Alex Wagner

To that end, I mean, the idea of opening the door to incivility, to not be constrained by the notions of civility that are basically thrust upon, you know, dissenters in this present political climate.

I wonder how you think about that in the context of the Charlie Kirk assassination, right?

I mean, it feels like uniformly elected Democratic officials, you know,

mourned his Kirk's death, even if they did not celebrate the ideas that he put forward.

And it was complicated, right?

It was complicated to figure out a way to disagree with the ideas that he stood for and promoted and resolutely stand against murder and assassination.

How did you think about those events in the context of, I guess, believing these uncivil times are going to call for and result in uncivil actions?

Yeah, and I think that that, you know, when you talk about it in that framework, it makes total sense, right, that J.D.

Vance, on one hand, memorializing Charlie Kirk, can call for civility as he is part of an administration that is dragging people into ICE detention centers.

targeting blue states and cities, trying to disappear trans people from society.

All of these things are incredibly violent things.

Violence is very inherent to the Trump administration, but because it's affecting those people and not this person, you can call for civility while being remarkably uncivil and explicitly violent.

How do you think they think of that disconnect?

Well, I think it's interesting that you talk about this in the context of the government shutdown, because I was having a conversation with Dan Pfeiffer yesterday on Pod Save America, and...

he was saying the Democrats are doing the worst, part of their strategy is so flawed, which is to say, we're not at fault for this government shutdown.

In fact, they should own it and say, we had to shut the government down because of what this administration is trying to do to Americans.

We were left with no resort because we care about the health and welfare of our citizens, and we can't fund a government that is actively trying to strip them of their rights,

strip them of access to healthcare.

So this is a principled fight.

It's actually, in some ways, I wonder if that more adheres to your notion of why civility doesn't work and it's time for uncivil tactics, like shutting down the government in the name of principle.