Speaker 1: Hey, everyone, this is It Could Happen here, a podcast
Speaker 1: about things falling apart sometimes about putting things back together.
Speaker 1: This is one of the former episodes, because we are
Speaker 1: recording this in the immediate wake, within a couple of
Speaker 1: hours of America's the United States of America's most recent
Speaker 1: mass shooting in Tennessee at a Christian school called Covenant.
Speaker 1: You know, obviously there are way too many mass shootings
Speaker 1: in the United States for us to cover each one.
Speaker 1: We are talking about this now in a timely manner
Speaker 1: because there's a bunch of very specific disinformation coming out
Speaker 1: about it, and particularly disinformation that is part of the
Speaker 1: broader targeting by the right wing of transgender people. So
Speaker 1: I'm going to for the first part of this, I'm
Speaker 1: going to turn things over to Garrison, who has been
Speaker 1: doing specific research on the shooter and what we can
Speaker 1: actually verify at this moment about their identity. Upfront, I'll
Speaker 1: say that the police have identified this person as Audrey
Speaker 1: Hale twenty eight of Nashville NBC News notes quote who
Speaker 1: said she identifies as transgender. Again, this is not quite right.
Speaker 1: We'll talk about it, but the right wing is obviously
Speaker 1: running with the idea that this is a transgender shooter
Speaker 1: and part of a trans a series. They will argue
Speaker 1: of transgender attacks on Christians. We're going to talk about
Speaker 1: the right wing sort of analysis of this later, but
Speaker 1: first I'm going to again push to Garrison, who will
Speaker 1: talk about what we actually can verify about this person
Speaker 1: and about this shooting at this point. Yeah, just as
Speaker 1: a note here, throughout this episode, there will be some
Speaker 1: what is probably miss gendering because we're going to be
Speaker 1: quoting from a lot of other people's statements, and also
Speaker 1: there will be mentions of like a few slurs against
Speaker 1: trans people just because we are quoting from a whole
Speaker 1: bunch of stuff and some of the details regarding the
Speaker 1: gender of the person in question is relatively unknown at
Speaker 1: the time. So just as a heads up, Okay, So yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go just gonna go over a few things
Speaker 1: regarding what we know happened, what the school was, because
Speaker 1: I think that kind of that might play into it,
Speaker 1: but that will kind of veer on speculation, So we're
Speaker 1: just going to limit it towards what we actually know
Speaker 1: and then to attempt to avoid speculation on this episophere. Yes,
Speaker 1: so someone caring multipier arms entered a private Christian school
Speaker 1: in Nashville this Monday morning and shot and killed three
Speaker 1: nine year old students and three adult staff members in
Speaker 1: their sixties, including the head of the school, doctor Katherine Khans.
Speaker 1: Police initially claimed the shooter was a teenager, but minutes
Speaker 1: later changed course and described them as a twenty eight
Speaker 1: year old woman from Nashville. It was then reported pretty
Speaker 1: quickly in NBC News that the shooter was identified as
Speaker 1: Audrey Hale, twenty eight, of Nashville, and the police chief
Speaker 1: said she identifies as transgender. NBC has another article out
Speaker 1: there that says Audrey Hale, twenty eight, who police say
Speaker 1: was a transgender woman, quote unquote. So we will get
Speaker 1: into that here in a sec But the shooter entered
Speaker 1: the Covenant School via a side door, according to the
Speaker 1: Metro Nashville Police spokesperson Don Aaron, and was armed with
Speaker 1: at least two quote unquote assault style rifles and a
Speaker 1: handgun unquote. It looks like it's an er rifle and
Speaker 1: an air pistol and then also a handgun. Nashville Police
Speaker 1: Chief John Drake has said, quote at one point she
Speaker 1: was a student at that school, but we are unsure
Speaker 1: of what year unquote, and that Hale shot through the
Speaker 1: door to gain entry into the school. The shooter made
Speaker 1: their way through the first and second floors at the school,
Speaker 1: firing multiple shots before Hale was killed by police on
Speaker 1: the school's second floor. So it's assumed by the police
Speaker 1: at this point, and they may have evidence that it's
Speaker 1: not been like made public yet that the shooter did
Speaker 1: attend to school, but they are unsure for like exactly
Speaker 1: how long and what years specifically. I think it's important
Speaker 1: to mention a few things about the school just because
Speaker 1: this is a very unique mass shooting in a lot
Speaker 1: of ways, mass shootings at private schools, let alone private
Speaker 1: Christian schools is very rare. And this is also like
Speaker 1: a preschool through sixth grade school. So the Covenant School
Speaker 1: is a preschool through sixth grade private Christian school founded
Speaker 1: in two thousand and one, and it shares the same
Speaker 1: location as Covenant Presbyterian Church. The website states it has
Speaker 1: thirty three teaching faculty and around two hundred enrolled students
Speaker 1: per year, with tuition at around sixteen thousand dollars a year.
Speaker 1: According to the school's website. To quote, the Covenant School
Speaker 1: is a ministry of Covenant Presbyterian Church created to assist
Speaker 1: Christian parents and the church by providing an exceptional academic
Speaker 1: experience founded upon and informed by the Word of God. So,
Speaker 1: I mean, honestly, this this is something that's pretty similar
Speaker 1: to the type of Christian school that I grew up in.
