Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 9/17/25: Charlie Kirk Shooter Charged, Tucker Rebukes Bibi, Leaked Tyler Robinson Discord

Episode Date: September 17, 2025

Ryan and Emily discuss Tyler Robinson charges released, Tucker scathing rebuke of Bibi over Kirk, leaked Discord reveals key details on assassin.   Ken Klippenstein: https://www.kenklippenstein.com/  To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show AD FREE, uncut and 1 hour early visit: www.breakingpoints.comMerch Store: https://shop.breakingpoints.com/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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so you can work, create, and boost productivity all on one device. I'm Jorge Ramos. And I'm Paola Ramos. Together we're launching The Moment, a new podcast about what it means to live through a time, as uncertain as this one. We sit down with politicians, artists, and activists, to bring you death and analysis from a unique Latino perspective. The moment is a space for the conversations we've been having us father and daughter for years. Listen to The Moment with Jorge Ramos and Paola Ramos on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I just normally do straight stand-up, but this is a bit different.

What do you get when a true crime producer walks into a comedy club? Answer, a new podcast called Wisecrack, where a comedian finds himself at the center of a chilling true crime story. Does anyone know what show they've come to see? It's a story. It's about the scariest night of my life. This is Wisecrack, available now. Listen to Wisecrack on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey guys, Saga and Crystal here.

Independent media just played a truly massive role in this election, and we are so excited about what that means for the future of this show. This is the only place where you can find honest perspectives from the left and the right that simply does not exist anymore. somewhere else. So if that is something that's important to you, please go to breakingpoints.com, become a member today, and you'll get access to our full shows, unedited, ad-free, and all put together for you every morning in your inbox. We need your help to build the future of independent news media, and we hope to see you at breaking points.com. Good morning, and welcome to Breaking Points. Emily, I was just telling Mac, I feel like we need to do like a four or five-hour show. Yeah, we could easily fill four to five hours. Yeah, a lot to get

through today. Yesterday was a jam-pack news day. Today's jam-packed news day. Donald Trump is in the UK. He's doing the state visit. There's going to be all kinds of stuff for Crystal and Sagar to talk about tomorrow. I'm sure they'll have stuff to talk about when it comes to Ukraine and all of that. But just, man, do we have a lot to get through? Yes, and we've got a lot more information about the Charlie Kirk assassination. We'll start with that. We're also going to be joined after that by Ken Klippenstein, who once again, in the midst of one of these investigations, managed to get his hands on some significant documents and reporting and published it, giving us deeper insight into the kind of social network of the alleged shooter. So we'll be speaking with him.

TikTok, maybe falling. Maybe. So, yes, so there's a deal with, what is it, Oracle, and Dries. Horowitz, Oracles, Larry Ellison's, a company now the richest man in the world who has, by the way, donated millions upon millions of dollars to the friends of the IDF. So that's who is now going to be owning a TikTok if this deal goes through. He's also going to own a lot of the rest of the media after the, what, Warner Brothers, CBS. Yeah, his son. The Allison family is going to own.

a lot of what's in front of your face. Big chunk. Yeah, big chunk of it. Yes. Cash Patel testified before the Senate yesterday. Interesting Epstein stuff there. Right, yeah, we're going to break down the Epstein stuff. Of course, he talked also about other aspects.

And we learned particularly some interesting details. I don't know if you saw this, Brian, yet, but Chuck Grassley revealed some new documents about Arctic Frost, like Operation Arctic Frost, which is apparently an FBI probe, into groups like Turning Point USA, actually related to the 2020 election and how they may have been, they were subpoenaed to nail down with the FBI I thought was a conspiracy to overturn that election. So Cashberto was talking about all kinds of things yesterday.

Epstein, Kirk, January 6th still, and the Epstein stuff in particular is really worth picking through. It looks like it's possible he lied under oath. So we have a lot to get to on that front. But also Luigi Mangione, his terrorism charges were dropped yesterday. So obviously he's still on trial for murder. He's still charged with murder. But the terrorism aspect of that means the sentencing will be different.

And meanwhile, you and Crystal are in trouble? Oh, gosh. Or you guys can look this up. They're actually in trouble. Me slash Crystal. Nobody knows who's Crystal and who's Emily. Because Crystal reported, as a journalist would do, that it matters, apparently, to the public, that Luigi is more attractive than Tyler Robinson.

Yeah. You got in trouble for chuckling. I think I wasn't paying attention, so I like dodged that bullet. You made a boo-gloo boys joke, but I think maybe it's just too much of a deep cut. Yeah. It's too much of a deep cut to get in trouble. Yeah. So we have Fox News watching our show now and clipping it and putting it up on their show.

Yeah, the sad part of it is that my streak of not wearing makeup for the Friday shows is over. If cable news producers are watching it, I'm going to have to do it. Don't worry about those producers. We'll see. There's only so much time in a day. And then we'll be talking about the incursion, the ongoing incursion into Gaza. There is a systematic effort to destroy any building that has any connection to Gaza City history. We'll talk about that, as well as a new UN commission on investigations determination that what everybody has been saying is true, that Israel is committing genocide, but this is now the United Nations saying it will,

we'll talk about that, as well as the Genoa dock workers resolving to go to launch a port strike on September 22nd if the humanitarian flotilla on its way to Gaza is impeded. So we'll get into all of that. Let's start with Charlie Kirk. Yes. So Tyler Robinson was formerly charged in Utah yesterday. And we actually have a clip of Robinson's interaction with the judge. We're going to go through the full charging document. It is about 10 pages long. We'll break out some of the critical moments of it. Let's first start with this video of Robinson and a judge yesterday in Utah. Mr. Robinson for count one aggravated murder, a capital felony in violation of Utah code annotated 76-5-202 in that on September 10th, 2025 in Utah County, the defendant, Tyler James

