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Sept. 17, 2025 - The Ben Shapiro Show
01:03:47
BREAKING: TEXT EXCHANGES Between Kirk Killer, Trans Lover
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Time Text
Alrighty, folks.
Well, there is new information that has emerged about the actual shooter of Charlie Kirk.
Tyler Robinson has now been charged with murder in Charlie's shooting, which of course we knew was coming because there's lots and lots and lots of information about this shooter.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Utah prosecutors unveiled seven charges Tuesday against Tyler Robinson in the shooting death of conservative activist Charlie Kirk on a college campus last week.
They said that they would seek the death penalty.
Here is the prosecutor Jeff Gray talking about the fact that they will be seeking the death penalty in the state of Utah.
Following the press conference, I am filing a notice of intent to seek the death penalty.
I do not take this decision lightly, and it is a decision I have made independently as county attorney, based solely on the available evidence and circumstances and nature of the crime.
Because we are seeking the death penalty, the defendant will continue to be held without bail in the Utah County jail.
The prosecutor in this case went on to explain that the shooter's DNA was found on the weapon.
Again, there's no doubt as to what happened here or why this happened.
It's an incredibly clear case of a political assassination.
Like crystal clear.
There is no mystery.
There is no enigma.
There is no shadowy conspiracy.
There is just the person who did the shooting and apparently a bunch of people behind the scenes who are encouraging him or echoing his desire to see it done.
Here again is the prosecutor.
The rifle, ammunition rounds, and towel were sent for forensic processing.
DNA consistent with Robin uh with defendant was found on the trigger, other parts of the rifle, the fired cartridge casing, two of the three unfired cartridges, and the towel.
Okay, well, the actual charging documents carried an enormous number more details.
Those charging documents point out that at the moment of the shot, a UVU political police officer, rather, was watching the crowd from an elevated vantage point.
As soon as he heard the shot, he began to scan the area for threats, believing the shot came from a rifle because of its sound.
He looked for potential sniper positions.
He noted a roof area approximately 160 yards away from Charlie as a potential shooting position and rushed there to look for the evidence.
The suspected shooting position is adjacent to an open, publicly accessible walkway.
To access the suspected location, a person must climb over a railing and then drop to the roof only slightly below.
The UVU officer climbed over the railing and down onto the roof.
He then walked to the suspected shooting position and confirmed a clear shooting corridor between the position and Mr. Kirk's seat.
They also noticed markings in the gravel rooftop consistent with a sniper having lain on the roof, impressions in the gravel potentially left by elbows, knees, and feet of a person in a prone shooting position.
A camera captured the suspect as he ran across the roof to the suspected shooting position.
The charging documents also explain that the shooter's mother said that over the last year or so, Robinson had become more political and had started to lean more to the left, becoming more pro-gay and trans rights oriented.
She stated that Robinson began to date his roommate, a biological male who was transitioning genders.
This resulted in several discussions with family members, but especially between Robinson and his father, who have very different political views.
In one conversation before the shooting, Robinson mentioned that Charlie Kirk would be holding an event at UVU, which Robinson said was a stupid venue for the event.
Robinson accused Kirk of spreading hate.
We'll get back to that in just a moment.
That particular line, spreading hate.
Robinson's father reported that when his wife showed him the surveillance image of the suspected shooter in the news, he agreed it looked like their son.
He also believed the rifle that police suspected the shooter used matched a rifle that was given to his son as a gift.
As a result, Robinson's father contacted his son and asked him to send a photo of the rifle.
Robinson did not respond.
Robinson's father spoke on the phone with Robinson, and Robinson implied he planned to take his own life.
Robinson's parents were able to convince him to meet at their home.
As they discussed the situation, Robinson implied he was the shooter and stated he couldn't go to jail and just wanted to end it.
When asked why he did it, Robinson explained there's too much evil and the guy, Charlie Kirk, spreads too much hate.
They talked about Robinson turning himself in and convinced Robinson to speak with a family friend who's a retired deputy sheriff.
According to those charging documents, police interviewed Robinson's roommate, a biological male who was involved in romantic relationship with Robinson.
The roommate told police that the roommate received messages from Robinson about the shooting and provided those messages to police.
Now, what I'm about to read, there are many theories about what exactly these text messages were.
One theory that my friend Matt Walsh has espoused, and I don't find highly implausible is the idea that the roommate was in on it, and that Tyler Robinson had basically planned out a conversation with his roommate in order to exonerate him, sort of breaking bad style.
If you remember the end of the series breaking bad, Skylar, who is the wife of Walter White.
She obviously knew about many of his crimes and covered it up and participated.
And Walter, in an attempt to exonerate her of the crimes, sets up a call with her in which he basically claims, and she acts shocked, that she had nothing to do with anything.
So that is a possible theory here.
It's also possible that these are just genuine.
But here is what the text messages and exchanges said.
Quote, on September 10th, the roommate received a text message from Robinson, which said, Drop what you are doing, look under my keyboard.
The roommate looked under the keyboard and found a note that stated, quote, I had the opportunity to take out Charlie Kirk, and I'm going to take it.
Police found a photograph of this note.
The following text exchange that then took place.
After reading the note, the roommate responded, What?
With about 10 question marks, you're joking, right?
Four question marks.
Robinson, I am still okay, my love, but I'm stuck in Orim for a while a little while longer yet.
Shouldn't be long until I can come home, but I gotta grab my rifle still.
To be honest, I had hoped to keep the secret till I died of old age.
I am sorry to involve you.
Roommate, you weren't the one who did it, right?
Robinson, I am, I'm sorry.
Roommate, I thought they caught the person.
Robinson.
No.
They grabbed some crazy old dude, then interrogated someone in similar clothing.
I had planned to grab my rifle from my drop point shortly after, but most of that side of town got locked down.
It's quiet almost enough to get out, but there's one vehicle lingering.
Roommate.
Why?
Robinson.
Why did I do it?
Roommate, yeah.
I had enough of his hatred.
Some hate can't be negotiated out.
