QAA - The Assassination of Charlie Kirk (E340)

Sept. 16, 2025 - QAA

01:04:52

The Assassination of Charlie Kirk (E340)

Liv, Jake, and Julian take a look at multiple conspiracy theories forming in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s murder. Subscribe for $5 a month to get all the premium episodes: www.patreon.com/qaa Editing by Corey Klotz. Theme by Nick Sena. Additional music by Pontus Berghe. Theme Vocals by THEY/LIVE (instagram.com/theyylivve / sptfy.com/QrDm). Cover Art by Pedro Correa: (pedrocorrea.com) qaapodcast.com QAA was known as the QAnon Anonymous podcast.

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	If you're hearing this, well done.
	You found a way to connect to the internet.
	Welcome to the QAA Podcast, episode 340.
	The assassination of Charlie Kirk.
	As always, we are your host, Jake Rakotansky, Liv Acar.
	And Julian Field.
	Damn.
	Where do I even fucking begin?
	Travis is unavailable.
	Deep in the basement of Masonic Libraries doing research for a book.
	And Julian has recently collapsed after a long and arduous goof he pulled on Drew Pavlo in Australia.
	It was up to me, old Yankee, to deliver a sobering QAA episode on the assassination of Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk.
	Oh no.
	I'm so glad we pawned this off on you.
	Many online were dunking.
	Dunking to levels that make me extremely uncomfortable.
	No judgment, but I am a man unmade for the violent world of American politics.
	If you remember, Julie and I started with a video game podcast, and I have to find a way out of this episode, please.
	Literally anyway, please, somebody help me.
	Please don't make me beat Travis.
	Not today.
	Don't worry, Jake.
	You're going to do just fine.
	Hey, Jake, I've got a really good idea.
	You know what you should say?
	You should say that.
	How the heck was this gonna be a Jake episode?
	I was really starting to sweat.
	And then my prayers were answered.
	My wife texted me a Jezebel article published two days before Charlie's murder, where the authors had purchased multiple witches' curses on Etsy, meant specifically for Charlie Kirk.
	You couldn't write it any dumber than this, folks.
	I had found my goofy, somewhat detached coping mechanism to carry me through the writing of the episode.
	But I knew deep down that it wouldn't be enough.
	A Jezebel curse and handful of TikTok conspiracies would never amount to an hour-long QAA episode.
	I knew I would have to be responsible for breaking down the horrific news.
	I opened a Microsoft Edge web browser to see Charlie's name being blasted across every single tile.
	I was out of my depth.
	I know, I thought I will ask Liv to do it instead.
	Instead of a Jezebel curse, he's asking a cursed Jezebel to do it.
	Well, folks, it happened.
	America's obsession with gun ownership has resulted in the murder of a significant figure within the political landscape.
	On September 10th, so yesterday, as of this recording, Charlie Kirk was shot once in the neck by a hunting rifle while at the Utah Valley University campus.
	As can be seen by multiple close-up shots of the event, which I do not recommend that you look at if you haven't yet.
	He was struck in what could, based on the blood content, only have been his carotid artery.
	He then slumps back in his chair.
	The scene was quite brutal, and it happened while his wife and one-year-old child were present in the area.
	Private security would rush him to a hospital where he would be pronounced dead about an hour later.
	Yeah, yeah, it's definitely a huge mistake to cover it this fast, but um, you know, just take that into account when you listen to the episode that we only have the information that uh we've been provided so far.
	It's been like maybe 30 hours.
	Charlie was on the campus as the first stop in his American Comeback Tour for the fall, sitting in a tent adorned with the slogan Prove Me Wrong, and attempted a continuation of what now feels almost like an entirely different era of political schisms on American university campuses.
	The aesthetic of the tour harkens back to Trump 1, when various conservative contrarians would gain political clout and attention by taking their controversial opinions to college campuses in order to stoke the already existing tensions between left and right through debating zealous liberal 18-year-olds.
	Yet this spirit is seemingly dying, and college undergrads want less and less to do with this senseless form of argument with bigots who have come equipped with an arsenal of pre-prepared talking points on whatever hot-button issue these undergrads might come to surprise them with.
	In Trump 2, people are tired.
	They don't want to do this sort of thing anymore.
	It only seems to make things worse.
	Yeah, I mean, we've kind of reached the uh apogee of this kind of nonsense with the Jubilee videos, you know.
	It feels like, Okay, this is it's not cool anymore.
	And it's just exhausting.
	It's like people don't want to like university students don't want to like go outside and then do a Jubilee video.
	They're just tired of it.
	Yeah.
	It's also just strange for, you know, people much older to seek out, you know, college age students to debate.
	That's it seems like a weird way to go about things.
	It's quite embarrassing, honestly, like kind of removed from its perspective that this was ever a trend.
	The moment right before Charlie's brutal death, he was involved in a debate between him and a local audience member related to the subject of transgender mass shooters.
	It seems like this audience member was attempting to demonstrate that the stereotype is unfair.
	Okay, so I'll play the audience member.
	Do you know how many transgender Americans have been mass shooters over the last ten years?
	Too many.
	Okay, well, it's five, okay?
	Now, five is a lot, right?
	I'll give you some credit.
	Do you know how many mass shooters there have been in America over the last ten years?
	Counting or not counting gang violence.
	And that was the last thing he ever said.
	And given the force of the blow, likely the last thought he ever had, as it seemed to have knocked him unconscious.
	There's something about this event that feels so especially grim to me.
	Even as a person whose rights Kirk has spent the last decade mobilizing to curtail.
	Was it especially grim that he died while participating in the last gasp of campus conservative shock culture?
	Literally right in the middle of a conversation, where he was about to apply one of his prepared debate lines to better facilitate the marginalization of a minority group?
	Or was this all merely a politically polarized bed that Charlie had contributed to making, which he had finally had the misfortune of being made to lie in.
	Oh, thank you, Liv.
	You are so much better at this than I would have been.
	The purpose of this episode isn't to discuss all the horrific things Charlie has said throughout his political career, or the ethical implication of these statements, whether violence is a legitimate strategy, etc.
	To me, all of this has just been incredibly depressing.
	And the celebrations of Kirk's death from the left amount merely to an admission that we are almost entirely powerless, only able to have an effect in politics when it's to rub salt in the wounds of our enemies, when what was likely a different right-wing freak assassinates their favorite evil fascist demagogue.
	This is not a cry for the adaptation of civility politics, or a plea to respect the memory of Charlie Kirk.
	Just a desire to recenter the conversation around how Charlie Kirk's murder has demonstrated how incredibly melted everything has become.
	Hey folks, live here from the future.
	Well, I guess for you it's still the past, but the future for the rest of the recording you're listening to.
	I'm recording this update on September 14th, so only three days after the episode was made.
	And a lot has happened since we made this episode.
	So I'll just fill you in briefly before we go back to the old me to talk about all the kooky crazy conspiracy theories that were produced in the day following the shooting.
	As you might know, they found the killer, who is 22-year-old Tyler Robinson, a white man who grew up in a Utah Mormon mega family.
	Confusingly, he had written inscriptions on bullets found in the rifle that had been dumped in a wooded area close to the scene, which read, Hey Fascist, catch, followed by a series of five arrow symbols.
	Oh bella chow, bella chow, bella chow, chow chow.
	If you're reading this, you are gay, LMAO.
	And finally, on the spent casing that went through Charlie Kirk's neck.
	Notices bulges, oh, what's this?
	Unfortunately, the shooter was a reddit epic meme lord.
	The five arrow symbols being a reference to the Starship Troopers S game Helldivers that we talked about before in the podcast, and Bella Chow being a prominent anti-fascist partisan song from World War II Italy.
	Notices bulges is also like a furry meme, OWO being like a surprised expression, basically.
	It's just, you know, ironic nonsense.
	The New York Times gained access to a Discord server where Robinson and some of his friends that he knew from high school would game together, where in the day after the shooting, some of his friends joked about photos of the Kirk shooter looking like him, as they were unaware that they genuinely were talking to the person who killed Charlie Kirk.
