036: Who the Hell Was Charlie Kirk?

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
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.

(00:52):
Welcome back to Posting Through It.
This episode was recorded on September 12th and since it
deals with breaking news, I justwanted 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

(01:14):
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 warnpeople to also be careful just

(01:34):
in general, because we're dealing with an authoritarian
regime. Don't underestimate how they may
use Charlie Kirk's death to makelike 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 onout there that are sifting

(01:59):
through the Internet right now looking for people.
It can take down on the tails ofCharlie 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,

(02:22):
something like that. I got called into the DC FBI
field office, where agents askedme 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 writeabout.
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

(02:45):
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,

(03:07):
you know, countries they've never been to before in, you
know, these horrific deportations.
They're sending people off to ElSalvador.
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

(03:30):
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 womannamed Irina Zarutska, a
Ukrainian refugee, a black man named Carlos Brown stabbed her

(03:56):
on public transportation in Charlotte and he had he had
suffered from schizophrenia beenand 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 environmentin the right wing space that
preceded what happened to Kirk. They were already in a very ten

(04:22):
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

(04:42):
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

(05:03):
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

(05:25):
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 rollercoaster week for them.
But then on Wednesday afternoon,this happened.
You know how many mass shooters there have been in America over

(05:47):
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 eventon Wednesday afternoon.

(06:07):
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 shooterfired from a rooftop forensic
experts estimated was about 150 yards away from where Kirk was

(06:31):
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

(06:51):
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.

(07:13):
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?

(07:33):
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'sgenerally 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

(07:56):
automatic rifles, things like the AR15.
But so yeah, a bolt action rifleis, 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.

(08:18):
You know, this is this is like your Grand Pappy's hunting
rifle. So the FBI made announcements
about a suspect or suspects thatthey 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 oftenlooks.
He looks completely lost in every image I've seen of him.

(08:41):
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?

(09:05):
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

(09:25):
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 hellelse they're doing.
Cash Patel and I are both IslandAnders fans.

(09:48):
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?

(10:08):
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.

(10:29):
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

(10:51):
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 wherethey were like, you know, people
like, oh, you see a video of somebody getting eaten by a bear

(11:12):
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

(11:35):
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 thevideo 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

(11:58):
Charlie Kirk was killed. Reactions from all across media,
social media, politics started pouring in.
Calls for retribution, all kindsof 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 avery close relationship to

(12:22):
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

(12:44):
looked like his face was slidingoff 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

(13:06):
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

(13:30):
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.

(13:51):
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

(14:11):
center of the movement, like thebig, 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

(14:33):
and what we don't know about theshooting.
The situation is still fluid. It is still breaking news.
By the time, you know, even justin 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

(14:57):
Tyler Robinson was detained as asuspect.
According to police, he confessed to killing Kirk to his
father, who turned him into the police.
We know that there is a photo ofhim wearing a Trump themed
Halloween costume in 2017. We know that he was apparently a

(15:18):
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.

(15:42):
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

(16:05):
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.

(16:26):
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.

(16:47):
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.

(17:10):
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 thinkthis 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.

(17:32):
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

(17:53):
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

(18:14):
Wednesday, a wave of columns andtributes 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,

(18:34):
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.

(18:57):
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 hismoxie and fearlessness, which is

(19:21):
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 thenyou go to do it, I mean, you've

(19:43):
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.

(20:07):
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 themainstream press, I thought it

(20:28):
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.

(20:48):
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

(21:09):
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.

(21:31):
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

(21:51):
just want to shout out because alot 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 andyouth conservative organizing
generally. It's fantastic.
You should go check it out. As a teenager, Charlie Kirk was

(22:13):
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

(22:34):
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 thatKirk spoke positively years
later about diversity at his school when he was asked about
it. But if you know anything about

(22:55):
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

(23:17):
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

(23:39):
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.

(24:00):
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 giftto 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

(24:24):
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 theywere not so keen on Charlie Kirk

(24:45):
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, areligious ideologue and infamous
mega donor to right wing groups who cut him a big fat check.

