Who Is To Blame for All the Political Violence?

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Just a couple of different random Charlie Kirk thoughts as
the shooter, the alleged shooter was taken into custody today.
In fact, his father turned him in, and it seems
to be exactly what kind of everyone guessed it was

(00:20):
going to be.

Speaker 2 (00:22):
It was a.

Speaker 1 (00:24):
Very liberal guy who disagreed with Charlie Kirk. He wrote,
I mean, as if to eliminate any possible question about
his motives for the shooting. He wrote various kinds of
left wing messages, engraved them on the bullet casings that

(00:47):
were recovered by police, various kinds of Antifa and other
sort of messages that clearly indicative of this is a
left wing person who dislikes Charlie Kirk because of Charlie
Kirk's views and killed him for it. All right now,
I have a couple of different thoughts on this, just

(01:09):
over the last twenty four hours of sort of talking
with more people about it. Here's the first thought, which
is that this is gonna change. This is not a
nine to eleven level event. I'm not gonna say that
it's a different kind of thing. Obviously, it's a much
smaller scale. It's one person dying, not thousands of people dying.

(01:33):
It's not gonna lead to a geopolitical turmoil for the
next two decades for the United States. Okay, I'm not
saying that, but it's gonna change a lot of things permanently.
And one of the things that's gonna change is on
campus speech. And maybe the combo of this plus Trump's

(01:55):
near assassination in Butler last year, it's possibly just gonna
change outdoor political rallies like forever. And I mean the
Charliekirk event wasn't even really an outdoor political rally. It
was a outdoor Charlie Kirk sits around and debates people
event on a college campus. But let's think about this

(02:17):
a couple of ways. Okay, Logistically, if you have the
thought that shooters are likely to be around who on
top of a building somewhere or whatever, Charlie Kirk didn't
stand a chance. The guy was using, you know, in response,

(02:39):
by the way, to all the morons who were saying, well,
you know, he didn't support gun control, so this death
is on him. Literally, unless you take the position that
the only acceptable view on gun control is absolutely no
guns whatsoever. There's no gun control measure that would have
possibly prevented this short of complete confiscation of all guns

(03:03):
from American society. This was a bolt action I'm not
a gun guy, so if I mis describe it, you know,
gun people, feel free to let me know. But my
understanding was this was a bolt action rifle, not a
semi automatic rifle where you can go just take the

(03:26):
trigger and boom boom, boom, boom boom, just keep pulling
the trigger. You have to pull the thing back and
load it. So a bolt action rifle, the kind that
you could use for hunting, et cetera. It didn't have
a high capacity magazine. It wasn't even a semi automatic weapon,

(03:50):
let alone an automatic weapon. It's the exact kind of
gun that liberals who advocate for gun control say, well,
you know, we don't mind, you know, someone having a
hunting rifle, but what we're talking about our military style
weapons like an AR fifteen, even though like AR fifteen's
are a very common hunting rifle, but it's like the

(04:11):
most common. It's the the gun that people describe when
they say I support gun control. But you know, obviously
this kind of gun would be okay. So with that
simple of a gun at two hundred yards. Charlie Kirk

(04:36):
is toast. And if the shooter who went after President Trump,
who I think similarly had a fairly commonly available rifle,
if that shooter had been a little a little bit
more experienced with firearms, President Trump would likely be dead.

(04:57):
President Trump, when he was shot in Butler, Pennsylvania, had
a layer of Secret Service protection. It wasn't the full
presidential compliment because he was given the level of, I
guess a lesser level of Secret Service detail that a
former president gets. But he had secret Service detail. A

(05:19):
conservative speaker coming to a college campus doesn't have the
Secret Service. That's not possible. And I'm just afraid that
these kind of events like the one with Charlie Kirk
are just not going to happen anymore. Why Well, because
colleges and universities already are inclined not to host them.

