For years, those on the radical left have compared wonderful Americans like Charlie to Nazis and the world's worst mass murderers and criminals.

This kind of rhetoric is directly responsible for the terrorism that we're seeing in our country today, and it must stop right now.

Welcome back to Posting Through It.

This episode was recorded on September 12th and since it deals with breaking news, I just wanted to say that up top, my name is Jared Holt.

I'm Michael Edison Hayden, and due to the topic of this episode, we're going to skip over the Patreon shout outs.

I'm sure listeners of this episode will include some right wing media types who would love to scandalize what we have to say about the subject of Charlie Kirk.

I don't want to see any of our supporters caught up in that.

We will pick that up again next week on Monday, September 22nd.

And we also decided to do this without a guest for some of the same reasons.

And this is a good point to warn people to also be careful just in general, because we're dealing with an authoritarian regime.

Don't underestimate how they may use Charlie Kirk's death to make like life difficult for critics of MAGA.

Yeah, I mean, like we said earlier, there's a whole range of people, right wing media figures, federal agencies, so on out there that are sifting through the Internet right now looking for people.

It can take down on the tails of Charlie Kirk's death.

And I don't say that to scare you, but this is just a reality that this happens after events like these.

And I know for a fact this podcast audience has included FBI agents before because years ago, it's had to be 2018-2019, something like that.

I got called into the DC FBI field office, where agents asked me about something I said on the show.

I wasn't in trouble, but they wanted to know more about my communications with the white supremacist that I used to write about.

I'd mentioned it in a podcast episode back in the day.

And yeah, that's going to have to be a story for another day because that's not why we're here.

My point is, we don't say this to be paranoid.

We say this because it's not a good time to be reckless.

Yeah, and and it's like, you know, Cash Patel, kind of boss eyed, completely incompetent, whatever.

I mean, you just look around at the at, at Trump world.

They're blowing up boats.

They're sending people off to, you know, countries they've never been to before in, you know, these horrific deportations.

They're sending people off to El Salvador.

You know, I don't take that stuff lightly.

And they are also completely reckless.

And bad at their jobs, I should say that.

Especially just how bad the FBI botched this manhunt, which we'll talk about in a minute.

So it's been an eventful few days.

The big story up until Wednesday.

And this is like almost completely memory hold.

It seems like at least by the mainstream media, some some people still holding on in the racist right was over this woman named Irina Zarutska, a Ukrainian refugee, a black man named Carlos Brown stabbed her on public transportation in Charlotte and he had he had suffered from schizophrenia been and out of the criminal justice system a few times.

And the pundits on X were basically calling Brown an animal and it this is important because this was the environment in the right wing space that preceded what happened to Kirk.

They were already in a very ten spot.

They were fuming mad.

They were making, I mean, the the whole community was working OverDrive on OverDrive in order to try to make this like the propaganda story of the midterm election cycle.

If you want to go back and listen to some information about that, we had it on our Patreon.

The episode went out earlier this week.

Yeah, And like, since Charlie Kirk was killed, there's been these articles in news publications about like Civil War rhetoric, retribution, retaliation rhetoric.

I'm quoted in a couple of them, you may see.

But that was what Mike is saying is correct.

Like what we covered on the premium episode earlier this week, this situation with Arena as the Roots got, they were on edge.

They were like they they were foaming.

Yes, I was holding it to math.

Is it fair to say?

And since then, Jared, there have been bomb, terroristic bomb threats at historically black colleges across the country.

We can't, I can't necessarily prove there's a correlation between that story and this.

Some of it may be Kirk related, but it's important because the entire mega space is in a very peculiar emotional place right now.

It's been a an absolutely roller coaster week for them.

But then on Wednesday afternoon, this happened.

You know how many mass shooters there have been in America over the last 10 years?

Counting or not counting gang violence?

Great.

So Charlie Kirk was talking about mass shootings and gun violence when he was shot.

It was an assassination.

The shooter hit Kirk at an event on Wednesday afternoon.

As we mentioned, we know the suspect is now a a, a person named Tyler Robinson.

He arrived at the campus, the

UVU campus, at 11:52 in the morning right before Kirk.

28 minutes before Kirk, the shooter fired from a rooftop forensic experts estimated was about 150 yards away from where Kirk was speaking.

I don't know, Jared.

Is that is it?

Is that safe to say that this guy was a really good shot?

I literally have no idea.

I've never even been to a gun range.

I mean, I grew up in the South, right?

So I, I have maybe a different relationship to guns or, or, or different exposure to quote UN quote gun culture then a lot of our listeners might.

A 150 yard shot is not something that somebody picking up a gun for the first time would be likely to hit.

But anybody who you know, knew their way around rifles and stuff, it's not like a mind blowing shot.

Doing a shot like that under pressure is a different question.

But there's there's a lot of people in this country that that could shoot something from 150 yards away if they're, you know, scope is dialed incorrectly and that sort of thing.

Well the gun type recovered by the ATF was an imported Mauser 30 O 6 bolt action with only four rounds in it.

He used 1.

Is that a weird gun I had?

Like I don't know is that a weird get down the mount?

I don't know what.

What do I know?

It's a hunting rifle like that's generally where you see this gun show up.

A bolt action rifle is a bit unusual in something like this.

You know, in, in events like this that have happened before, we've seen perpetrators use semi automatic rifles, things like the AR15.

But so yeah, a bolt action rifle is, you know, it packs a harder punch, you know, the, the ammunition, the bullets can go further, faster, etcetera.

So it's, it's a little unusual, but this isn't like some crazy weapon that he picked.

You know, this is this is like your Grand Pappy's hunting rifle.

So the FBI made announcements about a suspect or suspects that they had to retract.

Not a shining moment for them.

Seemed a little bit pathetic actually.

Which was with with Kash Patel looking ridiculous like he often looks.

He looks completely lost in every image I've seen of him.

To my friend Charlie Kirk, Rest now, brother.

We have the watch and I'll see you in Valhalla.

The guy's father turned him in ultimately and sort of just, I just handed him, you know, like a foul ball at a baseball game.

That's reference something that was on our last Patreon.

And I don't know, this is probably a good, a good point to say this.

What happened?

You know, some of the discourse that I saw after this shooting I just didn't think was very funny.

And what I'm talking about, of course, is the anti podcaster hate that I saw in the timeline.

People saying things like, who would?

I guessed putting 2 podcasters in charge of the FBI would have resulted in so much incompetence.

And I just think that that makes me sick to my stomach.

I think Mike and I would do a great job, you know, using military or federal aircraft to go to hockey games and incur significant gambling debt on DraftKings and whatever the hell else they're doing.

Cash Patel and I are both Island Anders fans.

So I, I think that you wouldn't even notice the, the switch.

What I wanted to say that Mike Sternovich said of the, of the FBI situation.

And I love this quote so much.

He says if even the great Cash Patel can't reform the FBI, then it's beyond redemption and must go the way of the Stasi.

I love it.

Why?

Because it's well, the reason why I love it, it's because of the level of denial to just say like, wait a second, like because cash is another is another one of him.

It's like another influencer or idiot in charge of something.

And it's like, well, this doesn't work.

Then it's you can't face the music that like he's a boob surrounded by boobs.

No disrespect to boobs here.

Shortly after Charlie Kirk was shot, video of the incident spread on social media.

Mike and I post saw a lot of people saw it.

It was seemingly everywhere.

It was very graphic, really disturbing.

I don't know, it was just.

Well, you know, as, as a, as a young Gen.

X or Zennial, whatever I am, I will say Jared, that I remember very, very distinctly a time when I didn't see snuff videos.

It was, you would hear about like, I, I believe it was like there was a series of, of videos called like faces of death where they were like, you know, people like, oh, you see a video of somebody getting eaten by a bear or whatever.

You know, I was like, no, thank you.

I don't, I would like to avoid seeing that.

I like to see art instead, you know, whatever someone dies, maybe in RoboCop or something.

That's enough for me.

But now, not only through my work, but just casually, I wind up running into like legitimate snuff videos all the time.

