9/11/25: Charlie Kirk Assassinated In Utah

a neighborhood. Our investigators have worked through those neighborhoods, contacting anybody they can with doorbell cameras, witnesses, and have thoroughly worked through those communities trying to identify any leads. We do have good video footage of this individual.

and tips are being fully investigated. As of this morning, we received more than one hundred and thirty tips. We think the community for that. This morning, I can tell you that we have recovered.

updated best we can. And Ryan, Emily and I will be doing a Friday show tomorrow as well.

You know, it's a it's a very difficult story to cover, and we're going to take everybody through it, and we're going to talk a little bit about kind of what it means, you know, to us, and kind of what I think we means, you know, to the mission of the show, and just generally about the country and all of that. But we do think, you know, this is a place where we have to show up. We've got to do the news. So so why don't we just go ahead and start, you know, with everything that we know.

You know. Crazily enough, it was literally happened as we were planning the show for the next day, and we all found out in real time.

everybody at breaking points from me. Sager, Ryan and Emily also wanted us to convey our horror at the at the whole thing, and our deepest consolences to Charlie's family, his wife, his two kids who were there on the scene when he was shot and murdered in this political assassination that happened in broad daylight. So here's what we know. Let me go ahead and set the scene a little bit. This was you know, Charlie has known for his college tours. This was the first stop of a college tour. This

was in Utah at Utah Valley University. And you know, it looked like a looked like a normal day. He was out, he was throwing hats into the crowd, and then suddenly gunfire erupts and you can see everybody scattering and screams and chaos. You guys have probably seen the actual video of his murder, which was captured on camera, and if you haven't seen it, I recommend you don't watch it because the image will haunt you for.

So you can see this image here appears to be the shooter and Sagar, you know, as we're putting the pieces of this together, and Charlie was taken to the hospital and then you know, later died while he was there receiving medical care. And anyone who saw that wound I think was pretty convinced pretty quickly that he wasn't going to be able to make it. But the shooter was quite a distance away. Immediately, the police arrested an

older man who was in the crowd. There were some eyewitnesses who said that he had claimed responsibility, this old man that was in the crowd, even though yet was unarmed. There's video also of him being dragged off where he's saying, shoot me, shoot me, acting very strange. Meanwhile, the actual gunman was on this the roof. Estimates are some two hundred yards away. I'm not expert on guns, but you know, we've all sort of spoken to people in our lives

that we know who say this. You know, this would be a difficult shot, and it was a single shot, and obviously, you know, shot to kill, and so far has successfully evaded capture.

four hundred and thirty feet away. So if you're looking at this diagram, you can actually see the rooftop where some of the video actually captured. You know, this individual are suspected individual. Part of the thing is, you know, we really don't still know a lot right now. You

had that initial suspects, not even suspect. You had a person who was taken into custody who faced questioning and definitely was acting very strangely That was followed by the FBI Director Cash Ptel, who said that there was a subject in custody that was a second subject actually in custody. I can go ahead and put that up there on the screen as well, because it just shows the chaotic nature so far of a lot of the communication from law enforcement. They say that the subject in custody has

been released after an interrogation by law enforcement. Our investigation continues and we will continue to release information in the interest of transparency. But that is the last communication that we had gotten from the FBI director so far, and the manhunt remains underway.

In addition to the old man that was seemingly acting very bizarre at this at the scene but has now been released, there was another another guy that they arrested. I think that actually is the subject that Cash was Pashtel was referring to here.

in the day. You know, soccer, can you do you mind putting that map up on the screen if you have it, because if you look at that building, uh, there is a parking lot too that is right behind the building that you know that the shooter was a lleged you know that we think that the shooter was

on when he murdered Charlie Kirk. And so the thought is that he was able to, you know, escape from this building while the crowd is fleeing, while they're bothered, you know, busy arresting this old man who has apparently nothing to do with it, he's able to probably go to this parking lot and escape and vanish so far

into thin air. So from the difficulty of the shot, the execution of that, to the ability to get away from the scene and you know and take advantage of these you know, diversions, makes it seem like it was intentional. I guess that's not completely onto the question, but take advantage of this chaos to be able to exit. This was someone who knew what they were doing. This was not some random radicalized in cel on the internet or whatever.

