“The Daily Show” responded to the assassination of conservative political activist Charlie Kirk with an uncharacteristically reflective, impassioned message Thursday night calling for America to leave its us-versus-them attitude behind.
“This is as good a time as any to say political violence is never acceptable,” host Michael Kosta said at the top of the episode. He went on to note that, of all the living U.S. presidents, Donald Trump is the only one who blamed Kirk’s fatal shooting on a specific party (“the radical Left”). “Did we expect anything different?” Kosta asked in response. “The last time Trump delivered a thoughtful message was apparently when he sent a birthday card to Jeffrey Epstein.”
“By the way, I’m not singling Trump out,” the Comedy Central host quickly noted. “This is how our society behaves now. A tragedy occurs. Instead of digesting and trying to understand, everyone sets their feet and starts throwing punches.” He argued, though, that the “root cause” of America’s political violence problem might not just be rhetoric, but rather something “extraordinarily complex.”
“The problem might be a toxic mix of our gun laws, lack of mental health, collapsed social connection — probably a bunch of other things I haven’t even thought of yet,” he offered. “Political violence isn’t going to go away if the people on the other side say exactly the right words from now on.”
Kosta also pushed back on remarks made by members of the American media, including fired MSNBC analyst Matthew Dowd, who suggested in the wake of Kirk’s shooting that it was the inevitable outcome of the activist’s “hateful words.” “I don’t know, man,” Kosta responded. “The whole idea of free speech in America is you can say what you want and not expect to be shot. Can you be challenged? Sure. Can you get roasted online? Sometimes. Told to leave a child’s birthday party? Yeah, even though I think I was right that the cake f—king sucked, Derek.”
More importantly, Kosta was mystified by the combative rhetoric adopted by members of the Right in response to Kirk’s death. “Who’s ‘they’?” Kosta pointedly asked. “People in the media would love to talk about how they are responsible for what they’ve done and how they had better watch out, or else they’ll get what’s coming to them.”
“But I think it would be better if we as a country understood that we have a problem with political violence,” Kosta countered. “And we need to start thinking less in terms of what they should do and more in terms of what we have to do.”
“It’s not lost on me today that the last time it felt like we thought in terms of ‘we’ was on 9/11,” Kosta noted, in honor of the 24th anniversary of the attacks. “I don’t know what you do to get back to that. Obviously not another 9/11. I want to be very clear about that. But what about… I don’t know… an alien invasion?”
“Maybe if UFOs suddenly appeared over every important U.S. city — and also Los Angeles — that’s the thing that would jolt us off our phones and bring us back together,” the “Daily Show” host concluded. “Or the aliens take over and enslave us all. But at this point, that might be worth a try.”
