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Brigid Bergin: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. I'm Brigid Bergin, senior reporter in the WNYC and Gothamist newsroom, filling in for Brian today. We'll get to the big Jimmy Kimmel news that rocked entertainment media and political circles last night in just a minute. Coming up later on today's show, we'll talk to a guest from the Legal Aid Society about the deaths of people in police custody here in the city, including a recent death of one of their clients. They're calling on the city's inspector general to investigate. Plus, later in the show, how artificial intelligence is showing up in the job hunting process. You may have encountered it as a job seeker, or maybe your company is using AI to hire people. We even heard a story of someone who had an interview with an AI chatbot. What could go wrong there? We'll wrap up today's show with a call and what we postponed from yesterday about the hit medical drama, the TV show The Pitt.

First, we'll start today's show with a preview of The Atlantic Festival, which debuts today in New York City for the first time in its 16-year history. Over the course of the weekend, attendees will hear from nearly 50 of the magazine's writers and editors, as well as decorated guests like David Letterman, Tom Hanks, and Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, among many others.

To give you a taste of what's to come of these next four days, we've got two of The Atlantic's staff writers with us, Ashley Parker and Adam Serwer. Tomorrow, they will be part of a panel titled The Big Story: Trump Politics and the End of Knowledge. First, Ashley and others will discuss the latest news from the White House and the halls of Congress. Adam and another set of journalists will look at what he describes as recent assaults on human knowledge and progress. Adam is also participating in a recently added talk on this new era of political violence that's become front and center since the assassination of Charlie Kirk last week.

Ashley and Adam join me now to talk about the Trump administration's response to Kirk's assassination, its implications for free speech and political expression, and whether this event represents another front in what Adam calls an attack on knowledge itself. Ashley, Adam, thank you for joining us this morning.

Ashley Parker: Thanks for having us.

Adam Serwer: Thanks for having us.

Brigid Bergin: Ashley, let's start with you. You were in the West Wing on the day of Charlie Kirk's assassination. Start us off by setting the scene. What did you learn about Kirk's relationship with the Trump administration from the White House's initial response to Kirk's death?

Ashley Parker: Sure. I was initially actually in The Atlantic offices in D.C. and as soon as it became clear that Kirk had been shot and his condition was unknown at that point, but things looked bad, I immediately raced over to the White House because I knew just from my reporting that this was someone who was not just a giant politically in MAGA world and in the president's orbit, but the that he was so close with a number of the president's top people, including the president himself.

When I got there, it was what I expected. All eyes were locked on every TV, which was just showing what the nation saw, which were the images, the real-time reporting on Kirk's assassination. In the West Wing, there were wet eyes, there were red eyes, there were grim faces. Some of these were staffers I've known since 2015 who have weathered all manner of political crisis and catastrophe, who were really struggling to keep it together and not break down because he was an incredibly close personal friend.

Right when I got there, a few minutes later, the media all filed out of the briefing room because we had heard that the president was going to lower the flag to half-staff. It was an overcast, cloudy day. We stood there and observed this moment that, again, happened so quickly. It's remarkable how quickly that happened, that the president got the order out, got the flags down. It was just the beginning of watching this president take actions, political actions, in many cases, being spurred on from a deeply personal place of anger, frankly.

Brigid Bergin: Charlie Kirk was a 31-year-old political activist, and yet you described him as one of the most influential unelected people in America. How did he become so influential in the Trump administration at such a young age? Can you talk us through his political career up from Turning Point USA to the time of his death?

Ashley Parker: Sure. He was someone, he didn't go to college, and he was identified early on by a Republican donor. Charlie Kirk said he wanted to get young people interested in politics, interested in Republican politics. One particular donor took a shine to him. Charlie Kirk, he did something unusual, which is that he met young people where they were in environments that were often hostile to him. He would famously go onto college campuses and do these prove me wrong debates and would have some supporters, but a lot of people who fervently disagreed with him, and he would go and he would debate them.

