Speaker 1: Hi, everyone. Immediately after we finished our recording, there actually
Speaker 1: was some new information. We're going to add this to
Speaker 1: the very top. So I'm just going to go ahead
Speaker 1: and share some of the latest from law enforcement. This
Speaker 1: is from the law enforcement press conference. This is at
Speaker 1: nine to twenty six am Eastern time. Just for dating purposes,
Speaker 1: I'm going to go ahead and play this about what
Speaker 1: they know about the individual.
Speaker 2: We were able to track the movements of the shooter
Speaker 2: starting at eleven fifty two am. This subject arrived on
Speaker 2: campus shortly away from campus. We have tracked his movements
Speaker 2: onto the campus through the stairwells up to the roof,
Speaker 2: across the roof to a shooting location. After the shooting,
Speaker 2: we were able to track his movements as he moved
Speaker 2: to the other side of the building, jumped off of
Speaker 2: the building, and fled off of the campus and into
Speaker 2: a neighborhood. Our investigators have worked through those neighborhoods, contacting
Speaker 2: anybody they can with doorbell cameras, witnesses, and have thoroughly
Speaker 2: worked through those communities trying to identify any leads. We
Speaker 2: do have good video footage of this individual.
Speaker 3: We are not going to release that at this time.
Speaker 2: We're working through some technologies and some ways to identify
Speaker 2: this individual. If we are unsuccessful, we will reach out
Speaker 2: to you as the media and we will push that
Speaker 2: publicly to help us identify them. But we are confident
Speaker 2: in our abilities right now, and we would like to
Speaker 2: move forward in a manner that keeps everyone safe and
Speaker 2: moves this process appropriately.
Speaker 1: So that's big news. They do have what we really
Speaker 1: discussed in our segment about how it was pretty shocking
Speaker 1: that they had not released any any information or video there.
Speaker 1: We do have one more thing that we can play
Speaker 1: here about the rifle, which the weapon they believe that
Speaker 1: they've discovered. I'm going to go ahead and play that
Speaker 1: as well.
Speaker 3: This morning.
Speaker 4: I can tell you that we have recovered what we
Speaker 4: believe is the weapon that was used in yesterday's shooting.
Speaker 4: There's a high powered bolt action rifle. That rifle was
Speaker 4: recovered in a wooded area where the shooter had fled,
Speaker 4: so the FBI laboratory will be analyzing this weapon. Investigators
Speaker 4: have also collected footwear impression, a palm print, and forearm
Speaker 4: imprints for analysis. I understand there are a lot of
Speaker 4: questions about motive. I assure you that all leads, tips
Speaker 4: and tips are being fully investigated. As of this morning,
Speaker 4: we received more than one hundred and thirty tips. We
Speaker 4: think the community for that. This morning, I can tell
Speaker 4: you that we have recovered.
Speaker 1: So there you go, they've recovered a high powered rifle.
Speaker 1: So those are the two kind of addendums that just
Speaker 1: to add into that, keep that in context. Anything else
Speaker 1: you want to add, Crystal before we throw to our
Speaker 1: original comments.
Speaker 5: No, I think that's it.
Speaker 6: Yeah, just guys, we record our whole thing and then
Speaker 6: right afterwards there's this press conference, so you know, just
Speaker 6: take that additional information in as you're listening to our commentary. Obviously,
Speaker 6: the some of the specifics have changed about what we
Speaker 6: know about the potential suspect, but I think all the
Speaker 6: overall commentary on what it means for the country, et cetera,
Speaker 6: continues to stand. So all right, guys, we'll keep you
Speaker 6: updated best we can. And Ryan, Emily and I will
Speaker 6: be doing a Friday show tomorrow as well.
Speaker 1: Hello everybody, it is It's Thursday, and we had to
Speaker 1: do a little bit of special programming today because conservative
Speaker 1: activist Charlie Kirk was shot and murdered yesterday in Utah.
Speaker 1: So we're coming in from home. I think people can hear.
Speaker 1: You know, it's a it's a very difficult story to cover,
Speaker 1: and we're going to take everybody through it, and we're
Speaker 1: going to talk a little bit about kind of what
Speaker 1: it means, you know, to us, and kind of what
Speaker 1: I think we means, you know, to the mission of
Speaker 1: the show, and just generally about the country and all
Speaker 1: of that. But we do think, you know, this is
Speaker 1: a place where we have to show up. We've got
Speaker 1: to do the news. So so why don't we just
Speaker 1: go ahead and start, you know, with everything that we know.
Speaker 1: You know. Crazily enough, it was literally happened as we
Speaker 1: were planning the show for the next day, and we
Speaker 1: all found out in real time.
Speaker 6: So yeah, Emily started sending us messages and none of
Speaker 6: us could believe it. And before we get into what
Speaker 6: we know, which frankly, I mean, we waited to put
Speaker 6: anything out last night because there's always you know, misdirection
Speaker 6: and things that are wrong, et cetera, and usually things
Speaker 6: shake out and you get a clear picture of what
Speaker 6: the hell happened. And I can't say that we know
Speaker 6: that much more this morning than we did yesterday. From
Speaker 6: everybody at breaking points from me. Sager, Ryan and Emily
Speaker 6: also wanted us to convey our horror at the at
Speaker 6: the whole thing, and our deepest consolences to Charlie's family,
Speaker 6: his wife, his two kids who were there on the
Speaker 6: scene when he was shot and murdered in this political
Speaker 6: assassination that happened in broad daylight. So here's what we know.
Speaker 6: Let me go ahead and set the scene a little bit.
Speaker 6: This was you know, Charlie has known for his college tours.
Speaker 6: This was the first stop of a college tour. This
Speaker 6: was in Utah at Utah Valley University. And you know,
Speaker 6: it looked like a looked like a normal day. He
Speaker 6: was out, he was throwing hats into the crowd, and
Speaker 6: then suddenly gunfire erupts and you can see everybody scattering
Speaker 6: and screams and chaos. You guys have probably seen the
Speaker 6: actual video of his murder, which was captured on camera,
Speaker 6: and if you haven't seen it, I recommend you don't
Speaker 6: watch it because the image will haunt you for.
Speaker 5: The rest of your life. Absolute horror.
Speaker 6: Single shot to the neck and he instantly collapses. The students,
Speaker 6: of course flee as we showed you there, and what
Speaker 6: we have come to find out from video, and you know,
Speaker 6: from from what we've learned at the scene, is that
Speaker 6: the shooter was apparently on a nearby roof. Let me
Speaker 6: go ahead and share this piece so you can see
Speaker 6: a little bit of you know, what this looked like.
Speaker 6: So you can see this image here appears to be
Speaker 6: the shooter and Sagar, you know, as we're putting the
Speaker 6: pieces of this together, and Charlie was taken to the
Speaker 6: hospital and then you know, later died while he was
Speaker 6: there receiving medical care. And anyone who saw that wound
Speaker 6: I think was pretty convinced pretty quickly that he wasn't
Speaker 6: going to be able to make it. But the shooter
Speaker 6: was quite a distance away. Immediately, the police arrested an
Speaker 6: older man who was in the crowd. There were some
Speaker 6: eyewitnesses who said that he had claimed responsibility, this old
Speaker 6: man that was in the crowd, even though yet was unarmed.
Speaker 6: There's video also of him being dragged off where he's saying,
Speaker 6: shoot me, shoot me, acting very strange. Meanwhile, the actual
Speaker 6: gunman was on this the roof. Estimates are some two
Speaker 6: hundred yards away. I'm not expert on guns, but you know,
Speaker 6: we've all sort of spoken to people in our lives
Speaker 6: that we know who say this. You know, this would
Speaker 6: be a difficult shot, and it was a single shot,
Speaker 6: and obviously, you know, shot to kill, and so far
Speaker 6: has successfully evaded capture.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the circumstances beyond the sheer horror of the actual murder,
Speaker 1: the circumstances of this assassination are really honestly shocking. So
Speaker 1: I'm going to go ahead and put this map up
Speaker 1: here on the screen just so that people can see.
Speaker 1: So this was if you're watching exactly where Charlie was shot,
Speaker 1: kind of in a lawn, you know, almost auditorium style
Speaker 1: place at the Utah Valley University campus, and a video
Speaker 1: showed a person on the roof before the shooting about
Speaker 1: four hundred and thirty feet away. So if you're looking
Speaker 1: at this diagram, you can actually see the rooftop where
Speaker 1: some of the video actually captured. You know, this individual
Speaker 1: are suspected individual. Part of the thing is, you know,
Speaker 1: we really don't still know a lot right now. You
Speaker 1: had that initial suspects, not even suspect. You had a
Speaker 1: person who was taken into custody who faced questioning and
Speaker 1: definitely was acting very strangely That was followed by the
Speaker 1: FBI Director Cash Ptel, who said that there was a
Speaker 1: subject in custody that was a second subject actually in custody.
