Open letter of response to Turning Point USA’s podcast

Sent October 7, 2025:

I lean left politically, and in responding to your October 1 podcast, I’m trying to do the work I ask of students and teachers —which is to connect respectfully with those across the political divide (please feel free to kick my tires here). You said you read all incoming email, so here’s hoping this one is worth your time!

First, I am deeply sorry for your loss. It struck me, listening to the podcast, that you bring a high degree of clarity, purpose, and energy to your work, and it must be enormously challenging to maintain that professionalism as you simultaneously mourn a personal tragedy. My thoughts are with your team as you face both challenges.

My intent in this email is not to refute the content of the podcast. Instead, I’d like to do two things: 1) reflect back to you areas of agreement, even across the political divide and 2) hit you with areas of concern that exist on my side of the divide and that I hear echoed in your own concerns. In other words, I’m trying to build bridges.

To my ear, one thread of your podcast was a longing and advocacy for genuine personal connection. I heard talk of babies and how children naturally drive parents toward community as they build a network in support of their kids. As a longtime educator and father of two, I found myself nodding along. Sometimes those connections eventually prove to have been superficial and situational, melting away after the birthday parties have passed, while others endure. I fret constantly about my teenage kids’ isolation—physical isolation imposed by the pandemic, followed by alienation bred of the digital onslaught—and I, like you, want desperately for all of us (but especially my own kids) to enjoy the fruits of meaningful human connection. I think I heard in the podcast an assertion that conservatives are generally more connected than progressives, which is something that had never occurred to me. Is it true, I wonder? I’d be curious to hear more.

I was struck by the feeling of threat expressed in the podcast. Your guest mentioned many frightening incidents (slashed tires, SWAT episodes, etc.), and you also talked about enduring a culture of low-grade violence and intimidation, such as when college students ransacked a Turning Point table. I get this—there are steps that precede or lay the groundwork for more overtly violent acts, and we ignore those intermediate acts of aggression and intolerance at our own collective peril. It would be eye-opening, I think, for many of my progressive friends to hear of your experiences.

And this is where I gently ask you to hear that my shared concern comes from a different perspective. That very same unease about an unchecked culture of intimidation, a casual encouragement of violence, is one of the reasons I worry about President Trump. What some may hear as bold, frank presidential talk—to be celebrated, if that’s the way it is received—often sounds to me as demeaning, intolerant, and supportive of violence. This is not to refute what you have said. I do not for a second doubt the threats you experience. It just strikes me that your experience living with this threat positions you to understand that many of us across the political divide share that same dread, amplified by the powers at the president’s disposal.  

It sounded to me as if you feel genuinely besieged—not only by the personal experiences I already mentioned, but also by a wider threat coming from the left. You cited a Rutgers study that alarmingly revealed robust support for political violence among those on the far political left. I tracked down that study, read it, and found it credible. In fact, when I present to teachers, as I often do, I intend to incorporate some of the study’s findings to make educators aware of what the authors call an “assassination culture” that may be fueled by online ecospheres. I can understand why you feel besieged, and it would be eye-opening for those in my progressive orbit to learn about this reported far-left support for political violence (We all tend to occupy our own, affirming news ecosystems, and it does not escape me that I had never seen the Rutgers study; I had to listen to a podcast run by folks across the political aisle to discover it).

Even as I acknowledge the disturbing findings of that report, I also lift up a research summary from More in Common that highlights two important findings: that overall support for political violence, as measured by an array of studies, remains very low in this country, yet many of us vastly overestimate the extent to which people across the political divide support such violence. This perception of danger from beyond can have the effect of heightening our defensive instincts—of sharpening our knives in anticipation of attack.

And many things can be true at once. It is true that you have experienced intimidation, that your guest has experienced personal targeting and attacks, and in fact that the leader of your organization was murdered. The Rutgers study shows us alarming support for political violence among a segment of what the authors call the “extreme left,” and I can’t imagine many would doubt the threat emanating from quarters of what we could call the “extreme right.” Still, it can be—and is—also true that our collective perception of threat does not match reality. And where there is genuine threat, I would hope we could move past a binary view of it. Your guest pointed out that conservatives generally should not be lumped together with “some KKK member.” We should be able to agree on that and that the left, broadly, is not represented by a subset of those who would support violence.

And yet there is a persistent drumbeat of rhetoric in this country that attempts to reduce our complex relationships to simple matters of good versus evil, us versus them. I respect your work, I admire your perseverance in the face of overwhelming tragedy, and I mourn your loss. But when I hear on this podcast a recurring reference to the bifurcation of morality in this country—which to me means a belief that conservatives follow a moral compass, while liberals do not—and with it a repetition of the threat that comes from that amoral half of the country, I connect that messaging directly to similar framing by the president as well as policy decisions intended to combat that threat, such as directing the military to fight the “threat from within.” This worries me.

What I am trying to convey, and what I hope you hear is this: that I agree with you on important matters, that I can learn from you—that I have learned from you—and that I also have insight to offer. I hear your worry about safety, and I understand it, even as I ask you to resist painting with a broad brush the entirety of the left-leaning electorate as a threat, because doing so fuels a culture of distrust and a fear of attack that can, in turn, spark preemptive aggression.

Here's my hope: that you’ve read this and considered it carefully, believing that it comes from a place of well-intentioned constructive engagement in the spirit, as I understand his legacy, of Charlie Kirk. Beyond that, if I could cash in a genie-granted wish, it would be that you might share some of my thoughts with your listeners. And if we were really going for broke, I would hold out a glimmer of hope that this would be our first, rather than final, exchange—that we could, in some way, sustain the conversation. We are fellow Americans, in this together, trying to make this world the best it can be for our children. Let’s keep talking.

Best,

Kent Lenci

Founder

Middle Ground School Solutions