He also had his own show eventually, and a lot of these clips would go viral, and he got on the president's radar. He really made himself also indispensable to the president. He was at the White House frequently, especially in the first term. He was at Mar-a-Lago a lot. He was also very, very good friends with the president's oldest son, Don Jr., with J.D. Vance, with a young coterie of mainly white male aides, who they were on a small group text-chatting all day.

There's a lot of people who credit Turning Points for helping Trump build that broad, unlikely coalition that helped elect him in 2024. He's not just a personal friend, but Trump likes people who help him, Trump likes people who don't need him. Trump likes people who like him. Charlie Kirk also checked all of those boxes.

Brigid Bergin: In terms of how he was able to wield that influence, were there causes that he championed separate and apart from just promoting a MAGA identity and spreading the president's brand?

Ashley Parker: He talked about his faith a lot, and it's interesting. I might get this order a little wrong, but he would describe himself as a person of faith and a husband and father, and a conservative. He would say, Trump in politics, it was nice and it was fine, but politics wasn't his motivating factor. He wanted a much broader movement that transcended Trump. In practice, a lot of what he championed was very clearly the president's agenda.

In these instances where he would disagree, notably with the White House, he was a big proponent of release more of the Epstein files. Calling for that. It was notable because it was, Charlie Kirk is breaking with Trump. That doesn't happen. The president called him. They had a private conversation. We don't know exactly what was said, but then the next day, Charlie Kirk came out and fell in line and basically said, "I'm going to trust my friends in the White House to do the right thing." There were not a ton of splits or a ton of daylight between him and the president.

Brigid Bergin: Adam, you posted on Blue Sky, urging people to stop saying that the alleged assassin was a right-winger, as the idea is, "Not borne out by the evidence submitted." How do you understand the killer's political ideology and motives, and how much does that matter?

Adam Serwer: Looking at the indictment, it does not seem that he was someone politically from the right. I think it would be irresponsible to speculate on the killer's motives at this time. I think people should stop doing that. In terms of political violence, generally, there really is no question in terms of the data that most political violence comes from the right. Yet at the same time, what we have is a spectacular instance of political violence targeted at a conservative person. This political violence is toxic to American democracy. It's indefensible. Charlie Kirk should still be alive.

What has followed the death is Charlie Kirk has been a state backed campaign of repression of free speech that cannot be justified and that is utterly dangerous to the basic American freedoms of speech, association and political expression that is extraordinarily dangerous and simply cannot be justified.

Brigid Bergin: Listeners, if you're just joining us, it's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. I'm Brigid Bergin, senior reporter in the WNYC and Gothamist newsroom, filling in for Brian today. My guests are two writers from The Atlantic, Adam Serwer and Ashley Parker. We're talking about the upcoming Atlantic Festival, but in the context of what they will be doing at this festival, talking about some recent news and the exchange of ideas, and particularly right now, what the assassination of Charlie Kirk means to free expression, and to what we're seeing online.

To you both, I wonder if you could both weigh in a little bit about the broader reaction we've seen among public officials and average citizens, both on the left and the right, to Kirk's assassination and to the identity of the shooters. Are there any trends you're noticing initially, and how they've shifted in the weeks since his assassination?

Ashley Parker: I'll start. A couple of things. One thing that was very striking to me is that you can find people on both sides who handled this in inappropriate, crude ways. I was struck by, on the Democratic side and to some extent on the Republican side, but every elected Democrat official came out and immediately condemned the shooting and political violence, all three living Democratic presidents, Kamala Harris, nearly every member of Congress.

What was striking to me was in this moment was just how much it didn't matter that the narrative was that the left was celebrating his death and the left had caused his death, and these voices, they're in a different moment. Barack Obama. Mot just on social media. Barack Obama gave a speech. Josh Shapiro, the governor of Pennsylvania, gave a speech about this, calling for unity, calling for a cooling down, and the country to unite and come together.

