Dave Weigel

Right.

And their assumption was, well, everyone must know that when people see that, they think of Charlie Kirk.

And I thought, with no disrespect to Charlie Kirk, who I liked personally, did not deserve to be murdered.

That's not what the country was thinking about.

Like it or not, this is a very distractible country.

They can't remember what it watched yesterday.

And

effort to say the country is going to change and we're going to have a new conversation about political violence after Charlie Kirk was assassinated.

One, that didn't happen for people who are not paying a ton of attention to news.

Two, it's pretty convenient because it's not like Donald Trump said, you're right, I'm going to change my tone and not joke about shitting on protesters anymore.

They kind of wanted it both ways.

We're going to say Democrats are crazy and violent and

We're also not going to police our own speech in any way whatsoever.

The combination of that, I think you're seeing how just Republicans were not connecting with people who in a non-presidential environment are not paying attention to that sort of news.

And the final thing I'll say, Cittarelli in New Jersey, who's one of the real losers in this process, his stump speech was day one.

I declare the end of sanctuary cities in New Jersey and I get us out of the greenhouse initiative and that's going to drive down energy costs.

Are those immediate things that solve your problems?

Are they the sanctuary cities?

Is that not something Trump is taking care of right now?

They just were not very immediate issues unless you were like watching Newsmax all day.