This was someone you know, someone who had a lot of experience in marksmanship and who had a plan and was able to execute it.

terms of the sniping direction. But I think actually you have to combine it with the totality of what we've seen in the executions so far wearing black also, you know, laying in the prone, finding a position, planning the attack, having a way of egress, evading capture, some thirteen out. Keep in mind, everybody, we're recording this around eight thirty am Eastern Standard time, Eastern time, so people should just

remember that, you know, information can break very quickly. But this is largely not just our you know, assessment, it's also the assessment of some law enforcement experts. You know, the CNN actually had a guest on who made this very point. So I'm going to go ahead and play a little bit from what they were saying.

In other words, Caitlin, this is the kind of person who would have planned to get in silently, try to be invisible, take this shot, accomplish the mission, take the gun with them, and leave little evidence behind, which is why I think they're having a very difficult time getting started on this. This is someone who was a.

Of course, you know, he was able to escape, but he also was you know, he made a couple of mistakes there with security camera footage they were releasing images. Law enforcement again to this point, has not released any image at all of the suspect. In fact, the press conference that they gave so that the CCTV footage was grainy and it just simply showed a person in black.

Presumably Also, the FBI is going to be doing like a cell phone location ping, which they're able to do and they've done in high profile investigations as well, to try and narrow all of the individuals who were there. I was looking at some maps of the area. There was a freeway very close by and obviously was a very chaotic situation, you know, to be able to go away and get in. There's some three thousand people who

actually attended the event. But broadly, you know, at this point, the fact that you've evaded capture for some twelve hours, more than twelve hours now since this attack does show and also the release of two suspects says this is a difficult investigation right now for the f and it does tell us also, you know, with the information, the conflicting information and all the stuff that came out, it is it's pretty shocking, and it does I think also what we can focus on is this, you know, if

we look at some of that you were talking about, the crazed lunatic attacks, very often those lead in suicide. They are martyrs who immediately are identified confronted by law enforcement. In this particular case, I think the fact that the shooter fled had a plan in the very beginning that there's been no claim, manifesto, et cetera. Actually is a message in and of itself that this person, at the

very least, you know, wanted to evade capture. Now again keep in mind that could be still a single individual. The DC sniper case. If we originally think back to that, there was a lot of speculation to the planned nature

of it. It was it's crazy. Actually we're talking on the day of nine to eleven, the twenty fourth anniversary since the nine to eleven attacks that happened in the wake of that, and there was a lot of worry about terrorism, etc. Obviously it turned out to be you know, a crazy guy and his son, but he did have military training and they certainly did, you know, plan a lot of this round Luigi against similar situations to somebody

who conducted an assassination, high profile assassination, was able to flee of their own accord, got away for a couple of days. So it is certainly within the realm of possibility. But the nature, the political assassin nature of this is so extraordinary and it really doesn't have a lot of parallels in modern American history, which we can return to. But you know, there's also some pretty kind of crazy

information now that's coming out. I want to keep in mind in speculation, but there was John Solomon over at who works for I think Real America's Voice, was recently reporting here on Fox News that there was actually some foreign intelligence lead involved in Charlie Kirk's assassination. And keep in mind, look Solomon, you know, he is his own track record. You can go and look for yourself. I will say he's the person who broke the Charlie Kirk's

death story. He was the first person to report it actually over at Real America's Voice, which was the outlet which hosts the Charlie Kirk program. But here's what he had to say late last night.

probably aren't the shooter. They a couple of hot leads, is a little bit of foreign intelligence, and I think over the next couple of days, we'll learn a lot more and hopefully we will bring to justice the evil person who did what they did to Charlie today.

To go back to what Soccer was saying about, Okay, well, what is the what is the profile? What do we know of this individual and what they wanted to accomplish. Unlike we can compare to the recent school shooting in Minnesota. You know, that person posted long video, there were long journals. They wanted people to know about them and their psychology and what they were doing and why with all this symbology. They also intended to be killed on the same and

killed themselves on the scene. You know, that is a typical trait oftentimes is you'll see you know, you'll see a manifesto. You'll see someone who either dies by their own hands or intends to be killed by the cops. There's a desire for sort of infamy and notoriety. You also have, you know, the desire to make some specific political point and make it really clear and apparent to the public. In this instance, you know, you have two things that you can say for sure. This person wanted

a public execution. They wanted it to be on camera. They wanted all of us to be scrolling through our Twitter and seeing the gore and the horror, the absolute horror of this. That was the message they wanted to send. They wanted all of us to see it. They wanted everyone, certainly who's a public fee, They wanted everyone to feel un safe and know that even if you're you know, Charlie Kirk and you got the president's ear and you've got a security team around you, that no one is safe.