Speaker 1: I can go ahead and put that up there on
Speaker 1: the screen as well, because it just shows the chaotic
Speaker 1: nature so far of a lot of the communication from
Speaker 1: law enforcement. They say that the subject in custody has
Speaker 1: been released after an interrogation by law enforcement. Our investigation
Speaker 1: continues and we will continue to release information in the
Speaker 1: interest of transparency. But that is the last communication that
Speaker 1: we had gotten from the FBI director so far, and
Speaker 1: the manhunt remains underway.
Speaker 6: And incredibly irresponsible, frankly to put out such a you know,
Speaker 6: his initial statement. People really felt like, oh, they got
Speaker 6: the guy right. There was a press conference with law
Speaker 6: enforcement and other electeds that they were contradicting each other
Speaker 6: at that point, whether they had a suspect and custody
Speaker 6: or not, whether there was an ongoing manhunt or not.
Speaker 6: In addition to the old man that was seemingly acting
Speaker 6: very bizarre at this at the scene but has now
Speaker 6: been released, there was another another guy that they arrested.
Speaker 6: I think that actually is the subject that Cash was
Speaker 6: Pashtel was referring to here.
Speaker 5: Also turned out to be uninvolved.
Speaker 6: He'd been like a Heritage Foundation staff or so, just
Speaker 6: you know, part of the sort of conservative firmament. I
Speaker 6: don't know why they picked him up at all, but
Speaker 6: extremely bizarre. You know, at this point, basically the only
Speaker 6: thing that we have heard definitively about the appearance of
Speaker 6: this you know, of this individual, the assassin, is that
Speaker 6: they were dressed all in black. There was some audio
Speaker 6: released from a police scanner that you know, said we're
Speaker 6: looking for a subject who's dressed all in black.
Speaker 5: That's basically it.
Speaker 6: We don't have any any photos of any suspects. We
Speaker 6: haven't heard anything about any any tips or intelligence. Now
Speaker 6: maybe there are things going on behind the scenes, but
Speaker 6: the fact they had two separate individuals in custody that
Speaker 6: they questioned and released and have not put out any
Speaker 6: information to the public to try to apprehend anyone, I mean,
Speaker 6: it's it's deeply concerning.
Speaker 5: And uh, all.
Speaker 6: The experts who've looked at this say, this looked like
Speaker 6: an extremely professional job. You know, the shot itself would
Speaker 6: be would be difficult, and you know, single shot, single
Speaker 6: kill shot. Then he's able to seemingly flawlessly escape and
Speaker 6: escape justice at least up to up to this point
Speaker 6: in the day. You know, soccer, can you do you
Speaker 6: mind putting that map up on the screen if you
Speaker 6: have it, because if you look at that building, uh,
Speaker 6: there is a parking lot too that is right behind
Speaker 6: the building that you know that the shooter was a
Speaker 6: lleged you know that we think that the shooter was
Speaker 6: on when he murdered Charlie Kirk. And so the thought
Speaker 6: is that he was able to, you know, escape from
Speaker 6: this building while the crowd is fleeing, while they're bothered,
Speaker 6: you know, busy arresting this old man who has apparently
Speaker 6: nothing to do with it, he's able to probably go
Speaker 6: to this parking lot and escape and vanish so far
Speaker 6: into thin air. So from the difficulty of the shot,
Speaker 6: the execution of that, to the ability to get away
Speaker 6: from the scene and you know and take advantage of
Speaker 6: these you know, diversions, makes it seem like it was intentional.
Speaker 6: I guess that's not completely onto the question, but take
Speaker 6: advantage of this chaos to be able to exit. This
Speaker 6: was someone who knew what they were doing. This was
Speaker 6: not some random radicalized in cel on the internet or whatever.
Speaker 6: This was someone you know, someone who had a lot
Speaker 6: of experience in marksmanship and who had a plan and
Speaker 6: was able to execute it.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 1: What I heard from a few gun experts is they
Speaker 1: were like, look, it's not that two hundred yards is
Speaker 1: a difficult shot. It's their life. You know, somebody could
Speaker 1: do it. They would have to know some familiarity. Generally,
Speaker 1: laying in the prone makes it a lot easier in
Speaker 1: terms of the sniping direction. But I think actually you
Speaker 1: have to combine it with the totality of what we've
Speaker 1: seen in the executions so far wearing black also, you know,
Speaker 1: laying in the prone, finding a position, planning the attack,
Speaker 1: having a way of egress, evading capture, some thirteen out.
Speaker 1: Keep in mind, everybody, we're recording this around eight thirty
Speaker 1: am Eastern Standard time, Eastern time, so people should just
Speaker 1: remember that, you know, information can break very quickly. But
Speaker 1: this is largely not just our you know, assessment, it's
Speaker 1: also the assessment of some law enforcement experts. You know,
Speaker 1: the CNN actually had a guest on who made this
Speaker 1: very point. So I'm going to go ahead and play
Speaker 1: a little bit from what they were saying.
Speaker 8: In a case like this, you're looking for someone who
Speaker 8: has detachment and a lack of empathy, who likes to
Speaker 8: be in control the offender. Characteristics of the assassin sniper
Speaker 8: are something that's been studied very closely, especially by the
Speaker 8: Secret Service, and it's someone who's methodical and patient, self reliant.
Speaker 8: In other words, Caitlin, this is the kind of person
Speaker 8: who would have planned to get in silently, try to
Speaker 8: be invisible, take this shot, accomplish the mission, take the
Speaker 8: gun with them, and leave little evidence behind, which is
Speaker 8: why I think they're having a very difficult time getting
Speaker 8: started on this. This is someone who was a.
Speaker 7: Planner and John Also, what stood out to me from
Speaker 7: what we heard from officials earlier was they said it
Speaker 7: was a single shot that was fired. It wasn't multiple
Speaker 7: shots in Charlie Kirk's direction. They said it was about
Speaker 7: two hundred yards away from where he was sitting under
Speaker 7: that tent. What does that tell you about the person's
Speaker 7: familiarity with firearms?
Speaker 8: That tells you that the person is not new to shooting.
Speaker 8: That they understood exactly what type of long rifle to bring,
Speaker 8: what kind of optics in terms of scopes and sites
Speaker 8: to have on that What the windage was that might
Speaker 8: affect a shot from that distance. This is someone who
Speaker 8: knew exactly what they were doing and is probably known
Speaker 8: to others, and this may be working to the advantage
Speaker 8: of law enforcement as someone who has a long history
Speaker 8: in shooting an amateur.
Speaker 1: So I think that that's very important to keep in
Speaker 1: mind here. That's what they're saying now so far, you know,
Speaker 1: in terms of the initial assessment, and I think, you know,
Speaker 1: again combining the totality of the shot, of the execution
Speaker 1: of getting out. If we think a little bit more recently,
Speaker 1: one of the more high profile assassinations that we saw
Speaker 1: with Luigi Mangioni, there's a couple of differences because Maggioni,
Speaker 1: you know, came up very close to the United Healthcare CEO.
Speaker 1: Of course, you know, he was able to escape, but
Speaker 1: he also was you know, he made a couple of
Speaker 1: mistakes there with security camera footage they were releasing images.
Speaker 1: Law enforcement again to this point, has not released any
Speaker 1: image at all of the suspect. In fact, the press
Speaker 1: conference that they gave so that the CCTV footage was
Speaker 1: grainy and it just simply showed a person in black.
Speaker 1: Presumably Also, the FBI is going to be doing like
Speaker 1: a cell phone location ping, which they're able to do
Speaker 1: and they've done in high profile investigations as well, to
Speaker 1: try and narrow all of the individuals who were there.
Speaker 1: I was looking at some maps of the area. There
Speaker 1: was a freeway very close by and obviously was a
Speaker 1: very chaotic situation, you know, to be able to go
Speaker 1: away and get in. There's some three thousand people who
Speaker 1: actually attended the event. But broadly, you know, at this point,
Speaker 1: the fact that you've evaded capture for some twelve hours,
Speaker 1: more than twelve hours now since this attack does show
Speaker 1: and also the release of two suspects says this is
Speaker 1: a difficult investigation right now for the f and it
Speaker 1: does tell us also, you know, with the information, the
Speaker 1: conflicting information and all the stuff that came out, it
Speaker 1: is it's pretty shocking, and it does I think also
Speaker 1: what we can focus on is this, you know, if
Speaker 1: we look at some of that you were talking about,
Speaker 1: the crazed lunatic attacks, very often those lead in suicide.
Speaker 1: They are martyrs who immediately are identified confronted by law enforcement.
Speaker 1: In this particular case, I think the fact that the
Speaker 1: shooter fled had a plan in the very beginning that
Speaker 1: there's been no claim, manifesto, et cetera. Actually is a
Speaker 1: message in and of itself that this person, at the
Speaker 1: very least, you know, wanted to evade capture. Now again
Speaker 1: keep in mind that could be still a single individual.
