True Anon Truth Feed - Episode 489: The Unaliving of Charlie Kirk
Aired: 2025-09-18
Duration: 02:26:40


=== Why We Left The Show (05:03) ===

[00:00:00]  I was trying to get you to ask me which movie and I was going to know.
[00:00:04]  It's lost.
[00:00:05]  No, no, I see what you're doing now.
[00:00:08]  It's not.
[00:00:09]  You know what?
[00:00:10]  The moment has passed and I think we should sing.
[00:00:12]  So has he memories like the corners of my mind?
[00:00:22]  Wow.
[00:00:23]  Misty watercolor memories of the way we were.
[00:00:32]  Can it be?
[00:00:34]  That was a really hip harmony.
[00:00:58]  Yeah, well, here's the thing.
[00:01:01]  I think that we've done that song way more times on the show than we have any reason to.
[00:01:07]  I love the movie The Way We Were.
[00:01:09]  Did you just see this or something?
[00:01:10]  No, I haven't seen it in maybe six years, but I love that movie.
[00:01:13]  How come?
[00:01:14]  Well, I think there's something inspiring about an ugly Jewish person being able to get with a really good-looking Aryan.
[00:01:22]  Why are you looking at me like that?
[00:01:24]  Well, no, you're not involved in this.
[00:01:26]  You're not an Aryan or Jewish, as you point out.
[00:01:29]  The ugly Jew is a vile centuries-old stereotype.
[00:01:32]  It is a centuries-old stereotype, and I really respect the subverting of the stereotype.
[00:01:37]  Streisand being like, you know what?
[00:01:40]  Fuck it.
[00:01:41]  I'm fucking Redford tonight.
[00:01:43]  You know, I think that's a good, it's inspiring for a guy like me.
[00:01:48]  I'm sick.
[00:01:48]  Yeah, me too.
[00:01:50]  But I'm Liz.
[00:01:51]  I'm Brace.
[00:01:52]  I'm producer Young Chomsky.
[00:01:53]  And this is Trunon.
[00:01:54]  Hello, everyone.
[00:01:55]  Hello.
[00:01:56]  I have some important news for you guys.
[00:01:58]  I have COVID.
[00:02:00]  But it's the new one that's not contagious, right?
[00:02:02]  It's not contagious.
[00:02:03]  I just have it.
[00:02:04]  You got COVID-26.
[00:02:05]  Yeah, I got the new kind of COVID.
[00:02:07]  But no, I'm sick.
[00:02:08]  So I've actually, I feel a little hungover because I have been sick in bed for four days.
[00:02:14]  Yesterday I wasn't in bed.
[00:02:16]  Which I think has given me a lot of time to interact with the world in a similar manner as many of the people in this episode we are talking about.
[00:02:24]  You're saying that you have been between, I'm going to guess, not very restful sleep.
[00:02:30]  No.
[00:02:31]  You've been very online.
[00:02:33]  I have.
[00:02:34]  You've been checking in, monitoring the situation.
[00:02:36]  What have you been seeing?
[00:02:37]  I have, first of all, last night I had a dream that Tom Cruise was a baby and I had to carry him through an airport.
[00:02:43]  He is a bit baby-like.
[00:02:44]  I know, but he was like in a, it was crazy because he ended up.
[00:02:47]  That's so funny because I've been recently revisiting the Tomcat era.
[00:02:51]  That was crazy.
[00:02:52]  What was that?
[00:02:53]  What?
[00:02:53]  I don't know.
[00:02:54]  When he was married to Katie Holmes.
[00:02:56]  Remember jumping on the couch with?
[00:02:59]  Do, I do, I do.
[00:03:00]  But it's just interesting because it's the same, it's a similar dream.
[00:03:03]  I had that dream about Sabrina Carpenter being shooting tall.
[00:03:06]  Well, but you have a thing about babies and adult babies.
[00:03:09]  Fuck, and airports.
[00:03:10]  Have you not put this together yet?
[00:03:12]  Because I think our listeners, and certainly myself have.
[00:03:15]  But I don't want to be an adult baby.
[00:03:16]  I think our listeners know that now.
[00:03:17]  I am actually repulsed by the thought of me doing that.
[00:03:20]  You know, that, like, you know, but that's such a thing to say.
[00:03:25]  You know what I mean?
[00:03:26]  That's being like, I hate, I hate, I, man, I would really hate it if I shit my pants.
[00:03:30]  You want to shit your pants.
[00:03:32]  Well, okay, Mr. Psychologist.
[00:03:34]  I don't know if that's exactly what affect theory is.
[00:03:36]  My baby doesn't want to eat broccoli.
[00:03:38]  He must crave broccoli more than any.
[00:03:41]  But look, I did say baby.
[00:03:42]  I'm telling you.
[00:03:43]  I went there.
[00:03:44]  You did.
[00:03:44]  It was a little slip.
[00:03:46]  I have been in bed looking at Instagram reels.
[00:03:49]  Much like a baby.
[00:03:50]  Looking at right-wing Twitter accounts.
[00:03:53]  Watching Rumble.
[00:03:56]  We both watched Rumble.
[00:03:57]  My first time.
[00:03:59]  Really?
[00:03:59]  Yeah, I wasn't familiar with its game.
[00:04:02]  Well, we got, we've definitely done ad breaks from Rumble before here.
[00:04:05]  Moink.
[00:04:08]  I was about to say, did you see some of the Rumble ads?
[00:04:11]  I didn't for whatever reason.
[00:04:14]  I didn't get any ads, but I was like, yeah, I was like skipping through the stream a little bit.
[00:04:18]  Oh, I don't know if Nick's stream has ads, actually.
[00:04:21]  Spoiler alert.
[00:04:21]  Yeah, Nick Fuentes.
[00:04:24]  But I did.
[00:04:25]  Did you see Dan Bongingo, friend of the show, on Fox and Friends?
[00:04:31]  I meant to watch that this morning.
[00:04:33]  He was like very earnestly saying how hard he's working.
[00:04:39]  And, you know, he doesn't, you know, these guys don't understand.
[00:04:41]  He has to be up at 7:30.
[00:04:42]  He's got to be at the office so early.
[00:04:44]  He's a deputy director of the FBI.
[00:04:46]  I think it's news to him.
[00:04:48]  Bongingo has been bitching about this same exact thing since he was put in office.
[00:04:54]  I'm not joking.
[00:04:55]  Like, I think the first week that he came in there, he was like, people don't understand.
[00:05:00]  This is really difficult on my field.
[00:05:01]  I think he's just fighting with his wife a lot.

=== Trump's Golfing Consequences (15:26) ===

[00:05:04]  Probably.
[00:05:04]  She's like, I liked it better when you did the moink.
[00:05:06]  Moink.
[00:05:07]  He looks like someone who, you know, constitutionally fights with his wife.
[00:05:12]  Speaking of constitutions and wives, we want to make something very clear here.
[00:05:18]  Yeah, we need to make some announcements just before we get into what we're talking about today.
[00:05:23]  We are conservative.
[00:05:25]  We've been saying this since the start of the show.
[00:05:27]  We are a conservative people.
[00:05:29]  We didn't leave.
[00:05:30]  People are always like, oh, well, you need to sell out and do a why I left the left thing.
[00:05:33]  I can't do that.
[00:05:35]  We were never.
[00:05:36]  I am a conservative.
[00:05:37]  Yes.
[00:05:37]  We are conservative small business owners.
[00:05:40]  The backbone of this nation's both economy and political economy.
[00:05:45]  Sure, absolutely.
[00:05:46]  Every kind of economy.
[00:05:47]  Sure.
[00:05:49]  And we really care about conservative values, of which we know what they are.
[00:05:58]  And we care deeply about making sure you know about them.
[00:06:03]  And so we're always talking about them.
[00:06:06]  To me, left, right, like those are labels, terrestrial labels that I call them.
[00:06:14]  My faith isn't in one party or one flag, except I do love America.
[00:06:19]  Well, but it's in Jesus Christ.
[00:06:21]  Sure, of course.
[00:06:22]  Because I'm also Christian.
[00:06:24]  Right.
[00:06:24]  You are a conservative Christian.
[00:06:26]  I'm a Protestant.
[00:06:27]  That's the one you went with?
[00:06:29]  Yeah.
[00:06:30]  Okay.
[00:06:30]  I'm Protestant.
[00:06:31]  Okay.
[00:06:32]  And so I agree with everything that people that I agree with are doing right now.
[00:06:39]  Yes.
[00:06:40]  Just to be clear.
[00:06:41]  Yeah.
[00:06:42]  Everything.
[00:06:42]  Everything.
[00:06:44]  That's never been a question to our listeners.
[00:06:46]  No, everyone's always been like, Brace, when are you going to talk about your politics more?
[00:06:50]  And right now is the time.
[00:06:51]  I am conservative.
[00:06:53]  Yes.
[00:06:53]  And everything that that means.
[00:06:55]  I also drank last night so much NyQuil and I still couldn't sleep.
[00:07:00]  And I think I robo-tripped, which you would call in sobriety a free lapse when you accidentally get high.
[00:07:06]  But I did not even feel like that.
[00:07:07]  I thought that was like the sort of like low-hand loophole.
[00:07:10]  What's that?
[00:07:10]  Like kind of the shit that Lindsay Lilan would do when.
[00:07:12]  Oh, no, she was just drinking.
[00:07:14]  You think that she actually drank 16 kombuchas and got drunk?
[00:07:17]  No, I think that's when she, I mean, I definitely think she got drunk then, but I think she was always fine in China.
[00:07:21]  I think so too.
[00:07:22]  No, I got wasted off of Nyquil last night because I couldn't sleep and I drank half a gallon because I'm fucking audibly sick.
[00:07:29]  I'm stupid.
[00:07:29]  Oh.
[00:07:30]  And I'm stupid.
[00:07:31]  Well, no, because once you drink a little bit of NyQuil, all your senses leave you.
[00:07:34]  And so your brain is like, I was like, my eyes were apologizing.
[00:07:37]  It was like more Nyquil.
[00:07:38]  I was like hallucinating.
[00:07:40]  I'm trying to get into more Nyquil.
[00:07:41]  I did.
[00:07:42]  No, I got up at 4 a.m. for more NyQuil.
[00:07:44]  Were you sleepwalking?
[00:07:45]  Like, no, I wasn't sleepwalking.
[00:07:46]  I was scared like Yoda.
[00:07:48]  Oh, Nyquil.
[00:07:49]  I wasn't sleepwalking.
[00:07:50]  I also like the taste, but I wasn't sleepwalking.
[00:07:53]  You gotta get a taste that you don't like.
[00:07:55]  Just little life hack.
[00:07:57]  I was just drinking that shit.
[00:07:58]  And so I am, this is the closest you're ever going to see me hungover on this podcast.
[00:08:03]  Because not only did I not sleep, I drank so much NyQuil that it's still affecting me into today.
[00:08:07]  So what we're saying is that we are hungover conservative Americans.
[00:08:11]  Hey, because I just had a couple of fucking beers with the boys.
[00:08:13]  You know what I'm saying?
[00:08:14]  You know what I'm saying?
[00:08:15]  And we are here to talk about those conservative values and the man who embodied them.
[00:08:23]  Charlie Damkirk.
[00:08:24]  That was his middle stage.
[00:08:26]  Charlie Damkirk.
[00:08:28]  No, I want to be clear here.
[00:08:31]  While Trump is golfing, actually, I think he's probably back by now because it's Tuesday.
[00:08:36]  But while Trump was golfing this weekend.
[00:08:38]  It's a safe bet that he's always golfing.
[00:08:40]  He loves to go.
[00:08:41]  My coffee must be amazing.
[00:08:43]  You know, I have a, he golfs so much that it makes me curious about his mobility.
[00:08:50]  Well, you don't really need to.
[00:08:51]  That's literally the thing.
[00:08:53]  Yes, I'm curious about, it's all in the hips, baby.
[00:08:57]  So I'm curious if Trump is.
[00:08:59]  We should watch him do air sex.
[00:09:00]  It could be the key to his longevity.
[00:09:02]  Yeah, it could be.
[00:09:03]  Is he good at golf?
[00:09:05]  You know, there are conflicting reports.
[00:09:07]  Yeah.
[00:09:08]  I don't know how to kind of break through the noise there because I think there's a lot of incentives, unfortunately.
[00:09:15]  I can't imagine that he's good at golf.
[00:09:17]  He might be.
[00:09:17]  Well, once you've been doing it, he does it a lot.
[00:09:19]  You know, it would be sort of more surprising if he was really bad at golf.
[00:09:22]  You know what I'm saying?
[00:09:23]  But also, like, what's really good.
[00:09:25]  I bet he's good.
[00:09:26]  But I bet he's fine.
[00:09:27]  I also bet he cheats a little bit.
[00:09:29]  Yeah.
[00:09:29]  But I don't think he's like, you know, going to the masters or anything.
[00:09:33]  No.
[00:09:34]  They come to him.
[00:09:36]  Trump was golfing.
[00:09:37]  I was in my sick bed, nuzzled up.
[00:09:41]  Yeah.
[00:09:41]  A little like Proustian kind of in your little nightgown.
[00:09:46]  Off your cap.
[00:09:47]  Off that Sudafedrine.
[00:09:50]  And I was, I was, and you know what I'm talking about, you know, the stuff that they got behind the counter.
[00:09:55]  Wait, you're taking that during the day and then the night wall at night?
[00:09:58]  Yeah.
[00:09:58]  Yeah.
[00:09:59]  I'm actually making shake and bake methamphetamine from the pseudophed during the day.
[00:10:02]  There you go.
[00:10:02]  Yes, I am taking that during the day and then at night.
[00:10:04]  It's speed during the day and then sleep as he sleepsies at night.
[00:10:07]  Yeah, just like a member of the armed services.
[00:10:10]  While Trump was golfing, I was watching and I was watching a lot of prayers, a lot of vigils, and I came to the conclusion that it's crazy that Charlie Kirk got killed.
[00:10:21]  It is crazy.
[00:10:22]  And it feels, and I hate to say this.
[00:10:24]  I'm sorry.
[00:10:25]  It's like actually really, really crazy.
[00:10:27]  I don't know how to sound not stupid saying that.
[00:10:30]  We were just talking about this, but I was here at the studio when he got shot.
[00:10:33]  Yeah.
[00:10:34]  Writing our newsletter about something kind of, I didn't know it at the time.
[00:10:37]  And then you swerved, which was good.
[00:10:39]  I swerved a little.
[00:10:39]  How did you not swerve?
[00:10:40]  I got to swerve.
[00:10:42]  Yeah, I got to swerve.
[00:10:44]  Oh, yeah.
[00:10:45]  It was, and it was like, I was, it was a shocking death.
[00:10:50]  Yes.
[00:10:50]  I was legit.
[00:10:51]  Assassination.
[00:10:52]  Shock.
[00:10:52]  Yeah, assassination.
[00:10:53]  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:10:54]  I was legit like, holy fuck.
[00:10:56]  Charlie Kirk got killed.
[00:10:58]  Because at first, I saw some like Desiree news reporter was, which I think is how a lot of people, I think it was the first person to like tweet about it.
[00:11:05]  Were they at the event?
[00:11:06]  They must have been, yeah, I'm sure.
[00:11:09]  Was like, Charlie Kirk has been shot, which can mean a lot of different, well, it could mean one thing, but there could be a lot of different results from that.
[00:11:16]  And so in my head, I was like, some guy walked up to Charlie Kirk while he was, you know, doing his thing and pulled out his little Derringer and popped it up.
[00:11:22]  Pulled Jack Ruby style.
[00:11:23]  Exactly.
[00:11:24]  And Charlie Kirk's been shot, but like, you know, he's not dead.
[00:11:29]  Well, and then the video was online immediately.
[00:11:33]  Well, the first video I saw is rather grainy and from far away.
[00:11:37]  And it looks like he got shot, but people were reporting he was shot in the neck, but you couldn't really tell.
[00:11:42]  And I saw the second video and I was like, oh, he died.
[00:11:46]  Yeah.
[00:11:47]  And that's a tough video.
[00:11:49]  I don't care.
[00:11:49]  Yeah, I didn't watch that one.
[00:11:51]  I was like, I don't need to see this.
[00:11:53]  I think a lot of people watch that video a lot of times.
[00:11:55]  Yes.
[00:11:56]  And I think that it's a really graphic video.
[00:12:02]  It's a tough watch.
[00:12:04]  And I think that that probably the graphicness of that video, or not the video, maybe that's a bad way to describe it, but like the sort of brutality of that, I think is really also watching that video on repeat.
[00:12:17]  And something we said on the show before, it can do a number on people.
[00:12:20]  Yeah, I think what's been so shocking or that I still find shocking about the whole event is that not just the immediate, like watching all of that immediately online and also how graphic it was, and it also just being unfortunate, like also one of like a billion different kinds of snuff films on X the Everything Av.
[00:12:42]  Like this is like what it like that this website now runs on.
[00:12:46]  Yeah.
[00:12:46]  You know, but it also being in this different register because of who Charlie Kirk is.
[00:12:52]  And it's like, we were just talking about this.
[00:12:54]  We're going to probably say that a lot during this episode.
[00:12:56]  Sorry about that.
[00:12:57]  But Charlie Kirk, a lot of people are immediately just kind of treating this as like, oh, this is like a media personality that got for lack of a better word.
[00:13:07]  Yeah.
[00:13:08]  I heard people being like, oh, so he's like a YouTuber or a streamer or something.
[00:13:13]  No.
[00:13:14]  Charlie Kirk was a major, major political activist, organizer, major political figure since, what, 2012, basically.
[00:13:25]  Yeah.
[00:13:26]  On the American right.
[00:13:27]  And it's like kind of hard to overstate his importance as a kind of like connector, networker, organizer.
[00:13:37]  I just keep saying organizer because that's what he was in a lot of ways.
[00:13:41]  In addition to the like megaphone that he had, which probably only a handful of Americans can kind of say, like he had a genuinely large audience.
[00:13:50]  Yes.
[00:13:50]  Much larger than, I mean, it's kind of incomparable, really, or it's a handful of people, really.
[00:13:57]  And so kind of all of that together makes this unprecedented in addition to everything else that makes it unprecedented, at least for our generation.
[00:14:05]  I mean, to have a kind of political assassination of this level is, again, yeah, it's really shocking.
[00:14:11]  I mean, I was talking to a lot of people after this, and it feels significantly crazier and more tense than either, well, the actual like real Trump attempted assassination, the one in Butler.
[00:14:26]  Right.
[00:14:27]  Like it feels much crazier than that.
[00:14:29]  For now.
[00:14:30]  For now.
[00:14:31]  Yeah, for now.
[00:14:32]  I know.
[00:14:32]  I know.
[00:14:33]  But that's the fun thing about the timeline is just keeps on moving.
[00:14:35]  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:14:36]  No, totally.
[00:14:37]  It feels a little bit more consequential, even.
[00:14:40]  Yeah, definitely.
[00:14:41]  Although who knows?
[00:14:42]  I mean, that's kind of difficult.
[00:14:43]  I mean, but it feels that way in the current moment.
[00:14:46]  I will say that.
[00:14:46]  I think that's safe to say.
[00:14:47]  And I want to also temporalize this a little bit too by I have to point out that this comes just a few days after the release of the video of a killing that I think happened like maybe a month or two ago of Arinia Zaretska on the bus in North Carolina.
[00:15:04]  She was sort of stabbed in the neck, and there's a really fucked up, sad video for sort of clutch.
[00:15:09]  It's just a sad video.
[00:15:11]  I also would not watch that if I was you.
[00:15:14]  And that there feels like, and there actually I think explicitly has been some connective tissue between that that is both made by people just on the right, like whatever random personalities on the internet, but also pretty explicitly in some ways by members of the government.
[00:15:30]  Yeah, absolutely.
[00:15:31]  These two shoot, or excuse me, this shooting and this stabbing are of kind of been connected and like wrapped up as essentially like, I don't know what, the result of some project by the quote radical left.
[00:15:48]  Well, I think before we dive into some of the responses and what actually happened, we kind of got to do our favorite thing, go back a little bit and just talk a little bit about Charlie Kirk.
[00:15:59]  Because, like you said, he's a very like a major consequential figure on the right.
[00:16:05]  And, you know, conservative activist, network builder, not even, not just a media personality, just not even, I'm like hesitant to even, it's, you want to mention that because it's like so important.
[00:16:18]  Yeah.
[00:16:19]  But I really don't think it's like as important, even as important as it was to the other stuff he's been doing.
[00:16:24]  I mean, TPSA has 850 chapters around the country.
[00:16:29]  Yes.
[00:16:30]  They also, I mean, this is something that I think really cannot be stressed enough.
[00:16:34]  Turning point USA, by the way.
[00:16:35]  Turning point USA.
[00:16:36]  Yeah.
[00:16:36]  You're right.
[00:16:37]  You know what?
[00:16:37]  How style.
[00:16:38]  We always get to the stage.
[00:16:38]  I got to say Turning Point USA, his organization.
[00:16:42]  But it has also functioned as a way for like, it has given birth to so many different right-wing personalities that we know and love.
[00:16:50]  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:16:51]  That's kind of like leadership incubator.
[00:16:53]  I mean, he, this part of that made him a favorite with the donor class because he was always farming young talent.
[00:17:01]  And so he was kind of, you know, he had access to this like vast network of money and influence above him and then was also always tapping into all of this like young under undiscovered talent below.
[00:17:13]  And yet when I try to tap into young undiscovered talent through various networks that I have, Liz is always like, you can't do that.
[00:17:22]  That's illegal.
[00:17:23]  You stop me from doing that.
[00:17:24]  And it's just interesting.
[00:17:25]  But moving on.
[00:17:27]  Yeah, I mean, I think that he is like, people, I don't know.
[00:17:31]  I've seen just people, and this is always the most annoying thing that people say on their podcast or whatever, but I legit have seen a bunch of people sort of like brush off his organizing capability and sort of, again, like we were saying, playing him as this media figure.
[00:17:44]  But it's, no, I cannot stress enough that like he was really important in the just general right wing.
[00:17:50]  I don't know if I can think of another figure that even comes close to his stature.
[00:17:55]  That is also with somebody besides like just a money man, somebody who actually was the person that you gave the money to and who did the work.
[00:18:02]  Yeah.
[00:18:02]  I mean, a massive number of people, like even within Congress, state governments, even places like Fox News, in addition to the Trump administration, by the way, all owe their job to like an introduction that Charlie Kirk first set up.
[00:18:17]  And part of that is what animates. some of the response here, as well as some other things I think we'll get into.
[00:18:23]  But he also, like I said, you know, he was really close with the Trump administration.
[00:18:28]  Yeah.
[00:18:29]  I think famously had a very close relationship with John Jr., but also obviously with JD and Trump himself.
[00:18:37]  I mean, I would not be surprised if he had a direct line to both of them.
[00:18:41]  Oh, no.
[00:18:41]  I mean, he definitely has a direct line to JD.
[00:18:43]  I would not, I would absolutely believe that he's a direct line to Trump as well.
[00:18:48]  In addition to like senators and cabinet members and like governors, I mean, he was, you know, yeah, he's a big, big player.
[00:18:54]  So this is like a big deal political assassination.
[00:18:57]  And the reaction to it all has been just completely overwhelming.
[00:19:03]  So to go back to the beginning, what exactly is Turning Point USA?
[00:19:10]  Where does it come from?
[00:19:12]  Well, it comes from Charlie.
[00:19:13]  I know.
[00:19:14]  Back in 2012.
[00:19:16]  Yeah.
[00:19:16]  The heady years of 2012.
[00:19:19]  Obama re-elected the GOP in Tatas.
[00:19:24]  There was this really famous, for you young people, there was this really famous autopsy that the GOP did after the Romney loss that was like, we need to get young.
[00:19:38]  We need to get diverse.
[00:19:40]  It was very contentious within the Republican Party.
[00:19:44]  And that's the backdrop for Charlie Kirk coming onto the scene because he was this real young kid who was like, who people saw real talent in, who was like, I think we need to, yeah, we need to reach out.
[00:20:01]  We need to like drive young black Latino kids into the party.
[00:20:04]  We need to be cool.
[00:20:06]  I can help you be cool.
[00:20:08]  Which is interesting in hindsight because I'm not really sure that's necessarily a word that one would associate with Charlie Kirk, but I can see where they're going with this.
[00:20:16]  So he was at the time 18 years old from the Chicago suburbs.
[00:20:20]  I think from like the same area that Obama kind of got his start of his political.
[00:20:24]  Not where I thought you were going to say that, by the way.
[00:20:27]  What?
[00:20:27]  Oh, where Obama got his dick sucked?
[00:20:29]  That's Gurney, Illinois.