(05:45):
College and university administrations are dominated by liberals. They already
chaf at the idea that the First Amendment requires them
At public universities anyway, they chaf under the idea that
the First Amendment requires them to allow people like Charlie
Kirk to speak. There's been a whole cottage industry in
the last fifteen years of people like Ben Shapiro or

(06:07):
Charlie Kirk or whatever having student groups invite them to speak,
the college university gives some bs reason for not letting
them speak, and then the conservative groups suing the college
or university for violations of their First Amendment rights. That's
been a whole cottage industry the last fifteen years. These
colleges and universities don't want to host Ben Shapiro, Charlie Kirk, etc.

(06:30):
Anyway they are forced to do so by the First Amendment,
or at a private university by some sort of shame
at wanting to respect freedom of speech principles. So they
shamefacedly allow someone to the right of Hillary Clinton to
appear as a guest speaker. But now they have a

(06:51):
non political reason to stop allowing these events. Safety, and
it's a real reason. Now, how do you secure if
you think a shooter could be there? How the heck
do you secure an event like the one Charlie Kirk
was at. Here's Kirk at It seems like he was

(07:11):
on like a campus quadrangle. The guy could have been
like two hundred two football fields away if he had
a scope in any decent amount of firearms training. Yeah done.
I haven't heard someone sort of indicate okay, yeah he
got shot in the neck. Probably because I was two
hundred yards away. This power this you know, power of rifle.

(07:32):
Uh probably was aiming for Charlie's head, bullet dropped a
bit hit him in the neck.

Speaker 2 (07:41):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (07:41):
So I think this is gonna change on campus events forever. Certainly.
I think it's you're gonna see a lot more college
colleges in the university saying well, we can't secure an
event like that, and it's gonna be somewhere between a
BSA answer and actually true. Now you can better secure

(08:07):
an indoor event, that's for sure. US indoor events are better.
I mean I I even got talked with some of
my board members about, like, you know, our big Christmas
event that we do every year. You know, how do
we you know, are we should we be a little
concerned about that. Thankfully, it's an indoor event at the
Fresno Convention Center. There's you know, private security that we

(08:30):
have just to be near the entrances, so you know what,
we're going to be fine. But nonetheless, I think this
is going to change things forever. I think presidential candidates
are going to start, you know, unless the Secret Service
really gets a deack together. I think outdoor. I just
think outdoor events are going to be have to be scrutinized.

(08:55):
I mean, let's think if you're someone like let me
just I'll take a ran US senator as an example, Okay,
Ted Cruz. A lot of people dislike Ted Cruz. He's
been a very prominent senator. He's a very loud senator. He's,
you know, very out front among Republicans in the Senate.
He's a big talker. He is very much disliked by

(09:18):
the left. Ted Cruz doesn't have a Secret Service detail.
You know, his the level of security protection he's gonna
get is not going to be as good as the
type Donald Trump got even in Butler, Pennsylvania. Is Ted

(09:39):
Cruz going to keep doing outdoor political events? I don't know.
I mean, I if I were him, or like any
Republican senator at this point, I'd sort of be questioning,
what are we doing?

Speaker 2 (09:57):
Is it?

Speaker 1 (09:58):
Do we got at least but we gotta at least
talk about this a little bit. And I don't know
if it's a full meeting or you know a couple
of discussions, but I think this is gonna change. Like
this is gonna it's one of those kind of nine
to eleven type things where nine to eleven happens and
all of a sudden, a lot of things that were
sort of the Norman American life changed forever. Security in

(10:19):
airports changed forever after nine to eleven. I'm wondering if
after this we're gonna change the way security happens, because
it's also like, I mean, as horrific as for example,
the attempted assassination of Brett Kavanaugh is when you think

(10:41):
about it, other attempted political violence. Both the Trump and
the Kirk thing were right in front of crowds. It's
at a public event with a camera on them, sort
of more or less out in the open. This isn't
like conservatives needing to be afraid. I mean, certainly Brett

(11:05):
Kavanaugh's attempted murderer came to his house at night, but
it's more like out in the open during an event.
I mean. I even talked with my buddy Jonathan Keller,
who co hosts Right to Life Radio with me. We
talked about this in the context of he hosts the

(11:27):
California March for Life every year up in Sacramento, right
at the State Capitol Building. And the way we set
it up is we have a rally in front of
the steps of the Capitol where we have different speakers
come up to a podium, and that speaker is a
sit and duck man. If anyone is across the street
on top of a building, I mean, they can have