(25:05):
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

(25:26):
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

(25:48):
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

(26:13):
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 intopushing online political

(26:34):
discourse further. Right.
One of Turning Point USA is sortof 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, whichis connected to the Leadership

(26:56):
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

(27:18):
going to get targeted. They would call for these people
to be fired over their politicaldifferences.
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?

(27:40):
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 hada tremendous amount of say over
what became MAGA before MAGA existed.

(28:03):
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 professorwatch list and and after Kirk
died, he posted to Instagram. I really want to be calm right
now yet I simply find myself triggered.

(28:26):
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 athis death?
Kirk is the reason. Charlie Kirk is the reason I was

(28:47):
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

(29:10):
very much believed you didn't deserve equal treatment.
For those of us who had personalexperience 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 lotof damage by Charlie Kirk.

(29:32):
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

(29:57):
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 andDiet 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

(30:21):
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

(30:43):
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

(31:06):
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

(31:28):
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 juston 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

(31:49):
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.

(32:09):
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.

(32:30):
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 sortof at the same time in a weird
way. And I don't know if you remember
this, but like, this is not justa leftist making fun of Charlie
Kirk. The right would make fun of
Charlie Kirk. He was a low, a low cow, a, a,

(32:54):
a, a, a character you would milkfor laughs.
We've talked, we've defined thaton 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

(33:17):
constantly for the fact that, you know, he was not, despite
what a lot of these profiles andmainstream media would have you
believe, was not this like, young gunner who, like, pulled
himself up by the bootstraps andbuilt something huge.
He was funded by really wealthy older people, a lot of them in

(33:39):
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.

(34:01):
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.

(34:22):
It is just so funny to me to seethese 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.

(34:46):
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

(35:08):
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 doa rap parody here.
This is. It'd be like, what would be like
Holt Hayden be like, you know, Idon't know, the Jared Hayden

(35:32):
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

(35:53):
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

(36:15):
you could forget about Nick Fuentes.
But we covered it on that one circa 2019.
Nick Fuentes, who you know, is ahaving 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

(36:38):
money, all of the attention, allof the credit is funneling its
way towards Charlie Kirk by thistime.
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

(36:59):
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, hewas like someone sat next to him

(37:22):
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.

(37:43):
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.

(38:08):
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

(38:33):
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

(38:56):
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.

(39:18):
It was very much like him tryingto prove himself and use the
organization he built, even moreso than in 2016, to support
Trump and try to get him re elected.
Yeah, and as the MAGA movement became much more focused on

(39:42):
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

(40:05):
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

(40:29):
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 integralpart 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.

(40:53):
The first one was in Phoenix, AZon November 6th and Turning
Point USA. Even though Charlie wasn't at
every single one of these eventsor 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

(41:15):
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

(41:37):
way. And it's like, yeah, like
disenfranchising people of theirvote.
Are you fucking kidding me? Sorry.
Sorry for the language, but it'sjust.
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 afascist movement and he was part
of the organizational prowess behind that fascist movement,

(42:02):
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, theelection itself.
The most powerful media elites, tech companies and billionaires
are trying to steal the electionin front of your eyes.
That was Charlie Kirk setting the tone and following the tone

(42:23):
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.

(42:46):
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 upbeing one of the the most, you
know, shocking days in American history where people broke into

(43:08):
the Capitol and like I said earlier, to try to
disenfranchise the votes of their fellow.
Citizens, hey, but Jared, he wasdoing 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

(43:34):
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 theskull and crossbones into battle

(43:55):
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

(44:17):
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 toyou 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.

(44:38):
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 electiondenialist figures like Carrie
Lake and to support all kinds ofefforts to change rules and

(45:01):
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 forpromoting the white supremacist
great replacement theory? This was a lot of shit has

(45:23):
happened, man. Oh my God.
Well, I think we, I think we need to stop.
You're usually the one that saysstop.
We got to explain something, butI'm going to do it this time.
Let's do it. Can you explain what the Great
Replacement theory is for peoplewho aren't familiar with it?
Because I feel like, what if youlike?
If we really unpack what it is it it's a lot easier to

(45:43):
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 thisis that there are white Western

(46:06):
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,

(46:30):
etcetera. So the idea is just weakening
white people on purpose to eliminate their existence.
So Tucker Carlson got in troublearound 2021 for promoting this
theory on his prime time slot onFox News, which was the most
watched cable spot at the time. And Charlie Kirk said this.

