With the Charlie Kirk memorial coming tomorrow, can't help but recall how Democrats at Paul Wellstone's memorial said a few partisan things and the entire right-wing media swung into action to smear it as a "hate-fest," then milked that for years. I'm sure @owillis.bsky.social has thoughts on this.

The right's position on political violence has always been and will always be that it's wrong, unless it happens to people they don't like in which case it's hilarious and awesome

Wordle streak moms are the 2026 swing voters Cold plunge dads are the 2026 swing voters Pickleball parents are the 2026 swing voters

Republicans clearly looking back and deciding that Willie Horton stuff was just too soft www.politico.com/news/2025/09...

I took a poll of 1,000 people named Dave who like to eat a nice sandwich and found they're evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans, so SANDWICH DAVES ARE THE KEY TO THIS ELECTION and the parties had better figure out what Sandwich Daves want if they have any hope of winning

Nearly 50 college instructors across #Illinois landed on #CharlieKirk's “Professor Watchlist.” @wbez.org reached out to all of them and found the list triggered hateful messages, threats of rape or death, and intensification since Kirk's killing. #twill www.wbez.org/politics/202...

Those of us who said Trump was a fascist got scolded for overreacting, catastrophizing, exaggerating, taking him too seriously. But we were right. paulwaldman.substack.com/p/we-were-ri...

The Cuomo campaign has assigned three staffers to use Midjourney to produce an endorsement from a hologram of Leona Helmsley

One of the key job requirements of being a Trump toady is that even if you are a reasonably smart person like Hassett, you will be told to go out in public and act like a complete moron, because that's what defending the mad king's policy choices necessitate

I hadn't realized until today that E.J. Dionne left the Washington Post. He was the last liberal in the opinion section; the voices there now range from center to right. In my years there I proudly said it was the best opinion section in the business. Now it's trash. A real tragedy.

Shakespeare, who is an example of somebody who's done an amazing job and is being recognized more and more, I notice

It's been a stressful day, so why not unwind by watching Mark Zuckerberg being hilariously humiliated in real time

Jimmy Kimmel make a joke about Trumpies caring more about scoring political points from Charlie Kirk's murder than about Kirk himself - totally fair - and after pressure from the administration it looks like ABC is ending his show. www.cnbc.com/2025/09/17/c...

I wrote at MSNBC about how with his new book Joe Manchin is peddling the same insipid centrist drivel he always has: www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnb... There's an odd footnote to this. A couple of years ago Manchin helped his daughter start a centrist group called Americans Together...

announcing my new think tank, the "people hate inflation, that's like 90% of why harris lost" institute

IOKIYAR, alive and well

has there been a single piece of political rhetoric that has inspired more mass shootings than great replacement?

Trump's rage at media is escalating: Crazy lawsuit against NYT plus new rants threatening two different reporters. He's finding that even if he extorts news orgs here and there, he cannot control the press. On the pod, @paulwaldman.bsky.social is very good on this: newrepublic.com/article/2005...

Really good piece from @dbernstein.bsky.social explaining where Charlie Kirk and Turning Point fit in the right wing grift-o-sphere: goodpoliticsbadpolitics.substack.com/p/charlie-in...

Multiple people have asked me "Do you use AI to help you write your columns?" and here's a piece of advice: If there's a writer in your life, maybe before you ask them that question you can ask ChatGPT what it feels like to get slapped across the face

Solid headline writing from the AP apnews.com/article/trum...

This 114-page piece of AI-generated slop is the #15 best selling book on Amazon right now

Yes yes yes. Conservatives - including Charlie Kirk - made Kyle Rittenhouse a hero PRECISELY BECAUSE he killed two people. That's what they were celebrating.

The last week has seen an absolute propaganda blitzkrieg from the right; it’s moments like this one that their media machine was created for. paulwaldman.substack.com/p/how-the-ri...

Look, if we want to create a super-awesome atmosphere of fear, we're just going to have to terrorize some innocent people. You know, for free speech or whatever. www.wsj.com/business/cha...

Nothing says "super masculine heterosexual man" like someone who 1) puts on copious makeup every day, 2) spends hours on his hair, and 3) is obsessed with the British royal family www.npr.org/2025/09/15/n...

