... Trump bluntly and deliberately signaled that forgiveness and unity were for others, and that he’d use Kirk’s assassination to intensify his efforts to impose personal power even more ruthlessly....But for most of the media, Trump's thuggishness just made Kirk appear more saintly. Collinson continued:
“He did not hate his opponents. He wanted the best for them,” Trump said. But in a moment of brazen self-awareness that epitomized his presidency, he then broke from the script. “That’s where I disagreed with Charlie. I hate my opponent.” Trump went on, “And I don’t want the best for them.”
But by ostentatiously stating how he differs from Kirk — who sought to engage his opponents respectfully and who prized free speech under the First Amendment — Trump made it clear he wanted Americans to perceive something about himself. He has never made a pretense of being a leader for all Americans, as most of his predecessors have — even if they didn’t follow through.(Emphasis added.)
Here's six minutes of Kirk engaging his opponents ... not respectfully:
We appear to have lost the battle to define Charlie Kirk using his own bigoted words. And now the press believes Kirk was a titanic presence in American politics, a man who'll somehow lead the GOP even after his death, rather than a niche figure who was popular only within the GOP base, as YouGov's numbers make clear:
Go here for more polling data on Kirk.
The mainstream press thinks Kirk was a kind, empathetic believer in free debate because for years mainstream journalists have avoided learning what right-wingers say to one another when they think we're not listening. Mainstream journalists have never made it a habit to watch Fox News, listen to talk radio, read right-wing websites, examine right-wing books, or turn on right-wing podcasts. When Rush Limbaugh was alive, they never read the full broadcast transcripts he posted on his site. Apart from a few commentators, they've never made a habit of going to Media Matters or Right Wing Watch to learn what conservatives are saying. They don't pay attention to the email forwards, the online memes, the bumper stickers. Instead, they go to diners and conduct focus groups, where right-wingers give them the polite version of their thoughts on politics and culture.
And now right-wing spin doctors are giving the mainstream journalists a polite version of who Charlie Kirk was -- and the journalists have no prior knowledge to compare it with, and apparently no idea where to find contradictory information.
But beyond all this, when the GOP began to talk about Charlie Kirk as a titanic figure in American life, the right-wing equivalent of Martin Luther King in terms of reach and influence, the mainstream media decided to take the party's word for it. Why?
Because Republicans have been working the media refs for decades. Mainstream journalists now believe that they're out-of-touch elitists (as are all Democrats), and if they barely detected Charlie Kirk's influence on American politics during his lifetime, it must be because they dwell in a liberal bubble and didn't see how profoundly influential he was.
Kirk had some influence. Reporters should have been aware of him during his life. Then they could have made an accurate assessment of his influence -- and his real views. But they were oblivious, and because they've been told for years that they're hopelessly biased against the right, they uncritically accepted the right's narrative of Kirk's life and beliefs. And now that's the mainstream media's narrative as well.
And in case you think I'm implying that mainstream journalists really do live in a liberal bubble, let me be clear: mainstream journalists live in a mainstream information bubble, where Republicans (with the exception of Trump and a few outliers like Marjorie Taylor Greene) never say or do anything extreme. These journalists would never have encountered Charlie Kirk's most hateful words, and they can't fit them into their worldview even as some of them come to light now. That's not liberalism.
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