It Could Happen Here Weekly 200

Also media.

Hey everybody, Robert Evans here, and I wanted to let you know this is a compilation episode. So every episode of the week that just happened is here in one convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to listen to in a long stretch if you want. If you've been listening to the episodes every day this week, there's going to be nothing new here for you, but

Truth fluid? Certainly truth fluid.

Yeah, that's a better way to phrase it.

I have a growing headache that I think grows larger by the second.

Yeah, will not cease.

I guess you should first discuss how the shooter has been identified and arrested. Yes, we are recording this Friday evening for context.

Yes, early evening there will be more information on the shooter and on the shooting. By the time you listen to this, we may include an update at the end, but we will be talking about stuff that is timeless, as in things that we know are false or true at the moment, and just generally our ethics on when do we feel confident saying a shooting or other kind of attack was left wing or right wing or something else, like when do we feel confident in making those judgments

The Lord works in mysterious ways.

So I can tell you, and this is something you'll find in the reporting. He came from a pretty normal Utah family, politically conservative. That's based on articles I've seen, we interviewing people who know the family, and just based on publicly available information.

Grunt style T shirt wearing father right.

He dressed as Donald Trump. It's seemingly in a positive fashion for Halloween one year. His family were pretty a very normal Utah family. I found posts where they took pictures of them camping with their RVs, going out hunting. He was hunting from a young age. He had access to firearms from a young age, including assault style weapons from a young age. Again, very common for Utah, and yeah, his family hunted and fished, and he seems to have

Well, no, there's a Pepe version.

You're right, You're right, I need to be precise. There's a Pepe version, and it is a meme that you can find shared in groper spaces, which again does not mean it's a groper meme, and I've seen that mistakenly and really tried to push back on This does not mean he definitely was, but it doesn't mean that he was.

Right.

And immediately after that it came out exactly what was carved onto the bullets that he had shot. And this was relevant in part because yesterday, the first day of news that we had about the bullets, the immediate claim that was leaked to Stephen Crowder through a source of his in the ATF was that transgender symbols had been

We should just include some of those clips here.

We'll put it in here.

Inscriptions on a fired casing read notices bulge's capital owo, what's this question mark. Inscriptions on the three unfired casings read hey fascist, exclamation point, catch exclamation point, up arrow symbol, right arrow and symbol, and three down arrow symbols. A second unfired casing red, oh belichow, belichow, belichow chow chow. And a third on fired casing red. If you read this, you are gay, lmao.

Just absolutely outstanding stuff. I mean, hearing a law enforcement officer say that is beautiful. It reminds me of having to explain bitcoin to all of the elderly detectives in West LA when I got a death threat against me. But this is like extremely online gamer nonsense, gay right.

Yeah, average white male over the online gamer at this point, that's what it looks like. It could have developed in a far right direction, could be developed in a far left direction. Could be an ironic centrist. It could be any number of things. There's no single clear indication.

Could be someone who doesn't map easily onto any of these traditional political compasses, Like, we don't know at this point. And what's kind of important that and the reason what I thought was really important to get out to people is that there will always be terrorist attacks from a wh It's never even if you want it to just be right wingers. It's never just right wingers who do domestic terrorism. That's never been the case, and it never

Inscribe the internet exactly onto tools of killing, mechanisms of death.

But literally inscribing the Internet onto tools of death. That is a thing both of them did. Yeah, maybe for wildly different reasons. Maybe this guy was coming from a left wing perspective, right, we just don't know.

But this is where it's all coalescing around.

And I think that is really important to note, right, the way that that happens. Now again, we wanted to talk about the thing that we can definitely say is disinformation. And one of the first counters to the whole transgender symbols carved onto bullets that came out was people putting up pictures of there's a Turkish manufacturer called Turan and they make bullets and their logo on the back of

A fucking hell Divers meme. Yes again, very gamer online kid. Side note, it's not completely clear which bullet casing was attributed to transgender ideology. It could be an interpretation of the arrows, or it could be the notices bulge oh woe casing and on that note, notices bulge oh Woe

That's the down arrows.

I think up arrow side arrow, down down down arrow, which some ADS agent or someone initially thought could have been a reference to the transgender symbol or the three arrows symbol. Coupled with the hey fascist section of that reference. The hell Diver's video game does used fascist as a term, but this also could be a more general political reference, either ironic or sincere. By referring to Charlie Kirk as a fascist. We do not know the actual and intentionality

Could be an anti fascist reference, could be video game shit, could be graper shit. There's just not enough to say at this point.

Or it could be could be a centrist, a political hodgepodge of that has resulted in this nihilistic outburst of violence, similar to some of these like TCC school shootings. Yeah, we don't know, but there's currently a lot of people on the right who thinks it's an ANTIFA super soldier leftist, a lot of people on the left who think this is a Nick Fuentes piled groper. And either of those could be true, but neither could be true. It could

And this is when I have seen people get kind of heated about being corrected on particularly the bullet thing. And I think the reason why is that it seems it seems like such a smoking gotcha. Of course they'd be this stupid you really want it to be true. And it's when you feel like that about a case like this, about an attack like this, that like, oh, I really want this to be true. It would be really satisfying if this was the thing that had happened.

Absolutely, if it's too good to be true or it feels too convenient, you should introspect greatly.

Yeah, Robert and Garrison will be right back. But first here's some ads and we're back.

There's been other things that is kind of influencing this political uncertainty. A reporter for the Young Turks only the most reparatable news outlet, has claimed on Twitter on Friday afternoon. Quote, according to Utah officials and police interviews with his family, Tyler Robinson hated Charlie Kirk because Kirk wasn't conservative enough. Robinson reportedly admired Nick Fuentes. G O piers are now scrubbing ex posts about DEM's faster than doj eRASS Trump's

And likewise, one of the things I'm seeing spread a lot is a claimed voter registration for Robinson.

A Tyler Robinson in Utah.

Yeah, again, there's a lot of them, a.

Lot of Tyler Robinsonson in Utah.

The one that is spreading the most, has a voter registration date of one to one two thousand and one, which he just simply couldn't have. Now that said, people pointed out that Utah's voter registration shit is bad, and this does seem like a placeholder that someone put in. But also the county's not right because he didn't live in Lehigh, Utah, and that's where this is listed for. I'm not saying this guy definitely wasn't. He may have been a registered Republican, but it looks like we don't

The exact quote was that Robinson was quote pretty left on everything, the only member of his family that was really leftist. The rest of his family was very hard Republican yep. And that Robinson would quote always just be renting and arguing about them.

And it does look CNN is saying that they have found Tyler Robbinson's actual voter registration data, and CNN says he's registered as unaffiliated with a political party and is listed as an active, which means he has not voted in either of the two last general elections. Sure, so again, there's just nothing clear we can.

Say, right, Yeah, it's hard to take both this young Turks reporter and a high school friend from four years ago. Not great sources for someone's current political outlook, absolutely not and contradictory. So it's really really unclear. Also, this is just one friend. You would want more than one source to substantiate this claim. And perhaps by Sunday night, when this airs, there will will be more information. Quick update

Yeah, And I just want to caution people if you care about knowing reality yourself. And there's two different questions here, right, what is useful, what is valuable, what like protects people? And then what gets us closer to the truth. Right. Part of why as soon as I found that photo of him dressed as a meme for Halloween and recognize the implications of it, I put it up there is because I thought it was relevant that it said something about his background, but also it got discussion and just

Not.

A different guy with his name donated to Donald Trump, the Tyler Robinson, who is currently in custody for shooting Charlie Kirk, has no record of federal election donations, per CNN. Right, these are very convincing when you see them just sort of sliding across your feed, and if you're not checking up on every new thing you see, it feels like, obviously, this guy's a right winger. Obviously he's a groper. I've seen so many pieces of evidence when you actually haven't seen any evidence at.

All, and even those two things can get compleated. Right, Saying he's a groper is different than saying a right winger. Right Like a groper is a very specific branch of alt right slash far right community slash ideology revolving around the America First streamer Nick Fuentes and a collection of memes associated with this movement, which have historically beef with Charlie Kirk for not being sufficiently to the right as

Like, no, it could be, but they're not inherently This.

Man could be, but they're not inherently nor are they really the main use of this saying Haha, if you read this, you are gay, could just be an average overly online male right or on the internet. A lot of people talk like that. A lot of gay people talk like that. A lot of fashions people talk about that is.

This homophobia or a twenty year old Right, it could be either or Yeah, And we don't need to just jump to one specific thing to build a singular narrative when a fluid situation is still rapidly unfolding.

Yeah.

Not if again, you want to feel like and you want to really be better than the other side, who don't give a shit about the truth, who just care about what's convenient and how many people they can get to believe a convenient fact. Right, If you don't want to be that kind of person, if you think that's bad, and I do, and you do, and we all do here at cool Zone, then you do kind of it to yourself to care about stuff like this, even if it's less convenient. By the way, if you're not an investigator,

One other aspects that people's reaction to the shooting is demonstrating, and we've seen this with other major events, major political events, violent political events, past few years, is how this shows a new fracturing of reality, because what eventually gets proven about the shooter will probably be insignificant to the narratives that people have already latched onto and have baked into

A normal garden variety Trumpist Republican who got angry over Epstein stuff could have done this. There's no evidence of that. I'm not saying, but I'm just saying, like there we literally like it could be so many things at this point.

And as satisfying as it is to just collapse this guy down to Antifa or Graper, it's very likely it could just be of third, weirder option, be the weirder option, right, especially if you look at the nihilist trend of violence that we've covered on this show, from TCC with ties to other extremist groups, the multiple school shootings that have used nostalgia and online references and references to previous shootings.

Now, I think it is worth talking about how gropers and how Nick Quintees himself has responded to this, because that is telling, right totally, whether or not this guy is a grower. A lot of gropers have publicly speculated that he is their guy.

Or people on four Chan have speculated that he is a graper, not your average four Chan user necessarily he's a groper. I think this distinction is also important.

That is valid.

Yes, but yeah, you have seen a lot of people on the right suspected this guy could be a groper. Certainly, some gropers have themselves as well as four Chan users. And Nick Fuintes does see a little bit nervous, but he could be nervous for a lot of reasons.

But he put out a video.

I watched the entire Nick Fuentez stream last night.

Oh good, thank god, he was.

Acting a little bizarre, talking very philosophical, almost as if he was like doing ketamine beforehand. Like he was talking about how the structure of society, and like a spiritual structure as well, will influence society to cause events to happen which kind of stress test and demonstrate the direction of society going. And he basically talked about the assassination as one of these events of society unfolding itself to

And again making that comment that I want all of my fans to stand down, etc. It's noteworthy of where Fuintes' head is right yeah, and of the media environment. He must exist in terms of like personally what comes to him. And I'm very curious if I could, if I could somehow know everything Nick Fuintees has been texted and been texting over the last seventy two hours. God, that would be fascinating.

He said. The people on the left were telling him it's his responsibility to try to turn things down, and he was kind of upset about that. And during the stream, Fuintes was not discussing the shooter as if the shooter was a groper, or even suspecting the shooter was a groper. Nick telling his audience or whoever listening, to put down your arms and not jump to quick emotional violence was in reference to retaliatory violence against the left for their

No, he's in danger because of the things he did. He invited the danger into his life by being Nick Quintes, but he is in danger.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, No, it was. It was a very odd stream. I tuned into nck Quentez every once in a while just to keep track of what he was doing.

Like a healthy person.

It's my job. I know.

I woke up at four am to stock a murderer's family on Facebook. Gearson.

So it was in the first fifteen minutes of the stream where Nick discussed these more theoretical elements, how spiritual or societal forces kind of use people as puppets, not in a like fully NPC way, but as an evolutionary

Right, Yeah, And I think that that's that's a really important point for people to get across that, like there's there's the immediate battle in front of us, right, which is why it's so tempting sometimes to take the easy Oh that's this guy was one of theirs. That that means we don't have to keep thinking about it, or it means that we can kind of just like move

Be certainly not trans right to give.

Them permission to do all the fucked up shit they wanted to do. You know, if they need permission, I mean, they seem to feel like they need an excuse.

I do think, hey, Trump creates permission. Some of his followers might appreciate permission.

I guess.

Yeah.

One thing that is undeniable is there was an extreme desire from a lot of these guys for this to be tied in with their ongoing attacks on trans people in the left totally right, and so I understand even the argument that, like anything that disrupts their narrative train, there, even if it winds up not being accurate, there's a

Like actually understanding how our country is unfolding.

Right, that influenced all of our lives, right, And usually usually what happens is not a single guy getting shot for a specific reason, usually a bunch of people who had nothing to do with the grievances expressed getting shot.

Right.

That's usually when somebody decides to pick up a gun and go into public because the inner they they got radicalized. Usually a bunch of random, innocent people die, which is again why it's just really important to try to understand the underlying dynamics, even in a specific case like this, and why I actually do care about the truth here, even though that that's not as convenient maybe as we'd like it to be. I don't know what else? What else do we want to talk about here?

No, I mean, like, I think this event will be extremely important. Yeah, something that that fwene has talked about is how even if you've never met Kirk, you, whether you hate Kirk or whether you love Kirk, Kirk has been a parasocial force in probably everyone who's listening to this. Yeah, their lives for years, and watching him bleed out gruesomely

Yeah, and you know, like logically we could all say that that's wrong and fucked up, but like you just you know, that's how people work, right, how people work. We all know that's how people work. I'm not saying that's okay, I just you know.

No, but it's it's it's the way, it's the way things work.

Yeah, And I don't know, like because again we again still cannot say at this point that there was just a Vanity Fair article came out that's kind of repeating some of the Groper stuff. But I looked in my post is their source on that? So they don't have anything new on the Groper front.

So no, they're just thinking that the squatting slav meme is evidence, yeah, tied to the Pepe version of the meme, which is then linked to Groyper, which is a specific type of pepe, not the skinny pepe. Yeah.

I'm so tired, Robert, I'm really tired. I don't know if this guy liked Nick Flintes. I will say he probably had an opinion about Nick Flintes. He was aware of them, the dude right, like he was that level of online for sure.

