Speaker 1: From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
Speaker 1: riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
Speaker 1: learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A
Speaker 1: production of Iheartrading.
Speaker 2: Hello, and welcome back to the show. My name is NOL.
Speaker 3: Our colleague Matt is away but will be returning soon.
Speaker 3: They called me Ben. We're joined as always with our
Speaker 3: super producer Paul Mission Control Deckant. Most importantly, you are you.
Speaker 3: You are here. That makes this the stuff they don't
Speaker 3: want you to know. This is breaking news. We have
Speaker 3: moved our regularly scheduled programming as we record this evening NOL.
Speaker 3: It is the evening of July fifteenth, twenty twenty four.
Speaker 3: The news continues to rock the United States and the
Speaker 3: world at large. An assassination attempt on Donald J. Trump,
Speaker 3: a former US president and current Republican candidate for the
Speaker 3: next presidential election.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: I think we all probably experienced it very similarly, likely
Speaker 4: in the form of a text from a friend or
Speaker 4: a casual you know viewing of of some coverage that
Speaker 4: then was interrupted. Whatever network is is your you know
Speaker 4: network of choice for news.
Speaker 2: We all found out about.
Speaker 4: It pretty quickly, and it's historic events, no matter how
Speaker 4: you crack it, whichever side you fall on. I mean like,
Speaker 4: this is a big deal, and the question now becomes
Speaker 4: what happens next?
Speaker 2: And also what happened?
Speaker 3: Yeah, well said, Let's begin with a disclaimer. At this moment,
Speaker 3: the public has relatively little factual information, and in the
Speaker 3: absence of transparency and factual information, speculation thrives. So in
Speaker 3: tonight's episode, we're exploring what happened, what we know for
Speaker 3: sure right now, and why so many people already seem
Speaker 3: to disagree on the big picture. We don't have all
Speaker 3: the answers. Our understanding of the situation will continue to
Speaker 3: evolve as new details emerge. When you're hearing this now,
Speaker 3: it is published on July seventeenth, Wednesday, which means that
Speaker 3: Donald Trump has already made an appearance at the Republican
Speaker 3: National Convention. But no matter what happens, no matter how
Speaker 3: our understanding of this situation evolves, the most important thing
Speaker 3: is that we are here with you, and we are
Speaker 3: immensely grateful that you, fellow conspiracy realist, have joined us
Speaker 3: this evening.
Speaker 4: And you know we're all in the same boat here.
Speaker 4: I mean, Ben, I know you immediately as you do
Speaker 4: went deep as much as humanly possible. You have contacts
Speaker 4: and folks that have skin in the game, that have
Speaker 4: experience in this world, and you know I do too,
Speaker 4: to a much lesser degree. But we don't have much
Speaker 4: more information than you, and we're not here to speculate
Speaker 4: per se. We're here to talk about what is being
Speaker 4: speculated about and to give you the facts as we
Speaker 4: know them. So we're not here to freak anybody out
Speaker 4: or anything along those lines. We're here to kind of
Speaker 4: like experience this together and learn about this together and
Speaker 4: just try to cool it a little bit.
Speaker 3: And we're grateful that you're here. And with that, let's
Speaker 3: dive in. Here are the facts. On July thirteenth, twenty
Speaker 3: twenty four, former US president current Republican presidential candidate Donald J. Trump,
Speaker 3: whom you may have heard of, previously spoke at a
Speaker 3: rally held at a place called the Butler Farm Showgrounds
Speaker 3: near the town of Butler, Pennsylvania. And at first this
Speaker 3: was like a regular rally, and this is Philadelphia adjacent.
Speaker 4: It's sort of like a I guess what you might
Speaker 4: call a bedroom community or like a outer suburb.
Speaker 2: Because if you've been to the state of Pennsylvania.
Speaker 4: You know, you go from urban to farmland pretty quickly,
Speaker 4: and this is somewhere between those two worlds, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Yeah.
Speaker 3: People gathered from across the area and from across all
Speaker 3: corners of the United States candidly to hear Donald Trump speak.
Speaker 3: This is totally in line and with previous rallies and
Speaker 3: not unusual. The next election here in the US war
Speaker 3: president is just a few months away, so it's quite
Speaker 3: common for candidates from any party to make the rounds.
Speaker 3: And what they're usually doing is they're attempting to garner support.
Speaker 3: They're also attempting to get more funding as ever, and
Speaker 3: they're hopefully hearing on the ground concerns from prospective voters.
Speaker 3: This is not unusual at this point. It's also not
Speaker 3: unusual for these folks to be protected by multiple law
Speaker 3: enforcement agencies, federal and local.
Speaker 4: And given you know, Joe Biden his recent performance in
Speaker 4: the presidential debate, which seems to have caused a lot
Speaker 4: of folks in the Democratic Party to lose faith in
Speaker 4: him significantly in terms of his ability to perform and
Speaker 4: carry out you know, all the tasks and pressures and
Speaker 4: everything that goes along with being the president. You know,
Speaker 4: he did a bad performance and it really kind of
Speaker 4: took over the news cycles. So while I wouldn't say
Speaker 4: Trump is in victory lap mode exactly, yet it does
Speaker 4: feel like the pressure from his side has been lowered
Speaker 4: a little bit in terms of, like, you know, the stakes,
Speaker 4: and he's not really having to defend himself, even against
Speaker 4: his recent felony convictions, not even something he's having to
Speaker 4: go out there and make the rounds to defend because
Speaker 4: it's not being discussed because of the fact that Joe
Speaker 4: Biden really did come off as having some evidence of
Speaker 4: cognitive decline.
Speaker 3: Right, evidence of cognitive decline. And you know, the thing
Speaker 3: is the United States Secret Service or the USSS as
Speaker 3: you would say in acronym land, their job is a
Speaker 3: political right. They're technically under the Treasury Department, and they're
Speaker 3: tasked with protecting people like this. The ideology or the
Speaker 3: political alignment should not matter. And whenever you see a
Speaker 3: rally of this magnitude, the Secret Service is the most
Speaker 3: visible group running protection, but there are many, many, many
Speaker 3: more agencies involved, including local law enforcement, and that may
Speaker 3: indeed be a problem. I don't think a lot of
Speaker 3: people realize just how much planning goes into these appearances
Speaker 3: way before the rallies.
Speaker 4: It would have to even if you're just a candidate,
Speaker 4: a popular candidate. This is someone who's a former president.
Speaker 4: Correct me if I'm wrong, Ben, If you've been the
Speaker 4: president before, aren't you.
Speaker 2: Entitled to Secret Service detail for life?
Speaker 3: Yes? Yeh, have to be.
Speaker 2: It would have to be.
Speaker 3: It's not even like a it's not even like a
Speaker 3: cool side benefit. It's a national security issue for the
Speaker 3: rest of your life. The idea of establishing security in
Speaker 3: this case, without going to into the weeds, this means
Speaker 3: the basic stuff establishing a perimeter, which we'll talk about,
Speaker 3: scoping out individual duties which we'll talk about, positioning everybody visible.
Speaker 3: High ground security like scoping getting your getting your playing
Speaker 3: clothes in there amid the crowd, and addressing what we
Speaker 3: will call environment or event specific concerns. As the FBI,
Speaker 3: for instance, clocked an actionable threat against this candidate, right,
Speaker 3: how do we nip this in the butt? Ald to say,
Speaker 3: by the time the protectee arrives the person who's being protected,
Speaker 3: the area has been massively transformed in ways that the
Speaker 3: average civilian, the average member of the public might not
Speaker 3: notice well and if.