(11:50):
a clear shot. Someone else could be like somewhere else
on the green space around the State Capitol Building. It's
not like it's really thoroughly patrolled by uh it's actually
I think the California Highway Patrol kind of manages the
security on the site of the State Capitol because it's
a state owned thing, not a local police deal. You know,

(12:16):
he's rethink rethinking this, So I'm you know, I think
that is one thing that's gonna change forever, all right
when we return. A couple of other things that are
going to change. One is my sort of sad thought
that we ain't done, that this is not the last

(12:37):
of these kinds of events. That's next on the John
Girardi Show. I don't think this is going to be
the last assassination like this. Let me explain why. First
is that this isn't an isolated one off. We've had
like several assassinations and attempted assassinations, almost all of them

(13:04):
coming from left wing people against either right wing or
not quite sufficiently left wing enough people. So let me
go through these events. Twenty seventeen, Steve Scalise, the House

(13:25):
majority whip in the Republican majority whip and House Representatives,
almost gets murdered at a practice for the congressional baseball game,
where a guy who is a psycho left wing Bernie
Sanders supporter with a list of Republicans comes out and

(13:46):
shoots him, and the other Republicans almost kills him, very
badly injured. You've got the attempted assassination of Brett Kavanaugh
that was plainly, clearly, cleanly motivated by politics. Someone had

(14:07):
leaked the draft decision in Dobbs in twenty twenty two.
Someone knew if he killed Brett Kavanaugh between the leak
of the draft decision and the actual release of the
real decision, that he could flip the result quite possibly,
and that's actually true that that quite possibly would have happened.

(14:29):
Went to Brett Kavanaugh's house, got thankfully, got to Kavanaugh's house,
got stopped by police outside of Kavanaugh's house, Thankfully, the
Supreme Court justices had security at their houses and got arrested.
It was very close to killing a Supreme Court justice,
so close that he got charged with attempted murder, and

(14:53):
yet the media treated it like it was a local
crime story. No, it was an attempted assassination of a
Supreme Court justice specifically motivated to flip the result of
one of the most important Supreme Court decisions, one of
the most certainly one of the most important Supreme Court
cases of that year, and based on its outcome, it
was one of the most important Supreme Court decisions of

(15:16):
this century. You have the two assassination attempts against Donald Trump,
one of which was like a two centimeters away from
murdering a former American president and a major party nominate.

(15:45):
You have the killing of the United Healthcare executive by
Luigi Manjoni. Now you might not think that that counts,
but the reaction to the Luigi man Joni is the
thing that I think is most telling out of all
of this. So his victim was not a traditional politician

(16:10):
kind of target, but also there was the murder of
those two Minnesota state legislators earlier this year, which it
seems that the motives of the people are dispute more
what exactly the motives of the killer were why he
did it, Maybe that he was just so thoroughly crazy
that maybe it wasn't a specific political motivation for what

(16:32):
he did. I will note though, that he one of
the two state lawmakers that he killed, had just supported
something that was very controversial to liberals in Minnesota. Had
supported cutting back Medicaid funding for illegal aliens, which liberals
in Minnesota were extremely upset about. The guy was had
like a bunch of signs. It was the same weekend

(16:53):
as those No Kings rallies that they had back in June.
The guy had signs for it in his car. So,
you know, maybe if you want to ascribe that to
the Ledger, you know, I guess you can, or maybe not.
You know, I think the motives are not quite clear.
The manjony thing, though, I think is the most the

(17:16):
thing that sways this the most for me. Why well,
because of the shocking public opinion polling that was done
afterwards showing this huge relatively huge could relative to the
number you'd expect, which would be like zero, you would
you would hope, you would assume, you would expect, Hey,

(17:39):
man murders another man in broad daylight kills a guy
who's got a wife and kids just flat out blows
his brains out with a gun. Usually, public support for
that kind of behavior is pretty darn low, basically zero.
Huge percentages of people were either or rationalizing it, saying, well,

(18:04):
you have to understand where he's coming from doing that
kind of song and dance, all the way to the
level of celebrating the guy like he was some kind
of a you know, hero of the poor, like he
was Robin Hood or something, down to the bizarre level
of talking about how handsome he was. It's not a majority,

(18:32):
but it's a damn significant minority who danced with something
ranging from way to go to well, you have to
sort of understand, what would you expect sort of this
almost rationalization of it. That's the range of opinion we're talking.