Yeah, I mean, which twenty two year old gamer mail doesn't. And that's the thing, right exactly.

Again, It's like I was talking about when before we knew who it was when we just had the video, because I did accurately anticipate that it was someone who learned how to shoot through hunting with a bolt action rifle. That's just what the shot looked like to me when I saw it, Yeah, which wound up being accurate. And there were a lot of people who were like questioning that on the grounds of like, well, though, this had to be like a trained sniper or something like that, and it's like.

This looks like a professional hit to me, Robert, or no, a massad agent either.

Or yeah, like no, Literally, all we knew is that it was somebody who was able to like competent with a firearm.

That's all you could say.

And probably it was not a semi automatic because people in stressful situations, if they can usually keep shooting right.

They would have hired more than one shot.

And was like, yeah, yeah, that's all that's all we could say, which narrowed it down to everyone in Utah, Like like that's when I try to emphasize this that like what I can say from this is that anyone in Utah could have shot Charlie Kirk at that point, and sure enough, it turned out being almost.

Like average twenty two year old Utonian.

Yeah, you.

Positive, normal Utah kid, that's what this guy looks like so far.

Yeah, and yeah, there's a lot of like semi racist or semi misogynist gamers out there. They're not necessarily gropers, right, And we don't even know how racist this guy was. There's no indication one way or another. He certainly had an awareness of online culture. But everyone who makes a hell Diver's two reference is going to have a pretty large awareness of online culture. And that does not indicate what his quote unquote beliefs are, just an awareness and an existence within that culture.

Yep.

Well, I can't think of anything else to say at the moment about this. It's unclear to me the degree to which this has shifted the national discourse on it. I have seen it looks like the way in which the conservatives are talking about this guy in the shooting, it looks like they have changed sae, at least some of them, because it's less clear at least the number of people right we're seeing.

The groper counter narrative has introduced doubt, which will influence some conservatives understanding of the shooting. Others will keep keep hitting that that, that, and that leftist Antifa line. I have seen certain people claim that the Groper narrative is even changing the way Trump talks about the shooting because Trump is not referencing Charlie Kirk as much or is avoiding questions about how he's feeling in regards to to Kirk's death. Yea, Trump has never cared about Charlie Kirk. Okay,

Yeah, And that's you know, if you're wanting to game theory this out of the ethics of just muddying the waters to disrupt their momentum, Well, there's an argument to be made there.

I can see the utility in that. Yeah, My utility is, I would say, at the very least equal to that, right, And that's having an accurate understanding. I want to know what happens to the world to predict future trends and like understand the trajectory of political violence in the United States. And that's what my interest in stressing evidentiary standards for understanding the motivations behind this attack and the online communities and cultures that this attack has emerged from.

Right, And I would say, if you're looking in your own life, how can I tell which side of things I'm on? Just imagine everything was reversed in the case where like you think, this is really clear evidence that this person was motivated by whoever you hate the most, and that whatever ideology you hate is why they did it.

Or just a vaguely right wing board gamer right or just a right wing word who has zoomer angst and it manifested this way as many other people have manifested there are zoomer anks through an act of political violence. Yeah, like groper, a very specific term means a specific thing. It doesn't just mean a gen z conservative.

Yep, No, it does not. And I think that's where we're going to have to and leave you for the day. We may have appenned an update to this, depending on what else is out. I do think that most of what we're talking about is pretty even though there will be more information at the time you listen to it, pretty timeless. In terms of how you should think about shit like this.

How you react to whatever the next assassination is going to be, because this is an increasing trend in American politics.

Look, if you care, and if your stance, if your principled stance with all the evidence is I don't care. All that matters is defeating the right. So all I care about is what's convenient in terms of disrupting their narratives, Then go on and live your life. But that's not the way we're going to do things here. When we look at these tacks, we are going to try to figure out what happened, even if it's inconvenient, and it may be, you know, we don't know what this guy yet.

Touch some fucking grass before you touch grass, I'm recording one more update Sunday morning. Yesterday, right wing out let's and then Axios and now even more mainstream out let's started reporting that the shooter, Tyler Robinson, had a transgender room mate, and that investigators believe the two had some sort of romantic relationship. Some information from law enforcement officials about this investigation has been shown to be dubious at best, but it is true that the shooter had a roommate

Now go touch some grass.

Here. The last time that you and I spoke was about twelve hours after Trump announced the takeover of DC's police force. It had really just happened, so I didn't really have a ton of clarity about how things were going to be taking shape and what resistance or pushback would look like. Now today that we're speaking Friday, September twelfth, it's been a little over about thirty days since all of this went down, and I feel like we're due for an update from my hometown, the District of Columbia.

What do you say? Absolutely, we're at the deadline. So now Trump can no longer do anything. The city's back. God, I wish you're free once again. Oh my God, from your lips to God's ears. So I did want to set the stage a little bit up top. You know, I'm a journalist, but I am also an advocate for DC statehood first and foremost. I feel like I need to make sure something is super clear, which is that how entwined all of this.

Is to DC's lack of statehood.

After the last time that you and I spoke, there a listener said, oh, why is she making this whole thing about statehood? How would DC being a state change anything? How would two more democratic senators change anything? Why are you making it about that? And I thought, oop, I did not do a good enough job of making clear why the takeover in DC could happen at all, and the ways that DC's lack of statehood is at the

He wants to do it to Chicago's so bad, so bad, but he doesn't have the ability to. And he's really upset about that, so much so that he's probably going to cancel a degree of the plans for National Guard diploma to Chicago instead going to cooperate with Louisiana because the governor is okay with working with Trump on that in Louisiana.

Yes, exactly exactly did you see this is like a non secorder. But the tweet that he put out, like the AI generated tweet that's they're gonna find out why we call it's the Department of War. Then it was like, oh, we were just just kidding and just.

Yes, delete that tweet now the most just that was just a.

Joke, which is into like downplay, like the amount of federal resources currently in Chicago. ICE in DHS have been very busy in Chicago, and I believe Friday morning, the day that we recorded this, ICE killed somebody in Chicago during an enforcement action. So this isn't to say, you know,

Yes, that is great context, and I think it also illustrates why what's happening in DC is so unique and could not happen anywhere else in the country. So while Trump is talking about wanting to send the National Guard to other cities, he does not have the broad authority to take over local police forces in those cities the

Well, the mayor's asked us to say, you know, we have a Democrat mayor. He was asked us today, and DC's a little bit different because I could federalize it if I want. You know, DC's a little bit different. So we have a lot of a lot.

We have actually more.

Power in DC because it's you know, I can change the mayor if I want, I can do whatever I want.

I haven't had to.

We've had a great relationship with the mayor. We've had a great relationship. Everybody's happy, and the mayor was not in favor of it at first. We forced and then she saw the results and everyone's going up the thank you her.

We have no crime anymore.

Ugh, Okay, I gotta stop it because I can't even I can't even listen to him bloviate on that.

But again he's kind of lying here.

But there is a reality where Trump single handedly is in control of DC. So it would have to take Congress overturning DC's home rule. But I don't think that would be terribly difficult for him to achieve. And if that does happen, he is right that he could appoint whoever he wanted to be in control of DC. And so the GOP has already introduced legislation that would revoke DC's home rule entirely, something that Trump says that he

Yeah, that would be unprecedented.

So just to put a pin in that.

Even though Trump is talking about setting the National Guard to other cities, DC's lack of statehood really makes what's happening here unlike any other place in the country, DC is uniquely vulnerable. In addition to all of the racial equity and democracy implications for statehood. The reality is everyday lives of more than a half a million people who live here like me are made more vulnerable by DC's

Free that's over. Mission accomplished.

We did its accomplished, so it lasted thirty days and it's come to an end. However, there is no guarantee

He kind of got what he wanted to with the mayor agreeing to cooperate with him.

Someone m hmmm exactly.

So to be super clear, even with the crime emergency in DC, ending that in no way means an end to things like the National Guard in our streets or checkpoints which have just been horrifying, and the surge that we're seeing in federal law enforcement, because those are two distinct things. And in the last few weeks of this, what's really become just abundantly clear is that this whole

In a moment.

And so one of the things that makes it complicated is that when you're talking about immigration detention versus other kinds of arrests, it just becomes a lot harder to have transparency into what's going on. But the Associated Press reported that dated from the federal operation, analyzed by the AP shows that more than forty percent of the arrests made over the month long operation were related to immigration.

Yeah, and I think you can certainly look at the anti crime narratives getting a lot of traction on the right with that pretty gruesome murder in North Carolina last week as well, and like, absolutely the crime angle is part of the rhetorical strategy Trump is using. And yeah, a right wing populast president doing a crime crackdown. Oh, this is unheard of, This is unprecedented. No, like, of

I agree it's hard to discuss because I think we have to really have some honest conversations. It is true that DC experienced a surge in violent crime in twenty twenty three. That surge thankfully went down, But I think that crime is just one of those issues where people who other rise are invested in telling nuanced, thoughtful stories about complex issues. I see a lot of that nuance and thoughtfulness go right out out the window when we're

You know, we had a wave.

Of businesses shut and they would say, oh, we're shutting because of crime, and it's like, yeah, look you actually look and you're thinking, oh, well, this is a cash less business.

What kind of crime were you experiencing?

Yeah, there's no way. Using crime as this excuse in post COVID economic decline has been extremely convenient for a lot of corporations. And yeah, I guess like the degree to which we've seeded territory on that same way, you know, we see a territory on like the border and immigration, but specifically sitting territory on discussion of crime allowed operating space for Trump to deploy this narrative, which then was used to hurt a lot of.

Immigrants exactly, and in DC, we saw much tighter coordination with immigration officials with our local police force, especially at checkpoints where police would work with ICE even if someone was not otherwise detained or in custody. I did an interview with the Washington Posts Tayu Armis, who covers immigrant communities here in DC, and he told me that this whole thing was essentially an attack on the policies that make a city like DC what is commonly thought of

On those Yeah, totally.

Yeah, I mean, and I think that it's important that we call that out for what it is. And this is difficult for me personally, but not get lost in debating what Trump is laying out about crime, because when you understand that it's not really about crime, then you don't have to do that debating, right, And it's like, well, the it's not really about crime, so let's not waste time debating what we both can plainly see this is not really about.

Yeah, yeah, because DC is just faking all crime stats anyway, right bridget.

Oh gosh, don't even get me started, gare.

And so, something that Tayu told me in our interview that I found very troubling is that, again, when someone is detained because of a suspected immigration related issue, we just have a lot less information and transparency than if

It's hard to find them in the system because these people often aren't even charged with their crime. Remaining in the country past. The expression of a visa isn't a crime exactly. So though these people are brained as quote unquote criminal migrants, that that often is factually incorrect, if factually incorrect even matters anymore, which it increasingly does not, it seems.

Yeah, And I mean, as you said, we know that immigrant communities are not committing more crime than the rest of the population, and.

So estimates would show less actually exactly because they don't want to get deported.

And you know, again, I feel myself getting pulled back into Trump's he he gets me go like circling the drain with this, where it's like, well, if you really cared about crime, you would want immigrant communities to feel comfortable talking to believes with the understanding that they weren't going to be deported if they reported a crime, or if they witnessed a crime, or if they saw crime.

But again, it's.

Not really about crime, so I don't have to I don't have to get myself pulled into.

That, no, because it's entirely racialized. That's like the big common denominator here, even with the anti crime narrative and the immigration stuff, is that it's all racialized violence.

Yes, And I mean, I'm glad that you brought that up, just as a personal I live in Columbia Heights, which is a heavily black and brown neighborhood, a very thriving Latino population, and it really just has been awful.

Right.

I live on a very busy street that runs right through the city, and like checkpoints on either side of my street, and I was listening to. I think it was a Kara Swisher podcast, and she also lives in DC, and she was saying, oh, well, I haven't really noticed any big changes, and I'm thinking.

Kara, Yeah, yeah, I bet, I bet you aren't noticing many changes.

Yeah, I bet you haven't noticed any changes. And yeah. I mean I've lived in DC most of my whole life.

I've never seen checkpoints where people are physically dragged out of cars and in this way. So I mean, if you don't live in a neighborhood like this, you might be able to get away with saying, oh, I haven't seen any big changes, or nothing's really changed, or maybe I just see the National Guard when I leave my house. But in neighborhoods like mine, the change is very real, I'll put it that way.

So you brought up.

The mayor, which I did want to briefly touch on. I have been called out on this very podcast for being too sympathetic to our mayor, which is actually funny to me because on my other podcast, all we do

And it's a choice in an attempt in some ways to diffuse the situation to not have Trump escalate, to not go into a even more like legally uncharted territory, right to accelerate the conflict. And I think a lot of people who are critiquing this move actually would be very interested in this point, in accelerating this conflict, seeing what Trump will actually do stress tests even more of our democracy, and a lot of people are interested in

Yeah, I mean, look at DC's Attorney General Brian Schwab, who has been out here suing the Trump administration somewhat successfully and has been a much more obvious fighter for DC. Right, So, like, he is certainly not playing nice. He's like, Oh, we're gonna fight this in the courts. If you want to try to take over our city, we will see you in court. I'm so curious what the conversations are like between Bowser and Schwab, But it just reveals to me

Where they may.

I want my trash picked up, I want my you know, my neighbors' kids to be able to go to school. All of that, I'm not that's understandable. Yeah, yeah, it's the complex thing. I do think that, you know, early on in this, Bowser was talking about how crime in DC was down, and then Trump said on social media, oh, Bowser better get her story straight on the crime numbers or things are gonna get worse. And days later she was taking in a very different tune. She did a

With the crime issue.

And I guess to somebody who's been following Bowser for as long as I have, it wasn't terribly surprising in an episode I did of it could happen here. I think back in January we talked about how her stance with Trump this time around was like concession after concession after concession, So it wasn't surprising.

This falls in line with that, I guess.

Correct, And I do think that people need to understand that in a lot of ways Bowser and I don't mean this in the way that it's going to sound, but like I do think that there is alignment between Bowser and Trump on a lot of issues, crime potentially being one of them. Right, when we were talking about how Trump wanted Bowser to dismantle encampments in DC, it wasn't like Bowser as some friend to the homeless.