And I can't even imagine what impact this is having on the psyche of young people.

It must be.

It's insane.

It's insane.

Like you literally watch Kirk's life escape from his eyes in the video And, and it's just, you know, it's, it's obviously traumatic for any person to just watch someone die like that.

So viral video Internet personality.

The Internet went batshit after Charlie Kirk was killed.

Reactions from all across media, social media, politics started pouring in.

Calls for retribution, all kinds of crazy rhetoric we're going to get into later.

But Needless to say, if you were online Wednesday, you heard about this.

They sent JD Vance, who claims a very close relationship to Charlie Kirk, out to retrieve the casket.

And he can kind of put aside things related to a 9/11 memorial.

And then, you know, as you, as you heard in the opening audio, Orange Chito Drumf made his statement.

And then then he showed up at the 9/11 event in, you know, in Manhattan the next day, and it looked like his face was sliding off of his skull.

I don't really understand what happened there.

Like, the face looked normal a little bit later.

I don't know what's going on.

Why sometimes Trump shows up looking like a sort of wet Purdue chicken, uncooked Purdue chicken one day.

And then the next day he looks normal.

And then sometimes his face looks like it's sliding off.

And then I don't know what's going on.

But when Laura Loomer saw the picture of Trump with his face sagging, she said about it.

Poor President Trump, he looks so sad today.

Well, the next day he didn't look so sad.

He was at Yankee Stadium doing the YMCA dance.

And then on Friday when we're recording this, he said this was just such a bizarre response.

So a reporter asked him, how are you holding up over the last 3 1/2 days?

And he said, you think very good.

And by the way, right there you see all the trucks, they just started construction of the new ballroom for the White House, which is something they've been trying to get, as you know, for about 150 years.

And it's going to be a beauty.

It'll be an absolutely magnificent structure.

I just think it's so great for, you know, it just says, or rather it says so much about mega that like every all these people and will play that are like screaming online.

People are flying.

They are like, you know, they're just posting these long emotional threads about Charlie Kirk.

And then you have like the center of the movement, like the big, you know, the big, the big Trump and he you know, and he's most more interested in trucks.

Like he's like 1/3 grader, like, you know, playing in the sandbox.

So like I said at the top of this episode, we are recording this on September 12th.

And as of the time we're recording, this is what we know and what we don't know about the shooting.

The situation is still fluid.

It is still breaking news.

By the time, you know, even just in the hours between when we record this and when it is posted, more information may come to light.

So we're not going to spend too much time on it.

But here is what we know as of now.

We know that a 22 year old named Tyler Robinson was detained as a suspect.

According to police, he confessed to killing Kirk to his father, who turned him into the police.

We know that there is a photo of him wearing a Trump themed Halloween costume in 2017.

We know that he was apparently a video gamer.

We know that the four bullets that were found with the rifle used to kill Kirk had messages on them.

The bullet that was fired read notices bulges.

OWO.

What's this?

Which I've read is like, I guess a meme from the furry community?

I don't know.

This is a level of.

This is a level of online that I don't get into.

On the bullets that were not fired, the messages hey fascist catch up arrow right arrow 3 down arrows appeared which is a reference to a video game calling in an air strike.

I think it's hell.

Diver 2 is the video game.

Another bullet said oh Bella chow Bella chow Bella chow chow chow.

The third one read.

If you read this you are gay LMAO.

What we don't know is what the suspects possible motive could have been.

We don't know anything specific about his political ideology or pretty much anything else.

Right.

And there is already, I've seen just a lot of like, and we'll get into this, just a lot of like reckless quote UN quote analysis of these 4 messages of saying people on the left saying this is proof he was a griper, he was a Nicholas Fuentes fan, which I haven't seen anything that actually supports that.

And then the right is saying this is proof he was antifa.

He was a radical left killer.

Wait, wait, wait, Do you?

Or do you mean to say that Andy knows journalism may be in some way rushed or flawed?

I can't.

I can't imagine.

I would never say that about such a dear friend of the show, but yes, I am saying that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So people on the right are claiming, oh, this is proof that he's antifa far left, whatever.

But.

But I think, you know, with the video game reference mixed in here and it's just I don't think this is enough to make a call, you know?

So a lot of things are still just totally up in the air.

There's a lot of people mistaking their speculation or their assumptions.

A lot of, you know, mistaking them for reality and a whole host of people online that are stepping into the void and proclaiming that they are, you know, some expert code breaker or decoder that will, you know, that holds all the answers here of definitive proof that your political opposition is responsible.

And I would just caution all of our listeners about trusting people like that.

It's maybe not a nice thing to say, but fuck those people.

It creates confusion and it it doesn't really help anybody.

That's all I'll say about that.

Posting through it is the most trusted name in news, of course.

After Charlie Kirk was killed on Wednesday, a wave of columns and tributes were published in mainstream media outlets that remembered a version of Charlie Kirk that simply never existed.

Many misrepresented Kirk's contributions to politics, and some went so far that I would say that they lied.

There was a piece by Ezra Klein, who I normally don't have much of an issue with a New York, you know, he's not somebody I read or follow, but seems pretty benign to me most of the time.

He published a piece in New York Times that said this Kirk was practicing politics in exactly the right way.

He was showing up to campuses and talking with anyone who would talk to him.

He was one of the era's most effective practitioners of persuasion.

Later on in the piece, he says, I did not know Kirk, obviously, and I am not the right person to eulogize him, but I envied what he built a taste for.

Disagreement is a virtue in democracy.

Liberalism could use more of his moxie and fearlessness, which is plainly bullshit, as as your Klein says.

Oh, I didn't know Charlie Kirk.

Yeah, obviously.

Dude, obviously.

Why even write this if you're going to say in the middle of it?

Like, I didn't really know much about him, but he was my hero.

Yeah.

In, in more or.

Less words, Yeah.

I mean, if you say I'm not the person to eulogize them and then you go to do it, I mean, you've already undercut the entire premise.

My favorite comment, you know, he he got, he got swarmed on blue sky.

My favorite 1 was a woman named going by Mabel who wrote I borrowed the phones of friends and family to submit a one star review of your podcast.

I, I, I don't know why it just it just hit me.

It was just, it was, it was like, it was great.

The Charlie Kirk Ezra described, and to be fair so many other mainstream media outlets described, was and is a total fantasy is it does not reflect what he contributed to American politics.

And with that kind of revisionist history clogging the mainstream press, I thought it would be important for us to take some time to really explain.

Who the hell?

Who the hell was Charlie Kurt?

Why are all these fucking things in Chicago?

I feel like everything you need to talk, you're like over flexing you.

You've been in Chicago only a few years and like always, you're becoming more Chicago every episode we do Ready.

OK, so Kirk came from privilege in the Chicago area?

It was technically Wheeling, which is a wealthy northern suburb of Chicago.

I play golf there sometimes.

It seems nice, but this podcast is going to have to do a whole lot better on Patreon before I think about moving up there.

You were at my wedding, Mike.

Remember where that was?

Yeah, I do.

Yeah, very well.

It's like directly West of there, like if you get on the road and triumph W, you go straight into Wheeling.

It's very white, although the demographics have changed.

We'll talk about that in a second.

And very wealthy.

So he was born in October 1993.

And so he was, he was a very young man when he died, and he got into politics in high school.

And this was a time when there were a lot of immigrants moving into the American suburbs.

There's a great 2022 profile of Kirk in Politico that was written by Kyle Spencer that I just want to shout out because a lot of the details that we we're going to share about his early life come from that profile.

And also Kyle Spencer rocks.

She has a book called Raising Them Right that covers TPUSA and youth conservative organizing generally.

It's fantastic.

You should go check it out.

As a teenager, Charlie Kirk was like a Reagan obsessed conservative who believed in small government, worried about the budget deficit, and had a preternatural interest in trickle down economics, this profile says.

The profile goes on.

It says Wheeling was doing its own adjusting after years of demographic change.