Speaker 1: The DC sniper case. If we originally think back to that,
Speaker 1: there was a lot of speculation to the planned nature
Speaker 1: of it. It was it's crazy. Actually we're talking on
Speaker 1: the day of nine to eleven, the twenty fourth anniversary
Speaker 1: since the nine to eleven attacks that happened in the
Speaker 1: wake of that, and there was a lot of worry
Speaker 1: about terrorism, etc. Obviously it turned out to be you know,
Speaker 1: a crazy guy and his son, but he did have
Speaker 1: military training and they certainly did, you know, plan a
Speaker 1: lot of this round Luigi against similar situations to somebody
Speaker 1: who conducted an assassination, high profile assassination, was able to
Speaker 1: flee of their own accord, got away for a couple
Speaker 1: of days. So it is certainly within the realm of possibility.
Speaker 1: But the nature, the political assassin nature of this is
Speaker 1: so extraordinary and it really doesn't have a lot of
Speaker 1: parallels in modern American history, which we can return to.
Speaker 1: But you know, there's also some pretty kind of crazy
Speaker 1: information now that's coming out. I want to keep in
Speaker 1: mind in speculation, but there was John Solomon over at
Speaker 1: who works for I think Real America's Voice, was recently
Speaker 1: reporting here on Fox News that there was actually some
Speaker 1: foreign intelligence lead involved in Charlie Kirk's assassination. And keep
Speaker 1: in mind, look Solomon, you know, he is his own
Speaker 1: track record. You can go and look for yourself. I
Speaker 1: will say he's the person who broke the Charlie Kirk's
Speaker 1: death story. He was the first person to report it
Speaker 1: actually over at Real America's Voice, which was the outlet
Speaker 1: which hosts the Charlie Kirk program. But here's what he
Speaker 1: had to say late last night.
Speaker 9: And that we all lost, no matter what side of
Speaker 9: the political all you're on too, we lost something important
Speaker 9: in America today. But the case goes on, the investigation
Speaker 9: goes on. There's a lot of piecing of evidence together.
Speaker 9: We don't have a shooter tonight. We have a couple
Speaker 9: of leads, a couple of people that were released that
Speaker 9: probably aren't the shooter. They a couple of hot leads,
Speaker 9: is a little bit of foreign intelligence, and I think
Speaker 9: over the next couple of days, we'll learn a lot
Speaker 9: more and hopefully we will bring to justice the evil
Speaker 9: person who did what they did to Charlie today.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I hope.
Speaker 1: So John Solomon's there saying a little bit of foreign intelligence.
Speaker 1: It look, it's not deniable. He's got a lot of
Speaker 1: sources in the Trump administration. Is one of the favorite
Speaker 1: journalists of Donald Trump himself. And we know that Donald
Speaker 1: try Trump has actually spent a lot of time actually
Speaker 1: on the phone there is let's see, I'm Crystal, if
Speaker 1: you just talk, there's some new information. I'm just going
Speaker 1: to review it.
Speaker 5: Okay, Yeah, go ahead and take a look at that.
Speaker 6: So Soccer and I also actually actually both have personal
Speaker 6: experience with John Solomon. He worked he was our boss
Speaker 6: effectively at the Hill when we both started there. I
Speaker 6: will say he is not always the most reliable character,
Speaker 6: but as Soccer said, he is very well sourced in
Speaker 6: the Trump administry. He's close to Trump, He's close to Charlie.
Speaker 6: He you know, is I'm sure close with people in
Speaker 6: the FBI, probably Cash Betel himself. So you know, that's
Speaker 6: why it's worth paying attention to what he says there.
Speaker 6: To go back to what Soccer was saying about, Okay, well,
Speaker 6: what is the what is the profile? What do we
Speaker 6: know of this individual and what they wanted to accomplish.
Speaker 6: Unlike we can compare to the recent school shooting in Minnesota.
Speaker 6: You know, that person posted long video, there were long journals.
Speaker 6: They wanted people to know about them and their psychology
Speaker 6: and what they were doing and why with all this symbology.
Speaker 6: They also intended to be killed on the same and
Speaker 6: killed themselves on the scene. You know, that is a
Speaker 6: typical trait oftentimes is you'll see you know, you'll see
Speaker 6: a manifesto. You'll see someone who either dies by their
Speaker 6: own hands or intends to be killed by the cops.
Speaker 6: There's a desire for sort of infamy and notoriety. You
Speaker 6: also have, you know, the desire to make some specific
Speaker 6: political point and make it really clear and apparent to
Speaker 6: the public. In this instance, you know, you have two
Speaker 6: things that you can say for sure. This person wanted
Speaker 6: a public execution. They wanted it to be on camera.
Speaker 6: They wanted all of us to be scrolling through our
Speaker 6: Twitter and seeing the gore and the horror, the absolute
Speaker 6: horror of this. That was the message they wanted to send.
Speaker 6: They wanted all of us to see it. They wanted everyone,
Speaker 6: certainly who's a public fee, They wanted everyone to feel
Speaker 6: un safe and know that even if you're you know,
Speaker 6: Charlie Kirk and you got the president's ear and you've
Speaker 6: got a security team around you, that no one is safe.
Speaker 6: And we also know that they wanted not to be found, right.
Speaker 6: They wanted to do this from a distance. They did
Speaker 6: not want to be captured. They wanted to evade justice.
Speaker 6: They wanted to get away. As far as we know
Speaker 6: at this point, we haven't found or located any sort
Speaker 6: of specific manifesto. Now that doesn't mean that this wasn't ideological.
Speaker 6: I think, I think, you know, it's very very very
Speaker 6: likely ideological. Although you know, you can't rule out there's
Speaker 6: all sorts of types of people that this could be.
Speaker 6: But I and I think the third thing we can
Speaker 6: say for certain is this was someone who planned and
Speaker 6: had some level of experience. You know, again, it looks
Speaker 6: like it was a professional job. Now, maybe they just
Speaker 6: got lucky, you know, maybe this was someone who was
Speaker 6: a hunter and pretty good shot and had an idea
Speaker 6: of how to get away and was able to pull
Speaker 6: it off, you know, without some sort of like people
Speaker 6: are speculating this could be a government, this could be terrorists,
Speaker 6: this could be foreign intel. I think all those things
Speaker 6: are on the table, without going too far down the
Speaker 6: speculative rabbit hole, but I think those are the pieces
Speaker 6: we know at this point. This was someone who wanted
Speaker 6: a spectacle of gore and assassination to haunt all of us,
Speaker 6: and someone who wanted to get away and be elusive
Speaker 6: and evade capture.
Speaker 1: That's right, And that's again, that is a message in
Speaker 1: and of itself. It kind of does rule out some
Speaker 1: of the more traditional thing not traditional, but some of
Speaker 1: the other high profile incidents that we may have all
Speaker 1: witnessed very you know, recently we had the school shooting
Speaker 1: in Minneapolis. Often, you know, those lead to murder, suicide,
Speaker 1: We've seen attempted assassinate, or even in terrorism. Right, you know,
Speaker 1: it's very often that that will be conducted and then
Speaker 1: claimed and or you know, you could you want to
Speaker 1: create the spectacle there and immediately make sure that your
Speaker 1: ideology is felt. The very fact that that hasn't happened
Speaker 1: is certainly an indication again of something. And eventually, if
Speaker 1: the case does get resolved, we'll learn a little bit why.
Speaker 1: My only caution is Luisian Angione very likely conducted a
Speaker 1: political or you know, some ideological assassination, at least in
Speaker 1: his own mind, and he still fled. Right, So say,
Speaker 1: the d C sniper very similar. I mean, he was
Speaker 1: obviously just deeply mentally ill. But I mean everything is
Speaker 1: on the table because we don't know anything. That's kind
Speaker 1: of what's so shocking. I'm not going to share the information.
Speaker 1: It's not credible confirmed for me to be able to
Speaker 1: bring anything. Yeah, let me just pick.
Speaker 6: Up on the Luigi point because just as a reminder,
Speaker 6: and I'd have to go back and look at the timeline.
Speaker 6: But it was pretty quickly that we were starting to
Speaker 6: get information about Oh he stayed at this hostel. Oh
Speaker 6: he ate at this location. Oh, here's the surveillance photo
Speaker 6: of him at the hostel. Here's the surveillance photo of
Speaker 6: him here. There were very quickly, there were some there
Speaker 6: were some pieces, you know, he was able to get
Speaker 6: out of the city, but there was some information that
Speaker 6: they were in fact working with and you know, pretty
Speaker 6: quickly you knew a significant amount about this individual, and
Speaker 6: they were able to chase down leads. Again, maybe they
Speaker 6: have something that's not public, but typically, you know, in
Speaker 6: these early days, if they have an image, they usually
Speaker 6: put it out so that people can be on the lookout.
Speaker 6: I mean, you remember how the Luigi was apprehended because
Speaker 6: somebody right well in somebody at a McDonald's in Pennsylvania
Speaker 6: saw him and said, Hey, that looks like the photo
Speaker 6: that I saw circulating and called the cops. At least
Speaker 6: that's the official story of how that all went down.