=== CMP And Economics Class (14:49) ===

[00:20:30]  That's not it.
[00:20:30]  So Obama, by the way, the guy who sucked Obama's dick died.
[00:20:34]  Died.
[00:20:35]  Yeah.
[00:20:36]  And it's interesting.
[00:20:37]  We didn't even talk about that because they don't count that.
[00:20:39]  That's interesting.
[00:20:41]  Think it's well, it's not interesting, but I would say I think we should count that as potentially one of the instances of left-wing violence because Obama might have done that to Shadow.
[00:20:50]  Oh, no, he OD'd for sure.
[00:20:53]  I actually, I don't mean that.
[00:20:54]  I feel bad saying that now, but he did suck Obama's dick twice in Gurney, Illinois.
[00:20:57]  Not Charlie Kirk, however.
[00:20:58]  Charlie Kirk was doing no dick sucking, nor even getting his dick sucked, one would assume.
[00:21:05]  He had an organization, I think it was just him, called SOS Liberty.
[00:21:11]  And one of his first things that he did was he wrote an op-ed for Breitbart while he was still in high school called Liberal Bias Starts in High School Economics Textbooks.
[00:21:24]  I'm always saying that he's complaining about Paul Krugman.
[00:21:28]  Of course.
[00:21:28]  He's citing the Cato Institute, talking about how supply-side economics were great and that those are pilloried in his high school economics textbook.
[00:21:36]  Charlie, it's supplier sad.
[00:21:38]  I have a question for the two of you.
[00:21:40]  Do you guys have economics class in high school?
[00:21:42]  Yes.
[00:21:42]  No.
[00:21:44]  I did home economics.
[00:21:45]  Did you?
[00:21:46]  Yeah, we learned how to use a microwave in school.
[00:21:47]  I didn't have that.
[00:21:48]  A microwave.
[00:21:49]  I went to all-girl school and I didn't get that, but I did get economics class.
[00:21:53]  I think I just had that in middle school.
[00:21:55]  I went.
[00:21:55]  Do you have economics class?
[00:21:56]  I never had an economics class.
[00:21:57]  No, home econ.
[00:21:58]  I don't know about cooking.
[00:21:59]  I did not have an economics class.
[00:22:01]  Well, I didn't, yeah, I didn't have any of that.
[00:22:04]  But yeah, we didn't.
[00:22:06]  I'm like, I was kind of surprised.
[00:22:07]  Economics class.
[00:22:08]  But this gets the attention of a Tea Party activist in his 70s named Bill Montgomery, who is like, come up to Gurney.
[00:22:17]  I'll give you a little bit of money.
[00:22:20]  And from that, he is whisked into a dream world.
[00:22:25]  He speaks at an RNC youth event the same year, and money flows from there.
[00:22:30]  He gets a bunch of money.
[00:22:31]  His first big funder, besides Bill Montgomery, is a guy named Foster Freeze.
[00:22:37]  Is it pronounced Freeze?
[00:22:38]  Yeah.
[00:22:39]  That's wild.
[00:22:40]  Yeah, and I was like, there's no way.
[00:22:42]  This must be the founder of the famous chain, Foster's Freeze.
[00:22:46]  No Relation.
[00:22:47]  What?
[00:22:48]  No Relation.
[00:22:48]  Are you kidding me?
[00:22:49]  Yeah, No Relation.
[00:22:51]  Can you believe that?
[00:22:51]  How can you be named Foster?
[00:22:53]  So do you think every time?
[00:22:55]  Every time he's like, hi, my name is Foster Freeze.
[00:22:58]  No relation.
[00:22:59]  Yeah, he must be because everyone else would be like, oh my God, I love your burger joint.
[00:23:04]  And he'd be like, no.
[00:23:05]  It's really more of an ice cream place.
[00:23:06]  I know, but yeah, I guess you're right.
[00:23:07]  I don't know.
[00:23:08]  I'm lackless intolerant.
[00:23:09]  I haven't been there in a very long time.
[00:23:11]  Charlie decides not to go to college.
[00:23:13]  Bill told him not to.
[00:23:14]  Okay.
[00:23:15]  Well, that's crazy.
[00:23:16]  Charlie, this guy's in his 70s.
[00:23:18]  You know what I'm saying?
[00:23:19]  When he went to college, it was a cost a quarter, and they taught you how to split a block of wood to make a fire.
[00:23:25]  Nowadays, they'll teach you about all kinds of cool things.
[00:23:27]  I can't believe he didn't go to the Chicago, whatever.
[00:23:30]  He would have been radicalized by all the gender.
[00:23:33]  Well, a month after Bill and Charlie meet, they launched Turning Point USA.
[00:23:36]  They sort of turned SOS Liberty into that.
[00:23:39]  Yeah.
[00:23:39]  First big campaigns, and this is where I remember this stuff.
[00:23:42]  Yeah.
[00:23:43]  Were free markets, not free stuff, and big government sucks.
[00:23:50]  Yeah, they were still kind of workshopping a lot of this.
[00:23:52]  They're like, oh, we can swear now.
[00:23:53]  Sucks.
[00:23:54]  Big government sucks.
[00:23:55]  Because the implication there is that big government sucks dick, which.
[00:23:59]  I don't think that's the implication.
[00:24:00]  What do you mean sucks by then?
[00:24:02]  It just sucks.
[00:24:03]  It sucks.
[00:24:04]  What does it suck?
[00:24:05]  Just sucks.
[00:24:06]  It sucks.
[00:24:06]  Nothing?
[00:24:07]  Or it must suck something.
[00:24:08]  It sucks at all.
[00:24:09]  There's only a few things to suck, and one of the most vile of those is the dip, as we know from Gurney.
[00:24:14]  That bumper sticker is like socialists will suck you dry.
[00:24:16]  It's true.
[00:24:19]  So they have a ton of money come flowing in.
[00:24:21]  They start chapters all over.
[00:24:23]  They have these big bus tours with big government sucks.
[00:24:26]  And then another big side, dicks.
[00:24:28]  And, you know, they're going to all these colleges.
[00:24:31]  It was kind of modeled after Move On.
[00:24:34]  Move on.
[00:24:35]  And organizing for action.
[00:24:36]  Pause here.
[00:24:37]  TBT.
[00:24:38]  Move On, I got to be honest, is one of the greatest neighbors organization ever made.
[00:24:44]  So Move On was, who is that?
[00:24:46]  What's that fucking guy's name that started it?
[00:24:49]  Oh, God, I have to look this up.
[00:24:50]  But Move On was started to get people to move on from being like Bill Clinton.
[00:24:56]  You know, got his dick sucked.
[00:24:59]  A lot of this is, it's very interesting.
[00:25:01]  A lot of this does revolve around oral fixation.
[00:25:04]  But it is like, it's worth mentioning only because those were two big thorns in the side of conservatives in the wake of Obama.
[00:25:10]  Like they really were in this like existential crisis moment of like, what do we do?
[00:25:15]  All of these guys are so organized.
[00:25:17]  They're all, you know, they've got all these crazy organizations.
[00:25:20]  And so TPS USA was kind of formed to counter that in that, in its own model, right?
[00:25:26]  Yeah.
[00:25:27]  And it was very much a part of the Tea Party movement.
[00:25:31]  Almost all of its money was coming from like the Koch Donor Network and other groups like there's one called like Donor's Trust, which is basically just like a way to shield.
[00:25:41]  It's just like a dark money fund.
[00:25:43]  It's like the tide foundation for liberals, right?
[00:25:45]  You just give them money and then they disperse it.
[00:25:47]  Yeah.
[00:25:47]  And so it hides who the actual donors are.
[00:25:51]  A lot of the early backers too, like Bill, were like small regional business people from like Illinois, later Arizona, people who are kind of affiliated with the D Party, but really more like general kind of like free market, you know, get government out of business, kind of classic conservative, what we think of as like the classic, you know, 80s, 90s, early 2000s conservative.
[00:26:17]  Totally.
[00:26:18]  The compassionate conservative and the like Bush model.
[00:26:21]  Right.
[00:26:22]  It's unclear when exactly this happens, but it's worth mentioning that sometime in the mid-2010s, Charlie joins this group called the Council for National Policy, the CMP.
[00:26:34]  This is a really, really, really important but extremely low-profile conservative network.
[00:26:40]  For example, like Ginny Thomas is on the board of their lobbying arm.
[00:26:44]  You know her, you love her.
[00:26:45]  That would be Justice Clarence Thomas' insane wife.
[00:26:50]  QAnon.
[00:26:51]  She's living like a total.
[00:26:52]  Do you think that she still believes in QAnon?
[00:26:55]  Or do you think she's like, let it go?
[00:26:57]  That was like, that's when I realized that like, I didn't, I don't know how to phrase this, but like.
[00:27:03]  Sometimes you find out that someone's so stupid that you actually have to reassess what you mean by the word stupid.
[00:27:09]  You know what I mean?
[00:27:09]  You're like, oh, like, I actually like something that I thought.
[00:27:12]  That doesn't encompass.
[00:27:13]  Yeah.
[00:27:14]  Like, people that I previously thought were stupid relative to this are now actually smart.
[00:27:19]  Oh, that's a spectrum.
[00:27:20]  It's crazy to be married to like a fucking Supreme Court justice and then be like, QAnon's real.
[00:27:29]  I think you're giving Clarence Thomas a little bit too much there.
[00:27:32]  No, well, he's also, I think he's.
[00:27:34]  That's what I'm saying.
[00:27:34]  Yeah.
[00:27:35]  I think, I think he's like a two peas in a pod.
[00:27:38]  But like, wouldn't she like encounter somebody who would like no?
[00:27:43]  You know, like, I know you couldn't just be like, oh, let me ask this person who has crazy security clearance because we're all boys.
[00:27:51]  Yeah.
[00:27:52]  Because we're all crazy Republicans.
[00:27:53]  Yeah, but like, it just never occurred to her.
[00:27:56]  Maybe they're like, yeah, Ginny, no, it's real.
[00:27:58]  We're getting the.
[00:27:59]  Maybe she just likes her stories.
[00:28:00]  She might just like her stories.
[00:28:02]  So another person in the CMP, for example, Cleta Mitchell, who you love, who was the lady lawyer on the Jan Second Call to Georgia with Trump.
[00:28:10]  Yeah, she's fire.
[00:28:12]  She's also a member.
[00:28:13]  I think she's actually in charge of like their legal strategy.
[00:28:16]  Anyway, it's been around since the early 80s.
[00:28:19]  Extremely secret members-only organization, people call it Shadow Network, whatever.
[00:28:24]  CMP really helped scale TPUSA because it connected them with the like uber wealthy funders like Richard Uline, who I didn't, yeah.
[00:28:35]  And I mean, Rebecca Mercer, obviously, along with the kind of more classic religious right figures, which they kind of like weren't really tapped into.
[00:28:45]  Yeah, Richard Uline, by the way, owns Uline, like where all the boxes are from.
[00:28:49]  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:28:50]  Like the shipping company or the box making company.
[00:28:53]  Or like everything for your warehouse office company.
[00:28:56]  Yeah.
[00:28:56]  Yeah.
[00:28:58]  There was, you know, this is kind of like from the New Republic on leaked meeting notes from the CMP in 2022, kind of what they were focused on.
[00:29:06]  You can see Glenn Young's 2021 election as governor in Virginia, a major win for the GOP.
[00:29:12]  CNP partners played a significant role in fomenting the, quote, critical race theory controversy that disrupted school boards and swayed white female suburban voters.
[00:29:23]  In this panel, CMP member Chris Wilson offers his expertise in research, analytics, and psychographics.
[00:29:29]  Wilson had brought Cambridge Analytica in to work on Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign.
[00:29:35]  He appears along with Chad Conley, a new CMP board member.
[00:29:39]  This general session analyzes the Virginia victory, followed by an action session appearance by Connolly and Wilson.
[00:29:48]  Several CMP partners, among them the Leadership Institute and the Family Research Council, have been holding national training sessions on school board activism.
[00:29:56]  Turning Point USA, run by CMP member Charlie Kirk, placed Alexandria, Chesapeake, Loudoun County, and other Virginia public schools on its school board watch list.
[00:30:06]  So I know that's annoying.
[00:30:07]  I just read that whole thing because, again, I want to reiterate how organized all of this stuff is.
[00:30:12]  Right?
[00:30:13]  Yeah.
[00:30:15]  Now, it's important.
[00:30:16]  TPUSA, they are technically a nonprofit.
[00:30:20]  You know it.
[00:30:20]  You love it.
[00:30:21]  That does bar them from doing political work.
[00:30:24]  Well, luckily, they created Turning Point Action.
[00:30:27]  Yeah, I give them all that.
[00:30:27]  It's a political arm.
[00:30:28]  It's like, there's been a ton of reporting about this.
[00:30:30]  Obviously, like, it's the same thing.
[00:30:33]  Yeah, but they say they funnel all their political work through there.
[00:30:36]  They've got some other ones.
[00:30:37]  They have like, they opened up recently Turning Point Faith, which is their religious right sort of arm.
[00:30:44]  But so it encompasses all of these different organizing nodes, we'll say.
[00:30:51]  So as TPUSA was growing in sort of the mid-2010s, there was a number of controversies that followed the group.
[00:31:00]  And I think the one that probably bought or brought most people who don't go to college's attention to it was an incident at Kent State University.
[00:31:10]  I'm going to read here from, I don't know.
[00:31:12]  Not the one you're thinking of.
[00:31:13]  No, not that incident at Kent State University, although it does involve arms at one point, a gun, at least.
[00:31:20]  Which I feel like you shouldn't be able to have any of that on Kent State.
[00:31:23]  I feel like at Kent State, maybe no gun.
[00:31:25]  Well, if the students had guns, it would have been a little bit different.
[00:31:28]  You always say that, but I don't think that's how it works.
[00:31:31]  Students in Kent State University's chapter of Turning Point USA, a conservative student group dressed up as babies in an attempt to demonstrate that, quote, safe spaces are for children, according to a report in the Chronicle of Higher Education.
[00:31:45]  At the protest, TPUSA members wore diapers.
[00:31:49]  Suspenders.
[00:31:50]  Why suspenders?
[00:31:51]  And pacifiers.
[00:31:53]  Wait, are there suspenders attached to the diaper?
[00:31:56]  Because I don't think the diaper needs a suspended statement.
[00:31:58]  I think the whole thing about the diaper is that it stays on.
[00:32:01]  I don't know.
[00:32:01]  I wouldn't know.
[00:32:01]  Diaper stays on.
[00:32:02]  I wouldn't know.
[00:32:03]  The diaper stays on, honey.
[00:32:05]  At the protest, TPUSA members wore diapers, diapies, suspendees, and pacifiers while sitting surrounded by toys behind a plastic fence.
[00:32:16]  On the walls, plastered posters read, Your censorship offends me and the real free speech zone.
[00:32:23]  That's so bad.
[00:32:24]  Can you imagine like you are like signing up for the conservative cause and they're like, you're getting dyed up to do it?
[00:32:29]  Next week.
[00:32:30]  All right.
[00:32:31]  Great.
[00:32:31]  Here, preach your name, email address.
[00:32:33]  Here's your diaper.
[00:32:34]  Here's your suspension.
[00:32:34]  That's the kind of conservative.
[00:32:35]  Go to the front, soldier.
[00:32:37]  That's the kind of conservative you are.
[00:32:38]  No, this is what I'm saying.
[00:32:40]  Actually, I don't believe in anything enough to do.
[00:32:42]  I was just thinking, I was like, there is no cause that could get you to do that.
[00:32:47]  No.
[00:32:48]  I don't think that there's any cause.
[00:32:49]  What about money?
[00:32:50]  Imagine, well, that's not a cause.
[00:32:53]  You know what I'm saying?
[00:32:54]  Money, I would do it.
[00:32:55]  It certainly has an effect.
[00:32:56]  How much?
[00:32:57]  How much do you think it would take for me to do that?
[00:33:00]  Two dollars.
[00:33:02]  No, I wouldn't do it for $2.
[00:33:04]  For you to die up?
[00:33:06]  At Kent State University for, I'm going to say $10.
[00:33:09]  And the dipe is public.
[00:33:10]  You can't just.
[00:33:11]  The whole thing's diaped.
[00:33:12]  I mean, there's photos of this in the papers.
[00:33:14]  Look up right now.
[00:33:15]  No, I just mean you don't have to be driving covering the diaphragm.
[00:33:17]  Your iPad is put on the direct wheel of the Tesla right now with a little sticky.
[00:33:22]  La boo-boo.
[00:33:23]  Put in Kent State diaper TPUSA right now, and you can see pictures of exactly what we're talking about.
[00:33:28]  Yeah.
[00:33:30]  I would do it for.
[00:33:32]  $10 million?
[00:33:34]  What?
[00:33:35]  What?
[00:33:35]  I was going to say $5,000.
[00:33:38]  You would do it for $5,000?
[00:33:40]  Yeah.
[00:33:41]  For an hour and a half.
[00:33:42]  I would give you $5,000 before I let you do that for $5,000.
[00:33:46]  Actually, you would have to give me $6,000.
[00:33:48]  And so then I would keep running it up.
[00:33:49]  Would the pacifier be extra or would you accept that for the same?
[00:33:54]  I have a gag reflex.
[00:33:56]  The dentist, which I learned from the dentist.
[00:33:58]  All right.
[00:33:58]  Well, this was not a great event.
[00:34:01]  Surprise had to disavow.
[00:34:03]  You know, as someone who is always in the business of disavowing certain things.
[00:34:10]  And we do disavow.
[00:34:11]  And we should have made that very clear at the top of the state.
[00:34:14]  Well, we have nothing to disavow because we're conservatives.
[00:34:16]  That's right.
[00:34:17]  But we do disavow.
[00:34:19]  We always disavow.
[00:34:21]  The TPUSA disavowed the baby.
[00:34:24]  The multiple babies.
[00:34:25]  The multiple babies.
[00:34:26]  Unfortunately, I believe this contributed to the radicalization of the president of TPUSA, Kent State, the one and only Caitlin Bennett.
[00:34:34]  No, I forgot about her.
[00:34:36]  I haven't heard about her in a while.
[00:34:37]  Well, what happened to her?
[00:34:39]  I used to hear about her.
[00:34:40]  I wish I could telepathically have you say this.
[00:34:43]  Can I just write this in the notes and have you say this?
[00:34:46]  Depending on what it says.
[00:34:50]  No, I'm not saying that.
[00:34:51]  Can you please say this?
[00:34:53]  Okay.
[00:34:54]  Wait, no, I may finish writing it.
[00:35:00]  Brace wrote.
[00:35:01]  No, it was written in the notes.
[00:35:03]  By Brace Veldon.
[00:35:06]  Who lives at.
[00:35:07]  Nope.
[00:35:10]  I saw a recent video and she got a little big.
[00:35:12]  Get a little big.
[00:35:13]  Same.
[00:35:14]  It's the gun girl, Kent State.
[00:35:16]  She just, she's, she's, she's, you know.