If I am able to grab my rifle unseen, I will have left no evidence.
Going to attempt to retrieve it again.
Hopefully they've moved on.
I haven't seen anything about them finding it.
Roommate, how long have you been planning this?
Robinson.
A bit over a week, I believe.
I can get close to it, but there is a squad car parked right by it.
I think they already swept that spot, but I don't want to chance it.
Robinson, I'm wishing I had circled back and grabbed it as soon as I got to my vehicle.
I'm worried about my old man would do if I didn't bring back grandpa's rifle.
I DEK, if it had a serial number, I said was supposed to be, I don't know, if it had a serial number, but it wouldn't trace to me.
I worry about Prince, I had to leave it in a bush where I changed outfits.
Didn't have the ability or time to bring it with me.
I might have to abandon it and hope they don't find Prince.
How the F L I explained losing it to my old man.
Only thing I left was the rifle wrapped in a towel.
Remember how I was engraving bullets?
The effing messages are mostly a big meme.
If I see notices bulge, UWU on Fox News, I might have a stroke.
All right, I'm gonna have to leave it.
That really effing sucks.
Judging from today, I'd say grandpa's gun does it just fine.
IDK, I think that was a $2,000 scope.
Robinson, delete this exchange.
Robinson, my dad wants photos of the rifle.
He says grandpa wants to know who has what.
The feds released a photo of the rifle, and it is very unique.
He is calling me right now, not answering.
Robinson, since Trump got into office, my dad has been pretty diehard MAGA.
Robinson, I'm gonna turn myself in willingly.
One of my neighbors here is a deputy for the sheriff.
Robinson, you are all I worry about, love.
Roommate, I'm much more worried about you.
Robinson, don't talk to the media, please.
Don't take any interviews or make any comments.
If any police ask you questions, ask for a lawyer and stay silent.
Hey, so, I mean, I just have one question here, which is if the roommate did not in fact call the police, does that make an accessory after the fact?
I mean, from what we understand, it was the father who called the cops.
It's the father who convinced the shooter to turn himself in.
But what is perfectly obvious is that we know the motive.
There is no doubt about the motive.
There is zero doubt, in fact, about the motive.
Charlie Kirk was shot because Charlie Kirk was a conservative who believed that men are not women.
Period.
End of story.
That is the motive.
We know who the shooter was, we know why the shooter did it.
Any extraneous conversations about other issues are a distraction from the reality of who did the shooting and the ideology that led to it.
They're not only a distraction, they're a waste of time, and they're stupid.
Okay, but the actual reality here is that there was one ideology that drove this, as I have been talking about for days now since the day of the shooting.
The permission structures that have existed for too long on the left for a trans ideology that labels as inherently dangerous, genocidal, and violent.
Anyone who says that a boy is not a girl, that's what created this.
Notice the use of that word, hate, hateful.
Charlie was hate for he was hate filled, he was hateful.
He was filled with hate.
What he was saying was just so hateful.
Yesterday, the Daily Wire team and I had the privilege of hosting Charlie's show alongside Andrew Colvet, Charlie's executive producer, it was me, Matt Walsh, Michael Knowles.
It was a truly Moving experience, obviously, to be sitting in the room that Charlie last occupied last week, and having a moment to spend with Erica, which was, I think truly devastating.
In any case, one of the things that happened during the show is that a clip was played of Charlie debating a young woman on the question of transgenderism.
And he asked her over and over and over what is a woman, which of course is a question that many of us on the right have asked, people on the left about the bizarre accusation or notion that men can magically become women.
But what I want to focus on here is the very last line that she says after it is clear that she cannot answer Charlie's questions.
Here is a very viral clip of Charlie talking about the trans issue.
What is a woman without using the word woman in the answer?
Can you can you answer that question or no?
It's just a person who believes they're a woman.
I mean, what's wrong with that?
You can't answer the qu you can't use the word woman in your answer.
The inability to answer the most fundamental obvious biological question, what is a woman?
This is not troubling.
Like it's so simple, it's so obvious.
And I guess the question is when is womanhood then achieved?
Just like for that, whenever they decide.
I mean, like, last chance.
Can you tell me what a woman is?
Are you a woman?
Why are you so hateful?
And Charlie laughs and everybody's laughing.
I asked you what a woman was.
That's not hateful.
I gave you the definition.
Okay.
Why are you so hateful?
Why are you so hateful?
And that's a laugh line, right?
Because everybody is sitting there going, that's not hateful.
Did Charlie say anything remotely hateful in that clip?
Anything.
He literally said, what is a woman?
Define the term without using the word woman.
There's nothing remotely hateful about that.
Nothing.
That is a very basic question.
That's like define cup without using the word cup.
You say, okay, it's a vessel that is capable of carrying liquid, right?
Any definition that you use has to be defined with reference to other defined terms.
You can't say a cup is a thing that believes it's a cup or a cup is a cup.
That doesn't add any content or information to the definition.
That's what Charlie's saying.
And she labels it hateful.
Why am I focusing in on that?
Because the use of that word hateful.
That word appears in the killer's text exchanges with his gay trans furry lover.
And it appears for a reason.
Because the psychological structure that has been set up, and it is inherent in trans ideology is that denial of trans identity is a form of genocidal hatred.
And the only proper response to that is murder.
The only proper response to that is violence.
As I say, this uh there are ideologies like this all over the spectrum.
Truly, there are ideologies that rest on the idea that articulation of opposition to this point to a point of view, existence is in fact a threat that must be met with violence.
Radical Islam makes the claim that the failures of Muslim countries around the world, that is a result of imperialism and colonialism and can only be fought with violence.
And that anybody who argues, for example, that there are pretty major cultural differences between radical Islamic countries and the West is a person who is really just making a false argument as a disguise for power, and power must be met with power.
The Marxist position, the free Luigi position, which we'll get to Luigi Manjion in a second, because again, this is very baked into the left.
The Marxist position, which is that rich people are in and of themselves a threat to poor people because the way they got rich is by stealing from poor people.