And we also know that they wanted not to be found, right. They wanted to do this from a distance. They did not want to be captured. They wanted to evade justice. They wanted to get away. As far as we know at this point, we haven't found or located any sort of specific manifesto. Now that doesn't mean that this wasn't ideological. I think, I think, you know, it's very very very likely ideological. Although you know, you can't rule out there's all sorts of types of people that this could be.

But I and I think the third thing we can say for certain is this was someone who planned and had some level of experience. You know, again, it looks like it was a professional job. Now, maybe they just got lucky, you know, maybe this was someone who was a hunter and pretty good shot and had an idea of how to get away and was able to pull it off, you know, without some sort of like people are speculating this could be a government, this could be terrorists,

this could be foreign intel. I think all those things are on the table, without going too far down the speculative rabbit hole, but I think those are the pieces we know at this point. This was someone who wanted a spectacle of gore and assassination to haunt all of us, and someone who wanted to get away and be elusive and evade capture.

We've seen attempted assassinate, or even in terrorism. Right, you know, it's very often that that will be conducted and then claimed and or you know, you could you want to create the spectacle there and immediately make sure that your ideology is felt. The very fact that that hasn't happened is certainly an indication again of something. And eventually, if the case does get resolved, we'll learn a little bit why.

My only caution is Luisian Angione very likely conducted a political or you know, some ideological assassination, at least in his own mind, and he still fled. Right, So say, the d C sniper very similar. I mean, he was obviously just deeply mentally ill. But I mean everything is on the table because we don't know anything. That's kind of what's so shocking. I'm not going to share the information. It's not credible confirmed for me to be able to bring anything. Yeah, let me just pick.

him here. There were very quickly, there were some there were some pieces, you know, he was able to get out of the city, but there was some information that they were in fact working with and you know, pretty quickly you knew a significant amount about this individual, and they were able to chase down leads. Again, maybe they have something that's not public, but typically, you know, in these early days, if they have an image, they usually put it out so that people can be on the lookout.

I mean, you remember how the Luigi was apprehended because somebody right well in somebody at a McDonald's in Pennsylvania saw him and said, Hey, that looks like the photo that I saw circulating and called the cops. At least that's the official story of how that all went down. So they like to get the public involved if they don't have a suspect in custody, so that people all over the place can be looking and calling in tips

and trying to assist in this investigation. Right now, as far as we know, there is nothing to go on.

are none. I mean, you know, Charlie, and you could kind of call him whatever you want. He was a conservative activist, he was an influencer. He's YouTuber, you know, And that's part of why I think, you know, so many of us who also do very similar jobs and participate some similar events, are so shaken and like struck by it. And it's because everyone has participated, at least

in some form, you know, in something like this. You know, for more modern comparisons, I mean, I'm not saying that they're one to one, but obviously we had in the nineteen sixties, we had the assassinations of people like Malcolm X or MLK Junior. You did have a period of a lot of violence, political violence in the nineteen seventies, the weather underground, you know, the sib Simbonese Liberation Army, the kidnapping of Patti Hurst. I mean, it was a

crazy time. And we have talked a lot about on the show over the years about the comparison to the nineteen seventies, and that's actually almost immediately what I came to. But there's some really darker ones as well that actually Ryan was reminding of and I had to go back and really to look because I'd only read about them in passing. But probably, you know, maybe the more one to one comparison would be a guy like Elijah Lovejoy.

He was actually an abolitionist, a newspaper editor in eighteen thirty seven who was actually killed by a pro slavery mob. And it was actually quite common during the Civil War era where pro abolitionist or anti secessionists and others in the South, journalists, political editors, people who would express those types of opinions were killed for their political beliefs and

for putting that out there. But that is how far back I would have to go actually to even find a comparison to keep it in the realm of Luigi Mangioni. I've talked about this here on the show also because

of Luigi's own predilections for Japanese culture. But in the early nineteen thirties, twenties and thirties, in the rise of the Japanese military state, there was a concept called Geikokujo, which means kind of like from the bottom to the top, and it entailed high profile assassination, and assassination was not something just limited to the government, although it was largely conducted. It was to target political leaders, opinion leaders, others, for

people to create a purpose of kind of moving towards militarism. Again, they're not one to one, but you know, the same social forces are not all that rare. I could also think to the anarchist movements of the early nineteen hundreds, Gilded Age oligarchs were targeted columnists and others. Again, they weren't assassinated. But that's part of what makes us, I think, so extraordinary. It's so crazy that we're talking. I don't know.