	Within a minute of the message joking about this, Robinson responded saying that his quote, doppelganger killed Kirk, who was trying to make him look bad.
	Someone joked that he shouldn't, quote, go to McDonald's anytime soon, a reference to where Luigi Manjione was found, to which Robinson replied, quote, better also get rid of this manifesto in exact copyrightful I have laying around.
	It appears that the investigation into the killer was quite incompetent, as we'll talk about later in the recording.
	It seems that Robinson was found because his father confronted him about possibly being the killer, to which he responded to his father that he would rather kill himself than turn himself in.
	His father, the genius he is, then went to a youth pastor and asked him about the situation.
	This youth pastor was then the person who turned in Tyler Robinson.
	The politics of the shooter are ambiguous.
	Some are saying that the inscriptions on the bullets are clear evidence that the shooter was an ironic far-right groper.
	A suspicion we talk about later in the episode.
	Now I personally don't think this is likely anymore, even if it may be possible.
	And leftists as well as liberals in America should be prepared for the possibility that the shooter was not further to the right than Charlie Kirk.
	A scenario which would make Trump's desire to use this to crack down on left-wing institutions unfortunately much easier.
	There's more to be said about the situation, but it's still rapidly developing.
	There are a few troubling facts about Robinson's life as concerns how they may be able to be used for the far-right American propaganda machine.
	One such example being the rumor pushed by both the FBI as well as the governor of Utah that Robinson's roommate is a transgender woman that he is dating.
	According to an Axios report, the FBI believes that this is the case and is attempting to find a motive for the killing related to transphobia.
	You know, the possibility that Robinson killed Charlie Kirk for being a transphobe.
	They have also extended this investigation to some Utah trans-related groups in an attempt to find out if any of them knew about the shooting before it happened.
	This is all very troubling, and we will likely provide an update on the situation when things have become more stable in the week or weeks to come.
	But until then, enjoy all the goofy funky conspiracy theories about the shooter that people dreamed up in the first 24 hours after it happened.
	There are many, many melted ticks that have arisen as a result of the death of Charlie Kirk.
	But I've decided to start this episode on the lightest note that I possibly can.
	With a video from the TikTok user Elder TikTok Eleven, a half Mexican Polynesian Mormon influencer who happened to be absurdly close to Charlie Kirk's tent when he was shot dead.
	He would go viral on TikTok for his immediate reaction to being in a live firing zone, which was to take out his camera and press record.
	It's your boy out of TikTok!
	There was just a gunshot!
	Charlie Kirk!
	We're in Utah!
	There's a confire!
	That is not a joke!
	Hey, let's go!
	Hey, let's go!
	It's your boy outer TikTok!
	There was just a gunfire in Utah!
	This is not a drill!
	There is a gunfire in Utah!
	Shots fire!
	Shots fired here in Utah!
	It is not a joke!
	Charlie Kirk, outer TikTok!
	Mormon Central, Utah!
	There was a gun that just fired off here at Charlie Kirk!
	I am not playing with Charles!
	Hey, make sure you go to church on Sunday!
	Read the book of Mormon!
	This is not a drill!
	I'm not playing with Charles!
	Hey, Jesus is Lord!
	Jesus will protect you!
	Jesus is your savior, bro.
	I'm not even lying.
	Make sure you subscribe to Outer TikTok on Instagram.
	He literally does like the Connor O'Malley pulling of the camera close to his face.
	He has the same tone.
	It's um yeah, I think we can we can safely say Conor O'Malley was uh more of a prophet than than a satirist.
	The audio is funny, but the video is like so perfect.
	Like he's literally like hitting a duck face in a peace sign while there are people around him who are like fleeing for their lives.
	He's just standing there.
	And like he is very close to the tent.
	He's right beside us.
	Yes, he's right there.
	It's like he keeps kind of putting the camera over his shoulder to try to like show you.
	He's like, this is my shot.
	He has accurately, you know, identified that it's his closest shot to getting 15 minutes of fame.
	This is so like, to me, this m this makes me feel like deeply unwell.
	Like there is like a deep, deep, deep unease.
	Just just being like in that like elder millennial stage to see like I know what life was like with no internet, and like now to today to like see this, I feel like there's this show, uh good television show with Steven Yun called uh called Beef.
	And uh there's a line in the show that Yun's character describes.
	It's like I I think, you know, might be like depression or anxiety, but he's he describes the feeling as like, you know, his like body like russing rushing towards the dirt.
	It's like the ground coming up to mean him.
	That's how this makes me feel.
	It makes me feel like deeply, deeply disturbed.
	But I also can't help but like giggle at how like insane the whole thing is.
	Yeah.
	I think that's that's pretty much America right there.
	Mm-hmm.
	Currently.
	Well, I'm unsure whether this is actually the same person.
	Someone posted a screenshot of the prove me wrong tent shortly after the shooting, where a man in what appears to be the exact same hat as Elder TikTok is taking Charlie Kirk merch off the table.
	Jesus.
	And he's I mean, maybe he's not taking the merch.
	He's right by the tent, though, as literally you can see.
	There's nobody else there running for their lives.
	Like he's going into the firing line for the merch.
	And I it's not just the blue hat if you look at the video and the picture.
	You're right, no, It is, it is her.
	He also has a white t-shirt on and a stra and some kind of like chest bag over.
	So there are three pieces of clothing that that that line up.
	Well, yeah, this young man has accurately, like subconsciously evaluated the American moment.
	And what he is is the body hit the ground and he went he was he was like the first vulture on the scene.
	He went straight for the eyeballs, straight for the soft tissue.
	Like, that's it.
	We had we just consume each other at the at the fucking bottom of the of the ocean.
	Just everything is is picked clean instantly.
	And then and then had the hindsight to grab whatever merch was on the table, you know, undoubtedly to be sold on eBay, you know, from from the day, you know, as collectibles.
	Yeah, merch from when Charlie Kirk got got blood stain included.
	Yeah, well, this is a hundred dollars.
	That's different than buying a bloody handkerchief from a lynching or something.
	This is an old American tradition to like immediately commercialize like uh public executions.
	And like if you go to his TikTok, he is like conservative, like he loves Charlie Kirk, but he was just like, it's clout time.
	Oh, yeah.
	Yeah.
	Well, he he goes into he goes into the exact mode that we've all been conditioned, but he he has uh um a more powerful heart than everyone around him.
	Everyone else is running and he goes, No no, I'm rising to the occasion.
	I'm gonna do the most American thing.
	Other TikTok would post a video apologizing for the incident a few days later, but it has not stopped a rift that has reportedly emerged in the Polynesian community online.
	To quote from Twitter user Chicken Pabrika.
	People on Mormon Polynesian TikTok are fighting over whether this guy is Samoan or Tongan because no one wants to claim him Lamau.
	Jesus.
	Oh god.
	It's all about claiming now.
	It's like, oh God, like nobody, yeah, like everybody's like, oh, oh, he's not ours, he's yours.
	He must be yours.
	If this guy was like ambiguously a Croat, I would do that though.
	I understand.
	I understand the feeling.
	He's not a Serb, there's not a Serbia doing this.
	Well, I thought you were Turkish based on like um the average person responding to your sword post.
	That was weird.
	That was very cool.
	Yes, I've been harassed by Turkish people and being challenged to duels by Turkish men in my DMs for the past three days.
	Yeah.
	Just because she has a cool sword that we won't ask how got into her family lineage.
	Don't worry about the family Yatong.
	Don't ask questions.
	But of course, a little bit of tasteless cloud chasing is far from the only reaction the internet had to this terrible, terrible tragedy.
	And certainly far from the worst.
	A vast majority of the conspiracy theories connected to Charlie Kirk's death concerned the identity of the shooter.
	Whoever it was is clearly an experienced marksman and took a single shot from approximately 200 yards away from atop the roof of a university campus building.