And therefore, the very presence of rich people is evidence of their exploitative nature.
They are bad people by nature of their bank account and a threat to me.
And therefore I get to go do violence to them.
It's baked into the ideology.
White supremacy, same kind of thing.
The idea is that white people are under grave genocidal assault, largely from people of color or Jews who are manipulating the system.
And therefore, those people are a threat to me, and I can go do violence, which is why, again, as I've said before, and I will continue to say, when there is an assassination, when there is an act of violence, a shooting that seems to have political implications.
We all know immediately what are the spectrum of possibilities available for the shooter.
We all know this.
I mean, I can speak from personal experiences to the number of death threats I receive, and I know exactly where they're coming from.
What are the ideologies that are driving them?
We know the ideology that drove the murder of Charlie Kirk.
We know what drove this.
And this should be a unifying moment for the country to be able to condemn that ideology.
It's not enough to say political violence is wrong.
And it is a waste of time to debate other ancillary issues.
The question is whether you are willing to condemn an ideology that says it is a form of hatred and genocide to say a boy is not a girl.
Whether you're part of that ideological superstructure.
And the answer is the answer is that there are an awful lot of people, tons and tons of people who are part of that ideological superstructure.
Tons of people.
Are you coming up?
Luigi Mangion just had his terrorism charge removed.
This is the permission structure for violence.
We'll also get into Cash Patel in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee, had some fisticuffs.
Senator Corey Booker as well as Senator Adam Schiff will get into all of it first.
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I mean, yesterday happened to mark a judge saying that Luigi Mangioni, the murderer of a United Healthcare executive, should not be charged with first degree murder.
Well, actually, he was always going to be charged, technically speaking, with second degree murder.
I guess in the state of New York, first degree murder is typically only murder of law enforcement.
But the question is whether there was going to be another charge of terrorism that was added on.
And that was the charge that was dropped.
Now, clearly, Luigi Manjione shooting Brian Thompson, the healthcare executive, and leaving a note, talking about how this was designed to effectively terrorize people who are part of the healthcare system.
That clearly was an act of terrorism.
It was a politically motivated murder with the intent of driving terror into the hearts of people who are part of the capitalist system or part of the healthcare system.
Well, the judge in this case, a person named Justice Gregory Caro, put out a statement explaining why the legal definition of terrorism was not met.
The judge said, quote, the defendant's apparent's objective, as stated in his writings, was not to threaten, intimidate, or coerce, but rather to draw attention to what he perceived as the greed of the insurance industry.
That is a permission structure for violence.
That is.
That's what that is.
Please, I would have what how would you define drawing Attention to what you perceive as the greed of the insurance industry through murder.
Definitionally terrorism.
It wasn't to threaten, intimidate, or coerce, then why was someone murdered?
I noticed that he didn't write an op-ed in the nation about the healthcare system.
He murdered a man.
And he murdered a man with the intent, yes, to threaten, intimidate, or coerce people who are members of the healthcare industry.
If you take this judge's argument and you extend it to literally any terrorist group around the world, it means that there is no such thing as terrorism.
That's what it means.
It writes the definition out of existence.
Now you can say radical Islamic terrorist beheads, a Wall Street Journal reporter.
Well, you know, he wasn't really meaning to threaten, intimidate, or coerce others.
He was really attempting to draw attention to what he perceived to be Western intolerance.
What a bunch of absolute sheer nonsense.
9-11 terrorists under this definition would not have been terrorists.
Because I mean, obviously, Osama bin Laden was just trying to draw attention to the predations of American foreign policy in Saudi Arabia.
Or some such nonsense.
They are deeply embedded.
They're embedded.
It is again largely relegated to the left, but there are some on the right who are willing to do this sort of stuff also.
That's just the reality.
This is why there were crowds outside of the courthouse.
When it was announced that Luigi Manjone would now he won't face life in prison without the possibility without the possibility parole.
He won't.
He could easily get out while he is still 50 or 60 years old, Luigi Manjion after shooting man in cold blood in the back and then in the back of the head.
And here are people celebrating that in New York City on the streets.
You want to write Zarm Dani's gonna be mayor?
why.
Scavengers, demons, that's what this is.
That's what this is.
And I would like to remind you that there were people on the right who were angry at me when I said that the capture of Luigi Manjone needed to end with the death penalty for Luigi Manion, and that anybody who celebrated the death of Brian Thompson was evil, was doing something evil.
There are people on the right who objected to that, who tried to create permission structures.
Well, you know, yes, he shouldn't have done that, but you know, there are people there are real grievances, and if you ignore those grievances, there are people on the right who did that stuff too.
Again, it was largely relegated to the left.
It was much more populous on the left, but there were some horseshoe theory people on the right who were doing that routine.
Clearly doing that.
I write about it extensively in Lions and Scavengers.
I write about that exact case.
I use that as a key tipping point case for political violence in the United States.
And you can see those permission structures emerging in the in the world's worst ways on social media.
Social media has been a bane to our existence.
It has.
Social media has been a net bad.
The algorithms controlled by the Chinese on TikTok are spinning up conspiratorial nonsense, violent ideologies day after day after day.
X is a cesspool.
Social media has become brain poison, brain rot for people who actually wish to think about things.
That is how you end up with an Australian mental health advocate named Lizzie Page saying it's okay to laugh about Charlie Kirk.
I mean, it's unspeakable what she says here.
I want to reiterate that it is not wrong or unethical or unkind to laugh at the misfortunes of terrible people that Charlie Kirk incited violence.
That's what he did.
And then that came back to haunt him.
That's that was his decision.
So it's got nothing to do with the people who are laughing and joking about him becoming a human water fountain.
No depths in hell too low for people like this.
And yet again, permission structures have been created.
you Joy Reed, who used to have a show on MSNBC.
Allegedly, I could never verify it because it had no viewers.
She spent time praising a songwriter who wrote a song glorifying the murder of Charlie Kirk.
Bullets don't discriminate like people do.
They don't care about what you claim to leave.