I mean, it's difficult to describe because it's not the same as nine to eleven obviously, but it does just feel like a rubicon was crossed yesterday. Yeah, I mean he was murdered and he was assassinated in cold blood in front of thousands of people in four.

and we were thinking about Butler. But that's I mean, I hate to say it, but like that's part of American political history. We've had multiple presidents who have been assassinated, We've had the chaining caning of Charles Sumner, you know, legislators. It's it's not like it was insane right to think about It's not like it was insane to think about

the death or the targeting of political legislators. But now it feels like people who engage in American public life itself very recently from Charlie and also these ministates, I mean these the recent Minnesota attack that was only a couple of months ago, where these were state legislators. They're not household names president right, these are not not even a congressman, not a senator nothing, right, state senator. I don't even know who my state senator is. You know

where I live. And so these are people who are like, you know, no offense, but like are like orbiting the political system. And I'm Charlie was more. Charlie was more influential even than those people I think, you know, to the national politics. But I don't know. That's part of why it just feels like that Rubicon really was crossed.

weird way that that unfortunately attempted presidential assassinations. There's always going to be someone who wants to kill the president, right, So it didn't feel like a totally different thing than we've seen or experienced or read about or heard about before. Right then you get, yeah, these state legislators, you know, you also had the attack on Paul Pelosi, right, somebody maniac who came in who was trying to get to Nancy Pelosi. Obviously, anyone who is in public life at.

an influencer and a YouTuber and whatever. But yeah, I mean, this is someone who is in our world, right, and so I think it does change everything in terms of how anyone is thinking about themselves in public life, the type of events they're going to say yes to, the type of availability that they're going to have to the public.

And you know, what, can I say, The country's coming apart, right, We're we're chock full of guns, you know, a nation pack full of guns, with mass levels of untreated mental illness.

You know, people don't have access to healthcare system, rampant inequality, and increasing political extremism where people, you know, people are radicalized and they feel that the stakes are existential, and in some you know, in some instances, the stakes do feel existential, like there there are genuine you know, deep political divides that are very real in the same way that in the build up to the Civil War, like for Southerners, the idea that like your whole you know,

Southern slave owners, the idea that your whole economic model was going to be taken away, that felt existential to them. So you know, it's a it's a tinder box, like it's a powder keg, and it is absolutely it's a

terrifying It's a terrifying moment for those reasons exactly. And to me, that has to be what this assassin wanted us, Like, that's what he wants the nation to take away from this is terror is fear, is the sense that you know, you you can't speak out, you can't be in a public place, you can't just have political disagreements and listen, I'm not going to mince words like I genuinely find found some of Charlie Kirk's used to be violent, abhorrent, no one like that doesn't mean you murder some I

mean it's it's horrific because once these things are on the table, that's the thing that's terrifying too. Is like I was thinking about the and the epidemic of school shootings, which, by the way, we had a fucking school shooting yesterday too, like this is America now where three three students were critically injured at I believe it was, you know, Denver

High School, So you had Columbine. Prior to Combine, there were not school shootings, and then after Columbine they're just coming more and more and more and more and more. And that's what's so frightening about this moment is that once you put this idea out there into the ether, how many other people will be quote unquote inspired by it? How does this transform the way we all relate to

each other? And then you know, we'll talk about the presence response in a moment, which was just pouring gasoline on the fire, which is also what makes this so frightening for all of us. And you know, I don't think anyone would be surprised if Trump does use this as some further crackdown on what he sees as his political enemies.

But it was I was just young enough or just old enough to kind of remember what that experience was like. And it's I mean, it's why I'm here. It's the only reason I've even got interested in politics. And yeah, and I think, you know, to that tinder box feeling, I think that's what's so really scary, and I do think that's what the assassin wanted, and that's why I think, you know, we really got to try to work against it. It's like you said with Charlie. I mean, look, I

like Charlie on a personal level. I was telling you, guys, I mean I was really shaken up by it. I was literally just talking to him a couple of weeks ago about what it was like to have kids and to have a daughter specifically. He invited me on his show, and you know, honestly took courage for him because he actually invited me on specifically to talk about Israel, and uh, you know, it's that's part of what's so crazy about it. I knew the guy for years. We had our disagreements,