It had flipped just a year earlier from a mostly white school to a mostly black, brown and Asian one.

Kirk was a minority in his high school, outnumbered in classrooms, hallways and athletic fields by young people of color.

The profile goes on to note that Kirk spoke positively years later about diversity at his school when he was asked about it.

But if you know anything about who he became later, as we'll explain later, you'll kind of see how this sets him up.

I mean, if anything, if he had fond memories of the people he went to high school with, it makes it makes his life look worse to me.

So also from political.

It was at Wheeling High School where Kirk began to craft a political identity, poking at liberal teachers with whom he disagreed, dismissing some as postmodern neo Marxist.

He spoke up often in class, defending his then favorite economist, Milton Friedman, and promoting gun rights, once asking a teacher of guns make people violent, Do forks make people fat?

In class?

Other students said Kirk was often rude, making the atmosphere unsettling.

Despite his later assertions that liberals are condescending and intolerant of dissent, classmates said that it was Kirk who had a superiority complex and did not tolerate disagreement on issues he cared about.

So he graduated from high school.

He applied to West Point University, very, you know, prestigious, like Military Academy, college.

He was rejected and decided to skip college entirely.

The day that he graduated high school in 2012, he used money that he got as a graduation gift to launch the Turning Point, which is the organization that would later be called Turning Point USA.

The early days weren't so great.

They weren't going so well.

But he eventually connected with some older GOP donors that were connected to the Tea Party movement at the time who, who opposed Obama, right?

Just this was the conservative movement that just went gangbusters after Obama was elected in 2008 and reelected in 2012.

Many of these folks were in their 70s and 80s, and even they were not so keen on Charlie Kirk at first, according to this profile.

Because Charlie was so persistent and kept showing up and kept trying to, you know, connect with them, they were eventually won over by his persistence.

In 2012 he met Froster Friess, a religious ideologue and infamous mega donor to right wing groups who cut him a big fat check.

He started making connections with other elderly GOP donors in Palm Beach, FL who kept the dollars moving.

Politico.

It wouldn't be long before the Reagan loving kid from suburban Chicago wasn't just hitting up the rich for cash.

He was hanging with them at their sprawling vacation homes, hunting and fishing with them, attending their lavish birthday celebrations, and having God chat with them on their boats.

One fundraising executive almost twice Kirk's age recalls arriving at a a donor's beach house for a meeting, noticing Kirk pacing around the backyard on his cell phone.

He was there with a houseguest.

Kirk would soon be included in important strategy sessions with conservative power brokers desperate to overcome the Obama ISM and take back Washington in 2016.

These would happen in plush living rooms with expensive pieces of period furniture and museum great art, far from the MC Mansion dotted suburbs where Kirk had grown up.

I just want to say Kyle Spencer is such an amazing writer.

So the organization starting to get some cash from these older GOP donors who were freaked out by Obama started to grow, and Charlie Kirk's profile started to grow with it.

Initially Turning Point USA was hyper focused on college campuses, but it would expand into a digital media empire that invested enormous resources into pushing online political discourse further.

Right.

One of Turning Point USA is sort of flagship products in these early days was something called professor watch list.

It listed about 200 professors on its website.

But the end of its first year, these names were pulled from things like campus Reform, which is connected to the Leadership Institute discovered the Networks, which is run by David Horowitz.

And basically what this site did was it identified college faculty that it believed were promoting left wing ideologies to their students and raised a lot of concerns that, you know, the people on this list, we're going to get targeted.

They would call for these people to be fired over their political differences.

And you know it.

In some cases it resulted in some really ugly stuff being directed those professors ways.

Yeah, it it, it's important to note that TPSA knew that people were getting death threats and persisted with the list, right?

There was no decide to.

We're going to back down and soften this.

I also want to point out the mention of David Horowitz, who also had an influence on Stephen Miller and is a, you know, recently passed away.

You know, he is a person who had a tremendous amount of say over what became MAGA before MAGA existed.

And I just want to highlight that because his name comes up a lot as in as an influence on a lot of the people that we cover here.

So this this guy, Preston Mitchum was put on the professor watch list and and after Kirk died, he posted to Instagram.

I really want to be calm right now yet I simply find myself triggered.

But I'm learning more about why I don't trust many people and their so-called compassion.

And I know people like me, black queer progressive person who speaks out about white supremacist ideology often pay the highest cost for messages like this.

Did you post about the times he's incited violence or just at his death?

Kirk is the reason.

Charlie Kirk is the reason I was docs in 2018.

He and Turning Point USA put me on professor watch list for progressive views.

He's the reason for me previously receiving death threats.

He's the reason the police had to call me and ask if I needed an S word to class when I taught at Georgetown University Law Center.

If you are part of a marginalized community, he did not care about you.

He would not want for you and he very much believed you didn't deserve equal treatment.

For those of us who had personal experience with him and received his direct attacks and do not tell us how to feel.

He died in the world he wanted.

You'll never understand.

And he quotes.

I think empathy is a made-up new age term that doesn't does a lot of damage by Charlie Kirk.

So around 2016 at the RNC, Charlie Kirk also meets Donald Trump junior and they form a friendship.

But when he gave a speech there, he didn't really mention Trump.

He wasn't really into him at first.

But it's through Don Junior, apparently of all people, that one of the dullest minds in the history of our country that Charlie Kirk gets more into Trump and closer to it.

Kyle Spencer mentions in her book Raising the Right that Kirk fetch Don Junior's Red Bulls and Diet Cokes as they went to fundraisers.

Imagine doing that, by the way, Jared.

Oh.

Man, so the 20/17/2018 era era of Turning Point USA is one that would be parodied for years to come.

There they have the affirmative action bake sale.

As their branding says, Big Gov sucks, Big government sucks.

It's anti socialist slogan.

Hearing a lot of glad handing fundraising and tacky memes.

I'm sure most of our listeners have seen these.

You know, it's a photo of Charlie Kirk doing AI have no idea how to translate this to audio, but, you know, kind of a little gestures like, Oh yeah.

It's like, well, actually.

And it would have some little thing that it's like, you know, if big governments are so good, how come I have to wait in line at the DMV?

Checkmate, libs.

It would have the TPUSA logo on it, you know.

I need to, I need to jump in and ask you a question.

Remember there was like something where there was someone in a diaper, Yes.

Like not a TPUSA thing.

Yeah, it was.

It was at a TPAUSA campus event protest.

Not even a protest.

I mean, it was like a display they put up, right?

Charlie Kirk was not wearing the diaper, but it became like he became associated with it.

Of course, I mean, and these memes, like, like I said, they were parodied a lot and not just on the left, but on the right.

To another thing, if people who follow Charlie Kirk online are listening, you undoubtedly have seen images where people have gone in Photoshop and you know, making a joke about the size of Charlie Kirk's head shrink and reduce the size of his facial features, right?

Subtly like smaller and smaller and smaller each time until he just looks like cartoonish.

This is born out of that era.

This 20/17/2018 TPUSA.

It has a shit ton of money, but it is not popular.

Right.

This is a good time for you and I to talk about something which is so So both Jared and I were kind of, you know, we were reporting on this.

Jared kind of came up.

He was a like a young gone straight focused on the far right.

I came into it.

I was reporting out of India like I'd been a playwright.

It was like a long thing.

You know, we're sort of we came at the but we both were like descending on this material sort of at the same time in a weird way.

And I don't know if you remember this, but like, this is not just a leftist making fun of Charlie Kirk.

The right would make fun of Charlie Kirk.

He was a low, a low cow, a, a, a, a, a character you would milk for laughs.

We've talked, we've defined that on this podcast before.

But he was like I, I just remember him being someone who was just repeatedly mocked as being stupid, pathetic, a joke, not serious, from both sides.

Yeah, I mean, people that outflanked him to the right would just rail on him constantly for the fact that, you know, he was not, despite what a lot of these profiles and mainstream media would have you believe, was not this like, young gunner who, like, pulled himself up by the bootstraps and built something huge.

He was funded by really wealthy older people, a lot of them in West Palm Beach, which is also where Mar a Lago is.