Speaker 2 (18:52):
Here, and that's what scares me is because that's like
enough of a critical mass of people.

Speaker 1 (19:08):
Look, if you've got a large group of people willing
to do this phony bolooney rationalization, that means there's a
certain sub section of it that's actually supportive of this
and willing to say, you know, tough guy crap. If
you've got a big enough percentage of people willing to
say fake tough guy crap, you've got enough people willing

(19:29):
possibly to say real tough guy crap. And then within
that group, you might have a sub section of people
willing to actually do it crazy enough little enough to lose,
or if feel that they have little enough to lose
that they'll actually do it. They'll actually get a gun,
they'll actually pull the trigger, they'll actually ruin their lives,
they'll risk getting killed in the attempt, they'll risk going

(19:53):
to jail for the rest of their lives. And that's
what's cares me is that that it all stems from
the Manjoni thing in the public opinion, pulling from that,
and it's stemming, and it's still stemming from the Charlie
Kirk thing. I'm not saying most people on the left

(20:14):
are celebrating. They're not. Very many people on the left
said many very good things. I thought Ezra Klein's column
in The New York Times was very very solid about this.
I even think Gavin Newsom's statement about this was very good.
I think Gavin Newsom's probably heartbroken. He knew Charlie Kirk

(20:37):
interviewed him on his podcast. He talked about how his
son liked him. I'm sure Gavin. I'd bet Gavin Newsom
is actually sincerely, really sad about this. But there's a
very large group, maybe it's not the majority, a very
large group of liberals who are one doing the BS

(21:01):
rationalization song and dance. Well, what do you expect when
someone's fomenting hate. It's not good, but you know it's
under How do you suppose people will react to it.
There's a large enough group of that, which means there's
a small enough group of people willing to say fake
tough guy crap, which means there's a smaller group of

(21:23):
that willing to say real tough guy crap. And there's
some story about people starting to sell T shirts with
a caricature of Charlie Kirk on it and blood shooting
from his neck with a caption under it that says
debate this. I mean that I saw it on Twitter.

(21:45):
People were trying to sell that. There's enough, That's what
I'm saying. I just feel like there's enough of a
critical mass of lunatics, enough of a critical mass of
irresponsible jerks that there's a decently sized subset of people
who are willing to say fake tough guy stuff. That

(22:06):
allows for a decently sized subset of people willing to
say real tough guy stuff and a few people willing
to actually do the crazy thing. And I just think
that group of potential rogue crazies is big enough. Maybe
it's only one hundred people in the United States who
are that crazy and that politically charged and have that

(22:30):
much little to lose, and have that much mental health
problems or that unstable whatever. I'd say, that number on
the right is way smaller than one hundred. And you know,
even within that subset, the number that I'll actually do
it is probably tiny, but it's not zero. And that's

(22:51):
my fear is that there's two or three more of
these that could happen. I don't know who, I don't
know when, I don't know where. And I also fear
that this act could multiply it because guess what, guys,
it's going to work. These people want to shut up
conservatives speaking on college campuses, and as I said in

(23:15):
the first segment, it's going to work. It's going to
be fewer these kinds of dresses, fewer these kinds of
events on college campuses done by conservatives. I can almost
guarantee it when we return. I want to wrestle with something.
Do we both sides this or do we identify where

(23:36):
the problem lies? That's next on the John Durbardy Show.
President Trump went on Fox and Friends earlier today and
he was sort of asked a question that was sort
of leading in the direction of, you know, do we
need as a country everybody to lower the temperature? And

(23:57):
Trump said, you know, I'm gonna get in trouble this.
He let off with that, and he said no. His
conclusion was, no, I think the left has kind of
a unique problem. I think the problem here it lies
on the left. So I want to wrestle with this,
all right. Is the problem that both sides have ramped

(24:22):
up the political rhetoric to such an extent that it's
driving everyone crazy? Or is it that the left has
something wrong with them that they have particularly fomented craziness
on their side? A couple thoughts. I'll tell you this.