=== Crystal Clanton Controversy (09:27) ===

[00:35:19]  Maybe she's pregnant.
[00:35:22]  People used to talk about her shitting her pants.
[00:35:24]  Well, that was the whole thing about Caitlin Bennett.
[00:35:25]  What is that?
[00:35:26]  So, well, that is when you poo-poo, but you're still wearing pants around the tour.
[00:35:30]  No, I mean, why did she, why is that a thing?
[00:35:33]  What are you talking about?
[00:35:34]  Why is that a thing?
[00:35:35]  Oh, she probably didn't mean to do it.
[00:35:36]  I don't know anything about this.
[00:35:37]  So, after the, so she also came to school with like an AR strapped her across her back, which I don't think you really want to see in a school in general in like 2017.
[00:35:47]  Kent State also, I think, in particular, you might have some sensitivities regarding that display.
[00:35:53]  And it was like a protest over, I don't know, fucking what, what gun-free zones or something, something, something.
[00:35:58]  Who fucking knows or cares?
[00:36:00]  But did she get spooked?
[00:36:02]  By what?
[00:36:03]  I don't know.
[00:36:04]  No, she didn't shit her pants while doing that.
[00:36:05]  No, no, to be clear, this was a separate incident that sort of brought her to prominence.
[00:36:09]  Oh, no, I know that.
[00:36:10]  And then after that, there was a rumor, and I don't know the provenance of the rumor, but it really spread all over, all over, much like, you know, you can guess what I would say, that she shit her pants, violently shit her pants at a party.
[00:36:28]  Like, she got so drunk that she just shit everywhere all over her pants.
[00:36:31]  They should have brought her a wheelchair like Paul Pierce.
[00:36:33]  You know, I was saying, this is, so she was president of TPSA Kent State while the diaper incident happened.
[00:36:39]  Perhaps this is her working out her own trauma.
[00:36:42]  You know what I'm saying?
[00:36:42]  And people, and these liberals chastise them for that.
[00:36:45]  But now she is, now she is like a full libertarian, kind of like, she works for a Liberty Hangout and she does like stupid on-the-street videos for them.
[00:36:53]  Poor thing.
[00:36:54]  So let's move along in the timeline because it's important that by 2016, Kirk Charlie, I'm just going to call him Charlie.
[00:37:02]  Charlie.
[00:37:03]  He goes through a little bit, a slight political transformation because he was a never Trumper.
[00:37:08]  Yeah.
[00:37:09]  Much like Vance.
[00:37:10]  He was a never-Trumper.
[00:37:11]  I mean, I don't know if he would call himself that, but he was not.
[00:37:14]  At first, he didn't embrace Trump.
[00:37:16]  He was a Cruz guy.
[00:37:18]  Which is crazy, by the way.
[00:37:19]  But that's the Tea Party, sir.
[00:37:20]  That's the Tea Party.
[00:37:21]  Yeah.
[00:37:22]  But also, being all in on Ted Cruz thinking this is a man who could be elected nationally is so psycho to me.
[00:37:28]  Crazy.
[00:37:28]  A fucking penguin.
[00:37:30]  But he does switch, eventually switches his support to Trump.
[00:37:32]  He launches the professor blacklist, which is still up.
[00:37:37]  Yeah, I hate his class.
[00:37:38]  It's a list of professors, some of whom I know that aren't.
[00:37:44]  Well, there's people, it's just like all of the race people women know.
[00:37:48]  That's just, it's just like professors that are like antifo professors or, you know, DEI professor or whatever, like critical race science, I don't know, theory, whatever.
[00:38:00]  It's like woke professor shit.
[00:38:01]  But there's one that's like environmentalist professors.
[00:38:04]  I'm like, come on, dude.
[00:38:05]  Like, I go on the watch list for that, you know?
[00:38:10]  Got to get them all.
[00:38:11]  So again, he's close to John Jr.
[00:38:13]  He's funneling all these conservatives who are kind of coming up through TPSA onto other jobs.
[00:38:18]  There's this kind of crazy article in the New York Times about Crystal Clanton, a woman who was exposed in an article about TPSA.
[00:38:32]  She was like an employee at TPSA for writing a text that said, I hate black people, all of them.
[00:38:37]  How she was sort of like kicked out or like a little letter.
[00:38:40]  They had to manage it.
[00:38:40]  They had to manage it, but they just got her a job with Clarence Thomas.
[00:38:45]  And now he's like, now she's like basically the Thomas's Genie and Clarence's adopted daughter.
[00:38:49]  That's crazy.
[00:38:50]  So you don't hate all black people.
[00:38:52]  You hate all black people.
[00:38:53]  Well, it's your words.
[00:38:56]  Except for the GOAT Clarence Thomas.
[00:39:00]  So cracks begin to show in 2017, 2018.
[00:39:03]  Jaden McNeil, a name that many of you probably have not heard for a long time, but he was sort of a Fuentes-like figure, publicly quits TPUSA and pledges allegiance to the Groupers.
[00:39:16]  Yeah.
[00:39:17]  This is a little pre-Groyper movie.
[00:39:19]  A little pre-Groper.
[00:39:20]  Yeah.
[00:39:21]  In their nascent kind of form.
[00:39:23]  I mean, remember.
[00:39:24]  Embryonic form.
[00:39:25]  This is also like 2016, 2017 is like when we're seeing like a lot of the alt-right stuff get really more and more and more popular, kind of until Charlottesville.
[00:39:35]  And TPUSA is, there's a lot of defections, sort of public like defections of chapter members or heads at this time.
[00:39:42]  It's also when Charlie meets Candace Owens.
[00:39:45]  She founds a Lexit.
[00:39:47]  Yeah.
[00:39:48]  That's a big relationship.
[00:39:49]  Big relationship.
[00:39:51]  Yeah.
[00:39:51]  She was a big part of TPUSA.
[00:39:53]  Yeah.
[00:39:53]  She was huge.
[00:39:54]  When did she actually like leave?
[00:39:57]  I think 2018 when she said Hitler was good when she was in London, except for the war stuff.
[00:40:05]  That's a, well, okay.
[00:40:07]  Yeah.
[00:40:07]  So that's what happened.
[00:40:09]  And I think in 2018, it was tough to get around.
[00:40:12]  She was like, Hitler was great domestically, but the war stuff was tough.
[00:40:16]  I disagreed with this international policy.
[00:40:18]  Which is also kind of crazy because like you're, you work for a big government sucks organization.
[00:40:25]  Or a former.
[00:40:26]  Former, but like at the time, you know, you're like, yeah, it's, it's a little tough to be like, well, I liked Hitler and his giant government.
[00:40:34]  I did not like him invading France.
[00:40:36]  Right.
[00:40:36]  You know what I mean?
[00:40:37]  That one's a little tough.
[00:40:38]  I think it's important to point out that at this point, things are going very well for TPUSA.
[00:40:45]  It's making tens of millions of dollars a year.
[00:40:47]  The Trump years were very good to them.
[00:40:50]  They were kind.
[00:40:52]  The AP did a kind of a big forensic look at a bunch of TPS USA records in 2023.
[00:40:58]  They were all doing very, very well.
[00:41:02]  They moved at least like 15.2 million into companies that this is a quote, they, their friends and associates are affiliated with.
[00:41:11]  I just want to point that out Because there was kind of a bit of a controversy about their financial records and kind of maybe them skirting a bunch of these sort of, you know, 501c3 laws or whatever.
[00:41:25]  Kirk himself got set up with like a $4.75 million estate in Arizona and a country club.
[00:41:32]  One of the companies that TPUSA controlled paid for part of his wedding reception by billing the event as a fundraiser.
[00:41:40]  We got to start doing shit like this.
[00:41:42]  That is, that is the American way.
[00:41:45]  Setting up as many companies as you can and then just billing all of your like personal expenses through those companies.
[00:41:54]  I'm making a joke, but also that literally is, that is the bedrock of American economy, the American economy.
[00:42:01]  I would say so.
[00:42:04]  2020 into 2024.
[00:42:06]  This is kind of a turning point.
[00:42:10]  No, so this is something I have to interrupt you right now.
[00:42:12]  Turning point, you have to.
[00:42:12]  Every single thing written about the deceased Charlie Kirk or spoken about him in the past, whatever, week since this happened, someone's always said it's a turning point.
[00:42:24]  Did they?
[00:42:25]  Yes, and I've read everything.
[00:42:27]  Lizzie, I don't think you understand how in bed I've been.
[00:42:30]  I've read a lot of things in there and I've changed my mind on a lot.
[00:42:35]  But it was a turning point.
[00:42:37]  You're right.
[00:42:38]  It was.
[00:42:39]  So, okay, I said they were making a lot of money before.
[00:42:41]  They were making way more money post 2020.
[00:42:46]  So 2016, they're at like 4.3 million.
[00:42:49]  That's a lot.
[00:42:50]  That goes to almost 39.8 million in 2020.
[00:42:53]  Then in 2024, they're hitting $85 million.
[00:42:58]  They have an obscene amount of resources, right?
[00:43:01]  And post-2020 Trump loss and also post-January 6th, which is a kind of important moment we got to talk about, they start channeling a lot of their work into like actual on-the-ground organizing.
[00:43:13]  Yeah.
[00:43:14]  So they were up until this point, you know, they're doing, I think, a lot of the stuff that people know, which is the college tours and the kind of like debate me, debate me stuff.
[00:43:23]  I think that's what, isn't that what they're known for?
[00:43:25]  I feel like it's funny.
[00:43:26]  I think Steven Crowder was the guy who like he, because people keep thinking Charlie Kirk was the change my mind guy.
[00:43:32]  That's Steven Crowder.
[00:43:33]  That's Steven Crowder.
[00:43:34]  But he.
[00:43:35]  And everyone knows the photo with the mug.
[00:43:36]  But yeah, of course.
[00:43:38]  But Charlie Kirk was the one who would like go out and debate and people would be like, you know, like, I don't know.
[00:43:46]  I don't even, I actually have like seen basically zero of these videos.
[00:43:49]  No, just be like, oh, this is Charlie Kirk talking to a social, social justice warrior.
[00:43:54]  Yeah.
[00:43:54]  And like, well, that's the thing.
[00:43:55]  I want to be, I want to be so is social justice warriors.
[00:44:00]  Yeah.
[00:44:01]  Well, they were defeated in battle.
[00:44:03]  But now they're finally, finally being routed from their holes by our fellow conservatives.
[00:44:08]  No, the Influence of Charlie Kirk, yes.
[00:44:12]  There was a lot of this logistics stuff, but I want to say one of the media influences that he was able to, that's a bad way to phrase it, but like one of the ways that he was sort of able to propagate his message is through what are basically cringe compilations, or like literally cringe compilations of like Charlie Kirk or Ben Shapiro debating some fucking dumbass, like 19-year-old who's like studying her microphone, being like, but you know, but, but, but, like, quality sounds good, exactly.
[00:44:40]  And they're like, it was the conservative destroys SJW.

=== Talking Gabby Gifford (03:29) ===

[00:44:47]  Exactly.
[00:44:47]  It was such a huge thing like of compilations on YouTube that I cannot stress enough how many people that you would be shocked to find how many people got their politics from precisely those videos.
[00:44:59]  Yes.
[00:45:00]  So they kind of like, not that they stopped doing that because he's still a massive content operation, but they start channeling a lot of resources, time and money into like ground game logistics.
[00:45:12]  And this is important.
[00:45:13]  Like Turning Point Action headed up so much of the ground game for Trump 2024.
[00:45:18]  There was this big New Yorker piece from last year that, I mean, they played a very central role in Trump's big win in Arizona.
[00:45:30]  Yeah.
[00:45:30]  I mean, the Trump team used all of these like TPA apps and field tools to like register lapsed Republicans.
[00:45:36]  And part of the strategy was they were not going after swing voters, the elusive swing voter, but instead just trying to reach out to people who they knew were like soft MAGA or soft agreed with them and literally just get them to the polls.
[00:45:52]  Yeah.
[00:45:53]  Yeah.
[00:45:53]  I mean, also, you know, they're based out of Arizona and shit.
[00:45:56]  And like they had, I think they, and Arizona has been a real battleground.
[00:46:01]  I'm not talking about you, Gabby Gifford.
[00:46:03]  No disrespect.
[00:46:05]  I'm conservative.
[00:46:06]  I can make those kind of jokes.
[00:46:07]  I'm sorry.
[00:46:07]  I'm not.
[00:46:08]  Take your fucking snowflake shit somewhere else.
[00:46:10]  All right.
[00:46:11]  But that was a, you know, you just pulled out a rare bird.
[00:46:15]  Which one?
[00:46:15]  Gifford?
[00:46:16]  Yeah, it's been a while.
[00:46:18]  You don't really hear so much about her.
[00:46:19]  Yeah, because it's been a while.
[00:46:21]  Her husband, too, Mark, whatever?
[00:46:23]  Astronaut.
[00:46:23]  You know, though, that being said, they didn't do well in the big Arizona race with Carrie Lake.
[00:46:31]  Carrie Lake is tough.
[00:46:32]  Yeah, that was a tough.
[00:46:33]  I don't.
[00:46:34]  She's not in office, right?
[00:46:35]  She lost everything.
[00:46:36]  She is a Herodot.
[00:46:39]  But I, because she's not conservative enough for me.
[00:46:42]  That's right.
[00:46:42]  But I view her.
[00:46:43]  Yeah.
[00:46:44]  But it's, it's, also, I was saying about this.
[00:46:48]  If you're Gabby Gifford's husband, I'm not talking about Gabby Gifford in particular, but if that happens, you kind of can't get divorced after that.
[00:46:57]  Even if you don't really get along.
[00:46:58]  That's so true.
[00:46:59]  You know what I mean?
[00:47:00]  Although I do feel like you'd be surprised.
[00:47:02]  I think I would be surprised.
[00:47:04]  I think I would.
[00:47:05]  But I do think that there's a sort of time.
[00:47:08]  I wonder, what do you think the time, how long do you have to stay married after that?
[00:47:12]  Yeah.
[00:47:13]  This is actually a great, okay.
[00:47:15]  So let's say you were like ready to file.
[00:47:20]  Yeah.
[00:47:21]  I'm like, we're on our way to the courthouse, but she's got to give a speech.
[00:47:24]  Unfortunately, she gets giffered.
[00:47:27]  Oh, no.
[00:47:28]  How long do you wait to file?
[00:47:30]  That's a real curpy enthusiasm.
[00:47:31]  It is.
[00:47:33]  Well, there's two ways to go about it.
[00:47:35]  And it's a whole thing.
[00:47:36]  You quietly file.
[00:47:37]  No, no, you can't because you're on Oprah next week with your wife.
[00:47:41]  Well, okay.
[00:47:42]  Yeah.
[00:47:43]  You wait for a month.
[00:47:44]  But a month?
[00:47:46]  No.
[00:47:46]  You have to wait for about five or six years.
[00:47:48]  Do you think that long?
[00:47:50]  I think minimum a year.
[00:47:51]  Minimum year.
[00:47:52]  It depends.
[00:47:52]  It's got to just be a little bit more.
[00:47:53]  I'm going to split the baby and say three.
[00:47:55]  Three years?
[00:47:56]  I think a year.
[00:47:58]  You'd be surprised by how quickly a year goes.
[00:48:01]  And also, it's a lot of media.
[00:48:03]  So the thing is, you've got to get out of the media moment because within a year, you're still risking a People Magazine cover, man who leaves Gifford situation with wife.