There's a million moments, but I'm thinking, for instance, after the shooting by Dylann Roof in Charleston, where these calls from elected leaders really mattered and galvanized the country. One thing I have been struck by is just how much that is not happening. This is not a moment of unity. We are seeing such divisiveness, despite the calls by Democrats and a number of Republicans, Speaker Mike Johnson, for just that. That has been a notable moment.

In terms of the shooter's motives, I agree with Adam, we don't know a ton. It's a little early to speculate, but one thing in general with this recent spate of political violence that I've been struck by is that a lot of these people don't fit into easy designations, that they're someone from the right wing or a pure someone from Antifa. A lot of these shooters, you think of the Butler shooter who tried to assassinate the president, it's a mystery. They dabble. They may like parts of the MAHA movement, but they weren't really a fan of the president. They gave a small amount of money to maybe a Democrat or a Republican, but they're also influenced by memes and video games.

To me, again, I'm not speaking to this specific shooter, but it's a really interesting moment with all this political violence, where people don't seem to fit in these easy profiling buckets.

Brigid Bergin: Go ahead, Adam.

Adam Serwer: Historically speaking, with political assassinations, there's been a strong element of some kind of mental instability and attention seeking. It hasn't been something that is easily categorizable politically. That's it. That doesn't mean that it won't be the case here. I think again, it's very early. Part of what's happening here is the reason people are jumping into conclusions is that the Trump administration wants to use Kirk's assassination as a pretext for cracking down on his political opponents.

You could see this from what the Trump administration officials have been saying themselves. It's remarkable for Pam Bonney to come out and say there's free speech and then there's hate speech, and there's no place for hate speech. The Constitution doesn't recognize the difference between free speech and hate speech. In fact, this is one of the few things that Charlie Kirk and I agreed on, that the Constitution protects hate speech.

For them to say that what they're really saying is, "We are going to go after our political opponents and we're going to use this horrible act of political violence to do it." This is an administration that simply does not recognize Americans' right to criticize powerful people that they're aligned with. As Ashley mentioned earlier, Kirk was a very powerful person. When Americans are criticizing powerful people, they are basically at the height of their First Amendment free speech protections. Those are protections that this administration would like to take away.

I think as far as politicians reactions, I think it's important once again to note that all Democrats basically condemn this, but I want to highlight an observation from a Republican senator who has been a target of Trump and his allies, Senator Thom Tillis, who said, "A couple of talking heads see this as an opportunity to say we're at war so they could get some of our conservative followers lathered up over this. It's a cheap, disgusting, awful way to pretend you're a leader of a conservative movement."

I think that part of the basic issue here is that social media encourages extreme opinions for engagement, and so you have a lot of people who are going around trying to turn up the temperature as much as possible because that helps their bottom line.

Brigid Bergin: Adam, you mentioned some of what we've heard from the Trump administration over the past week. I want to play a few clips from people from the Trump administration placing some blame on the left and stating how they're combating domestic terrorism in the wake of Kirk's assassination. First is White House Chief of Staff Stephen Miller speaking with Vice President J.D. Vance during his commemorative episode of The Charlie Kirk Show on Monday.

Stephen Miller: The organized doxing campaigns, the organized riots, the organized street violence, the organized campaigns of dehumanization, vilification, posting people's addresses, combining that with messaging that's designed to trigger and incite violence. The actual organized cells that carry out and facilitate the violence, it is a vast domestic terror movement. With God as my witness, we are going to use every resource we have at the Department of Justice, Homeland Security, and throughout this government to identify, disrupt, dismantle, and destroy these networks and make America safe again for the American people. It will happen, and we will do it in Charlie's name.

Brigid Bergin: Here's Attorney General Pam Bondi on ABC News on Monday.

Pam Bondi: Who killed Charlie? Left-wing radicals. They will be held accountable, so will anyone in this country who commits a violent crime against anyone. The death penalty, thanks to Donald Trump, is on the table again.

