Trump Appears on Fox Saying a Suspect in the Charlie Kirk Murder is in Custody 9/12/25

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Thank you everyone. Wow, it's please we have a no
cell phones, sir, no cell phones recorded audience is not
allowed to have any cell phones out. This is a
Friday show. There have been a substantial number of developments overnight,
and we will share them with you. And when I
say we, I'm talking about the devoted staff we have,

(00:22):
and even if they weren't being compensated, I know they
would be here every day. I've now wake them and
Kim as well. Kim tells me every night, I'm only
doing this to pay for Julia's education. Yes, as that
is the kind of dedication we look for from everyone.

(00:44):
But I am impressed that these devoted colleagues of mine
have put together a really great show. And when I
say a really great show, I mean it's filled with information,
it's filled with visuals, it's builled with explanations, it's filled
with video, and we'll augment it with a second hour

(01:05):
with two very smart people joining to react to a
lot of what's going on in America. It's not just
the political violence. There's a lot more going in the
US right now. And you could say even that the
political violence that has been wrought across the country this

(01:25):
week is part of a bigger picture that we will
discuss and get into discussions about with Michael Shore and
Jim Aveolett in our two and then kind of to
leave you with a soft landing on the week the
Culture Blaster, Michael Snyder will be through in hour two
to kind of tell us about movies and streaming and

(01:47):
things that can serve as welcome distractions, as there's a
lot going on that can I think, get into our
psyches and perhaps, you know, make life even tougher than
it already is. So we'll do that in our two.
Our one will be dedicated to much of what we've
seen just in the last day or so with the

(02:08):
murder of Charlie Kirk. There has been reaction and even
prior to finding a suspect, there was a ton of
reaction and overreaction, and we'll get into all of that,
so bear with us. I did want to start on
a lighter, happier note, and so I I wanted to

(02:37):
point out that we went to a dinner the other
night and our friend, who is an amazing chef. She's
not officially a chef, like you know, that's not her profession,
but she's just remarkable in what she's able to do,

(02:59):
and she made this Portabello mushroom risotto with the Portabello
mushroom seasoning from Coachella Valley Coffee. Look at that, the
Portobello mushrooms. We saw it on the counter and we said,

(03:19):
oh my god, it's Coachella Valley. Does she know the connection?

Speaker 2 (03:24):
No, Oh my god, that's funny.

Speaker 1 (03:26):
So she uses this Portobello mushroom seasoning from Coachella Valley
Coffee and a coach if you're just joining us, Coachella
Valley Coffee is a sponsor on our show, and they're
famous for the best coffee on Earth. I mean, just
the best coffee you'll ever taste. It's a boutique roasty.
Everything's hand roasted and they have all these different beans

(03:47):
that are organically grown. And then as I say that,
everything's hand roasted, and they have amazing teas and spices
and seasonings, and.

Speaker 3 (03:57):
So talk about the spices at all.

Speaker 1 (04:00):
Yeah, we seldom even mentioned them.

Speaker 3 (04:02):
The coffee so good and the tea is so good,
and there's there's a few spices, but it's not like
we ever highlight that.

Speaker 1 (04:08):
Right, what's in this salt?

Speaker 3 (04:10):
Paprika onion garlic and French roasted Coachella Valley Coffee. Did
the risotto taste like coffee?

Speaker 1 (04:18):
No, the risotto was so delicious. And I took from
her like a to go bag of the risotto and
I dragged the This is how good it was. I
dragged the risotto out like in very distinct small portions
over a three day period because I was. I was

(04:39):
so it was so delicious. So we encourage you, if
you even are already on the Coachella Valley Coffee site
Coachella Valley Coffee dot com, to check out their seasoning,
which is I say, we just saw on the counter
at our friend's home, and definitely there's a steak rub,
there's the Sea Salt. Do use our discount code, so

(05:00):
anything you order there you can get a discount of
ten percent on it is mark t in the discount
code offering. They're a checkout. Use it Marke Tea at
checkout and you'll get ten percent off Coachella Valley Coffee.
That isn't that a while though?

Speaker 3 (05:16):
Just really, I hope you gave your friend the discount code,
were you like next time?

Speaker 1 (05:19):
I don't think I did. At least they got it
off of the Well, I don't. You're right, this is
a really good point. You're Megan, I don't know. We
didn't even mention the discount code. We were so taken
with the.

Speaker 3 (05:28):
Cdo you can message her back and let her know.
I did that with my sister. She tried to serve
me Mango Coachella Valley Tea, which I had told her about,
and I said, you use the discount code, right, She goes, No,
I didn't like.

Speaker 1 (05:44):
At least it'll save your money on shipping, the kind
of thing. So yeah, I use the discount code mark
t at a checkout. And you, now, this is pretty
cool because this is an email that I got. Is
this mail and the rundown somewhere or do I have
to find it?

Speaker 4 (06:02):
No?

Speaker 2 (06:02):
I didn't.

Speaker 3 (06:03):
You didn't send this one to me.

Speaker 1 (06:04):
Oh my goodness, this is so ter Oh yeah, yeah,
it's it's it's there though.

Speaker 5 (06:10):
If just right above the yeah, Choco Chaco and Max.

Speaker 1 (06:14):
Chacko Chaco and Max are two cats that are apparently
drawn to our sort of activists. It's peaceful activism. That's
kind of what's the distinct quality of these T shirts
and these different T shirts featured on our website at
getmarkmerch dot com. They all encourage peaceful resistance or they

(06:39):
have some kind of proclamation that's really look make love
not fascism, really associated with kind of peaceful resistance that
we talk about. So Born to Peacefully Resist. I'm wearing
that shirt right now. I've got a few of them.
In case you're thinking, well, Mark, you wore that shit
yesterday too. It's a different shirt, Okay, so don't please,
but I do. It's my favorite. That's and I also

(07:00):
like this one because it's got the Earth on it.
Born to Peacefully like that color? Yeah, me too, me too,
So clearly the cats like that color as well. And
I'm kind of embarrassed that I don't have the the
email because the email had the the person who will,

(07:22):
I'll find it for you, just to mention it.

Speaker 3 (07:24):
It's a cat hair Friday, says John Watson.

Speaker 1 (07:26):
I'm loving it. I love you know, I'm a person.

Speaker 2 (07:30):
What's cool?

Speaker 3 (07:30):
That's right?

Speaker 1 (07:31):
Yeah? Oh, here it is. It's from Karen. It's from
Karen klein Er. Everybody Karen Kleiner. Yeah, so those are
her cats, and she's got the new shirt, Born to
Peacefully Resist. If you want to pick one up. It's
at get Mark meirch dot com. We don't make a
lot of money on the merch side at all, but

(07:52):
it's a great way to interact with the audience and
for you to kind of wear I think of a
good message. You know, is about peaceful resistance. It's about
peaceful conversation, even heated conversation, but never violence. Never anyway.
The Born to Peacefully Resist T shirts and the whole line,
along with a lot of other merch stuff in case

(08:14):
you really want to rep the merch line is a
get mark merch dot com bravo good stuff. Way to
hustle that picture together. Thank you guys, Mark Thompson Show. Yeah,
the bucket hat is Richard Delamater approved. Richard Delamator is
quick to say cats make the most important decisions for me.
Says there by the way, put in some long sleeve

(08:39):
T shirts. Said. De Leette is saying, well, well, I'll
talk to Corney handles the merch dush. She handles the
design and many of you have emailed our email is
a The Mark Thompson Show at gmail dot com. And
to the extent that you've been in touch with us
about design, She's tried to respond to we have to
do it all weally kind of a homegrown small business.

(09:00):
So she tries to respond to your request some female
T shirt, some ladies T shirt as they're called, and
then some as you say, long sleeved teas. Maybe those
are in the offing. So anyway, all right, can we
get into what's happening? Mark Thompson. So, it's a tragedy

(09:22):
when political violence rears its head. It was a tragedy
when political violence was rearing its head earlier this summer
in Minnesota, when a legislator and her husband were gunned
down in their own home. It was a tragedy when
political violence reared its head with the setting a blaze
of Joshapiro's home, the Democratic governor in Pennsylvania. And is

(09:46):
a supreme tragedy when political violence again informs the rally
that Charlie Kirk was having on the campus in Utah.
It's completely unacceptable. Well, it's murderous, it's awful. We've talked
about it should be decried in every way. And the

(10:09):
calls for vengeance, and I mean, these are just as bad.
The scary part of anything like this is the ripple
in the pond right that the effect of this act
of political violence will only it'll only beget more political violence,

(10:33):
you know, in a way justified by the kind of
ways in which vengeance is rationalized.

Speaker 3 (10:42):
These far right online conspiracy theorists are taking it to
a level that is very frightening. Some are calling for
Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act. They say that Bannon
says we are at war with each other, so what

(11:04):
they're having to say their reaction is extreme and frightening.

Speaker 1 (11:10):
Bannon is always spoiling for a conflict. He uses the
verbiage of battle a lot, and it doesn't surprise me
that he is moving into this space very comfortably. I'll
talk more about this, but obviously it's awful. The calls

(11:31):
for vengeance, the ways in which we might see rallies
and calls for violence celebrated in any way, those scare me.
The country moves into a very scary place, and you've
seen already that many politicians are now no longer going

(11:53):
to have public events that have been scheduled. There have
been real effects, even in the short term. We'll get
to more of that as we continue, but I did
want to update this story. Tony Ladotti says, this is
not a war between right and left, it's between moderates
and extremists. It's the responsibility of both sides to rain

(12:16):
in their fanatics. A great comment. Thank you Tony for
the ten dollars superchat, and I completely agree. I mean,
obviously political violence is an outgrowth of fanaticism. It stands
to reason, sadly, there are more radicalized people in America
now than in a long time. Louis says, with a

(12:39):
five dollars superchat, Charlie, you were right. People do have
to die for us to have more guns than people
in America. Thoughts and priors and other cliches, but no
gun control. The irony of this entire event, the tragic irony,
and it is a tragedy. These kids, one in three,

(13:03):
his young wife, and Kirk himself a thirty one year
old guy. You could say he may grow more moderate
in his views, even as he has a big following,
even he has a big follow even though he has
a big following, with what I would say are radical views, right,

(13:24):
I mean, radical views about women, radical views about race,
radical views about immigrants. I mean, Charlie Kirk was a
hate monger in many ways. He could have moderated those positions. Now,
maybe he would have become more radical. I don't know.
But all I'm trying to say is having his you know,
life snuffed out at thirty one will never know. But

(13:46):
the way in which now there is this call for
vengeance is very much in keeping, I would say, in
general with right wing radicalism. Right wing radicalism far outpaces
the radical left. You can scheme it out any way

(14:08):
you want and tell me I'm wrong and it's equal
on both sides. No, it's not. And the reason I
say this is look at earlier this summer when they
set Josh Shapiro's, the Democratic governor of Pennsylvania's home on fire.
Do you hear calls for vengeance? When they killed the

(14:29):
Minnesota legislator and her husband in her home, did you
hear calls for vengeance? This is a different crowd, and
so it's in that context that this act of political
violence exists. We're going to talk more about this, I'm sure,
in the days ahead, but I just wanted to know,

(14:51):
let's just be fair about the state of the state now.
The verbiage that's coming is extraordinary and prior and I
will get to I'm going to try to take this
in chronological order, so I'll get to the arrest of

(15:12):
the perpetrator, and I'll get to who he was, and
I'll get to it quickly. But I do want you
to be aware of because we are talking about a
period of political violence and an atmosphere that is supercharged
right now. And remember it's supercharged by verbiage, by rhetoric,
and so Randy says, Trump told reporters yesterday that we

(15:36):
have radical left lunatics out there and we need to
beat the hell out of them. So much for the
President acting as a leader and being a calming voice. Now, yeah, exactly.
By the way, I'm not going to be able to
continue to speak extemporaneously and try to stay on a
schedule with things that I want to get to because
this show is not scripted if I have to read

(15:58):
and acknowledge every comment. So you feel free to. In fact,
I appreciate you putting comments up there, but I want
to explain kind of why it's going to seem like
I'm ignoring some of them because I've got to I'm
getting to something, and every time somebody says and I've
got to react to it, it takes me off the track,
so I of course it's true, and that actually that
comment is very much on the theme that I do
want to get to, which is the rhetoric is supercharged.

(16:21):
So even before the arrest, even before we knew anything,
Trump was talking about the lunatic left, and not just
Donald Trump, but his son. I saw this on Sean Hannity. Again,
this is now before there had been any sort of
id of who this guy was. The Eric Trump appearance

(16:46):
on Sean Hannity's show was all about how the Democrats
have created this environment and the persecution of my family,
the Trump family, is how we got here. Go ahead,
Albert Eric a.

Speaker 6 (17:04):
Great Again movement, and he put his heart and soul
in every aspect of his effort into it. And then
to see the blood gushing out of his neck today,
you know, the truly traumatizing site. You know when all
you saw in that crowded audience was just love. I mean,
kids who were engaged in the political process, who finally
wanted to get involved with politics for the first time

(17:25):
maybe ever, right, I mean something that ten years ago
was so dull until my father reinvigorated it. And now
you had the next generation a kid who is thirty
one years old, who was out there giving it absolutely
everything and electrifying these kids, you know, and today he's gone,
and it's just it's hard to fathom. We've seen enough death,
We've seen enough senseless killings, and Sean, let me leave

(17:47):
it with this. I'm sick and tired of seeing the bullets.
They're only going one way again. First it was my father.
Then you saw what they tried to do to Kavanaugh.
Then you saw what they did to Steve Scalise. Now
they just killed Charlie Kirk. I've got more envelopes of
white powder as has done, as is everybody in our
entire family. When does the senseless nonsense stop? And when

(18:09):
is there accountability from MSNBC and NBC and everybody else
who just fosters this hate every single day, including today,
right after that incredible man right there was killed.

Speaker 7 (18:21):
It's enough, you know.

Speaker 8 (18:24):
I've had the same experience. I don't talk about it publicly.
There's a lot we go through. I spent about an
hour on the phone with you and Laura the other night,
and you were describing a chapter that you're writing in
a book that's coming out, and we talked at length
about all that your brothers, your sister, your entire family, Milania,

(18:46):
your father more than anybody has gone through and really
unprecedented rage and hatred. And it's almost like, I wonder
if we've become numb to the words, and what impact
all those words dehumanizing your father, you know, has had
and dehumanizing people in the movement. You know, words matter?