Robinson intentionally or knowingly caused the death of Charlie Kirk under the following circumstances. The defendant knowingly created a great risk of death to another individual other than Charlie Kirk and the defendant. Notice conviction of this offense may carry the death penalty or pursuant to Utah Code 76.3-207.7, a mandatory term of imprisonment for life without parole, or an indeterminate term of not less than 25 years, and that may be for life. Victim targeting enhancement in violation of Utah Code annotated 76-3-203.14 sub-2. Tyler James Robinson intentionally selected Charlie Kirk because of Tyler James Robinson's belief or perception regarding Charlie Kirk's political expression. Notice if the trier of fact finds beyond a reasonable doubt that the victim-targeting enhancement

applies. So this is one critical excerpt from the charging documents. We can go through this on the screen right now. We're actually going to read through basically the whole thing, because this is an exchange with Robinson and Robinson's roommate slash lover. Robinson said, I am still okay, my love, but stuck in Orim for a little while longer. after the shooting. Shouldn't be long until I can come home, but I got to grab my rifle still. To be honest, I'd hope to keep this secret till I died of old age. I am sorry to involve you.

The roommate identified in the charging document as a roommate, you weren't the one who did it right. Robinson, I am, I'm sorry. Roommate, I thought they caught the person. Robinson, no, they grabbed some crazy old dude, then interrogated someone in similar clothing. I had planned to grab my rifle from my drop point shortly after, but most of that side of town got locked down. It's quiet, almost enough to get out, but there's one vehicle lingering. The roommate says why. Robinson says, why did I do it? Roommate, yeah, Robinson, I had enough of his hatred. Some hate can't be negotiated out.

If I am able to grab my rifle unseen, I will have left no evidence going to attempt to retrieve it again. Hopefully they have moved on. I haven't seen anything about them finding it. How long have you been planning this? A bit over a week, Robinson replies, I believe I can get close to it, but there's a squad car parked right by it. I think they already swept that spot, but I don't want a chance that Robinson goes on. I'm wishing I had circled back and grabbed it as soon as I got to my vehicle. I'm worried what my old man would do if I didn't bring back Grandpa's rifle.

I don't even know if it had a serial number, but it wouldn't trace to me. I worry about prints. I had to leave it in a bush where I changed outfits, didn't have the ability or time to bring it with. I might have to abandon it and hope they don't find prints. How the fuck will explain losing it to my old man. The only thing I left was the rifle wrapped in a towel. remember how I was engraving bullets. The fucking messages are mostly a big meme.

If I see notices bulge UWU on Fox News, I might have a stroke. All right, I'm going to have to leave it. That really fucking sucks. So, Ryan, a lot to break down from that exchange. Obviously, there are other messages being left out, which I'm curious what else the investigators have at this point, because what they're including in the charging document is just to make the charge of stick. It's to make their point that they have evidence he did this. He did it because he said Charlie represented hate that can't be negotiated out. It's abundantly clear at

this point that it was somebody who was targeting Kirk from the left. And there are all kinds of layers of irony, of course, going in, as they mentioned, the notices, bulges meme on the bullet engravings. All of that stuff obviously still exists. But what do you make of that exchange? To me, going into it, there were three possible motivations that a shooter like this could have. One would be just pure nihilistic notoriety. Two would be Fuentes Group Groyper style. I'm a white nationalist, and I think that this guy's too part of the left of them. They bitterly hate each other.

or from the left, somebody in the LGBT world who thinks that Charlie Kirk is filled with hate towards them. And so this seems like it's the third possibility. Right. Like that just seems pretty clear. Right. It doesn't seem like it was some sort of communist. Correct.

William McKinley. It seems like it was a cultural, like you were saying, gender motivated. Right, right, which is interesting because there's also something very contemporary about the way that we're analyzing this, how we're all trying to get inside the guy's head and divine his precise political ideology and his precise thoughts when in the past, like you said, say McKinley, or, you know, say some anarchists who killed a czar or somebody, or Jean-Wil's Booth killing Lincoln. What you do is you look for their associates and their political

faction that they are connected with. What is the material political tendency that exists that is organized to carry out this action? And that's a materialist understanding of the world. What we have is an ideological idealist even. And I don't mean idealist as in like somebody who loves the world, just idealist and kind of the Marxist. sense of the term, where you're getting into somebody's ideas. And there's something very contemporary, like I said about that, because it's, it's, it's, neoliberal, it's individualistic, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, that if we find the other people that that share those thoughts, we crack down on all of that. And that's the solution to it. And yeah,

that's kind of a dark place to take this to. So yeah, there's just something very present in our politics about just rooting through this guy's mind, trying to try to figure it out. Now, at the same time, maybe that's cope on my part because going into this, I would have hoped that it was not somebody from the left because I don't want to believe that that's that the left is capable of doing that. And the left broadly did not do this. A person who felt Charlie Kirk was filled with hate did this. And there's micro macro. Yeah. And like you said, it's not, they're not communists, not socialist, not anarchists. And we're going to talk to Ken Kliberstein about this. Not that we know yet. It didn't seem to have, right. Who knows? Well,

But, like, it doesn't seem like he had those. It was more, those cultural politics. Yeah. And now, maybe we will find that there was some organized militia associated with this. Who knows? Yeah, no, I mean, there's still a lot to learn. There's zizzian stuff out there. There's all kinds of weird possibilities that we haven't gotten to the bottom of yet.