Brigid Bergin: Adam, you penned a piece titled The New Dark Age earlier this year, in which you argue that the Trump administration is going after knowledge itself. Your piece digs into the attacks on universities, museums, libraries, scientific research, and so on. I'm wondering how you hear these clips. Is this an example of the attack on knowledge as well? We haven't even really gotten into Kirk's legacy and some of the other positions and things that he said that we are hearing. I am seeing a lot of our listeners text in about the fact that he was someone who took positions that were felt to be very extreme and very hateful for people in the LGBT community, for different groups that were not white. What is your response to those clips?

Adam Serwer: First of all, is that Stephen Miller in the first clip?

Brigid Bergin: Yes, it was.

Adam Serwer: When you say, as God is your witness, and then you proceed to lie and make a bunch of things up, you shouldn't do that. That's one of the Ten Commandments. You don't bear false witness, much less doing so by mentioning God. Number one. Number two, what you could see here is, again, the administration using Kirk's assassination as a pretext to attack their political opponents. They're not interested in preventing violence in the broader sense, even though that is one of the government's roles. They're interested in suppressing their political opposition.

They have made that perfectly clear. They're inventing this idea of networks of violence in order to justify doing so. This is basically classic authoritarian stuff. This is what repressive governments do to say that they're not being repressive. They say they're going after violence, even though those people do not exist in the way that Miller is discussing it.

As far as the attack on knowledge is concerned, this is an administration that does not countenance any use of authority. When I say authority, I mean having a large platform, being someone who has a certain amount of expertise, a university, a scholarly voice. It does not countenance any expression that could be seen as fomenting political opposition. That is indeed why a lot of what they're doing with the federal government, even in terms of denying grants, revoking funding for research, stuff like this, is fundamentally about speech.

What they want is to make sure that nobody has the ability to accumulate, disseminate, or establish knowledge that could be used to oppose Donald Trump politically. This is all part of a broader attack on speech, on free expression, and in some ways, on the ability of human beings to measure objective reality, because those are things that might be used to oppose Donald Trump.

It's a frightening road to be walking down, but you can see it in virtually every area of American politics right now, even coming down to economic data. Remember when the jobs numbers weren't as good as Trump wanted them to be, he fired the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics. We're rapidly approaching a situation where, if you criticize the Trump administration, they will do everything they can to make sure that you are fired or censored. That is just antithetical to the First Amendment, to free speech, and to democracy writ large.

Brigid Bergin: I want to pick up on that, Adam, with a clip from J.D. Vance, again from this episode of The Charlie Kirk Show on Monday that foreshadowed the moment that we're in with the news that broke about Jimmy Kimmel's show last night.

J.D. Vance: When you see someone celebrating Charlie's murder, call them out in hell, call their employer. We don't believe in political violence, but we do believe in civility. There was no civility in the celebration of political assassination.

Brigid Bergin: Then, of course, as I mentioned, the news broke last night that Jimmy Kimmel's show will be shelved indefinitely after he said this on air on Monday.

Jimmy Kimmel: We hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it.

Brigid Bergin: Adam, I came across a headline of yours from last October that was seemingly prophetic for this moment in politics, The Rise of the Right Wing Tattletale. Do you see a tie between the pattern you identified in the piece and the news that Jimmy Kimmel has been taken off the air for these comments?

Adam Serwer: Yes, look, that is the vice president of the United States encouraging regular Americans to snitch on their neighbors for thought crime. That is their ideal situation, where people are too intimidated to criticize powerful people in government or align with government, the exact freedom that the First Amendment was meant to secure. They want to punish them and make people afraid to say something lest they lose their job or they become the character of the day on Elon Musk's social network.

This issue of civility, look, I don't think democracy requires civility. I think it does require nonviolence, but to invoke civility about Kirk, this was a man who talked about Black crime, who said that the Haitians in Huntsville, Alabama, are raping your women and hunting you down at night, would become your masters unless Trump won the 2024 election. He described a group of Black women as having taken a white person's slot. One of them included the first lady. I don't traditionally think of the first lady as a white man's job.