Speaker 1: It's the school that's attached to this church. I also
Speaker 1: had around two hundred fellow students, so that this seems
Speaker 1: seems to be relatively pretty similar and not super uncommon
Speaker 1: for this type of private Christian school. Um, that's kind
Speaker 1: of all I'm going to get into that here. I mean,
Speaker 1: I've I've looked around the school's website a lot, and
Speaker 1: it seems pretty pretty basic in terms of these types
Speaker 1: of Presbyterian private Christian schools. But now we're gonna start
Speaker 1: getting into some of this stuff regarding the identity of
Speaker 1: the shooter, and a lot there's because there's a lot
Speaker 1: a lot of information going around. NBC News is now
Speaker 1: claiming that the shooter is a transgender woman. I don't
Speaker 1: think that's fully accurate, Um, but we're gonna expect quoting
Speaker 1: directly from the Yeah, this is to be fair, I mean,
Speaker 1: partly NBC's fault because more they should have done as
Speaker 1: much research as you did, Garrison. Yeah, but they are
Speaker 1: quoting the police. Yeah. Yes, The gist is that the
Speaker 1: police identified this as a transgender woman. They have a manifesto.
Speaker 1: We don't know what's in the manifesto, but yeah, police
Speaker 1: continue gare Yeah, and I guess, I guess one of
Speaker 1: the things that's reported is after police said this was
Speaker 1: a transgender woman. They also talked about how Hale had
Speaker 1: conducted surveillance and prepared for the attack with detailed maps,
Speaker 1: and then also the aforementioned to benifesto. But yes, we're
Speaker 1: gonna we're gonna move on to some of the stuff
Speaker 1: that we do know using just basic open source research stuff.
Speaker 1: So there is a LinkedIn page for someone named Audrey
Speaker 1: Hale in the Nashville area. They list a lot of
Speaker 1: various like illustration jobs they've had for the past few years,
Speaker 1: and they do have a little pronoun marker next to
Speaker 1: their name that says he him. Hale appears to have
Speaker 1: had a website for their graphic design portfolio called AH Illustrations,
Speaker 1: so just their initials AH. They have posts in they're
Speaker 1: being tagged from twenty twenty three from twenty twenty two,
Speaker 1: so it's been at least up for two years. I
Speaker 1: tried to do like um metadata stuff on some of
Speaker 1: their artwork. I did not really get much in terms
Speaker 1: of what year they were posted, but we may be
Speaker 1: able to learn more about that later. The website has
Speaker 1: an about page that introduces the person as Audrey Hale,
Speaker 1: but it also directs you to a now vanished Instagram
Speaker 1: page called at Creative period Aiden. So we're going to
Speaker 1: go through some of the rights initial stuff a bit later,
Speaker 1: because they were already calling us a transgender shooting before
Speaker 1: any information came out at all, as a part of
Speaker 1: the Sam Hide joke. Yeah, for reference, Sam Hide is
Speaker 1: kind of a right wing comedian who had a show
Speaker 1: on Adult Swim For the last several years. It has
Speaker 1: been a meme to every time there's a shooting, there's
Speaker 1: a specific picture of Sam Hide holding a rifle that
Speaker 1: people will post and say, I'm getting this picture that
Speaker 1: you know, this was the shooter at whatever. It's been
Speaker 1: at Parkland, it's been at El Paso, it's been at Duvaldi.
Speaker 1: Every single shooting this happens. And with this shooting, someone
Speaker 1: photoshopped some ladies head onto sam Hide and claimed immediately
Speaker 1: that it was a transgender person. This also ties into
Speaker 1: the Highland Park shooting, where the shooter wore women's clothing
Speaker 1: at some point to try to escape, and the right
Speaker 1: contain unusually tries to claim that that makes it a
Speaker 1: transgender shooting. Anyway, Please continue, gare yes. So, by going
Speaker 1: through their online portfolio dated as far back as twenty
Speaker 1: twenty two, I found a self portrait that has a
Speaker 1: that has a different social media user name titled at
Speaker 1: cree dot tiv Dre. I think Dre is for like Audre,
Speaker 1: and this also appears to be an old Instagram handle
Speaker 1: before they changed it to at Creative. Aiden Hale's website
Speaker 1: also has another self portrait just tagged with the name
Speaker 1: Aiden and Aiden Creates. That one appears to be from
Speaker 1: maybe slightly after, but it's kind of unclear with how
Speaker 1: the website is laid out. So although the Instagram page
Speaker 1: for this person appears to be taken down, it's unknown
Speaker 1: if they took it down or if Instagram took it down,
Speaker 1: but it is gone and there's no archive of it.