And there are a lot of unanswered questions that remain. I have been thinking about this in recent days along the lines of microblame and macroblame. microblame is important because, you know, this is, this person from what we know would not have been stopped by Gavin Newsom or Joe Biden or Josh Shapiro before the shooting happened coming out. And in fact, Gavin Newsom sat down with Charlie Kirk and debated some of this, actually, just within recent minds. It's not as though this person would have been persuaded to stop a plot of political violence

by Barack Obama coming out and saying political violence is wrong. That's not the case. This person is responsible for pulling the trigger. As far as we know, as of right now, we're not saying any other questions are irrelevant because they are, and I'm going to get to that in just one moment. But that's the microblame. The macro blame is, yes, a climate where more and more people associate, I think, what are good faith mainstream political disagreements with hate. And that's a different question. You know, that wouldn't be solved like that either. You snap your fingers. That wouldn't be solved. like that either. But I do think that's something we genuinely need to think about. And of course, not saying, you know, someone brought this up, the overapplication of the term groomers by people on the right. I'm not saying, you know, something like that isn't wrong, but a conservative was just gunned down in cold blood on a college campus. So it's appropriate right now to spend a little bit of time reflecting on how we got from point A to point B, Ryan, on that. I also think it's worth knowing Steve Bannon has said he doesn't buy these text messages. He says they feel a little bit

too scripted. He says it seems like a script, actually a bad script. What did you make of this? Some people, we were talking to producer Mac before the show. He was saying, even the word vehicle, using the word vehicle is a little weird in text messages to a friend. The old man line is one people have pulled out. I don't know. Well, so I listened to Bannon's take on this. And yeah, he's saying, I don't buy this. This feels like it's too convenient. It's too scripted. He's laying out all the evidence so that the FBI can just kind of tie the this up in a bow and move on. But Bannon had one, I think, misinterpretation. One thing that Bannon was saying was focusing on this, the gun. And so Bannon was saying, you're worried about how your parents are

going to react to the gun, showing Grandpa's gun being gone. I think they're going to care more about the fact that you just allegedly killed somebody in cold blood. Right. That's a misunderstanding. The reason that Tyler is concerned about his parents, not having an explanation for where the gun is is that he can't explain where the gun is and it ties him to the killing he's in his mind he's still trying to get away with it it's also so I

but I think people also yes like it doesn't read like a typical Gen Z text exchange yeah look at his ACT scores this is not a typical Gen Z kid he's like 99th percentile in the ACTs after going to I think a Utah Southern Utah

public school. Yeah. Like that is a different mind than the average Gen Z person. So you have to think about that when you're analyzing whether or not this could be authentic or not. Yeah, that's a good point. It's not typical, but he's not, he's also not typical. He also just assassinated somebody.

Right. It's not remotely typical. Well, that's another thing that Bannon brought, well, yeah, good point. That Bannon brought up is he had time to write all of this. And he said, I don't buy that he had time to write. I think Bannon referred to it as a sonnet. It sounds like he's sitting there looking at the squad car. Right.

So he's got time. And he's from this document or from this exchange even just sticking with it. He's talking about that he hasn't seen anyone saying they found the rifle yet, which meant he was following the news coverage. Yeah, and right, exactly. Which is chilling. It's on Twitter and probably TikTok or whatever. And so there's also a part that is very Gen Z, which is,

Y'all can't stop interacting on social media and texting. Like, you guys just can't do it. Like, so he says, towards the end, I can't find the exact quote, but he says this was something I would, I hoped I would be like confessing to as an old man, you know, on my deathbed or whatever. Right. Guy, you're texting in real time with another person. Mm-hmm.

Like, that fundamental disconnect is, does seem actually very Gen Z. People, like, they're just talking, they just tell everybody everything. Yeah, it's an incontinence. Like, you are telling someone that you were hoping you would never tell anybody about this. Yeah. You're telling somebody right now. Like, Woodward and Bernstein, who, Gen Z, look, Watergate, look it up. Complicit, yeah, the, they were the reporters.

They were the Washington Post reporters who broke Watergate. They had a source called Deep Throat. They took the identity of that source to the source's grave. The deal was when the source died, they could talk about it. And they did not tell their friends about it at a party. And this was the 70s and 80s. And Bernstein in particular was he partied with the Hollywood crew to this day off of Watergate. Is he still alive?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Anyway. He died out on that forever. Woodward just wrote books about it forever, or wrote books about Washington. But they never told anybody. Yeah. And they didn't tell anybody the name and then say, this is the secret that I'm hoping to take to my grave. So that part is so Gen Z that I don't think some...

Bob Woodward on a Discord server from the Arlington Park and Garage, yeah. Yeah, right. Woodward in the parking garage. I'm in a parking garage meeting FBI. You won't believe it. Number three in the FBI. Don't tell anybody. Yeah. So I don't think there's any Gen X detective that could conclude.

cock to that level of Gen Z. That's next level. Ah, come on. Why is this taking so long? This thing is ancient. Still using yesterday's tech, upgrade to the ThinkPad X1 Carbon, ultra-light, ultra-powerful,

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My name is Ed. Everyone say hello, Ed. I'm from a very rural background myself. My dad is a farmer, and my mom is a cousin. So, like, it's not like... What do you get when a true crime producer walks into a comedy club? I know it sounds like the start of. of a bad joke, but that really was my reality nine years ago.

I just normally do straight stand-up, but this is a bit different. On stage stood a comedian with a story that no one expected to hear. The 22nd of July 2015, a 23-year-old man had killed his family. And then he came to my house. So what do you get when a true crime producer walks into a comedy club? a new podcast called Wisecrack, where stand-up comedy and murder takes center stage. Available now. Listen to Wisecrack on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Other things from the charging doc, Robinson's mother, quote, explained that over the last year or so, Robinson had become more political and had started to lean more to the left, becoming more pro-gay and trans-rights oriented. She stated that Robinson began to date his roommate, a biological male who was transitioning genders, This resulted in several discussions with family members, but especially between Robinson and his father, with very different political views. In one conversation before the shooting, Robinson mentioned that Charlie Kirk would be holding an event at UVU, which Robinson said was, quote, a stupid venue for the event. Robinson accused Kirk of spreading hate. And then it goes on to say the family saw the surveillance image of the suspected shooter in the news, said it looked like their son, confronted the son, brought the son into a family friend who was a deputy sheriff, deputy sheriff and they convinced Robinson to go turn himself in. It looks like that the roommate is cooperating, Ryan. It seems like that's where they got some of these messages. Now, the roommate

received a text message from Robinson on September 10th, according to this, which said, drop what you were doing, look under my keyboard. The roommate looked under the keyboard and found a note that stated, quote, I had the opportunity to take out Charlie Kirk and I'm going to take it. The police found a picture of the note, apparently not the note itself, which might Ryan get to the reports that suggested something had been deleted. And then that after the note is found, that's when the exchange happens that we just read through. And notice that they have a photo of that note?

