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Sargent: He had real penetration in the culture, you’re saying that that.

maybe makes it possible to kind of jar people a little bit more.

Sommer: Exactly. And I think the videos of his assassination as well, I think are so graphic and we’re sort of inexplicably so available on social media that I think that will pull people in as well.

Sargent: That’s a smart point. Just to talk about Tillis one more second. It occurs to me there’s almost like a self-compounding problem here. If you had a president who was calling for calm and reminding everyone that political violence has claimed victims on both sides and not saying his own side’s political violence is just fine, which is what, you know, presidents ordinarily do. You might have other Republicans doing the same, but because Trump has set up this frame where any talk like that is weak, where you’re always supposed to be waging open warfare on the left at all times, other Republicans are also doing that. And the political science tells us that the masses take their cues from elites. So The MAGA masses are constantly getting inflamed and torqued up into a fury. What do you make of that? It seems like a bad situation.