(24:46):
If you're the Heritage Foundation versus name your left wing
think tank, your security concerns are different. If you're a
typical left leaning speaker coming to a college campus, I

(25:07):
don't think you're as worried as say, a Ben Shapiro
type is. Frankly, I think you got to be crazy
to think that the consistent trend isn't pointing one way.

(25:31):
The lone counter example that the left can point to,
and it's not unfair of them to point to this,
I hate to say, is January sixth. Now, there's a
lot about January sixth that mitigates it. The mob there
at the Capitol did not actually kill anybody. There were

(25:58):
police officers who died from unrelated cardiac episodes. The next day.
There was one j six protester who got shot and
killed by a cop that day. January six protesters, though themselves,
did not actually kill anybody. Now, they did not cover

(26:20):
themselves in glory. Any January sixth er who assaulted a
police officer. That is bad. To damaged property, et cetera,
that's bad. A ton of January six protesters, though, I think,
engaged in nonviolent activity that in many cases sort of

(26:45):
may have even thought that they weren't even doing something illegal.
That the vast bulk of the January sixth prosecutions were
for crimes like I think the crime is actually called parading.
It's basically basically what it's like, trespass, but it means
like being on a piece of federal property that you're
not allowed to be on. Okay. And there was some

(27:06):
confusion I think among many of the January sixth defendants
about you know, are we being waved in here by
these capitol police. Oh? Okay, I don't know. Let's walk
into the capitol, honey. So nonetheless, January sixth was not
a good look. Okay, long and short, and if you're

(27:28):
and I'm just telling you this as the country as
a whole perceived it, it wasn't a good look. But
I think it's my opinion, I feel like January sixth
was more of an isolated, one off type thing that
is less indicative of broader trends. I don't think there's

(27:53):
much violence on the conservative side. I think January sixth
was one isolated thing that got way out of hand,
Whereas in the wake of say George Floyd, and it
happened at maybe the worst possible place, literally the United

(28:17):
States Capitol Building. In the wake of George Floyd. You
had weeks of sustained horrible violent rioting, burning down police precincts.
You had lawyers in New York throwing Molotov cocktails into
cop cars and getting away with it with barely a

(28:41):
slap on the wrist. And there's also this sort of
historical legacy on the left of politicized violence, not being condemned,
being coddled the weather underground folks Chase A Boudin's parents,
Chase Budin, and you may remember the former District Attorney

(29:02):
of San Francisco, Chasa Budin's parents were terrorists who killed
people when they were holding up a Brink security truck, who,
after they were able to get out of jail or whatever,
went on to receive university professorships. There has been this

(29:24):
lionizing of left wing terroristic sympathizers on the left that
goes back way beyond the twenty twenties. The left has
always had this problem of sort of coddling radical elements
that were open to violence, especially these sort of revolutionary like,

(29:49):
sort of almost communist aligned folks. Prior to the collapse
of the Berlin Wall and the downfall of Soviet communism.
So I guess if I had to diagnose again with

(30:11):
the one counter example being January sixth, but I think
it's the lone counter example, I'd have to say that
most of the political violence is all pointing in one way.
And that's why it makes it a little lame. I think,

(30:36):
to both sides this, there's this constant drumbeat that, well,
Donald Trump is so inflammatory that he stirs up violence.
All right, Donald Trump says things that are inflammatory. Responding

(31:00):
to that with violence is not proportionate or justified or
able to be rationalized. And if we're talking about the
rhetoric of one side versus the other, let's not forget.
Twenty twenty two, Joe Biden gives a speech with marine

(31:21):
standing right next to him, which was kind of a
violation of protocol to use marines kind of as props
for a basically political speech where he talks about MAGA
Republicans as an existential threat to the United States of America,
on and on and on, talking about the former president

(31:45):
who barely lost an election with forty nine percent, with
I don't know forty eight percent of the vote, whatever
it was President Trump got in twenty twenty a former
president supported by about half the country and labeling more
or less half the country as radical extremists without a
lot of nuance about you know, well something there are
some Republicans were good. Basically the only Republicans they thought

(32:08):
were good were you know, Lynn Cheney and or Liz
Liz Cheney, sorry Liz Cheney, and you know Bill Crystal.
And that was like an apocalyptic speech on Joe Biden's part.