	Initial reports seemed to indicate they had immediately found the shooter's identity, as an older white man had been arrested at the scene and was heard screaming, shoot me, as police took him away.
	Almost as if he was begging to get Lee Harvey Oswald, I guess.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, this was this is so he looks like my dad, kind of Twitter user Jack Tron received 1.7 million views on Twitter with the video of the man being arrested using this caption.
	This is the man that shot Charlie Kirk, a baby boomer Democrat.
	Honestly, he looks like a Democrat.
	I do agree.
	I can't explain why.
	Whoa, anti-Semitic.
	I think my dad looks better than this guy, actually.
	I'm sorry, Dad, if you're if you're listening to this.
	I hope you're not.
	This is gonna be a shitty episode.
	Don't say that.
	Internet sluice connected this man with the name George Hodson Zen, a local Salt Lake City insane person who had, for instance, been arrested in 2013 after making bomb threats to the organizers of the Salt Lake City Marathon.
	Nice.
	He would send this to them in an email.
	I was wondering if you needed anybody to help place bombs near the finish line on Saturday.
	Question mark, question mark, question mark.
	Which is like awesome.
	It's like tumbler girl cadence.
	Like, oh yeah, yeah.
	I can't actually seem to definitively connect the identity of Mr. Zinn to the man arrested at the scene of the crime.
	It doesn't seem to matter.
	As whoever was arrested was released hours later.
	It seems that his initial arrest related to him claiming he was involved in the shooting in some capacity while it was happening.
	Although I can't find a video proving that.
	It's just people claiming that's why he got arrested.
	The idea that this white boomer was purposely trying to get arrested, even though he had nothing to do with the crime, was certainly something that conspiracy theorists on places like Twitter latched onto.
	One example being from user Noah's Ark, who gained 3.9,000 likes on a tweet related to the man with this caption.
	He distracted the police so the shooter could escape.
	George Zinn is Jewish And was later released.
	Yeah.
	I mean, even if you're gonna argue that he was like running interference like in the aftermath, this doesn't seem like the best conclusion to draw from that.
	I like the idea of adding like he is Jewish whenever you're describing a Jewish like Jake Ross Rakatansky is Jewish and he had a wonderful sandwich this morning to wreck.
	He is Jewish.
	This brings us to our first and possibly most popular conspiracy theory related to the Charlie Kirk shooting, that the Jews did it.
	Now this one struck me as weird, as Charlie Kirk has towed the party line on Israel for the most part, so much so that influence to his right, such as Nick Fuentes, have gained a lot of political capital contextualizing him as a part of a conspiracy by the Jews to destroy the white race.
	Baku's primary evidence for this theory came from a tweet in early August of this year from former InfoWars pundit Harrison Smith, who tweeted thus.
	I'm not gonna name names, but I was told by someone close to Charlie Kirk that Charlie thinks Israel will kill him if he turns against them.
	Funny enough, this tweet was made in response to another right wing influencer talking about Charlie Kirk avoiding discussions with Nick Fuentes, with the implication being that Kirk is afraid to speak his mind about the Jews.
	Perhaps the second most popular theory surrounding the shooter was that they were transgender.
	While the right has been pushing this idea for a few years, it's only gotten more intense recently as a result of the Annunciation Catholic church shooting from August 27th, which is done by a detransitioner that is a former trans woman who's reversed their transition that was part of a satanic far-right accelerationist cult.
	The first so-called evidence that far right users online provided for the idea that this shooting was caused by a trans person came after someone with the name Omar tweeted this days before the shooting.
	Charlie Kirk is coming to my college tomorrow.
	I really hope someone evaporates him literally.
	Let's just say something big will happen tomorrow.
	As far as I can tell, far right posters took these two tweets and combined it with a photo of a completely unrelated transgender woman whose Twitter location was in Seattle, Washington.
	I'm fairly certain the only reason why they decided to pin it on this woman specifically was because she had gotten a viral joke tweet a day before the shooting that received 11 million views.
	Yeah.
	Nevertheless, her image along with that tweet were plastered all across the internet.
	Yeah, it was like the first thing I saw when I opened Twitter this morning.
	It was like the most predictable Which is so fucked because you have like these posts still up when now they've you know the FBI has released, you know, multiple uh still images of the shooter, clearly not the same person at all.
	And it's also just like there was never evidence this woman is just in Seattle.
	Like there was never she never tweeted about the shooting, you know, she's just transgender.
	Mm-hmm.
	But those posts stay up even like once the posts that have clearly disproved them are also Oh, of course.
	Yeah.
	Which is what's so cursed about the whole affair.
	I'm still getting it now.
	Like after we always we have the image of the shooter, short hair, seems to be Sishenderman.
	I still am getting people on Twitter right-wing guys like sending me that in DMs and being like, this trune, you know, did it or whatever.
	Like they're still doing that.
	It's just not a thing that's yeah.
	I tweeted about the shooting a lot when it happened, and I saw it posted in my replies and DMs at least a few dozen times with people who are definitively saying it was the shooter.
	Which as a trans woman who gets a lot of viral tweets makes me feel really great about continuing to use that website and just generally being online and visible.
	Yeah, it's fun.
	X has become a true like horror factor.
	True facts.
	My brother, like uh was I hope he doesn't find me saying this was like uh, you know, like going to the bathroom at work, like you know, his what you your one time to like get like five minutes, you know, to yourself.
	And he basically like opened his phone to like try to look at like 2K build tutorials and stuff, and he said within like seconds he had already been fed like five different angles of the shooting, like, you know, he's not following any like crazy right-wing people.
	It was just like first things up in his feed.
	But also, like X is also has become a mill for racial animosity.
	It's it's very literally a tool for a billionaire to spread the great replacement conspiracy theory and like the idea that whites are oppressed and must rise up and and fight and go to war with their, you know, demographic enemies and these these these uh external.
	I mean, it's it's lit, it's literally a factory for fascism.
	Yes, totally.
	And and the tweets I was seeing, like I was scrolled doom scrolling last night, scared me to death.
	All of these guys are like, everyone should watch the video because like then they'll understand why we're yeah, that why we're gonna do what we're about to do, and people being like, I don't see anybody like to like these guys, it's it's like um uh what's his name, Alex uh uh Garland.
	It's like his his like civil war fantasy is like making strides, at least in this online space towards reality.
	From what I was looking at, it seems like there are so many guys that are at least fantasizing about it online together.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	People are declaring it's war, this and that and the other, so I don't know.
	But this specific set of images was not the end of the transgender conspiracy theory.
	As of when we record this podcast, a day after September 10th, the shooter remains at large, and his motivations to whereabouts are completely unknown.
	At 5 30 AM PST this morning, Steven Crowder made a tweet in which he claimed to receive a report by the ATF that said that the murder weapon had been found.
	Attached was a screenshot of a phone browser on the Teams.dOJ.gov website, where part of the text read this.
	ATF and other law enforcement located an older model imported Mauser.3006 caliber bolt-action rifle wrapped in a towel in a wooded area near the campus.
	The location of the firearm appears to match the suspect's route of travel.
	The spent cartridge was still chambered in addition to three unspent rounds in the top-fed magazine.
	All cartridges have engraved wording on them expressing transgender and anti-fascist ideology.
	That's it's the fact that they haven't become specific about this is so strange.
	And the fact that it went through Steven Crowder.
	I mean, this is just absolute chum for these, you know, moronic sharks.
	Like, even with Manioni, you know, like they reported what was written on the bullets.
	They didn't say, oh, it was part of like anti-healthcare ideology.
	This is just so clearly meant to like foment hatred and anger and division.
	Also, like, didn't it like I it seems to me that they just like looked at like the last shooting that they, you know, that they could feasibly try to blame on a transgender person who wrote stuff on the magazine, so they were like, yeah, okay.
	We'll just say that they wrote stuff on the magazines.
	Like, that's the way that you tell now.
	That's that's how you identify what faction you're a part of.
	Yeah, which is great.