Yes. Not the note itself? Not the note itself. So where's the note? Did they burn the note? Throw the note away? Where's the note? Well, yeah, I mean, let's get to this because there are,

I think, a lot of remaining questions, including a big one, actually, that Megan Kelly raised, which is how did Tyler Robinson, who was planning this for apparently a week, according to this exchange, know that on the roof, there wouldn't be security. I'm sure you can go look at other Kirk events, and it's unusual for there to be security on a roof of a campus event. Grant everyone that, but after Butler, big speaking tour, how do you know for sure there's not going to be anyone up there? How do you know for sure that you're going to have a clear line of sight to reach Kirk from there that there aren't going to be, you know, banners that are put up or obstructions in one way or the other? Maybe he went up the night before? Like, we don't know. Yeah, he may have. Yeah, absolutely possible.

Also, he could go and see if there's security and if there is abort the mission. Right, yeah, entirely possible. Entirely possible. But that's why, you know, normally you don't have a suspect like this alive, frankly. And so I'm sure we'll learn a lot more about Tyler Robinson's story on what happened. Right. And also, I think one thing that people should take away from this to that point is that you basically cannot get away with this in the United States anymore. Or could Robinson have gotten away with it if he hadn't been turned in? well you're going to get turned in like so the because the way the reason you can't get away with this is mass surveillance ring cameras dash cameras security cameras cameras cameras cameras cameras

absolutely everywhere he he very effectively as the police said walked with his head down a hat pulled down sunglasses changed clothes he did everything that he could except he probably should have put on a COVID mask maybe that would have helped like you know mask Now, maybe Utah, it's not cool to, like, mask up. Right. It might have looked suspicious. Right. But you're going to have some people masking.

Anyway, not that I'm giving advice here because I want people to get caught doing this, actually. Yes. So he did basically everything he could, and they still got a clear picture of him. And, yes, okay, let's imagine a world where your parents don't turn you in. In most cases, your parents are turning. you in for this. I'm sorry. If your parents don't turn you in, your cousin is going to turn you in. Your uncle is going to turn you in. Your aunt is going to turn you in. The person in your chemistry class is going to turn you in. In this world, hundreds of people know what we look like.

And somebody's going to notice and somebody's going to be not okay with you doing what you did. Some are going to be okay with it. Some will love you and won't turn you in. Some are going to turn you in. Some are going to turn you in. So that's why I'm saying, like, even if you get away at the scene in an era of mass surveillance, and plus... Well, that's an interesting part of the charging document. It talks about how they have surveillance footage of him going up to the roof and leaving the roof, but not of the shot happening. It doesn't mention that, of course, but it mentions... It talks about how you have surveillance video of him going up to the roof. Right, there are spaces in this world that are not.

Well, I also find that, but that's what I thought to your point. I think that's quite interesting because we also know there was that. Who could get away with this and a state level assassin, like who is able to understand where all the cameras are and you've got, you know, Ocean's 11 style or like, you know, maybe then you can get away with that type of assassination and you exfiltrate back to your country immediately and you're wearing a ski mask or something like that, like professional assassins, okay, but like a regular person whose face is going to be out there and they're not going anywhere. Like, you can't get away with it. So another odd... Which is, to me, a good thing. So that means people are going to have to... It goes back to the school shooter mindset, like, that you're going in and you're not coming back out.

Right. Which is, again, something different from this case, especially when you have someone saying that they hope to take the secret to their grave, but they had also been... And they're telling that to somebody. Right. And posted about it in the Discord. One of the Discord servers as well, we'll get into that with Ken. But let's go ahead and bring this other element of the story in. And this is something that people thought was very weird at first.

This is A3, George Zinn. Do you remember the name George Zinn from the frenzy last week? This is, according to TMZ, the man... I claiming he did it. Yeah, he claimed he did it. The man accused of obstructing the Charlie Kirk murder probe is even in more hot water. He's now been charged with possessing child porn. George Zinn, who falsely told police, he shot Kirk moments after the attack,

was charged with obstruction of justice following the death of Charlie Kirk. Quote, now Zin has been charged with four counts. of sexual exploitation of a minor, after FBI agents examined his phone and found images of underage girls dressed only in their underwear. According to court documents filed Tuesday by Utah prosecutors, the docs say Zinn admitted to the feds. He gets, quote, sexually aroused by children. And you will remember, of course, he said, after the shooting, he basically was saying that he did it.

Right, right. And then at one point, I think he said he did it. So he did that so that the shooter could get away. This is the story from George Zinn. This whole storyline just feels designed to get people to believe that the official story is bogus. Right, right. Like you could not stitch up a side narrative less compelling or more compelling, depending on your perspective here. Because if people don't know, this whole CSAA thing is a, it's almost a mean.

at this point that, like, if you are inconvenient to the government, look out, you're going to find, you're going to wind up with something on your, on your computer. So to see that used here. Now, I have no reason to think that, like, this guy is apparently a known figure around town. Yeah. One of those kind of. Many such cases. Weirdos. Gadfly. Real gadflies around town. All the police, like, kind of knew his name. Yeah. And does a weirdo like that also have CSAA on his phone? I have no problem believing that. Yep. On the other hand, this is becoming a thing. And like FBI, careful how many times you use that bullet, I guess. He said he wanted to cause a distraction for the actual gunman, but also at one point he said he, quote, wanted to be a martyr for the person who was shot.