And if you think death is just the unfortunate cost of freedom, you will live.
surely die in irony cause you once said that empathy is made up that you can't stand it's some new age type of years Probably wouldn't feel a thing if I was gone down.
But I am nothing like you.
And all I'm saying.
There's Joanne Reed sitting there grinning at that.
This leaves us for people like me and like you.
There's a full blown fire in America and a fascist honor for stuff.
Well, I mean, where are the permission structures coming from?
Who knows?
Who knows?
I mean, if you didn't recognize it, those are all quotes taken out of context with regard to Charlie.
Because Charlie had talked about the public policy discussions that have to happen around things like gun control.
And that did not mean that he was non-sympathetic to the victims of people killed by guns, obviously.
If you go back and you read his comments about empathy, he's he makes a point that I've made many times before, which is that empathy and sympathy are two different things.
Not even a point made by Charlie.
It's made it's a point originally made by Paul Bloom, psychiatrist who wrote an entire book about the problems and dangers of empathy, which is the idea that it's one thing to say, I feel terrible for you, how can I help?
It's another thing to put yourself in somebody's shoes to the extent that their priorities become superior to all of other priorities.
That makes for bad politics.
That's the point that Charlie was making.
These permission structures are quite real.
And the media are that they're creating a new permission structure now.
Because they're trying to find excuses for the shooter.
They're trying to find some sort of sympathy for the shooter.
And so, believe it or not, I read you the alleged text exchange between the shooter and the and his trans furry lover.
And again, I just wish to reiterate here.
Charlie Kirk was shot by a man who was gay and was in a relationship with his trans furry lover over Charlie being quote unquote hateful.
If somehow you're having a discussion about any other issue today, I wonder at your priorities.
I do.
Well, here was ABC News covering what they called the touching text messages between the assassin and his gay lover.
And by the way, you know that one year from now there will be a movie out on Netflix about the beautiful relationship between the shooter and his gay trans lover and the evils of a Utah society that would not accept their forbidden love.
You know that's gonna happen.
You know it will.
The left can't help themselves.
You know that's going to be a thing.
Here we go.
And then those text messages, and I don't think I've ever experienced a press conference in which we've read text messages that are A, so fulsome, so robust, so apparently, allegedly self-incriminating, and yet, on the other hand, so touching.
Right?
With the suspect reaching out to his roommate, who is allegedly his boyfriend, who we understand, you know, identified as male at birth, now identifies as female, and the terminology he used.
He was trying to protect him.
He kept calling him, my love.
My reason for doing this is to protect you.
Um, you know, but also asking him to delete the messages and not speak to law enforcement.
So there's this this heartbreaking duality that we're seeing uh very tragically playing out here.
Heartbreaking duality, Starcross lovers.
It's it's basically dog day afternoon.
No, actually.
No, actually.
This was a a deranged, evil individual, and his roommate, who sounds equally deranged, doing this.
Again, the roommate got all these facts and did not turn this person into the police.
The dad, the father turned this person into the police.
And and the and the media are covering this as though it's a it's a story of beautiful Romeo and Juliet love that ended with the murder of an innocent 31-year-old father of two.
You don't despise many in the legacy media enough, truly.
Already coming up, we'll get to more Democrat reaction to all of the revelations about the shooter denial in Chester River in Egypt.
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Montel Williams is on with Abby Phillip on CNN last night and Montel did the uh did the same thing.
There's a suggestion that actually maybe the real story here is that the MAGA dad is to blame.
Because if only the MAGA dad had been, you know, more accepting of his son in a sexual relationship with a gay trans furry.
Why would he possibly have objected?
Who knows?
It must just be biblical intolerance.
I mean, oh uh.
And that's probably what drove all of this.
If only he had just welcomed him home for a barbecue dinner while they all dressed up as dogs and pranced around the yard, then you know that that would have been then all of this could have been stopped.
Here we go.
I don't believe he was motivated politically.
I think this was motivated emotionally.
I think this was an emotionally stunted person who literally say it this way, just hear me, tried to defend his significant other, not trying to defend some ideology.
Although I do think there, I mean, there's clearly an ideological difference.
That's why I played about what they said about the family.
I mean, the the ideological difference that he was reacting to wasn't just Charlie Kirk.
It was also maybe his dad.
I mean, his father was, according to him, MAGA.
So that conflict was there, clearly.
But this is a young man who's dating a person in transition.
And I'm a conservative father, and I question, let's say my daughter brought home the first guy that she bought home.
I questioned the guy he bought home.
She bought home.
Was the dad questioning him politically?
Is this a political motivation?
Or was this a psychological kind of thing?
Was it maybe it was psychological?
Maybe it wasn't political.
Maybe it wasn't more when it comes to this issue, the political is the psychological, is the personal, obviously for the shooter.
Obviously, in front of it's just excuse making.
It's just excuse making.
That's all.
To try and treat with empathy a person who does murder because that person was in some sort of perverse relationship with a gay trans furry, which is what you are talking about here.
And it is definitionally a perverse relationship when you are talking about murdering people you disagree with.
And also, there are clearly issues of derangement when you are talking about a person who is enmeshed in a culture in which you dress up as animals for sexual pleasure while considering yourself a person of the opposite sex.
Something is not normal, can we say that?
Or is that just driving more hate?
Is that just driving more hate?
You know?
It's just driving more hate and driving hate, as we have learned from our media and from our political leaders.
Our true political leaders, people on the left, we have learned that that hate, that hate is what is what creates the incentive for murder.
That's what creates the justification for murder.
Well, some on the left continue to claim that um actually we have no idea what the killer was.
Jimmy Kimmel tried this routine on Monday night.
It did not go amazing.
He had some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from.
Everything that we can to score political points, then we're trying to claim he wasn't one of us.
Well, I mean, he was not, by all available evidence, as soon as the shooting happened.
I mean, from the bullets, from the etchings on the bullets.
Meanwhile, MSNBC's Brandy's dragony said, Well, you know, when you when you say that people are celebrating, nobody's celebrating.