Speaker 6: So they like to get the public involved if they
Speaker 6: don't have a suspect in custody, so that people all
Speaker 6: over the place can be looking and calling in tips
Speaker 6: and trying to assist in this investigation. Right now, as
Speaker 6: far as we know, there is nothing to go on.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it took about twelve to twenty four hours for
Speaker 1: some of that information, so we're still you know that
Speaker 1: in that timeframe obviously, but it yeah, I mean, I
Speaker 1: think again, it's just it's extraordinary, and it does tell
Speaker 1: us at least something that the person wanted to create
Speaker 1: this high profile spectacle, they wanted to get away. And
Speaker 1: you know, I've been thinking kind of racking my brain
Speaker 1: for comparisons, and in modern American history it's there really
Speaker 1: are none. I mean, you know, Charlie, and you could
Speaker 1: kind of call him whatever you want. He was a
Speaker 1: conservative activist, he was an influencer. He's YouTuber, you know,
Speaker 1: And that's part of why I think, you know, so
Speaker 1: many of us who also do very similar jobs and
Speaker 1: participate some similar events, are so shaken and like struck
Speaker 1: by it. And it's because everyone has participated, at least
Speaker 1: in some form, you know, in something like this. You know,
Speaker 1: for more modern comparisons, I mean, I'm not saying that
Speaker 1: they're one to one, but obviously we had in the
Speaker 1: nineteen sixties, we had the assassinations of people like Malcolm
Speaker 1: X or MLK Junior. You did have a period of
Speaker 1: a lot of violence, political violence in the nineteen seventies,
Speaker 1: the weather underground, you know, the sib Simbonese Liberation Army,
Speaker 1: the kidnapping of Patti Hurst. I mean, it was a
Speaker 1: crazy time. And we have talked a lot about on
Speaker 1: the show over the years about the comparison to the
Speaker 1: nineteen seventies, and that's actually almost immediately what I came to.
Speaker 1: But there's some really darker ones as well that actually
Speaker 1: Ryan was reminding of and I had to go back
Speaker 1: and really to look because I'd only read about them
Speaker 1: in passing. But probably, you know, maybe the more one
Speaker 1: to one comparison would be a guy like Elijah Lovejoy.
Speaker 1: He was actually an abolitionist, a newspaper editor in eighteen
Speaker 1: thirty seven who was actually killed by a pro slavery mob.
Speaker 1: And it was actually quite common during the Civil War
Speaker 1: era where pro abolitionist or anti secessionists and others in
Speaker 1: the South, journalists, political editors, people who would express those
Speaker 1: types of opinions were killed for their political beliefs and
Speaker 1: for putting that out there. But that is how far
Speaker 1: back I would have to go actually to even find
Speaker 1: a comparison to keep it in the realm of Luigi Mangioni.
Speaker 1: I've talked about this here on the show also because
Speaker 1: of Luigi's own predilections for Japanese culture. But in the
Speaker 1: early nineteen thirties, twenties and thirties, in the rise of
Speaker 1: the Japanese military state, there was a concept called Geikokujo,
Speaker 1: which means kind of like from the bottom to the top,
Speaker 1: and it entailed high profile assassination, and assassination was not
Speaker 1: something just limited to the government, although it was largely conducted.
Speaker 1: It was to target political leaders, opinion leaders, others, for
Speaker 1: people to create a purpose of kind of moving towards militarism. Again,
Speaker 1: they're not one to one, but you know, the same
Speaker 1: social forces are not all that rare. I could also
Speaker 1: think to the anarchist movements of the early nineteen hundreds,
Speaker 1: Gilded Age oligarchs were targeted columnists and others. Again, they
Speaker 1: weren't assassinated. But that's part of what makes us, I think,
Speaker 1: so extraordinary. It's so crazy that we're talking. I don't know.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's difficult to describe because it's not the
Speaker 1: same as nine to eleven obviously, but it does just
Speaker 1: feel like a rubicon was crossed yesterday. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: he was murdered and he was assassinated in cold blood
Speaker 1: in front of thousands of people in four.
Speaker 5: K h pet of the world.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like streamed live stream. And you know, for those
Speaker 1: of us who were in the news business, we experienced
Speaker 1: his death at like a very visceral level. I mean
Speaker 1: we saw the blood literally and the life like leave
Speaker 1: his body, and uh, yeah, I don't know. For you know,
Speaker 1: it's really poignant. I think to me that it's twenty
Speaker 1: four years now after nine to eleven, and it does
Speaker 1: feel like a very a very different country. And I
Speaker 1: hope I'm not exaggerating or overreacting, but yet, you know,
Speaker 1: and we were thinking about Butler. But that's I mean,
Speaker 1: I hate to say it, but like that's part of
Speaker 1: American political history. We've had multiple presidents who have been assassinated,
Speaker 1: We've had the chaining caning of Charles Sumner, you know, legislators.
Speaker 1: It's it's not like it was insane right to think
Speaker 1: about It's not like it was insane to think about
Speaker 1: the death or the targeting of political legislators. But now
Speaker 1: it feels like people who engage in American public life
Speaker 1: itself very recently from Charlie and also these ministates, I
Speaker 1: mean these the recent Minnesota attack that was only a
Speaker 1: couple of months ago, where these were state legislators. They're
Speaker 1: not household names president right, these are not not even
Speaker 1: a congressman, not a senator nothing, right, state senator. I
Speaker 1: don't even know who my state senator is. You know
Speaker 1: where I live. And so these are people who are like,
Speaker 1: you know, no offense, but like are like orbiting the
Speaker 1: political system. And I'm Charlie was more. Charlie was more
Speaker 1: influential even than those people I think, you know, to
Speaker 1: the national politics. But I don't know. That's part of
Speaker 1: why it just feels like that Rubicon really was crossed.
Speaker 5: I agree. I agree, Sagaran.
Speaker 6: To me, it's like it's a wake up call of
Speaker 6: the era that we were already living in.
Speaker 5: You know that.
Speaker 6: I think we were in a little bit of denial about,
Speaker 6: to be honest with you, because I mean even January sixth,
Speaker 6: like that was an extraordinarily violent and you know, a
Speaker 6: violent upheaval. Obviously, you had the two assassination attempts on
Speaker 6: President Trump, but like you said, you know, in a
Speaker 6: weird way that that unfortunately attempted presidential assassinations. There's always
Speaker 6: going to be someone who wants to kill the president, right,
Speaker 6: So it didn't feel like a totally different thing than
Speaker 6: we've seen or experienced or read about or heard about before.
Speaker 6: Right then you get, yeah, these state legislators, you know,
Speaker 6: you also had the attack on Paul Pelosi, right, somebody
Speaker 6: maniac who came in who was trying to get to
Speaker 6: Nancy Pelosi. Obviously, anyone who is in public life at.
Speaker 1: All, rational baseball shooting, remember.
Speaker 5: That, Yeah, that's exactly right.
Speaker 6: And anyone who's involved in public life at all, it's
Speaker 6: almost just accepted at this point that you're going to
Speaker 6: get death threats and that's just like part of the
Speaker 6: part of the deal. So, you know, obviously for us
Speaker 6: on a personal level, like Charlie was more famous than us,
Speaker 6: he had the ear of the pros and more power.
Speaker 6: You know, he had this whole organization and he was
Speaker 6: an influencer and a YouTuber and whatever. But yeah, I mean,
Speaker 6: this is someone who is in our world, right, and
Speaker 6: so I think it does change everything in terms of
Speaker 6: how anyone is thinking about themselves in public life, the
Speaker 6: type of events they're going to say yes to, the
Speaker 6: type of availability that they're going to have to the public.
Speaker 6: And you know, what, can I say, The country's coming apart, right,
Speaker 6: We're we're chock full of guns, you know, a nation
Speaker 6: pack full of guns, with mass levels of untreated mental illness.
Speaker 6: You know, people don't have access to healthcare system, rampant inequality,
Speaker 6: and increasing political extremism where people, you know, people are
Speaker 6: radicalized and they feel that the stakes are existential, and
Speaker 6: in some you know, in some instances, the stakes do
Speaker 6: feel existential, like there there are genuine you know, deep
Speaker 6: political divides that are very real in the same way
Speaker 6: that in the build up to the Civil War, like
Speaker 6: for Southerners, the idea that like your whole you know,
Speaker 6: Southern slave owners, the idea that your whole economic model
Speaker 6: was going to be taken away, that felt existential to them.
Speaker 6: So you know, it's a it's a tinder box, like
Speaker 6: it's a powder keg, and it is absolutely it's a
Speaker 6: terrifying It's a terrifying moment for those reasons exactly. And
Speaker 6: to me, that has to be what this assassin wanted us, Like,
Speaker 6: that's what he wants the nation to take away from
Speaker 6: this is terror is fear, is the sense that you know,
Speaker 6: you you can't speak out, you can't be in a
Speaker 6: public place, you can't just have political disagreements and listen,
Speaker 6: I'm not going to mince words like I genuinely find
Speaker 6: found some of Charlie Kirk's used to be violent, abhorrent,
Speaker 6: no one like that doesn't mean you murder some I
Speaker 6: mean it's it's horrific because once these things are on
Speaker 6: the table, that's the thing that's terrifying too. Is like
Speaker 6: I was thinking about the and the epidemic of school shootings, which,
Speaker 6: by the way, we had a fucking school shooting yesterday too,
Speaker 6: like this is America now where three three students were
Speaker 6: critically injured at I believe it was, you know, Denver
Speaker 6: High School, So you had Columbine. Prior to Combine, there
Speaker 6: were not school shootings, and then after Columbine they're just
Speaker 6: coming more and more and more and more and more.
Speaker 6: And that's what's so frightening about this moment is that
Speaker 6: once you put this idea out there into the ether,
Speaker 6: how many other people will be quote unquote inspired by it?
Speaker 6: How does this transform the way we all relate to
Speaker 6: each other? And then you know, we'll talk about the
Speaker 6: presence response in a moment, which was just pouring gasoline
Speaker 6: on the fire, which is also what makes this so
Speaker 6: frightening for all of us. And you know, I don't
Speaker 6: think anyone would be surprised if Trump does use this
Speaker 6: as some further crackdown on what he sees as his
Speaker 6: political enemies.
Speaker 1: Well that's why it's so poigning to think about it
Speaker 1: on the anniversary of nine to eleven, And you know,
Speaker 1: nine to eleven it was kind of the best and
Speaker 1: the worst. You know, the day after nine to eleven.
Speaker 1: It was a similar it was a somber moment. People
Speaker 1: came together, they put the flag in their window from
Speaker 1: the newspaper. Yeah, it's crazy, it's twenty four years ago.
Speaker 1: There's probably a decent number of people watching this who
Speaker 1: don't either weren't alive or don't remember it literally at all.
Speaker 1: But it was I was just young enough or just
Speaker 1: old enough to kind of remember what that experience was like.
Speaker 1: And it's I mean, it's why I'm here. It's the
Speaker 1: only reason I've even got interested in politics. And yeah,
Speaker 1: and I think, you know, to that tinder box feeling,
Speaker 1: I think that's what's so really scary, and I do
Speaker 1: think that's what the assassin wanted, and that's why I think,
Speaker 1: you know, we really got to try to work against it.
Speaker 1: It's like you said with Charlie. I mean, look, I
Speaker 1: like Charlie on a personal level. I was telling you, guys,
Speaker 1: I mean I was really shaken up by it. I
Speaker 1: was literally just talking to him a couple of weeks
Speaker 1: ago about what it was like to have kids and
Speaker 1: to have a daughter specifically. He invited me on his show,
Speaker 1: and you know, honestly took courage for him because he
Speaker 1: actually invited me on specifically to talk about Israel, and uh,
Speaker 1: you know, it's that's part of what's so crazy about it.
Speaker 1: I knew the guy for years. We had our disagreements,
Speaker 1: and that's fine. We have our disagreements here every day,
Speaker 1: you know, you and me, and we were talking about that,
Speaker 1: you know, in the context Emilin and Ryan who enforced
Speaker 1: and weren't able to join us, but they definitely wanted to,
Speaker 1: both expressing their horror how disgusted they are really by
Speaker 1: the whole attack. And I just really don't want to
Speaker 1: go down that path again. But I feel like all
Speaker 1: of the not only does that the assassin want, but
Speaker 1: I also feel like it's to the benefit of a
Speaker 1: lot of entrenched kind of political interests. It's also to
Speaker 1: the you know, it's like the baseline of engagement for
Speaker 1: politics for a lot of people. And that doesn't erase
Speaker 1: the existential field because you're right there are Look, politics
Speaker 1: is existential, is true. We're not going to lie to you.
Speaker 1: I don't means words about that the election was insanely important.
Speaker 1: It was, doesn't you know. Not saying that that, of course,
Speaker 1: it's not like a gateway to justifying political violence. And yeah,
Speaker 1: just like dealing in the aftermath of this feeling of
Speaker 1: public life in the in the tinder box of the
Speaker 1: country again on the twenty fourth anniversary of nine to eleven,
Speaker 1: it all just really kind of comes full circle for
Speaker 1: what they wanted, whoever this person was, and the you know,
Speaker 1: the the the murdering of someone again, there's something so
Speaker 1: twenty twenty five about the attack, you know, Mac, Mac
Speaker 1: was not only the fact that we watched it live
Speaker 1: basically happened witnessed. I mean the moment I saw the video,
Speaker 1: I said, disguised dead, it's it's it's over. But Mac
Speaker 1: sent us our producer a video you know, there was
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna call him out by name, but like
Speaker 1: a TikToker who's like yo TikTok live, like, you know,
Speaker 1: creating content out of it almost immediately subscribe and subscribe
Speaker 1: to me on my channel, right, And I was like, ah,
Speaker 1: I can't believe really that that's kind of where things
Speaker 1: are now. And yeah, I mean it's a scared every time,
Speaker 1: not just for people who are engaged in public life.
Speaker 1: And you know, like I said, I knew, Charlie, you
Speaker 1: know that crazy The last time I talked him. We
Speaker 1: fought actually about something. I don't think he would mind
Speaker 1: me saying that. And you know, to his credit, he
Speaker 1: really would talk to a lot of people, and he
Speaker 1: had a debate scheduled with Hassan Piker nine days from now, right, uh.
Speaker 1: And he did change a lot of people's lives and
Speaker 1: their minds. And I mean that's part of what made
Speaker 1: him what he was. And I think at the very least, like,
Speaker 1: you know, if there's going to be taken anything from that,
Speaker 1: it's kind of like the legacy that I would like
Speaker 1: to look at. But unfortunately, I think things are going
Speaker 1: in a bad direction.
Speaker 6: Well, I think he was very I mean, he was
Speaker 6: really important in Trump's reelection. I mean, you know this
Speaker 6: whole like gen Z Men shift like Charlie is a
Speaker 6: very important part of that, and a lot of the
Speaker 6: you know, a lot of the sort of like I
Speaker 6: don't like, legacy conservative influencers. I don't when Chica like
Speaker 6: sort of like Trump one point zero people who got big,
Speaker 6: like you know, the Ben Shapiro and Tim Poole and whatever.
Speaker 6: A lot of them have seen some of their influence
Speaker 6: and their views fall off as people have moved towards
Speaker 6: like Fuenttes and the Croypers and like some other newer
Speaker 6: creators as in Gold or as another one.
Speaker 5: Charlie still was.
Speaker 6: You know, it was like at the peak of his
Speaker 6: power and combined having this giant network, this you know,
Speaker 6: very influential a lot of Republican influencers too, like their
Speaker 6: audience or old people like Charlie genuinely had. You could
Speaker 6: see there were thousands of people who showed up for
Speaker 6: him for this event, thousands of young people who showed
Speaker 6: up for him for this event. So he's a very
Speaker 6: important part of Trump's reelect. Obviously, was in contact with
Speaker 6: Trump himself and other people in the administration on a
Speaker 6: regular basis. And you know, I this is not to
Speaker 6: dispectlate about who or what or whatever, but it is
Speaker 6: notable too that he was in real time really grappling
Speaker 6: with some of those divisions in the MAGA coalition what
Speaker 6: it means to be America first and probably nowhere And
Speaker 6: we covered some of this on the show. Was he
Speaker 6: more sort of like torn and under pressure than on
Speaker 6: the issue of Israel? And it makes sense because you
Speaker 6: have the president who's with Israel one hundred percent of
Speaker 6: the way and back in the genocide and doing the
Speaker 6: whole thing. And then you have Charlie's young audience that
Speaker 6: increasingly has this very different view, and so you could
Speaker 6: see in real time the way he was struggling to
Speaker 6: balance those things because you know, of course he wants
Speaker 6: to maintain his good relationship with the White House.
Speaker 5: He's trying to keep his base happy.
Speaker 6: And whatever, and so you could see playing out before
Speaker 6: our eyes like this sort of tug of war for
Speaker 6: him of how to position himself. And that's the context
Speaker 6: in which he, you know, had you on his show
Speaker 6: so you could articulate, you know, your views about it.
Speaker 6: He hosted that focused group of young people that we covered,
Speaker 6: asking that, you know, what they thought about it, and
Speaker 6: sort of letting them talk and also articulate a view
Speaker 6: that was divergent for the White House. He's been very
Speaker 6: out He's been outspoken on the on the Epstein Files
Speaker 6: as well, so you know, he was both kind of
Speaker 6: at the peak of his power and also really touching
Speaker 6: on some very sensitive and very controversial issues, not even
Speaker 6: just with the nation at large, but even within the
Speaker 6: Republican the political Republican is actually.
Speaker 1: What's so striking to me is that a guy like me,
Speaker 1: knew Charlie and actually had good relations, and that I
Speaker 1: was watching Fox News and a guy like Mark Levin
Speaker 1: had neutral I mean he was look, he was the
Speaker 1: consummate politician. Honestly, he might have been president one day,
Speaker 1: like even just thinking about it, like in the level
Speaker 1: of fame, the engagement, his ability to kind of navigate
Speaker 1: all the political coalitions from a very early age, engaged
Speaker 1: with the political process. He was basically on a first
Speaker 1: name basis with like every Republican senator. I would say,
Speaker 1: you know, outside of Trump, JD and Elon, he's one
Speaker 1: of the most respect people for the Trump election. In
Speaker 1: twenty twenty four TPUSA events, you know, we're critical, critical,
Speaker 1: especially in the gen Z men swing to the right. Uh.
Speaker 1: And you know, again, because we don't know the motivation
Speaker 1: of this shooter or like what they even want to cause,
Speaker 1: it's kind of difficult to even speculate as to where
Speaker 1: that goes. Uh. And I think, you know broadly again
Speaker 1: with Charlie's murder, with his assassination here, I really just
Speaker 1: think about like the sick nature that you said, there
Speaker 1: was a school shooting, and I don't know, I just
Speaker 1: want to come back to like talking and hashing things out.
Speaker 1: I know that sounds really trite, but it is. You know,
Speaker 1: things can be existential, and we also co existence, if
Speaker 1: that makes sense.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and that's that's what that's what this country has. Yeah, right, exactly.
Speaker 1: We don't really have another choice. And that's what's so
Speaker 1: that's what's scary about it. We don't really have another
Speaker 1: other than more of what you saw yesterday, of murder
Speaker 1: and assassination in cold blood and of kind of you know,
Speaker 1: and that you know, again you can hate the guy,
Speaker 1: disagree with the guy, whatever. Again, we even had our
Speaker 1: own disagreement. Whatever. Fine, you know, I don't have to
Speaker 1: throw it clear about it. I liked him. I did.
Speaker 1: And to see not just the murder, but kind of
Speaker 1: within the context of the broader country and the slide.
Speaker 1: It's funny when you read a history book, you see
Speaker 1: things that are so obvious. But now if I you know,
Speaker 1: put my history hat on eight years, it's not that
Speaker 1: long ago. That was twenty seventeen. We had the baseball
Speaker 1: shooting right from that point forward of Steve Scalise, you know,
Speaker 1: still injured from the attack. It's a miracle that he
Speaker 1: even survived, and many of the other individuals. Then we had,
Speaker 1: I mean, so an entire summer of insanity. We had BLM,
Speaker 1: which was then followed by January sixth, and then was
Speaker 1: followed now by I mean, you know, interim school shootings
Speaker 1: all up in between insane ideological attacks, synagogues, churches.
Speaker 6: I mean, Joshapiroson, there were the embassy staffers who yes,
Speaker 6: Jesus really, the Minnesota legislators.
Speaker 1: Paul Pelosi was attacked, you know, and and and we're at.
Speaker 6: A point now where I can't hold them all in
Speaker 6: my head, like I'd have to make a list. That's
Speaker 6: how many of these you know, ideological assassination or attempted
Speaker 6: assassinations we've seen at this point, just in the past,
Speaker 6: just even if you narrated the past couple.
Speaker 1: Of years, right, that's just eight years, right, And I
Speaker 1: can't even go, you know, off off of all of them,
Speaker 1: for I'm sure I'm already missing a bunch within them.
Speaker 1: And that and then just in the last six months
Speaker 1: to see, uh, this kind of explode in this like
Speaker 1: like you said, the tinder box kind of nature of everything.
Speaker 1: But what it does I think really demonstrate is, like
Speaker 1: you said, what the intention? And I don't think we
Speaker 1: spent enough time talking about this after nine eleven. That's
Speaker 1: part of why I wanted to focus on it after
Speaker 1: nine to eleven. We did not spend enough time and
Speaker 1: on talking about what did these people want from murdering
Speaker 1: three thousand innocent people on nine to eleven. And what
Speaker 1: they wanted was what we gave them, the invasion of Iraq,
Speaker 1: the destruction of our civil liberties. You know, they said
Speaker 1: they hate us for our freedom, and then we took
Speaker 1: away our own freedom. Everybody turned inward. Millions of people
Speaker 1: abroad ended up killed. We ignited civil wars. You know,
Speaker 1: if you we'd never had a serious reckoning with like
Speaker 1: why why did the World Trade Center? And it's like
Speaker 1: to strike at the heart of American capitalism. They strike
Speaker 1: at the heart of American power at the Pentagon, and
Speaker 1: they were also going to hit the legislature and the
Speaker 1: seat of government and the point or the White House,
Speaker 1: and no one's really still sure to this day. But
Speaker 1: for what purpose? And the purpose was basically what we
Speaker 1: gave them. And I want to sit with that in
Speaker 1: the in the wake of the death, to say, like, okay,
Speaker 1: like this, what the person wanted was the fear not
Speaker 1: only of people public life, but also just the general
Speaker 1: chilling effect. But look, we still don't know anything about
Speaker 1: the shooter. And that's actually still what's so insane really
Speaker 1: about it all, and almost kind of heightens the the
Speaker 1: like shocking nature of it, the fact that there's still
Speaker 1: not a single detail and it's nine am Eastern time
Speaker 1: that we and I are recording, and we don't know anything.
Speaker 6: Right, And I mean, listen, obviously we've been speculating privately.
Speaker 6: Unlike others who are extremely irresponsible, We're not going to
Speaker 6: just like assume that we know that, including the probable
Speaker 6: in the United States, which I'm about to show you,
Speaker 6: We're not going to assume we know the ideological motivations,
Speaker 6: even you know, as you can certainly spin out any
Speaker 6: number of theories. I also wonder if this person is
Speaker 6: never caught, like and there will be no end to
Speaker 6: the conspiracies about this. But I think it's probably the
Speaker 6: right time in the conversation to play the president's response
Speaker 6: here because it fits very much soccer with what you're
Speaker 6: saying about. You know, we yeah, we responded to nine
Speaker 6: to eleven in you know, I don't know, You're probably
Speaker 6: right that it is what the terrorists wanted, but it
Speaker 6: also just even putting aside their desires. It was disastrous
Speaker 6: for us, It was disastrous for the world. It was
Speaker 6: certainly disastrous for a rock. It was disastrous for Afghanistan.
Speaker 6: You know, the horror and the turmoil of that continues
Speaker 6: to this day. And you know the president here threatening
Speaker 6: basically to you know, to go to use this, to
Speaker 6: to go to war with his ideological enemies, something that
Speaker 6: in a lot of ways he was already doing. So,
Speaker 6: you know, this is a lot I want to play.
Speaker 6: All of this is four minutes. I want to go
Speaker 6: ahead and play all of it so that we can
Speaker 6: that we can fully react to it.
Speaker 3: To my great fellow Americans, I'm filed.
Speaker 5: Are you guys, Are you hearing it? Or no?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I hear it, Okayled.
Speaker 10: With grief and anger at the heinous assassination of Charlie
Speaker 10: Kirk on a college campus in Utah, Charlie inspired millions
Speaker 10: in tonight, All who knew him and loved him are
Speaker 10: united in shock and horror. Charlie was a patriot who
Speaker 10: devoted his life to the cause of open debate and
Speaker 10: the country that he loved so much.
Speaker 3: In the United States of America.
Speaker 10: He fought for liberty, democracy, justice, and the American people.
Speaker 10: He's a water for truth and freedom, and there has
Speaker 10: never been anyone who was so respected by youth. Charlie
Speaker 10: was also a man of deep, deep faith, and we
Speaker 10: take comfort in the knowledge that he is now at
Speaker 10: peace with God in Heaven. Our prayers are with his wife, Erica,
Speaker 10: the two young beloved children, and his entire family, who
Speaker 10: he loved more than anything in the world. We asked
Speaker 10: God to watch over them in this terrible hour of
Speaker 10: heartache and pain.
Speaker 3: This is a dark moment for Americans.
Speaker 10: Charlie Kirk traveled the nation, joyfully engaging with everyone interested
Speaker 10: in good faith debate. His mission was to bring young
Speaker 10: people into the political process, which he did better than
Speaker 10: anybody ever, to share his love of country, and to
Speaker 10: spread the simple words of common sense when campus is nationwide.
Speaker 10: He championed his ideas with courage, logic, humor, and grace.
Speaker 10: Long past time for all Americans and the media to
Speaker 10: confront the fact that violence and murder are the tragic
Speaker 10: consequence of demonizing those with whom you disagree, day after day,
Speaker 10: year after year, in the most hateful and despicable way possible.
Speaker 10: For years, those on the radical left have compared wonderful
Speaker 10: Americans like Charlie to Nazis and the world's worst mass
Speaker 10: murderers and criminals. This kind of rhetoric is directly responsible
Speaker 10: for the terrorism that we're seeing in our country today, and.
Speaker 3: It must stop right now.