and that's fine. We have our disagreements here every day, you know, you and me, and we were talking about that, you know, in the context Emilin and Ryan who enforced and weren't able to join us, but they definitely wanted to, both expressing their horror how disgusted they are really by the whole attack. And I just really don't want to go down that path again. But I feel like all of the not only does that the assassin want, but I also feel like it's to the benefit of a

lot of entrenched kind of political interests. It's also to the you know, it's like the baseline of engagement for politics for a lot of people. And that doesn't erase the existential field because you're right there are Look, politics is existential, is true. We're not going to lie to you. I don't means words about that the election was insanely important. It was, doesn't you know. Not saying that that, of course,

it's not like a gateway to justifying political violence. And yeah, just like dealing in the aftermath of this feeling of public life in the in the tinder box of the country again on the twenty fourth anniversary of nine to eleven, it all just really kind of comes full circle for what they wanted, whoever this person was, and the you know, the the the murdering of someone again, there's something so twenty twenty five about the attack, you know, Mac, Mac

was not only the fact that we watched it live basically happened witnessed. I mean the moment I saw the video, I said, disguised dead, it's it's it's over. But Mac sent us our producer a video you know, there was I'm not gonna call him out by name, but like a TikToker who's like yo TikTok live, like, you know, creating content out of it almost immediately subscribe and subscribe to me on my channel, right, And I was like, ah, I can't believe really that that's kind of where things

are now. And yeah, I mean it's a scared every time, not just for people who are engaged in public life. And you know, like I said, I knew, Charlie, you know that crazy The last time I talked him. We fought actually about something. I don't think he would mind me saying that. And you know, to his credit, he really would talk to a lot of people, and he had a debate scheduled with Hassan Piker nine days from now, right, uh. And he did change a lot of people's lives and

their minds. And I mean that's part of what made him what he was. And I think at the very least, like, you know, if there's going to be taken anything from that, it's kind of like the legacy that I would like to look at. But unfortunately, I think things are going in a bad direction.

A lot of them have seen some of their influence and their views fall off as people have moved towards like Fuenttes and the Croypers and like some other newer creators as in Gold or as another one.

important part of Trump's reelect. Obviously, was in contact with Trump himself and other people in the administration on a regular basis. And you know, I this is not to dispectlate about who or what or whatever, but it is notable too that he was in real time really grappling with some of those divisions in the MAGA coalition what it means to be America first and probably nowhere And we covered some of this on the show. Was he more sort of like torn and under pressure than on

the issue of Israel? And it makes sense because you have the president who's with Israel one hundred percent of the way and back in the genocide and doing the whole thing. And then you have Charlie's young audience that increasingly has this very different view, and so you could see in real time the way he was struggling to balance those things because you know, of course he wants to maintain his good relationship with the White House.

that was divergent for the White House. He's been very out He's been outspoken on the on the Epstein Files as well, so you know, he was both kind of at the peak of his power and also really touching on some very sensitive and very controversial issues, not even just with the nation at large, but even within the Republican the political Republican is actually.

name basis with like every Republican senator. I would say, you know, outside of Trump, JD and Elon, he's one of the most respect people for the Trump election. In twenty twenty four TPUSA events, you know, we're critical, critical, especially in the gen Z men swing to the right. Uh. And you know, again, because we don't know the motivation of this shooter or like what they even want to cause, it's kind of difficult to even speculate as to where

that goes. Uh. And I think, you know broadly again with Charlie's murder, with his assassination here, I really just think about like the sick nature that you said, there was a school shooting, and I don't know, I just want to come back to like talking and hashing things out. I know that sounds really trite, but it is. You know, things can be existential, and we also co existence, if that makes sense.

And to see not just the murder, but kind of within the context of the broader country and the slide. It's funny when you read a history book, you see things that are so obvious. But now if I you know, put my history hat on eight years, it's not that long ago. That was twenty seventeen. We had the baseball shooting right from that point forward of Steve Scalise, you know, still injured from the attack. It's a miracle that he even survived, and many of the other individuals. Then we had,

I mean, so an entire summer of insanity. We had BLM, which was then followed by January sixth, and then was followed now by I mean, you know, interim school shootings all up in between insane ideological attacks, synagogues, churches.