Speaker 1: It appears that Hale did have other social media accounts
Speaker 1: that are still online. Besides the aforementioned LinkedIn, a TikTok
Speaker 1: account by the name of I am Underscore Aiden ten
Speaker 1: shares a profile picture with Hale's own website, and it
Speaker 1: also links to Hale's Instagram page, which is mentioned on
Speaker 1: Hale's website. The TikTok was seldom active, but their first
Speaker 1: visible post is from March fifteenth, twenty twenty two. There
Speaker 1: are two other posts from that month, and all three
Speaker 1: of these posts are like about late nineties early two
Speaker 1: thousands video game nostalgia. And thanks to TikTok's use her
Speaker 1: name embedding feature, we can see that the account used
Speaker 1: to be called Audrey Video Game Nerd Underscore ten before
Speaker 1: being changed to I am Aiden ten sometime between March
Speaker 1: sixteenth and April fifteenth of last year. Hale's last visible
Speaker 1: post is just from over a month ago, February ninth,
Speaker 1: twenty twenty three. And yeah, just as a note, kind,
Speaker 1: I've gone over less of this than you, but I've
Speaker 1: I've combed over what's available. I don't notice any of
Speaker 1: the normal red flags. There's not even like pictures of
Speaker 1: this person posing with firearms. There's not threats. There's one
Speaker 1: video where they seem to be mourning a friend or
Speaker 1: a relative. But it's a pretty normal, like in memoriam
Speaker 1: style video. None of their art strikes me as disturbing
Speaker 1: in any way. No, it's at least one red ram
Speaker 1: one they have. They have one piece of Shining fan
Speaker 1: art that the Right's been using. It sticks out, but
Speaker 1: also like the Shining is one of the most popular
Speaker 1: movies of all time. Yeah, no, nothing nothing. As someone
Speaker 1: who's looked through the social media accounts of a lot
Speaker 1: of shooters, this account is relatively normal, like they there's
Speaker 1: nothing in here that would be immediately red flags. They
Speaker 1: did a lot of like corporate work. I think I
Speaker 1: think they did artwork for the city of Denver. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it looks like it. They were being commissioned to do
Speaker 1: graphic design for a lot of businesses, a lot of
Speaker 1: like local events in Nashville. Um. There's one other thing
Speaker 1: from their site that I will mentioned part of their bio.
Speaker 1: They have this sentence that says there is a childlike
Speaker 1: part of me that loves to go and run around
Speaker 1: on the playground, and the Rights using this in like
Speaker 1: a like a weird like a groomer way, being like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, this this kid wants this adult wants
Speaker 1: to go around with two playgrounds and their Childlike this
Speaker 1: is this is a completely normal thing to say. This
Speaker 1: is like, this is not a red flag. This is
Speaker 1: I also enjoy going on the playground. This is not
Speaker 1: a red flag either. This is just part of weird
Speaker 1: culture war stuff. Yeah. Yeah, I have another thing about
Speaker 1: being a kid forever and ever as well. It just
Speaker 1: seems that they connected with childhood things and those kind
Speaker 1: of things. Yeah, and like psychologically, maybe being kind of
Speaker 1: stuck in the past or whatever is a part of
Speaker 1: how they describe or justify this in their manifesto. We
Speaker 1: just don't know. But the point of the matter is
Speaker 1: if you had looked at this person's social media prior,
Speaker 1: and this is very different from most shooters, you would
Speaker 1: not have thought, oh, this is a person who is
Speaker 1: of danger to people. There's there's just not signs in it.
Speaker 1: I mean. The one thing that is the kind of
Speaker 1: last thing I'll mentioned is the I think the two
Speaker 1: other adults that were shot. One was a custodian, There
Speaker 1: was a was a I think it was like a
Speaker 1: substitute teacher. Um. They were all in their sixties. Um.
Speaker 1: It's unclear how long those two other people have been
Speaker 1: with the school of the head of the school has
Speaker 1: been been there for a while. Um, but I mean
Speaker 1: because because it is a preschool through sixth grade school, um,
Speaker 1: Hale would not have been at the school relatively recently.
Speaker 1: I can try to I'm trying, I'm trying to do
Speaker 1: like quick math here to be like if you would
Speaker 1: if you be in sixth grade and you're now twenty eight,
Speaker 1: seventeen years ago, yeah, eleven years old, right, Americans five? Yeah, yeah, yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: So it's it's it's certainly it's it's started in two
Speaker 1: thousand and one. So yeah, that's that is that is
Speaker 1: that is possible. Yeah. I do want to note a
Speaker 1: couple of things before we move on to the right
Speaker 1: ring wing reaction. One of them just kind of again
Speaker 1: to to sort of boil it down based on what
Speaker 1: is available publicly, we know this person seems to have
Speaker 1: been born and raised as Audrey. Hale started going by
Speaker 1: Aiden at the latest sometime last year. Their LinkedIn shows
Speaker 1: them at that point as using he him pronouns, but
Speaker 1: still but still with the name Audrey, but still with
Speaker 1: the name Audrey. It is actually very much at this
Speaker 1: point still unclear how they exact precisely identified what pronouns
Speaker 1: they used. We certainly don't know whether or not they
Speaker 1: were on any kind of like hormones, not that that
Speaker 1: would have an impact on any of this, but we
Speaker 1: have very little actual information. The police are saying that
Speaker 1: they identify themselves as transgender in the manifesto. At some
Speaker 1: point we might learn more as a result of that,
Speaker 1: but but it is. It is a lot of what's
Speaker 1: being put out as either unclear or you know, wrong
Speaker 1: in one way or the other. There's just a lot
Speaker 1: of information that is kind of missing about this person.
Speaker 1: People are jumping to conclusions on stuff, so we will
Speaker 1: probably learn more there later. One more note on this,
Speaker 1: The police are the ones that initiated the use of
Speaker 1: the term manifesto. Of now, there was no manifesto published
Speaker 1: by the shooter. We do not know if this is
Speaker 1: a quote unquote manifesto like at all. The police have
Speaker 1: claimed that they found writing when they rated this person's house,
Speaker 1: So this writing discussing things around their gender or what
Speaker 1: they were doing this. This could be anything from like
Speaker 1: a suicide note to just like a diary or a journal.