=== Maga Becomes Swaggy (14:43) ===

[00:48:17]  Yeah.
[00:48:17]  Unless, though, the Trump card would be something bad happens to you.
[00:48:20]  Turn about.
[00:48:22]  So you would have to do your own Gifford?
[00:48:25]  Yeah, you could do like a Jesse Smollette.
[00:48:27]  Oh, I could fake my own attempted assassination.
[00:48:31]  And that would let me divorce my wife.
[00:48:33]  But that is too risky.
[00:48:34]  I think you can't go full Jesse.
[00:48:37]  I can go partial Jesse, though.
[00:48:39]  What if I actually get the shit beaten out of me by some guys because I provoke them with my annoying affect?
[00:48:45]  And now because of my COVID-19 nasally voice, and I don't think it's nasally voice.
[00:48:52]  I think it's because of the COVID.
[00:48:53]  And I get my ass kicked publicly, quietly filed for divorce the next day.
[00:48:59]  You know what I mean?
[00:49:00]  No one quietly files.
[00:49:01]  TMZ all over you.
[00:49:03]  Can I send my like lieutenant?
[00:49:05]  I think this is a tough one.
[00:49:06]  Anyways, it's a tough one.
[00:49:07]  We don't know.
[00:49:08]  We don't know.
[00:49:08]  And knock on what it never happens to us.
[00:49:23]  So 2020 was also a kind of big time for...
[00:49:29]  It was a big turning point for Time USA.
[00:49:33]  Turning point.
[00:49:34]  You know what I'm saying?
[00:49:34]  TPUSA, for like everyone, but TPUSA at this point, you know, is flooding their channels with a lot of like COVID anti-vax stuff.
[00:49:46]  Yeah.
[00:49:46]  Now, a lot of this is, of course, positioned around government overreach.
[00:49:52]  This is from their small business or small, you know, small government kind of, you know, background.
[00:50:03]  They really are going hard on Facebook ads, YouTubes, all this stuff about, you know, COVID.
[00:50:10]  I don't know.
[00:50:11]  Like, no, I don't want to just, it was all that stuff that was coming out then.
[00:50:14]  Yeah, I was thinking about that hydroxychloroca cuisine or whatever the fuck that was.
[00:50:18]  Man, I was taking all that kind of shit.
[00:50:20]  I was taking fucking fentanyl.
[00:50:21]  I was taking fucking hydrocodone, oxycodone, of course, and all that.
[00:50:25]  It did help me.
[00:50:26]  Sure.
[00:50:27]  But not because of COVID.
[00:50:28]  You know what?
[00:50:29]  I've always been like, I bet he got vaccinated.
[00:50:32]  Charlie?
[00:50:32]  He looks vaccinated.
[00:50:34]  I think, yeah, sure.
[00:50:36]  I, you know, at this, there is a point here where they hold this like giant Palm Beach conference that got a lot of coverage at the time because they were like ignoring a bunch of mask stuff.
[00:50:48]  They had, it was like a huge scene with a bunch of models like blasting cash cannons at teens and like really trying to be this sort of like swaggy, I don't know, swaggy Florida anti-COVID event.
[00:51:04]  So you remember?
[00:51:05]  2020 is when MAGA got swaggy.
[00:51:08]  Yes.
[00:51:08]  Like I don't think people remember well enough that like that was when a lot of the MAGA rappers, Forgiato Blow, of course, but God, there's a million Forgiato blows, like kind of really.
[00:51:18]  I think there aren't.
[00:51:19]  He's quite singular.
[00:51:20]  He's amazing.
[00:51:22]  I love Forgiato Blow.
[00:51:23]  Come on this show.
[00:51:24]  Forgiato, come to one of the live shows.
[00:51:26]  We will set you up.
[00:51:26]  You can sing whatever song you like and we will pay you $50 to do it.
[00:51:32]  But that was when MAGA became swaggy.
[00:51:34]  Compare how much fun it was probably to be at the 2020 TPUSA Palm Beach convention getting fucking cash blasted to you and then watch the DSA cringe compilation from the 2019 convention.
[00:51:45]  No, or just we were both at.
[00:51:48]  I wasn't at that one.
[00:51:48]  I was at.
[00:51:49]  But also, like, think about the arc from adult babies and president pooping herself to then swaggy cash for sexy teens or whatever they were doing.
[00:52:05]  Okay, well, I don't in Palm Beach.
[00:52:07]  I mean, the next day they're at Mar-a-Lago holding like a huge little, you know, a big gala with Gates and Christy Noam, Ram Paul, a bunch of people were there.
[00:52:17]  They had, you know, Trump is like calling in at one point.
[00:52:20]  So this is post-2020 election, by the way.
[00:52:24]  And it's all kind of in this moment leading up to Jan 6, which Charlie was a part of.
[00:52:32]  Yeah.
[00:52:33]  I mean, he lent his network to the Stop the Steal movement.
[00:52:37]  He like appeared at a rally with Ali Alexander.
[00:52:42]  The famous pedophile.
[00:52:44]  Ali Alexander there is the link also between Nick Fuentez.
[00:52:48]  Yeah, all these guys are all linked up.
[00:52:52]  He was posting constantly.
[00:52:53]  He sponsors this like big Jan 6 event.
[00:52:57]  But I mean, and I'm talking about the before the riot.
[00:53:02]  Like the one Trump spoke at?
[00:53:03]  Yeah, like the rally.
[00:53:04]  Yeah.
[00:53:05]  He they asked him to speak, but he kind of like declined.
[00:53:10]  Smart move.
[00:53:10]  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:53:11]  But he did post about it in a now deleted tweet.
[00:53:16]  And I think it was deleted quite quickly after the events unfolded.
[00:53:21]  But he said, this historic event will likely be one of the largest and most consequential in American history, which, you know, fair enough.
[00:53:30]  The team at Trump Students and at TPA Action are honored to help make this happen, sending 80-plus full buses of patriots to DC to fight for this president.
[00:53:41]  Man, Trump students, which would be Students for Trump, that was their at.
[00:53:46]  I don't know if you've been following Ryan Fournier lately, but he was like the founder of Students for Trump.
[00:53:51]  Him and I believe a guy who later very quickly, I believe, maybe I can't remember if it was Students for Trump, so I might be wrong, but I feel like James Alsub was involved in that.
[00:54:00]  But he Ryan Fournier got arrested for pistol whipping his girlfriend.
[00:54:06]  Are you serious?
[00:54:06]  A year or two ago in DC.
[00:54:08]  Yeah, hitting his girlfriend with a pistol in the head, which is fucking insane.
[00:54:14]  Now he is the CMO of, I believe it's called Uncensored AI, which is one of these.
[00:54:22]  Oh my God.
[00:54:22]  That's exactly what people are asking for.
[00:54:24]  It's just straight up racist AI.
[00:54:29]  And so that you see it.
[00:54:30]  So one of the things that's on Twitter now is like, you'll see people with like a little, there's like a company logo that'll be next to their screen name or whatever.
[00:54:38]  You can click on it.
[00:54:38]  It takes you to it.
[00:54:39]  So a lot of conservatives have uncensored AI next to theirs.
[00:54:43]  If you click on it, it is literally just like examples of it being asked questions.
[00:54:47]  And it's like, how many Jews died in the Holocaust?
[00:54:49]  It's all shit like that.
[00:54:51]  So here's an example of like the kind of posts that they're making.
[00:54:54]  Every kind of, they're doing this like every day, every couple of days.
[00:54:57]  Why six people all black did nothing to help Irina Zarutska as she was brutally murdered in front of them?
[00:55:04]  We're in the middle of a 100-year-plus white genocide.
[00:55:09]  Wait, was that all the questions?
[00:55:10]  No, no, no.
[00:55:11]  These are just different ones.
[00:55:13]  Oh, here's a good one.
[00:55:15]  All bleeps are black, but not all blacks are bleeps.
[00:55:21]  So this is the company of the guy from, and it's actually the text from here.
[00:55:27]  A bleep is a primitive, uncivilized black individual characterized by low intelligence, poor impulse control, and a complete disregard for societal norms.
[00:55:34]  Blah, It goes on.
[00:55:36]  And the question was, describe a bleep.
[00:55:40]  This is Ryan Fournier's company, and he is still, I believe, the chairman of Students for Trump.
[00:55:46]  Great.
[00:55:47]  Amazing.
[00:55:48]  Well, I'm glad he's got a side gig.
[00:55:50]  Although I don't know which is which.
[00:55:52]  Yeah.
[00:55:54]  So post-January 6th, Charlie and kind of everyone else had to distance themselves from that.
[00:56:00]  There was, he got actually questioned by Congress in the Jan 6 hearings because they, you know, budgets showed that like there was about a million dollars that they spent on a rally build out and buses for Jan 6.
[00:56:15]  Dude, I could do the sickest rally with a million dollars.
[00:56:18]  I mean, yeah, they, I guess when he was in front of Congress, he refused to answer questions and he was like invoking the Fifth Amendment, which is quite funny.
[00:56:27]  But everyone, you know, I think as people remember, there was a big sort of like, okay, we got to kind of take a step back a little bit from Trump.
[00:56:37]  Yeah, it's tough because like it really, it was like a three month, four month period where everyone was like, Trump is done.
[00:56:46]  Yeah, totally.
[00:56:47]  He'll never come back from that.
[00:56:49]  And then he just came back from it.
[00:56:50]  Actually, it was more than that.
[00:56:51]  I feel like it was like a year.
[00:56:52]  Yeah, it was about a year because he was mired in all those lawsuits.
[00:56:55]  Yeah.
[00:56:57]  And, you know, everyone thinking that, you know, they were going to catch him.
[00:57:01]  They were going to catch him.
[00:57:02]  But they didn't catch him.
[00:57:04]  So TPUSA, kind of alongside other well-funded right-wing networks and operators, starts pivoting to schools.
[00:57:13]  This was kind of their big thing post-2020.
[00:57:16]  Teacher watch lists, like you mentioned, but also all of the big anti-DEI campaigns.
[00:57:23]  They did all those like campus brainwashing tours.
[00:57:27]  That was like the whole thing where they were just like, you're being very much.
[00:57:32]  That was like the theme.
[00:57:32]  Dude, if you go to college, are there just always people like coming there to be like, I got something to say about school?
[00:57:38]  You're being manipulated.
[00:57:39]  Yeah.
[00:57:40]  It's kind of like.
[00:57:41]  I think so.
[00:57:41]  I mean, I don't know.
[00:57:42]  It all seems very corny to me, but I also think it energized a lot of young people who were already like frustrated or like exhausted, I think is a better word.
[00:57:57]  Exhausted by what they perceived as like the woke mob, either online or at their schools.
[00:58:02]  Yeah.
[00:58:03]  And sort of like, you know, what can I think would I think?
[00:58:06]  Or whatever people kind of, young people are trying to.
[00:58:09]  I will say going to college in the past 20 years seems seems like a little ride.
[00:58:17]  Seems like a tough, seems like a rough four years.
[00:58:19]  Yeah.
[00:58:19]  But, you know, I mean, there's other guys that were kind of pivoting.
[00:58:22]  You know, this is Rufo kind of mounting his big campaign, but it also goes hand in hand with libs of TikTok, all this stuff.
[00:58:28]  You know, this stuff is complimentary and also kind of organized to sort of be a kind of big front together, right?
[00:58:36]  This is also when a bunch of the immigration rhetoric starts intensifying.
[00:58:42]  And I think with Kirk, you start to hear a lot more explicit nods to Christian nationalist kind of rhetoric.
[00:58:52]  Things like wink, wink, nod, nod, kind of great replacement theory stuff.
[00:58:59]  So that is where the, well, in the original great replacement theory, it's the Jews are replacing native populations with foreign-born people.
[00:59:07]  That's the original one?
[00:59:08]  Yeah.
[00:59:09]  But the current European one is about Arabs.
[00:59:13]  Yeah, no, but it's the Jews that are doing that.
[00:59:15]  The whole thing with the Great Replacement Theory is that the Jews are manipulating all of this.
[00:59:19]  Oh, I see.
[00:59:20]  So like they're the ones that are sort of like opening up the floodgates.
[00:59:23]  It has changed a little bit.
[00:59:24]  Like Elon's version is that the Democrats are like importing Mexicans who are going to vote Democrat.
[00:59:28]  That was a huge talking point, even with TPUSA.
[00:59:31]  Yeah, exactly.
[00:59:32]  Totally.
[00:59:32]  So like that, it's changed a little bit, but the original one is that the Jews are sort of manipulating everything.
[00:59:37]  Yeah, there was a, you know, I'm just going to read some quotes.
[00:59:39]  You cannot have liberty if you don't have a Christian population.
[00:59:43]  Everything Democrats love, God hates.
[00:59:45]  The Democrat Party, it's always, I always called it the Democratic Party, but I guess.
[00:59:50]  The Democrat Party is what Republicans say.
[00:59:52]  That's the house style, right?
[00:59:53]  Because they don't want to say that they're Democratic.
[00:59:55]  Because it sounds nastier.
[00:59:56]  The Democrat.
[00:59:57]  They should do demon rat.
[00:59:59]  Yeah, true.
[01:00:02]  Democrat Party is espousing the death of the unborn, the mutilation of our teenage kids, open borders, the destruction of our sovereignty, the elimination of our currency status.
[01:00:11]  I don't know what they're talking about with the last one.
[01:00:12]  It's kind of interesting.
[01:00:15]  There's a spiritual battle happening around all of us.
[01:00:18]  It's funny because all of this, you know, I don't have the exact dates on all of us.
[01:00:22]  I think they're mostly like around 2024, 2023, 2024, kind of in the lead up to the election.
[01:00:30]  But all of that, I mean, that is what we hear from the White House now.
[01:00:34]  Yeah.
[01:00:35]  And all of the kind of proxy surrogates or whatever.
[01:00:38]  Yeah, he was really on message.
[01:00:40]  And I think a lot of the message was probably crafted at TPUSA.
[01:00:42]  Totally.
[01:00:43]  I mean, I think that Kirk's model, it's funny.
[01:00:46]  I was thinking about this, like it mirrors Trump a lot in a lot of ways, right?
[01:00:50]  Where like the whole thing is kind of politics is branding, taking what he sees as alienation and moving it to belonging via these parties, and then just highlighting the kind of like swaggy social life of it all, which again, it's so weird to associate that with TPUSA for so many reasons, not just the dyped up situation, but like that is something that they were really kind of pushing.
[01:01:19]  And then you, you know, it gets repeated a lot, but then you see the evidence in the numbers, right?
[01:01:24]  You have Trump's 18 to 49 male vote share jump from 43% in 2020 to 49% in 2024.
[01:01:32]  Yeah.
[01:01:33]  Not a coincidence.
[01:01:34]  That's like because of the work that these guys were doing.
[01:01:36]  Yeah.
[01:01:37]  I don't know.
[01:01:38]  I think it's kind of maybe some of why the two of them liked each other so much.
[01:01:53]  Anyway, all of this being said, like, again, just to repeat ourselves, Kirk was not just like a YouTube shock jock.
[01:02:01]  He was extremely, extremely influential in this White House and a really effective coalition builder, institution creator, organizer, behind the scenes, responsible for a ton of staffing at the White House.
[01:02:18]  I'd say like probably second in line to Trump in terms of who is the most responsible for popularizing the kind of like populist push within the GOP and not just like ideas and aesthetics or whatever, but literally like money flows, leadership, organizations, hierarchies, connections.
[01:02:37]  And so he's very different than like Shapiro or Tucker or Crowder for sure.
[01:02:44]  Even though I think people kind of maybe slot him in there, I think it's worth really hammering home that, you know, he was kind of on a different level in a lot of ways, even if those guys are similarly like very front and center.

=== Groyper's Unique Influence (15:12) ===

[01:03:00]  Though at the same time, it's important to note that like it's crazy he spent the last month of his life probably like making sure Cracker Barrel's logo got changed back, which is also kind of part of this whole thing.
[01:03:13]  Like this is all one thing now, you know, the Cracker Barrel of it all and all of this on the ground organizing.
[01:03:21]  But this is also his closeness to particular members of the government and his sort of position as a gatekeeper of sorts is why a lot of his detractors sort of view him as the face of Con Inc.
[01:03:35]  We love saying that.
[01:03:36]  Conservative Incorporated, which we're a part of.
[01:03:40]  Absolutely.
[01:03:41]  We are part of Con Inc.
[01:03:42]  Yes.
[01:03:43]  And his biggest foes, or his biggest organized group of foes, are a group that you might have heard the name of quite a lot this week, which would be the Groupers.
[01:03:54]  So unbeknownst to me, we actually did an episode on Charlie Kirk and the Groupers, but on Grope or Groyper War I back in 2019.
[01:04:03]  That's how long we've been on this beach.
[01:04:05]  Jeez, I didn't even realize that we did that.
[01:04:07]  There was a Groyper of me.
[01:04:09]  There was a Liz Groyper.
[01:04:10]  It was a Liz Clown Groyper.
[01:04:11]  That's a rare clown.
[01:04:12]  That's a rare.
[01:04:12]  It's a Harris Groypers.
[01:04:14]  One of the rarest Groyper, yeah.
[01:04:16]  So immediately after the shooting, a lot of people were on with zero evidence saying this guy is a Groyper.
[01:04:23]  Now, what is a Groyper?
[01:04:27]  Now, what is a Groyper?
[01:04:28]  Well, Webster's defines Groyper.
[01:04:30]  So a Grouper is, to put it simply, a fan of Nick Fuentes, the famous racial live streamer.
[01:04:37]  The Groyper itself is a corpulent frog who is legally distinct from Pepe the Frog, made, of course, by a friend of the show, Matt Fury.
[01:04:49]  And remember, the alt-right?
[01:04:51]  That's so, yes.
[01:04:53]  They loved Pepe.
[01:04:54]  But also barely.
[01:04:56]  I know.
[01:04:57]  They loved Pepe.
[01:04:58]  They loved Kazan.
[01:05:00]  They loved, I don't know, I can't really remember what other stuff that baked Alaska.
[01:05:06]  Who I recently, I think I sent you a screenshot of Giuliani thanking Baked Alaska for being a patriot.
[01:05:11]  Sure.
[01:05:13]  I know.
[01:05:13]  It's just amazing.
[01:05:15]  But I think Matt Fury got mad that Pepe became like a QAnon MAGA figure.
[01:05:21]  And then I think maybe Suze.
[01:05:22]  Gripers were like the more based Pepe.
[01:05:25]  Yeah, exactly.
[01:05:25]  They were more like, we're like the real Pepe's.
[01:05:28]  Yeah, we're like, oh, the Griper says what's really up.
[01:05:32]  It was embraced by Nick Fuentes as a description of his fans.
[01:05:37]  Griper Army.
[01:05:38]  Who is Nick Fuentes?
[01:05:40]  Nick Fuentes is one of the most consequential figures on the right.
[01:05:45]  I would say that is correct.
[01:05:47]  He is also from the Chicago suburbs.
[01:05:49]  And no, while there are many rumors that say about Nicholas Fuentes.
[01:05:54]  I can't wait to see where you're going.
[01:05:55]  Not the ones where Barack Obama twice had his penis blown by a recently deceased gentleman, not Charlie Kirk.
[01:06:05]  So he's a young guy.
[01:06:06]  He's younger.
[01:06:07]  How do I phrase this?
[01:06:08]  Well, he's younger than Charlie was when he perished.
[01:06:10]  He's 27.
[01:06:12]  He came to prominence in 2016 in a video of him at his college, I think Boston University, wearing a MAGA hat, making a case on why you should vote for Trump.
[01:06:21]  I actually remember seeing this video.
[01:06:24]  People made fun of him.
[01:06:25]  I think it was dox.
[01:06:26]  I imagine Trump wasn't very popular on campus.
[01:06:29]  Young people hated Trump.
[01:06:30]  There were a lot of videos at that time of people trying to talk about Trump.
[01:06:35]  Remember the comp bot?
[01:06:36]  Oh, what was that?
[01:06:38]  Come on, that Trump was completing the...
[01:06:41]  Oh, can't...
[01:06:43]  Oh, yes.
[01:06:44]  Oh, he's like in Times Square.
[01:06:46]  He's sort of got a Groyper-like cycle of figure.
[01:06:50]  German idealism.
[01:06:51]  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[01:06:52]  So there was like a lot of videos at that time where people were making fun of guys getting all in on Trump.
[01:06:58]  Yeah.
[01:06:58]  So Fuentes doesn't react well to this, and things get worse for him.
[01:07:01]  He attends the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville.
[01:07:06]  What a consequential day that was, where alt-right protesters ran over and killed Heather Heyer.
[01:07:14]  It was a big deal.
[01:07:16]  You know, it was, it was, yeah, it was a very consequential.
[01:07:20]  Steve Bannon got fired for his comments on that.
[01:07:22]  All those guys with the torches became a meme for the Boston Celtics.
[01:07:27]  Really?
[01:07:28]  For the fans of Buffalo.
[01:07:29]  Oh, yeah.
[01:07:30]  Okay, that makes sense.
[01:07:31]  So he drops out of college after that.
[01:07:33]  He starts the America first live stream still going on today.
[01:07:38]  A lot of guys, I just want to say, by the way, a lot of guys made their careers and were at Charlottesville.
[01:07:45]  Yeah.
[01:07:46]  Yeah.
[01:07:46]  That was like very much a meetup.
[01:07:49]  It's also just funny how some of these guys that came out of Charlottesville, like Richard Spencer, Fuentes, like eventually, I mean, some of them got arrested just because they were insane people later.
[01:08:03]  But these two guys in particular also both kind of turned against Trump at various points.
[01:08:08]  While professionalizing, too.
[01:08:09]  Yeah, while professionalizing.
[01:08:10]  That's kind of interesting.
[01:08:11]  It is.
[01:08:12]  It is.
[01:08:13]  So at first, he's with the right side broadcasting network and he gets dropped from that.
[01:08:16]  He was a Nazi.
[01:08:18]  Like, I mean, I don't know how else to put it.
[01:08:19]  I don't think he would even really disagree.
[01:08:20]  I think he probably would on some technical grounds, but he believes in everything the Nazis believe.
[01:08:25]  It's, I think, a fine shorthand for this guy.
[01:08:28]  He's like friends with Jared Taylor.
[01:08:30]  He goes to the American Renaissance Conference, links up with Patrick Casey, who has also done a pretty big rebrand.
[01:08:37]  Casey and all these guys were, they had this idea that they were going to hide their power level.
[01:08:42]  They used to always talk about that.
[01:08:43]  They're going to hide their power level and like.
[01:08:45]  A lot of memes about that.
[01:08:46]  They would talk about optics, right?
[01:08:47]  And they're going to like get, they're going to do entryism, Trotskyoid style entryism on the GOP.
[01:08:53]  Sometimes they were caught and ejected because they couldn't help but make a meme or two while they were running or whatever.
[01:09:00]  Sometimes they actually were pretty successful in this.
[01:09:02]  I was going to say, I do actually think a lot of this was successful.
[01:09:05]  Yeah.
[01:09:05]  Well, I do too.
[01:09:07]  I think the funny thing about Fuentes, and this is like a constant.
[01:09:09]  How many grapers do you think are in like low-level staff positions?
[01:09:16]  I think a lot.
[01:09:17]  There's like probably a lot of gen, like Groyper.
[01:09:19]  I think Groyper's.
[01:09:21]  I know.
[01:09:21]  I don't want to say, okay, maybe they are not self-described grapers, but they are graper adjacent.
[01:09:29]  Groyper in all but name.
[01:09:31]  Absolutely.
[01:09:32]  Yeah.
[01:09:32]  I think there's probably a lot.
[01:09:33]  I mean, I think, well, with the Patrick Casey stuff, that was like a little before Groip, you know?
[01:09:40]  Or like the Groyper thing, before Nick became like the star that he is.
[01:09:44]  That was almost more of like a general like alt-right.
[01:09:46]  Like, guys, we got to clean our shit up.
[01:09:48]  I guess that's what the dissident right is.
[01:09:50]  They just were branded as the dissident right.
[01:09:52]  And we're like, and they got rid of a lot of the goofies.
[01:09:54]  They got rid of a lot of the goofies.
[01:09:56]  And started hiding them behind, you know, avatars.
[01:09:59]  Well, a lot of the, so like, they stopped doing like the street protest stuff.
[01:10:03]  Like the, I mean, they, there was some of that.
[01:10:06]  Like there was like the Proud Boys shit and like those guys in various other groups.
[01:10:10]  But they had some help.
[01:10:11]  But like a lot of like the guys sort of surrounded, like Patrick Casey was doing like basically a American version of Identity Europa, which is still around, like the Martin Sellner, whatever organization.
[01:10:21]  But they like kind of like stopped doing that and were just like, we're going to professionalize.
[01:10:24]  This was like their whole thing.
[01:10:25]  And they've been pretty successful at that.
[01:10:28]  I don't know how big Patrick Casey's podcast actually is, but they've sort of like Shed themselves of like the neo-Nazi image while I believe probably retaining their beliefs.
[01:10:39]  I don't know.
[01:10:39]  I don't really check in on them.
[01:10:43]  Fuentes, though, has a habit of falling out with every single person he ever collaborates with on any level.
[01:10:50]  Like, this is something that is just like, I think Kanye West is the only person he hasn't had like a public spat with.
[01:10:55]  JD McNeil, for instance, the guy I was talking about earlier who was a TPUSA defectee or whatever, he was like Nick's little fucking, you know, botcha Bossie boy.
[01:11:06]  And he eventually has this big falling out.
[01:11:09]  And like, there's so many of these guys.
[01:11:11]  I think Chris Brunet, all these guys like get close to Fuentes and then have like this big falling out with them and then spend years trying to expose Fuentes.
[01:11:19]  But Fuentes, frankly, doesn't really hide anything except perhaps it's rumored his sexuality.
[01:11:24]  And so there's like, what do you expose him for being racist?
[01:11:28]  He's racist.
[01:11:30]  Right.
[01:11:30]  Like, you know, it's pretty upfront.
[01:11:31]  Exactly.
[01:11:32]  There's not really any like, it's, it's, there's not really anything to expose.
[01:11:36]  I mean, did you read the New York Times profile on it?
[01:11:38]  I read parts of it.
[01:11:39]  Yeah.
[01:11:40]  But I was like, I know.
[01:11:41]  Yeah.
[01:11:43]  There's like nothing I can really learn from that.
[01:11:45]  I follow Fuentes.
[01:11:46]  But at the same time, I mean, it's true.
[01:11:47]  It's like there's not much to expose other than to talk about his success.
[01:11:51]  Exactly.
[01:11:51]  Like, what are you going to say?
[01:11:52]  He's racist.
[01:11:52]  He's like, I am racist.
[01:11:54]  It's not like, I think that is something that a lot of liberal types have difficulty grappling with because that they think that, like if people hear that he's racist or whatever, or like Anti-Semitic or, you know, denies a Holocaust or whatever, that like they'll turn away from him, but like that's just not how that environment works these days.
[01:12:12]  Um, you know he's like, you know it's, it's his big thing is that like, his movement at this time you know this is 2018, 2019 is sort of this growing nascent, very angry, very young gen Z ass movement.
[01:12:27]  That is contra Con Ink.
[01:12:30]  So in 2019, the Tpusa brand ambassador, Ashley St. Clair, is at a party and photographed with Ali Alexander, Nick Fuentes and baked Alaska and is kicked out of TPUSA for being photographed with all of them, for being photographed with all of them, and explicitly so, I think.
[01:12:51]  And Fuentes, because of this incident, declares the defending Ashley's honor.
[01:12:57]  Yes well, so there truly is always a woman at the heart of any war.
[01:13:03]  Yeah really, there is, really there is.
[01:13:05]  He declares Groyper War, One which we have talked about on this podcast when it was happening live war coverage.
[01:13:12]  But just to briefly revisit, TPUSA was doing all of these like speaking tours featuring Charlie Kirk's little band of like whoever I don't know what guy it's like I was reading about it again.
[01:13:23]  I'm like who the fuck are any of these guys?
[01:13:25]  They're always.
[01:13:26]  It's a Rolodex.
[01:13:27]  They're constantly running through trying out new talent.
[01:13:29]  But they also had Donald Trump Jr.
[01:13:30]  Donald Trump Jr.
[01:13:32]  These kind of guys, uh, various whatever TPSA personalities, and Groypers would get these viral moments because there'd be a QA at the end, and Groypers would able, like, their whole mission was to get in line for the QA first so they could ask all the questions.
[01:13:45]  And they would ask, for instance, like to a gay TPSA guy was speaking, like, do you think anal sex is conservative or whatever, or like, Google the USS Liberty, or like, do you think that Jews control blah just like that kind of shit, like questions that would be difficult to answer at the same time?
[01:14:03]  Fuentes is deplatformed from basically every website, YouTube, Twitch, Getter.
[01:14:08]  What remember Getter?
[01:14:09]  I think Getter was a conservative like platform, like Getter Done, yeah, no, G-E-T-T-R, it's kind of like Getter Done, yeah.
[01:14:18]  Uh, Clubhouse, remember that one, Reddit and Twitter, although Musk later reinstated him, but his like sort of grassroots are not grassroots, I don't know what to call it, but like his fans' like prominence in all these viral moments is still like getting all this attention, right?
[01:14:36]  And eventually, Charlie Kirk actually stops doing QA's at these because and like cuts the event short because of the Groypers.
[01:14:42]  So they declare victory.
[01:14:43]  The Griper War was successful.
[01:14:45]  He won the first Groyper War, so he starts making a ton of money.
[01:14:51]  Uh, he starts his own platform called Cozy TV.
[01:14:54]  He has, because he's kicked off of like Twitch and everything, yeah.
[01:14:56]  So he like does his own sort of like live streaming platform.
[01:15:00]  I think he's making like a lot, a lot.
[01:15:03]  I would assume he's making a lot, a lot.
[01:15:04]  Um, he is sort of re-platformed thanks to a live streamer named Destiny, which we're all adults here.
[01:15:16]  We don't need to get into what that is.
[01:15:18]  Uh, and is sort of like introduced to like this sort of red pill side of podcasts.
[01:15:22]  Like, I think he goes on like the Fresh and Fit podcast, all this kind of shit.
[01:15:26]  So, then also famously was at January 6th.
[01:15:29]  There's a lot of questions about why he wasn't arrested, blah, blah, blah.
[01:15:33]  So, there's this whole like narrative that he's a fed or whatever.
[01:15:36]  Later, grows quite close to Kanye West and joins Kanye for a dinner at Mar-a-Lago with Donald Trump.
[01:15:44]  Do you remember that?
[01:15:45]  Yeah, absolutely.
[01:15:46]  It was a big, it was a big fucking meal.
[01:15:48]  Like, McConnell came out and was like, There is no room in the Republican Party for white supremacy.
[01:15:53]  People were like, This is going to tank Trump's chances.
[01:15:55]  He'll never recover.
[01:15:57]  Fuentes at Mar-a-Lago.
[01:15:59]  You can't be seen with this guy.
[01:16:00]  And yet, here we are.
[01:16:03]  So, Fuentes has maintained the course, threatening a Groyper War II against Trump in 2024.
[01:16:10]  So, this is so interesting because I think part of it is that it's really tough to maintain a dissident position when your boy is in power, even if you are, he is to you not your boy.
[01:16:24]  Yes, this is a problem that the left had during Biden.
[01:16:30]  Yeah.
[01:16:31]  And no one, so I don't mean that in a way to say that like people were supporting Biden or whatever.
[01:16:36]  But you end up kind of being like, you either have to take this like super extreme position against, or you have, you're caught in this mode of like, well, some of it's okay and some of it's not or whatever.
[01:16:46]  And it's just kind of muddled and hard to kind of like weed through.
[01:16:50]  It's not as easy when you can kind of be this, you know.
[01:16:54]  Yeah, I mean, I watched some of the streams after Trump was elected and like within a couple of weeks, he was like, there's nobody being deported.
[01:17:00]  It's all for Israel.
[01:17:02]  It's all like, it's like, it was very clear that he, he saw that the maybe the market was open for a guy who was like actually more right-wing than Donald Trump.
[01:17:11]  Right.
[01:17:11]  It was sort of castigating him for not doing enough because so much of the right-wing media sphere was involved intimately, sometimes even hired by the Trump government, for instance, to be the deputy director and the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
[01:17:24]  Yeah, totally.
[01:17:26]  So Fuentes has maintained the course.
[01:17:31]  The Groyper is sort of a known quantity now.
[01:17:34]  And now it's like really prevalent on Twitter, for instance, which has really undergone like a 4chanization.
[01:17:39]  Yeah, totally.
[01:17:40]  But also in the same sense that like 4chan is even like so dated as a sort of platform or like as a kind of like at the forefront of internet culture platform that it also like makes everything on Twitter kind of dated too at the same time.
[01:17:54]  Well, he's also become like a clips star, basically.
[01:17:59]  Yeah, he might be banned personally from a lot of these platforms, but like short form clips, because he's such a good broadcaster that like short forms of him talking about whatever go viral very easily because he's like so eloquent, right?