spent enough time talking about this after nine eleven. That's part of why I wanted to focus on it after nine to eleven. We did not spend enough time and on talking about what did these people want from murdering three thousand innocent people on nine to eleven. And what they wanted was what we gave them, the invasion of Iraq, the destruction of our civil liberties. You know, they said they hate us for our freedom, and then we took

away our own freedom. Everybody turned inward. Millions of people abroad ended up killed. We ignited civil wars. You know, if you we'd never had a serious reckoning with like why why did the World Trade Center? And it's like to strike at the heart of American capitalism. They strike at the heart of American power at the Pentagon, and they were also going to hit the legislature and the seat of government and the point or the White House, and no one's really still sure to this day. But

for what purpose? And the purpose was basically what we gave them. And I want to sit with that in the in the wake of the death, to say, like, okay, like this, what the person wanted was the fear not only of people public life, but also just the general chilling effect. But look, we still don't know anything about

the shooter. And that's actually still what's so insane really about it all, and almost kind of heightens the the like shocking nature of it, the fact that there's still not a single detail and it's nine am Eastern time that we and I are recording, and we don't know anything.

the conspiracies about this. But I think it's probably the right time in the conversation to play the president's response here because it fits very much soccer with what you're saying about. You know, we yeah, we responded to nine to eleven in you know, I don't know, You're probably right that it is what the terrorists wanted, but it also just even putting aside their desires. It was disastrous for us, It was disastrous for the world. It was

certainly disastrous for a rock. It was disastrous for Afghanistan. You know, the horror and the turmoil of that continues to this day. And you know the president here threatening basically to you know, to go to use this, to to go to war with his ideological enemies, something that in a lot of ways he was already doing. So, you know, this is a lot I want to play. All of this is four minutes. I want to go ahead and play all of it so that we can that we can fully react to it.

he loved more than anything in the world. We asked God to watch over them in this terrible hour of heartache and pain.

Long past time for all Americans and the media to confront the fact that violence and murder are the tragic consequence of demonizing those with whom you disagree, day after day, year after year, in the most hateful and despicable way possible. For years, those on the radical left have compared wonderful Americans like Charlie to Nazis and the world's worst mass murderers and criminals. This kind of rhetoric is directly responsible for the terrorism that we're seeing in our country today, and.

and everyone else who brings order to our country. From the attack on my life in Butler, Pennsylvania last year, which killed a husband and father, to the attacks on ICE agents, to the vicious murder of a healthcare executive in the streets of New York, to the shooting of House Majority Leader Steve Scalise and three others. Radical of political violence has hurt too many innocent people and taken.

live on for countless generations to come. Today, because of this heinous act, Charlie's voice has become bigger and grander than ever before, and it's not even close. May God bless his memory, May God watch over his family, and may God bless the United States of America.

most of the attitude of the rest. Part of why I'm really despondent today is that literally, without knowing anything, and look, it could be. I mean, who's going to put it out of the realm. Of course, it was probably a political assassination for some purpose. We have no idea really still, we don't even have any confirmed information or anything. That's what I was looking at earlier. But you know, I actually thought Hanania Richard Hannania said this.

He says, I don't think individual political assassinations have anything to tell us about our politics. These are stochastic events. It's a country of three hundred and fifty million people, widely available firearms. Some of our fellow citizens are insane. Like in any country, if your public figure, one of the risks that you face is an unstable individual might

come after you. But what he focuses on and continues is not only that we don't know the identity or the motivation of the shooter, but also that, you know, focusing in on hot political rhetoric. It's I hate to sound like a leftist or whatever, but it's pretty obvious that it's it's everywhere with you know, for both sides.

I guess, and I guess I know that's cringe. You know that a lot of right wingers don't want to hear it, but it's obviously true, Like the rhetoric is dialed all the way up, and we could blame everybody. Oh it's their fault, they started it. It's sort of fine, we are where we are. And I also will speak

up for free speech. And this is the other thing, outside of the context of nine to eleven, is part of the overwhelming and crushing environment of that time actually prevented people who are sober minded, who are asking questions and yes, in some cases we're offensive, that's allowed. Okay, yes you can cancel them and all of that if you wanted to. But mono like monoculture enforcement and just immediately kind of reaching for a political agenda is the

absolute worst of nine to eleven. And well that's that's why it hits me hard today.