No no, no, no.

Yeah, like the.

Specific encampment in question already had plans to demolish, just later on on a slower timeline.

There is a class alignment among people in the political quote unquote elite.

Right.

You can look at Gavin Newsom's extreme anti homeless policies and compare that to Trump's extreme anti homeless policies, and yeah, they have class alignment on that issue, even if Gavin might be against Trump on some other issues, though he has his own fair share of concessions to Trump.

Oh you said it, friend.

Also, I like that I'm on a first name basis with Gavin.

I know, gab.

Podcaster solidarity and as we've seen the past week, podcaster solidarity most important thing.

Ooh yes, oh yes, Also, fellow, iHeart podcaster.

I believe for Gavin. Yeah, yeah, I hope he joins the union.

Yeah.

Same.

And I guess I should say to your point about the complexities about you know, the way that Bowser, our mayor is playing this. It's true that it's good that the crime emergency has ended, that DC still has home rule, we still have a mayor, we saw the city council as of today. And even if you will say, like, well that's you know, the mayor CosIng up with Trump, like you have that to thank that's why that's happening.

I have to assume.

Yeah, when she does press conferences where she talks about how having federal troops in DC has been good for the city, how crime has gone down, when you have these other cities that are currently trying to fend off federal takeovers from Trump. So even if her CosIng up with Trump has led to d C specifically being able to enjoy home rule for another day, at what cost if it enables Trump's actions in other cities.

You know, me putting on my skull mask as I bring out my chess spoarding the accelerationist collapse of DC and how that affects a larger political situation in the United States. Yes, how much how much of DC am I willing to sacrifice to see how far Trump will go.

Yeah, it's tough.

It's complicated because obviously, as a DC resident, I want to have a safe and peaceful existence for myself here in DC. But it's not happening in a vacuum, and so I also have to think about, you know, the national implications for other cities.

And you know, I don't envy our mayor.

I guess I don't envy many mayors. Oh.

I am firmly believe if you want to become the mayor of a city like DC, Baltimore, Chicago, something has to be wrong with you.

And Bridget Todd has come out against Zorn Mamdani officially could happen here podcast?

No, no, no, I'm just saying I mean, yeah, I'll say it.

Who wants a job like that though? It sounds like a nightmare. Yeah.

I and a friend who was like vying to be the head of comms for the Baltimore Police Department, and I was like, wow, you are a massacre.

That's even weirder, that's even weirder.

Yeah, that's like the I.

Can't imagine to never know peace and not get into heaven.

Listening and thinking, oh, why she's talking shit about me?

And so it is complicated, and I do think it's important as important as much as I want DC to be a safe place where I can walk outside and not see people getting dragged out of cars and federal checkpoints and all of that, we do need to think about the larger picture here. And people that I've talked to with regards to the mayor, they tell me that, oh, it seems like she is just not interested in the like the polling of these decisions, because the conversations that

So obviously, you know, some of these pieces.

Are not overturning home rule entirely, but they are clearly attacks on DC's ability to govern itself and the self determination of folks here in the district.

Are you going to discuss what's going to happen with the Safe and Beautiful Task Force? Oh no, but I can has passed the expiration of the order, Bowser's establishment of the task force to continue federal cooperation. Yes, I guess it's like one of the most immediate, like continuing aspects of this story. And it's like unclear how much this heightened fedral presence will last past the expiration of the order.

So in a.

Press conference, I have to say, Bowser was pretty tight lipped when asked directly about all of that, and so a lot of it sounds like wade and see, like she really did not give clear answers, and so yeah, I walked away from that presser being just disconfused, as you probably are, just disconfused as listeners are. I do think in part that speaks to the unprecedented nature of the way that Trump is dealing with DC right now.

Don't worry.

I am with you and won't allow this to happen.

I'll call a national emergency and federalize if necessary.

Three exclamation points.

And so I guess one of the big questions that I've been wrestling with is what does all of this mean for the future of DC. There was a time where it felt like lawmakers had DC's back, but it's really become clear that the days of DC being able to count on the Senate and Congress are over. I did an interview with a long time journalist here in DC, Marxy Graves, and he reminded me that DC has really been the most reliable jurisdiction in the country there is

It's extremely consistent extreme.

I mean, have you seen that map where it's the election for.

Reagan and it's a whole big splotch of red and only I think Minnesota and DC are the only splotch of blue. Like nobody backs Democrats like DC backs Democrats every single time. California can't say that, Massachusetts can't say that. And in return, the party has essentially abandoned us. They circulated messaging nationally telling Democrats to tread carefully about how to talk about what is clearly an attempt at a

It is so clearly about control.

They have been eyeing control of DC for many many many, many years, and now we have this big, wide, open, breezy window allowing them to do that.

Is DC spiritually Midwestern? Because like it's sorry, that's an insane question.

Tell me more about what you mean by.

This, because like, in some ways, you know, it is like a coastal, elite place and it's like the you know, the heart of political power. But DC to be always has kind of had Midwest vibes. I don't I don't know how to express it any other way. Maybe to because so many people from the Midwest move to d C to do politics work. But I'm sure people from all over move to DC to do politics work. But like DC and like Minneapolis feel like very similar cities to me in some ways.

I have said this before.

See that's what I'm saying.

Yeah, I have.

Said this before, Like I think there is something to this where And in that interview I did with Mark C.

Graves, he kind of he kind of gets at it a little bit.

But I do think that DC is the kind of place where you can just sort of take for granted that I will always live in this sort of progressive city.

I will always sort of live in this.

Like I think it's easy to take things like home rule in DC, for granted, And I think DC the nature of DC is a little bit weird that, as you kind of alluded to, it's a very transient city. And so there are people living in DC who have only known one Mayor Bowser because she's been mayor for like ten years.

Right.

They don't know Mayor Gray, they don't know Mayor Fenti, they don't know how kind of tenuous a lot of what holds DC together actually is. And it can be really easy when you're living in a city the historically has enjoyed low unemployment, has been pretty moneyed, is pretty progressive. The kinds of fights that we were having in DC before all this started, they seem so quaint now, bike lanes tipped minimum wage, like all of these you know, it is it is sort of like Minneapolis in a kind of way.

You're not You're not wrong.

Well, I'm glad, I'm glad my vibes meter is still accurately attute.

Yes, And I did want to spend a little bit of time talking about to protests and pushback that we've seen because DC has not taken this quietly. There was a massive protest in March that I will say, I'm a little sad that it didn't get.

More national coverage.

Weirdly, it got a lot of international coverage, but not a ton of national coverage, which is sort of part and parcel for DC. So many national outlets only think about DC when it comes to federal implications, and when it comes to what's happening locally in our streets and at Malcolm X Park and all of that, they're like DC, who we don't know her? So like that protest was quite moving. We also have local groups like Harriet's Wildest

We also have things like educating residents on their legal rights. And this is like a weird saying in DC.

DC has a ton of parks, actually more parks than any other part of the country. We're consistently voted the number one city in the country for parks, and so because DC is just a wonky place, sometimes you don't know if you're on federal versus city property. So you can find yourself in a park that's just a tiny little triangle of grass. Oh no, you're actually on federal property.

Right.

It's not as exciting as you know, being out on the streets necessarily, but it is no less important.

Yeah, The non flashy stuff often goes under recognized.

Yeah. And I will also say that folks might know DC has its own style of music called go go, which is sort of a fitty local artistic expression of

Joy is part of it.

That's like why we're doing this, so that we can experience joy in our cities.

Yes, I agree, we will allow a little bit of joy, I suppose in this stace. Yeah, semi joyful time.

Yeah, a tiny bit.

I will speaking of joy I wanted to end on one last teeny tiny little tidbit about resistance, which is that when I when we were talking last time, Gare, I told you I think this was like the day that the takeover was announced, there was that guy who threw a sandwich at the Yes, yes, well they popped this dude on felony charges, but DC's grand jury failed to indict, and now he's down to a misdemeanor, so he pled not guilty I think, just a couple of days ago to just a misdemeanor.

So yeah, I mean grand jury's they used to say.

Like, oh, you could get a grand jury ton byte a ham sandwich, I guess not if it's thrown at a federal office, or you can't not in DC.

It's just like the only good piece of grand jury news I have kind of ever heard in my life. Whenever I hear news of it a grand jury, it's always like terrible, like, oh no, that sounds awful. Yeah, this is uh the first, the first based grand jury I've ever seen.

Yes, yes, I.

Mean if you're listening in if you're listening in DC and you're on a grand jury, you know what to do well?

Does Souths put it that way? But yeah, that's all I have really.

I would just say, you know, if you happen to be listening in a place that is not the district, we really need your voice. You know, when stuff happens, there's not really anybody I can call. We have a congressional representative, Eleanor Holmes Norton.

Uh.

She has been a.

Lifelong fighter for d C and d c's self determination and civil rights. She is also i think the second oldest person in Congress, And I'll just say it's showing I think, you know, we don't really have a lot of people who are fighting for us and being a voice for us. And so yeah, stay checked in to d C. Even if Trump moves to you know, deploy national guards in other places, other kinds of takeovers. What's happening in DC is unique. It cannot happen in any

Thank you for talking about DC once again. Bridget. Where can people find you online and your other shows?

You can check me out on my podcast. There are no girls on the internet. On iHeartRadio, a co host a podcast called Citycast DC about local happenings and politics and news and DC. You can check that out. I'm on Instagram at Bridget Marie DC. I'm on TikTok at Bridget Marie DC, and I'm on YouTube. There are no girls on the internet.

Yeah, that's right, Okay, cool, I'm glad we figured that out, all right.

No, I just YouTube is is like a sesspool. I'm bringing my best out there.

So true?

What up?

It could happen here? It's your favorite cousin prop. Y'all already know what it is. I'm about to black this mug up because y'all don't be blacking it up enough anyway. All over our country there's this sort of nar around crime, which is verifiably false. We also understand that a lot of times the feeling of crime and safety is a lot of times it's a vibe like it's kind of

I wasn't going to bring up the flame of it all.

I'm like, gotta throw the red shirt off of problem. Oh man, happy to.

Be here, Man, We happy to have you.

Bro.

That was the one that's funny because that's the one asterisk next to your name with me?

Is all that red you beware?

Hey man?

He'd be like, Yeah, I know, you gotta be who you're I would not respect you were you to not be flying your whoop.

You know what I'm saying.

So I appreciate retired.

He said, Look, that's what I love it. We're gonna get into it. So we're gonna get into it. So this is like I said, the nipsey Elsa was Saint Louis.

When we first met, I had no idea people out there really actually said yes.

I thought that was a joke. I thought y'all was doing too much.

And then I met this and he was like, oh, it's over there right thor her. I was like, wait, y'all really say.

That, no joke at all, that's really y'all.

That's really how we talked. We really talk. And the crazy thing is I slowed down talking.

You know what I'm saying.

Sometimes it'd be like here in there. But if I get to go away and be like her, I heard heard yo.

Yup, yup?

Call switch? All right? Perfect.

So first of all, let's tell them what you do now, so kind of give them the brief introduction who you are, what you're doing, and then we'll go to the origin story.

So, like you said, my name this Travis Tyler. That's what my mama named me from Saint Louis, Missouri. And man, I'll be trying to figure out what am I sometimes like for real, even when I was doing music, I never felt like I was a rapper.

Yeah, I felt like I was an artist, you know.

And I still feel like I'm an artist in the sense of the word now because I create things, yeah, from inspiration, you know, alchemy, I create from the mind.

Yeah yeah, yeah.

But I'm not what you would consider an activist. I'm not a politician, but like I'm always in the middle of something that's happening. Yeah, And that's how I've always been. And I have a passion for the youth of urban community, especially black youth. I have a passion for black men, especially black men that are either trying to escape the reality of street life or black men that are being re entered into society from prison. I have a passion

And so that's it, man, Like I'm wearing.

The shirt is actually like one hundred from my mentoring program, my mentor inner city youth ages teen to seventeen, not just setting up some of the mentor them, but creating the rights of passage, creating a pathway intentional pathway. I think a lot of time with inner city youth, well, I ain't even gonna say inner city youth, especially with fatherless yes young men, whether wherever they're in the world, whether it's the suburban nameghborhood or the inner city or

Yeah, and you still got that group home joint, right.

Yeah, so the group home. It's funny we're going to interview now. I just stepped down from their Friday Okay. But it was a good thing. It wasn't a negative. So I ran it for like a year and a half, helped rebuild the program, brought it up to the modern age, staffed, creating new things for the boys. Learned a lot myself in the process and now I'm going full throttle into shape out my Flight one hundred program. Yeah, because the end goal, like one of my end goals is to

Yeah.

What I truly enjoyed about what you're doing is at least with the group form and the mentoring thing is the trust factor in the sense that you know, when you get involved, especially in the juvenile system, like they tell you that your record sealed, they say.

That, Yeah, yeah, you know what I'm saying, But like in practice, it's not the thing.

So like I think oftentimes if there's a step between getting into juvie or into central, you know what I'm saying, if there's an in between step, if somebody could come in the middle of that and stay look, let little

What it was like.

You can go to Rocky or you can go to this program, and like ten out of ten, I'm gonna be like, let's go to this program. But yeah, sometimes that program be just as bad, you know what I'm saying. But if it's ran by somebody who has been through the system, who understands it and knows that, like, here are the traps, Here's are the ways for which I know I was taking advantage of I was abused, And this is what we're not gonna do here.

You know what I'm saying. The goal is for you to never come back to this.

You make a valid point.

One of the reasons I believe God allowed me to go back into the space with the group home was bro Honestly, you will be surprised how I'm trying to word this in a good way, but I don't think it.

Is one you say however you want, you will be surprised how messed up the foster curs system is yeah, yeah, a lot of these.

Kids get pulled out of their homes.

So the group home that I was at mostly all of our boys they came from environments where they have been taken from their parents, and so I was run of the transition to living group home.

So my objective, my daily task.

Was to teach a group of young men how to transition into manhood, how to go out.