Speaker 1: So by using the word manifesto, they're kind of trying
Speaker 1: to tie it into that we simply at this point
Speaker 1: do not know if this was a manifesto at all,
Speaker 1: Like we just that is that is a very loaded
Speaker 1: term in this context. I think it's notable that the
Speaker 1: shooter did not publish anything. Whereas usually when there's like manifestos,
Speaker 1: they are published online, right the shooter, the shooter themselves
Speaker 1: will publish it online, and that is kind of part
Speaker 1: of their entire attack. That is not the case here.
Speaker 1: The shooter did not publish anything about this attack online
Speaker 1: that we've or that we've found, or that anyone's found.
Speaker 1: So I think that's an important thing to note when
Speaker 1: we're talking about the use of the word manifesto here
Speaker 1: in terms of like the importance of a manifesto, you know,
Speaker 1: speaking of someone who has written professionally about a number
Speaker 1: of them. Manifestos are obviously useful, especially when trying to
Speaker 1: analyze why someone did something, what their political goal may
Speaker 1: have been, if they're indeed there's a political goal, what
Speaker 1: their radicalization pathway has been. But a crucial thing is
Speaker 1: to never ever take a manifesto purely at face value.
Speaker 1: Manifestos are political writings by terrorists, right, That is what
Speaker 1: a manifesto is, and they are writings that are kind
Speaker 1: of calculated to achieve a goal. And I don't know
Speaker 1: what this person put in their manifesto. Their manifesto must
Speaker 1: just have been a perfectly accurate summation of their feelings
Speaker 1: of why they did this terrible thing. That's possible, we
Speaker 1: sit We don't know at this point. But manifestos are
Speaker 1: a part of understanding a shooting and what the goal
Speaker 1: was of the shooting and what the individual hope to accomplish.
Speaker 1: But they cannot and never should be taken at face value.
Speaker 1: And that's what a lot of media are going to
Speaker 1: do if this every does get public. So please always
Speaker 1: show care and skepticism of directly reading from a manifesto,
Speaker 1: Like even in the case, you know, there's just a lot,
Speaker 1: like in the christ Church manifesto of like bullshit, shit posting,
Speaker 1: jokes and stuff thrown in there with the real stuff.
Speaker 1: It's generally possible to us to get to gather and
Speaker 1: understand motive from a manifesto, and I am you know,
Speaker 1: I will read it if it becomes available, but be
Speaker 1: very careful with such things. Um. Yeah, speaking of not
Speaker 1: being careful, let's talk about the right wing response to
Speaker 1: this um because I think, broadly speaking, it's fair to
Speaker 1: characterize it as they are claiming this is part of
Speaker 1: a line of terror attacks by transgender people. There's a
Speaker 1: lot of folks saying that this is reason to ban
Speaker 1: gender affirming care, to ban hormone therapy, to ban trans
Speaker 1: people from purchasing firearms. This is a pretty rampant on
Speaker 1: the right already. It became very quickly, so I actually
Speaker 1: want to go over one thing I just came up
Speaker 1: and saw while Gare was talking that I think is
Speaker 1: interesting as Candice Owens. Candice Owens is a right wing commentator,
Speaker 1: unfortunately quite influential and a sizable platform. I want to
Speaker 1: quote from her response. Her initial response was the immediate
Speaker 1: response when all the information was out was that there'd
Speaker 1: been a shooting at this school. I live in Green Hills,
Speaker 1: and I'm positively devastated for the families impacted by this tragedy.
Speaker 1: Please suspend your politics and instead do what these families
Speaker 1: at this Christian school would want. Pray. That's a perfectly
Speaker 1: reasonable response, at least for somebody who believes in prayer.
Speaker 1: Within a matter of like an hour or so, it
Speaker 1: became clear that or information began to come out that
Speaker 1: the shooter was likely transgender, at which point Candace suspended
Speaker 1: her statement about not making it politics. She posted shortly after,
Speaker 1: transgenderism as a mental illness. Keep your children away from
Speaker 1: transgendent individuals and their parents. People that support and encourage
Speaker 1: as their monsters and should be kept away from children.
Speaker 1: They yelled at Matt Walsh made a statement, why haven't
Speaker 1: we be given the name of the mass shooter yet?
Speaker 1: And Candace responded, because they're wiping the socials so they
Speaker 1: can make things up about the person. She noted, as
Speaker 1: to a post by Matt Walsh being like, the question
Speaker 1: is why this culture is producing so many people who
Speaker 1: want to carry out attacks like this. Take the guns
Speaker 1: and you'll still have a country infested by homicidal sociopaths.
Speaker 1: Where they're coming from, what is creating them? Candas responded,
Speaker 1: I would start with the fact that we now celebrate
Speaker 1: clinical insanity while we admonish normalcy. People are aspiring to
Speaker 1: mental illness because they receive attention and off times are
Speaker 1: awarded for perversity. She is essentially taking the stance of like,
Speaker 1: we have to blame this on the fact that this
Speaker 1: person was transgender, and being transgender is a mental illness. Right.