Speaker 4: I'm not mistaken, then if there is an actionable threat,
Speaker 4: isn't it still up to the individual whether or not
Speaker 4: to carry out the event? Like can secret service like
Speaker 4: supersede that person's own will and say, no, it's too
Speaker 4: great a threat, we have to cancel. Because I've certainly seen,
Speaker 4: you know, instances where maybe there's a threat but the
Speaker 4: person says it's too important, We're gonna I've got to
Speaker 4: go through with this. Just be on the lookout. And
Speaker 4: maybe I'm just thinking too much about like film world,
Speaker 4: but can they You can't really force somebody to not
Speaker 4: do what they want to do. Your job is just
Speaker 4: to protect them despite what they want to do. Sometimes,
Speaker 4: to my understanding, the the way the decision making process
Speaker 4: occurs is such that they're these two like these two.
Speaker 3: Sides of an argument. If you wanted potus or a
Speaker 3: candidate to do something and security said they could not,
Speaker 3: it usually gets resolved before it would ever get to
Speaker 3: that level of longer heads, but it is perhaps possible.
Speaker 3: The thing is, we have to realize there's an entire
Speaker 3: industry built around keeping these people alive. Trump's and it
Speaker 3: went wrong. It went wrong this weekend Trump's Trump's rally
Speaker 3: for a lot of People's kind of an all day
Speaker 3: event right there. You tailgating like a concert. You know,
Speaker 3: people are meeting old friends, people are buying merch and
Speaker 3: snacks and swagged they're.
Speaker 4: Getting in the parking lot. You know, it's like a
Speaker 4: fish show. I'm kidding that part's not true. But there
Speaker 4: is a festivally. You know it's happening. It absolutely is well.
Speaker 3: Because you know, if you're winning hearts and minds, you
Speaker 3: want people to feel galvanized and energized. So by the
Speaker 3: time Trump hits the stage at approximately six h three PM,
Speaker 3: the crowd is raucous, the energy is electric. Pennsylvania is
Speaker 3: technically what we will call a swing state, but the
Speaker 3: area around Butler, Pennsylvania is has long been considered and
Speaker 3: self described as a stronghold of support for the Trump
Speaker 3: campaign in particular. But his speech, No, his speech is
Speaker 3: interrupted just a few minutes in. It's around six to
Speaker 3: eleven PM when we hear the gun shots, six to
Speaker 3: eight gun shots from a from someone who's later identified
Speaker 3: as a twenty year old man named Thomas Matthew Crooks.
Speaker 3: These were shots at Trump and into the crowd using
Speaker 3: what the News described as an AR fifteen style rifle,
Speaker 3: So like a five point five six semi auto.
Speaker 4: Which has range, right, I mean yeah, especially is it
Speaker 4: like a proper sniper sniper rifle? Is there like something
Speaker 4: that's more high velocity that could hit a target from
Speaker 4: farther away than we're talking here that maybe the average
Speaker 4: Joe couldn't get it is along those lines, or it's
Speaker 4: a little less than that.
Speaker 3: There are other there are other armaments that could shoot
Speaker 3: further that would be more specifically designed for this. We
Speaker 3: know that Crooks was positioned on the roof of a
Speaker 3: building that was about four hundred ish feet north of
Speaker 3: the rally stage where Trump was speaking. And you know,
Speaker 3: you and I both and Paul and Mat as well
Speaker 3: have found different versions of the layout. Have found satellite
Speaker 3: imagery you can tell where he was. You can also
Speaker 3: see photographs of the guy's body after videos.
Speaker 4: Yesh, maybe the video is after he was I mean
Speaker 4: a spoiler alert he was taken out. But you know
Speaker 4: there is there are photographs where you can see what
Speaker 4: appears to be the top half of a person prone
Speaker 4: army crawling I believe it would be the term on
Speaker 4: this roof. And then there are there is video of
Speaker 4: people that then went to where the shots came from
Speaker 4: and got a shot.
Speaker 2: Of his his deceased body.
Speaker 3: And these are still just the we're just in the
Speaker 3: factual part. Absolutely, this might be a longer win, but
Speaker 3: we think it's worth the time. This structure that Crooks
Speaker 3: was a top was considered outside of that security perimeter,
Speaker 3: so he himself was not subject to screening, and he
Speaker 3: used a ladder to reach the rooftop. Then as he said,
Speaker 3: no bear crawled across to achieve position. He got clocked
Speaker 3: and observed, but apparently not engaged nor made as he
Speaker 3: arrived in position with a firearm and a cell phone.
Speaker 2: I believe he was observed. Yeah, I'm sorry, Yes, observed.
Speaker 4: And and like like flagged as a keep an eye
Speaker 4: out even right right, whether by local law. That must
Speaker 4: have been by local law enforcement if I'm not mistaken.
Speaker 3: Well, the sieves in the crowd noticed this because again
Speaker 3: he's so close that you could see him, you know,
Speaker 3: without any kind of binoculars or other optic assistance. And
Speaker 3: some people apparently said okay, even though this guy's in
Speaker 3: casual dress a neutral colored T shirt sometimes described as
Speaker 3: gray camo for a gun tuber brand, They said maybe
Speaker 3: he's part of plain clothed security. Other people aired on
Speaker 3: the side of caution went to whatever authority they could
Speaker 3: find and said, Hey, there's something creepy on the roof
Speaker 3: over there.
Speaker 4: But isn't it wouldn't it be standard operating procedure to
Speaker 4: have posted snipers looking like posted snipers. There's no point
Speaker 4: in having a sniper and plain clothes. Plain clothes is
Speaker 4: meant to blend into a crowd if you're alone, you know,
Speaker 4: gunman on a roof wearing freaking YouTube gun club t shirt.
Speaker 4: What benefit does that serve in terms of like any
Speaker 4: form of like covert operation, that makes zero sense, that
Speaker 4: would not be done.
Speaker 3: We know that these reports came minutes before Crooks took action.
Speaker 3: A local police officer found the ladder and ascended to
Speaker 3: the rooftop and encountered Crooks. And when he did, when
Speaker 3: he confronted Crooks, Crooks turned and aimed the rifle at
Speaker 3: this officer, which caused the officer backed out the ladder,
Speaker 3: at which point Crooks returns his attention to the rally
Speaker 3: stage and opens.
Speaker 4: Fire immediately because he knows his window is narrowing at
Speaker 4: this point, Like this guy, he's not going to take
Speaker 4: him out by hand personally, but he is going to
Speaker 4: report him and people are coming for him, so he
Speaker 4: knows if he's going to do the thing, he's got
Speaker 4: to do it now.
Speaker 3: At about twenty seconds after his initial shot, nearby snipers
Speaker 3: on another roof fatally executed him via return fire counterfire,
Speaker 3: and so we have a window of about twenty seconds
Speaker 3: there of active fire. And due to the extensive video
Speaker 3: evidence that you mentioned, it's been shared across pretty much
Speaker 3: every media outlet. At this point, we know what happens next.
Speaker 3: After that initial shot. We see the former president of
Speaker 3: the United States, mid speech to supporters, raise a hand
Speaker 3: to his right ear, and then he pauses and he
Speaker 3: drops down behind the lectern for cover. Secret Service agents swarm,
Speaker 3: creating the human shield. A couple more gunshots. You can
Speaker 3: hear I'm sure you heard this too. You can hear
Speaker 3: the audio.
Speaker 2: With my shoes.