Another quote, this is from the DA. All of a sudden, he comes up with this plan. It's weird. The DA tells the Salt Lake Tribune. Almost every political event you can think of, there was always George somewhere in the background listening. So he was like part of the local political landscape. We have those here in D.C.

We have more than enough. Yes. So. I know some of their names. That's another odd wrinkle in all of this. We learned a lot more yesterday. And frankly, I wouldn't be surprised as some of them had shot sex abuse. I would be surprised if some of them didn't.

Right. Yes. So that's the anti-conspiracy side. Like these people, these weirdos exist. That's true. Yes. And yeah, absolutely. Take it from us who do these public events.

Great point. Yes, great point. And get the weirdo messages and all of that stuff. Yes. We're probably more familiar than most with this type. But so this is all of the new details that we learned yesterday from the charging document. Now, the conversation about our national politics also took another kind of, it had another ugly wrinkle yesterday, not a surprising one, but an ugly one,

related to more comments from Ezra Klein, actually reflecting on the reaction that he got to his first reaction in the wake of Charlie Kirk's assassination. So here's a little bit. Oh, go ahead. Right. Let's do them in a different order. Put up A5. Yeah, yeah. Because so this was the piece that probably everybody in the country has seen at this point, his headline.

Charlie Kirk was practicing politics the right way. He gets enormous amount of blowback for this piece from, obviously, from the center left and the left. Which is really just saying Charlie Kirk was inviting debate and conversation. Right. Which, as her client says, don't agree with the guy. It says things that I find very, very wrong. but the baseline foundational reality is that he was inviting debate and conversation.

Right. Hated or love it. It was nonviolent. Yep. It was speech. Yep. And so then he then had already interviewed Ben Shapiro because Ben Shapiro was on a book tour.

And so that interview was in the can before Charlie Kirk was assassinated. So he published that interview but also added a kind of preamble response slash rebuttal to the criticism he got for the original piece. We can play just a little taste of that here, A4. My reaction, honestly, is it is too little to just say we oppose political violence. In ways that surprised me, given what I thought of Kirk's project, I was an am grieving for Kirk himself. Not because I knew him.

I didn't. Not because he was a saint. He wasn't. not because I agreed with him no most of what he poured himself into trying to achieve I pour myself into trying to prevent but I find myself grieving

for him because I recognize some commonality with him he was murdered for participating in our politics somewhere beyond how much divided us there was something that bonded us to some effort to change this country in ways that we think are good

I believe this so strongly that we have to be able to see that the bullet that torn to him was an act of violence against us all. I actually believe that. I don't know how to express this thought exactly. The nature of our politics right now, the truth of it, is that it is ferocious.

That our visions of what is good, our visions just of what is decent, have diverged. The stakes of our politics right now are frightening to me. The consequences for people are very real. We see each other as threats, and to some degree, we are right. And it is somehow also true. It is true at the same time that we will be immeasurably worse off, if that is all we are to each other. We are going to have to live here with each other.

There will be no fever that breaks. there will be no permanent victory that routes or quiets those who disagree with us. So for this, what I would find it would be rather uncontroversial assertion. Like we're not going to fight our way out of, we're not going to shoot our way out of this. We all live in the same country. We're going to have to deal with this either violently or non-violently. And he was dealing with it non-violently, and that's the right way to deal with it. He's got an enormous amount of blowback.

I've gotten my own for just agreeing with him. Yes. I was looking at your feed and couldn't believe. It's ugly. It's ugly. And so the counter argument that you can probably read in the comment section to this video right now is he was not doing politics the right way. The most, to me, the best point would be, whatever his, like denying the election or whatever, January 6th, because if you can show that he was actually trying to overturn an election, okay, that's not the right way of doing things. I don't remember him being involved with January 6th. Did he, I think, some T.P. USA buses came? Yeah, they sent buses for the big Trump speech on the ellipse.

But the Trump speech was not, like, guaranteed to lead to an insurrection. No, I mean, again, Trump said peacefully march on the Capitol. Whatever you think about, and I have all, many, many problems with how Trump handled that. But it wasn't like a conspiracy plot by turning point in a day. I don't think he was pro-insurrection. But whatever, if you see it was, then okay, fine. That's, that is, I will acknowledge, that is absolutely not the right way to do policy. to sack the capital because you don't like the election. That's not. I don't associate him

with that. Other people have said, well, he says things I think are racist. He says things that are sexes. He says things are hateful towards LGBT people. He like said, my friend, Medi Hassan, should be deported. I'm not okay with that, but it's speech. Like that, that is all within speech. And so that that is what Ezra means by practicing politics the right way. It does not mean that he has the he has good politics or the right politics or the correct politics or shares your politics. That would be that would be a different thing. There's a willful misreading of it. I think for the sake of catharsis. Ezra probably would have phrased it slightly differently. Just but maybe not like I don't know. No, you should stand by it 100%

Because what he was talking about is that in the most basic sense, which is that he was on a college campus, sending people, and this is one of the coolest things that Charlie Kirk did, is sending people who disagreed with him to the front of the line and talking, talking, and I actually think there are all kinds of criticisms that can be made about doing politics for the algorithm and doing politics for TikTok and doing politics all apply. But that's not what Azarclan is talking about. He's talking about the most basic skeletal sense of what Charlie Kirk was known for, which was going to college campuses. and debating people and eagerly debating people and doing it with speech. Speech can have violent implications and consequences, but it is speech and it is not violence in and of itself. And that is, I think, an argument that caught fire particularly. It used to be sort of relegated to the fringes, faculty lounges, talking about Foucault and getting into what actually is, you know, like it was very abstract philosophical discussions about what actually is speech and violence and what is the line.

all of that, and then it migrated into this very literal belief among, I mean, I've been accused of it. I don't know, like, if you ever ran, but when I was in college, I was accused of committing acts of violence with my speech. It's fucked up. Yeah, yeah, sure. It's completely fucked up. Sometimes. And, you know, at his Southern Utah event where he was killed, like he started the event by saying, all right, give me the best libs Utah has to offer. Best lives. Give me the best lives. Yep. And so then another counter argument as well, he's, he's, he's there in bad faith. Mm-hmm.