Speaker 1: That's the stance Canvas is taking. That's the stance a
Speaker 1: lot of folks are taking. One of the most widely
Speaker 1: shared posts from a right winger on this was by
Speaker 1: a guy named DC Underscore Draino notes himself as a husband, patriot, lawyer, constitutionalist,
Speaker 1: and anti woke. He has six hundred eighty six thousand
Speaker 1: followers on Twitter. He has been relentless in posting about
Speaker 1: this as an act of transgender terror. He has spread
Speaker 1: at some of the information that Garrison added on this
Speaker 1: podcast about this person's social media posts, and his posts
Speaker 1: are some of the most widely read and like that
Speaker 1: I've seen. One of them reads unconfirmed reports identify the
Speaker 1: Nashville shooter as Audrey Hale, a biological female that identifies
Speaker 1: as he him on their LinkedIn authorities believe the transgender
Speaker 1: shooter previously attended the Christian school. He then follows, we
Speaker 1: will not let this story be swept under the rug.
Speaker 1: Trans terrorism must be confronted head on and stopped. Tennessee
Speaker 1: just passed laws restricting sextualized drag shows for children, in
Speaker 1: banning the genital mutilation of children was today's mass shooting
Speaker 1: at a Christian school by a transgender killer and act
Speaker 1: of domestic terror? And when will we start talking about
Speaker 1: transgender mass murders targeting innocent school children in our schools?
Speaker 1: Enough as enough? And in this they posted a link
Speaker 1: to a reader's story about a shooting from last year.
Speaker 1: I think it was in Colorado in Denver. This was
Speaker 1: a shooting where two people, one of whom was transgender,
Speaker 1: walked into a school in Denver and shot at several
Speaker 1: class mates, killing one. They claimed it was revenged on
Speaker 1: classmates over bullying. The McKinney, the transgender shooter, has been
Speaker 1: sentenced recently, so it's been in the news. This is
Speaker 1: being built as like a transgender terrorist attack because spoiler,
Speaker 1: there's very few cases of trans people carrying out acts
Speaker 1: of violence, so they're kind of grabbing what they can
Speaker 1: in order to try and make an argument that this
Speaker 1: is part of a trend. In the absence of any
Speaker 1: kind of manifesto, people are claiming that transidentity motivated the killings.
Speaker 1: The police seem to have helped to jump start this.
Speaker 1: All right, So first off, we're going to play before
Speaker 1: we continue. We're going to play a clip of the
Speaker 1: police press conference where the police chief of Nashville talks
Speaker 1: about what has happened and talks about the information that
Speaker 1: they have about the shooter based on the apparently the
Speaker 1: manifesto that they have in the maps that they have.
Speaker 1: So we're going to play that now. Our investigations tell
Speaker 1: us that she was a former student at the school.
Speaker 1: I don't know what grades she's attended on grades, but
Speaker 1: we do firmly believe she was a student there. She
Speaker 1: does identify as transient. Yes, history, no history at all,
Speaker 1: and no motive. Is disappointed to anything discovered in the
Speaker 1: apartment or house. No, we have a manifesto. We have
Speaker 1: some writings that we're going over that pertain to this day,
Speaker 1: the actual incident. We have a map drawn out of
Speaker 1: how this was all going to take place. Uh, there's
Speaker 1: right now a theory of that's that we may be
Speaker 1: able to talk about later, but it's not confirmed, and
Speaker 1: so we'll we'll put that out as soon as we can.
Speaker 1: There's any reason to believe that how she identifies as
Speaker 1: any motive order targeting school, we can give you that
Speaker 1: at a later tim There is uh some theory to that.
Speaker 1: We're investigating all the leads and once we know exactly,
Speaker 1: we'll let you know it was woman. Don't know any
Speaker 1: history of nimetal illness at this time, but we are
Speaker 1: looking at that. Investigation is on going and I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: woman a woman, all right? So yeah, Garrison, you want
Speaker 1: to start off here? Yeah, I think giving like the
Speaker 1: most charitable reading of that, I think it's possible that
Speaker 1: this police chief does not have as a as a
Speaker 1: full art. I don't think this police chief has as
Speaker 1: an in uh as an in depth understanding of gender
Speaker 1: theory as some of us or the listeners do. So
Speaker 1: it is just confused by that question is it a
Speaker 1: trans man or a trans woman? And he answers by saying, yeah,
Speaker 1: they're trans, but they are a woman. Um, So I
Speaker 1: think that that could be what's going on. And then
Speaker 1: we have outlets like NBC News saying that the person's
Speaker 1: a transgender woman because they also are, for one, not
Speaker 1: doing like very basic digging online and are also just
Speaker 1: making are just usually enjoy repeating the police's talking points
Speaker 1: when stuff like this happens, because it's just easier. Hey, everybody,
Speaker 1: Robert here. Shortly after we finished this, the police chief
Speaker 1: of Nashville, John Drake went on Lester Holt's NBC show
Speaker 1: and gave another statement that was much more accurate than
Speaker 1: the previous statement that we just played you, which the
Speaker 1: right wing is making a lot of hay out of.
Speaker 1: In the statement, they note that the shooter attended the
Speaker 1: school as a child and was resentful of the school
Speaker 1: and of being forced to attend it, that the school
Speaker 1: was the target and not any specific individual, and that
Speaker 1: the victims were random. They also owe in this statement
Speaker 1: to Lester Holt, the police chief makes a lot less
Speaker 1: of a deal about the fact that the shooter was
Speaker 1: trans It seems like the first statement that they made
Speaker 1: was based on either incomplete information or in the at
Speaker 1: the moment. But I'm going to play you this statement
Speaker 1: and then we will continue the episode. It sounds like
Speaker 1: things are moving very quickly. You describe this as a
Speaker 1: targeted attack, and you elaborate absolutely so. The person we
Speaker 1: know as Audrey Hale, she's a twenty eight year old Nashvillion.