(46:52):
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 tothe, you know, Tree of Life to

(47:15):
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

(47:39):
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

(48:01):
and I always thought Jared went in hiring bumble Jack that that
he was trying to reckon with thedamage he suffered from Nick
Fuentes followers that he was trying to give TPUSA an edge.
Give some give. How about somebody who had some

(48:21):
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 forsome Republicans but also
considered a bad boy. I think it's that and also the

(48:43):
fact that as the years would go on, this sort of digital media
empire side of Turning Point USAbecame 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.

(49:03):
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 ofthis, 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

(49:27):
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 deaththreats and harassment around
this time. People might remember this was
like at the height of, you know,critical race theory panic.

(49:48):
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 membersis 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

(50:09):
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

(50:32):
protest in Kenosha, WI armed andended 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.

(50:54):
He described Kyle Rittenhouse, somebody who killed their
perceived political opponents inthe street, as a hero to
millions, and the crowd gave hima 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.

(51:15):
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

(51:36):
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

(51:57):
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.

(52:18):
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.

(52:40):
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

(53:03):
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

(53:27):
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

(53:49):
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 himsome questions.
Another quote from Charlie Kirk.This one's in 2023.
I've seen this one getting a lotof play since Charlie was killed

(54:12):
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

(54:34):
when you have an armed citizenryand 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 Amendmentto protect our other God-given
rights. That is a prudent deal.

(54:54):
It is rational. OK, so in 2023, Charlie Kirk
brings on as a producer this guynamed 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

(55:16):
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 reallypinpoint this thing that people

(55:37):
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 wastoo dangerous for TV.
So you'd think the Neph would kind of disappear into nothing.
But Kirk kind of redeems him andmakes him a feature on his
podcast. And this now combined with Jack

(55:58):
Pozobic, shows a sort of patternof redeeming, helping long or
bringing into the culture peoplewho 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

(56:20):
starting to lead in a lot harderto 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

(56:43):
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.

(57:05):
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.

(57:28):
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 willingto stand behind him actually.
And Kirk was one of the few people to go down to Mar a Lago
and like actually take a picturewith Trump.
At that time, he was ride or diefor Trump.
And I think that's a really important thing because the turn

(57:50):
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

(58:14):
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

(58:35):
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

(58:55):
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 takea different tone here as we get
towards the end because I didn'teven 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,

(59:19):
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 spateof plane crashes.

(59:44):
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 whenthe 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 stuffin 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

(01:00:04):
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 knowyou don't.

(01:00:24):
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

(01:00:47):
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 didit.
Yeah, and I should also say he did the same thing regarding the
fires in Los Angeles. You know, as people were scared

(01:01:09):
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.

(01:01:29):
That's not what happened. Before we go to a bigger
discussion about what we thoughtof 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 thatepisode with my older son and I

(01:01:52):
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

(01:02:12):
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

(01:02:33):
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 knewyou.
But it's just morality that demands we protect the most

(01:02:55):
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

(01:03:15):
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

(01:03:37):
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

(01:03:59):
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

(01:04:21):
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

(01:04:41):
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

(01:05:02):
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

(01:05:26):
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.

(01:05:48):
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

(01:06:09):
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

(01:06:29):
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.

(01:06:49):
Yeah, and they're performing forother 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

(01:07:12):
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, hewas just crying about Charlie
Kirk, the same guy who he has almost made half of his name off

(01:07:32):
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

(01:07:54):
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 celebrationof Kirk's death.
The fact that the tone out thereis like really without
compassion that people are celebrating it or whatever.
And they are coming face to facewith the fact that if someone

(01:08:16):
shot them, if someone gagged himin 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.