Speaker 3: Yeah, let me get my shoes. You can hear the
Speaker 3: audio where Secret Service receives confirmation of the kill right
Speaker 3: of the Oh.
Speaker 2: I don't know that I've heard that. No, I don't
Speaker 2: think I have not heard that, but I don't doubt it.
Speaker 4: This is all being captured on the lectern mic probably right,
Speaker 4: like this is where we're getting that whatever audio was
Speaker 4: recorded for streaming purposes or for you know, later capture
Speaker 4: or whatever.
Speaker 3: And so there's this pause, and I love that you
Speaker 3: mentioned this. After about twenty five seconds, agents helped Trump stand.
Speaker 3: Blood is visible on his ear in the right side
Speaker 3: of space. Yeah. He tells the agents to Paul's just
Speaker 3: like you said. He says, let me get my shoes,
Speaker 3: and then he raises his fist to the crowd and
Speaker 3: he's mouthing out the word fight as they chant Usa, Usa.
Speaker 3: He's escorted to a vehicle. He's taken to a nearby hospital.
Speaker 3: Source of hours in the area was one of the
Speaker 3: first non government employees to reach the hospital before the
Speaker 3: news hit the press. Later we would learn that was
Speaker 3: the nearby Butler Memorial Hospital.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and Evan Vucci, who believe is an Associated Press photographer,
Speaker 4: capture to what again.
Speaker 2: Whatever side of fall you fall in?
Speaker 4: This is an iconic photograph that Trump.
Speaker 2: Knew he was making. He knew he was creating.
Speaker 4: This photograph of trouble, with his fist in the air,
Speaker 4: American flag upside down flying in the background, him being
Speaker 4: clutched by a secret service in full secret service regalia
Speaker 4: looking defiant. I gotta give it to the guy. He's
Speaker 4: nothing if not media savvy. He and to my previous
Speaker 4: question ben about like, at what point do you defer
Speaker 4: to the person you're protecting versus just you know, no, we're.
Speaker 2: Taking He had to say, wait a second, he could.
Speaker 4: Have and I'm not trying to like big up drop
Speaker 4: or anything, but like he was in harm's way, and
Speaker 4: he did, for a second continue to be in harms
Speaker 4: way for the purposes of this pretty incredible photo op.
Speaker 4: And that was after, to be fair, that was after
Speaker 4: the kill confirmation. It was okay, sorry, okay.
Speaker 3: But at this point in this chaos, in this pandemonium, question, right,
Speaker 3: your immediate question is is this alone wolf? Is there
Speaker 3: someone else out there? And look, he receives what we
Speaker 3: used to call a million dollar wound, and that's not
Speaker 3: disparaging this candidate at all. It's just a wound like
Speaker 3: that that great is your ear? Are you familiar with
Speaker 3: the phrase one?
Speaker 2: I was gonna ask you the origin of it because
Speaker 2: I don't. I don't.
Speaker 4: It doesn't quite even make sense to me, and the
Speaker 4: least in the way that I'm thinking about it.
Speaker 2: So he help us out.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so million dollar wound. You hear it in Vietnam
Speaker 3: or the Vietnam conflict. You hear it in later conflicts
Speaker 3: as well. I mean, it dates back to like World
Speaker 3: War Two. But the idea is, you get a type
Speaker 3: of wound in combat that's serious enough to get you
Speaker 3: sent away from fighting, but it's not fatal and it's
Speaker 3: not permanently crippling.
Speaker 4: Right because to your point in the outline here that,
Speaker 4: by the way, kudos, Bet. I mean, you couldn't have
Speaker 4: been sleeping after this event because you cobbled together everything
Speaker 4: that we have out there, whether it be the facts,
Speaker 4: whether it be all of the stuff the theories we're
Speaker 4: going to talk about. But you point out that he
Speaker 4: could have had his ear blown off, you know, and
Speaker 4: we're going to get into the trajectory of the whole thing,
Speaker 4: but it likely was just ripped a little bit and
Speaker 4: the blood spattered onto his face. Also, there was blood
Speaker 4: on the bleachers. Yeah, there was a spatter of blood
Speaker 4: on the bleachers. And I bet you he's probably going
Speaker 4: to be deaf in that ear. I don't know what
Speaker 4: you think about that, Maybe not, I guess if maybe,
Speaker 4: I don't know how that works, he described in his statement,
Speaker 4: knowing it was serious when he heard a whizzing sound,
Speaker 4: you know, and.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, we know that. To the point about blood
Speaker 3: on the on the bleachers behind him, we know that
Speaker 3: two civilians were previously wounded. One civilian was fatally wounded.
Speaker 3: His name has been released. You can find it online
Speaker 3: as a volunteer firefighter and tooling engineer. Overall seemed to
Speaker 3: be a good dude, and out of respect for the family,
Speaker 3: we're not we're not going to mention the name there
Speaker 3: and give them. We want to give them time. But
Speaker 3: you can find that online.
Speaker 4: Also a video out there of I believe some form
Speaker 4: of er doctor, a general practitioner who attended to him
Speaker 4: to some degree, you know, and his shirts.
Speaker 2: Covered in blood.
Speaker 4: He's wearing, you know, maga hat and full trump you know,
Speaker 4: merch and he describes helping this guy out and to
Speaker 4: use the word brain matter, you know, seeing that there
Speaker 4: was brain matter, and that he said he administered chest compressions.
Speaker 4: But it's the kind of stuff you do where you
Speaker 4: as a medical practitioner, it's like you do it because
Speaker 4: you're you're there on the site, but you probably already
Speaker 4: know it's too late, but you still do it because
Speaker 4: you know, at least you can say you did it
Speaker 4: because you were there. But yeah, I would appear this
Speaker 4: person received a head shot that you may as well
Speaker 4: out there have seen the images of the trajectory of
Speaker 4: the bullet of how it was literally the fact that
Speaker 4: Trump looked left, I believe, or let's see, you know,
Speaker 4: it would be right to my left if I'm looking
Speaker 4: at the images to look and gesture to a PowerPoint
Speaker 4: type presentation on a large projected screen with something about immigration, right, and.
Speaker 3: That shows us again, It's something we've talked about in
Speaker 3: other shows, the history hinges on such small things, in
Speaker 3: this case, a matter of inches or centimeters and look.
Speaker 3: As is common with these situations, there was immediately a
Speaker 3: tsunami of speculation, bad faith, disinfo, plain old conspiracy rock
Speaker 3: on the internet. We were talking about it. We were
Speaker 3: talking about off air. Folks like I want to thank,
Speaker 3: folks like our Power, Robert Evans from behind the Bastards,
Speaker 3: Ocent Defender, thousands of other people were delving deep into analysis.
Speaker 3: And you have to do this because in the fog
Speaker 3: of war after a recent catastrophic attack like this, the
Speaker 3: reporting can often be contradictory because the real information only
Speaker 3: trickles out at the speed of the investigation. I'm thinking
Speaker 3: about the idea it was very common that I initially
Speaker 3: suspected even that Trump was perhaps not injured by a
Speaker 3: direct bullet wound, but by glass shrapnel.
Speaker 4: That came out pretty quick, and I believe it was
Speaker 4: reported by some official and passed on and then sort
Speaker 4: of parroted in the media during that zippity Do you
Speaker 4: know reporting window that the internet just like requires now.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, yeah, you nailed it, man, Because anonymous law
Speaker 3: enforcement sources apparently reported this, the journalists and people rolled
Speaker 3: with it until Donald Trump himself went on truth social
Speaker 3: and made his statement where he confirmed that he was
Speaker 3: directly injured by a bullet.