On their own, pay their bills, live on their own. All this.

You'll be surprised though.

These kids get pulled from their homes and their parents and they're saying to them, oh, we're going to send you somewhere better, better, yeah, yeah, yeah, and the places that they send them to do more harm to them than their home.

Like they're sitting in there with people that are worse than.

Their parents and one day don't have a voice to advocate for them.

So here I am right now. It's crazy.

A few months back, I was like, I'm gonna talk about this at every chance I get, which is crazy. They don't have nobody to advocate for them, because I'm sure there are people that have been through the foster care system, but for some reason, people see that stigma. They're probably celebrities that have been through foster curve, but they see it as a stigma, like, oh, they didn't want to talk about that part all my parent gave me up. I don't know who my parent is. I

But you got to.

Think, ultimately, you are walking into a child's hole and you're kidnapping them.

That's what you're doing. Really.

Yeah, Yeah, So if I come to your house at eight nine o'clock at night. When I was fourteen, me, my cousins, my brother, a bunch of my siblings were taken from my mom and my aunt right from across the street because I was over my friend's house. Holye swooped up. Social workers swooped up. It's nighttime. You go into somebody's house, you take their child. They don't know

Pat way beyond that point.

I know most people have seen if you hadn't the movie Don't Sit where they talk about the Shackling family and how they basically met dough fans out of the whole West Virginia with oxy coote you know oxy code ain't how do you want to pronounce it? And they showing the movie how these doctors were getting these kickbacks for introducing the drugs to the patients in West Virginia.

Bro, who better to prack.

Them on with drugs than children?

We ain't got no parents that nobody cares them out.

Yeah, bro, they take these kids and they put them into the system three four, five years old, and they start doping them from day one man.

Five dose dough over and over and over. Switch them out, put them on something else. Well, let me see how they don't work. Switch them out, put them on something else. By the time they got to me at eighteen years old, they like bro frime, yeah, fried, and then you got you got case workers. They don't care about the kids. They don't call, they don't come see them, they don't pick them up, they don't do none of these things.

And the kids sitting there feeling like they don't got nobody in nowhere.

So my main space that I function in right now, especially for them, is to be an advocate. Every chance that I get, I'm gonna talk about it so people could put eyes on it. But also that's one of the reasons that I'm building the things that I'm building, so that we can have a space where it's like now, you don't have to go to because there are a lot of people I already have the good ideas they have. There are some good programs. Yeah, like there are good programs.

Yeah, I think obviously you talking that talk. But like one of the things that you know, in the humanitarian space that I like I serve in, they have a saying that says peace works at the speed of trust, you know. So like, even with all these good programs in different places, it's like, if these kids don't trust you, Yeah, you brought up being removed from your family's house when

And say, okay, but he knows.

Yeah, So give me a little bit of that, get a little bit of the retired whooping all that.

Oh it's funny. I got this video on my page that I posted. I started off saying, ain't nobody coming to save you? Yeah, And at the end of it, I go through this story about being in the group home and all of that, and I say, have y'all ever seen the Marvel movies where they like, it's your origin story.

I'm like, that's my origin story. Yeah.

So for me, that part of the group home was significant in my life, real, real significant. So before I went to the group home, I was already outside, like there are a lot of things that I've experienced in this world that when I look back, I just be like, Man, that's crazy.

Bro.

When I was fourteen years old, me and my girlfriend were living together.

Crazy.

Yeah. No, I slept in the beg fourteen every night.

Yeah, with my girlfriend at fourteen, Like we basically lived together, me and her in a room, her mom in the next room. And so I was because of my mom's issues, like I've been at this point, I've been my sole provider, you know, minus a short period of time her and her Whether it's like I went to live with my daddy and he sent me back off with my grandma for a short period time. My grandfather, all of those were short periods of time. But since I was like twelve,

Yeah, town full of white people, Like I was a hoodie kid.

Like when they got me, true story, I had on Dickey overalls like the zip of the brown boy, yeah, and some boots like a bey Yeah.

The Saint Louis like I don't know, like the influence of like West Coast culture, and it was very big out there. So when he was like, yo, I'm zipped up and the beanie and the dickies, it's like you would think you was in South Central Yeah.

Yeah. So I had on a beie, the zip up Dickey boy like yeah boot. So they took me out to the woods and man, I got there and when I got there, it was the first time in my life, I think I feel that level of desperation and hopelessness because I was supposed to stay there until I was eighteen or twenty one. Those were their words based off my behavior. I'm fourteen, so I'm in my head like I'm frona beer six years Like. So I'm meeting all

And I'm just like, dang, it's crazy, you know.

And then one day, it was right after Christmas, I'm sitting in her hindsight, I got a different perspective of it. Now.

It's this kid I never forget him. His name was Roger.

When I first met him the very first day that I came, he sat down beside me and he said, Man, if my granddaddy was hurt, he wouldn't want me talking to you. And I was like why, He said, because he didn't like black people. So I turned right to him and said, why did you feel the need to tell me that?

Right?

Why you tell me that? Yeah?

Like I was like, you could have kept that to yourself. He like I don't got nothing against black people. I'm just saying my grandfather don't like black people. So I'm like whatever, I'm okay, cool.

Yeah.

It's like right after Christmas, Christmas Day, I was sitting in the group home. Nobody called, Like, I was watching all the other kids. They getting gifts, they opening their presents and yeah, depending on their program, some of them they get to go home. Like so I'm sitting there, ain't nobody called me on, got no gifts, I don't got nothing, and I'm just sitting in the chart like just pissed all day basically.

Yeah, and uh, one of my workers came in later that day.

I seen her.

She was talking to the lady. The other lady was about to get off.

They was behind me and I heard her talk and she said, he just sitting there all day. She was like yeah, she like, did anybody call them or anything? She was like no, She's like nobody. So I'm and it's crazy now that I've been back in that space more than once. Yeah, I've experienced that with kids, seeing them nothing and I know what to do, like I got you know what I'm saying, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, And.

So I'm sitting there.

At that point, she like, nah, he's just sitting there all day, and so she went came out. She's like, hell, what you doing. This lady played a significant role in my life. I wish I could remember her name.

Bro Like.

So she was like, what you're doing. I'm like nothing. She was like, you want to go to the store. I'm like to do what She like her, I got something for you. So the state gave each kid one hundred dollars Walmart gift card.

Wow.

So she like, you got a gift card the Walmart for one hundred dollars.

Bore.

I had never been to Walmart before. I ain't know what Walmart was. So I'm like, all right, man, let's go. We go to Walmart. I'm walking around.

He ain't never been to Walmart.

I had never been to Walmart. Broke walking around. I'm looking around the store. I got this hundred full Guess what I buy?

No lie?

True story. White t shirt is some Dickies.

Yes, yes, yes, white t shirt is some Dikies out of Walmoart in the country.

You're I love it.

So I grabbed these dickeys, white tea. Go back to the group home.

I'm still mad because ain't nobody called me, Nobody came to see me, you know, none of that. And so the next few days, man, me and dude we always ended up in the living room at the same time. And I'm I'm I'm mad.

Yeah. So fourteen.

You gotta think when I was fourteen, bro, I was like probably six six foot six one. Yeah, like one hundred and eighty two hundred pounds when I was fourteen.

Yeah.

And so while I'm married, they had some little weights. I had started lifting weights every thing.

Oh man, I'm programming.

I'm a big old kid. Yeah.

So dude gets to talking crazy to me. We sit in the living room. He like, man, what you doing, boy? So my conversation goes back to the first time.

Like god he racist?

Yeah, yeah, now I know, now I know.

I'm like what you mean? Boy? He like, you heard me?

Boy?

I'm like boys in kid or boy as in racist.

Yeah.

He like, boy, you heard me. Now we're fighting.

I said, hey, bro, I'm gonna tell you this one more time. Don't call me a boy again.

Yeah.

He said, what you gonna do?

Boy? Lit that fool up?

Yup, yup?

I'm talking about right now?

They style locked in big night night.

Yeah.

So by the time they come in, I got him by the back of the neck. Yeah, and I'm rubbing his face across the carpet. Yeah, I'm like, what you call me again? He stayed in saying, you know, he's like, boy, you hurt. So now hindsight though, when I look back, I had to think and say, yeah, dangn me and him was sitting there at the same time. I thought back and said, oh, he ain't had no visitors on Christmas steeven. Yeah, oh he man like me. He just as hurt as you.

He was hurt.

He ain't even know how the process.

You the craziest storyteller ever, like, cause I'm like, you can get to the point, and I.

See it right there now. I know like he ain't know how the process. So I rushed him up forever.

So when the people come in and they see me, you know, they like, grab me up cause I'm.

Six foot yeah yeah, yeah, it's on your.

Kid from the city. Yeah, you know, everybody record and story they're coming here, so they know like he a gang man, but he did he did.

Yeah, so I'm no bressing. They snatched me up, throw me in the room. They took me in this room called an isolation room. This room is like an eight mychin. All the walls were metal.

Yeah.

The door was like this stick wood with a little bitty wondering the thing on it. No way out unless they let you out in carpet on the floor.

Bro.

When they shut that door, I just lost it.

Yeah.

My brain said, you finna died in her, Ain't no way out. Yeah, And I got to kick in the door. I got to yelling, and I'm talking about Bro. I just was wilding in that. But they just they paid me no mind. They didn't even come to the door.

It don't make no difference until you calm down.

They like, he can't get out.

And so this girl that I knew to her, she came and sat down by the bottom of the door and talked under the thing, and she was like, hey, you gotta come around down. She's like, come down here. So I laid down on the floor. I'm breathing through the crack like I'm breathing under the door. She like, you gotta calm down, Like they never gonna let you out of her.

They scurried.

She like, I'm out here, like you gotta. So I'm just laying there regulating, and I go to sleep. Wow, and I wake up in the middle of the night. I knocked on the door. They let me out to use the bath on the dude like it was a big white dude used to be overnight. He was like, if I let you out or you're gonna get the trip. And I said, nah, man, I just got to use the bathroom. I already didn used it there once. I'm like, I just want to go to the tarlet.

Yeah. Yeah yeah.

So he's like, all right, come on, he let me out. I went back in and he locked the door. When I went back in there, bro, I said to myself, this was my one of my origins. I said to myself, I said, when they let me out of her fourteen years old, I.

Said, I'm gonna be different. Yeah, I'm be in control.

I'm gonna show the world.

Who I am.

Yeah, when they let me out, I played the game after that every since. And so I went to another group home. I stayed there. I was supposed to be there for a while. And I got to that group home and I asked the people. I said, how do the program work? As soon as I got there, Yeah, they said, well, if you do this and then you go to level this, and you go to this level, you go to that level. I said, how long do it take that? They said probably like ninety days. I said, I'm gonna do it. Are sixty?

I love it?

They said okay and shown up sixty days later. Bro leics than sixty I was done.

Yeah.

They called my mama. My case had been dropped because my mama was doing what she's supposed to.

Do, and they like, you can go home.

Yeah, So now I go home two days before I'm turning fifteen. I get back home, though my mama was on the same mission. And I've been outside ever since. Beautiful man, and I think one thing I feel another to just shape me into who I am.

But the hero.

Yeah, yeah, I was gonna say that that authenticity of like even having the a wherewithal to know that, like you know, at the end of the day, love Homie was.

Scared, right, Yeah, he was hurt too, Like he was just hurting.

So when you have that sort of like level of empathy and you know when you were outside, like the reasons for which you were outside, you know what I'm saying, and having those connections, it's so clear to me how that fuels the direction you're in, and it rus to me the cornerstone premise of my whole movement here, which is like, yo, if you understand the hood, you understand politics. You walked in there and said, what's the game? What's the play? Okay, what's the play? How does this work?

This?

Okay?

Now, know how to work it. Here's a way to make it better. I know how it, I know how I felt in it. So if somebody else has to be in there just the way it needs to be done, because I know I would have succeeded had this this

Like you ain't make no difference to us.

And sure, yeah, like in the same way that you know, if you were having a rodent infestation at your house, I mean sure you could bomb the house, right, and yes, the rodents are gone. You're see what I'm saying, But you've killed everything, you know.

What I'm saying.

But then you get to say, like you know, as a metaphor, it's like, oh, look, we were tough on crime, we ended crime, you know what I'm saying. It's like, well, yeah, but that's what you locked us all up. Like it didn't This didn't really help us. But you know, we're seeing sort of across the country despite all of these efforts and proof that like the streets are different, and

But these are like in these are in active areas.

Like you know, everybody can just walk in to this park and be like I'm gonna do a fundraiser.

It's like, like, no, we rob it, all of you, you know what I'm saying. So like, after years of.

Doing this, you know, one little Waiian didn't know who he was dealing with, you know what I'm saying, caught you slipping, you know what I'm saying. You had to rebuild and I've seen even health journey from that moment sort of change to bring you into the position you're in sort of now, which is like, obviously it's somebody we could deeply admire. Can you talk a little bit about obviously without getting personal, without sharing anybody's like personal information.

Yeah, yeah, so I think you nailed it as a whole. It takes a person that people trust to bring a level of com So even when I got shot, when I got shot, or I had dudes in my inbox where.

Yeah, yeah that be outside ready to slide?

Oh, ready to they ready to slide? Yeah, Yeah, that's like, hey, who got you? You know it? Let's go.

Yeah, And I'm like, nah, I'm cool. Yeah yeah, yeah, you know.

And so sometimes when things like that, I think people take things into their own hands. Yeah, that you don't know nothing about. And so after that, they were like, do you want to do this news interview? I was still broke up. I couldn't get out the bed. I'm like, yeah, you know, but my reason for doing the news interview was so people could hear my heart. Yeah, and you have a thistle in every neighborhood around America.

Yeah.

So here's the thing about police.

Police are reactive Yeah, when by the time police on a word of things, a crime has happened. Yeah, the murder has already taken place, the shooting has already happened, the robbery has already happened. The person that's stopping the crime is miscathy that live on the block. Yes, that's say, hey can murder. Yeah, where are you going? I could tell you frustrate. We had this lady in our neighborhood and name was miss a Miss Alexander. How many times as a kid I be walking past her house on

Respect is you have to respect her? Yeah, and you done. Or the dude that used to be in the street. It's a dude her in Saint Louis.