Speaker 1 (19:09):
I mean, yeah, words matter. Stop here for a second,
but I will return to this again. This is a
cut before they'd made the arrest, before they made the idea.
I'll get back to that cut. But what a cherry
picked history, even just recent history, Sean Haddity has. You're
telling me that it's unprecedented, the kind of criticism of

(19:31):
Donald Trump, the other ring of the Trump family. What
did happen? What happened to the Obama family when they
were in the White House. They were eviscerated by the right,
They were pulled apart in ways that were horrible. I'm
just talking about the rhetoric associated with Barack Obama and

(19:54):
his presidency. So don't tell me about everything happening under
the Trump presidency and the criticism of the Trump family.
Obama and his family were positively pulled apart by the
right by Fox News Channel and others like it. Continue Overt.

Speaker 8 (20:15):
Had been assassinated.

Speaker 7 (20:17):
We knew he was shot.

Speaker 8 (20:19):
And you know over at MSD and C, they're blaming
the victim. You know, Pritzker is blaming your father. But
this has been ten years. You're chronicling all this. Most
people don't know the backstory of all that you had
to live through and your family has had to live through.
It's never happened in history before. Eric, and I don't

(20:41):
know if there's anybody we can appeal to. I don't
hear anybody on the left, maybe with the exception of
John Fetterman that you know, wants it to go away.

Speaker 6 (20:52):
Yeah, well that's right, Sean. I wrote a book about this.
I released it two days ago. It's called Under Siege.
It is exactly what we're dealing with right here. And
I said in it, I mean, they tried to impeach
my father multiple times. They went after kids, they tried
to break up our family, They tried to bankrupt us.
They try and put us, our company out of business.
They subpoenaed the hell out of all of us. They
pulled him off the ballot of Maine in Colorado, they

(21:14):
gag ordered him, they took his free speech away from him.
They did so much more, and then they tried to
shoot him. They tried to shoot him twice. Right, And
I said this on your show. I said this before
Butler Pennsylvania. I said, they've tried everything, and this is
what under Siege is all about. This is what the
book is all about.

Speaker 7 (21:30):
The tried.

Speaker 1 (21:31):
So now he gets into the book. But what I'm
trying to give you in that cut is a sense
of what the right is saying and what they're doing
and the rhetoric that's out there. And you know, obviously
when you look back at the history of Trump and
the Trump organization, they ran a fraudulent charity. They were

(21:52):
literally barred from running a charity in New York. I mean,
you can say that was some kind of you know,
jihad against them, but that's the real judgment of a court. Also,
the settlement of Trump University for twenty five million dollars,
that's a fraudulent university. This is a family. And you
talk about there after our businesses. They want to there

(22:14):
after your businesses because your businesses are committing fraud at
every turn, and even as you ascend to the presidency,
you and the Trump family have looked to enrich yourselves
in every way possible. The mean coins, the setting up
of the platform for crypto trading, all of this. So

(22:36):
don't tell me that these attacks on your family are baseless.
Quite the contrary. I think the family's done quite well.
You've made, by estimates that we know about, and these
are in published reports from the New York Times and elsewhere,
anywhere from four and a half to five and a
half billion dollars off the presidency. So we're not even

(22:58):
through the first year. Well that's the criticism of the
Trump family. But you can see how this rhetoric can
whip up the kind of resentment. And I'm sure if
I felt attacked, you know, and I felt my family attacked,
that this is the kind of defense I would put up.
But it's because of the linkage to political violence that

(23:24):
this rhetoric becomes so dangerous. Now Trump also commenting on this,
jumping on the radical left. Give me that, Albert, and
then I'll get to Trump's announcement on them. This is
him just commenting on and I want you to pay

(23:45):
specific attention here to the fact that Fox it seems
in this moment anyway, is this that Ainsley? Whatever? Is
she the one on the couch there with anyway, they're
trying to say, hey, they're radicals on both sides right,
and Trump says not really, No, the radicals are on

(24:06):
the left. Here we go.

Speaker 9 (24:07):
What do we do about our country with that? Because
we have radicals on the right as well, we have
radicals on the left. People have gotten or watching all
of these videos and cheering. Some people are cheering that
Charlie was killed. How do we fix this country? How
do we come back together?

Speaker 10 (24:23):
I'll tell you something that's going to get me in trouble,
but I couldn't care less. The radicals on the right
oftentimes are radical because they don't want to see crime.
They don't want to see crime, worried about the border.
They're saying, we don't want these people coming in. We
don't want you burning our shopping centers, we don't want
you shooting our people in the middle of the street.
The radicals on the left are the problem, and they're vicious,

(24:46):
and they're horrible, and they're politically savvy. Although they want
men and women in sports, they want transgender for everyone,
they want open borders. The worst thing that happened to
this country, because I've already solved inflation costs it down.
Look at an energy course, you're going to have two
dollars gasoline. Pretty so I've solved just about every problem.
The worst thing that happened to our country is where

(25:07):
we let twenty five million people in many of which
and I say eighty percent should not be in our country.
They emptied their prisons into our country. They emptied their
mental institutions, insane asylums. You don't know what that is.
That's seriously, you know that as a mental institution on steroids.

Speaker 7 (25:26):
Okay.

Speaker 10 (25:27):
They emptied out insane asylums, crazy people into our country
by the Midians. And it's the single it's the hardest thing.
We have a border now that's totally secure. Nobody came in.

Speaker 1 (25:39):
So this is ex Mornings. I want to remind you.
This is on the heels of the apprehension of the
guy who murdered Charlie Kirk, and Trump segues in this
television appearance to attacks on immigration, peacocking about the economy, which,
of course it's all a concocted mess of facts. Right,
He's completely the economies not in is not trending in

(26:02):
a good direction at all, and talking about the border,
et cetera, and slamming the radical left as he puts it.

Speaker 3 (26:10):
So he he actually said the radical right, they're just
mad about crime, as if that's so. He makes excuses
for the radical right. But the radical left, boy, those
are the people we need to really go after.

Speaker 1 (26:23):
And this rhetoric is one dimensional on some level, but
it's landing with so many people, and so it's radicalized
many on the right. And the assassination of kirk this
is a and I'm sure that those who don't want
it is an assassination. It's a political assassination. It may

(26:49):
energize a lot of those who are already radicalized. What
happened with the apprehension of this guy is interesting also
as it relates to Trump, because there's a theater and
performative aspect to this presidency and this man, Donald Trump,

(27:10):
which is which doesn't reflect to humanity. It doesn't. It
reflects a again, an adherence to the theater of the presidency,
the messaging associated with the presidency. And so it was
that they apprehended Charlie Kirks murderer and we'll tell you

(27:36):
more about that in a moment. But Cash Battel, who
had already screwed up this investigation in so many ways,
the FBI, they're now peacocking about it. But the reality
is Cash Battel and the FBI now populated with a
bunch of loyalists. They got rid of the FBI station

(27:58):
chief or regional head there in Utah, why because she
was a dei higher. You don't get to run an
entire region for the FBI because you're some dei higher.
It was a it's really an offensive notion. But in
any case, Patel made a mess of this. I mean,

(28:20):
he announced that they had a suspect when they didn't.
They'd apprehended somebody and they hadn't. Then he had to
walk that back. Then he announced through his FBI preliminary
investigations that there were a bunch of etchings on the
bullet casings. Turns out there weren't. Turns out a lot

(28:42):
of this stuff was in a preliminary stage of an
investigation where they're just kind of throwing stuff out that
they found at the scene. So Patel has been a mess.
So finally Patel gets to announce that they've apprehended the
Charlie Kirk murderer. They didn't, by any virtue of their investigation,

(29:06):
apprehend anybody. What happened with the Charlie Kirk murderer. His
family blew the whistle on him. His family said, you
have to turn yourself in. He'd gone back to his
family and then a clergyman who they reached out to.

(29:27):
They together approached law enforcement, and that's how this revelation
was made as to who it was, and then ultimately
his apprehension. That's what happened. So they can peacock all
they want, and you'll see it in a second, everybody
thanking each other. Oh my god, the fine work done.
The fine work done by who, By the kid's dad

(29:49):
who called the cops, by the clergyman who called the cops.
Thank them. All you needed was a phone line. I
resent the performative theatrical nature of this stuff because it
lacks any kind of tethering to reality. Albert run this package.

(30:16):
I don't love this package. But is that what's up next?
In the gate? This is sort of the what do
you have next? This is the announcement, and you'll get
a little bit of what I'm talking about and this
is kind of a wrap on what happened, and then
I'll tell you a little bit about the family.

Speaker 7 (30:33):
Go ahead, good morning, ladies and gentlemen. We got him.

Speaker 11 (30:37):
A suspect is in custody in the shooting death of
Charlie Kirk. Tyler Robinson, a twenty two year old Southern
Utah man, reportedly confessed to the shooting to his father,
A minister. Friend of the family urged Tyler to turn
himself into authorities.

Speaker 10 (30:52):
I think, with a high degree of certainty, we have
him in custody.

Speaker 11 (30:58):
President Trump broke the news that authority had a suspect
in custody during a live interview with Fox and Friends.
Conservative activist Kirk was fatally struck in the neck with
a bullet on Wednesday, all speaking at an event at
Utah Valley University. On Thursday, Kirk's body was flown home
to Phoenix, Arizona, on Air Force two, accompanied by Vice

(31:18):
President Vance. President Trump is calling for the death penalty
in the case. The death penalty is legal in Utah.
This is inside.

Speaker 1 (31:28):
So that's kind of a summary of where we are now.
So they apprehended the suspect, and again it was because
the family reached out to law enforcement to tell them
who this guy was and that he was indeed in
their family. But I think this again speaks to the

(31:50):
lack of seriousness on the part of this man, Donald
Trump and his administration, and he's populated with all these
guys who are just one dimensional incompetence, like Cash. Tell
Patel they made the apprehension at eleven o'clock last night.
He kept the lid on it because he wanted Donald Trump,
or Trump wanted to make the announcement. I mean, I

(32:13):
don't know if Patel wanted Trump to make the announcement.
Pateel is all lavishing praise all the time on Trump,
so maybe said, mister President, I want you to make
the announcement tomorrow on Fox and Friends. So he sits
on this information all night, and then Donald Trump goes
on this Fox and Friends show and he makes the announcement. There.
I mean, this lunacy, but that's what happened. That's where

(32:38):
we are. We have a TV president, But were he
only a TV president, will be fine if you were
just reading things off the prompter. His decision making and
his reflexive movements have tremendous effects on this country and
on the world. So back to this guy, twenty two
year old guy Trump breaks this news. The suspect's name

(33:06):
is Tyler Robinson. He was not a UVU student, lived
in southwest Utah, about two hundred and fifty miles from
the side of the shooting. He was charged with state
felony offenses, aggravated murder that carries the possibility of the
death penalty, destruction of justice, discharging old weapon, all of

(33:28):
that stuff. So Trump said, essentially somebody very close to
him turned him in. Those were Trump's words on that
Fox show. In fact, Albert, you have a little bit
more of Trump describing I think the actions of cops

(33:52):
and authorities. And here's a little bit more of that,
and then I'll tell you more about the family as well,
because there's all this stuff about you know, is it
a radicalized family? Are they radicalized left? Are they? And
of course, you know, all of these different narratives that
have been folded onto the scene are utterly without any
kind of underpinning of logic.

Speaker 9 (34:11):
Go ahead, any updates on the suspect.

Speaker 10 (34:14):
Yeah, can I always say, I think just to protect
us all and so Fox doesn't get sued and we
all don't get sued and everything else. But I think
with a high degree of certainty we have him in custody.
In custody. Everyone did a great job. We worked with
the local police, the governor. Everybody did a great job,

(34:38):
you know, getting somebody that you start off with absolutely nothing,
and we started off with a clip that made it
look like an ant that was almost useless. We just
saw there was somebody up there. And so much work
has been done over the last two and a half days.
You know, it's amazing actually when you start off with
that and then all of a sudden you get lucky
or talent or whatever it is. But yeah, we're I

(35:01):
think we're in great shape. He's in custody.

Speaker 9 (35:03):
Well, your suspicion was that he was radical left and
now you have more information.

Speaker 5 (35:09):
What can you share with us about well, his ideology?

Speaker 10 (35:12):
Yeah, Larrence, let me just and by the way, Larrence
is doing a good job. What's going on your job? Yeah,
I'll tell you why. I'm I said you're going to
do well.

Speaker 1 (35:21):
But yeah, I.

Speaker 10 (35:22):
Think that, Uh, I don't want to go too far.
I'd like to tell you some stories at how it happened.
But essentially, somebody that was very close to him turned
them in. And that happens when you had some of
those good chats. Somebody is going to say, whether it's
a parent or whatever. I'd rather not say right now.
They're going to announce it today, sometime later, probably talk
about that. But somebody close to him turned them, you know,

(35:44):
they said, whoa, it's interesting. Well, we had very good pictures,
but not great, not perfect. And when you look at it,
what happened is somebody and this happens a lot. It
happened with the crazy Boston bomber, it happened with others.
Somebody that recognizes even a little tilt of the head
which nobody else would do, and somebody who was very

(36:06):
close to him said, that's him and essentially went to
the father, went to a US marshall who was fantastic,
by the way, and the person was involved with law enforcement,
but was a person of faith, a minister, and I
brought him to a US marshal who was fantastic, and

(36:30):
the father convinced the son this is it. And again
I'm always subject to be corrected, but you know, I'm
just giving you based on what I'm hearing. They'll give
you much more active.

Speaker 1 (36:41):
I just heard about it five.

Speaker 10 (36:43):
Minutes before I walked in. As I'm walking in, they said,
looking real good, they have the person that they wanted.

Speaker 1 (36:49):
So you break the news. We know that's not true
because they made the arrest at eleven o'clock last night,
didn't they, Kim, I thought they made the arrest to overnight.

Speaker 3 (37:01):
It was late last night.