Nobody's celebrating.
Well, that's weird, because um, I've played on the show.
Many, many people celebrating.
Many.
And forget about the celebration.
I've played mainstream political actors creating permission structures for murder.
We've talked about it on the show.
Again, I will go back to the New York Times, not once, but twice, treating Hassan Piker as an authority on Charlie Kirk.
Hassan Piker who has repeatedly and overtly justified terrorism, celebrated terrorism, called for violence against political opposition.
That's the kind of people that I'm talking about.
But but apparently it's all in our imagination.
It's a figment of our imagination, according to Brandy's and drageny over at MSNBC.
If you look across media generally, you have seen a lot of people trying to grapple with Charlie Kirk's legacy and what that is as a right-wing agitator and as a provocateur and as you know, a strategist and the most important GOP figure besides Donald Trump, arguably ever.
And so, or right now, and so there's a lot of grappling to do, but to suggest that the internet is cheering for this is just the opposite.
Total opposite of what's actually happening.
It is well, I mean, if by total opposite, you mean the absolute truth that the internet is cheering for this.
A lot of people on the internet were cheering for this.
There is just no question about that.
It is just the reality.
In the same way that there are brainworms on the internet that are spending their days marinating in conspiracy theories, even though, again, all the evidence is clear in this case, and we know who the person is and what they thought.
And it's an it's again, it it is an enormous number of people on the left.
Heather Cox Richardson, who is apparently the single most popular individual author over on Substack, wrote over the weekend the alleged shooter was not someone on the left.
The alleged killer is Tyler Robinson, is a young white man from a Republican gun enthusiast family who appears to have embraced the far right, disliking Kirk for being insufficiently radical.
Rather than grappling with reality, right-wing figures are using Kirk's murder to prop up their fictional world.
Briefly, they claimed Robinson had been radicalized in college.
Then when it turned out he'd spent only a single semester at a liberal arts college, MAGA pivoted to attack those who allegedly had celebrates death on social media.
But there was literally no evidence presented that he actually was of the right.
None.
None.
And believe me, there were plenty of people on the far right who hated Charlie.
I mean, the Groipers, as I've said before, literally declared a Gruper war on Charlie Kirk.
They declared that he wasn't sufficiently radical.
It's exactly what I told Bill Maher on Friday night.
He said, Well, what how do we know it's not the Gripers?
I said, theoretically, could it be?
Because before all of the evidence had come out, theoretically, it's possible, super unlikely.
And you know what I cited as the evidence.
The contemporaneous conversations that the shooter had with family calling Charlie Kirk hateful, because my point was if you're calling Charlie hateful, that is part of a left-wing matrix of thinking.
The griper matrix is Charlie wasn't hateful enough.
He should have been more hateful.
He should be more vile toward the Jews.
If only he had been, then they would have liked him.
The excuse making is ridiculous.
Ridiculous.
Already coming up, Cash Mattel of the FBI.
He has a bunch of tete tats with Democratic senators.
It gets spicy.
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Well, yesterday, FBI's Kash Patel, he was testifying before Congress and he said that there are a lot of people actually under investigation with regard to Charlie's shooting because there was apparently an online discord group that was mobilized around the shooter, had interactions with the shooter, as you mentioned on the show yesterday.
Many of the comments talked about the possibility of Charlie being assassinated on September 10th, which of course was the date that he was assassinated, but weeks in advance.
Here's Cash Patel explaining.
Unfortunately, it has been leaked that there was a uh a Discord chat, and for those unfamiliar with it, it's a gaming chat room online that the suspect participated in.
So what we're doing, we've already done is serve legal process, not just on Discord, so that the information we gathered is sustained and held in an evidentary posture that we could use in prosecution should it be decided to do so.
And we're also going to be investigating anyone and everyone involved in that Discord chat.
Okay, very good.
I see the public reports that the Discord thread had as many as 20 additional users.
It sounds like you're you're trying to run down all of that to see if that's accurate.
Who else may have been on that thread, what they may have known.
Is that fair to say?
It's a lot more than that, and we're running them all down.
It's a lot more than 20.
Yes, sir.
And you're running all of that together.
Every single one.
Well, of course, that is necessary because these networks of people incentivize one another, for sure.
And meanwhile, we have new information about the 71-year-old man who was initially arrested after Charlie's shooting.
You remember the tape?
Older man balding, uh, and and he's wrestled to the ground.
What exactly was he doing?
Well, apparently, when he wasn't being arrested for possession of child pornography, which is another thing that happened to him this week.
Apparently, he was led away from the shooting scene in handcuffs, according To Breitbart about an hour after the shooting, and that led many to believe he was the shooter, but he was instead charged with obstruction of justice.
Because apparently, police documents say that he allegedly screamed, I shot him, now shoot me.
And then when no officer shot him, Zinn again yelled, I shot him, now shoot me.
Then he explained he did this to draw attention from the real shooter, presumably, so that the shooter could escape.
Apparently, Zinn has a long history of showing up and disrupting or being arrested at events ranging from political speeches to the Sundance Film Festival and other protests.
Well, yesterday in that Senate Judiciary Committee hearing that included Cash Patel, which we'll get to more of that in a moment, an FBI investigation was uncovered.
Apparently, it was launched in the wake of the 2020 election and it scrutinized nearly a hundred Republican and GOP-aligned groups, or people including Turning Point USA, according to unclassified bureau files released on Tuesday.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley published those files related to the probe.
It was codenamed Arctic Frost during a panel hearing, saying that the records revealed that Arctic Frost was much broader than just an electoral matter, and the investigation expanded to Republican organizations.
According to Grassley, some examples of the group that Ray that Christopher Ray's FBI sought to place under political investigation included the RNC, Republican Attorneys General Association, and Trump political groups.
And on that political list was one of Charlie Kirk's group's turning point USA.
So Arctic Frost wasn't just about politically investigating President Trump.
It was also a way to improperly investigate the entire Republican political apparatus.