I don't really know him, like personally personally, but his saying, uh he goes by the name Yo Bangda uh huh.

You know what I'm saying. Yeah, x street dude. Everybody love him.

You're me yeah, yeah, bro be outside like politicket, Yeah, running programs, you know, doing stuff like that. So those are the people that calls change in every community. Let me tell you a place while we're on this subject, where I think we fail it, especially with organizations. Organizations that typically come into our neighborhood. They come for agenda, yeah, and politics, And what they don't understand is what you're saying, if you understand the hood, you want to staying politics.

I've said this to people one hundred times.

If you really really really want to see.

Impact and see change, you need to go to the community and see the people that are already leading it.

There you go the people that you're talking about.

The reason I'm able to go into park in that neighborhood is because I'm a leader over there.

At one point, I was one of the leaders actively. Yeah.

So people don't know me, they respect me, they understand my journey and my transition, and that rapport is what get the work done.

Police a reactor. Bro By the said, the police come somebody.

Dead, It's already done. Yeah.

Yeah, it's people like me on the phone when Brok like, man, bro, I'm about the snap.

It's like, nah, bro, where you at? Like you know what we're doing?

And so I think those people need to be empowered more. For any organization that's listening or that possibly here, it is. We don't need you to come out our community and build a hub. We don't need you to put an office there. And I'm just gonna be candidate and bring a whole lot of white people.

Facts and gentrify a program.

We don't need that.

What is needed is if you have resources, you have money, you have things you could bring structure, you could bring system, but bring it to empower the person that's already in that space. It's gonna take you thirty years to get to kind of respect that person.

Get over there already, Jims.

And you know why they can't be fully involved because they still got to work, They still gotta do thing.

You still yes, you still yes, man.

So if you want to really empower the community, take that forty fifty sixty seventy thousand, one hundred thousand that you're about to run on this campaign against whoever else you don't like. Yeah, and take some of that money, take about seventy five k that and give it to somebody like Yo Bang.

Yo bang a missad. Yeah, but it was Alex Carrasco.

Yeah.

Get the people like that, yup.

Because we lived in the Mexican hoods. You know, he had his to despoon thos Like we already knew. He was like, what what the people like that? Give it to him? You know what I'm saying, he'd looked that man. Took me camping for the first time with with Alex Carrasco.

You know what I'm saying, Like, believe it or not, believe it or not.

Part of the reason that you turned out the way you did is because of siege that people like him playing it. Yep, no facts, It was the difference between you and the other dudes on the.

Block that didn't go.

That's exactly like exposure, bro, is she what you're exposed to right now? One of my missions I'm working on over the next couple of years, Well, I'm gonna take a group of kids from the.

Hood to Africa. They have to see it, bro, that's one of my missions.

They have to Yes, Yeah, I'm gonna take a bunch of kids from the hood to Africa, like so they can get over there and see what it really look like.

Yeah, but also just taking them other places.

They could also go to, like Denver, Like.

Yeah, I took a group of kids to Kaa a few years back, like in the city kids, Yeah, and.

They were blown away. Yeah.

Like like you said, going camping, you get to see water and boats.

When I used to teach, I taught in the city called Pomona. It's in the Inland Empire. It's kids from La I've never seen the beach, Like you've never seen the ocean and you're from Los Angeles, you know what I'm saying. So like, yeah, that exposure changes everything. Have you set up some sort of like fundraising things so we can see if we could get our listeners to maybe like fund this Africa drip.

So if you go to my page, just like one hundred foundation dot or.

Like one hundred foundation dot org.

Okay, yeah, it's a donation tab, it'll go to the give but.

A page, Okay, we will link to that. Yes, see that's all I needed. Yeah, listen, bro, I want to thank you for your time.

Man.

Some of y'all know, like I've known this man for a long time. We've we've ran ran into many A cities and many A shows.

And always appreciated you too.

Yes, sirry Man, I think there was a little bit of like we've been sitting in green rooms that both of us know good and well that we just why are we here, Like we have no reason to be in this room, but we are. It just has very much a very much like a real recognized real with

I want to say before we go, we talked about something before you start recording. Yeah, and I want to point it out because I think it's important too. We were talking about how resources prevent violence. Yeah, so everybody know where there's no hope, there's violence, there is desperate right. Yes, So right now in Saint Louis, we have been informed that the senator who's a Republican centater.

Yeah, he's linked.

Up with pjt Okay, okay, and there you are.

They're building an FBI base here and they're bringing in more FBI agents to divert violence.

Right. Yeah.

One again, law enforcement is a reaction to crime. They don't prevent it. Yeah, here's the reality that everybody that has a brain to think should be aware of. I don't care how many FBI you bring, how many police you hire. There are not enough law enforcement to govern the earth.

Yes, yes, period, there's too many of them.

Yeah, there's not there's too many of us. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, you can't govern the earth.

Yeah, like that's that's that's a no go.

Right. Yeah.

Most cases, when I see people make these arguments about this, I'm a person I like to use facts.

I get straight to the facts, like we get the points.

So in Saint Lewis, right, from twenty twenty to twenty twenty four, the murder rate in Saint Louis has dropped by one hundred and thirteen.

Come on, man, yeah, one hundred and thirteen, bro, that's a lot of lives.

Yeah.

So in twenty twenty, the number of homicides at Saint Louis was two hundred and sixty three. The number in twenty twenty four were one hundred and fifty. See, there are certain things that I'm not gonna say they are the exclusive reason. But there are certain things that I know have contribute today. And it's not law enforcement because our police force is short right now.

They gone, they don't do too much and nothing.

Yeah, there are a few things I know they have contributed to that. The magic thing is resources, yeah, and compassion.

But they are few. Through a certain few things that I want to shout out.

One of them is an organization called FCCY Freedom Center Saint Louis. My hoomie Mike Milton. The other one is Action Saint Louis. The other one is Missus Saint Louis. The other one is we Power Saint Louis. We power STL. They fund early childhood development. Word like crucially important for our community. Wow, you got mcc action Saint Louis, missus, Saint Louis Black Men, Bill, We power STL.

Just to name a few people like your bangor.

These are the people that have been actively in the community.

For the past four years. A past mayor to Charlotte Jones.

She probably got a lot of things wrong in people asked, but she was directing certain things and empowering people in a certain way.

These organizations have thrived.

Over the past four years and as a result, you see the number of homicides in the city. D Chris, So, why do we need to bring more FBI agents?

What is that for? Show?

Shouldn't we be throwing more money into these organizations if they are out here the turn trying they got the FCC has data, Yeah, they have data of reconciliation. I'm talking about my boy, Mike Milton. He's stepping into roles. With one case in particular, a young man was driving in the car with another young man.

He was drunk.

The young man died.

He reconciled him with the mother.

The mother in return went to the judge and was like, he don't need to go to jail here either, gonna treatment.

Wow, Like why is he going to prison? Wow? Damn man.

And then when they get when they get rid of justice, yeah, with sort of justice. When they get released from prison, they go to SCC and they spend time with them and they learn.

The storative justice. They take accountability. Wow. Wow.

So if we go if we need anything in Saint Louis, in DC, in Chicago, if we need anything in these cities, what we need or people to be realistic about what's happening and if you want to do something, say some of the funds you're gonna use to have more law enforcement into these places where you know people are already doing things. Because let me tell you something else, it's twenty twenty six almost, it's twenty twenty five. Ain't nobody

Two, bro, sir.

Don't nobody's seen the police and be like, oh my gosh, you'll go to police these grown men just like another grown man.

Ain't nobody scared of police no more? That ain't a thing lead like the rest of us. That's not a thing. Yeah, you belied like the rest of us. Mumble with the police. Bro, they dangerous right now, straight spirt up. That's what I'm trying to say.

Look, we can talk about this right because that's the way we are with these ice agents.

It's like, you think I'm scared.

Of you, bro, You think I'm scared.

Of you homie.

Yeah, anyway, thank you this, Thank you for it, for like bringing it back to the data and shining the light on like people actually doing the work. You can follow you on Instagram. It's I am thiszle.

Right, it's th hi is l this yeah, th h I s l fl like one hundred foundation dot org is the website social media.

You've been found all that stuff there.

You'll find all that all right, It can happen here. Cool zone media. We appreciate y'all.

Appreciate you.

Bro.

Yes, sir, I'm not Robert Evans. I'm not going to start this episode with a horrible noise. Welcome to it could happen to hear a show about things falling apart with me today, Mio Wong, James Stout, I'm Garrison Davis.

We have never as a society been this Year's of Lead paint as we are now, Oh my god.

Yeah, it's not great.

Speaking of things falling apart, the lead paint in my room is crumbling. It's probably great things to my brain, wonderful, love this, love this, so okay. Most a lot of this episode is going to be about the Charlie Kirk assassination and everyone's reaction to it, and everyone's sort of

Yeah, the cyber trek, former Green Beret guy.

Yeah.

And this is the kind of thing that you would have seen during the original Years of Lead.

Yeah.

So for people who don't know what the original Years of Lead was, because this is becoming a thing that people are using to understand what's going on now. And I think there are problems with that that we'll get to. But the original years of lead are this period from I mean that there's you know, you can you can start in a couple different places, but like roughly sort of like the sixties or the eighties, like early mid eighties in Italy that are this period of really really

I'm not even gonna really a.

Nice great yeah, which which was this massive like a second series of like you know, workers taking over factories and starting like factory councils, and like there are so many communist factions that, like the communist faction that's doing this stuff, they have mutated to a point where they're

Yeah, these people are Italians. Yeah, Yeah, many such cases.

One of the big opening things is that the Piazza Fontana bombing, which is this massive bombing that kills nineteen people Injures, an unbelievable number of people, and it is immediately blamed on anarchists. There's an anarchist named Giuseppe Pinelli who he's among like eighty anarchists who arrested almost immediately, he like somehow falls out of a four story window of a police building while he was being interrogated.

Yeah.

The Italian state, which will go on to admit a lot of the shit that it did, maintains to this day that he just got tired and fell out the window himself. I'm gonna let you.

Try your archductions.

I think this guy died. I mean a lot of a lot of anarchists are lazy.

I can see, I.

Can see that happening. Yeah.

There is a good a play that I took part in during high school called Accidental Death of an Anarchist by Dario Foe, Yeah, which you can enjoy.

This is the most like James backstory moment seen before. This is wild. Yeah, whoa someone someone update the icy HH wiki page. James backstory. This is great.

Yeah my theater era.

Who did you play?

I can't remember? It was tragic twenty years ago.

You should you should have remembered.

Oh, I know. It was very fun. We had a good soundtrack. It was very enjoyable for me and my friends, and I'm sure all eight people who watched it also had a wonderful time.

So in less fun times, So this bombing was actually carried out by a group called Ordine Nouvo, which is it's literally new order. Fascist groups only have four names. And this is a group that was aided by a combination of Italian intelligence and this thing called Gladio, which was this American netwill sort of stayed behind networking case of Soviet invasion that had all of these weapons cashes placed around the country that's eventually sort of repurposed into

Just like in The Dark Knight Rises by Marxist historian Christopher Nolan. God.

I see, I thought you were gonna say, just like cancel culture, but.

Just like just like what the right's doing right now for anyone who posts about Charlie Kirk, you know.

But but there was also stuff like, for example, Lota Continua, which is a leftist group of staggering complexity, I like killed the police officer who was interrogating Guiseppe Pinelli. So you know, like there are left wing assassinations. A group called the Red Brigades kidnaps the former Prime Minister of Italy, Aldo Moro. See every other episode where I've yelled about this.

Them, but actual organized factions any a legitimate armed struggle, I mean.

The Red Brigades are literally organized in a military fashion, right, with like units and command structure.

But this is also true of like, this is also true of the fascists, right, yeah, and it's also true of group I mean, you know, like obviously like autonomia and the sort of like anarchistic communist factions are looser, but like they're still they still are like organized, and they're rooted in a whole bunch of different kinds of struggles. And the strategy of tension is being deliberately managed by by Italian intelligence and by American intelligence, and by a

Right, like just a guy it's a guy who got.

Reddit gamer and discord political violence.

Yeah, these are these are these these are decentralized acts being fueled by sort of radicalization. But they're not like active intelligence operations.

I mean some of them aren't even fueled by radical Like even even the word radicalization here is sometimes in miss This one in particular is like not that really

Yeah.

And it's also worth noting that like from the state end, these like this is not something that was like deliberately unleashed by the state, except in the sense of like, well some.

People would argue otherwise, Yeah, but wrong right there.

If that's the issue, you know, like like if like the last time we saw something that you could argue even sort of look like that is like there is genuinely something kind of suspicious about the way that a whole bunch of the most famous Black Lives Matter activists who weren't the ones in the NGO suddenly turned up dead.

Which is why we're calling it something else, the years of lead paint, because these people are just like because it is not the result of this large scale like deep state orchestration, nor these legitimate organized fashions. Everyone is simply brain rotted. Yeah. Yeah.

To contrast, right in the twentieth century that the prevailing concept of how the left would change the world was through the violent capture of state institutions or in the case of the anarchists, I guess less. So that you know, if we look at like this communist ideal of revolution.

Yeah, how's that anarchist revolution going, buddy?

Well, I mean, these guys are thirty years after the Spanish Revolution, rights some of them have seen anarchists hold whole cities and hold off the country's army. It's not out of the out of the realm of possibility for them.

There isn't even illegitimate left in the United States, like in any meaningful sense.

Yeah, I mean that there exists, Like I guess it's like I don't want to call it incoherent, but like a lot of the left exists. The people going hardest on the left are going hardest on the internet. I guess, this is what I want to say. And like, this is nothing like post sixty eight Italy.

We've seen a nice, nice like resurgence, stuff like union organizing and that's like the most realistic manifestation of the left.

But mutual aid organizing.