Well, yeah, he's a right-wing person. Like, he's not, yes. And yes, and people say, another argument is that he has these rhetorical tricks that he uses on college students and where he kind of outmatches them. Okay. Yes. That's what debate and argument. Maddie wrote a book about that, rhetorical tricks. Right.

So if Medi went to a college campus and like, he would absolutely make mincemeat of anybody who came before, including me, me. Is that doing it the wrong way because, you know, he's using rhetorical tricks? No, you it's still debate. It's still speech. You don't have to like it. Doesn't mean you agree with it, but it is, it is not violent. And he wasn't even part of the government because you could also say, well, this government is like fueling a genocide and it is ISIS out, killing people, chaining them. They're awful. They're violent. He's not actually part of the government. He's a supporter of the government. So we're 100 plus million people in this country. You're going to kill all of them. And so that gets to Ezra's other point. Let's say you disagree with Ezra. Yep. And you actually think he's not practicing politics the right way. Yeah. What is the right way? Right. Is it a violence? Yeah. There's violence and nonviolence. There's not a middle ground. And you can debate, like, so are you going to debate or not debate? Like, so he can, can he debate on college campuses or not?

Okay, college campuses, they're off limits because the kids are too young. So then he can only debate older people. Like, it becomes incoherent at some point pretty quickly. And it becomes just a way, I feel like, to show what tribe you're in. Yes, it's exactly that. It feels like what. Which is cowardly. What Ezra said was deeply unfashionable.

It's like the intellectual... And the fact that it's unfashionable is what's disturbing. Right. It is like the intellectual equivalent of like Crocs. It was him saying the kumbaya stuff is true and accurate. And that is, yeah, it's unfashionable because it's not edgy. It's not, it's not a, I was thinking about this this morning. It's not a rejection of the establishment.

and you'd be hard pressed to find another show of people that are like our consensus across crystal saga you and me is that the establishment is broken and corrupt and that's a problem and so I think people who find ourselves find themselves in our milieu the fashion is to reflexively disagree with the establishment at every turn because the establishment is wrong we all agree that the establishment is wrong well in this case I actually agree with the of like mainstream establishment about where our politics are going and that's not fashionable and it's a very cathartic reflex to want to disagree with the people who are saying anything nice about Charlie Kirk who was friends with a president in power a president abusing power and so it's

easy to just have that knee-jerk reaction to find your catharsis in it because it's there's something that's much more fashionable about disagreeing with the establishment in the elites. And in this case, I actually think, you know, there's, the elites have a point. And yeah, the other argument that people made was, okay, fine, Ezra, but you shouldn't lionize Charlie Kirk. Yes. And I'd have two responses to that. One is that I don't think he was lionizing Charlie Kirk. He's saying, I disagree with everything. I spend my life trying to block the things he wants to achieve. Yep.

But what he was admiring, objectively, was the fact that he'd built this mass organization around the country, that he'd increased turnout among young people, and had done that nonviolently and had elected a president. Just objectively, he's saying, like, I would have liked the left to have built that instead. Yeah. And so saying that you built power. is not lionizing right somebody it is stating an objective fact right uh and and and then he like i also would even go further and i had some people saying you know why aren't you pointing out

these like racist things he said a little whatever like because i think in the moment after he's killed thank you if you say i don't think he should be killed thank you but here's some bad things that I disagree with him over. You are backdoor implicitly justifying to some people that the killing may have been okay. And that's why you have to stop doing that. Now, everybody remembers this on the left when it came to Qasem Soleimani. Remember the assassination of Qasem Soleimani? This is such a weird jump, but yes, I know where you're going with this. I wish Charlie Kirk was here because he would, I think, appreciate this analogy. I'm not saying that he is Qasem Soleimani. No, you are not.

But so right leading into the Iowa caucuses, Trump assassinated Qasem Soleimani. Again, this is a Trump move. Trump set up a peace deal. He asked Iraq to broker some peace talks with Iran and the IRC, which brought Qasem Soleimani, who was the head of the IRC, the Iranian Revolution and Guard Corps, brought him to Baghdad. he flies into the civilian airport of Baghdad, he's in a car with his aides, and we drone strike him as he's on the way to these peace talks. Sound familiar, we did it to Iran several years later, we just did it to Hamas a couple weeks ago. It's the most cowardly thing and counterproductive thing

you can do. You put out a peace deal and then your adversaries gather to consider this peace deal and then you kill them. Cowardly, disgusting. And so every day, Democrat put out a statement saying, I deplore Qasem Soleimani's life and work. He's responsible for the killing of thousands of Americans, probably, American troops in the Iraq war in the 2000s, as well as kind of a leading figure of building up the axis of resistance. And so every single Democrat said, I disagree with him, I hate who he is. However, Trump should not have done this, you know, cold blood, this extra legal assassination. Yep.

Except Bernie Sanders. Yeah. Bernie Sanders' statement was clear and unequivocal. You do not assassinate figures like this. Like, this is not how we do things in the world. And you save your critique of the person for later because the critique. It's beside the point. The critique then justifies the killing in a way.

and everyone on the left understood that in the moment and everyone jumped on Elizabeth Warren and all the other Democrats who led with a mealy mouth I hate what this guy stands for however so the point is if you're against the killing

you just say you're against the killing the killing was wrong and then you move on and I think the reason is I mean there are a bunch of reasons but the one that stands out to me is that the killing is the much much much much much much more important question

in that moment than anything else, right? It's black and white. Exactly, because it's totally uninteresting that an American politician doesn't agree with an IRGC commander's way that he carries out the killing of U.S. soldiers. Obviously, you don't agree with that. And obviously, if you're on the left, you don't agree with Charlie Kirk, who's on the right? Right. You need to say that?