Speaker 1: We have belief, or we feel that it's very strongly
Speaker 1: that she went to school here in the Nashville area
Speaker 1: and she went to that actual school, and and so
Speaker 1: there's some belief that there was some resentment for having
Speaker 1: to go to that school. Don't have all the details
Speaker 1: of that just yet, and and that's why this incident occurred.
Speaker 1: Did Hale target in your mind, did Hale target the
Speaker 1: school or someone in the school? She targeted random students
Speaker 1: in the school, just whoever, and and persons whoever she
Speaker 1: came in contact with, she fired rounds. You recovered what
Speaker 1: you've described as a manifesto. You've also said that Hale
Speaker 1: identified as trans. Do you believe there is a connection
Speaker 1: to that. We feel that he identifies as trans. But
Speaker 1: we're still in the initial investigation into all of that,
Speaker 1: and if it actually played a role into this incident,
Speaker 1: as we know more, we'll definitely make that known. But
Speaker 1: right now we'll ensure if that actually played a role.
Speaker 1: But does the manifesto point you in a particular direction
Speaker 1: that you can reveal it does? It has in the
Speaker 1: initial investigation. We've turned it over to the FBI. We've
Speaker 1: looked over it as well, and it indicates that there
Speaker 1: was going to be shootings at multiple locations and the
Speaker 1: school was one of them. That was actually a map
Speaker 1: of the school detail and surveillance entry points and how
Speaker 1: this was going to be carried out on this day. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I think a big part of this is
Speaker 1: that after a mass shooting in any national paper or
Speaker 1: other media outlet, you're always trying to be first with something,
Speaker 1: and that creates a situation where like, you don't fact yet,
Speaker 1: you don't do the basic ocent looking up right, You
Speaker 1: just like cops have said something, get it out, get
Speaker 1: the most, get a ton of cliques, and then that
Speaker 1: leads to the disappointing sort of repetition of half or
Speaker 1: like in falsehoods that we're seeing. Yeah, and it leads
Speaker 1: to it provides a lot of So one thing that
Speaker 1: the right has always understood is that the immediate aftermath
Speaker 1: of a story that breaks into the news is you
Speaker 1: call it the wet cement period, where if people are
Speaker 1: talking about it, if you can, if you can lasso
Speaker 1: a narrative and drag it out in front of everybody
Speaker 1: and get momentum behind it, then that effectively becomes reality
Speaker 1: for an awful lot of people. And it's very important,
Speaker 1: which is why they're all immediately falling into line on this.
Speaker 1: One of the posts that I just ran across is
Speaker 1: from Benny Johnson, who's a right wing media guy. So
Speaker 1: Benny Johnson says the Colorado springshooter identified as non binary,
Speaker 1: the Dinver shooter identified as trans, the Aberdeen shooter identified
Speaker 1: as trans, the Nashville shooter identified as trans. One thing
Speaker 1: is very clear, the modern trans movement is radicalizing activists
Speaker 1: into terrorists. Elon Musk responded to this with an exclamation point,
Speaker 1: which is great. The Colorado spring shooter was not non binary.
Speaker 1: The Colorado Springshooters lawyers made that claim briefly while they
Speaker 1: were trying to cobble together a defense after this person
Speaker 1: killed two trans people and shot up an LGBT nightclub.
Speaker 1: The Dinver shooter is the person we just talked about. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean also they also could be referring to that
Speaker 1: to that yes, probably yeah, yeah, and um yeah. It's
Speaker 1: uh like it's it's it's frustrating, like what they're doing
Speaker 1: with this stuff here, Like it's very obvious, especially in
Speaker 1: trying to wrap in the attack of a right wing
Speaker 1: terrorist on an LGBT UM club to part like to
Speaker 1: an act of like claiming that it's an act of
Speaker 1: transgender terrorism. UM. A lot of this is spreading, particularly
Speaker 1: among people who paid for blue check marks on the
Speaker 1: New Twitter because that's like, yeah, this is kind of
Speaker 1: the first mass shooting we have had in the new
Speaker 1: Elon's kind of new check mark thing, where like people
Speaker 1: are able to kind of verify themselves for money, and
Speaker 1: we're about to see all of the old verified accounts
Speaker 1: loose verification. Um. We'll talk a little bit more about
Speaker 1: how well that's actually working for them later, which is
Speaker 1: actually less clear. Um, so that's possibly a positive thing.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I mean it's pretty obvious. Andy knows posted
Speaker 1: about this. He's another He works for a place called
Speaker 1: The Post Millennial. He's a right wing ghoul. He says
Speaker 1: the shooting comes amid a surge of far left death
Speaker 1: threats in Tennessee over the states, you know, anti trans laws.
Speaker 1: He provides no evidence of this. He does quote or
Speaker 1: site an Eminem's ad that Audrey Hale made that is
Speaker 1: like a Pride ad that says born this way. You know,
Speaker 1: it's like a rainbow of Eminem's that says born this
Speaker 1: Way appears to be something that they may have done
Speaker 1: for money. I don't know, isn't really relevant to the situation.
Speaker 1: One of the uglier posts that I found on the
Speaker 1: right comes from a guy who identifies himself as an
Speaker 1: American dissident. Stu Peters, he's the executive producer of Died Suddenly,
Speaker 1: which is one of these right wing attempts to connect
Speaker 1: every single death of a person who got vaccinated to
Speaker 1: the vaccination, which is a ghoulish thing to do anyway.