Apparently, Arctic Frost kicked off in April 2022 and focused on at least 92 Republican-linked entities like TP USA.
The investigation pursued lines of inquiry about purportedly false election fraud claims, fake elector schemes, frivolous lawsuits, financial fraud, and pressure on state officials to flip vote counts in President Trump's favor.
It was unclear exactly what the basis of the inquiry was into TPUSA.
But again, there is no justification that I can see here for why that was opened into TP USA other than political animus.
That's the point that Senator Grassley was making.
Now, meanwhile, the Trump administration is looking at what it can do in the future to crack down on political violence like Charlie's assassination.
Marco Rubio is picking one pretty easy avenue.
He is saying, listen, if you celebrate Charlie's assassination, we don't want you here.
So if you're trying to come into the country, you have a bunch of memes on your phone celebrating Charlie's murder.
Well, guess what?
You don't get to be an American and you don't get to be on our soil, which is totally appropriate.
The great sin with Mahmoud Khalil was not the attempt to deport him.
The great sin with Mahmoud Khalil is that he was led into the country in the first place, given his history of terrorist support.
So if we can stop that before it starts, why wouldn't we?
Here's the secretary of state.
You're a foreigner and you're out there celebrating the assassination of someone who was speaking I mean, we don't want to.
Why would we want to give a visa to someone who thinks it's good that someone was murdered in the public square?
It's just common sense to me.
And have you actually revoked any pieces yet?
Have you taken that action and the other thing?
Well, we were both cases of people.
I don't know who revoked being the people that are in the country.
Well, certainly but denying these.
I mean, think about it.
I want everybody to think about this for a moment.
Okay, you're out there celebrating the assassination in cold flood of someone.
And didn't you want to come in?
Why would we want anybody like that in our country as a terrorist as anything?
We don't want them here.
That happens to be like an easy solve for importing new crazies into the United States, new evil people into the United States.
But what would we do about the organizations that are already here?
So the Trump administration, according to the Wall Street Journal, is moving swiftly to galvanize the outpouring of support for slain conservative activist Charlie Kirk into political momentum.
As President Trump's advisors, weigh a slate of executive actions targeting liberal organizations.
Among the actions being discussed by the president's team, reviewing the tax exempt status of left-leaning nonprofit groups and targeting them with anti-corruption laws, according to administration officials.
The president could begin rolling out the actions as soon as this week.
Officials across the administration are working to identify groups suspected of targeting conservatives or causes conservatives' support.
That could include looking at attacks on Tesla showrooms earlier this year, as well as people who have retaliated against law enforcement carrying out Trump's deportation campaign, adding the perpetrators could be categorized as domestic terrorists.
So, again, this is not the administration saying that if you disagree with Charlie Kirk or disagree with Turning Point or disagree with President Trump, then now you're going to be arrested or your 501c3 status is going to go away.
That is not what this is.
This isn't the Tea Party scandal during the Obama administration.
This is saying that if there are people who are violent and those people are funded by groups, then those groups ought to be looked at in terms of tax exempt status and well as well as anti-corruption laws.
So we'll have to see what can be uncovered evidentiarily.
Obviously, we want to be very careful when it comes to the application of law here.
Want to make sure that you're actually going after people who are lawbreakers, not just people who are engaging what Pam Bondy called hate speech the other day, and a gigantic boo-boo by the attorney general, suggesting that hate speech would be prosecuted in the United States.
Not only is that unconstitutional, it happens to be a left-wing talking point.
Because of course, everyone has a definition of what hate speech constitutes.
If the left were in charge, they would have characterized everything that Charlie was saying as hate speech, and then presumably sought to remove the nonprofit status of Turning Point USA.
President Trump said on Monday that he might target George Soros and others under the RICO Act, right?
That'd be the Racketeer Influencing Corrupt Organization Act.
And he said he would consider designating the movement known as Antifa as a domestic terror organization, which should.
Now the Open Society Foundation's claim that they don't fund or support violent protests, we will find out.
There should certainly be full investigations, because these people are getting their money from somewhere.
But again, the biggest thing here is to be as meticulous as possible in pursuit of the policy.
This is something my friend Chris Rufo has talked about.
It is not enough to have the proper principles when it comes to going after the bad guys.
You actually have to meticulously apply political and legal pressures in the right way, constitutional ways that don't violate core constitutional principles.
Now, with that said, the attempt by the left to somehow suggest that you have a right in the United States to remain employed while saying terrible things about Charlie Kirk's murder.
No, your employer has a right to fire you if you if if you say things that your employer doesn't like.
The question of cancel culture has always been about whether the employer is right to do so on a case-by-case basis.
If you woke up this morning and you decide to tweet out all black people should be killed, your employer has no obligation to continue employing you.
None.
If you woke up this morning and you said, men are not women, well, it seems to me that it would be cancel culture to be fired for that.
Because that is not only well within the overton window, as they say, the range of acceptable discourse, it is a mainstream normie political point of view.
So again, treating celebration of Charlie Cook's murder as a sort of action that that meets with no social consequence.
Here's the thing.
Social consequences can be good.
Social consequences can be useful if applied correctly.
If applied wrongly, they're wrong.
But social consequences are very often the thing that people have to face in lieu of facing legal consequences.
We don't want the government prosecuting speech.
We do, however, want a space in the United States where we have conversations with people of opposing political points of view without celebrating their demise.
And if you celebrate somebody's demise publicly, celebrate it, cheer it, justify it.
Well, then if you get fired from your job, that ain't cancel culture.
That is just called normalcy.
This is why the kind of full libertarian view when it comes to this sort of stuff, that no one should ever meet with consequences social or otherwise for their speech is just a form of moral relativism.
Not every, not every piece of speech is created equal, not every ideology is created equal, not every culture is created equal.
Some speech is better than other speech.
Some things that are said are better than like the fact that we even have to make this argument shows how insane everything is and how the very depixelated version of every argument becomes the one that sticks in everybody's mind.
The cancel culture argument originally did not argue that there should never be social consequences for any speech at all.