(32:28):
Let's note, by the way, every single Republican president or
presidential candidate since Reagan, probably beyond that, probably since Nixon,
has consistently been labeled by political operatives on the left
as some level of irredeemable, constantly pilloried as Nazis. Someone

(32:55):
posted online a picture. It was a picture of Barack
Obama and Mitt Romney shaking hands, and someone said, ah,
you know, this is what America needs to get back to,
this level of civility between two good men who just
genuinely disagreed to which I was like, are you nuts.
Do you remember the twenty twelve election when Vice President

(33:17):
Joe Biden said, never really apologized for saying that. Mitt
Romney talking to an African American audience, Mitt Romney wants
to put y'all back in chains literally, you know, because
so like Mitt Romney was the most milk TOAs nice,

(33:39):
even keeled, not heightened up rhetoric guy. Ever, and Democrats
attacked him like he was Adolph Hitler and Paul Pott
and you know, Frank every bad person in history, like
all combined in one. That he wanted to murder dogs

(34:00):
and wanted to stuff women into binders, and he was,
you know, and wanted to put black people in chains.
That Mitt Romney, a former governor of Massachusetts. More. Yeah,
that that was his real That was his goal, putting
black people back into the bondage of American chattel slavery.

(34:29):
I mean, has Trump said inflammatory things? Yeah, sure, I
don't know that. You can blame him for Steve Scalise
getting almost assassinated, for Trump getting almost assassinated twice, for
Brett Kavanaugh almost getting murdered at his home. For this,

(34:57):
I just think there is a different There has been
a different historical attitude towards left wing insided violence, and
especially like after the George Floyd stuff. After the George
Floyd stuff, liberals were basically besieging a federal courthouse in
Oregon for months liberals burned down whole sections of Minneapolis.

(35:24):
They were burning down police precincts. Sandra Celadon was cheering
it on. So I'll give you the counterexample of January sixth.
All right, I'll give you the counter example. But I
think conservatives are allowed to feel a little bit aggrieved

(35:48):
and a little bit ticked off. And because gosh, I
know I am. I've been wondering about security and safety
for people like me or Trevor Carey. Obviously we're you know,
I'm not gonna flatter myself like I'm a target at
the level that Charlie Kirk is. But I've got my
name on a bunch of nationwide published articles online. I

(36:10):
have a whole, big old story talking about the transgender
you know, the boy pretending to be a girl from
southern California went to that track and field meet earlier
this year. I was a reporter at it. I wrote
about it. I went into real detail with that Someone's
gonna notice that. And I guess that's my fear is

(36:30):
I am probably not going to get noticed. Maybe someone
may notice that. I guess I'm probably not going to
be the victim of this kind of thing. But I
can tell you every right wing person who talks for
a living has thought about this at least a little
bit since Charlie Kirk's death. All Right, when we return

(36:52):
my fearful prediction about this shooter, the guy who killed
Charlie Kirk. Next on the John Gerardy Show, they arrested
Charlie Kirk's killer. I don't want to do this. I
liked the old policy of not saying the guy's name,
so I'm not gonna say it. But here's my fear.

(37:16):
Remember how Luigi Mangoni got kind of lionized after he
killed that healthcare Well, here I am saying luigiman Joni's name. Anyway,
he murdered that healthcare executive and then he got lionized
on the left as if he was some kind of
you know, hero whatever. Ah. It was more than a
few people who noted that man Joni was a fairly

(37:37):
handsome guy, and this led fed into the sickos who
are being supportive of it. I'm a little afraid something
similar is going to happen around this guy. I am
afraid that this guy is going to become the kind
of household name that Luigi Manjoni was and that's what

(38:00):
really makes me afraid is if he gets lion eyes
like this, we see copycats, because I'm wondering if this
guy is a copycat of Luigi Manngoni, that'll do it.
See you next time on The John Girardi Show.