=== Loud Clips Star (15:04) ===

[01:18:12]  He can speak very well.
[01:18:13]  And he's very polemical.
[01:18:15]  Very polemical.
[01:18:16]  And people really like that.
[01:18:18]  And it's crazy.
[01:18:18]  He just does the show straight to camera, right?
[01:18:21]  There's no guests or anything like that.
[01:18:23]  He just does it straight.
[01:18:24]  One of his main targets for the past four or five years has been the one and only Charlie Kirk.
[01:18:30]  And he actually personally hated Charlie Kirk.
[01:18:33]  A lot of his project was about Charlie Kirk.
[01:18:36]  He would call Charlie Kirk, you know, paid show for Israel, et cetera, et cetera.
[01:18:40]  You know, this gatekeeper, con Inc. guy that was actually preventing like real, you know, white, white conservative movement from taking root in this country.
[01:18:50]  And it was interesting because right after Kirk died, he did a really big live stream.
[01:18:58]  I think it had 200,000 concurrent viewers, which is fucking huge.
[01:19:03]  It is huge.
[01:19:03]  I think I was looking at it just because I watched it after on Rumble.
[01:19:08]  And on Rumble, he had 2.25 million views on this video.
[01:19:14]  His normal ones on Rumble are getting like 200 to 300,000 views.
[01:19:19]  So this one was like orders of magnitude higher.
[01:19:23]  I mean, this stuff is, you guys understand.
[01:19:25]  I know everyone who's listening to Truanon would be like, you guys are the biggest podcast in the world.
[01:19:29]  Oh my God, that's so cute.
[01:19:30]  Thank you so much.
[01:19:30]  Thank you so much.
[01:19:31]  We are nothing compared to this kind of shit.
[01:19:34]  You know what I mean?
[01:19:35]  Like, this is, it's huge because that's just the viewers on that one platform.
[01:19:40]  I mean, he's also, you know, concurrently streaming on his own platform that all these people, blah, blah, blah, blah.
[01:19:44]  He's a giant Telegram channel.
[01:19:46]  He has a really viral, this thing called AF Post on Twitter that like you see people reposting all the time.
[01:19:51]  That's just kind of a good idea.
[01:19:52]  It just says viral news headlines.
[01:19:54]  Right.
[01:19:55]  But obviously, Fuentes aligned one called AF Post.
[01:19:59]  I want to just, the reason I'm mentioning him here is because I think he factors into the story.
[01:20:05]  Not only do people sort of just say it was a Groyper for whatever reason after Charlie Kirk was killed.
[01:20:10]  I think probably because at first, A, they want it to be.
[01:20:13]  And then B, there's a lot of wish casting out there.
[01:20:15]  A lot of wish casting.
[01:20:16]  But B, also because he has been like Charlie Kirk's kind of number one enemy, public enemy for like five years.
[01:20:23]  But there's also these two kind of competing characters or like visions in the Republican, with the Republican youth, right?
[01:20:33]  And one was Charlie Kirk.
[01:20:34]  Yeah.
[01:20:35]  And the other one's Nick Fuentes.
[01:20:36]  Exactly.
[01:20:37]  And now, Kirk's dad.
[01:20:51]  September 10th, 2025.
[01:20:55]  One day before our live show.
[01:20:58]  Sorry, I thought you were waiting for me to say it.
[01:21:00]  No, I was just taking a dramatic pause, but thanks for stepping on my line.
[01:21:04]  No, it's no problem.
[01:21:06]  No, okay.
[01:21:08]  September 10th.
[01:21:09]  Let's walk through what happened.
[01:21:10]  Utah Valley University.
[01:21:12]  It is the American Comeback Tour event.
[01:21:16]  Yeah.
[01:21:17]  Stop one.
[01:21:19]  It is the first day of the tour.
[01:21:21]  Oh, the world tour.
[01:21:22]  They ruined it.
[01:21:24]  Something to close to 3,000 people are there.
[01:21:27]  That's a good amount of people.
[01:21:28]  What the fuck is Utah Valley University?
[01:21:31]  Nobody knows.
[01:21:32]  Police say, I'm going to just go through the facts here.
[01:21:35]  Police say that suspect, no suspect, Tyler Robinson arrives around 11:50 a.m.
[01:21:41]  They've got him on security footage walking around.
[01:21:43]  He's like moving through the parking lot.
[01:21:45]  And then at some point, he stops at the stairs and is on the phone, which is very interesting.
[01:21:50]  Two is dating.
[01:21:51]  Now, Charlie starts speaking around noon.
[01:21:55]  I think, have people, I'm sure if you're listening to the videos, he's like in a tent.
[01:22:00]  And it's sort of like he's at a tent at like the bottom of this like tiered, almost like a Chinese tiered rice field.
[01:22:06]  You know what I'm saying?
[01:22:07]  A bit of an amphitheater vibe.
[01:22:09]  Yeah, he's at the bottom of a begrassed amphitheater with like students really all around it, thousands and thousands of students.
[01:22:16]  It seems to be in a pretty good mood.
[01:22:18]  Merch all around him.
[01:22:19]  Yeah.
[01:22:19]  Yeah.
[01:22:19]  They're really, and there's merch all around him, but there's also security all around him.
[01:22:23]  And there's, you've seen there's the camera, the really close cameras.
[01:22:26]  Really close cameras.
[01:22:26]  Yeah, I don't think we've seen that video.
[01:22:27]  I don't think we're seeing that.
[01:22:28]  Woof.
[01:22:29]  Um, so he starts speaking at noon.
[01:22:32]  About 23 minutes later, a single shot is fired from about 142 yards away from on a rooftop, they say, hitting Charlie Kirk in the neck during a Q ⁇ A.
[01:22:46]  Well, it's not just any Q ⁇ A. He's doing like one of his kind of debate things, and he's debating with a liberal who I don't know if you saw this afterwards, but he did an interview, and it's him in his room, and it's got a, I think it's like a gay flag, a trans flag, a NATO flag, and an American flag.
[01:23:03]  Oh my God, all the flags are here.
[01:23:04]  This is genuinely like one of those guys that like, oh, that's like a weird person on Twitter that like can't exist.
[01:23:11]  But I'm like, this is a real one of those guys.
[01:23:13]  He's got them all.
[01:23:15]  And it's a UVU student.
[01:23:17]  He says, do you know how many transgender Americans have been mass shooters over the last 10 years?
[01:23:22]  Charlie Kirk very deftly responds because he's a bad bro.
[01:23:26]  He says, too many.
[01:23:28]  Too many.
[01:23:29]  I mean, what a great line, right?
[01:23:30]  Because it's like.
[01:23:31]  That's how you deflect.
[01:23:32]  It's a yes or no question.
[01:23:34]  It's great.
[01:23:35]  And you sit and says, in America, it's five.
[01:23:37]  Now, five is a lot, right?
[01:23:39]  I'm going to give it to you.
[01:23:40]  I'm going to give you some credit.
[01:23:41]  Do you know how many mass shooters there have been in America over the last 10 years?
[01:23:46]  Charlie Kirk says, counting or not counting gang violence.
[01:23:50]  And then he gets shot in the neck.
[01:23:52]  He gets shot in the neck.
[01:23:53]  And in fact, what looks like the artery in the side of his neck.
[01:23:57]  Jesus.
[01:23:57]  And it is a fucking rough video.
[01:24:01]  Yeah, the assassination is immediately on social media.
[01:24:05]  Really, really graphic videos.
[01:24:07]  I mean, you just see it.
[01:24:08]  He just collapses, falls over.
[01:24:11]  I mean, yeah, it's kirk down.
[01:24:12]  Yeah, he's really down.
[01:24:14]  It's insane, by the way, that we are watching that on social media.
[01:24:18]  Yeah.
[01:24:19]  It is so crazy to me.
[01:24:22]  I'm trying to like, even the Trump one, I mean, I guess the Trump one's different because he kind of like got staggered and got up.
[01:24:31]  Yeah, it was a goaded event.
[01:24:32]  I mean, he fucking like it was the fight, fight, fight thing.
[01:24:37]  What a fucking, talk about pros.
[01:24:38]  Yeah, that's that's a pro right there.
[01:24:40]  Um, this was like, I mean, it's funny when you think about like assassination videos because obviously they're quite famous.
[01:24:49]  Yeah, but like, I mean, think of like they all came out kind of before.
[01:24:53]  I'm trying to think if there's anything like this.
[01:24:57]  I mean, certainly there's videos of people being killed.
[01:24:59]  I'm not talking about being killed.
[01:25:00]  I'm talking about political assassinations.
[01:25:02]  Yeah.
[01:25:02]  But famously very low resolution.
[01:25:04]  Low res and always introduced on broadcast television with a kind of like warning or highly edited.
[01:25:10]  Like even like the Kennedy video.
[01:25:12]  I mean, remember, right?
[01:25:13]  Like, and that didn't come out for so long.
[01:25:16]  So it's like.
[01:25:18]  I guess the Bud Dwyer video, but that's not an assassination.
[01:25:21]  Yeah, but that's not like, yeah, but I'm seeing like a political figure like this.
[01:25:27]  Yeah, yeah.
[01:25:28]  I don't, I mean, I don't think.
[01:25:30]  I don't even think in another country, I'm trying to think.
[01:25:32]  I mean, I'm sure there has been.
[01:25:33]  We just don't know about it, but still, it's like in America, it's certainly not.
[01:25:37]  Anyway, it's all over like every other snuff film.
[01:25:40]  I want to X the everything up.
[01:25:41]  Yeah, and I really do think like this is sort of, I think there's maybe a problem with like the fact that X is basically just like a snuff film website.
[01:25:52]  Yeah, you think?
[01:25:54]  Because it's, and I'm not talking about like political videos or anything like that, but like this also comes on the heels of every conservative replaying this video of Arena getting stabbed in the neck over and over and over on this bus, and then Charlie Kirk getting shot in the neck, which I don't know what the fuck that's supposed to mean.
[01:26:11]  Nothing.
[01:26:11]  It just is what it is.
[01:26:14]  Gets stabbed, like gets shot in the neck.
[01:26:15]  And like, then it's a really gory video.
[01:26:18]  And like watching that over and over and over and over again.
[01:26:21]  I think that does.
[01:26:22]  I mean, I don't think it's crazy to say.
[01:26:23]  I think it's this self-traumatizing thing that's just on repeat for so many people.
[01:26:28]  Yes, no shit.
[01:26:29]  In addition to every single, like every other piece of media on that website, whether it's like some kind of like graphic porn or like a fucking like dead baby in Gaza.
[01:26:41]  Well, it's crazy because like, do you remember obviously the famous thing from Clockwork Orange where he's got his eyes?
[01:26:46]  That's all of us.
[01:26:47]  I know, but that's what I'm saying.
[01:26:48]  He's like, he's got his eyes open.
[01:26:49]  He's watching these videos of porn and also war and like whatever else.
[01:26:53]  But don't even play Beethoven behind it.
[01:26:55]  Exactly.
[01:26:55]  But like now it's just like, that's what we're like, you do that for fun.
[01:26:59]  Like you're just doing the clockwork.
[01:27:00]  Not even fun.
[01:27:01]  It's compulsive.
[01:27:02]  Yeah, you're right.
[01:27:03]  You're right.
[01:27:03]  You're right.
[01:27:04]  Like it's this weird sort of like low grade, again, dopamine hit that you get from just like being lost in a world that isn't the one outside your phone over and over.
[01:27:14]  We basically just like doing the Clockwork Orange scene to yourself.
[01:27:17]  It's fucking insane.
[01:27:19]  So let's talk about this.
[01:27:23]  A bold action rifle.
[01:27:26]  They found it on the scene.
[01:27:28]  Yeah.
[01:27:29]  I'm just going to, I'm going to read from the initial report.
[01:27:32]  Investigators noted inscriptions that had been engraved on casings found with the rifle.
[01:27:37]  Inscriptions on a fire on the fired casing.
[01:27:40]  Oh, interesting.
[01:27:41]  I didn't realize that.
[01:27:42]  Yes.
[01:27:42]  On the fired casing read, notices bulge.
[01:27:48]  How do you say this out loud?
[01:27:49]  Oh.
[01:27:52]  O-W-O.
[01:27:53]  Oh, whoa.
[01:27:54]  What's this?
[01:27:57]  Dude, that's what fucking killed Charlie Kirk.
[01:28:02]  I just like would like to pause on that for a second.
[01:28:05]  That is crazy.
[01:28:07]  I mean, I don't, like, it's, what do you even say to that?
[01:28:09]  I don't know.
[01:28:10]  Well, did you see the like press conference when I think it was the governor?
[01:28:15]  Yeah, he read it out.
[01:28:16]  He read it out and he's like, I don't even know.
[01:28:18]  You could see how uncomfortable he was just like speaking meme out loud that, of course, he didn't understand or wasn't like a part of in any way.
[01:28:25]  I'm sure maybe someone explained it to him because he can Google.
[01:28:28]  It doesn't mean that he understood what I'm saying.
[01:28:30]  I don't understand it.
[01:28:30]  I know what it is.
[01:28:32]  But also just like trying to process that there's like an internet meme fucking like inscribed into onto a bullet casing for this political.
[01:28:41]  There's so many levels here.
[01:28:42]  It's wild.
[01:28:44]  The other unfired casings read, because there was only one shot fired.
[01:28:48]  Yeah.
[01:28:50]  Hey, fascist, catch.
[01:28:52]  And then up arrow symbol, right arrow symbol, and three down arrow symbols.
[01:28:57]  Is that a video game thing?
[01:28:58]  It is a video game thing from a video game called Helldivers 2, which is, I've not played it, but it is a very popular kind of meme-y, I would say, video game.
[01:29:10]  It's just like an online game that caught on.
[01:29:12]  I think the world is sort of like a Starship Troopers.
[01:29:14]  Yeah, it's like a Starship Troopers kind of thing.
[01:29:18]  But I think that is a symbol from what I've read for you got to press that in and you call in a very large bomb that I think is probably effective at destroying your enemies in that game.
[01:29:28]  And then one that says, oh, Bella Chow, Bella Chow, Bella Chow, Chow Chow, the lyrics from the famous anti-fascist partisan song in Italy, Bella Chow.
[01:29:40]  And then if you read this, you are gay, LMAO.
[01:29:50]  Now, I'm going to be honest here.
[01:29:55]  I don't know which convention it is, but for instance, there are several weapons that are technically banned in the use of war, like, or in war.
[01:30:02]  Dumb-dumb bullets, for instance.
[01:30:04]  I think poison gas is banned, for instance.
[01:30:07]  What we're encountering here is another one of those things that I think as a result of our modern age, that the people who kind of came up with these rules of war had not yet considered.
[01:30:18]  Writing you are gay, if you read this, you are gay LMAO on a bullet, is almost like a dead man's switch.
[01:30:25]  You know what I mean?
[01:30:26]  Because it instantly changes the life of the detective who might find the gun.
[01:30:31]  That's tough.
[01:30:33]  It's fucking crazy.
[01:30:34]  That's so crazy.
[01:30:35]  I don't even know what to say.
[01:30:37]  So to go back to like the immediate time of the assassination, rumors are flying everywhere.
[01:30:45]  And again, I didn't see the second video maybe for like 45 minutes until after I saw the first one.
[01:30:50]  It was like a little delayed in the upload.
[01:30:52]  Yeah, they weren't announcing anything.
[01:30:54]  But rumors are flying.
[01:30:55]  Glenn Beck says that Charlie's stable, that he might recover.
[01:30:59]  And then people, this kind of takes off on Twitter and people are repeating it over and over and over again.
[01:31:03]  And I figured, because I only saw the first video and you just see Charlie jerk and you don't really see much happen, but it's filmed from far away and it's pretty grainy.
[01:31:11]  And I was like, okay, maybe like somehow like the bullet, you know, some these things happen.
[01:31:16]  Bullet can go through fly.
[01:31:17]  I knew a guy who got shot in the neck with a fucking 762 round and he lived.
[01:31:22]  He was fine because it just went through somehow.
[01:31:25]  I have no idea this even happened.
[01:31:27]  Part of his neck that just, I don't know what, didn't kill him.
[01:31:30]  Um, and uh, I wasn't there when it happened, but I knew I knew him afterwards.
[01:31:35]  Uh, I was like, all right, maybe.
[01:31:37]  And then I saw the actual video.
[01:31:38]  I was like, that's telling that happening.
[01:31:40]  So, immediate attention is pointed at an older white guy who is yelling, I shot him.
[01:31:46]  Not something you generally want to yell after somebody has been shot and killed.
[01:31:51]  Police depending on your, you know, maybe you do want to.
[01:31:54]  Maybe you do, yeah.
[01:31:55]  Well, so police, there's there's immediately pictures of police like arresting this kind of old white man, you know, kind of old, bigger white guy on the ground.
[01:32:05]  Everyone was like, It's a radical boomer.
[01:32:07]  That's what I thought at first because that wouldn't be totally outside the range of possibilities.
[01:32:11]  Sure, takes all kinds.
[01:32:13]  Dragged off while his pants are falling down.
[01:32:16]  He's wearing big stuff, giant boxers.
[01:32:18]  Yeah, that's tough.
[01:32:20]  This is a guy named George Zinn, who the Salt Lake Tribune says is locally famous for being thrown out of places.
[01:32:26]  He was the first person.
[01:32:27]  That's a great line.
[01:32:28]  He is.
[01:32:29]  Sorry.
[01:32:30]  Liz.
[01:32:30]  No, they have like a list of places to go.
[01:32:32]  No, no, I understand, but I do think that that's a great line.
[01:32:35]  He's also, he's been, he was the first person kicked out of the City Creek Center Mall.
[01:32:40]  Like, that is his, like, he was the very first person kicked out of a new mall that opened in 2012.
[01:32:44]  City Creek Center Mall.
[01:32:45]  Liz, he is banned from Sundance, but repeatedly arrested for returning.
[01:32:52]  He's arrested because he won't stop coming back.
[01:32:55]  Not a lot else to do.
[01:32:57]  I think he is at one point.
[01:32:58]  He was just arrested on child porn charges.
[01:33:00]  Like 10 minutes ago.
[01:33:01]  Yes.
[01:33:02]  Yeah.
[01:33:02]  He was just charged with four counts of childborn.
[01:33:04]  Yeah.
[01:33:05]  Which I'm assuming they found when they were searching his person after the probably found on his phone.
[01:33:11]  He's saying he actually admitted it believed to the police, according to TMZ, that he was sexually attracted to children.

