We just turned 4! 🥳 🎂 🎉

The federal government is waging a censorship campaign, an all-out war on the First Amendment, on a scale without precedent in living memory. @andycraig.bsky.social

Other Presidents Tried to Heal America After Political Violence—Trump Is Dividing It www.theunpopulist.net/p/other-pres...

"Trump's attack on free speech and free elections are two sides of the same coin, and we can’t treat them as separable." — @andycraig.bsky.social in @theunpopulist.net 🔥🔥🔥

Terrific @stevechapman.bsky.social piece on how Trump's gleeful assassination of alleged drug smugglers could unravel international law and norms. www.theunpopulist.net/p/trumps-sta...

Getting to re-read President Obama's eulogy for Rev. Clementa Pinckney, the S.C. state senator and pastor of Mother Emanuel church, one of nine victims senselessly gunned down by the white supremacist Dylann Roof, was a gift. Easily one of the most righteous responses to tragedy I've ever heard.

They destroyed even the pretense that they care about free speech in order to sack Office Depot employees and fast food workers. What a completely batshit political movement.

As an Argentinian, this is not easy to say: But I am so very envious of 🇧🇷 Brazil 🇧🇷 right now.

Can't believe @theunpopulist.net is turning four this Monday. I've only been there for half its lifespan. But I think one marker of its quality—I'm biased, I know, I know—is that it feels as if it's been around much longer than that. We're only a presidential term old, and that's wild to me.

Responding to acts of shocking political violence, earlier presidents tended to emphasize reconciliation and magnanimity in their public statements, a path conspicuously not followed by Donald Trump [@bernybelvedere.bsky.social @theunpopulist.net]

The takes this week, my God, the takes.

Mere hours after Kirk’s murder, Trump addressed the nation in a four-minute speech that, entirely breaking with precedent and established norms of decency, called not for national unity or calm but for fear to fall on Americans who differ with his politics. @bernybelvedere.bsky.social

George F. Will with a, um, questionable historical parallel.

New, from me, at @theunpopulist.net Following Charlie Kirk's murder, Trump moved very quickly to channel the abject fanaticism from his online supporters into a full-blown retribution agenda against political opponents—something past presidents studiously avoided doing.

Gallows humor might save us!

Nailed it

Wow, the callous disrespect for Charlie Kirk's heartfelt view is insane here. Please forward to the FBI for them to look into. 🙏

Talking political DE-ESCALATION with the Daily Wire's Ben Shapiro, a DEMONCRAT SCALP COLLECTOR who spends TWENTY THREE AND A HALF HOURS A DAY roasting pervert libs for bringing about the END OF CIVILIZATION, and the remaining half hour dumping AMERICA'S SOY SUPPLY INTO THE BOSTON HARBOR.

What really jumps out about this analysis is how sane it is.

This should be the No. 1 story right now. Without due process or any finding of law, the U.S. just extinguished 11 civilian lives. www.theunpopulist.net/p/trumps-sta...

"So while I think some of the encomiums to Kirk that we’re seeing today are misplaced...He had a right to speak, even as others had a right to criticize him. The right to freedom from political violence means freedom for our ideological enemies, too..." www.theunpopulist.net/p/trump-is-a...

My guess is that … they will bake it?

This is excellent, from @stevechapman.bsky.social in @theunpopulist.net, on Trump’s decision to order the cold-blooded murder of 11 people on a Venezuelan vessel. “Trump is apparently determined to secure our undisputed place as the premier rogue nation on the planet.”

This sentiment is ubiquitous on the right in the wake of Charlie Kirk's murder. As with so much rhetoric from that side, its premise is a total farce. These people were never interested in anything like a good-faith dialogue or in the free marketplace of ideas in the first place.

“The last message that Charlie gave to me, adorned with his favorite Bible verse, ‘Don’t tread on me,’ inscribed on the bottom, and spurred by the same revolutionary fire that founded a nation, was this: ‘MLK was mid.’ I will never forget that vital insight.”

