MSNBC’s Chris Hayes used his Tuesday All In show to look back to Monday when Vice President JD Vance guest-hosted The Charlie Kirk Show after Kirk was brutally assassinated. As Hayes tells it, Vance was echoing anti-Semitic ideas when he criticized an article in The Nation because that outlet is funded by George Soros.
Hayes tried to argue that Vance’s reliance on the article in question fails to show a vast left-wing conspiracy to commit acts of political violence, “And in the complete absence of any evidence of any vast plots. Vance, instead, singled out an opinion column published by The Nation that criticized Kirk's cultural legacy while also condemning the violence that killed him.”
That condemnation by Elizabeth Spiers was not exactly the strongest, “I do not believe anyone should be murdered because of their views, but that is because I don’t believe people should be murdered generally, regardless of who they are or what they’ve done. I am against the death penalty, pro–gun control, and believe war is a failure of humanity, not a necessary byproduct of it. Kirk was fine with murder as long the right people were dying.”
Elsewhere, Spiers tried to say that writing a positive history of Kirk’s life would be akin to trying to claim Joseph Goebbels was a good family man.
Nevertheless, Hayes continued, “It was then the vice president of the United States called for a war on the free press and its supporters in rhetoric that echoed anti-Semitic conspiracy theories.”
In a clip, Vance was shown declaring, “There is no unity with the people who fund these articles, who pay the salaries of these terrorist sympathizers. [Jump Cut] Did you know that the George Soros Open Society Foundation and the Ford Foundation, the groups who funded that disgusting article justifying Charlie's death? Do you know they benefit from generous tax treatment? They are literally subsidized by you and me, the American taxpayer, and how do they reward us? By setting fire to the house built by the American family over 250 years.”
We’re supposed to believe that because Vance criticized a specific Jewish individual’s political activity, he was flirting with Jewish money tropes. That is, of course, ridiculous. It is completely understandable why a man with an Indian wife and biracial children would be angry at an article accusing his murdered friend of being an “unrepentant racist.”
For his part, Hayes was reduced to using a reductio ad Orbanum, “Those words echo a lot of what Viktor Orban in Hungary has said, as he has gone after George Soros and independent institutions of civil society. I mean, that's the vice president of the United States grossly mischaracterizing an article he seemed not to read, spinning it into part of a vast and false conspiracy, saying there's no unity with the other side.”
Yes, technically, Spiers didn’t applaud Kirk getting murdered. She did, however, call Kirk all sorts of nasty names under the guise of simply telling the truth. If someone murdered whoever the liberal equivalent to Charlie Kirk is and then some conservative outlet ran an article trashing that person, would Chris Hayes seek unity with that person and their benefactors? No, of course he wouldn’t. Meanwhile, Hayes omits the part of Vance’s podcasting duties where he said not even two minutes earlier, “We can thank God that most Democrats don’t share these attitudes, and I do.”
Here is a transcript for the September 16 show:
MSNBC All In With Chris Hayes
9/16/2025
8:04 PM ET
CHRIS HAYES: And in the complete absence of any evidence of any vast plots. Vance, instead, singled out an opinion column published by The Nation that criticized Kirk's cultural legacy while also condemning the violence that killed him. It was then the vice president of the United States called for a war on the free press and its supporters in rhetoric that echoed anti-Semitic conspiracy theories.
JD VANCE: There is no unity with the people who fund these articles, who pay the salaries of these terrorist sympathizers. [Jump Cut] Did you know that the George Soros Open Society Foundation and the Ford Foundation, the groups who funded that disgusting article justifying Charlie's death? Do you know they benefit from generous tax treatment? They are literally subsidized by you and me, the American taxpayer, and how do they reward us? By setting fire to the house built by the American family over 250 years.
HAYES: Those words echo a lot of what Viktor Orban in Hungary has said, as he has gone after George Soros and independent institutions of civil society. I mean, that's the vice president of the United States grossly mischaracterizing an article he seemed not to read, spinning it into part of a vast and false conspiracy, saying there's no unity with the other side.