Kirk did not restrain himself from making heated statements about all kinds of groups of vulnerable people. In fact, that's really been the essence of Trumpism, is destigmatizing the bullying of vulnerable groups using a large platform. I find it extraordinary for the vice president to say that now we have to be civil. I think it reflects a basic philosophical approach to speech, which is that conservatives are allowed to say whatever they want, and you are allowed to say whatever conservatives want. If you do not say what they want you to say, then your speech is not protected. That is the basic philosophy of this administration. It is, unfortunately, the basic philosophy of the party.

As a result of that, these sentiments, which, by the way, are grotesque, any celebration of Kirk's death is grotesque, but it is free speech. It is protected. That's what free speech means, is it protects grotesque statements, including the ones that Charlie Kirk made throughout his career about groups of people that I care very deeply about and that I found enraging, to be honest. This administration does not believe you should be allowed to criticize them, even as they make things up about you. In particular, I think back to J.D. Vance inventing this smear about Haitian immigrants eating people's pets. This is a man who's now calling for civility. What they really mean is, "You can say what we want, and that's it."

Brigid Bergin: Adam, from that analysis, it sounds like you really think we are at a turning point for the First Amendment.

Ashley Parker: I think we are at a turning point for the First Amendment because the American federal government has been in the hands of people who do not believe you should be allowed to criticize them, especially if you have a large platform.

Brigid Bergin: Listeners, we can take some of your questions and comments for our guests, Ashley Parker and Adam Serwer, on Charlie Kirk, the impact of his assassination. We're also going to switch gears in a moment and look at Trump's relationship with world leaders as he's in the UK today for talks with their prime minister. Call us at 212-433-WNYC. That's 212-433-9692. We can take your calls and your texts.

Ashley, Adam, you're not going to be surprised to know that we got calls and texts before I even asked for those. One listener wrote, "Please comment on Charlie Kirk's professor watch list. It had made him famous. It ruined the lives of many professors and was based on flimsy criteria. Have either of you reported on his watch list?

Adam Serwer: I have not reported on the watch list, but I was aware of the watch list. That's one of the reasons why these complaints about doxing are hypocritical, but hypocrisy doesn't really describe it. Again, they think that they should be allowed to say what they want, and they think you should be allowed to say what they want. It's really an expression of power. It's not even hypocrisy. It's fine for them to make lists of people to harass and demand that they be fired, but if you do it, that's cancel culture.

Really, the issue here is, in every society, you're going to have arguments about what kind of behavior is appropriate, especially for people in public-facing roles. This is different because it is a state-backed, backed by the government, backed by the vice president of United States, it is a state-backed effort to silence people who are criticizing powerful people aligned with the government of the United States. That is a fundamental attack on the most sacred right of free expression.

Brigid Bergin: Let's go to Casey in Ditmus Park. Casey, you're on WNYC.

Casey: Hi. I wanted to ask all of you, as people with high journalistic standards, about something that seemed a little odd to me about the reporting immediately after the shooting. When the shooter's identity was revealed, very quickly, it was reported that his roommate was a trans person. That, to me, just seemed like a strange detail for the media to include. I wouldn't be surprised to hear that on Fox News. It was also reported on WNYC.

To my knowledge, I can't think of other times when affiliates of mass shooters identities or politics have really been immediately brought to the public consciousness. I was just curious, from all of you as journalists, why was that relevant, or by what journalistic standards was that considered relevant?

Brigid Bergin: Casey, thank you for that question. Ashley, Adam, I know none of us collectively reported directly on the events. More analysis after the fact, but it's a fair question to raise because it is a piece of information that has been put into the public sphere. What is your response to that?

Ashley Parker: Part of, not necessarily the roommate, the trans identity, but the roommate in some ways was thrust into the public sphere because of these text messages that emerged between Charlie Kirk and his roommate, where Charlie Kirk is basically confessing what he did, and the roommate is expressing acute shock. We get the closest sense of general motive we have from those text messages, is where I'm paraphrasing. I don't have it in front of me, but Charlie Kirk, when the roommate says, "Why? Why would you do this?" The alleged shooter says, "Charlie Kirk was spewing too much hate, and it just had to end." That, I think, explains why the roommate, not necessarily their identity, but why the roommate was brought in, generally.

