Political Gabfest - Assassination of Charlie Kirk
Political Gabfest
Slate Podcasts
4.4 • 8.5K Ratings
🗓️ 11 September 2025
⏱️ 65 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This week, Emily Bazelon, John Dickerson, and David Plotz discuss the assassination of Charlie Kirk amid an extremely troubling climate of political violence in America, another Supreme Court order with no majority explanation allowing racial profiling by ICE in LA, and a score-settling excerpt from Kamala Harris’s upcoming memoir 107 Days.
For this week’s Slate Plus bonus episode, Emily, John, and David discuss the astonishing new details revealed by the release of a book of letters collected for Epstein’s 50th birthday from his friends, including Donald Trump.
In the latest Gabfest Reads, Emily talks with Jonathan Mahler about his new book, The Gods of New York. They discuss the unraveling of Mayor Ed Koch’s New York City; how the city’s current mayoral race is mirroring the past; and more.
Email your chatters, questions, and comments to gabfest@slate.com. (Messages may be referenced by name unless the writer stipulates otherwise.)
Podcast production by Cheyna Roth
Research by Emily Ditto
You can find the full Political Gabfest show pages here.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to the Slate Political Gab Fest. |
| 0:10.3 | September 11th, 2025, The Assassination of Charlie Kirk edition. |
| 0:22.9 | I'm David Plotz of Citycast in Washington, D.C. |
| 0:28.2 | From New Haven, Connecticut and the New York Times Magazine and Yale University Law School, Emily Basel. Hello, Emily. Hello, hello. Good morning. And from New York City and the CBS evening |
| 0:34.4 | news and CBS evening news plus John Dickerson, hello, John. Hello, David. Hello, Emily. |
| 0:40.7 | This week on the Gab Fest, the assassination of Maga Leader Charlie Kirk and the extremely troubling, dangerous climate of political violence in America. |
| 0:51.8 | Then the Supreme Court clears the way for racial profiling in the |
| 0:56.3 | service of ICE's mass deportation efforts. Is there any check possible on Trump's harsh |
| 1:02.4 | immigration policies? Then Kamala Harris has a new memoir about her presidential campaign, |
| 1:07.7 | 107 days. We'll talk about an excerpt from the book that savages Joe Biden |
| 1:13.5 | and his staff. Plus, we will have cocktail chatter. |
| 1:17.5 | Hey, Jack, I'm seeing your business everywhere. Have you got a new marketing person or something? |
| 1:22.2 | You could say I've got a new secret weapon for print. Print? Oh, vista print, right? That's not a secret. How did you know? Come on. Custom posters, branded mugs, stylish flyers. Only one place prints all that. Vista print. Yeah, I got business cards, stickers, t-shirts, booklet, signage, even photo books from my last holiday. |
| 1:40.5 | Print everything for your business with Vistaprint. If you need it, we print it at vistoprint.co.uk. |
| 1:48.0 | Charlie Kirk, the founder of Turning Point USA, one of the most effective pro-Trump organizations, |
| 1:55.6 | a key architect of the surge Trump had among young voters last year, |
| 2:00.1 | was assassinated yesterday at an event at Utah, |
| 2:03.2 | Valley University in Orem, Utah. Kirk was 31, and he'd been a MAGA leader for more than a decade. |
| 2:09.9 | He'd started Turning Point USA chapters on 850 campuses, befriending and being befriended by Trump, Don Jr., J.D. Vance, advising Trump, |
| 2:21.3 | hosting an incredibly successful podcast, TikToking, and generally organizing the young |
| 2:28.6 | cology wing of the MAGA movement. His assassination is the latest act of political violence and what's been an |
| 2:35.8 | alarming period for it from the summer's assassination of a Minnesota state legislature, |
... |
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