Speaker 1: And yeah, they initially leapt into there's a lot of
Speaker 1: like ugliness in here. Stu is one of the more
Speaker 1: open folks, calling them a tranny named Audrey Hale who
Speaker 1: is a former student of Covenant School. They kind of
Speaker 1: interpret the police statement, which is at least very warbly,
Speaker 1: as the police saying this was a direct attack on Christians,
Speaker 1: which the cops have not yet said. Stu posts police
Speaker 1: admit this was a targeted attack on Christians by a
Speaker 1: demonic tranny for some context. Another one of his posts
Speaker 1: is arguing that Zelinski is waging war on Christians. So
Speaker 1: you know, this is a should be seen with guys
Speaker 1: like this in addition to being the troubling thing that
Speaker 1: it is part of kind of the broader like echo
Speaker 1: chamber that the right has set up for itself, Like
Speaker 1: this is troubling and problematic and to a degree frightening,
Speaker 1: and they're going to continue to try to push for
Speaker 1: disarming trans people. As a result of this, I suspect
Speaker 1: we'll see states introduced bills that are red flag laws
Speaker 1: just for trans people. This is the kind of thing
Speaker 1: that I am worried about, but it also is kind
Speaker 1: of worth seeing this as this is very much in
Speaker 1: line with the other kind of right wing echo chamber
Speaker 1: panic stuff that is everywhere, and so far, while this
Speaker 1: is deeply concerning, I'm not seeing evidence that it's breaking
Speaker 1: out of the right and like, that doesn't mean it's
Speaker 1: not a problem, but it is kind of worth noting.
Speaker 1: The actual trending tags right now on Twitter are not
Speaker 1: what you'd expect. The Tennessee shooting is not trending on
Speaker 1: its own in a particularly high position. It's substantially lower
Speaker 1: than the Uvaldi and Highland Park shootings, both of which
Speaker 1: you're trending right now. This is based on a Twitter
Speaker 1: account I use that is not my Twitter account. It's
Speaker 1: just a blank account, so I'm hoping to get a
Speaker 1: little bit less of a biased thing. When I looked
Speaker 1: at my own accounts trending, it was Uvaldi and Highland
Speaker 1: Park as well as Columbine was trending. Sam Hyde is trending,
Speaker 1: you know, because always does after a shooting. As a
Speaker 1: result of this stuff, guns is trending. I think AR
Speaker 1: fifteen was trending on one of my accounts, but the
Speaker 1: I'm not yet seeing evidence that this is anywhere like that.
Speaker 1: The antitran stuff has made it outside of the right
Speaker 1: wing fever swamps. Yea, you are getting like again. That
Speaker 1: does not mean it's not troubling. It is deeply troubling,
Speaker 1: but it's also not when I'm looking at sort of
Speaker 1: liberal and centrist responses to this, it's noteworthy that what
Speaker 1: is trending is Uvaldi and Highland Park and Columbine, because
Speaker 1: what's common is people sort of putting this within the
Speaker 1: continuum of America's nightmarish problem with mass shootings, particularly at schools,
Speaker 1: which is the right way to see this. This is
Speaker 1: part of an ongoing series of island acts and a
Speaker 1: mass shooter culture that exists within this country. And obviously
Speaker 1: it's tied to the availability of guns. It's tied to
Speaker 1: a number of things. But it is kind of worth
Speaker 1: noting that when it comes to what most people are
Speaker 1: seeing as a result of this, it is another mass
Speaker 1: shooting in America, and not trans people are carrying out
Speaker 1: terrorist attacks. That is so far at least just like
Speaker 1: a thing I'm seeing in the right wing fever swamps. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think. I think Marjorie Taylor Green is one of
Speaker 1: the first, like sitting politicians to make a statement focused
Speaker 1: on the shooter's gender identity, saying how much hormones like
Speaker 1: testosterone and medications for mental illness was the transgender Nashville
Speaker 1: shooter taking. Everyone can stop blaming guns now, and like
Speaker 1: this style of messaging is just blaming the shooting on
Speaker 1: like HRT and health medication. But there's no indication at
Speaker 1: this point that the shooter was taking testosterone or was
Speaker 1: on any medication. But this is just a clear attempt
Speaker 1: to like tie this shooting into the campaign against trans
Speaker 1: healthcare that that Green has been doing for years now,
Speaker 1: and to make trans healthcare seem like the reason that
Speaker 1: this shooting took place. Yeah, this person has kind of
Speaker 1: already become like like Schrodinger's like gender affirming care right
Speaker 1: where like and you know, suggesting they're doing attacks because
Speaker 1: they can't access gender affirming care. Marjor Teler Green's is
Speaker 1: acting that the gender affirming care they did access made
Speaker 1: them become more violent, Like the same thing with Jack Sobiak,
Speaker 1: who was saying that testosterone increases aggression. Yeah, Jack Possobiak
Speaker 1: is an influential Republican advisor and commentator. He's he's a fascist,
Speaker 1: like he's a terrible person. He's the guy who initially
Speaker 1: spread the Pizza Gate conspiracy theory. But he is influential
Speaker 1: on the right because of his ability to get stuff
Speaker 1: to go viral on the base. And I guess one
Speaker 1: thing we should mention that that kind of ties into
Speaker 1: is that Sobiak has been repeating some talking points that
Speaker 1: Tucker Carlson focused on. A few nights ago during his show,
Speaker 1: there was an NPR segment about trans people who are
Speaker 1: purchasing firearms to defend themselves that interviewed somebody on a
Speaker 1: number of folks. One of the people they interviewed is
Speaker 1: a person who goes by queer Armor on Twitter about
Speaker 1: why they've chosen to be armed and like advocate other
Speaker 1: trans people arm themselves for self defense. Tucker took quotes
Speaker 1: from that person and made a very fearmongering piece about
Speaker 1: how NPR and the liberals want to create an army
Speaker 1: of trans stormtroopers and disarm regular Americans. Right, that's the piece, yeah,
Speaker 1: talking of, like, I guess armed Americans. One thing that's
Speaker 1: also twending is just an incredibly crass photo that the
Speaker 1: representative for that Tennis fifty district twitter to district the
Speaker 1: school was in Who's called Andy Ogles Ogles maybe posted
Speaker 1: for his Christmas photo. I guess which is him. It's
Speaker 1: a classic Republican politician photo, right, entire family, everyone holding
Speaker 1: a different variant of an AAR fifteen. And it's yeah, late, Look,
Speaker 1: I think, regardless of what you think about guns, is
Speaker 1: kind of crass to be parading them as like culture
Speaker 1: war tokens like this. And I've noticed that's been trending
Speaker 1: across a lot of at least of timeline I'm seeing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is this is at the nexus of a number
Speaker 1: of things that are like fucked up about this country.