Speaker 10: My administration will find each and every one of those
Speaker 10: who contributed to this atrocity and to other political violence,
Speaker 10: including the organizations that fund it and support it, as
Speaker 10: well as those who go after our judges, law enforcement officials,
Speaker 10: and everyone else who brings order to our country. From
Speaker 10: the attack on my life in Butler, Pennsylvania last year,
Speaker 10: which killed a husband and father, to the attacks on
Speaker 10: ICE agents, to the vicious murder of a healthcare executive
Speaker 10: in the streets of New York, to the shooting of
Speaker 10: House Majority Leader Steve Scalise and three others. Radical of
Speaker 10: political violence has hurt too many innocent people and taken.
Speaker 3: Too many lives.
Speaker 10: Tonight, they asked all Americans to commit themselves to the
Speaker 10: American values for which Charlie Kirk lived and died, the
Speaker 10: values of free speech, citizenship, the rule of law, and
Speaker 10: the patriotic devotion and love of God. Charlie was the
Speaker 10: best of America, and the monster who attacked him was
Speaker 10: attacking our whole country. An assassin tried to silence him
Speaker 10: with a bullet, but he failed because together we will
Speaker 10: ensure that his voice, his message, and his legacy will
Speaker 10: live on for countless generations to come. Today, because of
Speaker 10: this heinous act, Charlie's voice has become bigger and grander
Speaker 10: than ever before, and it's not even close. May God
Speaker 10: bless his memory, May God watch over his family, and
Speaker 10: may God bless the United States of America.
Speaker 5: Thank you your thoughts soccer.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is the worst of Trump, right, this is
Speaker 1: you take a moment where any of I mean, look,
Speaker 1: I know people here, some people don't like JD. You
Speaker 1: know what he did afterwards, He put out a remembrance
Speaker 1: about his interactions with Charlie, and he expressed his condolences
Speaker 1: to his wife. And that's just what generally normal people
Speaker 1: do from the entire political spectrum. Uh And what's so,
Speaker 1: That's what I mean. And to be honest, that encompasses
Speaker 1: most of the attitude of the rest. Part of why
Speaker 1: I'm really despondent today is that literally, without knowing anything,
Speaker 1: and look, it could be. I mean, who's going to
Speaker 1: put it out of the realm. Of course, it was
Speaker 1: probably a political assassination for some purpose. We have no
Speaker 1: idea really still, we don't even have any confirmed information
Speaker 1: or anything. That's what I was looking at earlier. But
Speaker 1: you know, I actually thought Hanania Richard Hannania said this.
Speaker 1: He says, I don't think individual political assassinations have anything
Speaker 1: to tell us about our politics. These are stochastic events.
Speaker 1: It's a country of three hundred and fifty million people,
Speaker 1: widely available firearms. Some of our fellow citizens are insane.
Speaker 1: Like in any country, if your public figure, one of
Speaker 1: the risks that you face is an unstable individual might
Speaker 1: come after you. But what he focuses on and continues
Speaker 1: is not only that we don't know the identity or
Speaker 1: the motivation of the shooter, but also that, you know,
Speaker 1: focusing in on hot political rhetoric. It's I hate to
Speaker 1: sound like a leftist or whatever, but it's pretty obvious
Speaker 1: that it's it's everywhere with you know, for both sides.
Speaker 1: I guess, and I guess I know that's cringe. You
Speaker 1: know that a lot of right wingers don't want to
Speaker 1: hear it, but it's obviously true, Like the rhetoric is
Speaker 1: dialed all the way up, and we could blame everybody.
Speaker 1: Oh it's their fault, they started it. It's sort of fine,
Speaker 1: we are where we are. And I also will speak
Speaker 1: up for free speech. And this is the other thing,
Speaker 1: outside of the context of nine to eleven, is part
Speaker 1: of the overwhelming and crushing environment of that time actually
Speaker 1: prevented people who are sober minded, who are asking questions
Speaker 1: and yes, in some cases we're offensive, that's allowed. Okay,
Speaker 1: yes you can cancel them and all of that if
Speaker 1: you wanted to. But mono like monoculture enforcement and just
Speaker 1: immediately kind of reaching for a political agenda is the
Speaker 1: absolute worst of nine to eleven. And well that's that's
Speaker 1: why it hits me hard today.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 6: Well, and it's so much worse frankly because George W. Bush,
Speaker 6: at least right then at the moment, yeah, you know,
Speaker 6: tried to calm.
Speaker 5: The you know, later on.
Speaker 6: Yeah, obviously, Like this is no defense of George W. Bush,
Speaker 6: But no, you're right, this is an of everybody on
Speaker 6: the planet to call out hot political rhetoric.
Speaker 5: Donald J. Trump, are you kidding me?
Speaker 6: Like, do you remember the things that he I mean,
Speaker 6: even in this well speech where he's castigating, he's calling
Speaker 6: you know, radical left Marxists and all of that. And
Speaker 6: this is a man who just used the mugging of
Speaker 6: big balls as an excuse to you know, send in
Speaker 6: the National Guard to Washington.
Speaker 4: D C.
Speaker 6: So what he his whole thing is to use either
Speaker 6: real or imagined or invented crises in order to crush
Speaker 6: political opponents, crush dissent, consolidate power.
Speaker 5: It's what he does.
Speaker 6: And so I don't think anyone should be would be
Speaker 6: surprised by this speech or the very or the likely
Speaker 6: you know, actions he's going to take out of it.
Speaker 6: But yeah, this was this was the line from most
Speaker 6: people on what I saw coming from the right. I
Speaker 6: saw this as war. I saw, you know, we need
Speaker 6: to exact vengeance again before even let's say it is
Speaker 6: someone on the left. Very possible, right, certainly, there'd be
Speaker 6: all kinds of ideological motivations there whatever. To use that
Speaker 6: to say that everyone in that political ideology is basically
Speaker 6: like a terrorist and a murderer is also just disgusting
Speaker 6: and abhorrent. But especially at a time when we don't
Speaker 6: even we have no idea who this person was or
Speaker 6: what their motivation was. So yeah, I mean he's I
Speaker 6: think it was Zajilani on Twitter. He's like, he's an narcissist.
Speaker 6: This is all he knows how to do is pour
Speaker 6: more gasoline on the flames. That's that is what he
Speaker 6: always always does. And you know, I think I've always
Speaker 6: been in the camp. I continue to be in the
Speaker 6: camp that Trump is a symptom of the underlying problems.
Speaker 6: That if it wasn't Trump, you'd have someone else likely
Speaker 6: to come and fill the role. I don't know that
Speaker 6: they'd have the same level of like power and chrism
Speaker 6: and culture personality that he's been able to accrue.
Speaker 5: But you know, he is the He is the.
Speaker 6: Emblem of the like collapsing country in you know, moral
Speaker 6: collapse and in free fall that I think we all
Speaker 6: have this sense that we're living in where nobody knows
Speaker 6: where the bottom is.
Speaker 1: I'm glad that you said that because I was reflecting
Speaker 1: on because I was watching TV yesterday and I saw
Speaker 1: Bush and Obama pull out their conciliatory statements, and I
Speaker 1: think it's really easy to say, wow, that's great. You know,
Speaker 1: that's a responsible statement. And I and again and I can't.
Speaker 1: I mean again, I don't. I can't stress the audience
Speaker 1: enough how formative nine to eleven was for me, like
Speaker 1: it's everything, everything is nine to eleven. And then I
Speaker 1: started to think, well, how did we get here? You know,
Speaker 1: how how did this all happen? And it was the
Speaker 1: collapse of institutional trust and the psychotic behavior of the
Speaker 1: US government post nine to eleven that destroyed trust in
Speaker 1: the individual state, combined with the failure of the post
Speaker 1: financial crisis. The I mean, look, we could blame each
Speaker 1: other for the culture war and all of that. I
Speaker 1: won't even get into that right now, but at the
Speaker 1: very least, you know, then that starts to dial up
Speaker 1: in the midst of all this angst and foreign war
Speaker 1: and abroad, and that leads. And that's why I'm glad
Speaker 1: you said it is a symptom, because that is downstream
Speaker 1: of how a lot of people think.
Speaker 6: Right, and I mean, in a healthy society does not
Speaker 6: elect Donald Trump.
Speaker 5: I don't think a healthy society and certainly not twice,
Speaker 5: and they don't.
Speaker 1: It's not even just that, because it's about the erasure
Speaker 1: of not even norms, but what those norms were used
Speaker 1: to perpetuate under the realm and the administration, the regime
Speaker 1: of George W. Bush, of Obama, Biden, Trump went whatever
Speaker 1: like this is genuinely is a bipart problem. It was
Speaker 1: a cry for help, and it's saying like something is broken,
Speaker 1: I'm willing to take a chance whatever we need to
Speaker 1: get out of this. And I think that the shooting
Speaker 1: is also a symptom of that as well. That's why
Speaker 1: I really do feel as if we're living right back
Speaker 1: through the nineteen seventies where we had I mean, if
Speaker 1: just think about it, we had Nixon, we had riots,
Speaker 1: we had the killings of in the late sixties of MLK,
Speaker 1: of Malcolm X, we had a bottom fallout of any
Speaker 1: hope we were in post Vietnam. We had high inflation,
Speaker 1: we had political violence. There was a sense in that
Speaker 1: time that we're never going to get out of this.