	It's just like years of lead, you know, where all you have to do is just like put a word on your mag before you do the thing, and then uh you get to pick which group is gonna be, you know, held up as the responsible one or the one that that should be further like oppressed or erased.
	This was we did this.
	We we paint wrote wrote names on bombs and stuff going out of planes.
	You know, this is a you know, we've been, we we like doing this.
	We like writing the names on.
	It's American pastime.
	Yeah.
	This story was picked up widely by the far-right online political machine, with Crowder's original post receiving 21 million views on Twitter.
	Yet it wasn't really Gropers and Nazis who were reporting on this story, as the Wall Street Journal used Crowder as a source, publishing an article with the title that read Ammunition and Kirk shooting engraved with transgender anti-fascist ideology.
	Sources.
	What does that even mean?
	Silent source of it.
	It's a truly, truly evil way to write anything.
	Like, give us what was actually written on it or give us nothing.
	I do wonder, like whether Crowder's stories of fabrication or whether it's just an internal memo that um like wasn't meant to be distributed, um, that later got walked back.
	It's hard to say, but as it turns out, Steven Crowder is not a very reliable source.
	If other journalists had seen this and it was some real memo and you know, decided not to pick up on it, or you know, whether it's just fake.
	Because a few hours later, the New York Times posted an update to the story, which read this.
	According to a preliminary internal report circulated inside the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, federal and local officials recovered ammunition with the shooter's rifle that appeared to be engraved with statements, quote, expressing transgender and antifascist ideology.
	But a senior law enforcement official with direct knowledge of the investigation cautioned that report had not been verified by ATF analysts, did not match other summaries of the evidence, and might turn out to have been misread or misinterpreted.
	In fast-moving investigations, such status reports are not made public because they often contain a mixture of accurate and inaccurate information.
	Yeah, I mean, you didn't even need this.
	I mean, obviously, you know, this is an obvious uh, you know, problem with it.
	But if you look at the fucking ATF statement, Steven Crowder has created a giant watermark with his name on it that he has plastered across the entire page to make sure he gets clout for this.
	Like, please, folks, can we can we at least not just immediately I mean the Wall Street Journal should be a fucking shamed of itself.
	While the Wall Street Journal initially reported Stephen Crowder's findings as a fact, they have since updated the page to read that a quote early bulletin said the ammunition was engraved with trans ideology.
	And they updated the introduction paragraph, for instance, to read this.
	An early Bulletin circulated widely among law enforcement officials said investigators found ammunition engraved with expressions of transgender and antifascist ideology inside the rifle that authorities believe was used in the fatal shooting of Charlie Kirk.
	But some officials later Thursday cautioned against reaching conclusions based on the internal report.
	Uh yeah.
	I hate everything.
	It's like, yeah, There's so many people I'm sure working for the ATF that that have an ideological stance and want this to go a certain way.
	Yeah, it would be good to get maybe a little bit of a committee on this.
	That's clearly how it leaked, right?
	Because it's like some incredibly pilled guy at like the ATF or whatever was like, I gotta fucking tell Steven Crowder this.
	That's it.
	Yeah, exactly.
	Someone who likes Steven Crowder and thinks he's a good person to leak to.
	That tells you everything you need to know about the person at the ATF.
	Of course, regardless of how unverified this is, the damage has already been done.
	And I would argue even the stitch-up job by the Wall Street Journal, after it had been discredited, is widely irresponsible to keep up.
	Oh yeah.
	Yeah.
	Shame.
	And so the two prevailing right-wing conspiracy theories concerning the identity of the shooter are that it was caused by Israel or one of those pesky transgenders.
	Known trans born watcher and Blair White DL trade Alex Jones waited on the conversation on the side of transgenders, saying this on Twitter.
	Look, folks, I have exposed the USS Liberty that Israel tried to sink to blame on Egypt more than anybody.
	I've exposed all sorts of false flags, Israel's not.
	But immediately yesterday, people started saying, Well, Charlie Kirk have been talking about Epstein being Mossad.
	They killed him.
	It's a professional hit.
	It it there's not credibility in every time something bad happens, always saying Israel did it.
	Israel does plenty of bad stuff.
	Some of other corrupt governments.
	Here's the deal.
	The ATF, just like the FBI leaked the cowlserf a few weeks ago with a trans shooter, went in and killed all those kids in Minneapolis at the Catholic school mass.
	And the and the person that put out their videos, all the carvings on the bullets and and and and the stuff on the gun.
	The ATF was worried along with DHS, which is part of it that that was gonna get suppressed.
	So they leaked it to Stephen Crowder.
	People always leaked at him because he's a very credible good guy.
	And it's out.
	And we we saw a trans person that lived there in that town the day before say something big's gonna happen today.
	Charlie Kirk's gonna get evaporated.
	Yeah, thanks, Alex.
	I've already set up the episode in a way for you to understand that you know all of those claims are not true.
	But Jones taking the transgender side should show you where the general political schism in the Republican Party over the source of the shooter lies.
	Jones just recently rejected the idea that Trump was an accomplice to Epstein's pedophile trafficking ring, for instance.
	He's oddly recently seemed to be a pretty like, for lack of a better term, establishment style Republican.
	Very much not so one of the people who's flanking Trump on the right.
	Which also show you how melted all politics is now.
	Also, that video was so disorder.
	I felt like I was watching a cutscene that you could kind of control, and like every now and again I would like move the camera a little bit to the right and sort of swirl around.
	It was bizarre.
	Those who are broken with Trump on Israel, who are typically more to the right of the current admin, have a much higher tendency of blaming the Jews.
	Like Charlie Kirk, for instance, if he could, you know, do political commentary about his own death, he would be blaming transgender people and not the Jews.
	Like that's my understanding of that alignment.
	Yeah, I think that's true.
	Mm-hmm.
	Many Whitewind conspiracy theorists, of course, have just been throwing shit at the wall and seeing what sticks.
	Implying that it was, you know, both transgender related and also connected to Israel.
	One of whom being perhaps the biggest QAnon account on Twitter, Shadow of Ezra, who posted a video on Twitter that received seven million views with this caption.
	An eye witness says the shot that took the life of Charlie Kirk was fired right after he was asked about trans violence, as if it were coordinated.
	He believes it wasn't just one person acting alone, but several people working together.
	He also claims that someone in the crowd confessed to the shooting right after it happened, even though they didn't have a weapon.
	After I got done uh talking to him, I really couldn't exit because there's such a big crowd.
	Uh and I so I turned around and like 10 to 20 seconds later, after uh I got done talking to Charlie, he was I saw that he was shot in the neck and that he was squirting blood everywhere.
	But I I was piecing things together, and it was really weird because the second guest that I talked to when it before I went and asked him the question, what I what I was gonna ask him, he was talking to him about how he was gonna ask about transgenderism or something like that.
	But not and nothing about shootings.
	And this is the irony that came to me, which was like right when he asked that, not like five, ten seconds later, he was shot.
	And not only that, right after that, someone confessed to it who had no weapon, which makes me think that it was clearly a setup and now multiple people were involved.
	So but prior to that, that's all I saw because everyone was squirming.
	I didn't see anyone fire a shot.
	I think it had to come from elevated position for sure.
	What I love about that video is like he's objectively like his retaliative events is objectively wrong for like a couple reasons, which like you know, It's a traumatic moment, fair enough.
	You don't remember that the topic was obviously shooting and then it wasn't immediately.
	But what I do love about that video is that it's just he doesn't have any extra details.
	He's just baking.
	It's just he was he was an insane person at a Charlie Kirk thing, because you know, of course, who's just giving us his bake, his conspiracy theory about it.
	Yeah.
	But Ezra, in typical QAnon fashion, had some other bakes in relation to Charlie Kirk's death.
	On another post which received 3.2 million views, Ezra posted a video of a Fox News clip by reporter John Solomon, as well as an image of the Israel flag and Ukrainian President Zelensky under it.