And I will also say we did have this band from twenty eleven to twenty twenty was like a really massive period of like really large scale street movement in a way that really terrified these people, Like twenty fourteen petificlarly Ferguson and twenty twenty like really truly rattled the psychology of all of the people who who are like currently running this country in that it demonstrated that like, oh damn, there could.

Be a world.

We're like, we're not automatically the superior race and we're not like treated like that because it's betting bullshit and people were willing to fight for that. But also like, yeah, no, like we don't have the kind of like organization or logistical capacity that like any of these things had, and it's not clear to me that you like, you won't get things that look like that anymore.

Yeah, as much much is like the right wing YouTube podcast Sphear wants to make it the case. First of all, there is not like an organized revolutionary left in the US, not as not a serious one. And secondly, like the organized revolutionary left that existed in twentieth century relied on a network that was international and that sometimes and not always had its roots in Soviet I guess foreign policy right that also does not like as much as a

We're back talking lead paint, King of lead paint, and in some ways the conspiratorial elements of the years of lead.

Professionally, We're gonna have to watch another video because of this whole second of the scarison. I have you known.

I'm actually multiple months later for my workplace harassment training.

I can see why, My god.

But it's it's it's it's pretty bad. Just the the total rejection of reality in the separation of truth and

Garretson do you remember that?

Oh my god, you were like Matt Walsh's. Matt Walsh is comparing this to to something that Walter White did during during Breaking Bad, saying that this feels like a strategy that these two people cooked up by watching too much TV, which in fact just shows that it is Matt Walsh who watches too much TV, by the fact that this is the first thing he thinks of. But

Yeah, right, Like, how do you someone who has rejected facts? Like, how do you bring them back?

They have to argue in court that the led shooter actually did the shooting, right, That's what they're trying to establish. Yeah, this is the evidence that will be agreed upon as as evidence. To introduce the text messages in court, the DA will have to prove their authenticity through chain of custody and metadata. The reason why they were released now is because they were included in the indictment laying out

We don't need more information, really, yes, we don't need it. What is interesting here is why is only this happening on the left and not the right.

That's all we need to know about that.

There was absolutely no cos you want to.

Talk about Meliss Horseman. Did you know her name before it happened? None of us did. None of us were spending every single day talking about missus Hortman. I never heard of her until after she died. The matter, And don't play that bullshit with me.

You know what I'm talking.

What I'm saying is there was no demonization amplification about that woman before she died. It was a specific crime against her by somebody.

Who knew her, the same thing.

You can bring up, Joshua Piro, but then you will not bring up, for example, that that was a pro Palestine person.

So don't use your what about this.

The fact, the.

Fact of the matter is the both sides argument not only doesn't fly.

We don't care. We don't care.

About your both sides argument that shit is dead. For one thing, there is no cognitive dissonance on our.

Side on your side.

Your beliefs do not match reality, so you're coming up with these rationalizations like what about this or what about that. We're not doing that because we saw it happen. We saw a young bright man assassinated, and we.

Know who did it. So if you look at like left wing violence or violence targeting right wing figures, even just like the past two years, right, there's the two attempted Trump assassinations, which the right frames as left wing violence. Though the first Trump shooter did not have left wing politics. They had more of the psychological profile of a school shooter who was looking to do something to get into history books and came from a conservative upbringing. This person

With the healthcare stuff, like we should probably point out the Trump also ran on like medicine is too expensive, right, it would cost too much to get the pills you need to stay alive. Like that has been a cornerstone of his platform too. It can be framed as like a populist sentiment of populist stance, yeah, yeah, not necessarily a leftist one.

So that's the political background that these people on the right are like coming from right, Like that's how they see see this that that's like this spike and left being violence that they're seeing refers to this collection of acts.

Now.

For Media has reported that a few days after Charliekirk's assassination, the Department of Justice removed from their website a National Institute of Justice research study showing a white supremacist and far right violence far outweighs any other type of terrorism

In Congress today, cash Betel that claimed to have no idea who did, then Rufe was for example, correct and like what he was about a.

Lot of them just aren't aware of this stuff. And it's not just this National Institute Justice study. These findings are incredibly consistent across multiple studies. The notably not left wing Cato Institute found very similar results in their analysis of six hundred and twenty politically motivated murders since nineteen seventy five, excluding nine to eleven, most political violence comes

I understand why people are saying what about.

This and what about this?

Because if you have to face the underlying fact to this, your life is going to fall apart, because you're going to realize you're not the good guys. If you sat around and you defended the mutilation of children, you're not the good guys. If you sat six hundred seven hundred cases of harassment against Republicans and you said, but what about this?

What about this?

And then you see this murder after calling somebody a fashion you fascist, you realize maybe I'm not the good guy. That is a hell of a realization to deal with.

So therefore, therefore you.

Have to grasp at rationalizations. You don't have to do that, Jessica.

They do. I don't believe you're part of that group. But why the hell do.

You have to mimic an echo that crap?

To us? He was a patsy. That guy was a patsy.

He was under the hypnot expel of a direct to consumer nihilism, the trans cult. And you know that if you can decide that biology is false, you can agree that that murder is okay and that humanity is expendable. How you cannot see that alone and see that for what the evil it is without having to attach all of these other things is beyond me.

His explicit claim that we should just like flag is that it's not. He's not necessarily talking about leftists as a whole. He's specifically talking about people who accept the trans people are people being and like that the existence of trans people leads to this nihilism. I guess, well, yeah.

I mean they see the existent trans people as like a result of this nihilist culture, right, Yeah, Well, he.

Seemed to put the cause all hour the other way though, in that he seemed to suggest that the nihilism comes from accepting trans people.

I guess I don't fully agree that that's how he's saying it. I think they view it as it's both causal but also a symptom. I think they play it kind of both ways and showing how it's it's more so just like the result of this like breakdown in like a moral fabric, right, which is then breaking down like notion of reality, which is right, like, you know, transness is such an existential threat to the right wing

You have the crazies on the far left.

You are saying, Oh, Stephen Miller and jd Vance, they're going to go after constitutionally protected speech, and we're going to go after the NGO network that fomens, facilitates, and engages in violence that's not okay. Violence is not okay in our system, and we want to make it less likely that that happens.

Walk me through at a high level, like what you.

And I have been working on, what the whole administration has been working on to try to make sure that we don't reward and promote this craziness.

Yes, so it's an excellent question. I've said this before, but there's repeating. The last message that Charlie sent me was I think it was just the day before we lost him, which is that we need to have an organized strategy to go after the lefting organizations that are promoting violence in this country. And I will write those words onto my heart and I will carry them.

Out the NGO network. Yep.

Yeah, this has been a thing with them for a while.

Yes, there was supposed to be a series of executive orders that were drafted earlier this year, specifically targeting Democrat funding platforms like Act Blue and environmental NGOs, that it was reported that Trump was about to sign, and then they kind of disappeared. This was around like April to May, and this has been something that they obviously have been wanting to do but for one reason or another haven't

I think some of their fascination with NGOs comes from the Trump administration's first term, when NGOs were very successful in bringing suits that delayed or prevented some of the policies that the mill of faction of the Trump administration would have liked to implement.

Yeah, and then I think the other angle of this is just pueriety, Semitism, mango with that. Partly when they're saying NGOs, they mean NGOs, and partly when they're saying NGOs they mean Jews.

And it's great.

It's very often this specific focus is on he s right highest Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society. Who I mean, we see this in the Tree of Life shooting for instance in twenty eighteen. Right, this has been with us for some time on the right.

I'm going to play another clip where they outline more strategies for clamping down on left wing violence.

And we are going to channel all of the anger that we have over the organized campaign that led to this assassination to uproot and dismantle these terrorist networks.

So let me explain a bit what that means. So thirty seconds, it'll be quick Stephen the organized.

Docs and campaigns, the organized riots, the organized street violence, the organized campaigns of dehumanization, vilification, posting people's addresses, Combining that with messaging, this design trying to trigger inside violence, and the actual organized cells that carry out and facilitate the violence.

It is a vast domestic terror movement.

But with the Goddess my witness, we are going to use every resource we have at the Department of Justice, Homeland Security, and throughout this government to identify, disrupt, dismantle, and destroy these networks and make America safe again for the American people. It will happen, and we will do it in Charlie's name.

So in their discussion of taking down this big doxing network, they also inadvertently and ironically describe the doxing campaign that the right is currently doing at a far larger scale and with way more institutional backing than any antif for left being, doxing has looked like targeting people making posts in support of Charlie Kirk's assassination or people making jokes about Charlie Kirk in the wake of his assassination, with

We are not in the business of inviting people to visit our country who are going to be involved in negative and destructive behavior. Okay, so why should if I invite someone? If we invite someone to visit the United States of America as a student, as a tourist, has whatever, then they have a different The standard they should be held to is very high. We shouldn't be bringing people

So now there's an organized campaign to not only try to deport and revoke visas or deny visas to people quote unquote celebrating the death of Charlie Kirk, but also get citizens here fired from their jobs and disrupt their life. Just two years ago, Elon Musk tweeted, quote, if you were unfairly treated by your employer due to posting or liking something on this platform Twitter, we will fund your

Yeah, it's it's pretty clear.

The mayor of Minneapolis taking a knee is not on the same level as Trump pardoning all the January sixth quote unquote insurrectionists. At the end of Vance's two hour long episode, he reiterated on the topic of doxing and harassment campaigns and political violence. Here's another clip.

I wrote a story in The Nation magazine about my dear friend Charlie Kirk. Now The Nation is in a fringe blog. It's a well funded, well respected magazine whose publishing history goes back to the American Civil War.

George Soros's Open.

Society Foundation funds this magazine, as does the Ford Foundation and many other wealthy titans of the American progressive movement.

The writer accuses Charlie.

Of saying, and I quote, black women do not have brain processing power to be taken seriously. But if you go and watch the clip, the very clip she links to, you realize he never said anything like that. He never uttered those words. He made an argument against affirmative action as a policy, He criticized a specific Supreme Court justice as an individual. He never said anything about black women

Now, of course, even.

If Charlie had uttered those words, it wouldn't mean that he deserved his fate. But consider the level of propaganda at work. Charlie was gunned down in broad daylight, and well funded institutions of the left lied about what he said so as to justify his murder. This is soulless and evil. But I was struck not just by the dishonesty of this smear, but by the glee over a young husband's and young father's death quote, she says he

There's a lot to break down there.

Yeah.

First of all, the president of the Nation, not the country the magazine. The Nation magazine has stated that they, in fact, do not receive money from George Soros or the Open Society Foundation. Vance's gesturing two left wing billionaires carries three parentheses around that term. Second of all, let's play the actual clip of Charlie talking about brain processing power.

Joy Reid and Michelle Obama and Shila Jackson Lee and Catangi Brown Jackson were affirmative action picks. We would have been called theis. But now they're coming out and they're saying it for us. They're coming out and they're saying, I'm only here because affirmative action. Yeah, we know, you do not have the brain processing power to otherwise be taken really seriously. You had to go steal a white person slot to go be taken somewhat seriously.

So he just happens to be talking about three black women and state that they do not have the brain processing power to do their jobs and that they stole a white man's spot. Yet in the position they are in now. An opinion writer for The Washington Post was fired this week for sharing this quote on Twitter, which replaced the names of the three women's talking about with just black women.

Did she share it like in between quotation monks if it was a direct quotation.

She did share it as if it was a direct quotation.

Okay, I see, so I'm going to read this from the email that they sent this writer firing her. This writer is a black woman. Among other requirements, the company wide social media policy mandates that all employees social media postings be respectful and prohibits postings that disparage people on

To close Charlie Kirk's episode and to close our episode, jd Vance talked about before we can have any national unity, we must, like Charlie, tell the truth. Unity.

Real unity can be found only after climbing the mountain of truth. And there are difficult truths we must confront in our country. One truth is that twenty four percent of self described quote very liberals believe it is acceptable to be happy about the death of a political opponent, while only three percent of self described very conservatives agree.

This is not a both sides problem.

If both sides have a problem, one side has a much bigger and malignant problem, and that is the truth.

We must be told.

So. These stats are from a recent you gov survey, where twenty four percent of very liberals to say it's okay to be happy with the murder of a political opponent and twenty six percent of young liberals to say some times political bolence is justified for two seven percent of young conservatives. This study also found that Democrats and Republicans are more likely to say that political violence is a big problem after attacks on members of their own party.

Wait, just Shapiro wasn't assassinated, right, they tried to ban his houseing.

Yeah, they're counting that an attempted assassination.

Oh, okay.

See.

After the attended assassination on Donald Trump, fifty one percent of Republicans said political balance is a very big problem forty six percent of democrats, And after the attacks on Paul Pelosi, fifty three percent of Democrats said political balance is a very big problem compared to thirty one percent of Republicans. These stats are very fluid and absolutely changed depending on whatever current events were current at the time,

Now, any political movement, violent or not violent.

Is a collection of forces.

It's like a pyramid that stacks on top one support on top of the other. That Peermid's got a foundation of donors, of activists, of journalists, now social media influencers, and of course of politicians. Not every member of that pyramid would commit a murder. In fact, over ninety nine

Benson goes on to talk about how people yelled at him and his family when he visited Disneyland, and discusses how after Charlie's death, one of his friends and a senior White House staffer had left leaning operatives in his neighborhood, passing out leaflets telling people what he looked like and where he'd lived and quote, encouraging neighbors to harass him

There is no unity with people who scream at children over their parents' politics.

There is no unity with.

Someone who lies about what Charlie Kirk said in order to excuse his murder.

There is no.

Unity with someone who harasses an innocent family the day after the father of that family lost a dear friend. There is no unity with the people who celebrate Charlie Kirk's assassination.

And there is no unity with the people who fund.

These articles, who pay the salaries of these terrorist sympathizers, who argue that Charlie Kirk, a loving husband and father, deserved a shot to the neck because he spoke words with which they disagree.

Did you know that the George Soros.

Open Society Foundation and the Ford Foundation, the groups who funded that disgusting article justifying Charlie's death, Do you know they benefit from generous tax treatment. They are literally subsidized by you and me, the American taxpayer. And how do they reward us by setting fire to the house built by the American family over two hundred and fifty years.