Speaker 4: Have we seen the image that captured the bullet. Let's
Speaker 4: talk about that for a second. Yeah, it's crazy. Who
Speaker 4: is the guy? Let's see it was.
Speaker 2: I believe in New York Times.
Speaker 4: Yeah, exactly, Uh, Doug Mills, But yes, that's correct, Doug
Speaker 4: Mills of the New York Times.
Speaker 2: There's video of him out there talking.
Speaker 4: And you know, when folks are covering these type of events,
Speaker 4: they cover it kind of like you cover a sporting event.
Speaker 4: They're using very quick shutter speeds, so you're and you're
Speaker 4: just blasting blast bla blater like, so you can get
Speaker 4: in the moment. You can go back through when you're
Speaker 4: editing and find that iconic fist pump with the exact
Speaker 4: right expression that you want, and in doing that, this
Speaker 4: guy caught.
Speaker 2: It's crazy. You can see this line, this little blurry
Speaker 2: line right.
Speaker 4: By Donald Trump's head and he saved I mean that
Speaker 4: PowerPoint saved his life.
Speaker 3: Yeah. One of my old professors reached out and said,
Speaker 3: person with an interest in history, and said, no matter
Speaker 3: how you feel about no matter how people feel about
Speaker 3: the events, this photograph will end up in a textbook,
Speaker 3: which I think is accurate. Well, what would you say
Speaker 3: to the.
Speaker 2: One hundred percent?
Speaker 4: I mean, it's a damn good photograph that captures actively
Speaker 4: hits it good for the angle is dope, Like, I'm sorry,
Speaker 4: just as a fan of photography.
Speaker 2: It's a cool photo.
Speaker 4: And we're talking about the fist pumping one, not the
Speaker 4: bullet capturing one.
Speaker 2: Because the bullet capture where he's on the ground, no,
Speaker 2: which is also pretty good.
Speaker 4: But the bullet capturing one literally required the guy the Mills,
Speaker 4: Doug Mills to have been going through his photos a
Speaker 4: frame at a time, because you can capture photos at
Speaker 4: the same speed as video, like you can set your
Speaker 4: shutter just to do a succession of blasts. And he
Speaker 4: obviously was what is that? And he caught it and
Speaker 4: now it's making the rounds. As I mean, I think
Speaker 4: we probably again still needs some photo forensics to be like.
Speaker 2: That definitely what that is.
Speaker 4: And I just want to really quickly give props to
Speaker 4: a guy I think you know, Jason Pargan I think
Speaker 4: is his name.
Speaker 2: He's a writer.
Speaker 4: He wrote that Book's John Dies in the End, and
Speaker 4: he's a YouTuber. He makes these really thoughtful media critique videos.
Speaker 4: He's been on Daily Zeitgeist before, but he came on
Speaker 4: and just really quickly in this short video said it's
Speaker 4: really important during times like this to remember that when
Speaker 4: something like this happens, ninety percent of the information that
Speaker 4: you read out there will be not right, because in
Speaker 4: this day of internet immediacy, the real reporting comes from
Speaker 4: actual verification of the facts, and because of the nature
Speaker 4: of the Internet and how what people have come to expect,
Speaker 4: that just doesn't happen, and it all blasts at you,
Speaker 4: leaving you to sift through the wreckage of it and
Speaker 4: figure out what's true, and then the real reporting comes
Speaker 4: much later. So he just urged people to be patient
Speaker 4: and truly like wait for what the real facts have
Speaker 4: to say. So just putting that out there, we're not
Speaker 4: trying to contribute to that instant gratification internet culture.
Speaker 3: I also want to quote something sent by a good
Speaker 3: friend of the show, professor Jeff who is out there
Speaker 3: in Pennsylvania himself, who sent us a piece by University
Speaker 3: of Plymouth over in the UK, guy named Phil Smith
Speaker 3: who wrote an incredibly insightful point about this, who also
Speaker 3: echoes the same points of Pargin, who wrote John dyes
Speaker 3: at the end as David Wong old school cracked guy.
Speaker 3: Very smart dudes. And we see some speculation that was
Speaker 3: in bad faith. You know, this is the first kind
Speaker 3: of thing of its type that happened in an age
Speaker 3: of biquitist social media. So there were a lot of
Speaker 3: bots out there, there were a lot of bad faith actors,
Speaker 3: and there were a ton of conspiracy theories. The most
Speaker 3: prevalent then and now is the idea that this tragedy
Speaker 3: had been somehow staged for political gain. Despite the death
Speaker 3: and injury to innocent people. And so now I would
Speaker 3: say the biggest question facing America in the world is,
Speaker 3: you know what we said at the top, what could
Speaker 3: this mean? How can we address these questions that remain unanswered?
Speaker 2: Right? And you know, I just popped into my head
Speaker 2: right now.
Speaker 4: I recently watched the movie Long Legs, which is a
Speaker 4: procedural FBI investigation kind of thing, and I think the
Speaker 4: reason a lot of times it's smart to base movies
Speaker 4: like that in the nineties is because of the lack
Speaker 4: of that ubiquitous technology you're talking about, yeah, or even
Speaker 4: further than that. And now I'm thinking back, like if
Speaker 4: JFK had happened, now, would the conspiracy theories have been
Speaker 4: completely different?
Speaker 2: And or it just would have been solved, you know
Speaker 2: what I mean?
Speaker 4: Like, really it's a different world and this stuff is
Speaker 4: generated from that world. But you do have to wonder,
Speaker 4: like what this is like a literal modern Internet age
Speaker 4: assassination attempt in the biggest, most visible, you know, way possible.
Speaker 3: So we're going to take a word from our sponsors,
Speaker 3: and when we return, we'll ask those questions, what could
Speaker 3: this mean for the future, and how can we address
Speaker 3: the questions that remain unanswered tonight. Here's where it gets crazy.
Speaker 3: Let's start with this. Let's start with what we know
Speaker 3: about the shooter, Thomas Matthew Crooks.
Speaker 2: At the time of his death.
Speaker 4: Thomas Matthew Crooks was a twenty year old dietary aide
Speaker 4: at the Bethel Park Skilled Nursing and Rehabilitation Center. So
Speaker 4: this is his town, you know, he's like literally from
Speaker 4: this particular bedroom community suburb.
Speaker 2: What have you of Philadelphia?
Speaker 4: And again, maybe folks from Pennsylvania and Philly will correct
Speaker 4: me on that sometimes there are gray areas of what
Speaker 4: constitutes a suburb and bedroom It's close enough that I
Speaker 4: would say it's definitely adjacent. You could make a day
Speaker 4: trip to Philly. He was from Bethel Park, Pennsylvania, an
Speaker 4: upper middle class suburb just about an hour away from
Speaker 4: where the rally was held, which was a fairground. Crooks
Speaker 4: graduated from a local high school in twenty twenty two,
Speaker 4: so Reuter's reports that class mates found him to be
Speaker 4: bright but quiet, which is kay, that's not tale as
Speaker 4: old as time in terms of like lone wolf types
Speaker 4: or even serial killers, you know, I mean.
Speaker 3: He also appeared in a Black Rock ad which set
Speaker 3: the Internet a flame again. On July thirteenth, the FBI
Speaker 3: disclosed more details about this alleged assailant. They analyzed his
Speaker 3: social media footprint and they said, in their estimation it
Speaker 3: did not contain threatening language. But then they also said
Speaker 3: they had had him on their radar somehow. Hopefully we'll
Speaker 3: get more details. They found no history of mental health issues.