Proud to welcome Karen to the club of writers purged from the Washington Post opinion section. We're a distinguished group!

Only because he's a white guy could a mediocrity like Stephen Miran get on the Fed board. Yet oddly no one is questioning whether he's "qualified." He "overcame setbacks on Wall Street" i.e. his career was kind of a failure but now he'll be on the Fed. Inspiring! www.wsj.com/politics/ele...

Yeah, I'm afraid I'm going to have to call bullshit on that. Urging calm was Cox's OWN impulse, and good for him. But Trump, Stephen Miller, and the rest of the gang are absolutely hoping for more violence. www.politico.com/news/2025/09...

When you write a piece noting that a guy promoted racism and violence, his followers immediately prove you right

Just you wait until Bari Weiss hears about this, she and the free speech absolutists at The Free Press are gonna be STEAMED

Let's be real: talking about the "debates" Charlie Kirk did like it was the noblest form of democratic praxis is ridiculous. It was performative trolling, just meant to make his opponents look bad. There was nothing deliberative or good-faith about it. Lots of people do the same thing. But come on.

Remembering how Biden and other Democrats said "We know inflation sucks but there are a lot of good things about the economy" and every pundit said "HOW DARE YOU tell people everything is great when they know it's not! You don't deserve to ever win another election, you bastards."

UC Berkeley has given the Trump administration the names of 160 students, faculty, and staff as part of an investigation into antisemitism on campus. One of them is Judith Butler. www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/arti...

It’s like climate change and hurricanes: Donald Trump may not be the provably direct cause of any one act of violence, but he’s the reason things have gotten so bad. paulwaldman.substack.com/p/dont-forge...

As someone who spent many hours listening to Kirk’s show on AM radio, I would say that he made Rush Limbaugh seem like Walter Cronkite by comparison, in terms of rhetorical tone and empirical rigor. The subtext of every show was “You don’t hate the left enough.”

rarely have I more acutely felt the dynamic by which Dems are held responsible for the rhetoric of every random left-leaning person on the internet and Republicans are not even asked to answer for their own personal words

Useful case as Trump tries to politicize death of Ukrainian woman in North Carolina. AFTER Jan6er Shane Woods remained out on bond AFTER he pled guilty to assaulting both a cop and a journalist on Jan6. Then he got super drunk, drove the wrong way on the freeway, and killed someone.

Oh come on

Any Democrat who says they want to return to “normal” will be following a recipe for failure. The emergency must be met with the will and skill to undo the damage. That means using all the power Trump has seized for the president. paulwaldman.substack.com/p/the-next-d...

OMG I just cannot fathom how anyone who has worked in politics for more than ten minutes, or even just paid attention to politics for more than ten minutes, could believe that appeals to "bipartisanship" have ever worked, work now, or will ever work. It's mind-boggling.

Trump could literally start a service called "I Am Scamming You Now Give Me All Your Money You Stupid Moron" and a million people would sign up with recurring monthly $45.45 payments

Not bad

At let's say $15 each for a digital copy they could have bought 100 million books for what they're paying in this settlement rather than stealing them, so maybe this will convince the AI companies to go about things in the right way, just saying Also "this could hinder AI innovation," LOL

"The choice is between a new round of disastrous cuts to government and a Republican Party allowed to trample the law and the separation of powers, or an outcome that might, in some small way, impede a president who grows more dictatorial with each passing day." — @paulwaldman.bsky.social

And let's not forget, for every one of the two dozen women who came forward to describe how Trump sexually assaulted them, knowing that speaking out would probably ruin their lives, there had to be MANY more women he did the same thing to, but who understandably remained silent.

Also, Vance's mother was addicted to PRESCRIPTION drugs, so maybe I'd cut him a tiny bit of slack* if the US government bombed the Sackler family and he was celebrating it *kidding, not even then would it be OK

Hard-hitting reporting in this morning's Politico

If you're a reporter, please stop referring to RFK Jr and his cronies as "vaccine skeptics." They're not skeptical. Skepticism would be fine. Skeptics look at evidence and can be persuaded. These people are extremist anti-vaccine cranks, and that's how news organizations should describe them.

My first answer to any question about future presidential candidates is, you just never know until they face that gauntlet. Some who seem great beforehand wither under the bright lights. But boy is Pritzker rising to this moment.