Adam Serwer: Look, I don't know what was involved in other people's reporting, but I think it's very clear that there is a high-profile campaign to demonize and dehumanize trans people so that they can be more easily persecuted under the law. The Supreme Court has countenanced this. The Trump administration has purged thousands of trans service members who are honorably serving just because they're trans. The focus on that detail here, I think, for a lot of people who are focusing on it, is simply an attempt to continue to villainize a very vulnerable and small group of people that does not deserve what is happening to them.

Brigid Bergin: Let's take Tom from Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey. Tom, you're on WNYC.

Tom: Hey, thanks for taking my call. I just wanted to bring to our attention, to piggyback off the last caller, I found it odd how we are silencing the truth about his political beliefs. Charlie's political beliefs--

Brigid Bergin: I think we lost Tom there. I saw his line drop. I think in essence what Tom was getting at was a lot of-- We talked about, Ashley and Adam, both you've talked about things that Charlie Kirk has said as part of his political discourse, positions that he took, attacks that he made on different groups. I think that listener was calling with a question about how his legacy and his biography, and his positions have, in some ways, been set aside because of this really horrific act of violence. It looks like maybe we got Tom back. Let's see if we can grab him if his line's a little bit better. Tom, are you back with us?

Tom: I'm back with you.

Brigid Bergin: I summarized your question, but I'll let you ask it quickly.

Tom: I just found it, to piggyback off the last caller, just a little disturbing that we're not allowed to say what he believed. Not to single you out, Ashley, but in your summary of his life and his political career, there was no mention of what he said, which, a lot of times, was hateful. I also find it odd, just the reporting on the whole situation in general, because if you go on TikTok or Instagram, there are kids that can decipher what was said on those bullets and lead you to a very interesting group of people called Groypers. They're not even bringing anybody on the radio, on the news to talk about this. It's very specific and alarming and scary. I just wanted to bring that into the conversation.

Brigid Bergin: Tom, thanks for your call. Thanks for calling us back. We appreciate it.

Ashley Parker: A couple of things. I think two things can be true, and you have to be able to hold both of them at the same time. One is that Charlie Kirk was assassinated in an act of political violence. That's utterly abhorrent, unacceptable. As Adam said previously, he should still be alive. You can also, and a number of people do, find the things that he said, that he was allowed to say because it was protected speech, absolutely abhorrent, particularly about Black women, about transgender individuals. Both things can be true. That he had views that a lot of people found offensive, again, abhorrent, dangerous, and that he didn't deserve to be murdered.

You mentioned my piece. I will say that piece, when we did it, just to answer that, the goal of that piece was to just explain that moment in the White House, how Trump and his aides were processing this, and how Charlie Kirk came to power. I think, but I could be wrong, if you went to The Atlantic website, I'm 99% sure that there were other pieces that discussed some of his views. It's a fair criticism and a fair point, but not every piece can do everything, and that was not what we set out to do.

I will say one thing, and this is a bit of a hypothesis, I do think you are seeing a little bit, because of what the Trump administration is doing, saying, "If you say anything we don't like about Charlie Kirk, we're coming after you. We're asking your employer to fire you. We're asking your neighbors to report you." I do think in some ways that they are achieving their desired effect because there have been people I have seen who have posted on social media holding those two views at the same time.

I condemn Charlie Kirk's death. He did not deserve to be murdered. Yet, let's remind people of what he said about Michelle Obama and a number of other Black women, who he said were taking spots from white men and didn't have the intelligence to be where they are. Those people just get so much incoming hate in vitriol. I can see individual citizens, not journalists, because our job is not to be cowed, but individual people saying, "You know what? It's not worth it. I'm not going to remind people what he said about trans women that I found so offensive. I'm just going to stay quiet because I don't want a bunch of Trump's allies coming after me."