Speaker 3: They currently believe, and we checked this right before we
Speaker 3: recorded that Crooks acted alone and importantly was not an
Speaker 3: operative of a foreign power. At this point they have
Speaker 3: the FBI has yet to officially identify or disclose any
Speaker 3: kind of motive, by which we mean they haven't found
Speaker 3: and so manifesto you know what I mean.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and Twitter ex or what have you, which is
Speaker 4: it's interesting, like I have a dear friend who's a
Speaker 4: friend of yours as well, Frank, who is a diehard
Speaker 4: Twitter guy, And despite all of the shenanigans with Elon
Speaker 4: and changing it to x and stuff, there's a reason
Speaker 4: that Twitter still exists because it is a very interesting
Speaker 4: cross section of the Internet that's different from other forms
Speaker 4: of social media, whether it be because of the comedy,
Speaker 4: whether it be because of the prevalence of fringey weirdos
Speaker 4: on it. It is entertaining, and there's a real kind
Speaker 4: of microcosm that exists within Twitter, and very quickly Twitter
Speaker 4: lit up saying this guy was probably part of the
Speaker 4: Grouper group, which is a far right kind of troll
Speaker 4: four chan type loose organization. I guess I don't know
Speaker 4: if you know more about this than I do, Ben,
Speaker 4: but the idea being that Trump wasn't right enough or
Speaker 4: something like that.
Speaker 3: Or that another thing, because you know, I'm all over
Speaker 3: Twitter and stuff. Another thing I saw was the idea
Speaker 3: or the the sort of wishful allegation that this young man,
Speaker 3: this assailant was somehow anti fascist or antifa as they
Speaker 3: would say. There does seem to be no proof of
Speaker 3: that at this point. We do know that he did
Speaker 3: not purchase the firearm himself. The rightfully used was purchased
Speaker 3: by his father.
Speaker 4: We know, eleven years ago, is the latest news. Right
Speaker 4: as we started recording, that just came out. So it
Speaker 4: wasn't like his dad just bought it ort or was it.
Speaker 4: You know, it was a legacy family weapon right right.
Speaker 3: And we know a little bit about political activity. Crooks
Speaker 3: was registered Republican, as is his father, his mother is
Speaker 3: a registered Democrat. His one of the administrators at the
Speaker 3: nursing home that employed him said, similar to his classmates statements,
Speaker 3: They said he performed his job without concern. His background
Speaker 3: check was clean. We know that he donated like fifteen
Speaker 3: dollars to a Progressive Democrat center to kind of get
Speaker 3: the vote out movement when Biden was elected. But there's
Speaker 3: still so many unanswered questions about crooks. As we were recording,
Speaker 3: or right before he went into it, the FBI having
Speaker 3: found possible bomb making material in his car, just.
Speaker 2: Like Magcutional like in the Charlie. Likely he was going
Speaker 2: to use it later.
Speaker 4: But I'm wondering because when I hear that, I think
Speaker 4: it's ready to go and he's gonna shoot and then
Speaker 4: set it off the car.
Speaker 3: Yeah, unclear at this point, but we know that the
Speaker 3: FBI evacuated neighbors in the area and then extends re
Speaker 3: searched his home obviously for electronic devices, and he written records.
Speaker 3: But the thing we have to know is to these
Speaker 3: earlier points, a lot of the stuff you're going to
Speaker 3: hear about this guy is going to be untrue or speculative.
Speaker 3: Some people are just getting things wrong with the best
Speaker 3: of intentions or with the limited information they have, just
Speaker 3: like us tonight. But other people are going to be
Speaker 3: trying to use this to push.
Speaker 4: You, yeah, in order to push an agenda or to
Speaker 4: weaponize this event in their favor, right, right, and really
Speaker 4: could just I think I made it clear, but the
Speaker 4: Groper thing absolute speculation. But it was sent to me
Speaker 4: by a Twitter person who's very active on Twitter, almost
Speaker 4: as though it were definitely probably true, like just the
Speaker 4: tone of it, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2: And this is a person I think is very smart.
Speaker 4: But in these times, we're all susceptible to this, we
Speaker 4: really are. You have to be vigilant and be patient
Speaker 4: to not allow yourself to be taken in and report
Speaker 4: things to others as though it's definitely true, because.
Speaker 3: You know, one of the number one things the humans
Speaker 3: hate unanswered questions.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and they also like being right and being the
Speaker 4: first one to tell somebody something.
Speaker 3: Yes, to be promethean. Yeah, that's a great observation. Let's
Speaker 3: talk about some of these unanswered questions. How the hell?
Speaker 3: First off, how the hell did one guy a civilian,
Speaker 3: no military record, no kind of counter intel training, how
Speaker 3: did he manage to get so very close. Why wasn't
Speaker 3: there already a security detail of some sort positioned on
Speaker 3: that roof? The high ground is very valuable real estate.
Speaker 4: Four hundred feet it's really feet, not meters. That's insane.
Speaker 4: And when you look at it on the satellite, because
Speaker 4: of the scale whatever, it looks farther than it really is.
Speaker 4: Like it's across what looks like a road, but it's
Speaker 4: more of a path, kind of like a dirt kind
Speaker 4: of you know, path cut into this fair ground. But yeah,
Speaker 4: it doesn't make any sense because you had these two
Speaker 4: snipers and their full get up on this roof. Two
Speaker 4: why are there two on one? Why isn't there one
Speaker 4: on that one and one on the other one? Because
Speaker 4: it's just wild man, it's at the very least a
Speaker 4: gross oversight and negligent acts.
Speaker 2: At the very most some vision.
Speaker 3: But if you know, if you have the time to
Speaker 3: prepare a perimeter right and you have assuming that you
Speaker 3: do not have a very hard austere limit on resources,
Speaker 3: then you would want to dominate the high ground. You
Speaker 3: want to command and control that and the map, like
Speaker 3: you mentioned, you can see the satellite shot, you can
Speaker 3: see other versions. You can see clear outlines of the
Speaker 3: initial gunfire and then the Secret Service response. It's rough,
Speaker 3: you know, one of the most plausible things I've heard
Speaker 3: about how this guy got so close is what I
Speaker 3: would call the disease of not my problem. When you
Speaker 3: have a lot of different agencies interacting, just like in
Speaker 3: any other big live production. To be honest, then you
Speaker 3: have to be certain that roles are specifically assigned. So
Speaker 3: is it possible that local yeah, yeah, thought the jurisdiction,
Speaker 3: Yeah right, Hey, the Secret Service will do this. Maybe
Speaker 3: Secret Service thought, hey, the local law will do this.
Speaker 3: Those are answers we don't have yet, I mean. And
Speaker 3: then secondly, dude, the shot itself, the not just the
Speaker 3: shots that injured civilians and kill the civilian, but the
Speaker 3: shot that got Trump uh set the conspiracy world of
Speaker 3: flame because it's like winning the lottery twice. Any person
Speaker 3: familiar with firearms can tell you, for the most part,
Speaker 3: head shots are not the norm. That's what you see
Speaker 3: in film and right exactly. And for a lot of
Speaker 3: people who have been making high bolic statements, the closest
Speaker 3: they have been to that situation is call of duty.
Speaker 3: So maybe sit out.
Speaker 4: I just don't understand why there were two security snipers
Speaker 4: with their weapons pointed in the same direction, right next
Speaker 4: to each other.