Speaker 1 (37:02):
Yeah, yeah, So I mean, don't tell me that you
just found out about it five minutes ago. I just again,
I'm not trying to bust Trump on everything, guys. I
in fact, you know, I sometimes turn myself into a
pretzel trying to justify or understand or figure might this
work better? But I mean, you know, once again, it's
just crazy that he withheld this information so he could

(37:23):
appear on this morning show and speak to his audience
and break this news of the apprehension. There's a lot
of theater here. Yes, the clergyman reached out to us Marshall,
and that's how the whole thing happened. But it wasn't
some triumph of FBI investigation or any other sort of
investigation on the part of the federal government. A family

(37:46):
member of Robinson's told investigators that the twenty two year
old had become quote more political in recent years. This
is coming from the governor of Utah. He described a
recent dinner conversation between Robinson and one of his family
members that was relayed to investigators, wherein Robinson apparently mentioned
that Kirk was coming to UVU. They talked about why

(38:07):
they didn't like him and the viewpoints that he had.
The family member also said that Kirk was full of
hate and spreading hate. Investigators found that Robinson drives a
grade Dodge Challenger, similar to the one belief to be
used by the shooter. On Wednesday, the vehicle was spotted
arriving on campus around eight in the morning. His appearance

(38:28):
of being radicalized, it's sort of hard to find. He
was brought up in what appears to be a typical
suburb of in Utah. He was awarded a scholarship to
Utah State University, only attended for one semester in twenty
twenty one. A neighbor said that he was smart, quiet,

(38:51):
and never caused any problems. I mean, that sounds so
familiar when you ever hear about these people. Authorities confirmed
that writing had been found on bullet casings related to
the attack that suggests the shooter was deeply entrenched in
internet culture. The single fired casing appeared to be inscribed
with a reference to a meme involving furries, an online

(39:13):
role playing community that in itself is sort of bizarre,
right weird?

Speaker 3 (39:17):
Yeah, yeah, Democratic activists are saying, listen, this is a
guy who is uh. He's not a Democrat, he's not transgender,
he's not an immigrant. He is a twenty two year
old white guy from a Republican family in Utah who
loves guns and wore a Donald Trump costume on Halloween.

(39:41):
So you know they're going to try to paint him
as some kind of ultraliberal activist, and that might not
really be the background from which he hails.

Speaker 1 (39:51):
Another unfired casing was found to read hey fascist catch.
It also had a series commands corentsponding to a video
game and oh bella chow bella chow bella chow chow
chow read another unfired casing appearing to reference an anti
fascist song, and the last simply read if you read this,

(40:15):
you are gay LMAO. I mean Kirk's jihad against the
gay community and trans community well known, but I mean
it's lost in all the rest of the jihads, I
mean against the immigrants, against women's freedoms. You know, he
had a very strong, you know, old school to be kind,

(40:37):
religious notion about where women should be in the family structure.
And it's not out in the workplace, and it's not
making any decisions. It's in an obedient role to their husband.
Authority said that a friend of Robinson showed them a
series of discord messages between the two appearing to reference
the logistics of the shooting, including retrieving a rifle from

(40:58):
a drop point, leaving a rifle wrapped in a towel behind,
and then changing outfits. FBI agents had recovered but they
believed to be the weapon used in the shooting that
was on Wednesday. They called it a high powered bolt
action rifle. That recovered it from a wooded area that
was nearby Trump, of course, you know you just heard

(41:19):
it praised all of this said. We started off with
this clip that made him look like an ant. But
you know it's incredible. The investigation, I mean again, the
posting of the picture that was key, But after that
it was a call from the family. Utah, a Department
of Public Safety detained two other individuals that named his

(41:39):
suspects in the immediate aftermath, but neither one of them
was involved. Cash Pattel fed into the chaos, of course,
announcing on social media the agents had caught the shooter
on Wednesday afternoon. Then he was forced to walk back
that claim. Soon after that first claim was made on
social meda to my friend Charlie Kirk, Patel said, rest now, brother,

(42:12):
we have the watch and I'll see you at Valhalla.
I mean again, Kirk was a strong are vikings Christian
Valhalla is the afterlife in Norse mythology, but yeah, in
in this case it's applied here. So with the video footage,

(42:34):
they said they had an idea that this was likely
someone of college age who blended in well with the institution.
Those are the words of law enforcement and the Utah
A Police commissioner. And then the footage shows that Robinson

(42:54):
arrived on campus at eleven fifty two in the morning.
He ascended several stairwells to the rooftop location where shot
was fired. That was the clip that was released. You
saw him running across the roof and then down into
the parking lot and the FBI Salt Lake City office
had also released photos of a person of interest in

(43:15):
the shooting that period to have been taken from surveillance video.
That was the black hat, the dark glasses, black longsleeved shirt,
and a design bearing an American flag in the center.
And you know, this is a period I think that

(43:35):
could very much be informed by this event and events
like it. And as I say, many political rallies and
even meetings with the communities that make up constituencies or
representatives across Washington and also in state capitals and in
other frankly just communities nationwide, they're canceling or postponing a

(43:59):
lot of these event because they're worried about the threat
of this kind of political violence now a sort of
copycat violence being perpetrated.

Speaker 3 (44:07):
A couple more details about the shooter from Newsweek magazine,
and I hadn't seen this before. They say he is
a third year student in Dixie Technical College's electrical apprenticeship program,
So while he did get a full ride to a
university in Utah, he ended up going to tech school.
His parents, Amber Robinson and Matt Robinson. Matt Is was

(44:32):
a twenty seven year veteran of the Washington County sheriff's
department and a registered Republican, so his dad, longtime in
law enforcement, comes from a conservative background.

Speaker 1 (44:45):
So it doesn't really fit, does it. It doesn't really
fit the narrative that was jumped on immediately by Trump,
by Bannon, by Hannity, by any of them. So I mean,
you can build whatever narrative you want. Obviously we see
evidence of that regularly, but it doesn't fit the narrative

(45:07):
that we were hearing about. I do think what you're
seeing is the ineptitude of the FBI under Cash Pattel,
the ridiculousness of firing competent FBI professionals and replacing them
with loyalists who don't know what they're doing. Cash Pateel
can't find his butt with both hands, and he is

(45:30):
the guy who is running the FBI a thousand agents
over on the Epstein files looking for Trump's name, trying
to dry clean all of those. They're trying to tee
up political prosecutions of one sort or another. This is
a crew that has lost their way on real law enforcement.

(45:50):
But when it comes to political recriminations and the kind
of political jihad that we see is now increasingly defining
this administration. That's why they do. But back to this shooter,
it's reprehensible in the extreme, it's unacceptable, and for those
cheering it, I would say, maybe you just don't get it.

(46:14):
It's wrong in every way, and it will beget a
bunch of other copycat creations that create a political environment
that's already just in the less than a day since
they've apprehended this guy, an environment that's supercharged with violence

(46:38):
and the threat of violence. And of course it doesn't
help that their calls for violence and you call them
the lunatic left, and you call them, I mean, the
lunatic left, lunatic left. I keep hearing it, and you
can say, well, Mark, it's just a thing that they've
done that for. Yeah, but what I'm seeing from the right,

(46:58):
as manifested by the Bannons, Hannity's, Laura Ingram's of the
world is a complete other ring of the left. You
just don't hear that kind of rhetoric in general from
the left. You know, Look, I'm no for a particular
fan of MSNBC, and particularly after they dumped that Matthew

(47:23):
Dowd because of what he said, and he said, you know,
violent thoughts lead to violent words, and violent words lead
to violent actions. Wasn't it something on those lines tonight?
You got it? Yeah, it's that seems like self evident.
That's such a tepid thing to say in a moment
like this, and you you fire the guy makes no sense.

(47:43):
But he's not the.

Speaker 3 (47:44):
Only one fired. There have been teachers fired and firefighters fired.
They fired somebody from that was they were going to
put a DC comic book out, the writer of the
comic book, and now they've taken the comic book away.
If you say anything negative about Charlie Kirk at all,
you're you know, you must be part of the radical left.

(48:07):
You can say you're sad about what's happening in America
with a stoking of the political violence. You can say that.
You can't say, you know, oh, I won't miss Charlie
Kirk's voice. If you say that, then you know, oh,
you you must be the problem.

Speaker 1 (48:25):
It's a it's its own sort of censorship that's being
brought down on the American discourse. And that's a problem
as well. And there's this.

Speaker 3 (48:39):
Irony that that Charlie Kirk was shot because of the
perhaps because of the things that he was saying the
violent the ugliness, not the violence, but the ugliness of
his message, right, and that he should be allowed to
have these opinions without fear of violence. That's true, But
then he gets shot and we immediately try to censor

(49:03):
free speech in this country. So you're either for free
speech or you're not.

Speaker 1 (49:09):
There is a talk of a law to be passed
that would suggest that you can prosecute anyone who says
anything that is disparaging about Charlie Kirk. I mean, imagine that.
I mean, but this is sort of like the rush
to hatch any kind of attention getting social media grabbing

(49:33):
moment from all of this that's happening on the right.
But it's a very dangerous time and I think it.
You know, also, I would just say this, and I
hate to keep coming back to Patel, but Patel is
such a mess. And by the way, Maga knows he's
a mess. Maga's angry at him for the Epstein files.

(49:55):
I mean, here is Cash Bateell, who had a podcast.
That's what Cash Bttel was doing before he was made
FBI director. He's a podcaster. And that's not to take
away some of his skills as a lawyer or you know,
he has a legal degree, et cetera. But I'm just
he shouldn't be running the FBI. Oh my god. And

(50:15):
you're seeing that he shouldn't run the FBI every hour
of the day. But maga's hit to him because his
cover up of the Jeffrey Epstein files is something that
they don't countenance. We see the ridiculousness with which he's
handled this investigation. You know, him going on prematurely declaring

(50:38):
that the shooter been captured, then he has to back
that down. I mean, he's just a blundering moron. And
then the one thing that he does better than anything
else is lavish Donald Trump with praise. Thank you for
letting law enforcement do its job, mister president. That's moere
of the first thing he said at his press conference.

Speaker 3 (50:58):
This is just cops being caught.

Speaker 1 (51:00):
Yeah, and so you know it's it's that everybody is
writing those checks. Mister president. You're so smart. Thank you
for letting us do our job. Anyway, the uh, the
Petel mess is just so reflective of this moment in

(51:23):
American history where we have incompetence in government and they
are all there just to lavish the president with praise,
and that's all the president cares about because he's on
a performative ride himself.

Speaker 3 (51:38):
Did you hear they want to put a statue of
Charlie kirk And in the Capitol in addition to giving
him the is it what the Presidential Medal of whatnot?
They want to put it. They want to create a
statue and put it in the Capitol.

Speaker 1 (51:57):
Yeah, that the presidential have never been anything like this
Presidential Medal of Freedom. Wasn't enough. We're going to do that.
Will you put that alongside the statue of the j
six ers who you pardoned. I mean, if you want
to go look at a moment that plants the flag
at the summit of political violence, you can go back

(52:20):
to January sixth. That was a politically charged, violent protest
that was fomented and encouraged in every way by this president.
And then after arrests were made and prosecutions pursued and

(52:46):
convictions sought and reached, you had a president go in
and literally pardon everybody, pardon them in a way that
took no stock of how heinous what they did was
doing what they did, taking no stock of what they did.

(53:09):
I guess this might be the way to say it,
meaning you're looking at people who are literally trying to
kill police officers. They were trying to enter the capitol
in a violent way, and they all were pardoned. I
mean that moment that that pardon happened, that unleashed a
group of people back into this country's everyday life who

(53:34):
are bent on the kind of violence that's associated with politics,
that is adjacent to or very much a part of
what we saw with the assassination of Charlie Kirk. Sorry,
I get it. Not everybody there was as violent, but
many people who were pardoned were. Every bit is violent.

(53:54):
You're trying to beat to death a police officer, That's
what was going on January sixth, not just one many.
So I don't see how you look at the at
the facts here and not see that the right has
created an environment that is just right for this kind

(54:16):
of activity.

Speaker 3 (54:17):
I don't think you. I don't think many people have
forgotten that Gretchen Whitmer, the governor of Michigan, as it
was Michigan who they went after her, tried to kidnap her,
had horrible plans for her. Paul Pelosi in his home
in San Francisco gets nailed with a hammer to the head.

Speaker 1 (54:37):
And they were looking for Nancy Pelosi. I mean, they
were a perpetrators looking for Nancy Pelosi, and there were
jokes made about that afterwards. They're trying to making jokes.

Speaker 3 (54:45):
The President Trump made jokes about it as if it's
somehow funny.

Speaker 1 (54:53):
The editor in chief of Midas touched Ron Philipowski writing
on x in a public social media post. So, after
days of Republicans blaming and vilifying Democrats and trans people
for Kirk's murder, despite having no clue who the person was,
we find out it's a white guy from a Republican
family in Utah who loved guns. Try to square that circle.

(55:20):
We'll talk more about it with the Abbil in short
Mark Thompson show. I also wanted to mention there's some
I mean, again, this isn't the only thing happening, but
obviously it's dominating the discourse as it should. I mean,
I think it's going to inform a lot of the future.
But I think there was a Kim was telling me

(55:43):
that there's a pretty major decision on planned parenthood that
went down. Also, it's kind of you know, everything else
that's happening right now is sort of being orphaned by
the media cycle, which is obsessed with this Charlie kirkstory.
And I understand why, but Kim bring us up to
speed on that, because I think that's pretty significant.

Speaker 3 (56:01):
Yeah, this is a story about the First Circuit Court
of Appeals that ruled that the Trump administration can enforce
this provision and the Reconciliation Bill passed in July that
would allow them to block Planned Parenthood from receiving Medicaid
funds from the government because the organization offers abortion care services.

(56:23):
So Trump is being allowed to now withhold Medicaid payments
from Planned Parenthood, which means more than a million patients
currently using Medicaid will no longer be covered for basic
reproductive healthcare STI testing, cancer screenings at these Planned Parenthood
clinics that are across the country. So basically, in a nutshell,

(56:47):
a court just gave Trump permission to defund Planned Parenthood.

Speaker 1 (56:54):
So this is about two hundred healthcare centers. Yeah. The
thing about Planned Parenthood is the abortion part of Planned
Parenthood really isn't a big part of it.

Speaker 3 (57:11):
It's a part of it, but it's not the only
thing they do.

Speaker 1 (57:14):
Right, Yeah, So, I mean I'm talking about cancers and
the other illnesses that have to do with the you know,
the reproductive process. Absolutely, they'll go undiagnosed and untreated.

Speaker 3 (57:33):
And it comes off after news it came yesterday about
ten million dollars worth of contraceptives being destroyed on orders
from Trump officials. So it's very clear what they want
to happen to women, especially poor women on Medicaid. You know,
they want them pregnant, they want them having babies. They
don't want any chance of financial success, and it's just

(57:55):
another way to keep the ladies down.