	And that we all lost, uh no matter what side of the political aisle you're on to, we lost something important in America today.
	But uh the case goes on, the investigation goes on, there's a lot of piecing of evidence together.
	We don't have a shooter tonight.
	We have a couple leads, a couple of people that were released that probably aren't the shooter.
	There's a couple hot leads, there's a little bit of foreign intelligence, and I think over the next couple of days we'll learn a lot more, and hopefully we will bring to justice the evil person who did what uh they did to Charlie today.
	Yeah, so clearly being like, take your pick.
	Is it Ukraine or Israel?
	Also, that's like he isn't saying that's a thing.
	He's saying they're looking into that as well.
	Yeah, they have they have some foreign intelligence, which it's unclear what that even means.
	A little bit of foreign intelligence.
	Like, okay.
	Fun.
	Just to like, you know, make every conspiracy theorist go mad.
	Mm-hmm.
	Yeah, Solomon has contributed to Biden Ukraine conspiracy theories in the past, for instance.
	So that's likely what he's implying, I guess.
	Although, you know, it doesn't seem like he would have any authority to claim insider knowledge into the situation.
	And this clip spread wildly across the key universe as evidence of foreign involvement in the case, because you know, it was a newsman who said it on the news.
	Yeah.
	A newsman just slipping in a little bit of their bake, actually.
	Yes.
	Some conspiracy theorists have not baked the source of the shooter itself necessarily, just the narrative that it was committed by a group of highly trained assassins.
	And I'll give them credit.
	The assassination was pretty clean.
	And the fact it was a single lethal shot from 200 yards away, and that they haven't found the shooter yet, shows that whoever did it was either very lucky or highly competent.
	The funniest of these bakes that I found was probably this tweet by Adam Media, who made a post that received 14.5 million views alongside a close-up photo of Charlie before he was shot with this caption.
	Breaking two men standing behind Charlie Kirk look like they gave hand signals right before the shot went off.
	I won't show the video, but it's like they're the guy's scratching his nose, the other guy's adjusting his hat.
	It's like, you know.
	Yeah.
	And it's also, of course, like you wouldn't be in the line of fire.
	It doesn't what would you be signaling to?
	You know, like take the shot, like he knows he can take the shot.
	It doesn't.
	He's talking about transgenders.
	Take the shot.
	Like Charlie's sitting, he's still sitting.
	Okay, he was sitting, now he's sitting, and then he's gonna be sitting in a second.
	There's no way that you would stand that close.
	What if there's a ricochet with there's so many things that can go wrong?
	You would definitely not be standing behind the guy.
	Not even in the movies do they like present that idea.
	You know what it is?
	It's Americans being like, wait a minute, you know where else I've seen that?
	Baseball games.
	Yes, that's how they fucking signal.
	I that's how they talk to each other.
	So that must be what CIA agents use as well.
	He's telling them to throw a curveball.
	That's fucked.
	Really like that one.
	I was I pulled away for I pulled away from the mic.
	I I that I was about to be like, well, this is bordering a little bit on what we're trying not to do.
	You're selling him to steal third.
	Sorry, sorry.
	It's a tragedy, it's a terrible tragedy, everyone.
	Another less view take of a similar nature came from a user on Twitter named Angus Cooney, who said this.
	There is no shooter.
	It came from inside his vest.
	Look at the letters.
	It goes from seven letters freedom to eight letters.
	The thing that killed him came out his chest.
	This is high tech.
	It's was a booby trapped vest.
	Who gave him it?
	Okay.
	This is I'm gonna I'm gonna tell you right now, this guy's name is not Angus.
	Booby tra a booby trapped vest.
	And it's like it it was his neck.
	Like, I know bro has to watch the close-up video.
	I don't know what's happening here.
	Charlie, put this on.
	Like come on.
	Like I don't know.
	Now the conspiracy sleuths aren't even like looking at all the information.
	It's just like you're phoning it in.
	It's like guy who didn't do the readings before showing up to class.
	Yeah, yeah.
	It's just everyone read one paragraph and you're a specialist on that one paragraph.
	There have been many libs, of course, baking that the murder was actually an inside job.
	The your and on news account, Which poses as a member of Anonymous received 600,000 views saying this.
	It's too professional.
	It's also interesting how all right wing networks are all blaming Democrats simultaneously.
	How all right-wing politicians automatically have the same talking points about the left is at fault.
	Possible on his own already killed him to start a war.
	Yeah, this guy's really onto something.
	It's like, have you noticed that all right wing people always blame it on the left and that they were really fast to do that?
	Wow, that's inconsistent with how they've been acting before.
	very suspicious.
	Must be coordinated.
	Could you imagine you get out to the Charlie Kirk murder group chat and you're like, well, RIP Charlie, you know, we're doing this.
	Like, it's my friend.
	You know, we've been, you know, doing all this political agitation together, but Trump Which time it take take him out to make us more angry at the left.
	As if we needed any excuse to like wield our power against the left.
	This is like when they this is like when they kill big pussy, you know, in the fucking, you know, in the bot in the in the bottom deck of the boat.
	Mm-hmm.
	That would make Charlie Kirk so cocked to the movement.
	You know, it gives he has all of his time so much effort over like a decade.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	He's put in a lot of time.
	A lot of political organizing.
	He's he's a fairly influential figure.
	Like, I feel like I was even surprised about this, thinking he was just like a media spokesperson guy, but no, he's like on boots on the ground getting people mobilized for the Republican Party.
	Mm-hmm.
	Yeah, he is TPUSA.
	I mean, he was the architect of like the the MAGA youth movement.
	Yeah.
	Well, and all the like civil war guys online are basically like, oh, you know, they're like Charlie was like the most mild of all of us, you know.
	He was like a moderate, you know, essentially.
	Like, wait till they see what we're gonna do.
	Another lip conspiracy I found was actually on my Instagram reels for you page from a user named Forbidden Clothes on a video which received 250,000 likes that had this caption.
	Me fighting the urge to point out the 200 yard shot was a professional assassination with complex planning designed to spark a civil war psyop.
	Which to be clear, he walked up on a roof with a hunting rifle and then pit like a good shot.
	Like, you know, it's the 200 yards with a hunting rifle is like he's a trained shooter, he's gone hunting before.
	Maybe he's got good nerves.
	It's not like with like iron sights.
	He he I think he had like a scope.
	No, he must have a scope.
	But still, I mean, you know.
	No, he did, yeah.
	It's it's not a bad shot, but you don't you don't have to be fucking a sniper, you have black eyes.
	Yeah, you wouldn't have to be, yeah, exactly.
	And then he just walked away.
	There were six police officers on campus at the time.
	There just was no security.
	You know, it doesn't it makes sense that he got away.
	It's not crazy.
	You don't need a team to do that.
	Others have already begun making the escape path of the shooter.
	One user in a now deleted tweet that's received at least five million views, named Stellar Man, posted this.
	A private jet under the tail number N888KG left Provo airport an hour after the shooting.
	Suspiciously 30 minutes into the flight, it drops off of ADSB illegally and reappears headed back to Provo approximate hour later.
	Why did this plane turn off its radar?
	Where's a shooter?
	It is the classic Q and On, though, because it's like you're leading someone with the questions.
	Where is the shooter in relation to just a plane turning off its radar around the same area?
	Yeah.
	And even if that is even what happened, because all he means is through what I can access on the internet, that plane disappears for a moment in this like simulation that I'm being fed at like a consumer level.
	Like I have no inside information about this, but I'm just like tracking planes obsessively, and this dot disappeared for a little while.
	That's about as much as he could say.
	It's so funny to me still, like how everybody I know I know I'm being redundant.
	I've said this on the show a thousand times, but like everybody online wants to be like in the movie when they cut to like the guy in the van.
	You know what I mean?
	Like the guy in the van with all the monitors.
	Everybody wants to be an expert.
	Like the moment this happens, they're like, definitely professional shooter, 200 yards, and point across scope, just kind of ammunition.