On September thirteenth, Fox and News Morning host Brian Kilmeade endorsed youthanizing homeless people with quote involuntary lethal injection or something, just kill them.

Billions of dollars some mental health and the homeless population.

A lot of them don't want to take the programs. A lot of them don't want to get the help that is necessary. You can't give him a choice.

Either you take the resources that we're going to.

Give you and or you decide that you got to be locked up in jail. That's the way it has to be now, or involuntary lethal injection or something. I just kill them, Kim Brian. Why did it have to get to this point right?

I would say this, we're not voting for the right people in North Carolina.

Wake up. Just kill them. Geez, the Fox News host advocating the killing of homeless people. And he didn't get fired from this. He apologized a few days later, but he's not getting fired from his job for this, openly advocating the death of homeless people. Yeah, murder.

And I think it's worth noting whenever we're having a discussion about political violence that two days after Charlie Kirk.

Was shot, Ice just killed a guy.

In Chicago who was driving away from their attempt to detain him. He was driving away pretty slowly, and there's video of it. Now, they pulled out their guns and they killed him. And you know, all of these people who are the people who ordered ice into this city, right, who are directly responsible for the deaths of this man who was also a single father. Actually well, no, Kirk was not a single father, but this guy was and was just murdered in cold blood by Ice.

Right.

This is not considered political violence by sort of either liberals or conservatives, right, because they don't think the political violence can be done by the state. And this is also part of how you get to the situation now where you can be like, well, the states should just murder homeless people and that's not considered political violence because it's the state doing it, and because they don't think homeless people are people.

Yeah, I mean to broaden that statement slightly or take a different angle on it, right, Like there is a complete bipartisan consensus that we should kill hundreds of people a year acrossing our southern border because that supposedly serves as a deterrent from other people coming, which it doesn't, But that is not seen as political violence.

Now, they just murdered three more people on a boat but leaving Venezuela a few days ago.

Yeah, yeah, as Evan's ended the Charlie Kirk Show episode. He advocated that listeners find and call the employers of people celebrating Charlie Kirk's death to join a TEPA USA chapter or to run for office.

But I promise you that we will explore every option to bring real unity to our country and stop those who would kill their fellow Americans because.

They don't like what they say. But you have a role too. Civil society, Charlie.

Understood this well, is not just something that flows from the government. It flows from each and every one of us. It flows from all of us. So when you see someone celebrating Charlie's murder, call them out in hell, call their employer. We don't believe in political violence, but we do believe in civility, and there is no civility in the celebration of political assassination.

The idea of the fusion of the state with civil society is really notable there, like, that's not what civil society is, right. That is a concept that is inherently totalitarian, that civil society should flow downstream from the state and the movement.

It's this fusion between the two that the right has deployed so successfully. Yeah, which has increased their ability to actually like rule.

Yeah. I mean that's that's what fatism does, right, like that, that's yeah, Franco, that's Hitler, Like that is textbook.

That's like the point of the brown Shirts.

Yeah, or like the Women's movement in Spain, right to give a more civil society example, they're not like, they're not like a state police agency. There are a civil society organization explicitly run by the state for its agenda.

So to return to the years of lead Paint idea that opened this episode, what I'm observing right now across the political ocean is this flattening of tactics. As I discussed on the show before in the Blue One episodes, the right trojan horst political conspiracism into acceptable political discourse, which the left is now embracing liberals and the left. And you can see this with people's reactions to the Charter assassination and theories about the alleged shooter. So the

Do you plan on designating Antifa finally a domestic terror organization?

Well, it's something I would do, yeah, if I have support from the people back here.

I think would start with PAM.

I think, but I would if you give me, I would do that one hundred percent.

And others also, by.

The way, But Antifa is terrible.

There are other groups, Yeah, there are other groups.

We have some pretty radical groups and they got away with murder.

And also I've been speaking to.

The Attorney General about bringing RICO against some of the people that you've been reading about that have been putting up millions and millions of dollars for agitation.

These aren't protests, these are crimes.

What they're doing where they're throwing brit I said cars of the of ice and mortar patrol.

And I want to close by. You know, we've seen the sort of repercautions that people have had, not even for like celebrating Charlie Kirk's death, but for like being like, wait, this guy fucking sucks, and this whole you know, this whole argument about civility. And I mean that, I mean the Vice President of the United States is making right. I want to read this quote from Matt Walsh as we're recording. This is this is from Tuesday, September sixteenth.

Coordinated at a state level with state resources. Yeah. Yeah, And the state involvement makes it okay, That makes it a moral action, not the actions of some like unhinged terrorist. Yeah.

And this is a really significant problem for the way that we think about political violence because this is something that's true for both liberals and conservatives that they think that the state is the appropriate arbiter for this kind of political violence, which is how Obama can do a drone strike on a sixteen year old American citizen and kill him in cold blood because Obama had political disagreements with his father, right, and how this is treated as

Why, Well, that is how we at the show understand the years of lead Paint, or the current twenty twenty five September era of the years of lead Paint. There's phantoms everywhere, there's conspiracies everywhere and nowhere, and the specter of political violence is around every corner. This is it could happen here. Executive Disorder, our weekly newscast covering what's happening in the White House, the crumbling world, and what it means for you. I'm Garrison Davis. Today I'm joined

Normally a week in history when very little happens.

The most normal week of a American politics. Yeah.

Yeah, Traditionally, nothing around the first third of September's days as ever mattered in American history.

We should schedule our calendar just to block out this whole section of the year each time.

I already have it written down in Mike calendar as the week to forget, so I just spend it drinking.

Robert, do you want to introduce their first topic?

Yes, I mean, our first topic, as we talked about last week, is the fallout from the murder of Charlie Kirk, particularly its impact on free speech and the pretext it's being used for to justify a crackdown on the quote unquote left different NGOs and other organizations that are being accused of being part of a vast and let's say, unlikely conspiracy to commit terrorism that has nothing to do with what's actually been discovered about Tyler Robinson, Charlie Kirk's killer,

No.

I did a brief update confirming that he was living with a transperson, but that was really all we knew at the time that could be confirmed. That was pretty evergreen as we suspected it it might be, and I will say, frankly, the motive still remains not entirely clear, but we do have some more concrete details about his online background. Yeah, and a few others, like ancillary pieces, which is included in the charging document, as well as reporting on his discord logs.

Yeah. So I think we should talk first about the whole trans roommate thing of it all, because obviously, first off, this is one of the most massive reaches I've seen, Like they're always desperate to have a trans connection anytime there's a shooting.

They were trying to establish this literally like seconds after it happened.

And that's been the case with like the last year and a half or two worth of mass shootings. Yeah, or at least a sizable number of them.

Yeah, that was a meme, right for why it's like a four Chan thing to suggest that any mass shooter was trans and now it's just become reality.

Yeah, And in this case, the allegation started coming out from the police that his roommate was transgender. This was before the discord logs had leaked. So I want you to talk a little bit. Gare you found the Reddit profile of Tyler Robinson's roommate. Yeah, so first question is do we know if they actually were trans and do we know if they actually were in some sort of a relationship. What is the actual evidence that exists to suggest that based on what we have so far.

They did post about their transition on multiple subreddits and public facing posts, and they referred to having a boyfriend BF that was helping them cope with the results of

Yeah, and I want to make it clear, which should be obvious to anyone who has like a third of a brain cell to rub together against the inside of their skull. There's not any evidence that this roommate was tied in any way to the Tyler Robinson's crimes, and in fact, the exit evidence this.

The state is arguing this that the roommate had no prior knowledge, yes, and has been fully cooperative. That the roommate is not involved.

Not only is fully cooperative, but turned Tyler in.

Like in part or produced evidence that was now used in the Charging documentary. Tyler turned himself in with his father like officially, but there was certainly conversations happening.

Yeah, And it's one of those things you can come down morally on that however you want. It's just a matter of there's absolutely no evidence. As people like Matt Walsherre saying that this is part of some grand LGBT conspiracy, their roommates seemed horrified to have been and you know, understandably terrified to have been potentially implicated in a massive act, like massively famous active murder, right, Like that's a scary thing to come to, like get a discord message realizing,

Yeah, let's go over some of the text exchanges included in the charging document. It's technically not an indictment because they did not charge via grand jury. Yeah, it's a placeholder for that. Yeah, but it's referred to as like a charging information document that they included some text messages because it was the clearest evidence to lay out to charge them with the crime, though not the only evidence,

Yep, it seems like this person fairly wisely stopped engaging with the Yeah.

There's not a good response to give to that.

No, that's not.

Yeah, Discord Again, one of the one thing I would hope this would bust is this has to have been a professional hit man assassin of some sort, which is a job that I mean, it technically exists, Like there are guys who are for the fucking crypts of the Bloods, or you could call them professional hitmen, and that they kill people for money, but they're not like the people you see in movies, Like they're guys who will walk up with a thirty eight and gut shoot somebody and

This is I believe, regular text.

So these are regular regular text.

This is straight up yeah sms, right, like yeah.

He's messaging this shit through unencrypted lines and left a note under his keyboard and dropped the rifle in the woods, Like this is all about what you'd expect from a twenty two year old kid who's a reasonably good shot with a rifle and had no real other skills. Like it's what it looked like.

Yes, this doesn't even seem like someone who spent a great deal of time planning, right, like learning about that.

They said they've been planning about it for about a week.

Yeah, this lines up with what they said, right, like Nick, Yeah, and they seem almost surprised. Yeah, I got this weird feeling reading it, Like Tyler almost is shocked that they did it, Like there's this sense of being pulled by history.

Yeah, it's seemingly confused by his own actions in a sense.

Yeah, like watching himself almost like.

Yes, and like I I scrite like one of the things. It sounds like and this is a little unclear, but it sounds like in terms of those memes winding up. But he was doing that before, maybe even before he'd ever planned to shoot Kirk. That's just like a thing he did for shit for people.

People have pointed to that as being like, oh, well, obviously the roommate knew something was up. If if the roommate was aware that that Robinson was carving bullets. That's first of all, that's not a crime. No, people just do weird shit sometimes, especially if someone goes to the range often maybe they're gonna fucking scribble on a bullet Like. That's not indication of anything that's legitimately concerning.

Frankly, yeah, it's indication again that this guy was very online in the gamer right.

Yea.

But that's it.

So it's not just people like Walsh who are casting doubt on the authenticity of these messages. Plenty of liberals and people on the left have taken to suspecting that these could have been written by an quote unquote FBI agent or law enforcement as fake evidence to frame the shooter. And people have pointed towards some weird verbiage like calling his dad his old man and referring to quote unquote like law enforcement type language like interrogate and Yeah, to me,

I don't even think it's that odd. It's nice people call someone they're in love with, my love. That's a thing that happens in the world.

Like that's not like a.

Very normal What are we doing here?

Why are we questioning this part of the Yeah?

But and again like these texts were handed over to local police by Robinson's roommate. Why fake evidence that would jeopardize the case when the police already have a lot of other evidence, DNA ballistic evidence, the fun group discord chat where he also admitted to the crime right before he turned himself in. Like these tex slogs don't even like make him out to be a crazy leftist. He talks like very vaguely about Kirk, like spreading hatred. Yeah,

Yeah, they're not talking about redistribution of wealth, they're not talking about overthrowing the gun.

Oh no, they're not talking about politics in that way. This seems more like personal to him.

Yes, he's in love with a transperson and he didn't like what Charlie Kirk said about Tree.

Yeah, And like, if the government's going to fake messages, why would they do so in a way that exonerates the trans roommate the real ideological target here.

Especially, look at what the government is doing right now, right they're going after quote unquote Antifa, They're going after the Open Society Foundation, George Soros, all of these left wing NGOs. If they were faking this, would he not have referenced one of those organizations? Would there not be a fucking black and red flag somewhere right there?

Yeah, Like it would be so easy. If you're going to implicate someone, you could implicate in text messages really easily. Like it's ridiculous to suggest that, yeah, the state did this.

Yeah, why would you fake that?

Why would you fake it that way?

Baffling, incomprehensible. These texts are not load bearing to this case. There's plenty of other evidence. And this isn't the same thing as like cops planting evidence or like a district attorney making subjective claims about intent, Like you don't need to overestimate state intelligence here.

No, we don't even need for what we have. There was no need for them to have done anything at all, because Robinson specifically notes that as soon as pictures of the rifle were posted online by police, his dad fucking calls family knew because it is a unique gun. It is an antique mouser that was sportized and rebarreled, presumably personally by his grandfather. Both his grandpa and his dad seemed to have recognized it immediately. There was no getting away with it once the rifle was found.

This is totally different from like the MS thirteen tattoo thing, where the trumpetdministration argued for an interpretation of tattoos and then printed out a picture with like very clearly photoshopped letters to draw a parallel between what they think the tattoos meant and with their interpretation of it as letters and numbers, which trump in all of his genius, mistook for being actual tattoos. And then they just ran with it because no one has the capacity to tell the

Yeah, let me tell you of someone who crades hundreds of papers every year from people who are largely but not all, between eighteen and twenty five. Yeah, young people can use punctuation. This is not like some kind of forensic fucking literary analysis required.

And the information obtained in these chat logs and through interviews with his parents match reporting by Ken Klippenstein, who got leaked messages from the shooter on discord, very very similar. Like lots of libs and people on the left are saying this is fake because they wanted the shooter to be conservative and they think that these texts damage the narrative that they have chosen. And I think that's why

And they're probably often pro capitalist. They're just not bigoted against queer people. Yeah, because that's not as common anymore.

These aren't political partisans. Yeah, they're not even on our slash bread tube, Like, yeah, that's that's not what's happening. He played, he played furry sex games on Steam when he was younger. One of his Steam names was Donald Trump because yeah, he's twenty two years old. Trump was an Augurat when he was like thirteen or whatever, Like, oh god, yeah.

It's.

We fucked the kids up so bad.

It's it's a large it's largely a political and like this what he did is is existential violence manifesting a political action from someone who isn't otherwise overtly political. Right, because shooting Charlie Kirk incredibly political action, even if that's not the way that that the shooter maybe conceived it.