Right. Who doesn't know that? Right. Right. No, it doesn't give you any more credibility to condemn his murder while saying that. It undermines your credibility, thoroughly. Just wanted to highlight what I thought was the most important point that Ezra made, which is he said, quote, much of what I would describe as Kirk's worst moments were standard fair Maga-Republicanism.

And that is a hugely critical, I think, description from his perspective. Right, right. And he says the chief proponent of which is the president of the United States. Yeah. You can't kill everybody who agrees with the president. And again, like, this is, Donald Trump won the popular vote this time. Charlie Kirk was winning hearts and minds on social media. Like, there were a lot, a lot, a lot of people who followed that guy.

He had a lot of fans. Donald Trump has a lot of fans. There are a lot of people who believe what Charlie Kirk and Donald Trump believe. And some of them, by the way, Sager and I believe, some of what Donald Trump and Charlie Kirk believe. And it is just the idea that you are, we've inflated in Ryan, you wrote a fantastic piece about this I always talk about, but Elephant in the Zoom, about the overinflation of definitions that the left has engaged in. And I'm not again saying the right doesn't do it to, and I shouldn't even be doing this throat clearing again, because a conservative

was just shot in cold blood on a college campus. But that's a real problem. I think that the left has had over the last 10 years is overinflating some of these definitions, racism. bigotry, sexism, misogyny, again, there are real practical, literal definitions of some of those terms that can be applied to people on the right. Like, I'll debate whether I'm a sexist, racist, all day. Fine, we'll do it. But to overinflate those definitions impugns people in mass in ways that are intentional, I think, on the left, they wouldn't say, yes, I do agree that every person who voted for Donald Trump

is a racist in some respect. That's the argument. But it's actually, it's literally not true. Charlie Kirk did not believe that people were inferior because of their race. He did not believe that. His quotes and context did not say that. And he didn't live his life that way. He worshipped with people of all faith, of all stripes and all different backgrounds.

He had turning point outreach to young black conservatives and young black Americans. he was like nothing but compassionate towards gay conservatives when, and actually gay liberals when he was in conversation with them. So disagree with how he handles those things, sure, but to impugn him and say that he thinks people are lesser than in like actual, like they're worth as human beings, that's a different question than what you think the policy implications of his beliefs are. And that's what I think gets really, really dangerous. Yeah, and one of the quotes that I see going around all the time

is where he said something like, if I see a black pilot, I'm going to wonder if they're worse. Yes. And I understand why everyone on the left sees that as a completely racist thing to say. You see a black person and your mind goes inferior. The point that he was trying to make, I'm not defending him here, but the point he was trying to make was because of the existence of in their minds quotas. I don't think there are quotas, but let's say there were quote. In his mind,

he thinks there are quotas where affirmative action requires an airline to hire X number of black candidates, whether or not they have X number of black qualified candidates. That's in his mind. So his mind then says, oh, this person was hired to fill this quota. So what he's saying is affirmative action actually fuels racism rather than redresses racism. So I agree or disagree with that That's the point he's making there Right Which is a different point than

The one that I think people were jumping on him for it And with He was coming after Shill Jackson Lee and Michelle Obama Saying that they don't have the brain power And Katanji Brown Jackson They don't have the brain power That they needed affirmative action Like I think that's just objectively ridiculous

Like I think they obviously are extremely smart women but what he was saying is that they that they said that they benefited from affirmative action right so you then are like well if you're saying that what you're acknowledging it's getting down in the weeds of and and a lot of his following

does have bias against black people like I think significant number so I like I get where people are coming from but that that's the conversation that was going on. Yeah, it was an argument that you get from Thomas Sol, Clarence Thomas, Walter Williams about the

effects of affirmative action. We don't have to go into any more of that, but Thomas hated it more than anybody. Right, and we okay, so we've been talking about this for like 50 minutes now, and I just want to say it's because these conversations are so fraught and the experience, I don't know about you, right, in the last week, has been

like incredibly depressing the way everyone is racing, to get clips or get like just... Right, and we haven't even gotten into... I know Chris and Saga did, but the whole right-wing organizing safe spaces and getting into cancel culture. Yeah, there's that too.

There's just an explosion of cancel culture all around, and it's because everybody's on edge and everybody's trying to cope with this in different ways, many of which I think are algorithmically programmed to be incredibly ugly because actually you don't have to say things. You literally just don't have to say things, but when the seduction of the algorithm is right in front of you, promising those dopamine hits for likes and retweets, people err on the side of posting, unfortunately.

Ah, come on, why is this taking so long? This thing is ancient. Still using yesterday's tech, upgrade to the ThinkPad X1 Carbon, Ultra-Light, Ultra-Powerful, and built for serious productivity with Intel Core Ultra processors, blazing speed, and AI-powered performance. It keeps up with your business, not the other way around. Whoa, this thing moves. Stop hitting snooze on new tech. Win the tech search at Lenovo.com. Unlock AI experiences with the ThinkPad X1 Carbon,

powered by Intel Core Ultra processors so you can work, create, and boost productivity all on one device. I'm Jorge Ramos. And I'm Paola Ramos. Together we're launching The Moment, a new podcast about what it means to live through a time, as uncertain as this one. We sit down with politicians.

I would be the first immigrant mayor in generations, but 40% of New Yorkers were born outside of this country. Artists and activists, I mean, do you ever feel demoralized? I might personally lose hope. This individual might lose the faith, but there's an institution that doesn't lose faith. And that's what I believe in. To bring you depth and analysis from a unique Latino perspective.