They ended up being a very important part of the country in the last 10 years.

And, you know, he was the product of donor money.

Like, the reason Charlie Kirk became a known entity was because he had the backing of rich old people he befriended.

Like it wasn't.

Astroturfed.

Totally.

It was completely as it was an Azoturf operation and he was perceived as a loser, full stop.

That's what Charlie Kirk was in in 2017, 2020, 18 people made fun of him.

Neo Nazis made fun of him.

More conventional American mega fascists made fun of him.

Everyone on the left made fun of him.

People made memes about him.

People made fun of the diaper stuff.

It is just so funny to me to see these people like weepy eyed Ezra Klein like, you know, talk about it like he was a complete and total joke.

I will talk about how he pivoted into being having someone who had an organic audience, but it takes so many years for it to get there.

Yeah, yeah.

I mean, eventually he faked it until he made it, right?

Like, eventually his audience.

It was more fake than make.

It was more fake than make with Charlie.

But eventually he did get a sincere audience and use it to build sincere political connections, which we can start getting into.

So, yeah, so around 2019 he forms this sort of, you know, it's it's sort of like a, a, a kind of run the jewels of two right wing idiots.

It is like, it's like called Falkirk Center for Faith and Liberty.

And this is like a mix of him and like Jerry Falwell.

I'm like, do I have that right?

Yeah, going to the campus.

No, fuck it, I'm not going to do a rap parody here.

This is.

It'd be like, what would be like Holt Hayden be like, you know, I don't know, the Jared Hayden center of Justin.

Yeah, yeah.

And and and so like this is happening.

He's in pure locale mode and he goes on his little tours.

He's doing, he start, you know, he's been doing his little tours, his college campus tours, trying to lure in some folks, you know, young people.

It's not going super well, quite frankly.

It's it's it's doing.

And then he gets bombarded by a bunch of people who are followers of Nicholas J Fuentes.

Yeah, we have a Who the Hell is Nick Fuentes episode.

Go listen to that.

That'll tell you everything you need to know and stuff you wish you could forget about Nick Fuentes.

But we covered it on that one circa 2019.

Nick Fuentes, who you know, is a having a rising profile at this time, is getting sort of increasingly frustrated with the state of, you know, quote, UN quote, youth activism, youth organizing in the Conservative Party, of which all of the money, all of the attention, all of the credit is funneling its way towards Charlie Kirk by this time.

So he is showing up to Turning Point USA events when they deny him entry or kick him out, throws a big fit, whatever.

And then his fans go line up at these Q&A's at events that feature like Don Junior and stuff and start asking them question, trying to make, you know, it's like Charlie Kirk has to answer for Israel.

Charlie Kirk has to answer.

It is just like it drives them insane.

Yeah, Turning Point USA loses its God damn mind over this.

Yeah, I and I, I recall also, he was like someone sat next to him who was like a, a, you know, a person of color that became an issue.

Like he was associating with gay people.

He was trying to read.

He, you know, Kirk's idea was like, oh, I'll just, I got to talk to these millennials and, and, and whatever and Gen.

Z and, you know, they seem to, you know, when they, they don't, they don't like this white supremacist stuff.

Well, you know, Fuentes fans, you know, really shook him up on that.

And I want to point out that Charlie Kirk changed after this, after this, after this, after these like little tour where Fuentes supporters were harassing him, asking him questions.

So just following him everywhere.

He started to take a he, he put on an alpha mask.

He he started to make himself like look more tough, try to make himself more, to make himself less compassionate, less Mickey Mouse.

I mean, because Charlie Kirk was always kind of a soft boy, like a kind of a, a wimpy version of some of these extreme far right guys.

And I think that it was really important for him to put on a mask after this, after he took this public beating in front of his own audience.

So moving the clock ahead to 2020, post grip of war, Charlie Kirk is getting more and more access to the Trump administration, is proving himself to be a loyalist propagandist for them.

Starts Really.

You know, the way I described it, I went on The Real News Network into the panel with like Shane Burley and Natasha Leonard.

Basically like any sort of culture war issue, any kind of MAGA thing, no matter how unpopular, no matter how grotesque, he would Sprint toward it.

It was very much like him trying to prove himself and use the organization he built, even more so than in 2016, to support Trump and try to get him re elected.

Yeah, and as the MAGA movement became much more focused on race, well, I should say I should stop and say let's remind people of what happened in 2020.

First we had George Floyd murdered by police.

There were widespread anti racist protests, rioting.

It became the story of the year and.

It really impacted Trump and the MAGA movement.

That and the economy being dinged by COVID is staggering around trying to figure out how to respond to this.

The Rage Against Trump was so palpable.

We had protesters every day down there.

And so during that time, Kirk kind of joins the overall tone and start saying things like that Black Lives Matter is trying to start a race war.

Then when the election comes along, Turning Point USA is kind of at the front of the pack of election denialism after outlets start projecting that Trump had lost to Joe Biden.

Turning Point USA was a integral part of the Stop the Steel movement that ultimately culminated in the Capital riot.

Charlie Kirk and his organization were one of the first groups to to make a move and start organizing rallies.

The first one was in Phoenix, AZ on November 6th and Turning Point USA.

Even though Charlie wasn't at every single one of these events or whatever would continue to play a vital role in building and supporting the election denialist movement in this country.

Yeah.

And, and I think it's important to note that it's, it's one thing to be an influencer and and focus on that, but to throw your organizational weight behind what was ultimately an insurrection attempt is another thing.

And and it should not be forgotten that Kirk's, Kirk's participation in that and it should not also be that kind of minimized.

I mean, that's a huge deal to throw your organizational weight behind that.

Yeah, this this Ezra Klein column where he's like, oh, he was doing politics the right way.

And it's like, yeah, like disenfranchising people of their vote.

Are you fucking kidding me?

Sorry.

Sorry for the language, but it's just.

No, I mean.

Offensive.

It's offensive to me.

Well, we'll get into who we think he was, but I mean, it's absolutely like, this is, this is how you know that Maggie is a fascist movement and he was part of the organizational prowess behind that fascist movement, right?

The infrastructure.

So November 4th, 2020, here's what he said.

This is like when it's first sort of kicking off.

This is around the election, the election itself.

The most powerful media elites, tech companies and billionaires are trying to steal the election in front of your eyes.

That was Charlie Kirk setting the tone and following the tone that came from the White House.

To fast forwarding to the day of the Capitol riot, January 6th, 2021, Turning Point Action, the lobbying arm, the five O1 C4 wing of Turning Point sent 7 buses of people to the Capitol on January 6th.

That doesn't mean they started the riot.

I want to be clear, but Charlie Kirk was again at the front, front and center, helping support, helping get people on the ground for what would end up being one of the the most, you know, shocking days in American history where people broke into the Capitol and like I said earlier, to try to disenfranchise the votes of their fellow.

Citizens, hey, but Jared, he was doing politics the right way.

So Ali Alexander, how?

How many all like Ali Alexander?

Ali Alexander, what's up?

Where are we?

Come on.

I'm posting through it.

Ali.

Anyway.

Please don't.

No, actually, yeah, we all remember Ali Alexander.

He is a very strange individual.

We don't want to get into it, but he was he was really became the kind of the captain of of the stop the steel express for some reason.

I don't know how he wound up being the guy, but he was the guy.

Like holding the holding the the skull and crossbones into battle as he.

He kept walking around.

He did what like everybody in these spaces have done, including Kirk and Steve Bandit and all walking around being like, I'm the guy, I'm the guy, I'm the guy.

And then eventually, and then eventually the people around him were like, Oh yeah, he's the guy.

It's it is.

The movement is both dangerous and stupid.

That's that's why the podcast has its tone.

So here's Ali Alexander talking about what Kirk did during the insurrection.

You know, Charlie, my message to you is don't apologize, my friend.

Don't cut.

Don't be afraid.

You did so much work behind the scenes that you weren't given credit for.

And, you know, don't be ashamed of the buses.