Speaker 1 (57:59):
The The realities of the agenda that this administration has
pursued are pretty grim, and they're you know, pursuing them
with a with a certain ease through the courts and
with this concierge Supreme Court in place. We'll see, but
it would, I would say, be likely that they'll get

(58:19):
a lot of their agenda through. You know, Donald Trump
saying that he'll send the National Guard to Memphis, Tennessee.

Speaker 3 (58:28):
That's the next city.

Speaker 1 (58:31):
He's going to send the National Guard to Memphis to
address anybody crime. Is the answer we were looking for. Yes,
the mayor is happy, the governor is happy, he said
about this pending deployment. The mayor is anybody Democrat? Yeah,
that's how Trump makes an enemy. The governor is Republican,

(58:57):
and he said the city is quote deeply troubled and
quote we're going to fix that, just like we did Washington.
As we've told you here, he's asked for the option
to maintain a National Guard presence in Washington through the
end of the year. Now he can do that, even
though it's being challenged in court. He can do that

(59:17):
because of the district. You know, it's a federal district
of Columbia. He'll need you know, you need the governor
to ask for the National Guard in the case of Tennessee.
But he's sending troops. You know who else is on
the list, Chicago, Baltimore. You know he's claiming crime as an.

Speaker 2 (59:41):
Issue in San Francisco.

Speaker 1 (59:42):
Yeah, exactly, so, I mean the and of course when
these National guardsmen get there, they end up, you know,
hanging out, spreading mulch over various parks, picking up trash,
and there are less expensive to do this that also
don't insult the service of many of these men and

(01:00:04):
women who joined the National Guard. They don't join the
National Guard to spread mulch and pick up trash. And
they're giving up time as mortgage brokers, as lawyers, as
account The National Guards people are teachers. Thank you. So

(01:00:25):
this is a this is such a misguided policy. But
again it's largely performative. It's theatrical. That's what Trump does
in such a big way. That's a little bit on
Charlie Kirk and some of the other things that are
going on. I will repeat a bit of this in
the segment ahead, because we'll talk to Jim Abel and

(01:00:47):
we'll talk to Michael Shore about these things as well,
and I think in that conversation will likely retill some
of the soil, and I'll also try to integrate some
of your some of your comment. It's along the way.
A lot of people have been into our chat and
I want to get into some of that as well. Yes,
thank you for being here. We are a live show

(01:01:09):
on the East Coast two to four on the West
Coast eleven oh one, and we appreciate everybody being here.
I want to quickly get into some super chats and
then I'll get to Michael and to Jim. The hypocrisy
of the last two days insults my intelligence, says a
Richard delamator. Thank you for that. What is this? A

(01:01:30):
twenty dollars super chat from Angel in the Bay Area says,
Mark apologies for piling on about the Voice two x
money today to say thank you for listening to the
Voice to bring us the important and vital information. I
apologize and promise to do better. I will tell you
what this is about better. Thank you, Mark and Kim,

(01:01:54):
Tony and the commission I always like it when people
use Albert's nickname, the commiss she's the commissioner of sports
on this show. This was about playing Donald Trump's comments
and being saying I can't take it. I don't even
want to hear his voice. And I was saying, guys,
you got to get over that. I mean, he's the
president of the United States and what he's saying is
super consequential. I don't want him to be the president

(01:02:16):
of the United States, but he is. So we're going
to play cuts that we feel are relevant to what's
going on. And I think this is Angel in the
Bay Area, who was one of those who made the
comment like I don't want to hear from him anymore.
It is from Tom Graves too early for Kirk jokes.
If so, sorry, Charlie, I see Tom Graves. Thank you Chaplin.
Fred says, Hi, Mark, I said it once and I

(01:02:38):
will say it again. Trump now has the perfect excuse
for his war with everyone that does not agree with him.
Told you Mark, civil war is coming. Well, these are
chilling thoughts. And then again, I don't know what that
looks like in this country, but I do believe that
there are likely challenges to the kind of civil war

(01:03:03):
that we're talking about. But if you're talking about it
birthing a period of increased violence, I would agree with that.
And that's one of the problems I have with political violence.
It gets you just more political violence. Violence generally gets
you more violence. Beth Farmer says, they can't put those
nasty worms. They can't put those nasty worms that should
be I guess back in a can. Their hate is
out there for all to see. Thank you for the

(01:03:24):
twenty dollars super chat. And yeah, I mean there have
been some hateful things said. We've played a bunch of
them for you. I thought the stuff that that Eric
Trump said, that Don Junior said, is you know, saying
on national television to an audience that's all too receptive
to it. Harry Magnus says, yes, Don Junior is traumatizing
and a liar. Sorry, you can't sugarcoat this nonsense. Yeah,

(01:03:52):
the common from luis the five dollars super chat. So
a white dude shoots another white dude on a predominantly
white campus in a mostly white state, resulting in threats
against HBCUs makes sense not, Yeah, this is I hadn't
heard it framed in that way, but that's exactly right.

(01:04:16):
Wasn't there a shutdown or a I don't wan if
i'd not a lockdown? Wasn't there a special advisory that
went out to the historically black colleges and university? Isn't
that right? Kim? I thought that happened yesterday.

Speaker 4 (01:04:29):
But.

Speaker 1 (01:04:32):
I don't know if Kim's still there or I can't
ask for people to keep those cameras on, but they don't.

Speaker 3 (01:04:37):
So you're correct. Yeah, we talked about it yesterday. They
had bomb threats, they had warnings at HBCUs yesterday and
it continues today.

Speaker 1 (01:04:47):
Yeah, there you go. Thank you. The lady. Beatrice says,
I hear he wants to give Kirka presidential a Medal
of Freedom. He's going to do it if hate speech
is a reason for that, Harrison Butker should get one.
He's the kicker for his commission, the kicker for the Chiefs.

Speaker 5 (01:05:03):
Yes, that's correct.

Speaker 1 (01:05:04):
It's tough for me to keep all the hate speech clear.
You know, it's a very very complicated hate speech scheme
that I've got going. I've got to match all the
hate speech with the person who said it. Harrison Butker
is the kicker for the Chiefs.

Speaker 12 (01:05:17):
Even last night at the football game, the Thursday night
football game, they did hold a moment of silence at
the Packers game in Green Bay, Wisconsin.

Speaker 5 (01:05:24):
So moment's silence from the NFL and the Packers.

Speaker 1 (01:05:27):
So Lady Beatrice says, not really, but shows how inappropriate
the idea is. Yeah, it's it is. I don't know,
the Congressional Medal, rather, the Presidential Medal of Freedom has
in my judgment, been I mean, you can argue a
lot this for a lot of different awards, but it's
been completely degraded anyway. It's you know, now you want
to say if somebody got the Presidential Medal free, but

(01:05:48):
who'd you get on who's the president? I don't know.
I mean Rush Limbaugh was a to me, you know,
low ebb. But they're probably other examples as well. Just
looking really quickly, and then I will get to both

(01:06:12):
Turning Point founders are dead. Anti vaxer Ed Montgomery died
of COVID in twenty twenty. And now Charlie Kirk says Louise, Yeah,
I hadn't put that together. Thank you Louise for that. Look,
Turning Point USA is super relevant. I was telling you
about this yesterday. We talked about it in Sun detail.
If you missed it might be worth going back to
yesterday's show because I know some people, maybe even many

(01:06:33):
here on this channel weren't aware of the power of
Charlie Kirk and the relevance of Charlie Kirk, and indeed
the lift that Turning Point USA produced and getting Trump
into the presidency this time round. Charlie Kirk is a
real political force through Turning Point USA that energized young,
politically motivated people to become activated, activated in ways that

(01:06:57):
are super dangerous and super bad, but super relevant. And
so Turning Point USA lives on and again the martyred
him around Charlie Kirk maybe the very thing that reminds
everyone the political violence is yet again, for another reason,

(01:07:18):
a bad thing, one hundred percent bad. Zoe Rose says,
this just goes to show how much infighting is within
the Republican party. Tyler is a registered Republican. Yeah, I
mean this, thank you, Zoe. That truly does underscore the
fact that these narratives that came out, and Trump's narrative
came out like twenty minutes after Kirk had been assassinated.

(01:07:41):
He was talking about a lunatic leftist and all this
sort of thing. These narratives are, you know, they slap
them on immediately, but they're just they're not valid in
any way. So all right, smash the like button if
you would. It helps us in the world of YouTube.
Sorry to be so with something mundane as slapping the
like no, but you got it. You gotta smash it

(01:08:02):
because if you do that, then that thumbs up helps
us show up in other people's feeds who don't even
know we're having this conversation. So smash it with your
iron rod. We continue its Mark tops show. Really privileged
to have a two very very smart, accomplished people join

(01:08:22):
us every Friday. He's the former White House correspondent for
ABC News, the senior correspondent there at ABC, and now
he joins us every Friday to I think, speak more
openly about what's going on in America, probably than he
could at the ABC network. Anyway, how about it for
the great Jim Avola and a man who has forgotten

(01:08:44):
more about politics than most of us will ever know.
He's the wonderful Michael Shore. Yeah, Hi, there are guys.
Thank you for being here, as I always say, but
truly on a it's a dark week because you can
see the increasing momentum of political violence in America. Jim,

(01:09:04):
I wonder if you can give me a thought on
what's going on.

Speaker 7 (01:09:07):
Well, I don't believe in violence in any way, so
you know, I think that this was overboard. We should
just argue with the guy and continue to press our point.
I don't believe in anything he had to say. And yes,
he was, as you just mentioned, very important in the
world of politics. He many people credit him with putting

(01:09:30):
Trump over the top because he got younger votes that
he didn't get before. On the other hand, you know what,
I don't know yet, and I'd like love to hear
Michael's thoughts and your thoughts on this Mark is I
don't know yet because I did not follow him very closely.
Is whether or not all these tributes about him wanting

(01:09:51):
to listen and not react in violence and debate in
a civil manner if that's correct. If it's correct, I
wholeheartedly endorse it. If it isn't, then I'd like to
hear about that, because I didn't. I don't know him
as that. But you know, now that he's been shot,
everybody's come out, of course and says that he's he

(01:10:14):
was a good example of how to debate, and I
don't know if that's true or not.

Speaker 1 (01:10:19):
I'll turn over to Micae on a second. I'll just
share what I know. He had a regular thing that
he was doing, actually I think doing it at the
time that he was killed, and it's called prove me wrong.
And so he has people, they talk to them before
they actually take the microphone. They have them, you know,
pre selected if you will, with questions, but they're legitimate,
provocative questions, and then Kirk responds to them. The one

(01:10:42):
thing I would say is when you watch them, it's
oftentimes not quite the legitimate back and forth that you
would hope for. There's a little. I feel kind of
a professional wrestling aspect to it, where Kirk will essentially
be able to steam roll the questioner. But that might
be a little unfair. I haven't seen all of these

(01:11:02):
different meetings. Certainly, going to these campuses and taking these
sorts of questions is something that distinguished him from many
other high profile political figures. Michael, you might have actually
seen some of this, because I know you're out there
on campuses and have covered them through the years, and
these Charlie Kirk type events. Can you speak to this?

Speaker 4 (01:11:20):
Yeah, I mean I've been to two of his events.
They weren't formally formally sort of id'd as that as
a you know, proved me wrong events. They were just
Charlie Kirk talking to people, and yeah, there's a sort
of a mic drop at attitude that he would take, like, yeah,

(01:11:40):
try try and tell me that this isn't right, and
then he's got his people boosting him up, and he
does this kind of he doesn't do that, but that's
the kind of feel I get. I should also, just
to correct the record, Tyler was not a registered Republican
according to what I've seen. One of your listeners said
that earlier seen that he's been registered as a non

(01:12:02):
partisan voter, and he came from a Republican family, which
is hard not to do in Utah generally speaking. But
but but just to just for clarity on that, on
that issue, I've only read today and learned from reporters
reporting that he was a registered non partisan.

Speaker 1 (01:12:21):
Albert play for us if you would the uh the
kid who asked the question, and as he was asking
the question in response, Kirk was murdered. Here you know, sadly,
of course, he's been folded into this whole narrative. I
say sadly because you know, he really was there. It
would appear just to ask this question and to participate

(01:12:44):
like everybody else, he was there. Do you have that, Albert?

Speaker 13 (01:12:46):
Here?

Speaker 1 (01:12:46):
He posted this on social media.

Speaker 14 (01:12:49):
It's a tragedy, and I don't it's hard to grapple
with and I'm part of a community that's struggling to
grapple with it right now. And people have obviously pointed
to the irony that it was the point that I
was trying to make is how peaceful left was great
before you got child, and that that only makes sense

(01:13:12):
if we stay peaceful. As much as I disagree with
Charlie Kirk. I'm on the record for how much I
disagree with Charlie Kirk. But like man, dude, he is
still a human being.

Speaker 1 (01:13:24):
Have we forgotten that?

Speaker 7 (01:13:28):
So?

Speaker 1 (01:13:28):
I mean, you could see how emotional he was. I'm
I'm struck by this moment because I don't know if
it's a culmination or if it's the beginning of a
period of what appears to be a political violence that's
being animated.

Speaker 4 (01:13:48):
In large measure, it's not even the culmination. This is
who we are, Mark, These are our politics. Our politics
are politics of violence. They have been for a very
long time. Are policing is we had John you writing
torture memos in the Bush White House. The left is

(01:14:10):
not the violent side. They are not the ones that
are pushing for, you know, for gun laws that allowed
half the people at Utah Valley University to be having
open Carrie, that's that's a misnumber. It didn't start with
Charlie Kirk's death, and maybe hopefully it will end, but
Gabby Gifford's was shot. It didn't end there. Kids are

(01:14:32):
shot in schools and that's not political necessarily. Those are
usually the ads of madmen and young sort of radicalized
people who get radicalized online. This is somebody who sowed
a lot of hate, who otherized so many people, and
now the right is trying to project onto the left
everything that they have stood for on issues of violence,

(01:14:54):
and it's going to work unless, you know, the left
finds a way to get into it. There is not
you know, somebody heard somebody saying the other night that
David axel Rod was quoting Eschylus on TV that night
and Republicans on TV were calling for revenge. Republicans in
the well of the House, we're calling for revenge. You know,

(01:15:15):
you cannot bring poetry by this person. I think it
was Corbyn Trent said you cannot bring poetry to a gunfight.
And that's where we are. This is who we are.
There's nothing there's nothing sort of new about what happened
to Charlie kirk Kirk, you know, it just happened to him,
and it's a tragedy and it's awful. But his rhetoric

(01:15:36):
was while he was alive, was terrible and the fact
that we're now turning him into a martyr is disgusting.
You know, in a way, it's a terrible tragedy. It's
awful for people to have seen that guy who were
just listening to, who asked him a question, who came
to that event, earnest Lee wanting to be a part
of that. That's exciting when a national figure comes to

(01:15:59):
your local campus in aurum Utah, I'm certain, especially when
there are a lot of like minded people at least
in terms of conservatism. But this isn't new. This is
who we are.