Adam Serwer: Look, what happened to Charlie Kirk was horrible. He should not have been murdered, but you're not going to tell me that I am not allowed to say that Kirk, who said the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was a mistake, that I am now allowed to say that I find the idea that we should be still living in a country where I can be removed by police from a restaurant with my family because it's a whites-only restaurant, that it was a mistake not to outlaw that. You're not going to tell me I'm not allowed to criticize that. If you do, I'm going to ignore you.

The fact is, I think, to some extent, this campaign of trying to silence criticism of Kirk's views is about putting the things that he said, implying that it's somehow socially unacceptable to criticize those views. The essence of democracy is that people disagree about things. What Kirk said was protected. He should not have been subject to violence for it. He should not have been killed, but the American people are allowed to say what they think about things like, I think the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which outlawed Jim Crow, was a mistake.

Brigid Bergin: We're going to take a short break. We're going to have more with my guests, Atlantic staff writers, Adam Serwer and Ashley Parker, and your calls in just a minute. Stick around.

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It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. I'm Bridget Bergen, reporter in the WNYC and Gothamist newsroom, sitting in for Brian today. My guests are Atlantic staff writers, Adam Serwer and Ashley Parker. Before we shift gears from conversation about the impact of the Charlie Kirk assassination, I want to bring in one more caller. Let's go to Steve in Queensland. Steve, you're on WNYC.

Steve: Hi, good morning. How are you?

Brigid Bergin: We're good. Go ahead.

Steve: Did you hear me? Oh, yes. Actually, I want to backtrack to a previous conversation about saying that you're being silent if you speak or go against anything the right has to say. For four years through the Biden administration, anytime we would post or someone would post, someone would fact-check you and say that was incorrect and put you off the line, off the site.

I don't understand how right now you're saying that if you don't agree, that you're getting booted off from, say, the right-wing side, but no one seems to be booting anyone. People want to hear opinions about-- Just like I turn you guys on and it seems a little left-sided, but I listen because I like to hear what you have to say. That doesn't mean that I'm going to stop listening to you, but I do want to hear that there's two sides to a story.

Brigid Bergin: Sure, Steve. We did play earlier the clip of Jimmy Kimmel, who has now been taken off the air, which is one of the most probably public examples. Adam, any response to Steve's point there?

Adam Serwer: I think there's an important distinction to be made here between people making their own decisions independently about what they want to host on their website or what articles they want to publish. National Review is a conservative magazine. They don't have to publish me just because I want them to publish me, because that is their right of free expression.

When the government, when the FCC commissioner goes on a conservative podcast, as Brendan Carr did yesterday, and says, "We're going to come after you if you say things like this," that is fundamentally different because that is state censorship. That's different from fact-checking. Fact-checking is someone else saying, "You're wrong about X." That is private speech from one individual to another. You can disagree or you can agree. Either way, it's a conversation between people. What is not supposed to happen is the government stepping in to settle the argument, saying, "This person is right and this person is wrong because I say so." That is not supposed to happen.

That is what is a violation of First Amendment rights. If there's conservative outrage about people's grotesque reactions to Charlie Kirk's murder, that is perfectly acceptable. That is itself speech. It's different when the government gets involved and says, "Why don't you report these people to us," or, "You're not allowed to say this because it's hate speech."

Brigid Bergin: I want to shift gears in our last few minutes because there's lots of news going on in parallel. We're going to talk a little bit about how world leaders are navigating Trump's return to power, something, Ashley, you've written about. Trump is in the UK today for talks with Prime Minister Keir Starmer. What's the subject of the conversation among these two leaders?

Ashley Parker: Today, we would expect, expect them to talk at least a little bit about Ukraine, Starmer pushing Trump to be more forceful against Russia. We also expect that Jeffrey Epstein, not that the prime minister is going to bring it up or that Trump is going to bring it up, but this is likely or quite possibly something that has followed Trump across the pond, in part because the UK just recalled its ambassador to the United States, because of his close relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. That this is something that might come up in questions by American or British reporters.