In fact, I want to note that Charlie's participation and turning points participation in election denialism did not stop after the capital riot.

The organization would go on to throw its weight behind election denialist figures like Carrie Lake and to support all kinds of efforts to change rules and procedures around voting, agitating about these rules and procedures around voting to try to make it more difficult to vote.

And in 2021, how many people here are listening?

Remember Tucker Carlson still on Fox News, getting in trouble for promoting the white supremacist great replacement theory?

This was a lot of shit has happened, man.

Oh my God.

Well, I think we, I think we need to stop.

You're usually the one that says stop.

We got to explain something, but I'm going to do it this time.

Let's do it.

Can you explain what the Great Replacement theory is for people who aren't familiar with it?

Because I feel like, what if you like?

If we really unpack what it is it it's a lot easier to understand why this caused so many problems for Tucker and why it's so crazy that Charlie Kirk threw his weight behind it.

So, so you know, the old heads might have called it white genocide.

I'll do it in short terms without all the references to whatever this.

The simplest explanation of this is that there are white Western countries and there are elites, sometimes Jews, who are bringing importing dark skinned immigrants, be they brown or black, deliberately to defeat destroy the host nation, either through overpopulation or by creating mixed race children, etcetera.

So the idea is just weakening white people on purpose to eliminate their existence.

So Tucker Carlson got in trouble around 2021 for promoting this theory on his prime time slot on Fox News, which was the most watched cable spot at the time.

And Charlie Kirk said this.

Nothing he said there is controversial.

It's factual and it's true.

I think we should also explain that Great Replacement Theory has made a cameo appearance in countless racist mass murderers manifestos.

From the Christchurch killing to the, you know, Tree of Life to the El Paso shooting, there's too many to name.

White supremacist mass shooters have targeted people and carried out heinous acts to promote and in furtherance as a reaction to that conspiracy theory.

It has a bloody track record which Tucker and Charlie.

This was well established by the time they signed up.

Yeah, absolutely.

Later on he called George Floyd a scumbag and then he kind of capped that off by hiring 1 friend of the show.

And I would recommend you go to this Who the Hell is episode back in our back catalog.

He hired to TPUSA Jack pozobic and I always thought Jared went in hiring bumble Jack that that he was trying to reckon with the damage he suffered from Nick Fuentes followers that he was trying to give TPUSA an edge.

Give some give.

How about somebody who had some sort of touch with the Republican mainstream but also had been condemned for things like pizzagate remarks that were overtly racist, misogynist, and anti-Semitic?

Somebody who was safe enough for some Republicans but also considered a bad boy.

I think it's that and also the fact that as the years would go on, this sort of digital media empire side of Turning Point USA became bigger and bigger selling point like this, right?

This was something that they would pitch donors on, right?

It's we're going to college campuses and we're changing the conversation there supposedly.

But we're also online and look, we've got a billion engagements last quarter and, and we're getting the message out and we're testing ideas and blah, blah, blah, you know, whatever they would say.

And it's really like around this time this 2020-2021, the rest of this, we're going to have a lot of clips that we're going to play.

Because I think it it is probably best to let Charlie speak in his own words so that people can really hear what Charlie was about in 2021.

As members of school boards, we're getting all kinds of death threats and harassment around this time.

People might remember this was like at the height of, you know, critical race theory panic.

Oh my God.

They're teaching our children about race relations and, and systemic racism.

This must be stopped at all cost.

This is what he had to say.

And obviously these threats to school members is school members is horrible.

They're just doing their jobs.

This is this is such the this is exactly the playbook they use.

Do you understand?

I could go every single day and say hello, everybody, Charlie Kirk here, welcome on Friday.

Let's go through all the death threats that I received.

We all get death threats.

It's disgusting, it's vile.

It's also part of life.

Another thing that happens in 2021 is that Turning Point USA and Charlie Kirk give Kyle Rittenhouse the hero treatment.

Kyle Rittenhouse was the young man who went to a racial justice protest in Kenosha, WI armed and ended up shooting and killing people.

When he went to trial, he ended up being acquitted of the charges against him.

My opinion, purely my opinion, the prosecutors trying to charge him with too much and failed.

But that aside had him on the mainstage at Turning Point USA events.

He described Kyle Rittenhouse, somebody who killed their perceived political opponents in the street, as a hero to millions, and the crowd gave him a standing ovation.

This is a good opportunity to actually talk about these events a little bit.

They started to stage events like this, like, you know, regularly.

And they became bigger and bigger.

And they used to draw all the, you know, right wing names, everybody from Tucker Carlson eventually to whomever.

And they're like, rock concerts for people who can't listen to music because they're worried that the musicians all hate them.

It was like, no, it's true, you know?

It's it's the the same people that blast Rage Against the Machine and then they like learn what, like, I don't know, Tom Morello's about and they're like, oh, what the fuck, man?

Why does he?

Hate us lots of lights, pyrotechnics, loud music.

There are a lot of fun for people who are, you know, right wing and you know, like I said, it's a place to go for they're they're they're out of touch at A at like at at your typical Lollabalooza or whatever, but they're you know, this is a place where they they're they can really rock out with their favorite celebs.

So then you have.

Carl I mean, we choked on prior episodes, right?

It's like, you know the announcer, you know WWE style will be like.

Coming to the stage, meme Lord Benny Johnson.

And he'll be like sparklers.

And then he gets up there and he's just like, how many of y'all like memes?

So you got to imagine that it's not just he gets a hero's welcome, but there's like they introduced Kyle Rittenhouse and outcomes this sentient, this sentient Chicken Mcnugget comes out and, and is there where this is like Kyle in like big like with like explosions.

I mean, he was like you do this guy who, who, who shot and killed leftist, right?

He's he's been acquitted, but he shot and killed leftist and you're just like, like with these fireworks and all that stuff.

It's actually quite a grotesque display.

It was disgusting.

On that note, the next year, in 2022, when reacting to the attack on Paul Pelosi, the husband of Representative Nancy Pelosi, folks may remember this event.

Somebody broke into their home and attacked Paul Pelosi with a hammer, Kirk describes.

Says top Republicans reject any link between GOP rhetoric and Paul Pelosi assault.

Of course you should reject any link.

Why is the Republican Party, why is the conservative movement to blame for gay schizophrenic nudists that are hemp jewelry makers breaking into somebody's home or maybe not breaking into somebody's home?

Why are we to blame for that exactly?

And why is he still in jail?

Why is he not been bailed out?

By the way, if some if some amazing patriot out there in San Francisco or the Bay Area wants to really be a midterm hero, someone should go and bail this guy out.

I bet his bail is like 30 or 40,000 bucks.

Bail him out and then go ask him some questions.

Another quote from Charlie Kirk.

This one's in 2023.

I've seen this one getting a lot of play since Charlie was killed this week.

But but we're going to play here too.

This is Charlie saying that gun deaths are essentially a necessary evil of protecting the Second Amendment.

We we should have a honest and clear reductionist view of gun violence, but we should not have a utopian 1.

You will never live in a society when you have an armed citizenry and you won't have a single gun death.

That is nonsense.

It's drivel.

But I am I, I think it's, I think it's worth it.

I think it's worth to have a cost of, unfortunately some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment to protect our other God-given rights.

That is a prudent deal.

It is rational.

OK, so in 2023, Charlie Kirk brings on as a producer this guy named Blake Neff, who becomes a regular feature on his podcast.

And I think Neff was in Kirk's vicinity at the time he was shot.

So for people who don't remember, in 2020, CNN published Blake Neff's identity after it was found that he was on all these forums posting horrible racist bullshit.

And he happened to be, at that time, 1 of Tucker Carlson's main writers.

So it was the first time I think, that anybody could really pinpoint this thing that people thought about in the culture with Tucker Carlson, that he was a white supremacist, that he was, you know, that he was a racist, that he was, that he was too dangerous for TV.

So you'd think the Neph would kind of disappear into nothing.

But Kirk kind of redeems him and makes him a feature on his podcast.