Speaker 1 (01:16:10):
There have been well, you mentioned that I'll get to
the white nationalism in a second, but you mentioned the
well of the House, and I wanted to play they
were right after this all went down. They were trying
to get together a minute of silent prayer, and kind
of to your point in a way, the discourse couldn't

(01:16:31):
even halt in the shouting back and forth, couldn't even
halt the one opsmanship associated with this couldn't stop for
even one minute. Albert play that stuff from the house.
The Mike Johnson attempt to have a moment of prayer
in the House chamber.

Speaker 15 (01:16:51):
Here you go, sh The chair would ask that all members,
President in the chamber and those in the gallery please
rise for a moment of prayer for Charlie Kirk and
his family.

Speaker 13 (01:17:09):
Mm hmm, what purpose is gen a lady for Colorado.

Speaker 1 (01:17:17):
Rise is Lauren Bolbert.

Speaker 13 (01:17:39):
Let's let's let's wait a minute, Wait a minute. The
house will be in order. The house will be an order,
The house will be in order.

Speaker 1 (01:17:53):
I just think that's instructive because you know, you this
speaks to the political discourse. You know, I mean this,
I think in appropriate that it ends of the house
will be in order. I mean this is now. The
house admittedly is a place where there are a lot
of cross currents. But you know, they can't even shut

(01:18:14):
up for sixty seconds to do this moment of silence.
I don't know that the moment of silence is appropriate anyway.
You didn't do it for the Minnesota Democrat who was
shot and killed in her home with her husband, et cetera.
But nonetheless, they attempted it, and they couldn't get it.
They couldn't get up the launch pad.

Speaker 7 (01:18:31):
Yeah, and I think for the most part, the problem,
the problem the Democrats have is they still played by
the rules. And I don't want them to change that.
I don't want them to stop playing by the rules.
But because they do, it allows the Republicans weeks worth
of grace to spew hate and it's not challenged because

(01:18:54):
Democrats still want to saything bad about Charlie Kirk because
he was killed in playing view and I think that's right,
that's the right thing to do. But it sets them
back because Republicans showed no restraint whatsoever. Trump the day
up was blaming leftists and he has no idea if
it was leftists, and in fact it may not have been,

(01:19:14):
as Michael points out, So you know, it puts I
don't know what to do about that. I mean, I
don't want everybody to jump in and have it be
a free for all. Should we should we play hardball? Yes,
Gavin Newsom's playing hardball, but he's playing hardball in the
in the court of public opinion. He's not advocating violence

(01:19:35):
or revenge for those type of things.

Speaker 1 (01:19:38):
Charlie Kirk on his podcast.

Speaker 7 (01:19:42):
They had a civil debate. You know, I wasn't pleased
that he had him and Steve Bennon as his first
two guests. I don't think that was great, but at least,
to you know, at least he is willing to listen
and debate. The Republicans have gone beyond debate. They are
just named calling and calling for revenge, and that's not.

Speaker 1 (01:20:02):
Right, you know, Michael, you point to where we are.
This is who we are, and I think that that's
a kind of instructive comment, because we're a society a
wash in guns and a wash in more and more
incendiary rhetoric and just beset.

Speaker 4 (01:20:25):
We change the name of the Department of Defense to
the Department of War. We have road rage videos that
we could watch until you know, if we wanted to now,
we could watch until twenty twenty seven on YouTube. We
are we have a police, We prevent crime through violence.
I mean, we are a violent country and any denial

(01:20:45):
of that is absurd and it's not coming the majority
of it is not, at least coming from the left.
It's this this rhetoric on guns, the rhetoric on torture,
the rhetoric on extreme policing. That's not coming from the left.
But the right does a very good job on saying
and projecting that the left is soft on crime, that

(01:21:05):
the left, you know, is doing things like this before
they even do it. Right, what happens the story starts
and people start fading away. We know what news cycles
are like, right, once they catch the guy, I will
learn a little bit more about him later, but this
story will fade away to some degree. And all the
information that people got from people like Donald Trump and
others saying this was some left wing radical who was

(01:21:27):
out there might be an anti fascist, that that there
seem to have been anti fascist messages, but I don't
know when anti fascist became radical in this country. And
to that degree, that's what we're looking at here. So
to me, it's status quo. And this time, sadly the
bullet hit, but it's it's no different than it was
the day before Charlie Kirk was killed.

Speaker 7 (01:21:49):
I mean, the just as further evidence of what I
was saying before is that let's look at the extremes
on both sides. Okay, lets so let's take aoc uh.
Let's take Bernie Sanders. Have you ever heard them call
for violence? Have you heard them call for revenge? No,
they don't do that. The Republicans on the other side do.

(01:22:14):
And that's and that is the problem. You can't this
is a one sided fight. You can't believe that that
that they're equal, you know, and and it's you.

Speaker 4 (01:22:28):
If it's not. If I can add to what you're saying, Jim,
that they control the message machine too, which is important
because what they can do is what I'm saying is
projected onto the other side. We've all had things in
interpersonal relationships, and wherever we were projecting something onto you
that they are doing, we probably all have done it

(01:22:50):
at some point in our lives. The Republican Party and Block,
which is interesting because that's another political story today, that
and Block. The Republican Party has been successful in projecting
whatever they want onto the Democrats. They're soft on crime all.
Their number one issue is transgender Everything that really isn't true.

(01:23:11):
It's the Republicans who are worried about transgender you know,
and so it's absolutely a successful potion that they've concocted
for political power.

Speaker 1 (01:23:23):
The days ahead will tell us more about this. But
the alt right movement, there are degrees of alt right ness,
and you know, the Nick Fuentes's of the world, they
also find themselves at odds with someone like Charlie Kirk.
I mean, this goes back up just a handful of years,
but there's sort of the suggestion that the Charlie Kirk's

(01:23:47):
of the world versus the Nick Fuentes's of the world
are on opposing sides because Charlie Kirk is almost too
mainstream for somebody who's like Nick Flinte. So again, this
not to get too much in the weeds, but I
guess what I'm trying to say is their gradations even
on the all right, but all of them are a
day's drive from as what Jim says. You know, the

(01:24:07):
high profile Democrats, or you might consider the lefties, you know,
those like AOC or Bernie Sanders. But Michael, you're so right.
I mean, it feels like all the right wing and
Republican punches land and Democrats are still finding a good
way to message.

Speaker 7 (01:24:27):
And the Republicans have have Fox News, you know, and
this morning, I think it was this morning, Trump appears
on Fox News and repeats the same thing about the leftists,
you know, he and they just let him go on unfiltered.
And Democrats don't have that voice anymore. So CNN has
gone more toward the middle, more toward the right than

(01:24:50):
they ever have been before. And MSNBC just fired Matt
down for saying something that was true.

Speaker 1 (01:24:57):
That also something was like, it's so it's so tepid
as a remark, you know when it comes to violence.
Here is a Trump a little bit on his Fox
and Friends appearance talking about the right. You see him there.
It was odd too. You know, they arrested this guy
at ten o'clock last night you taw time, and the

(01:25:17):
held the announcement until Donald Trump couldn't make the announcement
on Fox News channel this morning on their morning show.

Speaker 4 (01:25:25):
And they didn't even catch them, right, I mean, the
guys surrendered exactly.

Speaker 1 (01:25:28):
That was the point I was making an hour one.
I mean, they're peacocking like it was some great investigative triumph.
You know, if the dad doesn't call and the clergyman
doesn't call, we don't have him.

Speaker 7 (01:25:37):
Right, but the clergyman get the ten thousand dollars or
whatever the reward is.

Speaker 1 (01:25:44):
By the way, that's a very good question. Something else
will reward.

Speaker 4 (01:25:50):
It's a time.

Speaker 1 (01:25:51):
Yeah. Hey, let me just quickly segue just while I
have you guys to the the situation with the Trump
announcement wanting National Guard troops to go to Memphis. You know,
obviously Chicago's on the docket and they are in Washington.
Give me a thought on this is this stuff? It

(01:26:13):
seems like a bigger reach. But he did do it
in LA and so on some level, I'm thinking he
can do it elsewhere, And at least in Tennessee there's
a Republican governor.

Speaker 7 (01:26:25):
Yeah, it doesn't appear as though there's much objection to
it in Tennessee from the from either the mayor or
who I think the mayor is a Democrat, But the
mayor's a Democrat, right exactly. He's not objecting then, and
certainly the Republican is not objecting. So I don't think
they have as much of a problem with it there
as they do in California or other places where the

(01:26:46):
governor has to cooperate.

Speaker 1 (01:26:49):
And meantime to push through Donald Trump appointees and nominations,
the Senate is doing something which is called the New Michael.
I wonder if you could explain it and how the
Democrats flirted with it but stayed away from it, and
how the Republicans are embracing it and look like they're
going to go through with it.

Speaker 4 (01:27:10):
Well, yeah, and so the thing about the I'll talk
to that first, and then I've got to say one
thing on Memphis. But you know, that's what you get
with majorities. That's why on election night when you find
out you have a six seat majority in the Senate,
it's huge because when you don't like the way things

(01:27:30):
are going, you change the rules. And that's what the
Senate is doing. And so if you woke up this
morning worried that we didn't have an ambassador in Greece,
well you're going to have Kimberly Gilfoyle soon, so don't worry.
These are the things they do. They say that they're
trying to negotiate with the Democrats. In fact they may be,

(01:27:51):
but those those negotiations didn't get anywhere on this And
when you have that kind of a majority, it means
that you can go right into it, and you can
and you can change the rules and then have your
vote and get people out there and.

Speaker 1 (01:28:04):
So, so explain what the rule change would.

Speaker 4 (01:28:07):
Be, then, please, Well, the rule change is that you
can bring these these nominees up what's called n block,
which is all at once rather than a little at
a time or one at a time. And when you
do that, it's hard then to get the objections because
you'd be objecting to everything. The rules of the Senate

(01:28:28):
state that you have to be able to vote on
these one by one. And when you do it and block,
you vote on everyone at once, and it's a big
advantage for the majority to be able to do that.

Speaker 1 (01:28:44):
Now, did you want to say something about Memphis.

Speaker 4 (01:28:46):
Yeah, well, you know there are some races going on
in Memphis in Tennessee, and it's an easy place. So
when you see Trump doing this, what he's doing by
not being on the ballot in twenty twenty six actually
on the ballot is he is. He's setting up the
Republican Party his party to retain control because they are
the ones that are tough on crime. So if you

(01:29:08):
go into a state where there's a governor's race in Texas,
Bill he's the governor, he's term limited out. Marsha Blackburn
is going to be running. There's a chance that some
prominent Democrats are going to run either for the Senate
against Bill Haggerty, but more likely against Marsha Blackburn and
Senate in the Senate in governor's seat. They're trying to
make sure that they have the power and they're able

(01:29:29):
to keep the power in these places by having their
candidates say, hey, we're tough on crime, they're soft on crime.
If crime is the number one issue. Nobody knows if
it will be. The Republicans are taking that ground out
and they have the advantage of both Houses of Congress
and the President to kind of do what he wants
when it comes as we've seen when it comes to
doing this. And they can also use the courts stepping

(01:29:52):
in against Democrats, right if they're unable to send troops
somewhere because the court said it, Hey, we wanted to
do it, but the Democratic Corps said that we couldn't
do it. I mean, this is the advantage of they
call it the bully pulpit, and this is the bully pulpit.
Part of the job is that you're able to do
these sorts of things.

Speaker 1 (01:30:11):
Crime is a winning issue, and it's been identified as
such as you've just said. But there was interesting, just
because you're talking about the politics of the next election.
Warning signed for Republicans as Trump's approval collapses in a
key county. They are looking at Bucks County, Pennsylvania. Michael,
you've reported from there, I think probably.

Speaker 4 (01:30:31):
Yeah, it's a swing county, and I mean it swung.
It hadn't been a swing county. And Jim I'm sure
has been there a number of times it's pretty close
to DC. It's a part of it's kind of it's
not a Philadelphia suburb, but it's a Philadelphia weekend spot.
And it's a place that had swung from you know,

(01:30:52):
being very blue to kind of purpling up a little bit.
And if Trump is failing there, that doesn't bode well
for a very big win the state at all. And
those are the kinds of things that you know, may
have seen Bob Casey lose his job and Kamala Harris
lose the state in the twenty twenty four election.

Speaker 1 (01:31:12):
Yeah, they call it one of the nation's top bell weathers.
And they say in new polling it is Donald Trump
approval writing that's in freefall. Again, that's the description. It's
actually fifty three percent among likely voters. That's a disapproval
number of fifty three percent. So I don't know if
i'd call it free fall, but maybe that's sufficient. Well.

Speaker 7 (01:31:31):
Independence Independence are are losing their interest in mister Trump,
and I think that that is because of these crazy
things he's been doing. And you know what, it shows
up his base he continues to have that. I guess

(01:31:53):
it's forty five percent now of people will who will
follow him no matter what he does. But the Independence
are spooked by the crazy things that he does.

Speaker 4 (01:32:04):
And go ahead, Pard No, I didn't mean to interrupt
you to what Jim is saying, though I'm bolstering what
he's saying to that. To that end, the the the
Independence are the ones that are most interested in issues
like crime in many cases that that's that's a swing
issue for a swing voter.