We were assured that Kirk’s killer would be a genderfluid migrant who smuggled CRT tomes laced with fentanyl into the country, propelled by hatred for America and runaway wokeism. In reality, it turned out to be Dan Bongino in a bid to protect the president from an extended Epstein news cycle. Wow.

Absolutely embarrassing tripe. Consistently of the worst publications in the game.

Kirk didn't serve in the military or hold office. The war hero treatment -- half-mast flags, military guard, Air Force Two escort, calls for a statue at the Capitol or to lie in the Rotunda -- shows that for MAGA, service to Trump has become the highest, most honorable form of service.

Good point here. I think an initial mistake some are making is leaping from detecting Groyper influences to ascribing something like Groyper membership—or converting that into a neat and tidy categorization of affirmative Groyper convictions.

Again, his whole mind is episodic - Kirk dying was the thing from last episode, he doesn't get why people are still asking him about it.

Powerful sentiments

“Don’t you DARE call us Nazis.”

The party very genuinely begging for measured rhetoric believes that the right has not radicalized one iota since 2008 and that in 2025 the left is entirely made up of political assassination enthusiasts.

The same people performatively pleading for responsible rhetoric will hysterically rage against an amorphous “you,” a category constructed to have perfect overlap with their political opponents, that it exclusively blames for all of society’s ills.

Why are heterodox sciencebros like this? This is such a bizarre thing to ask for or expect.

I did an analysis of Trump's response to the Charlie Kirk killing, which is basically that political violence is bad only when he's not in charge of it.

This is very good from @tracinski.bsky.social in @theunpopulist.net "Trump’s statement is not a condemnation of hateful rhetoric and political violence in general. It is a condemnation of political violence only against his allies."

This is indefensible. You can commend Kirk for engaging with dissenters in discussion and debate without preposterously elevating that to a full-blown positive appraisal of the way he practiced politics, which, in the main, involved being an indefatigable reactionary provocateur.

We are headed for dark times. These people aren’t mere provocateurs any longer—they are politically consequential. And they will selectively seize on tragedies—politicizing Kirk’s killing but remaining silent about the Minnesota legislators—to turbocharge their illiberal designs.

The murder of Charlie Kirk is completely senseless and a symptom of a deeply broken society. May God show us the way out this morass of escalating political violence that we’ve found ourselves in.

Really important piece by @andycraig.bsky.social in @theunpopulist.net about Trump's leaked plans to deploy a red state's National Guard against a blue state.

“Republicans are going to paint Democrats as far-left extremists no matter what positions they take. So you might as well defend the positions you believe to be principled, moral, and correct.” @radleybalko.bsky.social is always a must-read.

Great piece by @anthonylfisher.bsky.social on Trump's pathetic flag-burning EO: "Self-anointed real Americans like Trump allow themselves — and only themselves—the grace to regularly express disgust with modern-day America. Yet they are also deeply insecure about their faith in America’s greatness."

I don't think I'll ever get over the fact that official government social media are now troll accounts. We live in an absurdist caricature of a dictatorship and a shocking number of people either haven't noticed or don't care.

Future (Prager U) textbooks will tell the tale of how Donald Trump repelled the leftist hordes attempting to erase white people out of existence through their cultural reengineering initiatives disguised as anodyne logo refresh efforts.

🙃

Putin tried twice to poison @vkaramurza.bsky.social. Threw him in prison, releasing him last year only in a prisoner swap. Yet this man, a genuine hero, stood unbowed at LibCon2025 and warned of the dangers of appeasing tyrants.Please listen @theunpopulist.net www.theunpopulist.net/p/appeasing-...

A very insightful—and sobering—LibCon2025 panel on the state of our constitutional democracy. Here is the whole thing—video + transcript—in @theunpopulist.net It featured @frankfukuyama.bsky.social, @ruthmarcus.bsky.social, @jacklgoldsmith.bsky.social, and @benjaminwittes.lawfaremedia.org.

Scott Adams would solve the Russia-Ukraine war by letting Russia rig an election that tells them they get to keep the territories they illegally seized.

Nah bro what is this 💀