Speaker 1: They're like, this is it. The American Empire has peaked.
Speaker 1: We have to step back from where things are now. Luckily,
Speaker 1: you know, we did get out of it, although we
Speaker 1: didn't get out of it with the unscathed. I wouldn't
Speaker 1: say it all went so well out And that's kind
Speaker 1: of kind of.
Speaker 5: How I still fallout from that era.
Speaker 1: Literally. I mean we were going to before this, we
Speaker 1: were going to cover the Charlotte murder, right, And I
Speaker 1: was just and it's so funny because we were going
Speaker 1: to talk about mental illness and about violence, and about
Speaker 1: the de institutionalization moment movement of the late seventies and eighties.
Speaker 1: The color of neo libert with the collapse of a
Speaker 1: high trust society looks like and explosions of violence and
Speaker 1: mental illness and murder and public trust and this huge
Speaker 1: debates between you and me about how to even solve that.
Speaker 1: But you know, coming from the problem itself and recognizing
Speaker 1: that is really important. And I'm putting that all together
Speaker 1: in that context.
Speaker 6: So yeah, I mean, just think of like, and it's
Speaker 6: hard to say when you didn't live through the seventies
Speaker 6: to you. No, Like, we can read about it, but
Speaker 6: I don't really know what it feels like, right, I
Speaker 6: don't really know if it feels the same, or if
Speaker 6: this feels not as bad crazy, or if it feels
Speaker 6: way worse. But my suspicion is that it's like the
Speaker 6: seventies on algorithms. Yea, you know, the seventies, but on
Speaker 6: AI fueled, algorithmic driven because what you mentioned this fel
Speaker 6: soo twenty twenty five. I mean in the same way
Speaker 6: that like the genocide and Gaza is so twenty twenty five,
Speaker 6: Like what is it even doing to us that we
Speaker 6: see this gore as just like a normal part of
Speaker 6: our lives every single day, Like even that, what is
Speaker 6: that doing to us? And then all of the incentives
Speaker 6: for you know, the influencer ecosystem is to put out
Speaker 6: the most inflammatory hot take that you can, Like if
Speaker 6: you're if you're that you know that guy who was
Speaker 6: there at the scene when Charlie Kirk is murdered and
Speaker 6: he's like live streaming and I followed me on TikTok,
Speaker 6: like you're The whole ecosystem is built up to say
Speaker 6: the most irresponsible, inflammatory, like outrageous thing.
Speaker 5: That's what's rewarded.
Speaker 6: And then you have these structural and and I sort
Speaker 6: of feel like those things are also symptoms. It's an
Speaker 6: accelerant right of what's already there, because think of what
Speaker 6: a powder keg this place is. You've got so like
Speaker 6: just flooded with guns. You've got a totally broken healthcare
Speaker 6: system where millions and millions of people are walking, you know,
Speaker 6: people walking around with untreated mental illness who don't even
Speaker 6: can't even go to a doctor right, very little like
Speaker 6: wildly in sufficient rehab, wildly insufficient mental health facilities. And
Speaker 6: then you have this vast inequality where people feel like
Speaker 6: they're being crushed day after day after day, and that
Speaker 6: their hope for you know, stable life, their hope for
Speaker 6: their kids, their hopes are just being like ground up
Speaker 6: and crushed. Where there's a sense that it doesn't matter
Speaker 6: who you vote for, that's not going to change. And
Speaker 6: you know, then you layer on top of it this
Speaker 6: very this really heightened political animus and a president of
Speaker 6: the United States who's happened happy to pour fuel on
Speaker 6: that fire because he thinks it serves his interest, you know.
Speaker 6: And it's just it's that mix that makes you feel
Speaker 6: every day like what is going like up is down,
Speaker 6: left is right, This country is going off the rails,
Speaker 6: and you unlike nine to eleven Sager, like nine to
Speaker 6: eleven really like launched a new era, right It was
Speaker 6: a wake up coase these things were happening in the background.
Speaker 6: We didn't really know, we were kind of like blind
Speaker 6: to it, but it really did sort of launch us
Speaker 6: into a new era. To me, the murder live of
Speaker 6: Charlie Kirk, that we all witnessed this public execution. It
Speaker 6: solidifies in our minds the era we already were in,
Speaker 6: that we already had lots of indications and years of
Speaker 6: experience with at this point.
Speaker 5: And I do think that's not to say that it does.
Speaker 6: It does put new things on the table, right the
Speaker 6: I think unfortunately, I think we're likely to see more
Speaker 6: attacks on influencers. And by the way, this is also
Speaker 6: not the first attack on an influencer. There have been
Speaker 6: other influencers who have people show up at their doors
Speaker 6: and try to kill them whatever. But I do think
Speaker 6: it puts new things on too. But it's also like
Speaker 6: a real reckoning moment with oh, this is where we are,
Speaker 6: Like we already were in this era and this is
Speaker 6: just confirmation of where we are at this point.
Speaker 1: That's right. I mean, if you think back to the
Speaker 1: nineteen sixties, it's like when RFK, the people who saw
Speaker 1: are I'm not comparing them, I'm just looking for analogies.
Speaker 1: When r if I was killed, that's after JFK, MLK,
Speaker 1: Malcolm X, and then are the people who went through
Speaker 1: that That's why they gave up. They were like this
Speaker 1: is just where we are now. That killed it, that
Speaker 1: killed it. It was a huge turning point for the nation.
Speaker 1: And yeah, and I guess.
Speaker 6: The last thing I'll say on the nine to eleven
Speaker 6: comparison is what makes this moment even scarier. And again
Speaker 6: just to cover like, we're not saying that, Charlie Kirk,
Speaker 6: this one individual being killed is equivalent to you know,
Speaker 6: three thousand people being morded on an island. But we're
Speaker 6: just trying to think of culturally significant moments. And that
Speaker 6: led to a mass crackdown on civil liberties, the fall
Speaker 6: unders which we still live with, that mass surveillance. The
Speaker 6: tech now is so much more advanced, so much more advanced.
Speaker 6: Things they could never have dreamed of in two thousand
Speaker 6: and one are already being implemented in twenty twenty five.
Speaker 6: Like so that's the other thing that makes this such
Speaker 6: a frightening moment. Actually record an episode. I don't know
Speaker 6: if it's going to air now at this point because
Speaker 6: it feels very outdated, But of her take with Anna
Speaker 6: Casparian and Jelly and Michaels and that whole crew, and
Speaker 6: we're talking about there was a dude who went on
Speaker 6: Fox News to pitch his like AI you know, minority
Speaker 6: report threat detection thing, and that tech is just like
Speaker 6: widely available now it's there's palenteer.
Speaker 5: The AI race is on.
Speaker 6: So things that were just not technically possible, like the
Speaker 6: type of sweeps and mass targeting, so not just like
Speaker 6: an individual but mass targeting of people for their views
Speaker 6: and their political beliefs. That's all technologically available to us
Speaker 6: in a way that it wasn't previously. And you know, again,
Speaker 6: we have an administration that has used every excuse they
Speaker 6: can to try to go after their political enemies and adversaries,
Speaker 6: whether it's lawyers, whether it's Propalestime protesters, whether it's immigrants,
Speaker 6: whether it's colleges like across the board, and so we
Speaker 6: can only imagine, I think we can only begin to
Speaker 6: wrap our heat around what the fallout from this is
Speaker 6: going to be. What the fallout of seeing this kind
Speaker 6: of gore in our timelines, with the fallout in terms
Speaker 6: of a crackdown is going to be, With the fallout
Speaker 6: in terms of how influencers are going to conduct themselves,
Speaker 6: and what this is going to mean for the world
Speaker 6: going forward.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's well said. All right, guys, do
Speaker 1: you have anything else you want to go over, Crystal.
Speaker 6: I think that's a but I don't see anything breaking
Speaker 6: or new that's that's worth putting out there, you know.
Speaker 6: I think as far as we can tell, the search
Speaker 6: for the gunman continues, and as far as what's been
Speaker 6: put out there publicly, there's very uh, you know, here's
Speaker 6: details to go on. But we will say it's very
Speaker 6: early still, so we'll be we'll be on it, and guys, Ryan,
Speaker 6: Emily and I are going to be doing Friday Show tomorrow,
Speaker 6: so we'll hear their thoughts. We'll try to cover some
Speaker 6: other stories tomorrow as well, because of course there continue
Speaker 6: to be important developments happening elsewhere in the world too.
Speaker 1: Absolutely all right, thank you guys for watching. Rest in peace,
Speaker 1: Charlie and condolences to the family. We'll see you guys
Speaker 1: later