MSNBC fired senior political analyst Matthew Dowd after he suggested on air that slain conservative activist Charlie Kirk’s own radical rhetoric may have contributed to the shooting that killed him.

During his appearance on Katy Tur Reports, Dowd suggested that Kirk’s rhetoric may have contributed to the violence that claimed his life. Kirk, 31, had a history of rightwing provocation and Christian nationalism, and frequently espoused bigoted rhetoric about Islam, women , LGBTQ+ communities and people of color.

“Hateful thoughts lead to hateful words, which then lead to hateful actions,” Dowd said, adding: “You can’t stop with these sort of awful thoughts you have and then saying these awful words and then not expect awful actions to take place.”

Dowd also speculated about the circumstances of the shooting, saying: “We don’t know if this was a supporter shooting their gun off in celebration. So we have no idea about this.”

The network issued an apology and announced Dowd’s dismissal, which came shortly after Kirk was shot dead during a question-and-answer session at Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah, where he was kicking off a nationwide campus debate tour. MSNBC president Rebecca Kutler described Dowd’s comments as “inappropriate, insensitive and unacceptable” in a statement posted to social media.

“We apologize for his statements, as has he,” Kutler wrote. “There is no place for violence in America, political or otherwise.”

The network almost immediately severed ties with Dowd, with Deadline reporting that MSNBC had cut its relationship with the analyst citing “furor over remarks he made in the aftermath of the shooting”.

Dowd, who served as chief strategist for George W Bush’s 2004 presidential campaign and was formerly a political analyst for ABC News, issued his own apology following the controversy.

Writing on Bluesky, he said: “My thoughts & prayers are w/ the family and friends of Charlie Kirk. On an earlier appearance on MSNBC I was asked a question on the environment we are in. I apologize for my tone and words. Let me be clear, I in no way intended for my comments to blame Kirk for this horrendous attack. Let us all come together and condemn violence of any kind.”

Kirk, co-founder of Turning Point USA and a prominent figure in conservative youth politics who had been credited with boosting the Maga youth vote during the 2024 election, was fatally shot in the neck during the campus event on Wednesday afternoon, with multiple videos of the moment spreading across social media.

Federal authorities are investigating the shooting, with two persons of interest initially taken into custody before being released. Both were briefly detained but released without charge, and a suspect is still at-large.

The killing has drawn sharp criticism from across the political spectrum.

Washington — Senate Republicans are expected to move Thursday on changing Senate rules to make it easier to confirm President Trump’s nominees amid a blockade from Democrats, who are warning against the move to go “nuclear.”

For months, Republicans have criticized Democrats’ efforts to slow the confirmation process, which they have taken to new extremes in recent months in protest to the president’s policies. And after weeks of discussion among Senate Republicans, Senate Majority Leader John Thune kickstarted the rule change process earlier this week, announcing a proposal to consider non-cabinet executive branch nominees in groups. 

“We’ve got a crisis, and it’s time to take steps to restore Senate precedent and codify in Senate rules what once was understood to be standard practice, and that is the Senate acting expeditiously on presidential nominations to allow a president to get his team into place,” Thune said as he announced he would take procedural steps to change the rules. 

Thune, a South Dakota Republican, has touted the proposal as one with “a Democrat pedigree,” citing a 2023 proposal to codify en bloc nominations of up to 10 nominees in Senate rules. Thune argued the GOP measure is “not as extensive,” noting that it applies to subcabinet level nominees and not judicial nominees. “But the proposals share the same objective — and that is providing for confirming groups of nominees all together so the president can have its team in place and so the Senate can focus on the important legislative work in its charge.”

The majority leader filed a resolution Monday to authorize the “en bloc,” or all at once, consideration of 48 nominees. On Thursday, the Senate is set to take a procedural vote on the resolution, which is expected to fall short of the 60-vote threshold needed to advance most measures in the upper chamber. Senate Republicans are then expected to move to overrule the chair, lowering the threshold to a simple majority.

Because the Senate often relies on unanimous consent to speed up floor consideration, any single senator can delay the process. And in recent years, both Democrats and Republicans have made pushes to change the confirmation process, including by cutting down the time requirements for the nominations and reducing the number of votes needed to a simple majority. 