And this now combined with Jack Pozobic, shows a sort of pattern of redeeming, helping long or bringing into the culture people who have extreme racist beliefs.

Charlie is using his influence to rehabilitate people associated with white nationalism and other racist beliefs.

Charlie Kirk is also circa 2023 starting to lead in a lot harder to his own beliefs about race.

He caught some Flack after he said this about the 1965 Civil Rights Act.

We made a huge mistake when we passed the Civil Rights Act in the 1960s.

Kirk said that he thought the law brought in a quote UN quote permanent bureaucracy that promoted diversity and inclusion, which he didn't like.

And he also said that Martin Luther King Junior, the civil rights icon, was awful and not a good person.

Not great, right?

Not great.

Nobody.

I guess he was doing politics the right way, Jared.

So I think this is important.

This is another sort of big picture thing to have here at the run this time.

I've sometimes referred to, I don't know, I like on this podcast and stuff that there's like sort of three Trump terms, right?

There was, there was, there was the first Trump term.

Then there was Biden, which was the dark Trump where Trump was the much bigger figure than Biden.

But it was like he's a shadow character and everything was really about him and his his crimes and everything else.

And now we have this one.

Well, during that time, there was a there was a moment when it looked like Trump was really going to be kicked to the curb and very few people were willing to stand behind him actually.

And Kirk was one of the few people to go down to Mar a Lago and like actually take a picture with Trump.

At that time, he was ride or die for Trump.

And I think that's a really important thing because the turn in his career that happens next kind of goes in concert with Trump's, you know, sort of almost miraculous rise from the dead, his sort of his his cultural redemption.

If I mean, if you can use those words that sort of propelled him to power on.

On November 5th, 2024, Charlie Kirk goes from this Astroturf performer that we've talked about backed by all these billions of dollars to a sort of viral TikTok, YouTube shorts, Instagram clip type guy by doing these debates with college age women.

Mostly it was it was sort of like they would ask him a question, then he would have this ready for social media response.

And for the first time, Kirk goes from, you know, to sort of a zero to hero thing on the right.

People start to take him more seriously and it becomes a much more organic fan base.

I would recommend anybody to read Madeline Peltz's obituary she wrote for her Substack.

I thought it was better than any of the ones for major papers.

But it really captures is that this guy all of a sudden became this really genuine phenomenon.

And I think I would like to take a different tone here as we get towards the end because I didn't even catch on to it at first.

It was, you know, because I was still thinking about him in terms of those memes about him in 2018.

But he really all of a sudden, alongside the rise of, you know, Trump's rise from the dead, becomes a viral superstar.

And with all that extra attention, you know, he continued to get in trouble for comments that he would make.

In 2024, he caught some Flack after he suggested that black pilots were to blame for a spate of plane crashes.

Let it happen.

And that's why I think this United story in the DEI story hits so hard because we've all been in the back of a plane when the turbulence hits or when you're flying through a storm and you're like, I'm so glad I saw the guy with the right stuff in the square jaw get into the cockpit before we took off.

And I feel better now.

Think I.

Mean like you want to go thought crime, like I'm sorry.

If I see a black pilot, I'm going to be like, boy, I hope he's qualified.

That's pretty disgusting.

In 2024, he also said, you know, he made a comment that children should have to watch public executions.

This is the exact quote.

Super Bowl thing and you read off what they did.

You don't celebrate it, you know you don't.

You just say look, this is what they did and if you do this, this will be your fate.

Ready, set, go boom, end of life and say guillotine.

I just air straight used to be a whole TV show, but like this is this is a question for everybody.

Here's a question for anyone that might be, you know, not persuaded.

Would crime go up or down?

After flooding in Texas this summer killed over 130 people, Charlie Kirk blamed that on DEI.

That was the thing that everybody on the far right was using at that time.

But this, you know, the subtext of that is just black people did it.

Yeah, and I should also say he did the same thing regarding the fires in Los Angeles.

You know, as people were scared for their lives, for their communities, he took the opportunity to bash on queer people and people of color.

Also earlier this year, after the murder of a Minnesota politician, Kirk lied.

He blamed anti Trump protesters.

That's not what happened.

Before we go to a bigger discussion about what we thought of Kirk, I think the last like really big cultural moment he had was the fact that South Park parodied him.

Yeah, I mean, I will tell you, I was sitting, I was watching that episode with my older son and I was just like, I remember just being completely shocked that that they were talking about Charlie Kirk.

Not because like, you know, I I've been reporting on this material for so long and you know, it's just somebody that I've seen before or whatever.

It's just more that it was like Charlie Kirk.

It was like I was like that loser.

I was like, I couldn't even, but you know, I mean, I just couldn't it, it just completely shook my head up.

And that's what I said, like what I said about the change.

I I had not occurred to me because I was I'm not a big TikTok person.

How popular Kirk had gotten organically and, and, and so quickly.

I mean, it just it, it really was a very rapid rise to to super stardom or near super stardom that happened over a very brief period of time.

And then somebody shot him.

Because people have different beliefs.

It's not about belief, it's about truth.

Science confirms life begins at conception.

So yes, Jeremiah 15 says before I formed you in the womb, I knew you.

But it's just morality that demands we protect the most vulnerable.

So let me ask you, when do you think life begins?

Eric, are you all right in there?

Yeah, I'm fine, Mom.

I'm just in here masturbating.

Look, Eric, that's enough.

Let's get out of the bathroom.

I can't, Mom.

I'm masturbating to these young college girls.

That's very naughty, Eric.

Stop it.

Mom.

I finally got sponsored by a protein powder, so I got a masturbate for a couple more hours.

Leviticus 9/1 through eight.

Let me alone.

All right, Jared, let's talk about some of the reactions to Charlie Kirk's death before we get into those important questions about who we thought he was as a person, what his influence will be going forward, and.

Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of reactions to talk about.

I mean, there has been no shortage of people who have tried to turn this gruesome murder of Charlie Kirk into content.

Everybody has a statement.

Here's some of what friend of the show Stephen Miller said.

This is just part of what he said.

He kept going and going too, too long to read.

There is an ideology that has steadily been growing in this country which hates everything that is good, righteous and beautiful and celebrates everything.

It is warped, twisted and depraved.

It is an ideology at war with family and nature.

It is envious, malicious and soulless.

It is an ideology that looks upon the perfect family with bitter rage while embracing the serial criminal with tender warmth.

OK, that's insane.

By the way, he sounds like Travis Bickel.

You know, I my, my thought about this is like, soulless from Stephen Miller.

Yeah.

My thought as you were reading that was I want to start a GoFundMe so we can send Stevens Thesaurus on a well deserved vacation because this is like classic like bad writer trying to be a good writer thing but.

What I like about some of his word choices, like malicious and soulless, I mean, if I were to like, thank you, those just follow my love.

You're going to ask me like two ways to describe Stephen Miller.

That's it, baby.

So a lot of the reactions to Charlie Kirk's death were just really over the top performative.

Mike, you found this clip of somebody just, you know, I just want to say, like, she might be genuinely upset about Charlie Kirk being killed.

If you were a fan of his, of course you would be is.

I think this captures like the tone of a lot of reactions.

Fucking animals you.

Liberal progressive deranged fucking animals.

You are so.

Hateful.

In your hearts to go out and shoot a young man who's never herded anyone with Christian values a young beautiful family a father a husband, a friend, a son you shot him why because you didn't agree with his politics because you didn't agree with his ideology.

That's the reason why he deserves to die.

You fucking.

What I think is interesting about that clip is also she's.

Her makeup is like all she's, you know what I mean?

Everybody is seems like they're I leave open the possibility that they are really feeling this and it's not it.

Not everything is insincere, of course, but they're doing their make up.

They're they're making their they're trying to perform this grief publicly for like subscribes.

And it's and that's why all these shooters mass shooter assassin doesn't matter are always performing for the Internet in the 1st place.

Yeah, and they're performing for other mass shooters.

And it's like, it is.

It is death as entertainment, which is one of the more disturbing parts of this.