(01:08:37):
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

(01:08:59):
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.

(01:09:22):
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 ina way where I could have a shot
at the crown? Yeah.
Look, it's very difficult to take.

(01:09:43):
People of someone of Nick Fuentes character or a person of
Matt Walsh's character, a personwho 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 toall of a sudden be like, oh, Oh
my God, now, now, now we need toworry about, you know, how

(01:10:05):
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.

(01:10:25):
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

(01:10:45):
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 itin the opening clip from Trump
before they even had a suspect identified.
Hell, before they even said theyhad a suspect and had to correct
themselves that they didn't havea suspect.

(01:11:08):
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,

(01:11:34):
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

(01:11:54):
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

(01:12:18):
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 bethe case on Fox News.
Laura, this won't stop until it stopped.

(01:12:40):
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 needto see that actions are being
taken at the national and federal level, task forces or

(01:13:02):
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 ifthis 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

(01:13:25):
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 abook 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

(01:13:51):
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 casuallyaccused 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

(01:14:12):
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 kiddingme, dude.
This is such bullshit of like, you know, if you, like you said,
accurately describe somebody's views, you're doing violence to

(01:14:35):
them is just intellectually insulting.
It's also just so soft and cowardly, right?
I mean, we got to arrest you forcalling 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

(01:14:57):
demonic child abusing psychopathkillers 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 someof the first guys that should be
thrown in the brink. Yeah, well, I am here not

(01:15:18):
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,

(01:15:46):
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 actualguy in there.
Yeah, yeah, he's a, he's a far right figure.
Who channels the rhetoric of theleft has been criticized on

(01:16:08):
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

(01:16:28):
his thing and he's been doing a lot of engagement some of his
engagement just like like just abasic scan looks like it's
astroturfed in some way. Yeah.
I mean, he does the kind of thing where he.
Like criticizes Israel, but thenyou know, takes it to
anti-Semitic step where he like equates Judaism with Israel.

(01:16:50):
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

(01:17:12):
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

(01:17:34):
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.

(01:17:55):
And so there was a, you know, anidea that Kirk had made comments
that were, how would you describe it, just sort of like,
you know, critical of, of Jewishinfluence 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

(01:18:15):
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 hardto say.

(01:18:37):
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 namethat, 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

(01:19:03):
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

(01:19:25):
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

(01:19:50):
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.

(01:20:10):
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 coverand there were people protesting

(01:20:36):
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

(01:20:57):
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

(01:21:19):
with a Red Hat on and what thesethere 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

(01:21:40):
little reality show drama kind of thing, like a married couple
that goes everywhere and and whatever.
I think she would be the type ofperson 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

(01:22:01):
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 beperfectly honest.
You know, as we covered the early days of of Kirk's time

(01:22:25):
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?

(01:22:48):
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

(01:23:12):
dates with like people that workat 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

(01:23:33):
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

(01:23:57):
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 andI 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

(01:24:19):
whatever, but I don't think thatthere's any way that it will
carry on with the same degree ofinfluence.
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

(01:24:41):
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 toTPSA.
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

(01:25:02):
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

(01:25:23):
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.

(01:25:43):
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 thatbenefited this MAGA fascist
push. So who do you think, Charlie?

(01:26:04):
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 pressthat made me want to do what
would Alex Jones call it? You know, like emergency
broadcast, you know, push an episode out.

(01:26:25):
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.

(01:26:48):
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.

(01:27:08):
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

(01:27:30):
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.

(01:27:51):
Wielded the influence. That he gained to try to
undermine the premise of this country and to disenfranchise
and make life more difficult formost of the people that live in
it. So the fact that flags are
flying at half mast for this guyI find grossly offensive.

(01:28:14):
And I have no, you know, rah rahsupport 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

(01:28:34):
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 seensuch 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

(01:29:02):
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 willmean going forward, what we
might expect to see in the aftermath of it on our episode

(01:29:22):
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 thisis a really big event for us.

(01:29:45):
But for now, everybody, just be careful what you post.

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