Still, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat, has pushed back on the GOP effort, telling Senate Republicans to “think carefully before taking this step.”

“If you go nuclear, it’s going to be a decision you will come to regret,” Schumer said. 

The minority leader has repeatedly criticized the White House for walking away from a deal before the August recess involving the release of already appropriated funds in exchange for cooperation from Democrats to swiftly approve a group of nominees. Schumer has said Democrats were working “in good faith with Republicans” on a nominations package, noting that Thune was very involved and seemed willing to come to an agreement, before Mr. Trump torpedoed the talks. 

“Now, rather than giving those talks another chance, Republicans would rather change how the Senate operates to weaken this chamber’s traditional and powerful sense of deliberation, Schumer said. “And if Republicans go nuclear, the historically bad nominees we’ve seen so far under Donald Trump will get only worse.”

With more than 1,000 positions requiring Senate confirmation, the process is an arduous one that has become more cumbersome in recent years. According to the Center for Presidential Transition, the average time to confirm a president’s nominee has nearly quadrupled during the last six administrations. 

In 2023, Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota and independent Sen. Angus King of Maine introduced a proposal that would have allowed up to 10 nominees reported by the same Senate to be quickly confirmed. Senate Republicans have repeatedly cited the legislation in recent days as they pursue their rule change, and Sen. John Cornyn, a Texas Republican, attempted to secure passage of a similar resolution on Tuesday under unanimous consent, saying “if Democrats were really interested in solving the problem… they wouldn’t object, they would agree — it’s their idea.” But one Democrat, Sen. Alex Padilla of California, objected, suggesting the effort should take effect in the next administration.

King told CBS News that his and Klobuchar’s legislation was intended for future administrations, saying “we designed that for the next president.”

“That would take it out of the politics of the moment,” King said. “Now, all of a sudden, they’re dusting it off for use today.”

In December 2022, Aspiration, a San Francisco-based environmental firm, was running out of money. Employees, including executives, were laid off. Outgoing payments were on hold, including to the firm’s expensive endorsement partner, LA Clippers star Kawhi Leonard.

That same month, according to the latest allegations made on the “Pablo Torre Finds Out” podcast that aired Thursday morning, Clippers minority owner Dennis J. Wong made an almost $2 million investment in Aspiration, which turned around and paid Leonard $1.75 million — as required through his endorsement contract with the environmental company.

The NBA announced last week that it is investigating the Clippers, majority owner Steve Ballmer and Leonard to determine if the league’s rules governing salaries were circumvented through Leonard’s business arrangement with Aspiration, allegations made by former Aspiration employees on a Sept. 3 episode of Torre’s podcast.

In Torre’s first podcast episode examining the relationships between the Clippers, Ballmer, Leonard and Aspiration, unnamed former Aspiration officials disclosed Ballmer’s $50 million investment into the company in September 2021 and Leonard’s endorsement contract with the same firm.

The contract called for him to be paid $28 million over four years beginning in April 2022 for a contract that did not require Leonard to do any work (while there were expectations outlined in the document, there was a clause that gave Leonard final refusal on anything he didn’t want to do). The Boston Sports Journal and The Athletic later reported that Aspiration gave Leonard an additional $20 million in stock from company co-founder Joe Sanberg’s personal stock options.

Also in September 2021, the Clippers announced that Aspiration was their new jersey and arena sponsor, a deal that was worth $300 million over 23 years.

Ballmer and the Clippers have repeatedly denied wrongdoing. Ballmer has stated that he was defrauded by Sanberg, who has agreed to plead guilty to federal charges of fraud (Aspiration is bankrupt). The Clippers have publicly suggested that there is evidence the team did not circumvent salary rules. The Clippers have not publicly shared this alleged proof.

The NBA has stated that it is seeking clear evidence before punishing the Clippers, so the latest allegations made by former Aspiration employees on the Torre podcast should be given scrutiny. It is against league rules for a team to pay its players additional salary outside of their league-approved contract.

If the NBA determines that Leonard’s deal with Aspiration was a form of cap circumvention, it could punish the Clippers by fining them millions, stripping away future draft picks or even voiding Leonard’s deal.