But yeah, every Matt Walsh and even Nick Fuentes, you know, has been getting weeping and doing content.

I mean, I find it completely impossible to know whether these.

Influencers were being sincere or insincere, but I'll tell you that Nick's blubbery monologue was among the most inauthentic seeming things I have ever seen.

The guy is basically, he was, he was just crying about Charlie Kirk, the same guy who he has almost made half of his name off of deriding.

It was like, oh, you know, he was so talented.

We had some disagreements.

And it's like, you know what?

I what I, what I was reading into it and I really think Nick is really sociopathic.

That's just my analysis of Nick.

You know, he's adapting.

There's a couple things going on.

One, I think all these influencers are scared.

They're scared out of their minds and they're scared for not just because Charlie Kirk was shot and they watched the bullet go through him and they're also influencers, right?

It is also, yes, the celebration of Kirk's death.

The fact that the tone out there is like really without compassion that people are celebrating it or whatever.

And they are coming face to face with the fact that if someone shot them, if someone gagged him in the neck, you know, and he was, you know, and, and whatever, he knows that there would be people celebrating, that people would be having parties over it.

And it must be like extremely scary for him.

That and also he now needs to pivot.

He needs to pivot into a thing that is like, you know, where he's not going to get blamed for shooting.

Yeah.

And Charlie was a.

Kingmaker of online influence you know Turning point USA devoted.

As I said earlier, a profane amount of resources, not just financial, but otherwise into identifying up and coming influencers that could be used for the conservative movement and building their careers, right?

I mean, he was one of the most visible online people towards the end of his life in the conservative movement and now there's a vacuum.

So I also think part of this, you know, and again, some of it may be sincere.

He was also very well connected and had a a lot of friends in the movement.

So a lot of it could be sincere.

I want to say that.

But there's also a void that needs to be filled, right.

And, and part of this is, I am sure, even if it's subconscious, like these guys are thinking about how do I posture myself in a way where I could have a shot at the crown?

Yeah.

Look, it's very difficult to take.

People of someone of Nick Fuentes character or a person of Matt Walsh's character, a person who had character, it's like it's, you know, he, he's, he's such an he, he's a, he's a person who, you know, deserves very little respect for just the way he treats people publicly to all of a sudden be like, oh, Oh my God, now, now, now we need to worry about, you know, how people are treated and all this.

I mean, you do nothing but pump violent to the world, right?

That is, that's your entire thing is to dehumanize people, to belittle women to to stigmatize Jews in Nick's case, in Matt Walsh's case, anti black racism, misogyny and and and transphobia.

You mean it's not even, I mean to, you know, really to treat trans people as if they as if they deserve nothing in this world, you know, and all of a sudden I'm supposed to like take you seriously when you're like, Oh my God, you know, what is the world come to?

I mean, that is the tone that they're trying to sell.

And I'm sorry, it's just very difficult to buy it.

So we can't cover every single reaction.

There was, there were too many, but a big theme and you heard it in the opening clip from Trump before they even had a suspect identified.

Hell, before they even said they had a suspect and had to correct themselves that they didn't have a suspect.

The reflex was to blame the quote UN quote radical left.

And now that they've got a suspect, they're still not giving it up.

You know, this person that they arrested, I got to say, man, it's like obviously his sentiment was clear.

He didn't like Charlie Kirk.

He killed the man, but what he wrote on his bullets, you know, there's not much of an online footprint to speak of.

It's like gamer shit.

It's weird, it's confusing.

A lot of people just don't understand it.

And it is a blank canvas that people are projecting onto.

And I don't think for a second, I don't think even if they had arrested somebody and it turned out he was a fucking neo Nazi psycho, that they would have given up This the radical left is, is responsible talking point.

Yeah.

And one of the big things that sort of.

Coalesced around is this idea that now MAGA is going to through the federal government, clamped down on nonprofits, journalists, anybody who labels people fascists with the idea that this would have prevented Charlie Kirk's death somehow, that somehow by accurately describing someone's ideology, you are putting a target on them, right?

And so we heard Jack Pozobic saying that that was going to be the case on Fox News.

Laura, this won't stop until it stopped.

How many?

More of these political assassinations, political violence incidents.

Do we have to see until it stopped?

We need justice for Charlie Kirk.

We need justice for all victims of these incidents.

And absolutely the families need to see that actions are being taken at the national and federal level, task forces or whatever they need to do to put the resources in that stop the perpetuation of these types of acts of violence.

Anyone funding this and funding this type of rhetoric that?

Everyone's Hitler and a dictator, and there's never going to be another democracy if this guy wins every.

All of that, all of that has to stop.

Jack, thank you very much for joining us.

You've also heard remarks like this from from people like Chris Ruffo.

And then there's this tweet that you found, Mike from Lomez, who I don't think we've mentioned on this show before.

Can you give a quick rundown of who he is?

Yeah, I mean, he's the guy behind Passage Press, which is a book that.

Publishes a lot of extreme far right and, and, and sometimes overtly racist or fascist books.

And this guy, I'm going to read the tweet.

It's actually a friend of the show, Hannah Gase.

Found it.

Quote.

Really trying to refrain myself from saying what needs to be done to every journalist and media platform that has casually accused everyone to the right of 2008 Barack Obama of being a fascist.

And then he he hits the return key a couple times and writes a hard rain period.

Oh, is it so fucking tough, Lomez?

Yeah, Come and get us, dude.

We're not going to stop.

Like, call this out, right?

I, I mean, you got to be kidding me, dude.

This is such bullshit of like, you know, if you, like you said, accurately describe somebody's views, you're doing violence to them is just intellectually insulting.

It's also just so soft and cowardly, right?

I mean, we got to arrest you for calling me a fascist.

Oh my God.

And these are the same people, these exact same people.

Will turn around and now the other side of their mouth tell you that the left is full of demonic child abusing psychopath killers that have to be stopped at every turn right.

So which is it?

Which is it?

Is that kind of rhetoric you know where going to jail?

Or is it not?

Because if it is, these are some of the first guys that should be thrown in the brink.

Yeah, well, I am here not casually calling Lomez a fascist.

Right now.

So yeah, as you said, come get it.

And the last reaction, just for comedy, just for comedy's sake.

Jared Jackson Hinkle, How would you describe this gentleman?

I would rather.

Not honestly.

Jackson Hinkle is jeez, man, where'd it begin?

So he I think what's difficult with Jackson Hinkle is you it, it takes.

Research to actually determine whether he's a real person.

Right.

Like, it's almost like you're like, oh, wait, that's an actual guy in there.

Yeah, yeah, he's a, he's a far right figure.

Who channels the rhetoric of the left has been criticized on several occasions for pushing Russian propaganda.

Just a bizarre, bizarre figure.

He may.

He may also have some ties to Middle Eastern countries.

I I he's been randomly appeared in places like Yemen, you know, based upon his his timeline, he's very anti Israel is part of his thing and he's been doing a lot of engagement some of his engagement just like like just a basic scan looks like it's astroturfed in some way.

Yeah.

I mean, he does the kind of thing where he.

Like criticizes Israel, but then you know, takes it to anti-Semitic step where he like equates Judaism with Israel.

Like like those are the same things, right?

And it's like if Israel does something bad, Jews are bad, which is which is just vile and for people who support the cause of Palestinian freedom.

He is not helping.

That's my review.

As someone who expresses solidarity with that movie, I think that's putting that lightly.

But what did Jackson Hinkle have?

To say, he said, quote, Israel killed Charlie Kirk.

It is time to label Israel as a terrorist state.

Well, I don't think that one's true.

And that's why I said you're not helping.

Yeah, Charlie Kirk was a huge.

Pro Israel person.

So that doesn't even make sense.

Yeah, I think, I think part of the conspiracy comes from the idea that.

The the from anti semites that Kirk was noticing in the you know noticing is usually yeah, noticing is like.

A meme that anti semites semites.

Use where where the idea that it's you start to see patterns in like that they're oh, there's there's all these people with Jewish names at a media organization or whatever you're noticing right.