That at least was never the argument I was making.
The argument I was making is that the Overton window had been shut so tightly by the left that perfectly legitimate speech was being treated as taboo and therefore punishable.
But I never made the argument that if you're out there saying that slavery is good and we should go back to it, that you shouldn't meet with no social censure.
That of course would be silly and morally relativistic.
Okay, meanwhile, Cash Patel had a fraud hearing with the Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday.
He went at it with Corey Booker, Corey Booker went after Cash Patel, and Cash Patel was having none of it.
Cory Booker put on those angry odds.
Just Popped those in.
Mr. Potato Head over there.
And decided to go at it with Cash Patel.
It didn't go amazingly for the Senator from New Jersey.
I don't think you're fit to him in the bureau.
But here's the thing, Mr. Patel.
I think you're not going to be around long.
I think this might be your last oversight hearing.
Because as much as you supplicate yourself to the will of Donald Trump and not the Constitution of the United States of America, Donald Trump has shown us in his first term and in this term, he is not loyal to people like you.
He will cut you loose.
This may be the last time I have a hearing with you because I don't think you're long for your job.
But I'm going to tell you this.
I pray for you.
I pray for you that you can step up and defend your oath, defend the Constitution, and do a much better job of defending this country.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Do you want to say that rant of false information does not bring this country together?
If you want to work on bringing this country, it's my time, not yours.
My God.
My God.
It is.
I follow you on your social media posts that are country apart to address your falsehoods.
Oh, you're not going to be able to do that.
You verify all the time.
For what time is it?
Sir, you're a time.
Sir, you don't tell me my time is over.
The people of New Jersey tell me what my time is.
You can't lecture me.
You may be the charge.
I'm not going to end it.
But I am not afraid of you.
Mr. Chairman.
I'm not afraid of you.
I'm not afraid of you, angry eyes.
Woo-hoo-hoo.
Man, maybe if he does some Angraz, those poll numbers will spike all the way from 2% to 3% in those in those Democratic primary polls.
Corey Booker.
Meanwhile, speaking of frauds, Senator Adam Schiff, who is somehow able to bootstrap his way into ascendancy by lying for many, many years about the president of the United States and his relationship with Russia that didn't exist.
Well, he he decided to go after Cash Patel, also Cash Patel was having none of it.
You want the American people to believe that?
Do you think they're stupid?
No.
I think the American people believe the truth that I'm not in the weeds on the everyday movements of inmates.
What I am doing is protecting this country, providing historic reforms and combating the weaponization of intelligence by the likes of you.
And we have countlessly proven you to be a liar in Russia gate in January 6th.
You are the biggest fraud to ever sit in the United States Senate.
And an utter coward.
I'm not surprised.
I'm not surprised.
And put on a show so you can go raise money for your charade.
You are a political buffoon at best.
Well, you can take an Natropolis.
Take it to the bank that the FBI is protecting this country and the state and citizens of the California.
Well, listen to the case.
But all you care about is a child sex predator that was prosecuted by a prior administration and the Obama Justice Department and the Biden Justice Department did squat.
And what did President Trump do?
Bring new charges courageously.
And what have we done?
You said I'm the most transparent FBI director in history.
33,000 pages of information to you.
I challenge you to say anything credibly to the truth.
Go ahead and run to the cameras where you want to go next.
Well, Cash Patel's not wrong there.
Can I make recommendation?
Just in all honesty, can I make a recommendation?
Stop the televised hearings.
Seriously.
They are just grandstanding nonsense.
Nothing gets done in them.
No information is uncovered in them.
And I I speak as somebody who has been the social media beneficiary of televised hearings.
Because it always turns into fireworks.
And it's basically a show for the cameras.
Nothing gets done here is a waste of taxpayer money.
Seriously.
Because all Adam Schiff is doing and Corey Booker is doing and all the rest, all they are doing is grandstanding for the cameras.
It is not about actually eliciting new information.
It is not about investigating.
It is just about what you can do to get your donors back home to think that you're doing the things that they want you to do.
That's all it's a waste of time.
well, Cash Patel did make one other comment.
This one set off the right.
So cash, of course, is not somebody who I think you can say, in all fairness, would be complicit in a gigantic rape cover-up by Jeffrey Epstein.
And Cash Patel is about as right wing as it's possible to get, about as anti-establishment as it is possible to get.
And so if Cash Patel says that there is no evidence that Jeffrey Epstein was trafficking girls to others, then I believe him.
Perhaps that makes me credulous, perhaps.
And we and if so, and if evidence changes, then I'll be happy to revise my estimate and suggest that Cash Patel was engaging in a cover-up with regard to Jeffrey Epstein.
However, so far as I am aware, the only allegations ever made that were not then retracted, that Jeffrey Epstein trafficked women to other men was made by Virginia Jufrey.
Virginia Jewry was such a non-credible witness that prosecutors refused to use her as a witness against Jeffrey Epstein in his criminal case.
And so basically, what has been going on with the Epstein case, and I've said this from the beginning was that I was perfectly open to any explanation for his behavior for the allegations.
I'm still open to explanations as to how he got all his money.
But I am not willing to call Cash Patel or Dan Pongino or the president of the United States or the rest of the administration liars because social media decided to expand the net of the actual credible evidence.
So here is Cash Patel yesterday saying the thing you're not supposed to say, which is that there's no evidence that Epstein trafficked to other men, that he was charged for sex trafficking because he was trafficking women to himself, and so is Ghlaine.
You've seen most of the files.
Who, if anyone, did Epstein traffic these young women to besides himself?
Himself.
There is no credible information.
None.
If there were, I would bring the case yesterday that he trafficked to other individuals.
And the information we have again is limited.
So the answer is no one.
For the information that we have.
In the files.
In the case file.
Okay.
Well, this set off Firestorm Online.
How dare Cash Patel say this?
Now he's a cuck.
All the rest of this sort of stuff.
I am weary.
Honest to God, I am weary of all the conspiracism.
I'm weary of it.