According to two former finance officials at Aspiration who appeared on the podcast, as well as company bank statements the Torre podcast obtained, Wong — who owns 1 percent of the Clippers, is the team’s alternate governor and was also Ballmer’s college roommate — made his first payment to Aspiration on Dec. 6, 2022, while it was clear the firm was losing money.

Leonard’s uncle and business manager, Dennis Robertson, was reportedly upset that a quarterly payment had been missed. Aspiration paid Leonard on Dec. 15 — the same day the company laid off 20 percent of its employees, or about 100 people, according to the podcast.

“It is beyond shocking, and I will tell you, I knew that the board (of directors at Aspiration) had put (in) money in December to make payroll and make rent… (so) it is not a rational investment that someone (Wong) would make,” one of two anonymous former Aspiration employees said on the podcast. “So it is very shocking to me that $2 million was made as an investment by Dennis Wong, who in my texts is identified as … Steve Ballmer’s partner a week before $1.75 million was paid to Kawhi.”

A second anonymous former Aspiration official, who is identified as one of the sources who made the initial allegations last week, said, “There’s multiple things that are conspicuous. One, we’re broke. We’re broke. So to invest in a broke company is beyond me. … And then the other thing is the amount that’s being invested, that’s such a nominal amount if we’re talking pure investment, especially in a late-stage startup that’s … already raised a year earlier $300 million (sic), what does $2 million buy you?”

Asked for comment on the latest report, NBA spokesperson Mike Bass said in a statement Thursday: “The Clippers situation is currently under investigation.” The Clippers did not immediately respond to messages from The Athletic seeking comment.

On the podcast, Torre stated that he obtained a confidential stock purchase agreement from Aspiration, dated Dec. 9, 2022, in which DEA 88 Investments, a limited partnership owned by Wong, purchased 0.072 percent of the environmental firm. In that agreement document, it says Aspiration was “in default.” Its independent auditor, KPMG, had resigned, and the company was already facing lawsuits worth millions for missed payments.

Leonard’s contract with Aspiration stipulates he was to be paid $7 million annually in quarterly installments of $1.75 million. He received his first payment on July 6, 2022, a week past the contractually set deadline of June 30. Aspiration missed a payment to Leonard in the fall before making the payment in December, following Wong’s wire transfer to the firm.

According to a cash forecast for sponsor payments obtained by the podcast, payments to Leonard were marked “critical.”

“In all fairness to Uncle Dennis (Robertson), he’s not the only one who’s calling trying to get paid,” one of the former Aspiration employees said on the podcast. “There’s a huge freeze because there’s no money to be spent. So from the finance team’s perspective, we feel like we’re on the other end of collections calls. People are constantly coming in asking for their money.

“Between those months when all of this is missing — so September, October, November, and leading up to December, the actual certainty of the company even existing is up for grabs. At that point, are we gonna get paid as employees? Why does Uncle Dennis keep calling us? We have such bigger concerns that we’re thinking about, which is our own salaries. Are we gonna have to go through layoffs? Where is the money gonna come from?

“But lo and behold. Uncle Dennis gets paid.”

On Wednesday, NBA commissioner Adam Silver suggested a league investigation would need to uncover strong evidence linking the Clippers and Ballmer to Leonard’s deals with Aspiration for Silver to penalize the Clippers. Silver said he would be “reluctant to act” without substantial proof.

“I think the goal of a full investigation is to find out if there really was impropriety,” he said. “In a public-facing sport, the public at times reaches conclusions that later turn out to be completely false. I would want anyone else in situations Mr. Ballmer is in now — and Kawhi, for that matter — to be treated the same way I would want to be treated if people were making allegations against me.

“We’re not a court of law at the end of the day, either.”

Silver said the burden of proof lies with the league if it is to punish the Clippers, Ballmer or Leonard.

Last week, The Athletic reported that the NBA hired law firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz to lead its investigation.

(“Pablo Torre Finds Out” is an independently produced show licensed by The Athletic and distributed on its podcast network.)

(Photo of Leonard by David Dow / NBAE via Getty Images)