The Daily is outside the beltway journalism for the people. Please consider supporting our work by becoming a subscriber.
Two things can be true at the same time. The shooting of Charlie Kirk was a horrible act of political violence that has no place in society, and the United States has a problem with the extremist right-wing rhetoric, which Kirk also engaged in.
Sarah Jones appeared on Chew’s Views on Monday, where she discussed the media coverage and whitewashing of right-wing rhetoric after the Kirk shooting:
I've never seen anything like this before of just a complete retelling of the story. We saw this with January 6th, but there was a lot of pushback with the facts that we are not seeing this time. And I think some of that might be, I don't know. I suspect a lot of it is just appeasing the Trump administration.
But I also think that a lot of people are really afraid of those people and they don't wanna get, because Nick Fuentes put out a statement saying, I will denounce anyone who commits violence. 'cause he knew everybody was looking at him. And then he also, of course, blamed the left with no evidence.
Because that's what they do, and no one is calling that out. Like, how come isn't that dangerous? And in the frame of all of that happening, Richard, one of the things I'm really concerned about that I don't see being talked about again in the media is that while elected officials have and the media, they have the money and the means and the network to get security.
Charlie Kirk Wasn’t Doing Disagreement The Right Way
The whitewashing of Kirk’s rhetoric is being done by media elites like Ezra Klein who recently wrote that Kirk was doing disagreement the right way.
Sarah Jones responded to this claim:
Ezra Klein wrote an article where he apparently praised. Charlie Kirk's form of disagreement. He was doing it the right way. I'm sorry. Didn't he call for the killing of Joe Biden? Yeah. Is that how we disagree the right way? And, the thing that really gets me about this is always. And I don't, God, I don't wanna harp on white men all the time because it is not all white men.
And I know that, and I really appreciate the fact that it isn't, and there's a lot of white men who are good allies, but there are so many and it seems like once. They're in a position of power and elitism that really crystallizes for them because I thought, wow, Ezra, like it's easy for you to see disagreement, rhetoric about taking rights away from other people, and saying that the civil rights action had been passed, and women shouldn't vote.
All of the things women shouldn't have the right to have life-saving. medical care. Those things are just a disagreement for somebody who isn't; their rights aren't on the line, so I would not like, I would rather not be lectured to by somebody who doesn't have any skin in the game whose rights aren't on the line, about how this is just a form of disagreement.
The media has been revising history, and this revision damages the country, because the nation does have a problem with violent extremism. Crime statistics show that the vast majority of these threats come from right-wing domestic extremists.
The press has an obligation to stick to the facts and not aid those who wish to rewrite history, but the press has failed after the killing of Charlie Kirk. That failure will have consequences for the issues of political extremism and trust in mainstream media.
What do you think? Has the press allowed Kirk’s rhetoric to be whitewashed and glossed over? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