all kinds of ideological motivations there whatever. To use that to say that everyone in that political ideology is basically like a terrorist and a murderer is also just disgusting and abhorrent. But especially at a time when we don't even we have no idea who this person was or what their motivation was. So yeah, I mean he's I think it was Zajilani on Twitter. He's like, he's an narcissist. This is all he knows how to do is pour more gasoline on the flames. That's that is what he

always always does. And you know, I think I've always been in the camp. I continue to be in the camp that Trump is a symptom of the underlying problems. That if it wasn't Trump, you'd have someone else likely to come and fill the role. I don't know that they'd have the same level of like power and chrism and culture personality that he's been able to accrue.

how how did this all happen? And it was the collapse of institutional trust and the psychotic behavior of the US government post nine to eleven that destroyed trust in the individual state, combined with the failure of the post financial crisis. The I mean, look, we could blame each other for the culture war and all of that. I won't even get into that right now, but at the very least, you know, then that starts to dial up in the midst of all this angst and foreign war

and abroad, and that leads. And that's why I'm glad you said it is a symptom, because that is downstream of how a lot of people think.

is also a symptom of that as well. That's why I really do feel as if we're living right back through the nineteen seventies where we had I mean, if just think about it, we had Nixon, we had riots, we had the killings of in the late sixties of MLK, of Malcolm X, we had a bottom fallout of any hope we were in post Vietnam. We had high inflation, we had political violence. There was a sense in that time that we're never going to get out of this.

They're like, this is it. The American Empire has peaked. We have to step back from where things are now. Luckily, you know, we did get out of it, although we didn't get out of it with the unscathed. I wouldn't say it all went so well out And that's kind of kind of.

The color of neo libert with the collapse of a high trust society looks like and explosions of violence and mental illness and murder and public trust and this huge debates between you and me about how to even solve that. But you know, coming from the problem itself and recognizing that is really important. And I'm putting that all together in that context.

soo twenty twenty five. I mean in the same way that like the genocide and Gaza is so twenty twenty five, Like what is it even doing to us that we see this gore as just like a normal part of our lives every single day, Like even that, what is

that doing to us? And then all of the incentives for you know, the influencer ecosystem is to put out the most inflammatory hot take that you can, Like if you're if you're that you know that guy who was there at the scene when Charlie Kirk is murdered and he's like live streaming and I followed me on TikTok, like you're The whole ecosystem is built up to say the most irresponsible, inflammatory, like outrageous thing.

wildly in sufficient rehab, wildly insufficient mental health facilities. And then you have this vast inequality where people feel like they're being crushed day after day after day, and that their hope for you know, stable life, their hope for their kids, their hopes are just being like ground up and crushed. Where there's a sense that it doesn't matter

who you vote for, that's not going to change. And you know, then you layer on top of it this very this really heightened political animus and a president of the United States who's happened happy to pour fuel on that fire because he thinks it serves his interest, you know.

And it's just it's that mix that makes you feel every day like what is going like up is down, left is right, This country is going off the rails, and you unlike nine to eleven Sager, like nine to eleven really like launched a new era, right It was a wake up coase these things were happening in the background. We didn't really know, we were kind of like blind to it, but it really did sort of launch us into a new era. To me, the murder live of

Charlie Kirk, that we all witnessed this public execution. It solidifies in our minds the era we already were in, that we already had lots of indications and years of experience with at this point.

it puts new things on too. But it's also like a real reckoning moment with oh, this is where we are, Like we already were in this era and this is just confirmation of where we are at this point.

unders which we still live with, that mass surveillance. The tech now is so much more advanced, so much more advanced. Things they could never have dreamed of in two thousand and one are already being implemented in twenty twenty five. Like so that's the other thing that makes this such

a frightening moment. Actually record an episode. I don't know if it's going to air now at this point because it feels very outdated, But of her take with Anna Casparian and Jelly and Michaels and that whole crew, and we're talking about there was a dude who went on Fox News to pitch his like AI you know, minority report threat detection thing, and that tech is just like widely available now it's there's palenteer.

in a way that it wasn't previously. And you know, again, we have an administration that has used every excuse they can to try to go after their political enemies and adversaries, whether it's lawyers, whether it's Propalestime protesters, whether it's immigrants, whether it's colleges like across the board, and so we can only imagine, I think we can only begin to wrap our heat around what the fallout from this is

going to be. What the fallout of seeing this kind of gore in our timelines, with the fallout in terms of a crackdown is going to be, With the fallout in terms of how influencers are going to conduct themselves, and what this is going to mean for the world going forward.

so we'll hear their thoughts. We'll try to cover some other stories tomorrow as well, because of course there continue to be important developments happening elsewhere in the world too.