Speaker 2: When there could have been one of those on that
Speaker 2: other roof.
Speaker 3: Usually you want a team of two.
Speaker 2: Okay, that makes sense, but still the other roof, it's
Speaker 2: just it's right there, man, that's the yet, that's the
Speaker 2: real pickle here.
Speaker 3: And the general rule is that if you are firing
Speaker 3: on a humanoid target, you aim for center mass because
Speaker 3: aiming for the biggest part gives you the highest chance
Speaker 3: of successfully hitting the target.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: So we also know that Crooks was there's great analysis
Speaker 3: of this on Twitter. We also know that Crooks was
Speaker 3: firing to your point immediately after he got confronted by
Speaker 3: that police. He was moving quickly so making.
Speaker 4: Me invite at a time and gotten a better shot
Speaker 4: off if he hadn't been discovered in that way.
Speaker 3: So now we see a near instantaneous reaction because he
Speaker 3: knows the window of time is now incredibly abbreviated. Firing
Speaker 3: under stress, you know what I mean. These are the
Speaker 3: opposite of ideal conditions for this kind of I hate
Speaker 3: to say it, but this kind of exercise. So what
Speaker 3: there are a lot of questions that need be answered
Speaker 3: about the shot, and then third, did you think that
Speaker 3: pause was weird after the shot they'll let me get
Speaker 3: my shoes moment.
Speaker 4: Well, first of all, I want to note it is
Speaker 4: it a known thing that Trump likes to do his
Speaker 4: speeches with no shoes on.
Speaker 3: That confused me as well.
Speaker 4: I mean, maybe you know some bands like to play
Speaker 4: barefoot or whatever, but like maybe it's a comfort level
Speaker 4: thing and you can't see his feet, but it'd usually
Speaker 4: when they walk on and off, you see their feet.
Speaker 4: They do do a walk on and walk off. What's
Speaker 4: the deal with the shoes, that's that's unrelated here. Clearly
Speaker 4: there's no shoe. We're not here to to litigate the
Speaker 4: shoe conspiracy, but it was an unusual thing for him
Speaker 4: to say so emphatically. And then yeah, I mean again,
Speaker 4: I think we know that Trump is a master media
Speaker 4: manipulator or just you know, opportunists at the very least,
Speaker 4: let's call it that to be fair. And he took
Speaker 4: that moment knowing that there were a million shutters going off,
Speaker 4: and he knew that was going to create that image,
Speaker 4: and he did it. He thought it was worth it.
Speaker 4: But to your point, there was the kill confirmation.
Speaker 2: But there could have been a second shooter, or they.
Speaker 4: Didn't know unless they did, which we're gonna go. I
Speaker 4: don't know, I can't. I'm just it's it's hard not to,
Speaker 4: especially in the world that we occupy. It's hard not
Speaker 4: to have those thoughts cross your mind, is all I'm saying.
Speaker 3: And let us know what you think about the let
Speaker 3: me get my shoes comment. And also, you know, I'm
Speaker 3: grateful to have spoken with some former USSS about this
Speaker 3: and other related things. Tell us, folks, if you have
Speaker 3: any experience in security, is this sop? Is this standard
Speaker 3: operating procedure? Were they waiting for the all clear to
Speaker 3: move this candidate and former PTUs or was there something
Speaker 3: wonky about it? While you're writing that email to us
Speaker 3: conspiracydiheartradio dot com. Let's talk about the fourth unanswered question.
Speaker 3: For a lot of people, audience behavior or perceived audience behavior.
Speaker 3: This could be seen as reading tea leaves because a
Speaker 3: lot of it is based on conclusions from video clips.
Speaker 3: But we see what looks to be unusual behavior for
Speaker 3: a shots fired situation in a largely civilian crowd. Usually
Speaker 3: people go nuts, run willy nilly. There's a lot of screaming,
Speaker 3: the smart ones try to find cover. There's some clips
Speaker 3: that I think gave all of this pause.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I sent a clip around that I just again
Speaker 4: just kind of doom scrolling on Instagram, which is sort
Speaker 4: of my platform of choice, and someone was already kind
Speaker 4: of making hay out of this clip, zooming in, drawing
Speaker 4: little circles and arrows, you know, the ones of this
Speaker 4: woman in sunglasses standing right behind the president, and just
Speaker 4: before the shots go off, she holds up.
Speaker 2: A campaign sign.
Speaker 4: The shots go off, and she just kind of has
Speaker 4: just a stone cold expression on her face, like people
Speaker 4: all around her are ducking hitting the deck. There is
Speaker 4: all those elements you describe, then the screaming, you know,
Speaker 4: the we're trying to get to cover in some respect,
Speaker 4: and she just doesn't do any of that and just
Speaker 4: gently kneels down, and you see her she goes out
Speaker 4: of the frame and then comes back into frame and
Speaker 4: has her phone and is filming, and no one else
Speaker 4: is around.
Speaker 2: Her is doing that just too scared. It's odd.
Speaker 4: That behavior just struck me as odd. I don't know
Speaker 4: what it means. I don't know if this was a
Speaker 4: plane closed somebody or if what based on what we know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like certainly there was.
Speaker 4: No take the shot right, because we know the shot
Speaker 4: was taken largely driven by that window of time that
Speaker 4: was triggered by the person being discovered.
Speaker 3: And to be completely fair, I would say another important
Speaker 3: thing here is this could be a function of people
Speaker 3: being entirely reliant on cell phones.
Speaker 2: So how I experienced the world so.
Speaker 3: That somebody may have thought this is for history. Oh
Speaker 3: another ques.
Speaker 4: I've seen that shot yet though by the way, from
Speaker 4: that particular advantage, have not seen that one making the rounds.
Speaker 2: Just need to point that out. The feds have well,
Speaker 2: hold the phones, y'all.
Speaker 4: Let's take a quick pause here, hear a word from
Speaker 4: our sponsor, and then we'll come back with more of
Speaker 4: this discussion.
Speaker 2: And we've returned.
Speaker 3: Another unanswered question is motivation. Why did crooks target Trump?
Speaker 3: We know he was twelve years old when Donald Trump
Speaker 3: was first elected to the highest office in the land
Speaker 3: in twenty sixteen, But we don't know whether there was
Speaker 3: a specific folkrum moment, right, specific crossroads, something that would
Speaker 3: make an otherwise apparently non threatening young man launch a
Speaker 3: suicide run. We know he's active on discord, we know
Speaker 3: he was you know, he was a computer enthusiast. But
Speaker 3: right now the FBI has Crooks's phone and his other
Speaker 3: cop devices over at Langley, and they're interviewing pretty much
Speaker 3: everyone the guy interacted with, ever, all within the reach
Speaker 3: of the US as you would. I mean, with all
Speaker 3: these examples, it's easy to see how this assassination attempt
Speaker 3: became the subject of numerous conspiracies. I think we're both
Speaker 3: familiar with the most popular one, which we mentioned earlier,
Speaker 3: the idea that the shooting was somehow staged orchestrated, and
Speaker 3: it's not just bots saying this.
Speaker 2: Well no, and then the question becomes orchestrated by whom, right,
Speaker 2: and to what end.
Speaker 4: One version of it is that it was staged by
Speaker 4: Trump or his campaign in order to what create a
Speaker 4: news event that would give him some sympathy in the
Speaker 4: face of his recent convictions. I just don't buy that, because,
Speaker 4: like I said at the top, dudes already kind of
Speaker 4: in victory lap mode because of everything that's going on
Speaker 4: with his opponent, who is the source of or the
Speaker 4: subject of most of the consternation, right, Like, it almost
Speaker 4: feels like a lot of the stuff with Trump didn't happen,
Speaker 4: Like the you know, the the convictions for the hush
Speaker 4: money and all of that, So it doesn't make sense
Speaker 4: to do this. Now, you'd keep this in your back
Speaker 4: pocket and wait for the polls, see what's happening, and
Speaker 4: then deploy some crazy false flag thing like this. So
Speaker 4: I don't know, man, in my head, it all this
Speaker 4: talk with the Supreme Court decisions about anything done under
Speaker 4: the guy, under the auspecies of a presidential act. I'm like,
Speaker 4: is this a botched Biden attempt on Trump's life? That's
Speaker 4: what's really going through my head.
Speaker 3: Yeah, to the idea that Trump or people associated with
Speaker 3: his campaign may have staged an event a false flag, well,
Speaker 3: the concept there, the conspiracy theory, is that this was
Speaker 3: an attempt to galvanize supporters, get positive press, distract from
Speaker 3: the recent unpleasantness of his court cases, and force his
Speaker 3: Democratic opponents into a lose lose situation temporary they had
Speaker 3: to be forced into a temporarily supportive position. But the
Speaker 3: weird thing is the assassination attempt, conspiracy or know already
Speaker 3: resulted in all three of those outcomes, and you know,
Speaker 3: two innocent people grievously injured, one innocent man dead. The
Speaker 3: next subgenre is okay well to sow it up. Proponents
Speaker 3: of the Trump staged idea point to all the unanswered
Speaker 3: questions we brought up as proof of their claims. The
Speaker 3: funny thing is, to your point, the idea the next
Speaker 3: subgenre that it was somehow staged by Biden, the Biden
Speaker 3: campaign or other democratic power figures. It's pretty much the
Speaker 3: same kind of theory, but with the positions flipped, and
Speaker 3: they're saying, hey, the Biden campaign is at a crisis point,
Speaker 3: weak performances and recent appearances. There's that mutually embarrassing debate
Speaker 3: his own party, members of it are calling for him
Speaker 3: to step down. Maybe this assassination was a Machiavellian way
Speaker 3: of pausing those conversations. And the weirdest thing the people
Speaker 3: who genuinely believe that point to the exact same questions
Speaker 3: as proof of their theory. They just have a different
Speaker 3: contextual framework for it.
Speaker 4: And I'm mainly dealing in thought experiments here. I don't
Speaker 4: really think that this was staged on. I do tend
Speaker 4: to go with the lone wolf thing, you know, and
Speaker 4: the breakdown of security and communication. There is, of course,
Speaker 4: another option in the conspiracy realm here, the idea that
Speaker 4: this was planned by some sort of foreign agency or operation.
Speaker 3: Yeah right, because fiction has taught us to think that way,
Speaker 3: and indeed, the United States has a history of launching
Speaker 3: similar operations. If we're just being completely honest, keeping it
Speaker 3: one hundred, the idea here, like you said, is that
Speaker 3: some outside force, maybe a rival state or a terrorist group,
Speaker 3: may have staged a shooting to boost Trump's popularity, or
Speaker 3: maybe they actually tried to kill the guy and they
Speaker 3: just botched it. In general, when people are talking about this,
Speaker 3: they seem to believe Russia was somehow involved, which kind
Speaker 3: of makes sense because Russia does have a track record
Speaker 3: of what we would call innovations in assassinations, but they
Speaker 3: also have a track record for beat me here, Paul,
Speaker 3: those operations up. Yeah, you know what I mean. So
Speaker 3: we could see how people might point to precedent and
Speaker 3: ask about Russia. But there's absolutely no proof of outside
Speaker 3: ops at this point.
Speaker 4: Any of this now, and there is another question of
Speaker 4: larger machinations. You know, America has long been understandably I suppose,
Speaker 4: I don't know. I can kind of see a skeptical
Speaker 4: of the lone wolf assassination narrative. I just I don't know.
Speaker 4: I just we know it's sort of the same thing
Speaker 4: that would drive someone to do as school shooting. You know,
Speaker 4: there is that maybe you were bullied, maybe you were
Speaker 4: radicalized in some way, but you're not being used as
Speaker 4: a tool and you decide to take it. You know,
Speaker 4: the whole Holden call Field model of it all kind
Speaker 4: of being the outsider and you want to make an
Speaker 4: impact and leave your mark. I do think that I
Speaker 4: don't understand the skepticism and the lone wolf theory.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, it's it goes back to some hard unanswered
Speaker 3: questions about similar events like Sirhan Sirhan Lee, Harvey Oswald
Speaker 3: and Jack Ruby. There this skepticism there, I think comes
Speaker 3: from the obvious dissonance between having the security of the
Speaker 3: world's most powerful country seem to drop the ball in
Speaker 3: a crazy way and right now. You know. One of
Speaker 3: the reasons these questions will continue to proliferate, probably for
Speaker 3: quite some time, is because, like Oswald, Crooks is dead.
Speaker 3: He will never be in court, he will never respond
Speaker 3: to questions. He's not going to speak about his motivations
Speaker 3: because it's physically impossible for him to do so. Now
Speaker 3: he is a asked question mark a piece of unwelcome
Speaker 3: punctuation burned into the already troubled story of an America divided.
Speaker 3: And that's where we get to the talking points. Noel,
Speaker 3: did you notice that a lot of people and pundits
Speaker 3: were saying kind of the same.
Speaker 4: Thing, mainly, there's no room for this kind of violence,
Speaker 4: political violence an American discourse in American political life.
Speaker 3: I heard that when I also heard one thing's for sure,
Speaker 3: this will change the energy of the election. What no way?
Speaker 4: Well, yeah, and I believe Biden used the term lowering
Speaker 4: the temperature on politics.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and it's been proliferated that way. Mainstream media outlets
Speaker 3: are quickly defining and solidifying their narratives. I'm not saying
Speaker 3: that's necessarily sinister, but if you want to play along,
Speaker 3: we can help you keep a notebook in a pin
Speaker 3: handy for whenever you counter meet about this assassination attempt,
Speaker 3: and make a note of every statement you hear using
Speaker 3: the exact same language to describe an aspect of the story.
Speaker 3: We are confident you're gonna find a lot of seemingly
Speaker 3: different news outlets hitting the same phrases. They're cooking live
Speaker 3: well it's the.
Speaker 4: Same reason that shows like The Daily Show and John
Speaker 4: Oliver can do all those amazing clip kind of packages
Speaker 4: of like news pundits and anchors saying the exact same
Speaker 4: stuff because they're just getting the talking points that are
Speaker 4: kind of being filtered down to them, and then they're
Speaker 4: sort of making it their own, but they're usually a
Speaker 4: bit lazy about it, so it kind of ends up
Speaker 4: being the same things repeated over and over and over again.
Speaker 3: Mm hmm. Yeah, it turned out the temperatures, I think
Speaker 3: the best example of that way. We also know that
Speaker 3: there are going to be inevitable documentaries, probably films that
Speaker 3: say they're inspired by a true story. A lot of
Speaker 3: those are probably already in production right now, just candidly
Speaker 3: because Hollywood's kind of ruthless. And then there's another thing,
Speaker 3: the internal talking points, the smokey back room conversations. There
Speaker 3: are going to be people in the GOP camp and
Speaker 3: in the Democratic camp who, when removed from microphones, they're
Speaker 3: going to tell each other this is a golden opportunity.
Speaker 4: Well yeah, I mean, the talking points on the Trump
Speaker 4: side can immediately be like they're trying to silence me,
Speaker 4: and I will not be silenced, you know, whoever they are,
Speaker 4: because since the guy's dead, I mean, there will be
Speaker 4: information will come out, hopefully about his motives, but that's
Speaker 4: going to be kind of secondary to what the rhetoric
Speaker 4: decides they want to do with this.
Speaker 3: You know, think about this, a lot of people aren't
Speaker 3: going to be reading policy proposals or the printed or
Speaker 3: televised statements from law enforcement. They're going to look at
Speaker 3: a photo and they're going to draw their conclusions from
Speaker 3: those photos. That's that's the power of the ephemeral social media.
Speaker 3: I mean, look, if you work in law enforcement security,
Speaker 3: you know this right now. For those folks, the current
Speaker 3: rule is silence. No speaking to the press at all
Speaker 3: unless you've been greenlit up the wazoo. Don't talk to
Speaker 3: your family, don't talk to your friends about what you're doing,
Speaker 3: no matter how limited your evolvement may be. That's the
Speaker 3: right thing to do. But also we're going to see
Speaker 3: a lot of I'm sure a lot of horse trading
Speaker 3: is happening the GOP, you know, say the quiet part
Speaker 3: out loud. A lot of them are not one hundred
Speaker 3: percent aligned with the Trump campaign, but it would be
Speaker 3: political suicide for them to say so publicly. The Democratic
Speaker 3: Party in a similar way, is not one hundred percent
Speaker 3: on board with this whole Biden thing. And so these
Speaker 3: internal factions are forming and they're cooking up their own
Speaker 3: responses to this tragedy, along with strategies for how to
Speaker 3: leverage it for themselves. And we know it sounds soulless.
Speaker 3: We are completely aware of that, but it is true.
Speaker 3: Does that sound too hyperbolic?
Speaker 4: Nah man, I mean that's absolutely you know, the fact
Speaker 4: that you can now again not to be too cynical
Speaker 4: about it, but that someone was killed, not the person
Speaker 4: that was intended to be killed, perhaps, but that allows
Speaker 4: you to make it an international tragedy, and now we
Speaker 4: can this person who was killed can be martyred and
Speaker 4: used for this goal of creating this kind of ground
Speaker 4: swell of support. But I was texting with a friend
Speaker 4: who I mentioned earlier, and apparently down the ticket on
Speaker 4: the Democrat side, there is still a lot of support
Speaker 4: for Democratic policies over the Project twenty twenty five stuff
Speaker 4: that we've talked about the kind of doom, doom and
Speaker 4: gloom you know of all of that, And it makes
Speaker 4: sense because Trump is even like visibly distanced himself from
Speaker 4: all of that, because I think there isn't support for that.
Speaker 4: So while there might not be support for the democratic candidate,
Speaker 4: it does feel like there's support for democratic policies over
Speaker 4: some of the more radical Republican part policy. So I'm
Speaker 4: wondering if this is going to be a great balancing
Speaker 4: of the scales in a way that could be positive.
Speaker 4: I don't know, man silver lining it here, I just
Speaker 4: don't know.
Speaker 3: We know the exact same conversations are occurring in think
Speaker 3: tanks and lobbying cartels. I've decided to start calling lobbyists
Speaker 3: lobbying cartels.
Speaker 2: I think that's appropriate.
Speaker 3: Thanks man, What the money moves, and.
Speaker 2: They make money moves, like Cardi B says.
Speaker 3: Right, right. And some of these internal talking points are
Speaker 3: going to be later public points of narrative control attempts,
Speaker 3: but a lot of them are not meant to be
Speaker 3: publicly encounter conversations. So we're going to see a narrative
Speaker 3: war happening here. It's already occurring. The larger responses from
Speaker 3: the international sphere are pretty much in line with what
Speaker 3: you would expect, thoughts and prayers. Obviously, we didn't do
Speaker 3: it America. Various countries are saying. But I asked some
Speaker 3: folks about the Russian response, and when it came out,
Speaker 3: it was interesting because it openly stated they don't believe
Speaker 3: Joe Biden or the Biden administration order to hit. But
Speaker 3: they did say we believe the anti Trump rhetoric of
Speaker 3: the Biden administration created the environment that led to the
Speaker 3: assassination attempt.
Speaker 2: Okay, well, you know what I mean. I just feel
Speaker 2: like the rhetoric is a lot.
Speaker 4: I've long accused the Democratic Party of being pretty soft
Speaker 4: in their rhetoric, and if anything, the Republicans are the
Speaker 4: ones that, in their talking points are calling for essentially
Speaker 4: violence and you know, low key right, So I don't
Speaker 4: know if I buy that.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Also it's Russia.
Speaker 3: Uh, I'm just gonna leave that one there. Now. Again,
Speaker 3: there's so much more to get to. By the time
Speaker 3: you hear this new information, we'll have developed. We talked
Speaker 3: about bomb making material in Crooks's vehicle.
Speaker 4: And the.
Speaker 3: FBI evacuating part of his neighborhood and searching his home.
Speaker 3: The head of the Secret Service we're talking about this
Speaker 3: off air is going to testify to Congress on July
Speaker 3: twenty second. We'll see how that works out. Right now,
Speaker 3: we are just a few minutes away from Donald Trump
Speaker 3: making his next public appearance at the Republican National Convention
Speaker 3: in Milwaukee, where he will, I'm sure be delighted to
Speaker 3: meet our pals Sophie Lichterman and Robert Evans.
Speaker 2: That's right. I saw that they were out there doing
Speaker 2: God's work.
Speaker 4: So yeah, by the time you're hearing this episode, it
Speaker 4: will be Wednesday, the seventeenth of July. A lot of
Speaker 4: this information will likely have evolved, but we're going to
Speaker 4: keep an eye on it and then look forward to
Speaker 4: having our buddy Matt back to hear his take on all.
Speaker 2: Of this, so you know, hopefully this at least again.
Speaker 4: I can't thank you enough, Ben for doing the line
Speaker 4: share of the legwork here and more and just you know,
Speaker 4: all of the outreach you've done and getting all this
Speaker 4: stuff together in a sane manner that is at the
Speaker 4: very we're talking about some of these more.
Speaker 2: Out there theories.
Speaker 4: But I don't I hope we're not lending any one
Speaker 4: thing credence. It's something we're all in the same boat,
Speaker 4: like I said, and like when I said, it occurred
Speaker 4: to me a botched Biden hit.
Speaker 2: That's just what my.
Speaker 4: Conspiracy brain is nagging at me and saying, maybe it's
Speaker 4: that I don't necessarily think that's true, but we also
Speaker 4: just don't know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and we want your help, and that's that's that's
Speaker 3: the thing. We want to be honest and straightforward about that,
Speaker 3: and that's very well said. We are going to be
Speaker 3: with you. We're all in this together as the situation develops.
Speaker 3: Most importantly right now, stay safe, stay tuned. We want
Speaker 3: to hear from you, and we try to be easy
Speaker 3: to find online.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you can find us at the handle conspiracy stuff,
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Speaker 4: coming at you all the time on Facebook where we
Speaker 4: have our Facebook group. Here's where it gets crazy on
Speaker 4: x fka Twitter, on Instagram and TikTok. We go by
Speaker 4: the handle conspiracy stuff show.
Speaker 3: And the rumors are true. There is a conspiracy afoot
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