Yeah, like this person happens. It happened across a queer person who they are very fond of. Right, they have queer people in their lives. That is not indicative of any politics other than they have a queer person in their life.

If this person stand the Soviet Union, we would fucking know about.

It because they would be running with that.

They'd have found a most into gud used a mosin for what. So they would have missed.

A little bit of Moses slander for you today to break up the horrors. Yeah, speaking of crackdowns, crack down on your wallet by buying.

These products and services.

Beautiful, lovely.

And we're back.

Yeah, First Amendment crackdown. Massive rhetoric coming out of Stephen Miller and from Pam Bondi and basically every mouthpiece of the administration about going after the left, about dismantling particularly organizations like the Open Society Foundation, going after George Soros

This could be like bail funds, environmental NGOs, legal support NGOs, like it's really unclear at the exact form that this is going to take. But this is stuff that the administration has pined of a doing for a while.

Yeah, and it's unclear.

You know.

It's one of the big pieces of news that's happened within twenty four hours of US recording this episode, which we recorded on Thursday the eighteenth, is that Trump has designated ANTIFAH a domestic terrorist organization. That he's said that what I'm saying is he said that, he said up words that he has said.

Words that he has said before, including it in twenty twenty.

For the letter of the law, for one thing, there's a wild difference between what you can do legally to an international foreign terrorist organization, yeah, and in domestic terrorist organization.

Yeah.

Because of the First Amendment, you can't just declare legally, in terms of what is written law, the president can't just declare a group of people to be a domestic terrorist organization.

It's usually an enhancement charge.

Yes, and then just go after people who have spoken out or donated money to legal charities that are randomly declared to be in support of that. That's not league, which doesn't mean it won't happened. Let me be really clear, Yeah, Yeah, but that's not what the law is about.

And they've tried to do that in Atlanta was stop Crop City and the Lena Solidarity Fund and going after the Bail Fund and people who had donated money to like the Forest Defense Fund, and this Trump is similarly actually to Atlanta. Is also talked about using RICO charges to get people in trouble who are funding these quote

Yeah, I mean for a use of word major, right, which doesn't that's like there's a domestic terrorism is a concept that's nebulus FTO, foreign terrorist organization is an extremely clear legal definition. He didn't use either of those. Yeah, this is a thing that like Ted Cruz, and I think he enjoyed it. I'm sure there are other people to vote, but Ted Cruz in before twenty twenty twenty nineteen, tried to introduce a resolution in the Senate condemning Antifa like this has been a thing.

Marjor Taylor Green introduced legislation which went nowhere or talked about dilation. I don't even know if she actually introduced it like this year about designating Antifa terrorist organization. It's been it's been something like Andy, you know, has been advocating for for years.

It's a really important point that they have attempted and failed to do this numerous times because the law doesn't let them. And this is something that if you have been in the riot reporting on public shootings business as long as I said christ one thing I can tell you is that in the wake of something like this, it was the same with christ Church and the immediate wake of christ Church, there was this really shocking moment where a bunch of conservative I talked to these people

We are seeing pieces of that.

Fucking Carl Rove, of all motherfucking people, wrote an article about how the administration is unfairly blaming liberals and leftists for the actions of an individual shooter. Tucker Carlson came out and made a statement that like, if the government is able to go after you for this, they'll come after conservatives at some point. He's not wrong about I don't credit him doing that because of a serious moral thing.

And specifically, like Pam Bondi is Turner General made some statements a few days ago about them going after quote unquote hate speech, yeah, which spawned a whole bunch of conservative commentators Steven Krawdertucker Carlson, as well as Matt Walsh. And under no circumstances do you have to hand up to Matt Walsh. But this prompted them to be like, no, actually, we don't believe in hate speech as a legitimate legal category.

Right.

We're fine with the government helping us like dos you and get you fired from your job, but prosecuting hate speech as a category is something that we do not agree with, and neither did Charlie Kirk. So there's been like that small reaction, which then prompted Pambondi to be like, no, when I say hate speech, what I really mean is like threats and assignment of violence, and like, yeah, okay.

Fighting words, I think is a legal term, right, Like incitements to violence.

Yeah, And you know, there's some stuff that's always been illegal and never been punished. For example, when conservatives I've been dealing with this for years, threatened to kill and rape activists and show up outside of their houses and harass them. As a general rule, the police don't do anything if those activists are on the left, right, even

That is a crime.

If you're posting and saying that you have broken the law, they won't go after a conservative for doing that, but they'll go after you, right like. That is how things work, you know. However, we have seen people who have been attacked for speech that absolutely is not crossing the line into fighting words.

Right.

One of the better examples for this happened at Texas Tech.

It happened.

You've had variants of this happened at a couple of colleges all around the country. They're specifically at Texas Tech, which is, you know, one of Texas's kind of premiere state schools. There was a video of an incident on the day that Charlie Kirk was killed where a student scene jumping up and down, yelling profanity at a vigil in a free speech zone outside of a student union building on the campus, saying y'all, Homie dead, making fun of people who were mourning Kirk's death. At one point,

She might.

And this is very chilling. This is deeply concerning. This is not the only case. There's a universe, smaller university outside of Austin where again a student was videotaped celebrating individual for Kirk's death. That person was expelled as well. There have been a number of teachers fired. Obviously, stuff like this has been happening all over the country, right and this is deeply worrying. And even if even if the space of possibility closes on these people faster than

Part of this culture shift can be seen in what some people are probably not very smartly calling the biggest attack on free speech they've ever seen in their life, which is on Wednesday evening, ABC put Jimmy Kimmel's show on hold quote unquote, indefinitely, following pressure from the FCC

And we've seen a lot of people shows and whatnot getting polled and people speaking out getting in trouble because they're companies. They're trying to do a merger. Right, that's not new.

Yes, this has happened with ABC already. This happened with a CBS and paramount. I think some people, including people on the right, are misunderstanding some of the circumstances of the firing or the being put on hold, as well as what, like Kimmel said, kim wasn't joking about or celebrating Kirk's death. What he did do is possibly like falsely insinuate that the shooter was Mega when evidence at

Yeah, and this is again, this is chilling, absolutely chilling speech. The things he said, we're not in line with the best available evidence at the time that he said them. But they weren't hate speech, they were not incitement to violence. There was nothing a league know about them. And again, you had a fucking right wing figure on television urging for homeless people to be executed.

The involuntary lethal ejection to solve the homeless crisis. Quote, just kill them. He's not getting fired.

No, he had to make a half assed apology, but that's it.

Yeah, Like he had to pretend to be sorry.

If I had a nickel for every time someone on Fox News said that like any mass shooter at all was linked to a trans person, Like none of my trans friends would ever be homeless. Again, Like they say this shit all the time and nothing happens, even though it is I mean literally just it is straight up tofammatory yep. And they say that shit constantly and nothing happens. And this is just a really pure, i mean example

Yep, I think with that that concludes our Charlie Kirk assassination aftermath discussion for now. But there is in fact other news this week happening. James, do you have stuff? Yeah, un Fortunately, I'm like I'm embracing myself. I know that James's news is never that good either.

Yeah, so it was good news these days.

Really the passport thing was killed, right, the Mark Rubio.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, there is some good news. Actually, there was a Senate bill, a writer on a bill that was introduced that would have given Marco Rubio the power to revoke passports for citizens for effectively political speech and the guys of speech protecting you know, quote unquote terrorists. That failed, like that was pulled by the sponsor, which is good. There was a backlash to it, and again when there's backlashes, that's that's good. Yeah yeah, yeah.

Yeah, I mean it's it's it's so annoying to have to like we all know that like pointing out the hypocrisy doesn't work as like a real strategy, but like there's if there's a way besides that to like actually channel resistance to these authoritarian and like speech chilling measures. Besides just smugly going like haha, the Party of free speech strikes again, which I understand how that's emotionally compelling, but no one cares. It's not going to stop them from taking away your free speech.

No.

Yeah, speaking of free speech, here's some free ads.

Yeah, we are back. I don't worry, folks. It is all downhill from here. I'm afraid because things have not been good outside of the coverage and repercussions to the Charlie Kirk shooting. And to start with, I want us to talk about Ghana. And this is one stories that unfortunately has been kind of eclipsed this week, but it shouldn't be, so we're going to talk about it. So the United States has begun using Ghana as a pass through to send people back to other countries in West Africa.

Right.

One could probably also pronounce that it's a bit where a French word, but I have decided not to. In this instance, they're sending people to Ghana when their home countries has been deemed to be too dangerous by a United States court, or they are unable to send them back to that country for some other reason. Right, people in this part of the world don't need visas to travel, so they can send them to neighboring countries without requiring like that, the Ghana can just bust them back, right,

Right.

Yeah. Some of them also detailed in the case they're transport They said they were in straight jackets for sixteen hours on the flight the US. Right, the government, the United States government in this instance has once again claimed that these people are out of its hands and it has no way of stopping the government of Ghana from sending them back to these other countries.

Right.

This is an argument that is attempted to make in several other instances. And I do just want to flag that, like this, use of third party countries for deportation has much increased under the Trump administration, But it was the Biden administration who begun funding Panamanian deportations right way before Donald Trump was even elected, and I have documented that

This sounds very similar to the time that ICE shot at the car driving away just a few weeks ago.

Sure, and Sam Bernardino absolutely, yeah. Generally, I have no idea of what rules ICE are operating under. It's not considered best practice to open fire a vehicle that is moving away from you unless it's actively endangering no, someone else's life, right.

In part because even if it's endangering someone else's life, a handgun will not stop a car. Yeah, maybe you hit the driver, but the odds are just as good, if not much better. Then it goes through a window and remains lethal going past the car and endangering people's lives.

And also it's worth mentioning on the other side of the car from the officer who we see draw his gun is the other agent. Yes, yeah, so if you're shooting at the car, you're shooting at your other agent.

Guns don't stop cars, generally, unless you're killing a fifty caliber anti materiel rifle. Guns don't stop cars. Yeah, like they do stop people, but they but they keep bullets keep going when they mess. It's just bad. It's a bad thing to do. It's irresponsible, it's normal cap shit.

Yeah, So what we see is at least two shots fired, and then we begin to see that then they leave the screen of the surveillance camera, right, so we don't see exactly like we're unable to see. I guess where

Right.

Hopefully that's making sense to people. Totally, He's traveled about one hundred feet in this time period. Unraveled Press have a pretty good account of this, if cobbled together. I think most of the open source video and also the surveillance video. There don't appear in those videos to be any other agents present, And when we see the agents rendering aid, none of them appears to be in the state someone would be had they been dragged by a

Yeah, these agents aren't going to get prosecuted in the court of law for this, the same way that absolutely the Charlie kirkissas as will.

Yeah, generally, like local there have been some cases, but I'm not really aware of any filed against border patrol agents. Generally, DHS has an agency which investigates like use of force incidents, right, and it is I will say it is extremely There have been times when agents have been charged.

They are rare Stephen Miller's DHS that seems very unlikely.

Yeah, Like I'm aware of some charges, for instance in San Diego, for agents who have allowed drugs to cross the border.

Sure, it is pretty rare. Yeah, So let's let's talk about what ICE's occupation of Chicago has been. Like, Yeah, I kind of want to start with something that's been very frustrating, which is a lot of the way that Chicago has been discussed in the wake of Trump, like not deploying the National Guard. There has been about oh, if you resist trumpet will like you know, you can

They have been.

Largely very very fast lightning raids. A lot of them have been an outlying part of Chicago land, which has been making it difficult to both track them and determine numbers because a lot of these parts of these massive high suburby we're going to talk about one later called Elgin then has one hundred thousand people in it, but also doesn't have the kind of I mean they have like local journalists, but they don't have like the kind of press corps that they like the City of Chicago

Is, Yeah, I do so. Baveno was, at least until recently, he's appeared to be, as you say, working in Chicago. Now his Twitter now reads Commander op at Large CA Gregory K. Bavino. He was a chief patrol agent in the El Centro sector when we saw Operation Return to Sender right. Operation Return December was December of twenty twenty four.

Yeah, and he's been, you know, he's been making it enormous deal of showing up in Chicago, and this has been something that's increasingly This is part of what it means for ice and Border patrol to show up in the cities. You get these fucking just absolutely hideous pr ops.

Yeah, GNOME's been on a few raids like this. Has been a consistent thing, right that these raids are a content creation exercise. As much as the law enforcement word.

Yes, and it excuse to dress up all that good stuff.

Yeah, and you know it. It's this.

It's just like reveling both in this, you know, in this sort of like like constructed like I'm holding an Air fifteen lookout tough I am image, and also just in the cruelty and the suffering in the same way that the Alligator Alcatraz stuff was. But it's worth noting that most of the raids have not looked like this.

They took.

Didn't from a community college. They've just been dragging people from their homes and workplaces. There was a very very well publicized raid in Naperville, which is another sort of outlying suburb, where they'd grabbed people who are like fixing someone's roof.

Was that the one where people remained on the roof? Yeah some time? Yeah, okay, yeah.

Yeah, really horrible seeing people are extremely pissed off. There's another story that I's gotten very very little coverage that was horrifying in Displans, which is the suburb just north of O'Hare, where ice agents and masks did a very very standard thing that they've been doing. You know, this is I mean a kind of standard ice tactic where they wait for people to get back into a truck, and then they block the truck off with their trucks

This is wild.

This was one of the home bases of power of the Bush era moral majority, right like Wheaton College is a school where dancing was illegal until two thousand and three, like they abandoned dancing for one hundred and forty three years. And if people in Wheaton are showing up to do direct actions against Ice, these people, they're cooked right, They will be able to do a significant amount of damage.

Yeah, and that's probably where we ought to end. Is a small sign of hope in the darkness.

If you would like to contact us, you can do so by using a proton mail email address cool Zone Tips at proton dot me. It's encrypted if you use an encrypted email address to send.

We reported the news.

We reported the news.

Hey, We'll be back Monday with more episodes every week from now until the heat death of the Universe.

It Could Happen Here is a production of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website coolzonmedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever.

You listen to podcasts.

You can now find sources for It Could Happen here, listed directly in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening.