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Next Up with Mark Halperin

What Charlie Kirk Assassination Reveals About Dems and Media, and Kamala's Book Tour Flops, w/ McCain & Ferguson

Next Up with Mark Halperin

MK Media

News, Daily News, Politics

4.61.2K Ratings

🗓️ 23 September 2025

⏱️ 71 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Mark Halperin opens with his latest reported monologue on Charlie Kirk’s assassination and the ongoing distorted coverage surrounding it. He reveals how the Dominant Media, aligned with Democratic leaders, downplays the significance of Kirk’s life and murder — and how it is echoing their role in obscuring Joe Biden’s decline. Mark explains how this “conspiracy of camaraderie” further erodes public trust in legacy outlets, deepens polarization, and signals that political violence is too often judged by partisan affiliation. Democrats’ reluctance to empathize with those mourning Kirk, he argues, reinforces the perception that ideology determines which tragedies matter. Meghan McCain and Ben Ferguson join to discuss America’s reckoning with Kirk’s murder, Erica Kirk’s extraordinary grace, and their own experiences with political threats tied to their Republican affiliations. They also unpack the start of Kamala Harris’s awkward book tour — marked by slights toward prominent Democrats, shifting blame for her 2024 defeat, and interviews that contradict her own account in “107 Days.” Finally, they examine how Harris’s fractured narrative about Joe Biden stands in sharp contrast to the loyalty and unity projected by Donald Trump and JD Vance. Chapter: For free and unbiased Medicare help, dial 262-454-0503 or go to https://askchapter.org/mark Disclaimer: Chapter and its affiliates are not connected with or endorsed by any government entity or the federal Medicare program. Chapter Advisory, LLC represents Medicare Advantage HMO, PPO, and PFFS organizations and standalone prescription drug plans that have a Medicare contract. Enrollment depends on the plan’s contract renewal. While we have a database of every Medicare plan nationwide and can help you to search among all plans, we have contracts with many but not all plans. As a result, we do not offer every plan available in your area. Currently we represent 50 organizations which offer 18,160 products nationwide. We search and recommend all plans, even those we don't directly offer. You can contact a licensed Chapter agent to find out the number of products available in your specific area. Please contact Medicare.gov, 1-800-Medicare, or your local State Health Insurance Program (SHIP) to get information on all your options. Delta Rescue: Visit https://DeltaRescue.org to learn more

Transcript

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0:00.0

Welcome back, everybody. This is Next up.

0:04.0

Grateful to you all for being here.

0:06.0

I met so many Nexters when I was in Arizona over the weekend,

0:10.0

covering the memorial service for Charlie Kirk and had an extraordinary experience hearing from folks about their appreciation for the program.

0:18.0

And of course, experiencing through their eyes what not just

0:23.2

Sunday was like but the entire experience of grappling with the assassination of Charlie Kirk and

0:28.6

the aftermath. So we're going to talk about what's next up for the country, for both political

0:34.3

parties and for people around. Again, I'm Mark Halpern, editor-in-chief of the

0:39.3

live interactive video platform two-way host of this program where I try to bring you my

0:43.8

exclusive reporting from around the country, around the world, analysis of all the top news

0:47.8

and all the stories that matter most so we can all try to figure out together what's going to

0:52.8

happen next up. Joining us today on the program

0:55.5

two super smart people who've been here and and who i like talking to so much megan mccane of

1:01.0

citizen mcane my colleague on two way and bed ferguson host of the ben ferguson podcast also

1:06.5

co-hosts the verdict with ted cruz they'll both be here. We'll talk about Charlie Kirk and how

1:11.5

the country's grappling with that and also about Kamala Harris and her book tour and then

1:15.7

some other political stuff with the two of them. I'm looking forward to that. But first,

1:20.4

my reported monologue, I did spend the weekend in Arizona going to what was an extraordinary

1:26.9

event in so many ways.

1:29.3

And I've been trying to understand what happened, how Charlie Kirk could have been assassinated.

1:37.3

And some of that is just a practical question of how someone who'd received so many death threats,

1:43.3

how someone who knew the dangers many death threats, how someone who knew

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