MSNBC pundit Mika Brzezinski made an impassioned call for unity on the 24th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, during a discussion about deadly political violence in the U.S.
Brzezinski said that September 11, 2001 began with “the promise and the hope of the beginning of the day… and then—quickly everything changing to devastation and buildings collapsing. And before that, people jumping and running and being covered in debris. And the loss that was so severe and so fast.”
She went on to connect that day to the reckoning that has followed the killing of Charlie Kirk, 31, at an event in Utah on Thursday, which has prompted calls from both sides of the aisle for civility in political discussions.
We don’t yet know what motivated the person who shot and killed Charlie Kirk, but this kind of despicable violence has no place in our democracy. Michelle and I will be praying for Charlie’s family tonight, especially his wife Erika and their two young children.
— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) September 10, 2025
Former President Barack Obama said that “despicable violence has no place in our democracy,” while Speaker of the House Mike Johnson told reporters that “we can settle disagreements and disputes in a civil manner.”
Brezinski offered her own version of that message on Thursday.
“On a day like today, I just hope that people look back on this and realize how much we need each other,” Brzezinski said on Morning Joe. “We need each other despite our differences.”
“We need to disagree peacefully,” she added. “We’re going to lose ourselves. This is not a war. We’re not at war with each other.”
The segment began with the show’s panelists remembering where they were on the day of the 9/11 attacks, and tracing the rise of political divisiveness since that time.
Brzezinski reported from Ground Zero—where she was broadcasting live when the South Tower collapsed—while she was a correspondent for CBS, prior to her move to MSNBC.
Her co-host and husband, Joe Scarborough, had retired from Congress months earlier, in May 2001, and he spoke on Thursday about the tone difference on Capitol Hill then versus now.
“We’re so far even from where it was when I was there 25 years ago, it just wouldn’t have happened,” Scarborough said. “And we as a nation have to find a way to pull ourselves back from the brink.”
Scarborough pointed out that in the hours after Kirk’s death on Wednesday, Congress broke out into conflict even amid an ostensibly unifying moment of mourning.
At the end of a silent prayer on the House floor for Kirk, shouting broke out when Republican Rep. Lauren Boebert suggested that someone lead a prayer out loud.
When several Democrats objected, pointing out the lack of a similar response to previous shootings, Florida Republican Rep. Anna Paulina Luna accused her colleagues of being responsible for Kirk’s death.
“You f—ing own this!” Luna yelled as Johnson tried to gavel the chamber back to order.
Luna was close to Kirk, the charismatic founder of Turning Point USA who was gunned down by a suspect who is still at large.
The shooting, which was caught on video and widely shared on social media, shocked the nation and ignited a renewed conversation about political violence.
Earlier this year, Minnesota state lawmaker Melissa Hortman and her husband were murdered in their home by a man who had a “hit list” of 45 other Democrats.
That tragedy followed attempts to harm Gretchen Whitmer, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and Nancy Pelosi that have all taken place in the last several years.
In the last case, Pelosi’s husband Paul had his skull fractured with a hammer by a man who was looking for the former House speaker.
In 2023, President Donald Trump joked about the Pelosi attack, asking how her husband was doing and saying that a wall around her house “obviously didn’t do a very good job.”
On Wednesday night, the president gave a video address in which he called deadly violence “the tragic consequence of demonizing those with whom you disagree day after day.”
Trump, who survived one close-call assassination attempt last July and another thwarted attempt last September, used his speech to pin the blame for Kirk’s death on “radical-left political violence“—a claim that has already attracted pushback for ignoring violence against Democrats.
A 2024 report on political violence released by Princeton University’s Bridging Divides Initiative found that incidents of extrajudicial violence rose as a percentage of all violence in 2024. The primary targets were Black, Jewish, Arab, Muslim, and LGBT people.
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