Speaker 1: I'm just enjoying Ian Miles Chong's timeline unfortunately. And who
Speaker 1: is he emails shop? Right, we engagement provocateur. Yeah, he
Speaker 1: lives in Thailand, right, Malaysia, I believe Malaysia. Malaysia. He
Speaker 1: has like he has like half a million Twitter followers,
Speaker 1: influential on the online sphere. His telegram is culture war room,
Speaker 1: which is, you know, giving you what you need to get.
Speaker 1: I think so I'm just going to read this tweet
Speaker 1: and obviously, like all the all the sort of content
Speaker 1: warnings you'd expect, today, a mass show to murder three
Speaker 1: children and three ou outs at a Christian school in Nashville, Tennessee.
Speaker 1: The murderer pronouns was were was transgender, and had written
Speaker 1: a manifesto detailing their intention, which come days after Tennessee
Speaker 1: past child protection laws intended to curb children from being
Speaker 1: subjected to trans surgeries and other irreversible procedures. Their heinous
Speaker 1: actions follow a month of media driven rhetoric about a
Speaker 1: transgenocide and calls for a so called trans Day of
Speaker 1: retribution in the United States. It is conceivable that much
Speaker 1: of the conservative public derided assists. It's now open season
Speaker 1: for gender extremists who have been terrorizing women who dared
Speaker 1: to speak out against a woke ideology. When they tell
Speaker 1: you what they intend to do, believe them. So Hale
Speaker 1: has posted nothing about a trans Day of retribution, has
Speaker 1: posted nothing publicly about being trans. Really, there's not a
Speaker 1: single post discussing their gender identity online. This is just
Speaker 1: they're just trying to weird political points by purposely like
Speaker 1: making it sound like this person was writing about this
Speaker 1: stuff online, and there's no evidence that they had writing
Speaker 1: about the stuff, nor is there any of it online
Speaker 1: that we can find. And yeah, I don't know. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's it's basic stuff that people like him do in
Speaker 1: the aftermath of like any type of event like this. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, we're gonna end now, because anything pretty much
Speaker 1: anymore we said would be getting into speculation or just
Speaker 1: belaboring the point about these fucking right wing ghouls. But
Speaker 1: I do want to end on a post from a follower,
Speaker 1: a Twitter personality who I consider to be pretty pretty savvy.
Speaker 1: They go by Juniper on Twitter. They noted this fifteen
Speaker 1: years ago. Anytime there was a shooting, they would blom
Speaker 1: it on Muslims, and if it were a Muslim, they
Speaker 1: would go hogwhile trying to indict all Muslims. They're doing
Speaker 1: that right now with the Nashville school shooting, and we'll
Speaker 1: try to indict all trans people. Just don't engage. See
Speaker 1: a Matt Walsh take that is incredibly aggravating. Ignore it.
Speaker 1: See a politician tweet miss gendering the shooter while simultaneously
Speaker 1: trying to blame all trans people. Ignore it. Anyone with
Speaker 1: a brain and a shred of empathy, we'll see right
Speaker 1: wingers as the psychopaths they are. A lot of trans
Speaker 1: people are rightfully scared in the world right now. People
Speaker 1: hate us without even knowing us, and how amazing we are.
Speaker 1: Just know that you are loved and we will win.
Speaker 1: The world cannot hate us forever. Hey, everybody, Garrison and
Speaker 1: I are going to put together a post, a substack
Speaker 1: post sort of synthesizing their research and what I've got
Speaker 1: so far in the right wing response, and we will
Speaker 1: be posting that up. It'll be at the at shatter
Speaker 1: zone dot substack dot com if you want it in
Speaker 1: an easier text version that you can kind of share
Speaker 1: with people. It could happen here as a production of
Speaker 1: cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool Zone Media,
Speaker 1: visit our website cool zonemedia dot com, or check us
Speaker 1: out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
Speaker 1: listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It could
Speaker 1: Happen here, updated monthly at coolzonemedia dot com slash sources.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening.