A big talk about how the country moves forward

Left, Right & Center

KCRW

352865, News

4.2 • 4.8K Ratings

🗓️ 19 September 2025

⏱️ 51 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

After the assassination of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk, both Republicans and Democrats called for unity and understanding — but polarizing rhetoric has continued to escalate. President Trump, Vice President JD Vance, and other White House officials have vowed to target the “radical left” for being politically violent. Democratic officials have warned that the White House may try to use the assassination to suppress speech. Those fears may have been realized when ABC was threatened over late-night host Jimmy Kimmel’s comments about conservatives’ reaction to Charlie Kirk’s killing. Brendan Carr, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, pressured the network to pull Kimmel off the air indefinitely. How do Americans feel about a government agency censoring speech that they don’t agree with? Whose responsibility is it to turn down the temperature when it comes to rhetoric and polarization?

David Greene worked with country singer Ketch Secor of the band Old Crow Medicine Show to produce a music documentary called Louder Than Guns. Greene spent time with Secor, touring across the country and hearing Americans’ reflections on gun violence and gun rights. When FOX News host Trey Gowdy said that Americans should have a conversation about preventing more gun violence, his fellow conservatives said he should be ashamed. How do we stop talking past each other during conversations about guns and create an open dialogue?

Are Americans too enraged by each other to ever experience unity? This week, a listener asked Left, Right and Center about America’s history of political violence and if our panel thinks anything has changed.

Transcript

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0:00.0	A Better Help ad.
0:02.3	Lewis Capaldi partnered with Better Help to get word out about how important therapy can be.
0:07.6	I struggle most weeks to get up, get myself up and ready and go to therapy or whatever.
0:13.0	Even like to open the laptop to talk to, my therapist sometimes could be really difficult.
0:17.4	But I do it because I realise how important it is for me to continue to
0:21.0	feel good. I felt the best I've felt in a long time through therapy.
0:25.6	Learn more about online therapy at betterhelp.com.
0:31.2	Welcome to left, right and center, everybody. I'm David Green. After the killing of conservative
0:36.4	commentator and activist Charlie Kirk, there have
0:39.1	rightfully been calls for understanding and unity in our country. On this show, like others,
0:45.6	we talked hopefully about turning down the political temperature. But what does that look like?
0:52.5	And who's supposed to control the thermostat? I mean, is it up to our
0:56.0	politicians or is it our responsibility? As citizens deciding how much we want to work on that?
1:01.8	How many Americans actually want to turn the temperature down? All fair questions, I think.
1:07.3	So let's talk about where things are right now. This was Republican Senator Tom Tillis discussing
1:12.5	the idea of de-escalation at a hearing on the Hill this week. Within 24 hours of Mr. Kirk's shooting,
1:19.6	we had the guy that does the podcast for the war room and another guy who's denied the Sandy Hook
1:25.8	shootings say we're at war. Now, how on earth,
1:29.6	and I do believe it's a smaller number, but it's a number that has an influence. How on earth
1:34.0	are we de-escalating the situation with the tensions as high as they were last week with going
1:41.7	out and saying we're at war? I'm not asking you to respond to this question.
1:46.1	I'm just saying that there are people out here on our side of the aisle that still need to look
	...

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