Meiselas: I think about the Charleston church shooting, where that lunatic terrorist Dylann Roof killed 9 African Americans. The motives were very clear. It was racist, it was anti-Black. Former President Obama at the time was the president. He did not speak from the Oval Office and say, this is on the hands of Republicans. You have been spreading anti-Black rhetoric. You are the ones responsible—he didn't do that.
What did he say? What you're supposed to say, what you're supposed to do, what good people should do: that this is a time where we need to come together and that the actions of a terrorist like Dylann Roof should not destroy who we are as Americans.
That's not unique to Obama. That's how leaders of the United States have behaved and acted before. They don't use the pulpit of the Oval Office to say the radical left—by the way, without even knowing the motives, what the causes are, without even having any details.
But the fact that the entire Maga Republican apparatus, starting at the highest level with Donald Trump—real leaders of the party, not randos on TikTok, not randos on Twitter, not a bunch of random people—the actual freaking leadership, saying we need to eradicate leftist Democrats for doing this to Charlie Kirk, without even knowing who did it, and then casting it as though this is a Democrat and leftist thing.
It's beyond irresponsible. To me, it is maliciously intending to cause more violence and more division and to provoke attacks.