Speaker 7 (01:32:25):
I guess I live in a bubble, you know, Michael Mark,
because I don't live that in La anymore. And even
when I did live in La, the worst thing that
there was was, you know, uh, when a homeless encampment
across the street from my very expensive, too expensive apartment.
But other than that, I didn't feel in danger at all.
I walked my dog in the middle of the night,

(01:32:46):
I did all those things. And here in San Diego
where I live now, I don't see any crime. So
I really can't speak to I can't speak to the
fear that that you say is palpable. I'm not sure
it's there among the majority of Americans. They're going to

(01:33:06):
make it seem like it is, and they're going to
terrorize people with that, but in reality, is crime the
big issue or is the fact that my meat costs
ten dollars a pound going to be the reality. I
still think it's the economy and that's it's going to be.

Speaker 4 (01:33:24):
But if they tell you that, and this goes to
what we've been saying all day, Jim, exactly what you
just said is if the Republicans are telling you the
crime is an issue, there are enough voters that are
going to say crime is an issue. It goes to
the last interaction Charlie Kirk had frankly, if we want
to put a button on this thing they were talking about,
are there you know how many mass shooters have been transgender?

Speaker 1 (01:33:46):
Right? You know?

Speaker 4 (01:33:47):
And he said too many or something like that. Charlie
Kirk said too many. The point is they're good at
telling you there's a problem when the problem doesn't exist,
because that scares voters, and that makes people think that
there is a problem they've done. That's what creates wedge issues,
and crime isn't quite a wedge issue, but it's certainly
something like you said, Jim, that the people are looking

(01:34:07):
at and hearing and saying, oh, it must be bad
all over the country. It's not bad in my neighborhood.
But it must be bad out there, and these guys
are the ones that are doing the most about it.
It's a very.

Speaker 7 (01:34:17):
And I think and even in places like San Francisco,
which had got such bad publicity for what was going
on there, that's improved as well. You know.

Speaker 1 (01:34:30):
What I'm told.

Speaker 4 (01:34:31):
Unless you're talking about their football team.

Speaker 7 (01:34:33):
Oh yeah, that's because they don't have a good quarterback.
But I keep telling the.

Speaker 2 (01:34:39):
Corner, Yeah you just heard that's the touch Jim's Mike, Well, we're.

Speaker 1 (01:34:47):
Out of time. I was going to try to show.

Speaker 7 (01:34:49):
Not that our bears are doing any better, but you know,
they look pretty good.

Speaker 1 (01:34:52):
They could only play three quarters of football, they would
be doing well, right the uh uh, I have to
wrap up, gentlemen, Thank you very very much. There's a lot,
like there's a lot going on, obviously the line and share.
What we talked about was the Charlie Kirk stuff, but
there is plenty to you know, leave on the back
burner for next week and I look forward to that. Michael,

(01:35:13):
thank you, Jim, thank you. I'll look forward to our
next conversation and appreciate you being here. I guess okay,
see you guys, Michael Shure and Jim Obla everyone. Yeah,
I just see that. We're you know, it's getting late.
I want to talk to them more, but it's getting late.
I've got no choice but to move along. You know.

(01:35:38):
The I watched the Kirk video. He was asked about
trans crime. Then the second question was how many mass
shootings were there. He was asked about how many mass
shootings were there with that were involved trans the trans community,
and Kirk said including gang shootings, and then the shot
rang out. That's exactly right from the sea Ris, That's

(01:36:00):
how it went down. Crime is running rampant, Yes, at
sixteen hundred Pennsylvania Avenue. I see what you did, Rick
ke Malush, Yeah, how about that? Yeah, thank you for
the for the chat. Everybody jumping in. By the way,
we read all your comments that are left after the fact.
So many watch the show on delay. Most watch the
show in delay, so feel free to chime in any time.

(01:36:24):
John Dowie, what about John Dowie? A big shout out,
John Dowie with a five dollars super chat superstick, big
shout out, Yeah, big shout out exactly. I'll tell you
one thing I was going to want Michael Snyder gets settled.
One thing I was going to mention to the two guys,
Jim and Michael. The Foreign service is a big part

(01:36:48):
of as you can imagine, American diplomacy and a lot
of what we do worldwide, and international relations, as you know,
are strained at best in many places they weren't strained
formerly in past administrations. We've had good relations with countries
like you know, I'll just use the ones that are
close by Canada, Mexico, and now we're on sort of
a wild adversarial footing with the minimum Canada, and it

(01:37:11):
would appear in Mexico as well. And you've got the
European nations that are all used to America taking a
leadership role. Now America is pulling back, et cetera. So
there's a union for American diplomats, okay, and the American
diplomats get an advisory from their union, and it's the

(01:37:32):
American of Foreign Service Association, I believe, and the advisory says,
in essence, be careful about any opinion you have that
is against the White House narrative and any bad news
you have associated with anything you've learned internationally in your dealings.

(01:37:56):
Here is how it looked important reminder, dissent and providing
professional opinions in uncharted territory. We are operating in uncharted territory.
The memo says. The environment facing the Foreign Service today
is unlike anything we've seen, and the afsay's duty. That's
the union's duty. The association's duty is to equip members

(01:38:18):
with the best possible guidance in this precarious moment. For context,
AFSA has long defended the ability of the Foreign Service,
but diplomats posted at embassies abroad are being called back
from their assignments after providing less than positive analyzes or
unwelcome recommendations to leadership. Even if offered discreetly, any statement,

(01:38:43):
verbal or written can be politicized and used against you.
Is the message, that is the reality we face, the
message says. The Union's warning to its members marks the
latest example of how federal civil servants at the State
Department and across the government are fai growing pressure from
Trump's White House to downplay information or views that do

(01:39:05):
not strictly adhere to the president's partisan agenda. For decades,
presidents have relied on experts in the federal government trying
to stay ahead of looming natural disasters, economic downturns, risks
to public safety, public health hazard, geopolitical shifts, credible terrorist threats.
But an administration that ignores or muscles the federal workforce

(01:39:29):
runs the risk of flying blind, making decisions with incomplete
or skewed information, with potentially disastrous consequences.

Speaker 3 (01:39:39):
So they're not able to do their jobs. These are
people that use words for a living. They're diplomats. They speak,
and now that their words are being ham strong.

Speaker 1 (01:39:50):
It's not even that their words are being ham strong.
What they do for a living is they ascertain and
assess different threats and changing landscapes internationally, diplomatically, I just
mentioned from a health perspective, geopolitically, there's so many different
subtleties and nuances here. And then of course they do
craft them using the language to communicate what's happening. But

(01:40:15):
John Dinkleman, who's retired career diplomat, he's now president of
this AFSA, that's the association that issued the memo. He says,
what we're seeing in the diplomatic corps right now is fear.
All presidents have valued loyalty, particularly among cabinet members and
senior officials. Who work in jobs set aside for political appointees.
But Trump and his team have pushed for political allegiance

(01:40:39):
in an unprecedented way, demanding career civil servants jettison imparton
partiality for a partisan stance backing the administration's agenda. He says,
I'm getting reports from literally all over the world of
individuals who are reticent to offer up their well trained

(01:41:00):
and well experienced opinions regarding the situation on the ground,
the way in which foreign interlocutors that's a dang word,
will view our positions, and even to propose, heaven forbid,
an alternate course of action, you know, one that's against
or different from the one that the Trump administration has
laid down. He didn't say how many diplomats have been

(01:41:24):
reassigned for offering candidate assessments, you know, or exposing to
avoid exposing people for for things they said and retaliation
to avoid that people are just shutting up. Yeah, he
doesn't say how many people that is, But he's talking

(01:41:47):
about a climate. He's talking about a climate at the agency.

Speaker 3 (01:41:50):
Make sure you pay the people just to keep their
mouths shut when it's their job to offer assessment and opinion.

Speaker 1 (01:41:56):
Yeah, well, I'll say this in the greater lie about
all of this. Here is Marco Rubio, the State Secretary
of State. And no one has folded himself into a
little carry on luggage bag for Donald Trump like Marco
Rubio has. It's absolutely disgusting. Marco Rubio said, values and

(01:42:19):
candid insights from patriotic Americans who have chosen to serve
their country is what the State Department is all about.
Is that right? Yeah? In fact, this administration reorganized the
entire State Department to ensure those on the front lines,
the regional bureaus and the embassies, are in a position
to impact policies. Well, you reorganize the entire State Department.

(01:42:40):
That's true if you mean couring out the entire State
Department and installing loyalists. So there you have it. That
the latest word from the union that represents the diplomatic Corps.
So a bravo and the continue the Albert, what do
we do? What do we do? I'm way behind and

(01:43:00):
I don't know now. Can't we just wrap it all up?

Speaker 2 (01:43:03):
Now?

Speaker 1 (01:43:04):
Albert? Do we have to do anything more? My god?

Speaker 12 (01:43:06):
We do owe our audience and our loyal longtime listeners
a segment we have a one story, having in a
private chat that we could get to one story for.

Speaker 1 (01:43:15):
You don't want to do the three stories. You want
me to get all the hate mail from people who
like Friday Fabulous Florida, and we're not going to do
the three stories. I get what's happening now. This is
my own palace revolt that I'm facing Michael Snyder. Michael Snyder,
the culture blaster who will be in in a few moments.
What would you like us to do just the one
story or the three stories?

Speaker 2 (01:43:34):
Michael, Well, you know Friday Fabulous Florida is important. I
think if you do one story but also of a
big glass of delicious Florida orange juice, you could balance
out things in I'm just trying to think of a
way through this.

Speaker 1 (01:43:47):
One, says Tammy. FFF says Obi Wan. Woman bites dog.
I need some FFF says see dog.

Speaker 2 (01:43:56):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (01:43:56):
Well I think that's somebody predicted it.

Speaker 1 (01:44:01):
Somebody for correctly predicted the one. Sorry, all right, we'll
do the one story. Albert. I don't want this to
happen again where Kim goes on and on and on
and then we don't have any time. I mean, it's
just an outrage. I mean, really, Kim, if you could
just begin to organize your verbiage so you could streamline

(01:44:24):
it a little bit, we wouldn't be in this spe
I blame you. I'm saying that.

Speaker 3 (01:44:27):
If I'm like the diplomats, I'm just going to keep
my mouth shut.

Speaker 1 (01:44:31):
All right. They do this to me all the time.
I don't know what the hell they do it for.
I don't know. It's really really disturbing. I'm running out
of people to blame on this show. That's the most
disturbing thing on this s Hey, I'm almost on all right, Uh, Albert?
Should we do it?

Speaker 2 (01:44:50):
Yes?

Speaker 1 (01:44:50):
You just want to do the one story?

Speaker 2 (01:44:52):
Yes, this brave woman, you could have done ten stories
during this debate. I'm telling you, how dare you? How
listen to me?

Speaker 3 (01:45:01):
I just want to hear you. Somebody hit the Friday
Fabulous Florida open fast.

Speaker 1 (01:45:05):
Go ahead, Albert, It's time for a Friday Fabulous Florida.

Speaker 7 (01:45:11):
There is a gigantic alligator in my kitchen. Oh look
at the weirdest stories from our weirdest state.

Speaker 1 (01:45:22):
And here you go. A seventy year old woman bites
a pit bull to save her dog during an attack
in Orlando, Florida. And you know what, Michael, when you
get to be seventy, I hope you can step up
and do that kind of thing. This is heroic.

Speaker 2 (01:45:37):
I want you to listen to this. You've gotta be
really hungry, though, Mark.

Speaker 1 (01:45:40):
This is she was hungry for justice, and this poor
dog that she was trying to save needed her, and
she showed up. Michael. A seventy year old Orlando woman
says that she had to fight off a pit bull
to save her dog during a sudden attack outside a
grocery store. Wow. She was leaving the store when a

(01:46:02):
pit bull bolted toward her fourteen year old dog, Sparky
lashed onto him. It happened out of nowhere, she said.
I did everything I could, She said. We ended up
on the ground grappling. She said. Surveillance video shows that
there she is. She weighs about ninety pounds. Is is

(01:46:23):
that right? Oh my gosh, this is incredible.

Speaker 3 (01:46:27):
Very delicate woman. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:46:29):
She was using her cane and her hands in an
effort to pry the dog off, but that didn't work.
She resorted to biting the pit bull on the back
of its neck. I couldn't open his mouth, she said,
So I bid him. She said, I had to. She said,

(01:46:50):
I'm ninety one pounds. I have no strength. She said.
The tactic worked long enough for a man who they're
still trying to identify, to pull the pit bull away.
He then walked off with the dog on a leash.
It was his dog. Oh man, Sparky is still shaken. Sparky,

(01:47:12):
the fourteen year old dog, but survived the attack. She
credits the senior dog with giving her strength and purpose. Really,
she says, he's the reason some days I get up.
You gotta take care of your dog. Bravo to her. Wow,
that is a brutal story, but at least it has

(01:47:34):
a nice ending, a Hollywood ending, and that it's Friday
Fabulous Florida. For today.

Speaker 2 (01:47:42):
This has been Friday Fabulous Florida. There is a gigantic
calligator in my kitchen. Y'all come back now here? All right, Well,
let's want to use Mark Thompson.

Speaker 13 (01:48:00):
Here's Mark.

Speaker 1 (01:48:05):
You know what, I like him. I kind of like
reducing Friday Fabulous Florida when we have to, like, in
an extreme scenario like this.

Speaker 3 (01:48:13):
No, that's you're going to get a big pushback.

Speaker 1 (01:48:16):
No, I like applying. I know I didn't want to
do just one. Albert said he wanted to do just
one and he runs the show. Yeah, well, yes, I
mean they tell you. I mean, I'm just saying what
I was going to say. Though, in a situation like
this made Albert we should do the same thing with
Michael's segment, just to do one movie and then send
him on his way, always.

Speaker 2 (01:48:35):
Looking for under the bus. There's no bus. Mark, my god, all.

Speaker 1 (01:48:43):
Right, all right, all right, settle down.

Speaker 4 (01:48:48):
We have processes and protocols and standards.

Speaker 1 (01:48:50):
Yeah, all right, my god, she took a bite out
of crime, says Mark Elliott. Come on, that's our audience.
My cat's name is Sparky, says William Langer. That's a
great name. Yeah, I'm I don't approve of efing with FFF.

(01:49:13):
Who said that Tammy? Tammy gives us a lot of
FFF stories. But well, hopefully this is a one off,
so without any further delay, although certainly we do enjoy delaying,
particularly when we're dealing with Michael, who's doing the waiting.
How about it for a man who knows all there

(01:49:34):
is to know about movies. The subtitles, the Marvel Universe,
the DC Universe, the streaming. It's Apple, It's Disney Plus,
it's Hulu, it's Netflix, it's Amazon. Who can keep a track?
I'll tell you who can keeps tracked? Who keeps track
of this? The brilliant culture blaster? He comes am, goes

(01:49:56):
on a rainbow? How about it for Michael Schneider.