And so there was a, you know, an idea that Kirk had made comments that were, how would you describe it, just sort of like, you know, critical of, of Jewish influence or something like that.

And Israel had picked up on it and wanted him out.

I really don't think so.

Everything I know about Charlie Kirk suggests to me that he was a Christian Zionist.

OK, so here's a question for you, Jared.

Who do you think will take over at TPUSA with Kirk no longer in the picture?

You know, it's, it's really hard to say.

Turning Point USA, as I mentioned earlier, has cultivated this roster of influencers like, you know, the Benny Johnson's, the Jack Pozobic.

So there's just too many to name that, you know, this organization has put its way behind and turned into stars.

So, I mean, I, I guess a lot of them could, but I don't know that any of them can really do what Charlie Kirk did, right.

I, I, I think the biggest personality at that organization besides Kirk at the moment is probably Jack Posobik.

And the thought of him taking over the reins should terrify everybody.

But I don't know if that'll happen because Jack carries a lot of baggage with him.

But does that even matter anymore?

I don't know.

I don't think that, you know, I'm going to disagree with you.

I don't think that there's any.

Way Jack can do it for one thing, he's extremely let in right.

If you hear him talk and stuff like that he it's like a complete dial tone.

Charlie had a Mickey Mouse like enthusiasm that he brought to his events and an upbeat persona.

Jack is dark, menacing.

When you you see him on Fox News and he's talking about this, Everything's about retribution.

I mean, the guy, the guy has been associated with all kinds of white supremacists and neo Nazis.

Never mind that that would be OK.

It's also the fact that he was willing to do it.

It's like it.

It says something about his personality.

And I just think that Jack is too.

His tone is too dark.

Let in one note.

He's not somebody.

He doesn't inspire excitement.

I I have a little quick Jack pozobic anecdote.

Outside of the courthouse where Trump was getting charged for that hush money thing, there was an event that I went to go cover and there were people protesting etcetera.

Marjorie Taylor Green came and there was this huge crowd for Marjorie Taylor Green and it was the selling thing was, was her and Jack and she came out.

She brought this huge crowd for her to talk for a few seconds and then left.

And when she left, the crowd sort of dissipated.

And then it was just Jack and he was talking in front of just a handful of people because people didn't really care.

And there was just this one red faced guy with a, with a slack jawed, looking completely stupid with a, with a red Trump hat.

I mean, I, I, I, I can share a picture with you because I took it.

But the I mean, I was like, that's the target Jack pozobic guy.

Some, you know, human ham with a with a Red Hat on and what these there there are not enough of these people who like Jack to just sort of propel this forward.

And if they go with Jack, it's going to be a big mistake.

I think it's a possibility that they will go with Erica Kirk, his wife, who is who.

They for a while were I think, trying to cultivate as a kind of little reality show drama kind of thing, like a married couple that goes everywhere and and whatever.

I think she would be the type of person who should have his name, something like that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That could make a lot of sense.

It's hard to imagine, but I guess we'll find out in the weeks ahead.

Here's another question on that note, which is do you?

Think the TPSA will survive?

That's a good question because so.

Much of why, you know, I, I think the question is did TPUSA become bigger than Charlie Kirk?

And I'm not sure what the answer to that question is, if I can be perfectly honest.

You know, as we covered the early days of of Kirk's time building TPUSA was entirely reliant on the fact that he befriended these elderly mega donors, right?

But now turning point USA is like completely woven into the conservative establishment.

It has infrastructure, it has who knows how many employees, a big headquarters.

You know, I I don't know, does it survive?

I'm not sure.

Does it kind of fall to the side?

I don't know.

But yeah, the question is, does, you know, like I said, did Turning Point USA get bigger than Kirk or was it the Kirk project or is it going to be like something similar to Project Veritas?

Remember, you know, the undercover group that goes in secret, you know, gets tender dates with like people that work at Google or for Congress or federal agencies and secretly records them saying mean things about Trump or whatever.

When they ejected James O'Keefe, I mean, that organization is still going, but James O'Keefe was that organization.

What I was going to say in response to that.

That's a really interesting that you.

Brought that up is there's a sort of truism which is organizations rarely survive the exodus of a founder I think it it's very challenging because they inhabit a certain personality and if you look at SPLC, which obviously I have quite a bit of experience with Morris Dees was the founder of SPLC and once Morris Dees was kicked out of the organization it went on but if the influence of SPLC and it's it's organizational prowess and stuff like that started to decline and I witnessed it first hand and yeah and and and and.

So my prediction of this is that TP.

USA will carry on and they're going to make a big thing about launching their brand or whatever, but I don't think that there's any way that it will carry on with the same degree of influence.

I don't see anybody being able to step in.

I mean, you're, you're asking, it's like asking Nirvana to carry on without Kurt, Kurt Cobain and someone else stepping in to do those vocals or something like that.

With the, with the difference being that Nirvana made some good albums, the the IT, I just don't see someone being able to do that in those debates and those shows and those viral things were just so important to TPSA.

So on that note, Mike, I think.

We should in this episode, the way we do all The Who the Hell Is episodes, even if this is a Who the hell was, Who the hell was Charlie Kirk?

After everything we've covered here, everything we've gone over, what was your take?

I think like most people caught up.

In the mega world he became a fascist.

He was a relentless, hard working fascist.

But that's not something we need to credit in any positive way.

He was not a particularly brilliant thinker.

They will be using clips of him for as long as we're alive, I think online, but that doesn't mean that he was a particularly eloquent speaker.

He was very hard working and he was very good at organizing.

He was very, very good at organizing.

And and just because he got money handed to him doesn't mean he didn't spend it in a way that benefited this MAGA fascist push.

So who do you think, Charlie?

Kirk was who the.

Hell was Charlie Kirk, so I think that you know one of the.

Sort of recurring themes that I saw in a lot of mainstream press that made me want to do what would Alex Jones call it?

You know, like emergency broadcast, you know, push an episode out.

Early and.

For us to, you know, scramble and get this together was this idea that Charlie Kirk was a victim of this country's, you know, problems of political division and violent rhetoric.

And sure, he was.

But he was also a huge part of the problem.

He helped create and popularize the same things that seem to eventually spin back around and cause an end to his life.

And I don't say that to mean that I think he had it coming.

I don't say that to dance on a dead man's grave.

I say that because that's the truth.

Charlie Kirk was part of this country's problem.

Charlie Kirk was a huge figure that got our country to the state that it's in today.

He was not a luminary.

He promoted all kinds of racist rhetoric, bigotries towards every minority group under the sun, conspiracy theories.

He built his career promoting contempt for this country.

He was not a patriot.

He was anti patriotic or non patriot, whatever that the word is for it.

He's traitorous.

He built his name and.

Wielded the influence.

That he gained to try to undermine the premise of this country and to disenfranchise and make life more difficult for most of the people that live in it.

So the fact that flags are flying at half mast for this guy I find grossly offensive.

And I have no, you know, rah rah support the troops kind of guy.

But it's just grow it.

It just feels deeply inappropriate to me.

And then I also think it's telling the fact that on all these cable news programs and stuff, remembering Charlie Kirk, none of them, you know, very few of them actually played any clips of what this guy was about or, or what this guy said.

But all of that said, as as horrible as he was and as horrible as the way he died was, I think the fact that we've seen such a big reaction to his murder across the political spectrum in every facet of media is a testament to the empire that he built and the impact that he had on American politics, even if most of it was for the worst.

And I think that's where we're going to leave it today.

We're going to talk more about what we think this shooting will mean going forward, what we might expect to see in the aftermath of it on our episode for Patreon supporters next week.

You can go to our Patreon page is down in the description if you want to hear that.

But otherwise, I think we're going to wrap up here.

Does this seem like a good place to stop Mike?

Yeah.

I mean, it's going to, it's a conversation that's going to keep going.

Over the course of episodes, you know, sporadically, because this is a really big event for us.

But for now, everybody, just be careful what you post.