	Like everybody won everybody is so keen to like, I don't know, like hop online and be like, I'm now an expert.
	And like, you know, these these five to seven things that are incorporated, and it's so funny, and people believe them.
	You're either like an expert or an influencer.
	Right.
	Those are the two takes you can be.
	Yeah, and everybody, yeah, it's so funny.
	Everybody's like, well, listen, what I've got to say about this, and it's real, and it's oh man, I just it's all right, sorry.
	People were baking this plane thing across the political spectrum.
	One user named Johnny Socialism quote tweeted Teleman with this caption.
	It appears the private jet that took off after the assassination and stopped tracking was owned by the Derek and Shillane Maxfield Foundation.
	They run a nonprofit called Sapria that focuses on victims of child Sex abuse and have pictures of themselves visiting Israel on Facebook.
	So, well, makes you think.
	Johnny Socialism?
	He's the guy who came up with socialism, right?
	Yeah, yeah.
	The belief that large institutions are work to conceal or aid the shooter was certainly not helped by the remarkably incompetent messaging of the FBI's director, Kash Patel, through the early hours of the shooting.
	At 3.21 PM, so approximately three hours after Kirk was shot, Patel tweeted this.
	The subject for the horrific shooting today that took the life of Charlie Kirk is now in custody.
	Thank you to the local and state authorities in Utah for your partnership with the FBI.
	We will provide updates when able.
	Yeah, so I mean, this rocks because it means that Cash Patel essentially has as much information as like the guy in War of the Worlds, like he's just behind the screen, like getting messages, DMs in different channels.
	He's like, okay, time to post on a Twitter.
	No FBI director in history has given you live commentary about taking people in that they don't know if they're guilty yet, which they then were, of course, yeah, rele releasing, as we'll see.
	Yeah, they then have to announce the L later that they had to they had to let it.
	And this is like one of their friends.
	This is like a guy who's like beloved to them and they can't they they can't do shit, you know, to uh apprehend his shooter.
	As someone who is watching the aftermath of the events unfold closely, this was an interesting detail even initially, as local police had never claimed to have detained a suspect, and they mentioned like a person of interest.
	And listening to the local police press conference, it did not seem like they were especially confident it was the shooter.
	I believe a reporter asked them about like, well, Cash Patel said this, and they were like, I cannot comment on that at the moment.
	Because they're just like, I don't fucking I don't know what that guy's fucking talking about.
	Yeah.
	What was especially odd about this statement at the time was that the FBI was advertising the existence of a tip line concerning details of the whereabouts of the shooter after he had tweeted that.
	So before any issued of correction, they were like, We got the shooter, but also if you have a tip line about any of the details of the shooter, please let us know.
	Yeah.
	Then of course, an hour and a half after the original tweet, at 459, Patel would quote tweet his original post with an update.
	The subject in custody has been released after an interrogation by law enforcement.
	Our investigation continues, and we will continue to release information in interest of transparency.
	So he thought, like, well, we were gonna be transparent and then just like tell everyone as soon as there's this uh person of interest.
	Yeah, truly.
	As expected, a very intelligent man doing a great job.
	Now it should be obvious that this is a product of the fact that Cash Patel is a moron who doesn't actually understand the job he's doing, and that even the local Salt Lake police force has a much more professional grasp on how to handle a situation such as this than you know the director of the FBI.
	Yet this hasn't stopped bakes related to Cash Patel's fuck up.
	Early on September 11th, MSNBC correspondent Ken Delanian tweeted this.
	Worth remembering that Cash Patel fired the highly regarded head of the FBI field office in Salt Lake City a few weeks ago for reasons that are not clear.
	This is good.
	Ken doesn't really understand the modern use of highly regarded.
	Uh he thinks it's like the one where you're trying to say the other word.
	He's accidentally all the Zoomers reading this.
	Oh that's pretty rude.
	Yeah, why would you say that?
	Why would you say that?
	This is like the the blue-on equivalent of when like Cernovich went to comment ping pong and was like, huh?
	I don't know.
	I don't know.
	The real reason for this firing appears to be Cash's desire to approach the FBI of non-Trump loyalists, and more broadly women and people of color.
	But you know, the implication here is obvious.
	Other political commentators have been surprisingly quiet.
	Nick Fuentes, for instance, has only released a statement condemning the shooting in absolute terms.
	One reason for this is likely because he's worried that one of his own people may have done the shooting.
	For those of you who are unaware, Charlie Kirk is not only a widely hated figure among the American left, and Kirk's influence mobilizing for what has now become the centrist wing of the Trump era Republican Party has made him a widely reviled figure among the American far right.
	I'm talking about the ones who explicitly want to create an Aryan ethnostate and think the Republican Party is cucked in reformist.
	To put it in leftist terms, Charlie Kirk is AOC, and these far-right militia are like Portland anarchists.
	You know, like they don't like each other.
	They don't like each other at all.
	Yeah.
	But they're unfortunately a lot more of the far-right militia than the Portland Anarchist.
	If you allow me to do some baking myself, it's entirely possible that Charlie Kirk's shooter was actually sourced from this group, who is far more mobilized and violent than any other insurgent group in America.
	And um, Fuentes has also just like had a history of being afraid of the federal government, because especially because of January 6th, he reportedly just recently got access to like a bank account again, with Trump like specifically intervening to help him.
	And he's definitely softened his message.
	Yeah, yeah.
	He was on the no fly list.
	Yeah, he's on the no fly list as well.
	I don't know if that's still a thing.
	I don't think so.
	I don't know.
	Yeah, he could only use Bitcoin.
	Hilarious.
	Very funny.
	And it would not be all that surprising if a writer said committed this murder, as they're overwhelmingly the primary perpetrators of political violence in America.
	This has not stopped Kirk's allies in what I want to call the mainstream Trump right from immediately assuming the shooter is a leftist.
	One place this can be observed is in the four-minute video Trump released about the murder.
	For years, those on the radical left have compared wonderful Americans like Charlie to Nazis and the world's worst mass murderers and criminals.
	This kind of rhetoric is directly responsible for the terrorism that we're seeing in our country today, and it must stop right now.
	My administration will find each and every one of those who contributed to this atrocity and to other political violence, including the organizations that fund it and support it, as well as those who go after our judges, law enforcement officials, and everyone else who brings order to our country.
	From the attack on my life in Butler, Pennsylvania last year, which killed a husband and father, to the attacks on ICE agents, to the vicious murder of a healthcare executive in the streets of New York, to the shooting of House Majority Leader Steve Scalise and three others.
	Radical left political violence has hurt too many innocent people and taken too many lives.
	Tonight I ask all Americans to commit themselves to the American values for which Charlie Kirk lived and died.
	Ironically, only one of the violent events Trump listed there was actually done by a leftist.
	with the congressional baseball shooting of Steve Scalise and other Republicans being done by, I'm pretty sure, a Bernie guy.
	It's also unclear what the organizations that, quote, funded and supported this killing are, although I'm sure whatever Trump means is not good.
	No, it means they are going to crack down, and I think that's the general general sentiment here is like, yeah, oh great, gloves off, as if like they were restraining themselves before.
	But uh this is this is the years of lead, you know, this is the strategy of tension.
	Years of lead paint.
	Yeah, years of lead paint, exactly.
	It's a stupider version.
	It's unclear if it's even fucking voluntary or if it's just like organically coalescing.
	But yeah, not good.
	Either way, all of it reinforces like right-wing crackdowns, militarized states, increase in in, you know, the real political violence, which as we know is the violence of the structure against uh the individuals and and and certain groups.
	But of course, you know, this is so much more spectacular.
	It's way easier to hang your hat on something like this than like the the slow, you know, snuffing out Yeah, the day-to-day grind.
	Yeah, exactly.
	Not good.
	I wasn't gonna mention this clip except for the fact that people have also been making it, with many online saying that it's actually AI generated.
	Yep.
	In particular, one section where it seems like Trump's hands are melting into each other.
	Yeah.
	What is kind of tricky here is that there are like editing techniques now that kind of create the frames between two frames that would otherwise be a jump cut.
	And those can look kind of artificial, but they're designed to try to look as natural as possible.
	So they would create this weird uncanny valley or what people were are describing as AI.
	I wouldn't be so sure that it's AI.
	And I also don't see the point.
	Because he he has appeared since like in public, and he doesn't look great, but like whatever.
	I'm pretty sure he could fucking power through a speech like this once he's on a couple of uh tabs of um whatever he needs.
	Was it Dexies or something?
	You know, he had that like feeling it's like tongue or whatever.
	The main reason people were banking this was because of the like Trump is dead thing.
	And you know, people were like the his 9-11 appearance, it kind of looked like the right side of his face, whatever was a little droopy.
	So people were banking, like maybe at a major stroke.
	But I am also skeptical about this being AI.
	One of the interesting reasons I saw online was how accurately the teleprompter for the speech can be seen behind Trump in the White House window reflection.
	And it seemed to like really track well with his speech, like not something an AI could possibly do.
	You know, although, like as you said, Julian, maybe they did some like touch-up work on Trump with either AI or some sort of video editing thing that created that sort of there definitely is an uncanny valley to the video.
	It seems odd in some way.
	It also could be like, you know, they could be running it through processing filters to make him look less old that are also adding additional artifacts.
	It's not to say that like it's it's not touched up with some kind, you know some kind of like editing tool, uh, but that it's like a a full-on, you know, sort of like uh fictional creation, I think is a stretch.
	Yeah, the tr the well, the trend like the creation of the frames like is an aspect of AI.
	So you could argue that it is like an AI video in that you know, he had to do a bunch of takes to get like this one quite short speech out, and so that they had to stitch certain frames together and they used this technology.
	What is for sure is that we're fucked and we don't know what's real and nothing yeah cannot be called AI at this point.
	Like we really are there.
	We're we're that place that we all warned might come, where it's like we do not know what's real or not.
	Oh yeah, we're here already.
	Like we warned about it like less than twelve months ago.
	It was like, oh no, this is gonna happen.
	And then we're here.
	I had a friend who's texting me the other day, and he was saying, like, he was saying, Oh, I saw this, he was like, I saw this thing online.
	He goes, but I did fall for a lady sinking a boat yesterday, so like I don't know if this is real.
	Like my friends are now texting me videos with the caveat that like they're not sure if they've been got by AI or not.
	Yeah, that's where we're at.
	That's really good.
	That's where we're at.
	Yeah.
	Trump also declared that all American flags be placed at half mast for the rest of the day on September 10th in order to commemorate Kirk.
	Oh yeah, I can't wait uh for like MLK Day to be replaced by like Charlie Kirk Day or whatever.
	Oh god, yeah.
	I'd honestly didn't expect that.
	I didn't realize that it like Kirk's death was going to be at that scale.
	Yeah, no, I suppose not, but he he truly was like instrumental to what is now like the most large and powerful base on the right.
	So it makes sense.
	It seems clear that the mainstream right is not necessarily targeting transgender people or certainly Israel, but instead just the so-called radical left in general with this one.
	And Trump wants to make Kirk into a martyr.
	Within the American House, Republicans attempting to facilitate a moment of silent prayer for Charlie Kirk.
	An idea that Democrats seem to disagree with.
	Well, it's hard to hear exactly what's said in the house video feed.
	Republican representative Anna Paulina seems to shout at Democrats, y'all caused this.
	Also a thing that Nancy Mace said as well in an interview.
	It's just like that seems the mainstream line.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	All the people who've recorded like insane videos of them like holding guns and being like, I am going to decapitate the opposition are now like, you guys have caused this violence.
	By saying that we're evil, like that's the which yeah, it's like the discourse about the left in this country is so psychotic.
	Yeah.
	And you know, it's like all these people that were like, ha ha, helicopter rides, and then like suddenly everyone's quiet.
	Yes, all the people who are making those tweets of like they want you and your family dead, and then you look like a week later and they were just like making fun of like a random transgender teen who killed themselves.
	It's like I don't yeah, I don't think that you guys actually care about this.
	I think you're just babies.
	Like it's w when it when it's attacking you, it's the tweet where it's like, no, you don't understand.
	My feeling, you know, when I say fuck your feelings, my feelings are very important.
	Yeah, I mean, they're just doing real politics like they're doing they're getting what they want accomplished with what is at hand, you know, with like the latest event.
	Like you can't look for ideological consistency or you know, like a lack of hypocrisy, because you're not gonna find it because what they're actually doing has nothing to do with their beliefs.
	They just know how to wield power, which is unfortunately a huge W for the right currently.
	Like you look at like Laura Loomer's feed, and it's literally all just being like this lady who works for the government has she her in her like LinkedIn page, like we need to get her fired.
	It's like they were just they were losing their minds about cancel culture like eight years ago.
	But it's like, yeah, that you're right, they they didn't actually give a shit.
	It's just like the left is the one who has to be punished for things.
	They have to lose their jobs.
	Like cancel culture is good, but it needs to be used on the left.
	Yeah.
	Pick up the weapons available and and fight.
	That's how they see it.
	Yeah, the backlash of Kirk's death has had ramifications even outside of the country, as America's culture war has come to infect every end of the wretched earth we have the misfortune of inhabiting.
	Nice.
	World leaders like Benjamin Netanyahu, Keir Starmer, uh, my own country, Canada's Mark Carney, Italy's Georgia Maloney, all condemning the shooting.
	And even like the the most insane one was the the premier of Manitoba, the NDP Wild Canoe, who has not said a single thing about Palestine or Gaza.
	But it's like, you know, just it's fucked up that they killed Charlie Kirk.
	It's like you're in Manitoba.
	What did you want?
	Yeah.
	What's going on here?
	Yeah.
	I mean, that's the thing is everything is America.
	Like, I went down to get coffee At this little Australian cafe, and the the three uh baristas working there were discussing this.
	They were like, it's this guy, like, what's his name?
	I can't remember his name.
	Uh, and then they they pulled him up, oh yeah, his name is Charlie Kirk, and then one of them was saying, you know, well, well, doesn't he like say like a bunch of like stuff, like a bunch of weird stuff, and the other one was like, well, yeah, but you know, like it's still bad, you know.
	It was it's interesting, just like it is just in the zeitgeist to discuss American politics, what I would consider relatively niche American politics.
	But um, yeah, no, like people I think everywhere, uh, especially in like the Anglo Sphere and uh certainly like in the West, you know, where there's this fucking ongoing insane debate about Islamo leftism and transgender ideology and all this bullshit.
	Right wing members of Europe's parliament even attempted to hold a moment of silence for Kurt, but the Parliament's vice president who was chairing the meeting named Katarina Barley immediately interrupted it.
	A spokesperson for the parliament told Politico that, quote, minutes of silence are announced by the president at the opening of the plenary, which took place on Monday.
	They continued.
	If there is a request for a minute of silence, the request must come from a political group to be held at the opening of the session.
	If there is a request, it can of course be done in October.
	But that's because like a lot of this right wing agitation for like, I don't know, a minute of silence is to capture the moment where the other people go, wait, that's not even how we do things.
	And then they get to say, look at these heartless bastards.
	They they blocked us from even doing a m a minute of silence.
	It's all just like all of this is just fucking theater.
	Indignation theater, you know.
	I mean, yeah, it's it's it is incredible like how much they want this to be a martyr, right?
	Like not just another death, you know, senseless death in America, like because everything is fucking cooked.
	They they want it to be a a a battle between good and evil.
	And um, they're gonna get what they want, probably.
	They're gonna get what they want.
	It was funny in the video in the European Parliament, the German right-wing nationalist guy, like described Charlie Kirk as a patriot, and it's like, you're German.
	You shouldn't like a guy is an American patriot that shouldn't appeal to you.
	What is I thought that was even like a a part of the German right.
	Was it they didn't like America?
	I guess they like him now because of Trump.
	It's just it's such a weird and coherent ideology of like, we like nationalism everywhere.
	Exactly.
	They feel emboldened by like uh other nationalist movements thinking, okay, maybe we have a wave, you know, maybe I don't agree with them, but yeah, then what?
	Like everybody becomes uh isolationist?
	It's such a weird it's really what's what what's really happening is they want to close the borders to people that they don't want in the country, and those are often based on race or religion.
	Yeah, we are all globalists now, even the Nazis.
	Speaking of cooked, while I was doom scrolling last night uh through the corridors of Reddit, uh I found that the Bakers there, uh, in a particular sub called No Filter News, uh, that's got a little over a hundred thousand members.
	There was a user there who went by ad hominem who had his own theory as to what had happened with the shooting.
	And he writes, my loose working theory for the last few days goes like this.
	The people taking control once Trump is out want him gone before he disintegrates before our eyes.
	We saw his droopy face at the 9-11 event today.
	That's why they released the AI video response from Trump yesterday.
	They paraded him around that unsecured restaurant where protesters were allowed to yell at him from across the room.
	The perimeter wasn't secured around the least popular president ever, because they hoped someone would take him out, and they could use that to make Trump a martyr and inflame a civil war.
	They would much rather see him go out as a martyr than to fizzle out and show definitively that he was never physically fit for this term.
	When that didn't happen, they decided on getting rid of Kirk.
	Kirk was calling for the release of the E-files, and I really don't know why a marksman would gather the gumption to go off someone and use that on Kirk, an influential yet still pretty inconsequential player in the relative big picture of what is going on.
	This is so funny because they're like clearly disappointed that it's not about Trump.
	Also, he he stopped talking about the Epstein Files.
	He was explicitly like, I'm gonna stop talking about it when it became a bad thing for Trump.
	Yeah.
	Unsurprisingly does not check out yet.
	Yeah.
	Within minutes of his death, Fox News and other corporate slash state media had talking heads stating this means war, demonizing all the left.
	They needed to divide the public with some major event, so the left and right stopped getting so buddy buddy over the Epstein files.
	I don't assume this all to be quote, exactly what happened without further supporting evidence.
	This is just a brainstorm.
	But the timing of all this seems strangely synchronized and desperately so.
	If you think there's anything to this line of thinking, help spread the notion yourself, as we have seen state media is already taking the quote violent left narrative and running with it.
	Keeping the conversation open is up to us.
	It's that's so awesome.
	Yeah.
	Citizen, it is your responsibility to continue posting online about shit that you do not understand very well.
	Everything's hewn on now.
	This is just complete, just complete over it, explicit Q and on.
	You don't have to do any of this baking.
	That's the thing is it's like you do no banking here and you kind of come up with the same point.
	The funny thing about this bake is that like if you like didn't bake anything at all and just like stated the objective facts of the situation, it would be 90% the same, which is like, yeah, they're gonna use this to try to like criminalize leftism and crack down on leftist organizations.
	Like you don't need all the extra, like and they dangled Trump in front of Palestinian protesters.
	Like, no, sometimes Trump just goes to dinner places.
	And would you believe that there are Palestinians out or Palestinian protesters out there that like still care about the genocide going on in Gaza?
	Because it's just perfect Q and on brain.
	Yeah.
	Because everyone's everyone's QNO now, even the people on the left.
	Yeah, and because we desperately want there to be intent that this chaos can't possibly just be swirling up due to every possible factor in a society like going this direction.
	But either way, you know, whether or not it's a kind of voluntary uh or involuntary, you know, kind of strategy of tension, it's happening.
	So I can see why people are tempted to assign like extra intent, extra structure to what feels extremely chaotic and disorienting.
	Honestly, though, for me, like the idea that the Trump admin is like brutal and competent enough to like kill Charlie Kirk, that's crazy.
	That's horrifying.
	That's so much more horrifying than like it's some random bozo groiper that doesn't know how to fall properly when jumping off a roof.
	Like you know, like that's that's way scarier.
	I don't see why this, like maybe like left-wing conspiracy theories are made to make you feel more uncomfortable.
	Like right-wing conspiracy theories, it's like to soothe them, and then the left, it's like this is a more a reason to panic more.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	I I kind of think you you might be onto something.
	Yeah.
	And regardless, like this is like a horrific event, like that was also like broadcast in HD, like to everybody's phone, millions and millions and millions of people and shared millions and millions of times.
	You know, I remember when I was like growing up, there was this video of a guy, can't remember he was like a governor or something, and he basically like shot himself at a press conference and he like handed a uh envelope to his lawyer and like handed an envelope, something like that.
	Like the paper bag one.
	I know what you're talking about.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, yes, yeah.
	Wow.
	I was like, oh man, I remember it like took took a piece out of me because you know, it's not like in the movies.
	And no.
	It's just, you know, you can see like that there are people that are like waiting for this.
	Yeah.
	The spectacle must continue, and like it's getting bloodier and bloodier.
	So it it certainly doesn't, it doesn't feel good.
	No, none of this feels good.
	And uh, you know, caveat is that we're creating this recording this episode, you know, on a very specific date.
	Like they they have not identified the shooter, uh, the current like kind of official updates as we finish recording this episode are that they've released some video of him and some stills of him.
	Uh he appears to be uh a young white male.
	More than that, we we do not know.
	So we uh, you know.
	All of the above is uh, I guess some speculation on our part, even though we've tried to be quite restrained about that side of things.
	It could be ruined in the next day.
	It's fossil, it's not impossible.
	Yeah, we could be swallowing our words, but anyways, that was our coverage of uh of this event, as you can still hear the shot ringing out.
	Uh it's gonna be a long couple weeks ahead of discourse, and there's a there are a lot of people banging for blood, a lot of people declaring war and all of the above.
	I mean, like years, right?
	Because like, what didn't Andrew Breitbart what did he die of?
	Like a heart attack or he died in the toilet, didn't he?
	I remember of farting and shitting himself.
	This this will be used, I think, for like decades upon decade, like as I I think this is a you know, to me, this feels like a significant, as you said, like live a significant political assassination like um a modern day.
	This is like somebody who was yeah, like pretty visible, like a pretty visible person in politics, I think.
	We'll see who it is too.
	I just wouldn't discount like more shocking things happening in the future that might eclipse even the I mean this might be just the start.
	I know, and that fucking sucks.
	Yeah, it could be.
	Yeah.
	Could be a season.
	The more that this just becomes a normal thing.
	It's you know, like low and wolf gun violence is the one form of like extreme political action that like Americans can absolutely take.
	Because you you just have to be like an insane person who knows how to aim a weapon.
	So if there's any extreme political action, you wouldn't expect it's like radical parties, it's not wildcat strikes, it's not like you know, communes off the it's it's just more of this.
	Yeah, so we'll see, and we'll be with you for the ride, folks.
	Um, thank you for listening to another episode of the QA podcast.
	You can subscribe on Patreon for a whole second episode for every main one.
	That's five bucks a month at patreon.com slash QAA.
	We've also got our podcast miniseries network, Cursed Media, where you can binge the entirety of our new show, Science in Transition by Liv Agar and Spencer Barrows.
	This uh is only going to get more relevant as we enter this like extreme politicization of the trans community and uh, you know, what the right has definitely settled on calling transgender ideology.
	It's already gotten like we finished the series in like July, and it's already gotten a lot worse since then.
	Yeah.
	Cursed Media.net on that awful note, and for everything else, we've got a website, QAA Podcast.com.
	I have a Twitch stream, twitch.tv slash Livagar, where I talk about politics.
	Go check it out.
	A listener, until next week.
	May the deep dish bless you and keep you.
	Oh, oh.
	Oh We have all take content based on your performances.
	My condolences on a lot of friend Charlie Perkins.
	Yes, sir.
	Personally, how are you holding up over the last day and a half, sir?
	I think very good.
	And by the way, right there, you see all the trucks.

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