You want to provide evidence?
Go ahead and provide evidence.
You want to call Cash Patel a liar, then have the balls to just call him a liar.
Or call President Trump a liar.
You want to do that?
Go ahead and do it.
But I'm I'm beyond, beyond exhausted by all of the insane conspiracism that eats up X particularly every single day.
It is wearying, it is exhausting, and it makes you stupid.
It makes you stupid and credulous.
And you will believe anything because you quote unquote believe nothing.
Evidence should be the actual thing that you are asking for.
And if you're not, you ain't just asking questions.
You're just providing an argument without having to provide evidence.
Meanwhile, the Fed is expected to cut rates today.
This afternoon, Chair Jerome Powell is expected to announce at least one quarter point cut.
Traders are betting, according to the Wall Street Journal, on two more quarter point cuts in both October and December.
The feeling is that the market is softening, that inflation is at least relatively under control.
It's pacing at about 2.5%, which again is too high.
It's supposed to be 2%.
In my opinion, it should be 0%.
I think that inflation eats up savings.
And I understand the argument that inflation causes people to spend, but I've always thought that it's a benighted idea that saving is somehow less preferential, less less good for the economy than spending.
That what we really need is a consumption-based economy.
Savings generally tends to lead to investment by banks, for example, in the form of loans.
In any case, the president's going to get what he wants.
He's going to get a rate cut.
He'll probably get a couple more rate cuts before the year is out.
Is that enough to jog the economy?
It certainly could be.
What I really think is going to happen is it's going to keep inflating the upper end of the bubble.
I think that all the tech companies are going to continue to have massive amounts of money pour into their stock coffers because of the expansion of the Monetary supply into the economy through the lowering of the interest rates.
If people believe they can get a 5% return on their investment and they can borrow from banks at 2.5% or 3%, then they're going to do it.
Now, we're not at those interest rates yet.
I couldn't remember what the actual Fed funds rate is, so I asked our sponsors over a comet, a project of perplexity.
What is the current Fed funds rate?
How high are the average 30-year fixed mortgage rates right now?
According to Perplexity, the current federal funds rate is 4.25% to 4.5%.
The market's widely expected to cut to the 4.00% to 4.25% range at today's Federal Reserve meeting.
The average rate for a 30-year fixed mortgage right now nationally is about 6.24% to 6.3%, which is still a lot higher than it was, you know, 10 years ago.
But it's going down.
It will likely go down more by the end of the year.
Meanwhile, while all this is going on, you know, all the policies of the Trump administration are geared toward at least getting innovation going again.
We'll see whether that happens.
Again, enormous amounts of money are waiting on the sidelines, don't know where to go, or are just pouring into AI.
The president said something I thought was quite strange yesterday.
He was asked about the Pope's statement that Elon Musk's trillionaire status somehow threatens global order and peace.
Listen, I've met the current Pope.
He seems like a truly kind-hearted person.
That does not mean that his understanding of economics is well informed.
Income and wealth inequality is not, in fact, the problem.
Poverty is the problem.
And the basic and general idea that wealth inequality is in and of itself a generator of poverty is a lie.
It is untrue.
There are plenty of countries where everyone has an equal amount of wealth because they own nothing.
That happens all the time.
Elon's wealth, by the way, has been largely distributed to shareholders who own shares in Tesla.
And the beneficiaries have been the public, which is able to buy Tesla cars.
But you know, the the the our politics is a politics that is rife with populism at the moment.
I am not a populist.
I think the populism is more an approach than it is an actual political program.
And it seems to me that populism is largely based on the idea of the many against the few.
That's basically the definition.
That's the definition.
The many against the few.
Now, there are certain cases in which there is an elite that controls an important institution that it ought not control.
But when the idea is that the economy is controlled by an elite that is rigging it for its own benefit, unless you can cite evidence as to who those elites are, rigging it to its own benefit.
And there are cases where it happens, for sure.
That's why I don't like crony capitalism.
So I don't like self-dealing.
So I don't like regulating yourself.
There's a lot of things I don't like about the current way the American economy runs.
The idea that Elon Musk being very, very wealthy is innately a threat to you is wrong and problematic.
But here was the president yesterday.
The interview criticized the fact that some CEOs make hundreds of times more in salary than average workers.
Keep worried about polarization.
Do you share that concern?
Well, I do say there's a big gap.
Don't forget, I'm a popularist.
There is a big gap.
Okay, well, I mean, that, okay.
Let's just be clear.
You could redistribute the salary of the top CEOs in the country to the people that work at their companies, it would amount to a marginal increase in their income, every year, like a very, very marginal increase.
And the reality is Tyler Callan has written extensively about the supposed gap at the top end of the income spectrum for people who manage large companies.
And the reality is that actually it is largely untrue.
As Tyler Callan has written, quote, there's another lesson from the number.
CEOs are paid less than the value they bring to their companies.
More concretely, CEOs capture only about 68 to 73% of the value they bring to their firms.
He says, quote, I find the most convincing estimate of the gap between pay and marginal product to be that of Lucy and Taylor at the Wharton School of Business.
He finds that the typical major CEO captures somewhere between 44% and 68% of the value he or she brings to the firm, with the additional qualification that the CEO's contract offers some insurance value.
That is, in bad times for the firm, the pay of the CEO won't be cut in proportion, but the CEO shares to a lesser degree on the upside.
You won't find credible estimates suggesting that major CEOs taken as a group are capturing more than 100% of their added value.
And the way that you can tell this is CEO gets hired, does the value of the company go up or go down?
So again, this seems to me the politics of envy.
It seems to me populism very often when it comes to economics is the politics of the scavenger.
It's all about just oh my gosh, that CEO earns too much.
It must be his fault that people are earning less.
Factually untrue.
That's not how economics works.
In just a moment, we'll get to a big win for the Trump administration with regard to TikTok, a win that I'm quite hopeful actually could change the nature of political debate, which would be deeply necessary at this poisoned and cursed point in time.
We'll get to that in just a moment.
Listen to that.
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