=== Suspect Arrested (09:33) ===

[01:33:17]  But I guess he's saying all kinds of shit.
[01:33:19]  Although I get there's some evidence.
[01:33:20]  I'd love to talk.
[01:33:20]  But he's like, I shot him.
[01:33:22]  I shot him.
[01:33:22]  Please shoot me.
[01:33:23]  Shoot me.
[01:33:24]  And I think he's obviously an insane.
[01:33:27]  Oh, you think?
[01:33:28]  Yeah.
[01:33:29]  And so he's arrested.
[01:33:31]  And then it's pretty clear, like, soon after that he wasn't a shooter.
[01:33:36]  He also didn't have a gun.
[01:33:37]  And also, like, when it's just happening, I was like, it's weird because it really doesn't seem like someone shot him in the crowd.
[01:33:41]  Right.
[01:33:42]  Because no one in the crowd is reacting to a gunshot.
[01:33:44]  Like, they are in some way.
[01:33:45]  Also, not to whatever, but you'd think that like if you are, if you get a guy in the neck, you had to have kind of a clean look at him.
[01:33:54]  Yeah.
[01:33:55]  You know, and in the crowd, it's kind of tough.
[01:33:58]  Yeah, I mean, maybe he's right up front.
[01:33:59]  But like, if that happened, then someone would, you know what I mean?
[01:34:01]  Like, it just, it was a little weird, but I was like, then it came out pretty quickly that it was not him.
[01:34:06]  They also randomly arrested a guy at his home named Zachariah Qureshi, which I don't know who he is, but his dad is named, I think it's like Muhammad.
[01:34:17]  And so assuming maybe this is someone of a hero of descent.
[01:34:22]  He is a 25-year-old fan of Charlie Kirk.
[01:34:25]  The police come to his house and arrest him.
[01:34:28]  No explanation is given, but this is when Kash Patel sent the initial tweet of subject in custody.
[01:34:35]  And the rumor is that he sent that tweet while dining at exclusive Italian Red Sauce Joint in New York City Rows, like at the table.
[01:34:45]  I mean, I believe that.
[01:34:47]  I can visualize, in my head, he is like covered in like red sauce Italiano style, like with the napkin on the shirt, like spaghette hanging out of his mouth.
[01:34:59]  Snizzed out of his mind, like talking to this 19-year-old girlfriend being like, just like fuck Charlie Harrison.
[01:35:04]  Horrible, terrible Zinfandel or something.
[01:35:07]  He is so fucking ugly.
[01:35:08]  It is crazy.
[01:35:09]  Did you see?
[01:35:10]  He was wearing a Liverpool FC shirt or tie in front of Congress today.
[01:35:16]  Can you fucking, that is so insane.
[01:35:19]  You have, do you have any respect, sir?
[01:35:23]  I mean, here he goes.
[01:35:25]  Are you going to wear a novelty sports tie to fucking congregate?
[01:35:28]  It's Kash Patel.
[01:35:30]  Did you see that he was, there's this lawsuit?
[01:35:32]  And which we need to read.
[01:35:34]  Actually, I downloaded it yesterday.
[01:35:35]  I was like, I don't have enough time to read this before the show because I have to do this other shit.
[01:35:39]  But there's that lawsuit against those fired FBI, from those fired FBI agents, like I think three of them against Kash Patel that like details how he was been spending a lot of his work time designing his fucking challenge coins.
[01:35:51]  Okay, I would like to see those coins.
[01:35:53]  I got to see the coins.
[01:35:53]  I pay no one cash with the money sign, which by the way, he does use.
[01:35:56]  He uses the money sign in place of an SS.
[01:35:58]  I know.
[01:35:58]  Our FBI director.
[01:36:00]  I want to see the discarded designs.
[01:36:03]  Yeah.
[01:36:04]  I want to see the ones that didn't make it.
[01:36:05]  Give me the whole Canva folder, honey.
[01:36:07]  Yeah.
[01:36:08]  So there is immediate shock and confusion.
[01:36:12]  Nobody knows what the fuck is going on.
[01:36:13]  There's no suspect in custody.
[01:36:15]  Nobody even knows where the shot was from at first until people see in certain videos there's someone running across a roof.
[01:36:22]  Yeah.
[01:36:23]  First lead is from Steven Crowder.
[01:36:27]  Ladder with Crowder, changed my mind, who gets a leaked ATF document saying that there's trans and antifa messaging on shells found with the rifle.
[01:36:37]  So this one is, I was like, really?
[01:36:41]  Like, that was quick.
[01:36:42]  You know what I mean?
[01:36:43]  It's from Crowder.
[01:36:44]  So I'm like, I don't know, but I'm like, I have no idea who does this.
[01:36:47]  So I'm not, I'm not weighing in here.
[01:36:49]  You know, I'm just, I'm taking all the news as it come.
[01:36:51]  So some people are now immediately saying this was a transgender antifa.
[01:36:55]  And then other people are just randomly saying it's a Groyper.
[01:36:58]  Well, they said it was a Groyper because they found a photo of that came out after there was a report that he might have been like a right-wing.
[01:37:10]  I think it was like retracted, but there was some news report that was like, oh, he was in, you know, because of the video game stuff, he was actually like really into like right-wing stuff.
[01:37:19]  And then there was like a photo found of Tyler in a black Adidas track suit with a like black leather newsboy hat doing a Slavic squat.
[01:37:31]  And they put it next to a Pepe in the same outfit.
[01:37:34]  And they're like, see, he's Graper.
[01:37:36]  This is what, anyway, this is literally where I think it all kind of came from.
[01:37:40]  Yeah.
[01:37:41]  And then people were kind of insisting on it.
[01:37:43]  But I think also people were running with that because of like what you said, which was that Fuentes was public enemy number one for Charlie.
[01:37:53]  Yeah.
[01:37:53]  And I think people rightfully see like a lot of hardcore fans of Nick Fuentes as sort of Elliott Rodgers types.
[01:37:59]  You know, and it's sort of anti-social, very young people who might do something like, you know, kill.
[01:38:05]  And I think a lot of people, again, wish casting.
[01:38:07]  I think, yeah, a lot of people just want it to be.
[01:38:09]  I mean, this is something I think that we're still going to see from this.
[01:38:11]  Dude, I still see people saying that this guy is like fully Republican.
[01:38:15]  Maybe he is.
[01:38:17]  I don't know.
[01:38:18]  But signs are not pointing there.
[01:38:22]  I think everyone just wants this to be the fault of their political enemies, as everyone wants everything to be the fault of their political enemies.
[01:38:29]  I mean, there is a surveillance photo that is released of the suspect, and it is just like a white guy wearing sunglasses and like some American flag t-shirt.
[01:38:39]  That, however, is immediately enhanced by like power Twitter users using Grok and a face that Grok makes up is just put on the guy's face.
[01:38:50]  I just said the word faced, but you know, we're so, you don't understand.
[01:38:54]  Liz and I. Chris is quite sick.
[01:38:57]  You're also a little sick.
[01:38:58]  Don't blame this all on.
[01:38:59]  I'm like low grade, always sick of it.
[01:39:01]  I'm fucking sick.
[01:39:04]  And the like photo is spread everywhere, but it's just the fake photo that Grok enhanced.
[01:39:11]  But Grok can't.
[01:39:12]  But there was a bunch of that shit.
[01:39:13]  There was also like, there was a bunch of edited photos of the kid with a Trump shirt on.
[01:39:21]  Yeah.
[01:39:21]  That like that fucking account, anonymous account or whatever, like put up and then like retracted it.
[01:39:27]  But of course no one sees the retraction or whatever.
[01:39:30]  And so that photo of him with a, you know, photoshopped with a shirt, a Trump shirt on, like spread everywhere.
[01:39:37]  And everyone, this is like so, this is one of the more fascinating aspects was watching in real time everyone in a kind of like posters war over whether this kid was a Democrat or Republican.
[01:39:50]  Weren't they also photoshopping like masks on him to be like, oh, he's a leftist?
[01:39:54]  No, they did.
[01:39:55]  COVID mask guy.
[01:39:56]  They had a photo of him that they put a mask on to be like, look, he's a libtard.
[01:40:00]  It is, I have almost never seen anything like it.
[01:40:03]  Where like based on, and this is before the bullet actual like engravings came out.
[01:40:08]  Yeah.
[01:40:10]  And so like nobody, there was genuinely almost nothing to go up for on this guy, like go with on this guy.
[01:40:17]  Was before the guy's name was even announced right, like people were saying that he was a anti-fo-radical DSA member and they were posting this video of some like guy from DSA Salt Lake City giving some speech, going like when we fight we win, like some shit like that just a few days earlier um, and then also people being like he is a far-right Neo-nazi Groyper who killed Charlie Kirk because Charlie Kirk wasn't radical enough.
[01:40:45]  Yeah, but they apprehended the suspect.
[01:40:48]  Well, I don't know if they apprehended the suspect is actually the right way to put it.
[01:40:52]  The suspect turned himself in, it seems like, or it's reported that it was at the urging of his dad.
[01:40:57]  Yeah well, it's like he I guess maybe told his dad and then the dad called in a like a pastor I guess they're probably Mormon and so the pastor was like, turning your ass in.
[01:41:09]  Yeah, they call the police and uh yeah, I guess his dad yeah, his dad recognized him from pictures which i'm like I don't know really, that doesn't really look that.
[01:41:19]  I mean, the pictures are kind of grainy, it's kind of tough to.
[01:41:23]  Well, I would just be like that wasn't me.
[01:41:25]  You know what I mean, not me.
[01:41:26]  I think the kid lived a few hours away from the, from the college too, so i'd be like it wasn't me, I was at work.
[01:41:32]  It's crazy because yeah, it all kind of I don't know it all kind of came together.
[01:41:36]  It let's talk about him, this kid, Tyler Robinson, 22 years old, from Utah.
[01:41:42]  He was enrolled at UTAH State University for one semester and then transferred to an electrical apprenticeship at Dixie Technical College.
[01:41:50]  It's funny, the right really like, was like oh, he got radicalized in the one semester.
[01:41:55]  They're still saying that yeah no no Pambondi, I believe.
[01:41:58]  No well, we'll talk about how the White House is using all this stuff and all these details.
[01:42:02]  But so he was arrested on september 12th.
[01:42:04]  I believe he's being charged today, probably before the this comes out.
[01:42:09]  Um, but really all like, right now still, the battle is over.
[01:42:20]  Like what his politics were?
[01:42:22]  Yeah, not even necessarily and I want to separate that not even necessarily his motivation.
[01:42:28]  It seems like everyone is like, well, he just wanted to kill Charlie Cook okay, but like, or ideological motivation, but like, what party can we pin this on and who can we go after for this and how can we use this to our political advantage?
[01:42:41]  Yeah, I mean, that is the big scrambling around here.
[01:42:44]  I do think that, like, it's a little, in my opinion, although, look, there's plenty of, who knows what's going to come out.