Broadly, the goal of this trip, beyond the policy issues that world leaders would always discuss, is the UK's desire, like the desire of almost every country right now, in Trump's second term. When Trump won the first time, world leaders wanted to figure out how to manage him and work with him, but there was a view that it was an aberration, that this is not really what America was, and it was a fever dream that would pass. When Biden was elected, I was on his first foreign trip, and he went abroad and basically said, "America is back. The America you know is back."

When Trump was reelected, there was just a sense among world leaders that America is a different ally than they have known, that they fundamentally misunderstood the country, that they can't count on the United States for allies, at least in the way that they used to be able to, and that Trump is someone they have to figure out how to deal with. Which is the long way of saying part of this visit is to cement that special relationship between the US and the UK, and to woo Trump and to flatter him and to make him feel special in a way that they hope will pay dividends when it comes to foreign policy.

Brigid Bergin: We certainly have seen that Trump is getting the royal treatment on this trip. He's been greeted by King Charles. Is this a reflection of maybe some of the tips and tricks for dealing with this second Trump administration, and is this a sign that the UK is using the same playbooks that some other foreign countries have used, who have successfully dealt with him?

Ashley Parker: It was fascinating reporting this story because, in talking to diplomats and foreign officials, it was like world leaders, they're just like us. You found out that it was like in middle school, if you have a friend who's a bully and a little erratic, you might all get together to discuss how to handle them when they're on your basketball team. World leaders were having these behind-the-scenes conversations about President Trump, that they were trading tips and advice and saying, "When I went for my visit at the White House, this happened. Be on the lookout for this."

One example was that normally, if you go to the White House, there's the private meeting and then the official press conference, but the Italian prime minister went there and she said, which happens all the time now, is that the press was supposed to be brought in to take a picture and then leave. They basically stayed for 10 minutes and asked a bunch of questions.

Because she hadn't been expecting it, her back was to the camera. She was in this awkward position where she had to either have her back, like just her head, be on camera, the back of her head, lovely silky blonde hair, while she addressed her responses to President Trump, or she had to twist her body in the chair. That was a tip she passed on to other world leaders. Be aware that cameras are going to come in, that you may not be expecting a press conference, but that there will be a press conference. Be prepared. That was one tip.

Then it's also this mix of flattery, but Trump also likes people who are tough. If you're totally obsequious and you don't have any backbone, there's some diminishing returns to that. It's hitting that fine line balance. One thing also that I thought was interesting, we learned, or I learned reporting this, was that Trump really places a premium on the epistolary form. Trump, people laugh, but he writes letters, he signs things in Sharpies, and he seems to assign a lot of value of I, with my hand and my Sharpie, wrote you a letter. You'll recall, in his first term, he would frequently pull out the "love letters" he said that Kim Jong Un sent him.

When Starmer came to the US for his first visit, he brought a handwritten letter from King Charles inviting Trump to a rare historic- that's the use of the superlatives that Trump so likes- second state visit to the UK, and that's what we're seeing play out now.

Brigid Bergin: We're running out of time here, and I know you both have a very busy weekend ahead of you. Adam, maybe if you could give us just the minute pitch on your panel at The Atlantic Festival before we let you guys go.

Adam Serwer: Please come to The Atlantic Festival. We're going to have a spirited discussion about all the ways that America's scientific dominance and ability to comprehend objective reality is being harmed by what is essentially a political assault on the engines of knowledge production in the United States.

Brigid Bergin: Well, I know it's going to be a very thoughtful weekend. My guests have been two writers for The Atlantic, Adam Serwer and Ashley Parker. They are both participating in events at The Atlantic Festival, which starts today here in New York City. Tickets for in-person events are still available. You can also get a free virtual pass if you go to theatlantic.com/theatlanticfestival for more information. Adam and Ashley, thanks so much for coming on the show. Good luck this weekend.

Ashley Parker: Thank you.

Adam Serwer: Thank you very much

 

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