Speaker 2 (01:49:59):
Hey everybody, Hi, Mark, Hi, Kim, Hi Albert and high remarkables.
You know, we do try to uplift the spirits at
the end of the week. And it's been a pretty
dark week. Not only did we have the anniversary of
nine to eleven, the day before that the murder of
Charlie Kirk. And he certainly didn't deserve that horrible to

(01:50:21):
widow his wife and leave his kids without a father.
And he certainly doesn't deserve a posthumous presidential Medal of Freedom.
I thought that honor was for people who made contributions
to the arts or enacted humanitarian disease deeds that made
the world a better place. I guess he was a
more reasonable purveyor of hate speech than any other political

(01:50:42):
operative or propagandist. The man may have been a racist
and misogynist and a homophoe, but he was always polite
about it. And so consequently, you know, he's he's being
mourned and we're sorry. I see what you're doing here.
He lost his life. But you know, let's be serious.
Other people have fallen victim to political violence. It is

(01:51:05):
never the answer. Opposing the other can only make matters worse.
And I just want to say that without embracing civility
and kindness and understanding and a commitment to genuine democracy,
the American experiment will have failed. We're kind of at
a tipping point.

Speaker 1 (01:51:21):
Mark Wow, I very eloquently put and the people in
the chat, as you shall see maybe later if you
watch this segment and see the chat, they agree with
you and applaud you.

Speaker 2 (01:51:31):
So I yeah, you know.

Speaker 1 (01:51:34):
I'm excited though that you will distract us with some
things that we can indulge in.

Speaker 2 (01:51:39):
And I will. And The Funny Thing is my favorite
film of the week.

Speaker 1 (01:51:44):
Dark dark horror Thing. Now.

Speaker 2 (01:51:45):
It addresses the crumbling of the American experiment in a
lot of ways. It's called The Long Walk, I mean
speaking of the country going down the toilet. The Long
Walk is a movie about a dystopian America in the
very very near future. And it's as good a movie
based on a Stephen King book or story that I've
ever seen.

Speaker 1 (01:52:06):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (01:52:06):
And though it's dystopian circumstances are speculative and kind of troubling.
That's not really his frequent excursion into full bar supernatural horror,
you know, we usually expect that from him. This is more,
you know, again, speculative fiction, and it deals with some
real political and social issues that we're confronting. America's in

(01:52:27):
terrible shape and one of the ways the government has
distracted people is to put the kind of competition that
is covered in the media at the center of things.
And what the competition is A young men are picked
from various locations they apply to be a part of
the Long Walk. And what it is is, as it says,

(01:52:48):
a long walk. All these guys are out on a road.
There's a specific route that they're taking and they have
to keep going at about three point five miles an hour.
And if they drop out at any point they're out.
There are other little strictures and there are armed guards
that will take them out if they falter. And so
the one survivor in all this gets a lot of money.

(01:53:11):
It's very much like you know some of these games
and competition shows on television, but it's taken to the
nth degree. And I have to say this was the
first novel the guy ever wrote, The Long Walk, and
he wrote it between nineteen sixty six and sixty seven
when he was a freshman at the University of Maine.
It was published later, I think, in nineteen seventy nine

(01:53:32):
under a pseudonym, But it predates other dystopian novels like
The Hunger Games and even the original Japanese book Battle Royale,
which came out in nineteen ninety nine, and like the
Hunger Games from the mid two thousands, it spawned a
successful film adaptation, and it was about one of these
dystopian competitions that kind of keep the Breton circuses for

(01:53:52):
a disadvantage population. Well, the movie based on The Long
Walk is a better film than any of the movies
in the Hunger Games franchise, four of which, by the way,
we're directed by the very same guy who directed The
Long Walk, Francis Lawrence, so maybe he learned things along
the way. But the script, which is written by At Molner,

(01:54:13):
is really good and the actors are wonderful led by
Cooper Hoffman as Raymond number forty seven in the competition,
a young man who's trying to find a better life
for himself and his mom, played by Judy Greer, And
this whole enterprise is overseen by a guy called the General,
played in fierce and fearsome fashion by no Less. I

(01:54:37):
gotta love this, no less than one of our heroes
from many, many years ago, Mark Hamill. That's right, Luke
Skywalker is now a villain in this film.

Speaker 1 (01:54:46):
He's the Geen.

Speaker 2 (01:54:47):
This was really powerful and impactful. And again, considering the
economic circumstances so many Americans are facing with the evisceration
of social services and what have you, there is a
creepy near future prescience or.

Speaker 1 (01:55:01):
Prescience evisceration and presciences.

Speaker 2 (01:55:05):
God, you know, it was really well done. And by
the way, in case anyone does not know, Cooper Hoffman
is the son of Philip Seymour Hoffman, the late Philis,
and he has the acting gene. He is quite good,
you know, Nepo, baby my ass. But there are also
really good young actors, among them David Johnson, who plays

(01:55:27):
a kid who kind of allies himself with Cooper Hoffman's
Raymond character and many many others. Charlie plumbers in this thing.
It's it's good and it is in theaters starting today,
and I highly recommend the Wow.

Speaker 1 (01:55:39):
It really does like it. What else do you have?

Speaker 2 (01:55:41):
Well, full disclosure, I have seen each and every TV
episode in film in the Downton Abbey franchise, so has
Courtney You and Courtney Again, created by screenwriter Julian Fellows,
whose American equivalent, The guilded Age, which I also love,
is still going strong after three seasons on HBO, So
you know, I was a awwordingly excited to see Downton

(01:56:02):
Abbey the Grand Finale and it's all about ending this
early twentieth century period saga which has covered decades in
the lives of the aristocratic, terribly British Robert Crowley played
by Hugh Bonneville. And he's back. He was the Earl
of Grantham, his wife, the American heiress Lady Cora played
by Elizabeth McGovern, their extended family, and their loyaler occasionally

(01:56:26):
sketchy servants, you know, and finally we get some decent
and uplifting closure from their palatial countryside manor down to
abbey to their townhouse amid the hustle and bustle of
London in the early nineteen thirties.

Speaker 1 (01:56:40):
There have they had a downsize? Did they a little bit? Yeah?

Speaker 2 (01:56:43):
A little bit. That's the thing that they kind of
fall out of.

Speaker 6 (01:56:47):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (01:56:47):
One of the things that's addressed in this movie.

Speaker 1 (01:56:49):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (01:56:50):
You know, you get your usual familial squabbles, new financial
struggles due to the stock market crash in nineteen twenty nine.
You get conflict amid the servants. You know, are you
a big above your station? How dare you crawl on
your belly.

Speaker 1 (01:57:03):
Like a snake? Sir?

Speaker 2 (01:57:05):
You know, you get romantic angst from Michelle Dockery's Lady Mary,
heir to Downton. She's a woman, she's divorced, She's become
a pariah in society because of the divorce. This becomes
an issue and there's even some guarded acceptance of different
kinds of love. Upon a visit to Downton by the
legendary musical theater composer inscribe Noel Coward and his entourage.

(01:57:30):
So I'm a real person, real personage in this thing.
And he becomes a plot pivot. Oh, because you know,
at least one of the Servants was a closeted gay man.

Speaker 1 (01:57:39):
Now, can I jump on to the Grand Finale without
seeing the ramp up to the Grand Finale?

Speaker 2 (01:57:44):
Or I really that would be a probably can. But
I have to just tell you all of this goes
down in the spirit of the departed Violet Crawley played
by the late Maggie Smith. She was the dowager Countess
of Grantham. She lingers here and there at Downton Abbey.
There's a giant portrait of her in the main hole,
and there's the occasional what would Lady Violet do?

Speaker 1 (01:58:07):
Is Maggie Smith in it?

Speaker 2 (01:58:08):
Or the ghost of Maggie Smith come on this in flashback?
Or they just well, yes, you know you see a
few brief images of her, and you do have this
giant portrait of Maggie Smith as Lady Violet in the
I guess the Grand Hall of Downton. Uh.

Speaker 1 (01:58:26):
You know the.

Speaker 2 (01:58:27):
Granddaughters Mary and Edith are always talking about Lady Violet.

Speaker 1 (01:58:30):
You know I have to say this, She's passed away.

Speaker 2 (01:58:32):
Thank you so much. This longtime viewer felt great joy
at developments in the movie, such as Scullery made Daisy
becoming the head cook of Dunton and finding love in
her marriage to Butler in Training, And it's like catching
up with old friends played by these wonderful actors. Jim
Carter is still here as the loyal, longtime butler Carson.

(01:58:53):
Joanne Frogett so good in the recent crime TV pro
Graham Uh, the one with the police. There are so
many of them out there, but there's a light of
She's still here his ladies maid, and Brendan Coyle is

(01:59:14):
her husband the gentleman's gentleman job. But almost everyone of
note gets a curtain call, including late additions to the ensemble,
like Cora has a frivolous brother, Harold from America. He's
played by Paul Giamatti.

Speaker 1 (01:59:26):
And well, Paul Giamatti is Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:59:29):
Downton Abbey and all its incarnations is a soap opera, yes,
of course, but that soap is of the high end, lavender,
fragranted variety.

Speaker 1 (01:59:38):
I didn't it was too selpy for me, but Courtney
loved it and most people loved it.

Speaker 2 (01:59:42):
I never mind using that, never mind using this soap
and this gun.

Speaker 1 (01:59:46):
Do you think it would have been great to be
one of the moneyed aristocracy? Let me ask Kim, because
Kim I think always sort of dreams of like the
being a wealthy uh landowner, just.

Speaker 3 (01:59:58):
Because I wanted to win the billion dollar.

Speaker 1 (02:00:00):
Yeah, but she doesn't get interested in a lottery unless
it's at least how.

Speaker 3 (02:00:04):
Much, at least a billion.

Speaker 1 (02:00:07):
So do you think you would have enjoyed that? I mean,
look at how you have to dress up and everybody's
evaluating you, and you have to get married and if
you're you know, yeah, I don't like the the lot
of the lives of women in those days.

Speaker 3 (02:00:20):
But yeah, the dresses and the tiaras, I'm down, bring
me the.

Speaker 1 (02:00:25):
You know, the whole thing. It just seems like dress
up looks like a dragged me but you used to.

Speaker 2 (02:00:29):
Wear with tiara. I'm sorry, it's not gonna happen. By
the way, the show I was thinking of that, Joanne
frogress On is Mobland. It's just a fantastic Okay. I
just you know, I see so many moves to you.

Speaker 1 (02:00:39):
Could you spend a little bit more time on Downton Abbey.

Speaker 2 (02:00:42):
I think you're the one that did a little excursion
into Kim's opinion about.

Speaker 1 (02:00:47):
It's the bad bad on the stream.

Speaker 2 (02:00:52):
Okay, let's move on. I found the History of Sound
to be like a beautifully written and executed period drawn
about two music scholars in post World War two America
who fall in love during a time when that was
not the sort of thing men did.

Speaker 1 (02:01:08):
Outside the closet story, there are historical UH touchdowns that
are Yes.

Speaker 2 (02:01:16):
Indeed, Lionel and David are fresh out of college and
decide to hike through rural areas to seek out and
record traditional folk songs that would otherwise be lost to posterity.
And on the road they grow closer and closer, but
away from UH their sociological and cultural quests, the expectations
of society and their baggage of different backgrounds proved difficult

(02:01:39):
to surmount. So the biggest strength of the History of Sounds.

Speaker 1 (02:01:42):
I don't know what you just said. I know there
are a lot of words they're put together.

Speaker 2 (02:01:46):
Okay, but they are question is by what they're there
through this musical quest. Yes, society and their different backgrounds
serve to keep them at odds, you know, romantic. I
mean they have the attractions. Yeah, if you're not paying attention,
that's fine.

Speaker 1 (02:02:05):
I'm paying attention.

Speaker 2 (02:02:06):
I guess strength of this movie, right, Yes, the casting.
Paul Muskaal and Josh O'Connor, two actors at the top
of their respective games, play the poverty born hard on
his sleeve Southerner Lionel that's Mesco, and the more well
to do cerebral Northerner David that's O'Connor. Look if this

(02:02:28):
it feels a little chilly at times, and it might
be due to the desolation and the grayness of the
settings as they travel in the backwoods and such. And
there's pain watching the repressed emotions of the leads. It's
kind of tough to deal with, but there is pain
to be mined here. A valid comparison would be to
Broke Back Mountain, Okay, although that movie's had that's weeping

(02:02:50):
western setting, and there was a willingness to have the
emotions of the two men in love be more overt
or theatrical despite the taboos that burden both films couples
in these respective eras and circumstances, you know, still, director
Oliver Hermanus, who co wrote the screenplay with Ben Shattick,
has told a kind of a unique and tragic story

(02:03:12):
with skill and despite the downbeat nature of it, I
was fascinated by the glimpse of backwood song hunting, and
I was kind of hypnotized by the sound of these earthy,
rustic tunes that the guys collected. And again, Mezcal and
O'Connor are as good as it gets in the central
roles of two men who deserved happiness together, but they

(02:03:32):
were like victimized by their time. Yeah, the history of
sound is in select theaters. All right, very good, so
let's move on. Strangely enough, this next film also focuses
on a couple making field recordings, albeit in the nineteen eighties,
and a couple having relationship issues, albeit of another kind.

(02:03:55):
It's called Rabbit Trap, and it is a spare folk
horror movie set in the Welsh wilds, and it is
graced by another pair of exceptional leads. Dev Patel he
was in The Green Night, he was in slum Dog Millionaire,
you know, Dev Pateel very talented man. And Rosie McEwen

(02:04:16):
and there's a real find and a young actress named
Jade Crude who plays the movie's third and a crucial role.
As good as they all are and as kind of
atmospheric as the terrain is, this tale of angst and
dislocation below the seemingly placid surface of the married artist
Darcy and Daphne Davenport played by Patel and McEwen becomes

(02:04:37):
predictable as soon as this strange young boy played by
the androgenous Crewt shows up and tries to ingratiate himself
with Darcy, and by the time Darcy comes upon a
fairy circle right of mushrooms in the nearby woods, not
too hard to see where Rabbit Trap might be headed.
The cinematography isn't quite Discovery Channel level, but you know

(02:04:58):
you're out there in the Welsh countryside or what stands
in for the Welsh country side. I think they're in Yorkshire,
but it's it's visually memorable. And on the other hand,
the sound design is really unsettling as these nature noises
recorded by the Davenports become more and more unnatural sounding,
and things do get heated. But ultimately Rabbit Trap is

(02:05:21):
as let's call it, as ephemeral as fairy.

