On Thursday afternoon, it was unmistakable that MSNBC host Katy Tur was looking to turn the page following Wednesday’s disastrous in which Tur and her assembled guests (such as Matthew Dowd) stepped on one proverbial rake after another with Notable Quotable-worthy first reactions to a Utah Valley University shooting that we would soon learn was the assassination of Charlie Kirk.

In a brief commentary, Tur made no mention of the quotable moments (which we compiled here at NewsBusters and posted on X by our Bill D’Agostino and Nick Fondacaro), but it was unmistakable an emotional Tur wasn’t trying to back peddle as she called the murder of a husband and father of two “an attack on the foundation of our country.”

Tur started to speak, but briefly had to pause and sigh before cutting right to the heart of the matter:

She then turned to a point about Kirk, the man: “Charlie Kirk was a husband and a father of two young kids — kids, as the First Lady movingly put it, who will now be raised with stories of their father instead of memories of him. That should horrify you. It should depress you.”

She closed with a reminder about the kind of discourse that calls to our better angels. In other words, a mindset that was sorely lacking on MSNBC airwaves exactly a day prior:

No matter how you feel about Charlie Kirk or his political ideas or gun violence in general, we are supposed to be a nation of reason and choice. The best arguments win, not the strongest fist, not the truest bullet. So, what are we now? Who are we now and what direction do we want — do we want to move in? It’s a question for all of us.

Later in the show, she made an allusion to the need for Americans to come together in light of this tragedy like we did after 9/11:

Tur made a similar remark to her opening when she closed a segment with the leader of a student dialogue group: “[T]he last time we stopped being able to talk to each other, we had a civil war, so when you say that this is the best option, it really is the best option. Learning how to how to listen, how to talk and how to hear things that even that — that you may find reprehensible, but not — not turning to violence.”

It should be noted here that Tur is married to CBS Mornings co-host Tony Dokoupil, arguably one of the people worth keeping in the inevitable Bari Weiss era (though he will never be confused with being a conservative, given moments such as his socialism pie game just before the pandemic).

On Thursday’s show, he compared the likely impact of Kirk’s assassination to the 1968 assassination of Robert F. Kennedy:

He also reminded viewers that the 1960s were a far more violent time than most people realize:

Prior to colleague Nate Burleson asking former Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) about how Republicans should tone down their rhetoric, Dokoupil again praised Kirk with another remarkable comparison:

To see the relevant MSNBC transcript from September 11, click here.