=== Political Scrabbling (14:49) ===

[01:42:51]  Who knows?
[01:42:52]  Maybe there's a secret Discord manifesto that we have no idea about.
[01:42:55]  There was text that just came out.
[01:42:57]  What did they say?
[01:42:58]  I think he said to his, he left a note to his partner, I guess.
[01:43:03]  Is that the one that the FBI was talking about?
[01:43:06]  Yeah, the one that they reproduce.
[01:43:08]  I had enough of his hatred.
[01:43:09]  Some hate can't be negotiated out.
[01:43:12]  That's what he says, why he did it.
[01:43:15]  Well, the note that he left said, I had the opportunity to take out Charlie Kirk and I'm going to take it.
[01:43:22]  And then later that's a text that he sent being like, after his partner's like, why did you do it?
[01:43:27]  And they're sort of focusing really right now on the main thing is that like the right is really honing in on is at first they're like, he's trans, and now it's like transgender partner.
[01:43:39]  And they're sort of, they're making it.
[01:43:40]  And this was, this was like, they were saying that the notices bulge oohoo.
[01:43:47]  It's tough for me to say this.
[01:43:49]  Notices bulge oohoo.
[01:43:51]  What's that written on the bullet was like a trans reference.
[01:43:54]  And I think it's more of like a furry thing, not that the two are.
[01:43:57]  I think people are trying to like divine way more coherent or legible like ideological like reasons for this than our present.
[01:44:09]  Like it's kind of like the, there's like, you know, there's always a little bit of a fight, explicit or not, between the right or the left.
[01:44:17]  Was Travis Bickle a left, like left wing or right wing?
[01:44:20]  And it's sort of just like, yes.
[01:44:22]  Yeah.
[01:44:22]  And like, to me, that is kind of America.
[01:44:25]  You know what I'm saying?
[01:44:26]  Like, I don't think, like, I don't, you know, this kid or whatever, I don't think anyone thinks legibly or coherently about anything really.
[01:44:34]  And this kind of left, right, whatever, that is a sort of spectrum that people are kind of constantly moving around.
[01:44:41]  And even more so now, because of the speed of social media demanding reactions.
[01:44:48]  Oh, yeah.
[01:44:49]  And those reactions then constantly shaping people's so-called quote-unquote politics as like news continually gets patchworked out through all these different like influence nodes.
[01:45:02]  And I feel like it's one of those reasons why we were talking about this earlier, the kind of like calling people hypocrites doesn't stick.
[01:45:11]  And it's not because it's not just because that's like slippery to like nail people to, but because people actually don't think of anything they're doing as ideologically inconsistent.
[01:45:24]  No.
[01:45:25]  All of their beliefs are constantly morphing and shaping along this current that is punctuated by all of these kind of all of these quote-unquote events or content pieces or whatever that shape and reshape the ways in which people are reacting to them.
[01:45:45]  Well, it's you know, I think I mentioned this show before, but that book, I don't know how to pronounce the second word, so forgive me, but Dementia Pracocks.
[01:45:52]  It's like the famous book about case studies, schizophrenics.
[01:45:57]  And it's, if you read like some of the, it's a great book, but if you read some of these, like this is basically indistinguishable from how many people that I see online interact with politics, you know, or like not even online.
[01:46:09]  Sometimes people you actually meet interact with politics.
[01:46:12]  It's this thing where it's like there will be, and there's always this also this rush after an event like this to this sort of race to narrativize it in the most convincing way, right?
[01:46:23]  And it's almost like willing it to happen in your specific way, because if you at least put out a more generalized set of, I don't want to call it facts, but like a story, right?
[01:46:38]  And whatever evidence does come out, you just does come out, you just conform it to that story.
[01:46:42]  You know what I mean?
[01:46:43]  And so like pretty much immediately before anything was known, all right-wing were like, this was a trans antifa person.
[01:46:52]  This also really piggybacks off of a narrative that has kind of been building on the right about transgender mass shooters, which is they're counting that one in, I don't remember where it was, sorry, but that recent really horrible one with the church.
[01:47:09]  You know what I mean?
[01:47:10]  That guy shot all those church kids because that guy, I guess, had at one point changed, like had been transgender, and then I guess detransitioned.
[01:47:18]  And there's been, I think, two more, one or two more.
[01:47:22]  Although I think one, I think that one was like a 764 person, which is, I mean, anyways, this is, we'll probably talk about the 764 stuff on another episode.
[01:47:32]  We have already talked about it, but we're going to probably talk about it again.
[01:47:35]  But there's this narrative building, and they're talking about after that shooting, you know, there was this meeting where unnamed officials reported, were like, is there a way we can ban transgender people from having guns?
[01:47:48]  You know what I mean?
[01:47:49]  So they sort of see this as this way, as this like political entry point that they can use.
[01:47:54]  And so I think people really leapt on this.
[01:47:56]  There's some context that would lead you to believe that.
[01:47:58]  I mean, listen, Charlie Kirk.
[01:48:00]  But even before that came out.
[01:48:01]  Yeah, I mean, that's, no, I know.
[01:48:03]  Even before that came out.
[01:48:04]  But like Charlie Kirk, also very well known for being sort of anti-transgender and like sort of sparring with whatever SJWs about it.
[01:48:13]  And I think that, I don't know, there was this like real buildup of narrativization on the right alongside this call to war.
[01:48:20]  So there was that one that was about the narrative about the shooter, but then there was also this other narrative that like Charlie was the one who would talk to you.
[01:48:27]  Charlie was the moderate.
[01:48:28]  Charlie was like the guy who would go and sit and have a debate.
[01:48:32]  The rest of us aren't like that.
[01:48:33]  And there was a lot of chest puffing that was sort of happening as well.
[01:48:37]  I mean, I do think that as people are trying to make sense of this, the kind of like, how can someone be so incoherently political and yet, I mean, well, we don't know, but we don't know what it seems like.
[01:48:53]  The context clues allow us to say this.
[01:48:57]  No big manifesto, no big, to carry out one of the like bigger political assassinations of our lifetime.
[01:49:05]  Yeah.
[01:49:05]  Like for there not to be a manifesto, for there not to be some big, I mean, it's a little, you know, not what people would expect from a political assassination, I would say.
[01:49:16]  And I think that like part of that is that the kind of like left-right coding of every moment is like really breaking down.
[01:49:24]  Yeah.
[01:49:24]  And you saw that in this like immediate aftermath with this like content war, this fight over, you know, who was responsible.
[01:49:35]  And it's just that like people aren't in organized politics.
[01:49:39]  Like everyone is kind of just posting.
[01:49:41]  Yes.
[01:49:42]  You know, and so I think like, you know, it's like, oh, okay, how can you have someone so well versed in this quasi-political language while also these like fluent in internet memes and culture and then also commit such a violent act?
[01:49:59]  And it's like, because that is literally mass internet culture now.
[01:50:04]  Yeah.
[01:50:04]  And I think that there's sort of like, I think people understand that to an extent.
[01:50:09]  And like, maybe there's some cynicism on like pretending like, you know, they're saying maybe this, they're saying like this guy is a member of antifun.
[01:50:16]  Like so far, the evidence has not shown me anything like that.
[01:50:21]  I think in reality, like a lot of people basically get their politics from memes and Instagram reels.
[01:50:26]  Right.
[01:50:26]  And there's all these like symbols in Discord groups.
[01:50:29]  In Discord.
[01:50:30]  And in video game groups.
[01:50:31]  But there's their social groups.
[01:50:33]  Or fucking like they get, or from like YouTube, four-hour YouTube videos about how Skyrim is socialist or whatever.
[01:50:39]  You know what I mean?
[01:50:40]  But like people get these, it's like all this phraseology and symbols, but like the symbols that symbolize nothing, right?
[01:50:47]  Like there's no organized movement that this person would represent.
[01:50:49]  Say this person is like a socialist or whatever or a communist.
[01:50:54]  Like they're not, it's like, I don't know how to describe it, but like there's no connection here to a communist movement or whatever.
[01:51:02]  Like there's no connection to any sort of real movement.
[01:51:05]  It's all kind of like this internet meme come to life.
[01:51:11]  I don't know how to describe it.
[01:51:13]  And the thing is, like this stuff is actually kind of everywhere if you look.
[01:51:16]  Like, and it's, it's even in more like serious places too.
[01:51:20]  There's all this just people sort of just talking without any actual like knowledge of kind of what they're saying and repeating slogans and these phrases kind of ad nauseum that they learn from memes and like that all this stuff is so much stuff.
[01:51:34]  It's just fucking mimetic now.
[01:51:36]  But I also think that that kind of goes hand in hand or is related to the like, I don't, not that I, I don't know.
[01:51:44]  I feel like for a lot of people, Charlie Kirk wasn't even just like a real person, but like a character in the world of internet.
[01:51:52]  He's an Instagram reel.
[01:51:54]  I mean, listen, he is, this is the Martin Luther King.
[01:51:56]  He's the Martin Luther King of Instagram reels.
[01:51:58]  But I mean that like in the sense that he's just this like internet character and so you're there.
[01:52:04]  It's like he's part of your story.
[01:52:06]  Yes.
[01:52:07]  Do you know what I mean?
[01:52:08]  And like, and so it's why everyone is kind of at the ready cheering or booing this like death of the internet character.
[01:52:20]  You know, like, like, oh, because he's not on the show anymore or something like that.
[01:52:24]  Yeah.
[01:52:24]  Like he got character that got killed off.
[01:52:27]  It's like not even like, and that's what even the response on the, like for the Republicans, like it's this bizarre, like, they're not even like mourning.
[01:52:34]  It's this weird, I don't know.
[01:52:37]  It's like they're, it's not the death of this person, but this kind of like, they're mourning this death of this character.
[01:52:44]  And everything is so performative to this level and like so over the top that it's almost like, like, I'm like, really?
[01:52:54]  Like, we're doing all of this?
[01:52:55]  It's, it's almost like, I don't know, it's all a bit, there's so much theater to every aspect of it.
[01:53:01]  You know what it really reminded me of, it's like, it felt like, because, yeah, I agree.
[01:53:05]  Like a lot of the right-wing response didn't really seem like the traditional way that you'd respond when someone who you know or like or respected was killed.
[01:53:13]  It seemed like the response when like, something big is happening on Twitter.
[01:53:16]  You know what I mean?
[01:53:17]  Like, the first thing I got to do is I got to go post.
[01:53:19]  It is an interesting reaction that a lot of people have is that like when you see a video of someone getting killed, the first thing you got to do is, I got to say something about it.
[01:53:28]  You know what I mean?
[01:53:29]  I'm going to say this, which people are probably going to mad at, but I don't care.
[01:53:33]  Here's some true not advice.
[01:53:34]  You don't got to say anything about it.
[01:53:35]  This is, it's genuinely.
[01:53:38]  There are a lot of, if you are out there and you have a job, you don't got to say anything about it.
[01:53:45]  It is.
[01:53:45]  The internet is not what you think and you're not going to win that battle all on your own, babe.
[01:53:49]  You are on enemy terrain.
[01:53:52]  And it is, it is, I do not think it is a good idea.
[01:53:54]  And like, I think it's not noble.
[01:53:57]  It's the, it's just noise.
[01:53:59]  It's just noise.
[01:54:00]  It's just noise.
[01:54:00]  I mean, that's, that's the whole thing.
[01:54:02]  It's like, whatever.
[01:54:04]  Yeah, Charlie Kirk is a guy with horrible, he's, you know, horrible opinions and like he's this big Trump figure or whatever.
[01:54:11]  I would say read the room and don't say something that is going to not be worth it to have said.
[01:54:20]  That's always good advice.
[01:54:21]  Just always read the room because yeah, you, I, listen, true and rule.
[01:54:24]  Read the room.
[01:54:26]  Read the room, buddy.
[01:54:27]  And like, I mean, personally, obviously, I've said this before.
[01:54:31]  If you ain't making money on the internet, there's very, very, very, very few reasons to be posting frequently on there.
[01:54:38]  But, but, but, nevertheless, I understand I cannot stop anyone from doing that.
[01:54:44]  I don't think it is worth it to jeopardize your job or safety or whatever by getting across a stupid joke.
[01:54:54]  And obviously, you might see people, you know, writing these sort of like screeds about how amazing Charlie Kirk was and it might piss you off or whatever.
[01:55:02]  Guess what?
[01:55:02]  All that shit on the everything on the phone is bad for you, right?
[01:55:05]  Everything you fucking read on there is going to, it should piss you off.
[01:55:09]  And so my advice would be to just be like, you know what?
[01:55:12]  That guy got shot.
[01:55:13]  I'm going to go.
[01:55:14]  I don't, that's not my business.
[01:55:15]  You know what I mean?
[01:55:16]  My view on this is, and my view on a lot of things is like, listen, people die every day.
[01:55:20]  Every death is a tragedy.
[01:55:21]  And I mourn every single one of them.
[01:55:24]  But, uh, I think that there's been an interesting sort of response from the right.
[01:55:31]  And I think they were really kind of gearing up for it.
[01:55:34]  And forgive me for this, but it has really felt like they've been fishing for a George Floyd moment.
[01:55:40]  And I think the back-to-back murders here are approximating something.
[01:55:48]  They're summoning that sort of into being, right?
[01:55:51]  Like they're able to kind of mold something with the material they've gotten from these two murders.
[01:55:56]  And people keep comparing this to like the assassination of like, I mean, people keep comparing.
[01:56:00]  It's like fucking Nancy Mace or whatever being like, this is like when MLK got shot or JFK got shot.
[01:56:05]  And like it is an assassination of a pretty prominent political figure, right?
[01:56:09]  But I think in many ways, it's really difficult to historicize a lot of the things that have kind of occurred in the past 10 years because the internet has thrown such a curveball into it.
[01:56:19]  That and just a lot of other things.
[01:56:21]  I would say the clearest, at least so far, analogous event that I can figure is the death of George Floyd.
[01:56:31]  You know that Kirk and George Floyd were born on the same day.
[01:56:34]  Oh, come be a breath.
[01:56:35]  Different years.
[01:56:36]  Give me a brain.
[01:56:37]  But same birthday.
[01:56:39]  God.
[01:56:39]  And of course, I'm sure without it.
[01:56:41]  It's not yours, babe.
[01:56:43]  Really?
[01:56:44]  Brace and AOC have the same birthday.
[01:56:46]  I know.
[01:56:46]  Well, that's because we're.
[01:56:47]  Twin flames.
[01:56:48]  No, we're brother, sister, husband, wife.
[01:56:50]  Same thing.
[01:56:51]  Yeah, brothers.
[01:56:52]  It's the same thing.
[01:56:53]  It's all one thing, baby, right?
[01:56:54]  We're all one race.
[01:56:55]  No, I mean, I do think, I know, I'm joke.
[01:56:57]  I mean, I'm not joking.
[01:56:58]  Apparently, they do have the same birthdays, which is very weird.
[01:57:03]  But I think that your point about the George Floyd thing, I mean, I do think that that it there's a lot of eerie similarities in terms of the response.
[01:57:14]  I mean, I think it's important to kind of mention that prior to this for the Trump admin, the situation was not great.
[01:57:25]  The economy is going downhill.
[01:57:26]  They're getting more questions about that.
[01:57:28]  There's all funny business with the Fed, but also all the numbers, and they're firing the numbers guy because they don't like the numbers.
[01:57:34]  None of this guy went out.
[01:57:36]  The Epstein stuff wasn't going away.
[01:57:38]  That was really bothering their family.
[01:57:39]  The birthday book came out.

=== JD Vance's Exile Explanation (04:40) ===

[01:57:40]  We did a fucking emergency episode.
[01:57:42]  I think that like the White House was losing a bit of a purpose, at least in the news, right?
[01:57:52]  And people were kind of drifting, questioning things.
[01:57:56]  So them, you know, they are clearly jumping on this and taking advantage of it from as many angles as they can.
[01:58:05]  So I think that explains some of the reactions in addition to the fact that, as we explained, Charlie Kirk was so fucking close to, I mean, really prominent people in the White House and then at all levels of the government.
[01:58:23]  Yeah.
[01:58:23]  And in all donor networks and all everything, right?
[01:58:27]  And so it's kind of like a both and situation, but the White House response to this has been insane.
[01:58:35]  It's been fucking crazy.
[01:58:38]  I mean, it is, I mean, I don't even know how like this episode's coming out day after tomorrow.
[01:58:46]  And I'm sure something even more insane will happen in the next, whatever, 36 hours.
[01:58:52]  The government, I'm going to say honestly, are acting as if there is a large conspiracy behind this.
[01:58:58]  In fact, they're sort of also lumping the arena murder in with that as well.
[01:59:03]  But they're saying like they did this.
[01:59:05]  Well, so yeah, that has been a long standing.
[01:59:09]  I mean, obviously Stephen Miller and JD Vance.
[01:59:13]  JD Vance had that really famous or like infamous quote that, no, I'm not going to even try to attempt to quote it because I'll get it wrong.
[01:59:22]  Where, you know, what did he say?
[01:59:25]  We need not like a, like, we need to like go through and really like not cleanse or audit, but it was like something about like left-wing groups and in colleges and universities.
[01:59:36]  Yeah.
[01:59:36]  I mean, he's, well, this has been a really good thing.
[01:59:37]  But it was like way before.
[01:59:39]  It was like when he was running for, it was like during his kind of, I would say, group chat podcast moment on the circuit.
[01:59:48]  But the kind of how do we go after and criminalize left-wing groups has been a project for the administration since coming in.
[01:59:59]  I mean, there's all that stuff in Project whatever it is.
[02:00:02]  2025.
[02:00:03]  Yeah.
[02:00:04]  Project Esther as well.
[02:00:05]  Yeah, about that.
[02:00:07]  And there's all these different kind of ways that they want to kind of do that.
[02:00:10]  It's unclear to me.
[02:00:11]  I'm like, what groups?
[02:00:13]  So they're going to have to create what these groups are to then criminalize them.
[02:00:18]  Yes.
[02:00:19]  That's one thing.
[02:00:19]  I mean, it seems like they're cohering a little bit around.
[02:00:22]  So this was Stephen Miller was kind of, I think, the first to come out and say this in this really kind of wild, I don't know, speech, but like Q ⁇ A that he did or interview that he did on Fox News where he was like, you know, the groups behind this, like, we will come after you.
[02:00:38]  We will arrest you.
[02:00:39]  You will be in cuffs and you will live in exile.
[02:00:42]  Which I'm like, in exile.
[02:00:44]  I know.
[02:00:45]  You know that Yarvin came out and was like, Stephen Miller is the only option for VP in 2028.
[02:00:53]  Of course.
[02:00:53]  Yeah.
[02:00:54]  Well, fucking, he's like, oh, cool.
[02:00:56]  Beast Jew.
[02:00:58]  I really like this guy.
[02:01:01]  Yeah.
[02:01:02]  I mean, Christ.
[02:01:03]  So it's, it's, I was like, I'm like, who are they talking about?
[02:01:07]  And like, top of the mind, I'm like, are they talking about like PSL or DSA or something?
[02:01:13]  Maybe.
[02:01:14]  I don't know.
[02:01:14]  Well, I don't know.
[02:01:15]  So I was shaking my head, but no one can see that.
[02:01:17]  The only names that have come out so far is at the end of, so JD Vance did the Charlie Kirk show podcast.
[02:01:25]  He hosted it yesterday.
[02:01:27]  From the White House.
[02:01:28]  It could have been from the Naval Observatory.
[02:01:30]  Was it from the White House?
[02:01:31]  I had read it was from the White House.
[02:01:33]  Well, whatever, from the government.
[02:01:34]  We've got a podcaster in the White House.
[02:01:36]  We got a podcaster in the White House.
[02:01:38]  Ladies and gentlemen, we made it.
[02:01:40]  That makes him, by the way, our coworker.
[02:01:43]  JD Vance has long been our coworker.
[02:01:45]  But only, we say that because we share politics.
[02:01:48]  Yeah, of course, because we're conservative.
[02:01:50]  Well, he named it too.
[02:01:52]  So he was, he sort of ends it talking.
[02:01:54]  He gets really angry.
[02:01:55]  He gives like a little JD Vance speech.
[02:01:57]  He's talking about some article in The Nation that came out about Charlie Kirk's politics, which I haven't read.
[02:02:03]  I think it's like, Charlie Kirk sucked or whatever.
[02:02:07]  And he was like- You just wrote it.
[02:02:09]  No, I know.
[02:02:10]  But he's like, he's like, their whole thing is like, actually, you guys are all taking Charlie Kirk quotes out of context.
[02:02:15]  I'm sure some have been taken out of context.
[02:02:16]  I don't think it's any secret to say that he is a very, very conservative guy.