Speaker 1 (02:05:24):
Dust Wow ephemeral. At the moment.

Speaker 2 (02:05:27):
The directing of director and screenwriter Brin Shaney is a
little more developed than the screenwriting of screenwriter Brinton Schaney.
Rabbit Trap is in select theaters. You know, it was
a bit disappointing, is what I'm getting. Yeah, Yeah, I
was also a little disappointed despite the powerhouse casting with
The Man in My Basement. This is the work of

(02:05:49):
author Walter Moseley, best known for his post World War
Two mystery novels featuring the biracial la detective Easy Rowlands.
Mosley wrote the book The Man in My Basement and
co wrote the screenplay, and there are committed quality performances
by Corey Hawkins. A young black man who has lost

(02:06:09):
his way, who has left a house in the Sagharbor,
New York community, which is historically a long time African
American enclave, and this house has been kind of a burden.
He has no money, he's kind of shiftless his friends.
He got to get a job. He can't hold on
to work. There are issues in his recent past that
are responsible for that. And this white guy shows up,

(02:06:32):
played by Willem Dafoe, and he says, rent me your
basement for two months and I will give you thousands
of dollars, and so he agrees to do it. But
what the Dafaue character does in the basement is not
what anyone might expect.

Speaker 1 (02:06:46):
Oh my god, and this is you don't like You
didn't like this.

Speaker 2 (02:06:50):
I did like it to an extent, but I thought
it was flawed. I have to say that the performance
is by Hawkins and Dafoe and on a Diop as
a young woman who's sort of an ex in African
American folk art. They're all quite good, and there's a
promising devil's bargain sort of thing here that's set into
motion with a racial subtext, and the historical residence surrounding

(02:07:12):
the community of Sag Harbor who plays the lead, a
guy named Corey Hawkins. He plays Charles Blakey. There's an
ancestral home and they're going to foreclose on it and
he needs the money and this guy shows up.

Speaker 1 (02:07:25):
I kind of like it.

Speaker 2 (02:07:26):
Well, it's not a horror movie, no, but there is
a supernatural vibe that suffuses a lot of it, and
that doesn't really pay off. I'm not trying to spoil anything.
There is quality here, and the performances are wonderful. I
just feel that the script kind of meanders a little
bit here and there, and there are moments of great

(02:07:48):
drama that don't really They didn't stick the landing. But
The Man in My Basement is a quality movie on many,
many levels. It's in select theaters and it will be
available for streaming on demand on September twenty fifth. Let's
quickly wrap things up. I've got to tell you about
this my sleeper of the week and you're gonna love

(02:08:10):
This is Code three. It is a dark and often
funny glimpse of a couple of paramedics and their trainee
during a twenty four hour shift on the streets of
Los Angeles. Rain Wilson is Randy. That's Rain Wilson right
from the Office. He played Dwight on The Office. He
played Harry Mudd in Star Trek Discovery. He was the

(02:08:31):
lead in the very funny superhero comedy Super He plays
this guy Randy, a veteran EMT who has seen too
many bodies over way more than a decade and kind
of on the verge of burnout. And his co star
is Lil rel howery Lo Laura. He is great here
as Mike, who is a kind of laconic guy toughing

(02:08:52):
out the gig behind the wheel of the ambulance until
something better comes along. And then there's young trainee Jessica
played by Amy Carrero. She's an eager beaver and kind
of at odds with these guys who are just struggling
to get through the shifts, you know. So this has
a lighter touch than the similarly themed Bringing Out the Dead,
and it gives Wilson a really strong lead role that

(02:09:14):
he commandeers with what I'd have to say is wit
and fire, and of course he's ably supported by Howary.
There is one phenomenal rant by Wilson, whose character of
Randy breaks the fourth wall now and then that felt
like he was channeling remember the Furious Anchorman Howard Beale
played by Peter Finch and network the nineteen seventy six
satire about Patty Chayevsky. Like Beale, Randy is mad as

(02:09:39):
hell at being overworked, underpaid, and underappreciated, and he isn't
going to take it anymore. CO three was directed by
Christopher Leoni and co written by Leoni and Patrick Pianezza,
and was purportedly inspired by Panetsa's experiences as an emt.
For all the laughs it generates, Code three does have
a number of serious moments to feel emotionally true. Again,

(02:10:01):
this is not a great film.

Speaker 1 (02:10:03):
But man, I enjoyed it.

Speaker 2 (02:10:04):
The only movie I thought was better to watch other
than the opulence of Downton Abbey would probably be The
Long Walk. Code three was a lot of fun. It's
in select theaters. I think it's going to play well
at home. It also features Rob Riggle as a nasty
er doc and the great Yvette Nicole Brown as a salty,
sympathetic dispatcher at the ambulance company. I liked Code three.

Speaker 1 (02:10:27):
Wow, he really liked Code three. Everybody I know the
another season of Only Murders in the Building is coming. Yeah,
did you see any of it?

Speaker 2 (02:10:36):
I did. I've watched the first three episodes and in
season five seasons, Charles played by Steve Martin, Oliver played
by Martin Short, and Mabel played by Selena Gomez have
to contend with the death of the beloved door man
at their Upper West Side apartment. But, oh, my goodness,
the Arconia and its connections to the old school New

(02:10:58):
York Mob. The new version of the Mob is embodied
by three tech billionaires and they honestly and the guest
stars are Taileoni and Bobby Cannavali as a husband and
wife in the Mafia and as the three tech billionaires
get ready, Christophe Wohls, Renee Zelwigger and Logan Laherman and

(02:11:19):
so far this thing is really that's great to snuff
if you've watched it and enjoyed Only Murders in the
Building on Hulu. Season five is available and will be
rolling out more episodes after the first three, which are
now one Hulu for your delectation and highly recommended Only
Murders in the Building.

Speaker 1 (02:11:38):
He likes it, and it's coming soon on a Hulu.
It's out there already, but oh, it's coming to your Hulu.
Whenever you click on it, it's there already. Code three
about the paramedics with Rain Wilson playing Randy and the
you know, the veteran e MT who's kind of had enough,
seen it all, done it all. Lirell how Rey, I

(02:12:01):
think it is last name it is how Rey and
Amy Carrero. Michael Snyder, the Culture Blaster, really likes it.
Says it's a really good ride, it's funny, and he
recommends it. The Man in My Basement, the Walter Moseley
inspired offering. He was the guy who wrote a bunch
of stuff these post World War two mystery Novels takes

(02:12:23):
place in a sag harbor enclave made up of largely
African Americans. Willem Dafoe, the white guy shows up and
he maybe the the savior to their economic vice. Yeah, yeah, man,
the thing that's squeezing them.

Speaker 2 (02:12:42):
Charles needs money to hold onto the ancestral family home
and maybe this guy.

Speaker 1 (02:12:46):
Will help out on a d up and Corey Hawkins
is the lead in that and Michael liked it, although
he felt they didn't quite stick the landing right on it.
Rabbit Trap set in the Welsh countryside Dev Patel, Rosie McEwan.
It was okay, it.

Speaker 2 (02:13:08):
Was not great, but it was not not again, not terrible.
Michael Snyder the Mark Thompson The History of.

Speaker 1 (02:13:13):
Sound, with Lionel and David hiking through rural areas recording
folk songs. Two actors at the top of their game.
You said, kind of, Ah, the sad realities is what
I got. Tragic love, yes, tragic love story involving two
gay men. But Michael said, uh, it's okay, Yeah, it's

(02:13:36):
for what it is.

Speaker 2 (02:13:37):
It's good. It's just you know, it's just not Broke
Back Mountain. No, it doesn't have that kind of sweep.

Speaker 1 (02:13:43):
Downton Abbey, the Grand Finale, the Julian Fellows offering wonderful actors.
Michael liked it and said that if you're a Downton
Abbey lover, you will love this. And finally, The Long Walk,
the Stephen King book from the sixties now hitting the

(02:14:07):
screen better than any of the Hunger Games offerings. And
that's worth a particular mention here because this film is
directed by director of the Hunker Game.

Speaker 2 (02:14:16):
Francis Lawrence, who directed four of the Hunger Games films.

Speaker 1 (02:14:19):
Wonderfully acted Cooper Hoffman, the son of Philip Seymour Hoffman.
Judy Greer Mark Hamill plays the villain, and Michael liked it,
oh very much. The Long Walk it's called well, Michael.

Speaker 2 (02:14:31):
Mark, there is no short Peer.

Speaker 1 (02:14:33):
I just wanted you to know. There's just a long Walk.
Short Peer might be, uh, the sequel. I'm grateful for
your patients, Thank you for hanging out. You can read
Michael's musings in the Voice SF dot org. The Voice
SF dot org.

Speaker 2 (02:14:51):
And even though it's going to be remote because I'm
in La and going to art openings and what have
you like Gabba Gallery Tomorrow night Downtown Big Opening. I
will be watching Giants Dodgers live from Oracle Park all
weekend long. What a titanic matchup?

Speaker 1 (02:15:06):
Yes, indeed, and your Niners against the New Orleans Saints.
I'm kind of should be when they win. But they
won't have Brock.

Speaker 2 (02:15:16):
They may not have Brock. I know they're not going.

Speaker 1 (02:15:18):
They're not gonna have Brock and they're not gonna have
good Rock.

Speaker 2 (02:15:23):
Goes on a rainbow. Bye bye, my so long. Everybody
see you next week.

Speaker 1 (02:15:29):
Yeah. What a nice spirited offering that was. I mean,
it's hard to believe that we only have Mark Thompson's show.
We only have an hour of show still to go.
Wait what Wait a minute, No, I'm I'm I'm I'm
only I'm looking. I'm offering off a dated rundown. Uh

(02:15:50):
do I need to get to some comments quickly? I
can just read them? What do I need to do? Yeah?
The lady Beatrice says, how did this guy think his
family wouldn't tip off the cops withholding knowledge of a
crime is illegal? Brian Landry's parents broke the law without
that's right. Brian Landry was without shame. That was the

(02:16:13):
But they ultimately I think they were prosecuted for the
obstruction of justice. There Brian Landry Fyi Reuters in a
Washington Post are reporting Trump officials to link child deaths
to COVID shots. Thanks RFK, Seriously, let's all move to Ibiza,
says Luisia. I mean you knew that they these reports
out of the newly reconstructed and reimagined HHS and CDC

(02:16:39):
were going to be. I mean it's all populard by
anti vaxers. They've gotten rid of any you know, objective scientists.
I mean they're doing exactly what they decried that Biden
administration was doing or past administrations were doing. So you
say that, you know, you say it's a it's a
big pharma jihad. Well now you're on an anti big PHARMERJHD.
And the idea is that you're denying all the science,

(02:17:02):
any positive science.

Speaker 3 (02:17:04):
So the information comes from that website, the FDA website,
or you can go and talk about your symptoms or
what happened to you when you have the vaccine, and
there's no indication whether the two things are related. It's
called an unverified report, and the reports are made on

(02:17:24):
a government website. And so the presentation of this link
now between the COVID shot and child deaths in this
anti vaxx movement is related to this database of unverified reports,
and that will be an official government linkage from the FDA.

Speaker 1 (02:17:41):
Yeah, good times. I'll see you at the Polio meeting,
Richard delamator mark here about the senator goal bar cost
has got four years, Maybe you can fill me in
on that, kim You know, I don't know what the
what that refers to.

Speaker 3 (02:18:01):
So I know that missus Menendez went to jail and
that was the gold bar situation. I don't know about
this one.

Speaker 1 (02:18:11):
I don't know. Kimmy Smith says, when they when are they?

Speaker 3 (02:18:20):
When are they going to do when most of the
forced Oh what are they going to do when most
of the forced births are brown babies?

Speaker 1 (02:18:26):
Oh? Thank you, Kimmy, Yeah, thank you, kim Yeah, yeah, yeah,
I know exactly this idea somehow that so you're, you know,
your defunding planned parenthood, which has been something that's been
a priority for them for some time, and you'll end
up in this spot. Yeah. West Thery says Charlie took
advantage of the young Charlie Kirk. They challenged him with questions,

(02:18:48):
he manipulated the conversation and make them look wrong. Professional orator,
he was gifted in oratory without question, and he was
gifted in argument. Indeed, can we get the commission to
discuss this weekend's NFL betting line?

Speaker 5 (02:19:01):
Eight ten am here in the meddi Exactly.

Speaker 1 (02:19:03):
We don't really do the betting lines on this show,
So you're on your own on that. And believe me,
you don't want advice from any of us.

Speaker 3 (02:19:08):
We have a bad relationship with sports betting.

Speaker 1 (02:19:11):
Yeah, just All says we don't give this much coverage
when innocent babies are gunned down in schools. That's so true.
I mean Fox News, Fox doesn't give it, is what
he's all saying. Yeah, the discussion is is never centered
around that kind of thing, and they look the other
way on that. Trump was trying to make political hay
out of the Charlie Kirk assassination. It was one of

(02:19:32):
their people trying to disguise themselves as a liberal when
it was one of their own. And people can write fiction.
People only write fiction. On that page that Kim is
talking about, that's what Ole Hanson is saying. Nobody can
verify it. That's sort of what you were saying there, Kim,

(02:19:53):
and I think with that we can wrap it up.
I am grateful for everybody's input, Thank you for your
four barons through a lot of stuff that we had
to get to and wanted to get to. And it's
been dominated by the Charlie Kirk news and it's also
been dominated by the handling of it, and sadly we

(02:20:16):
had to pretty much orphan the Epstein file update and
much as though the I just mentioned her at the end,
I think they voted down, that is to say, Republicans
voted down the release of that huge file of Epstein information,
even the dry cleaned version, so that legislation that would

(02:20:39):
have essentially forced the release of it has been voted down.
So there are other things that we will get to
on Monday. Thanks for all the love and the support everyone.
Kim's over on the after party, last channels for the
Mark Johnson Show. Yeah, Bubba, thanks for all your help.
I'll beyond T y T today actually just a couple

(02:21:02):
maybe see you there until Monday. Bye bye.

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