=== Contextual Controversies (10:50) ===

[02:02:21]  And so probably he believed most of the things that people are attributing to him.
[02:02:26]  He's like, this magazine is funded by the Open Society Foundation.
[02:02:32]  So George Soros, or his son now, because George Soros is 95 years old.
[02:02:36]  So probably his son.
[02:02:38]  Wait, didn't his son just marry Huma Abedu?
[02:02:42]  Yes.
[02:02:43]  Which, of course, there's a video of her wearing a baby's face out there.
[02:02:46]  People certainly in the Republican Party believe that.
[02:02:50]  That's true.
[02:02:50]  And he says that the nation is funded by Open Society and by the Ford Foundation, and that both of those foundations have tax-free status.
[02:02:59]  Right.
[02:03:00]  And you, he's like talking to the audience, you are paying for that.
[02:03:03]  So I think the like the conservative version of events is them just going after the tax-free status of those organizations.
[02:03:15]  Totally.
[02:03:16]  But I think the like more radical version is like you've seen them kind of do this already.
[02:03:24]  There was a line in the New York Times that came out.
[02:03:31]  It said, on Monday, two senior administration officials who spoke anonymously to describe the internal planning said that cabinet secretaries and federal department heads were working to identify organizations that funded or supported violence against conservatives.
[02:03:43]  The goal, they said, was, and I kind of want to underline this, to categorize left-wing activity that led to violence as domestic terrorism, an escalation that critics say could lay the groundwork for crushing anti-conservative dissent more broadly.
[02:04:00]  So we've been talking about that for a while, them using this kind of terrorism statute to get around a bunch of stuff.
[02:04:08]  But also like what that means is that they would need to kind of literally create these organizations.
[02:04:14]  Yeah.
[02:04:15]  Because everyone's always talking about Antifa.
[02:04:18]  Yeah.
[02:04:18]  This is a great example.
[02:04:20]  Since 2020, Antifa has basically like in the popular imaginary become this like, I am a member organization.
[02:04:30]  Yes.
[02:04:31]  As opposed to like an extremely decentralized, very incoherent kind of collection of signal chats.
[02:04:40]  Yeah.
[02:04:40]  I mean, I think it's really difficult to call that an organization under any kind of like legal understanding that we would understand like a gang or we would understand a clear ideologically motivated organized group like as they have designated political groups in the past as domestic terrorists.
[02:05:04]  I mean, I'm thinking, think about like animal rights groups.
[02:05:06]  Oh, yeah, or the Christian identity movement or something like that.
[02:05:09]  You know what I mean?
[02:05:10]  Like something that had like meetings and memberships.
[02:05:12]  Totally.
[02:05:13]  You know, I'm not going to say that like no anti-fascist groups have something similar to this, but the thing is that that space is generally dominated by anarchists and the sort of decentralization is sort of a pillar of their beliefs.
[02:05:31]  And so oftentimes these things are not very organized in the traditional sense like that.
[02:05:36]  And they also probably understand that like if they did get organized in that sense, they would be pretty easy to bust up.
[02:05:40]  Totally, which is another way of also saying that like nothing is anti-fud, which means everything can be anti-fud.
[02:05:45]  Exactly.
[02:05:45]  I mean, well, listen, this is something that I think about because remember, again, we've covered this in the show, that fucking leaked DHS report saying that I was a possible conduit for foreign funding to fucking Antifa.
[02:05:59]  Which the Briece is not an anarchist.
[02:06:01]  First of all, I'm not an anarchist, but second of all.
[02:06:04]  He's a conservative.
[02:06:05]  And I've never actually said this on the show before.
[02:06:08]  I punched an antifoot guy about four years ago or five years ago in Oakland at a protest.
[02:06:15]  Because you're anti-woke.
[02:06:16]  No, because he was being really mean to an old guy.
[02:06:18]  I don't know if he was like, you know, I don't know what his guy's politics were, but he was like a black block guy.
[02:06:22]  He fucking pushed an old guy who wouldn't get out of his way because he was like old.
[02:06:25]  And I punched him.
[02:06:26]  So I fought antifo because I'm conservative.
[02:06:30]  But like that, this is like, this is, it's so broad that like I am, and I'm not a street fight guy.
[02:06:34]  Listen, I'm a man.
[02:06:35]  Not only am I a conservative, but I'm a compassionate Christian and anti-fighting conservative because I'm disabled.
[02:06:45]  You are a man of peace.
[02:06:46]  I'm a man of peace and I'm in a wheelchair.
[02:06:48]  Not yet.
[02:06:49]  No, but they don't know that.
[02:06:50]  It's an audio podcast.
[02:06:51]  So I couldn't do any of this stuff regardless.
[02:06:54]  They are, it's, I do agree.
[02:06:56]  I think that there is this like, I think, I, well, first of all, I think that a lot of conservatives literally do think that Antifa is like a, I don't know, it's like the DSA or something.
[02:07:05]  No, but that's what I'm saying.
[02:07:06]  But that has been, there's been a concerted effort to create that.
[02:07:10]  And it has, because they have laid the groundwork in the media and then throughout all of their policy channels, it can't, it, you can see them how that they're trying to then translate that into something legal.
[02:07:25]  And yeah, yeah, exactly.
[02:07:28]  I mean, one, one, I just had this crazy shock of memory.
[02:07:31]  Actually, at that cringe compilation 2019 DSA convention, I was one of the people leading the charge to oppose a measure to have an anti-fascist action working group or whatever because people want to start.
[02:07:46]  So you've got it in paper.
[02:07:48]  So I was like, no, well, I don't know.
[02:07:49]  You got it in writing.
[02:07:50]  But I think I spoke against it.
[02:07:52]  I was like, this is a bad idea and will lead to a lot of people getting arrested with zero good things coming out of it.
[02:07:58]  But this is what I want to say.
[02:07:59]  Again, you're living your truth, which is true and on rule, get it in writing.
[02:08:04]  How can I be, yeah, get it in writing, but also how can I be anti-fascist?
[02:08:06]  I'm apolitical, a conservative.
[02:08:10]  I'm a political conservative.
[02:08:12]  I want to go back real quick to what you were saying about the George Floyd thing.
[02:08:16]  Yeah.
[02:08:16]  Because another big response that we need to mention is that, and this is from the fucking horse's mouth, from JD Vance himself, is that it is now everyone's duty to get people who celebrated Charlie Kirk's death fired from their jobs.
[02:08:37]  So this is the, I mean, it's, I almost feel stupid talking about it.
[02:08:43]  It does.
[02:08:44]  Have to mention it.
[02:08:45]  It's like cancel culture.
[02:08:47]  You know what I mean?
[02:08:48]  So it's, I just feel stupid talking about it in whatever iteration.
[02:08:51]  I don't know why that is.
[02:08:52]  No, I mean, the only way I want to talk about it is that because this is a funhouse mirror of what we just experienced during the mud in Virginia, so that's what I'm saying.
[02:09:02]  It's like it's so 2020 in so many ways that it's like it's after now, like if you, if you made a joke or you said anything about Charlie Kirk's death that wasn't laudatory, they will put you on a website called CharlieKirksmurderers.com, which is fucking grieved.
[02:09:23]  Have you seen that?
[02:09:24]  No.
[02:09:25]  They think they had to change it because I think there's probably some legal problems with that.
[02:09:31]  But there was a website that is, and I think they rebranded it, but it's a list of, I think they say it's up to 30,000 people now with their social media screenshots, maybe their names.
[02:09:40]  I think their names, and whatever tweets about Charlie Kirk that they made.
[02:09:46]  And like half of them are like nothing.
[02:09:49]  I mean, I've only briefly looked at it.
[02:09:51]  But it is this like mass wave of cancellations.
[02:09:55]  And then there's also been various people, including Rudy Giuliani, who have been calling employers to get people fired.
[02:10:01]  I mean, this was the first like- Can you imagine fucking Rudy Giuliani calling your boss and getting you fired?
[02:10:06]  So drunk, be like, hey, this wasted old man, because he's currently in a wheelchair.
[02:10:12]  This wasted old man who just got a drunk driving accident while a prostitute was in there.
[02:10:16]  But that's what people say.
[02:10:17]  I don't believe that.
[02:10:19]  Is calling me, telling me to fire you.
[02:10:22]  Well, guess what?
[02:10:23]  I called the gay store and they told me we were the manager.
[02:10:26]  In fact, you picked up the phone.
[02:10:30]  But anyways, who said that conservatives can't?
[02:10:34]  But it's, I mean, I think it's getting better at humor.
[02:10:37]  I know, I mean, that's the conservative humor for me.
[02:10:39]  You guys liking it?
[02:10:41]  But, but, yeah, it is, it is sort of very like, but this is what I'm saying when it's like, it's not even that it's like they're, you know, oh, how, well, you say you're against the camera.
[02:10:52]  But you can't remember you and you yourself are canceling.
[02:10:56]  Like, it's not even that.
[02:10:56]  It's like, I genuinely think that they believe this is ideologically consistent because it is as they are forming their politics online.
[02:11:05]  You know what I'm saying?
[02:11:06]  Like, I do think that they wouldn't see this as, well, you guys, you know, you, you didn't like this when the left did it, but now the right is doing it because it's like, no, this is such a, this is so different.
[02:11:22]  And I don't know how else to say, like, it's because all of these, like, your views on all of these issues get shaped as these events are unfolding.
[02:11:32]  Yeah.
[02:11:33]  Right.
[02:11:34]  And this is another way of saying again, like, this, this stuff is not ideologically legible in any kind of way.
[02:11:43]  Like politics in America just don't exist like that now.
[02:11:46]  I mean, this is the same milieu that both like this shooter and, you know, frankly, the shooter, there was another school shooting that day that was that like neo-Nazi.
[02:11:55]  I guess they're saying neo-Nazi school shooter in Colorado.
[02:11:59]  But it's like, I think it's all of this is coming out of the same kind of, I don't know, like online, schizophrenic, frantic, fast-paced.
[02:12:11]  Trying to look for legibility in that is just a fool's errand.
[02:12:14]  Like it's obviously going to be incoherent and inconsistent.
[02:12:17]  And people are saying, you know, and it's such a, again, we think calling out hypocrisy is just, it doesn't, it's almost entirely useless most of the time.
[02:12:27]  But especially in this case, because nobody ever was like, you know, don't cancel culture is bad.
[02:12:32]  Everyone, the implicit thing when people said that cancer culture is bad when it doesn't benefit me, right?
[02:12:36]  Which is actually, you can append that to anything that basically people say related to politics.
[02:12:42]  And it's, it's, it just is what it is.
[02:12:45]  That just is the culture.
[02:12:47]  I think there's also just an element of, I don't know what here.
[02:12:53]  Like there is this, this, I think, explicit in some ways, trying to do a white BLM thing where like whites are under attack from like, you know, as Charlie Kirk said, roving gangs of feral blacks on the street.
[02:13:09]  And we have to have Trump.

=== American Culture's Trump Narrative (03:09) ===

[02:13:11]  I mean, this plays into like Trump's whole thing of like sending the army or whatever, the National Guard into various cities, DEA, ATF, and stuff like that.
[02:13:19]  And so you almost see this like reversal from like 2020, this sort of mass movement against the police.
[02:13:25]  And then you sort of see that now this mass movement for like really, you know, aggressive federal policing of metropolises.
[02:13:35]  Right.
[02:13:35]  And I don't think any of this is a coincidence, right?
[02:13:37]  These are inextricably linked.
[02:13:38]  Yeah.
[02:13:39]  Yeah, absolutely.
[02:13:40]  You know, I want to say, too, there's a few things that the government has done that have just been astounding.
[02:13:44]  One is ordering flags at half-mast.
[02:13:47]  And not just in other countries doing this as well, by the way.
[02:13:50]  No.
[02:13:51]  And other places around the world doing this as well.
[02:13:54]  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[02:13:57]  The all-white community in South Africa.
[02:14:00]  I mean, Heg Seth, there was a video kind of right after it happened of Hagseth leading a bunch of troops in prayer for Charlie Kirk, which I'm like, this is, this seems strange.
[02:14:11]  Tash Patel said, what?
[02:14:15]  I'll see you in Valhalla.
[02:14:17]  Oh, God.
[02:14:17]  No, dude, it's even worse than that.
[02:14:19]  He's like, I can't remember what exactly what he says, but it's like, we'll take it from here, Charlie.
[02:14:25]  We have the watch.
[02:14:26]  See you in Valhalla, brother.
[02:14:28]  It's like, dude.
[02:14:30]  Man, if you said that about me after I died, I would be so.
[02:14:34]  We have the watch?
[02:14:37]  What are you like, watch of what?
[02:14:39]  Instagram reels?
[02:14:41]  What are you talking?
[02:14:42]  Valhalla!
[02:14:44]  It's so, I mean, it's, it's terrible.
[02:14:48]  It's terrible.
[02:14:50]  But the cast of characters in this administration is so on the nose American.
[02:14:59]  Like, are these like cartoon characters of American culture to such a degree that I almost like, I don't even know how to talk about it.
[02:15:09]  I'm almost in awe of it.
[02:15:11]  Right.
[02:15:11]  Like, they are all such products of the most disturbing parts of mass American culture, whether that's like Hegseth in the, you know,
[02:15:25]  Global War on Terror content ecosystem or like Kash Patel's total, like, I don't know, internet brain poisoning from QAnon or and then the way they talk about these things in this Marvel language that is, but it's like, no, this isn't, this isn't soy Marvel.
[02:15:47]  This is fucking based Marvel.
[02:15:49]  Like the way they talk about this shit, which is so American and so like mass American culture.
[02:15:56]  Like it, it is so perfect and it could only be Trump and we could only produce this.
[02:16:02]  And it's what makes me really proud to be an American.
[02:16:04]  I see the Trump regime as this sort of like distant Jupiterian figure of Trump and his feuding court of essentially like online content creators and podcasters.

=== Pam Bondi's Dilemma (08:37) ===

[02:16:20]  I watched a interview that Pam Bondi gave to Stephen Miller's wife on Stephen Miller's wife's podcast, which by the way, had 300 views 12 hours after being posted.
[02:16:35]  Those are Democrat numbers.
[02:16:36]  No, that's tough.
[02:16:39]  And she's talking about like, oh, we're actually going to, you know, we're going to absolutely target hate speech after this, which is like awesome.
[02:16:47]  That's not even what she said.
[02:16:48]  She went further than that.
[02:16:50]  Oh, no, she repeated it several times.
[02:16:51]  She said that it was like basically that it wasn't protected speech inciting violence, which by the way, just to be clear, it is protected speech.
[02:17:00]  Yes.
[02:17:01]  There's a very narrow carve out that is like literally if you're like, come with me, let's burn this bank.
[02:17:09]  And then you burn the bank with a bunch of groups.
[02:17:11]  That's not protected speech.
[02:17:13]  But calling for violent, I mean, even calling for violence against the government is protected speech because there was that there was the big landmark case was about a fucking KKK guy who was calling for revenge on the government for like being anti-white.
[02:17:28]  I mean, she's going all the way back around here.
[02:17:31]  It's so crazy to me that these things are like essentially like formulated.
[02:17:35]  You can see her kind of like thinking in real time as she's being interviewed on this podcast, this whatever, podcast by fucking Stephen Miller's ambiguously racialed wife, because they say she's Jewish, but she looks, it could be anything.
[02:17:48]  I'm not saying it.
[02:17:49]  America's a melting pot.
[02:17:50]  America's a melting pot.
[02:17:51]  And I think we're seeing that in Mrs. Miller.
[02:17:54]  But Pam Bondi is just like formulating her, like, there's this really maybe consequential policy decisions in real time.
[02:18:01]  Yes.
[02:18:02]  As this like podcast guest.
[02:18:05]  And it's like, and I say this is someone who does a podcast.
[02:18:08]  Don't do that.
[02:18:10]  Well, I think that this administration is doing that on so many different levels.
[02:18:13]  Like they are reacting and creating policy and making consequential statements based on the kind of like speed of social media, like how all of this like news on social media, the feed, basically.
[02:18:32]  I don't know how else to call it.
[02:18:33]  Like everything is being decided and moved on at the speed of like Twitter, basically.
[02:18:40]  Exactly.
[02:18:41]  So Pam Bondi during this fucking interview is like, did you see this?
[02:18:44]  I don't know who brings it up actually, but someone in the interview, either her or Katie, mentions some video that went viral right-wing Twitter about two Office Depot employees, a couple of wokeys refusing to print Charlie Kirk posters for a memorial and like, you know, somebody coming in with a camera and being like, blah, blah, blah, blah.
[02:19:04]  And they're like, well, we're investigating Office.
[02:19:06]  Like those employees have been fired, but we're not going to stop there.
[02:19:08]  We're going to investigate Office Depot.
[02:19:09]  And it's like, what the fuck?
[02:19:11]  You're the fucking attorney general of the United States.
[02:19:13]  You don't investigate Office Depot for what?
[02:19:15]  Bias against conservatives?
[02:19:17]  This is another thing that kind of relates it to like their version of George F. The CEO of Office Depot wouldn't be immediately in Trump's office over that.
[02:19:25]  Well, so here's, here's the thing that blows my mind here.
[02:19:28]  Oh, there's two things.
[02:19:29]  One, I think this is kind of the connection to like this is they're making this their Floyd moment is that they view conservatives as a protected minority, right?
[02:19:38]  Or as a minority that is being, well, I guess they would say majority, but whatever, as this, this part of the country that's being picked on by everybody else.
[02:19:45]  But I'm thinking now, it's like the scene has changed so much from like six, seven years ago, right?
[02:19:52]  Or five years ago.
[02:19:53]  You know, you had the liberal media or whatever and all these institutions sort of dominated by liberals now.
[02:20:01]  In the past year, now you have this huge consolidation of media under the Ellisons, right?
[02:20:07]  We were giving Barry Wise 250 million.
[02:20:09]  You see that there's a lot of people.
[02:20:10]  But it's not just that.
[02:20:11]  It's now that they're buying up and consolidating all of these media properties.
[02:20:16]  Exactly.
[02:20:16]  Yes.
[02:20:17]  exactly um you have the x the big communications platform not only dominated by conservatives but like explicitly tweaked algorithm to favor that owned by somebody who is just a tweet is like multiple ways Literally, yes, Elon Musk, and you know, rumored to be on some drugs.
[02:20:39]  You have a very aggressive, muscular White House and DOJ who are specifically kind of going after viral shit.
[02:20:50]  I'm just like, well, I'm like, I'm like, you guys seem to kind of, and also you have the bending of the knee of all of these universities and all of these big law firms to trumpet.
[02:21:01]  Not to mention just like, sorry, like the soft cultural movement.
[02:21:05]  Yes.
[02:21:05]  Like completely dominant, ascendant.
[02:21:09]  I think we can just stop saying ascend it.
[02:21:10]  Like just dominant.
[02:21:11]  Dominant.
[02:21:11]  It is ascend it.
[02:21:12]  It is dominant.
[02:21:13]  It is.
[02:21:14]  I think it's clear right now.
[02:21:16]  This is a very conservative moment.
[02:21:18]  Yeah.
[02:21:18]  Like this is the big, this is like polar opposite from wokies.
[02:21:21]  Yeah.
[02:21:23]  It's crazy to me.
[02:21:24]  And so you know, that means that soon they're just going to start arresting people for like calling Sidney Sweeney mid.
[02:21:30]  Yeah.
[02:21:31]  Well, but that's, that's one of the big right-wing viral, you know, rage bait posts that they make.
[02:21:36]  That's what I'm saying.
[02:21:36]  Oh, yeah.
[02:21:37]  I know they'll be, it'll sort of be their like great.
[02:21:39]  Sam Bonnie get to work.
[02:21:40]  I know.
[02:21:41]  It's just, it's so, and like the fucking, I think about these like football stadiums who like, or like football teams, like five years ago, six years ago, whatever, had these like tributes to Floyd.
[02:21:50]  And then now they're doing these moments of silence.
[02:21:53]  Well, it used to be that literally at the end of every end zone, there was a statement saying like end racism.
[02:22:00]  You're joking.
[02:22:00]  Whatever.
[02:22:01]  I'm not joking.
[02:22:02]  This is what you miss when you miss, you know.
[02:22:05]  You have to run towards something that says end racism.
[02:22:09]  Well, it's quite slim, I'll say.
[02:22:13]  So you have the end, you know, the end zone and you got the, you know, the team's logo or whatever.
[02:22:17]  And then there was like a band behind it that was sort of like a, almost like a Chiron or something that was like, we stand together or like, end racism.
[02:22:27]  You know, and the NBA had all of their, during the bubble, they had all of their kind of novelty jerseys that wear all of the slogans the players could pick out.
[02:22:37]  And it was like their way of saying something.
[02:22:39]  Anyway, that doesn't exist anymore.
[02:22:40]  Jesus, I know.
[02:22:41]  It's just, it's the best one was the, was when this is like school choice or something.
[02:22:47]  That one really made me laugh.
[02:22:48]  I mean, it's such a, it's such a huge cultural turn.
[02:22:51]  And obviously a lot of conservatives are refusing to believe that.
[02:22:55]  But on the flip side of a lot of liberals are still acting like they're in charge.
[02:22:59]  Yeah.
[02:23:00]  And you got to understand you're not in charge anymore.
[02:23:03]  They are.
[02:23:03]  They won.
[02:23:04]  You lost the war.
[02:23:06]  And so I think people really have to reckon with that.
[02:23:10]  I don't know.
[02:23:11]  I think this is going to be, I'm, you know, I'm not, listen, I want to say this.
[02:23:15]  I'm conservative.
[02:23:16]  I pay my taxes.
[02:23:17]  In fact, I only, not only I overpay my taxes.
[02:23:20]  I'm one of those guys who donates a little bit to the IRS on the side.
[02:23:22]  I give a tip.
[02:23:23]  I hit 15%, 13%.
[02:23:25]  Give them a little walking around.
[02:23:27]  Yeah.
[02:23:27]  Give a little walking around.
[02:23:28]  Yeah.
[02:23:28]  Give the age because I pay in person.
[02:23:31]  I always put a crisp 20 in the agent's blouse.
[02:23:34]  Buy yourself something nice.
[02:23:35]  Yeah.
[02:23:36]  Maybe a little bit of perfume, tiny bottles.
[02:23:40]  Yeah, I think this is a moment that a lot of people are going to freak out.
[02:23:43]  And I think the freak out is probably going to continue.
[02:23:45]  And I think the freak out is going to harden.
[02:23:47]  We'll see what comes up.
[02:23:49]  We literally, you kind of just have to pray that the government is as incompetent as it shows and that Kash Patel and Pamela.
[02:23:55]  Well, you know, that's not a bad bet.
[02:23:57]  It's not a bad bet.
[02:23:58]  It's not a bad bet.
[02:23:59]  From everything we've seen, I think also, yeah, people want the government across the spectrum, people want the government to be more efficient and centralized than it is.
[02:24:10]  That being said, I wouldn't bet against Stephen Miller.
[02:24:14]  No, I know.
[02:24:15]  He's the one who's like, he's sharp.
[02:24:17]  Like, he is dedicated.
[02:24:18]  He's sharp.
[02:24:19]  He is not.
[02:24:20]  He's greased up and ready to go.
[02:24:21]  Oh, my God.
[02:24:22]  Could you imagine?
[02:24:23]  You know what he reminds me of?
[02:24:24]  And I've said this before on the show, but I saw a video when I was very young that made quite an impression on me of a bald man's entire head being inserted into the vagina of a young man.
[02:24:34]  Then a website that, of course, was shown to me in computer class.
[02:24:37]  And I remember the bald head.
[02:24:39]  I don't remember the vagina whatsoever, but I remember the bald head very clearly.
[02:24:42]  And so whenever I see something.
[02:24:43]  Did it remind you of a baby?
[02:24:45]  No, it didn't.
[02:24:46]  First of all, I was born with a full head of hair.
[02:24:49]  But you didn't see that.
[02:24:50]  Yes, I did.
[02:24:51]  They showed me a mirror, first of all, because it said, who's the most handsome baby in the ward?
[02:24:55]  And I said, it's me because I could talk.

=== Sharp But Greased Up (01:42) ===

[02:24:58]  I'm just trying to locate some of the.
[02:25:00]  It's not, dude, no, you never will.
[02:25:02]  You never will.
[02:25:03]  I just find.
[02:25:04]  Did you say that?
[02:25:05]  You are also the man who said I would never get your birth time.
[02:25:09]  Cool.
[02:25:10]  So you're kicking.
[02:25:11]  This is honestly, wow, after my friend gets killed.
[02:25:17]  Robert.
[02:25:17]  Coworker.
[02:25:18]  I was talking about Redford.
[02:25:20]  Also your co-worker.
[02:25:21]  Also my coworker.
[02:25:21]  You were in the media.
[02:25:22]  Handsome men.
[02:25:23]  Yeah.
[02:25:24]  You know what?
[02:25:24]  Thank you very much.
[02:25:27]  I don't know.
[02:25:28]  You know what?
[02:25:30]  This is my advice.
[02:25:32]  Just stay cool.
[02:25:34]  You know what I'm saying?
[02:25:35]  Stay cool.
[02:25:37]  And of course, you know what?
[02:25:39]  We love everybody.
[02:25:40]  We love everybody.
[02:25:43]  We're conservative.
[02:25:44]  We're conservative.
[02:25:44]  So there's some people we don't love.
[02:25:45]  So we don't love some people so much.
[02:25:47]  But we try to show them compassion because we're conservatives.
[02:25:51]  Dude, they're talking about if you joke about Charlie's death, you can get your visa revoked.
[02:25:57]  Oh, so crazy.
[02:25:59]  Yeah, I'm aware.
[02:26:00]  Believe me.
[02:26:00]  It's so fucking crazy.
[02:26:03]  Yeah, the stuff that they are doing with visas and green cards is a little unnerving.
[02:26:09]  Yeah.
[02:26:11]  And there's a lot of legal room there.
[02:26:14]  All right.
[02:26:14]  Well, let's wrap this up.
[02:26:15]  I'm Bryce.
[02:26:16]  I'm Liz.
[02:26:16]  I'm producer Young Chomsky.
[02:26:18]  And this has been Trunon.
[02:26:19]  We'll see you next time.
[02:26:21]  Bye-bye.
[02:26:40]  Come on.