There's not a single day that Paola and I don't call. or text each other, sharing news and thoughts about what's happening in the country. This new podcast will be a way to make that ongoing intergenerational conversation public. Listen to The Moment with Jorge Ramos and Paola Ramos as part of the MyCultura podcast network on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. My name is Ed. Everyone say hello, Ed. I'm from a very rural background myself. My dad is a farmer, and my mom is a cousin.

What do you get when a true crime producer walks into a comedy club? I know it sounds like the start of a bad joke, but that really was my reality nine years ago. I just normally do straight stand-up, but this is a bit different. On stage stood a comedian with a story that no one expected to hear. The 22nd of July 2015, a 23-year-old man had killed his family. And then he came to my house. So what do you get when a true crime producer walks into a comedy club? A new podcast called Wisecrack, where stand-up comedy and murder takes center stage.

Available now. Listen to Wisecrack on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Let's get to Tucker Carlson. Ryan, who did a stream just last night with some other prominent friends of Charlie Kirk's, remembering Charlie Kirk, and of course then getting into some of the controversial questions about whether or not Kirk was moving on the question of foreign policy towards Israel in the days of weeks before his death. So let's roll this video of Tucker Carlson A6. I don't think I think I've ever seen anything lower than his attempt to hijack Charlie's memory and use it for

his own political ends, particularly because what he said was completely untrue. Charlie didn't hate Jews. He loved Jews. He had tons of friends who were Jews. He loved the state of Israel. He loved going there. He did not like B.B. Netanyahu, and he said that to me many times, and he said to people around him many times. He felt that B.B. Netanyahu was a very destructive force. He was appalled by what was happening in Gaza? He was above all resentful that he believed Netanyahu was using the United States to prosecute his wars for the benefit of his country, and that it was shameful and embarrassing and bad for the United States, and he resented it. So if you're not like super hyper online, you may have missed some of the context about the Ackman saga. But this has been

becoming a really significant subplot in the broader conversation about what happened to Charlie Kirk. Bill Ackman and others allegedly convened what's now being billed as sort of an intervention for Charlie Kirk in the Hamptons in early August. And Ackman and others who were there have rejected the characterization of it as an intervention. It was sort of Bill does an influencer summit for people on the right, and apparently they talked about Israel as part of their conversations in the Hamptons. But Tucker Carlson, Matt Gates, Candice Owens, and others. Smith last night. Yeah. Yeah. Are coming out and saying Charlie did express to them. He was

privately, and he talked about this publicly too, so it's not exactly surprising. But privately had expressed, he was under pretty significant pressure. from the pro-Israel side to not give a platform to people like Dave Smith, who were critical of Israel. In fact, actually, Charlie had Sagar on. People probably remember, I believe it was back in July, late July, so before this influencer summit, to talk about Epstein documents, a potential Israel connection, Epstein documents. And that really was upsetting. And have Saga on after Sager was on Tucker is even more infuriating to the Ackmans.

right um and had acman at his conference and i mean i mean it had tucker at his conference trashing acman you pointed out as we were prepping this segment an interesting bit of the timeline yeah so if if you want to actually try to get a sense of what because what went down at this meeting slash intervention whatever you want to call it understand this the dates are august fourth and august fifth and it was held uh in the hamptons if you watch this show you have probably seen the viral clip of Charlie Kirk on Megan Kelly's program, really lashing out at people who are coming after him saying, stop telling me what I can say and I can't say about my own government. Who do you think you are? How dare you attack my moral character? You've seen this clip probably.

If you haven't, you can go find it. You can look up when that appearance was. That was August 6th. And he is heated in that clip. He has worked up. So according to Ackman and Seth, Dillon and others who were Seth Dillon and also acknowledged that he was there invited by Kirk. It was cordial. It was just some chit-chat, some good food, and some panels, and everything was fine. According to Kirk's friends, he felt, uh, he felt, uh, he felt like he was being pushed in an aggressive posture with, with money being used as, as the pressure. So those are the two different claims about this event.

that was held on the fourth and the fifth, go and rewatch his appearance on Megan Kelly on the sixth. Take his temperature. And you ask me if that is a guy who just came out of a cordial session where they just shared some blueberry muffin tops and enjoyed the Bridgeport views. And there's also the possibility

that conversations happened on the sidelines, of course, right? That other people who were part of... Something ticked him off. Yeah, right. Something made him very angry right before that Megan Kelly appearance. And I think, you know, he'd been getting this for months. And same with a lot of people. Yeah, for months and months and months.

And some of the reporting is now that actually you can see this. He convened a focus group of young conservatives on Israel. And one of those things that people were saying more and more, or that people are saying he was privately expressing is that what was really driving some of the upset on the young right is just being told what they can and cannot say. It wasn't necessarily about policy so much as it was about speech and so much as it was about like offering any criticism. And that's what was really sort of driving him to be more public about some of this. And yeah, I mean...

September 2nd? What was September 2nd? the focus group oh right uh i think he did one earlier in the summer too um but yeah the that's that was another thing um that i've been having actually after uh yeah i'm i had intended to send him a note and i never did it uh to just thank him for being honest and standing up back then um but it was a reminder you got to send those messages a hundred percent yeah it's yeah yep you do um um um And also for his conversation with Sagar, which was very well done and very fair.

And I think people underestimate how hard that is to do. Just like people underestimate, people on the left underestimate how hard it is for you and Crystal to sit next to Saga and me sometimes. And people on the right underestimate how hard it is, like how much backlash we get. You know what I mean? But it's just people underestimate what goes on behind the scenes and like the trash that you, get for just sitting next to someone who disagrees with you and who your friends disagree with. It's constant. And I can't imagine, especially for somebody like Charlie Kirk, who had been going back and forth to Israel, probably, probably like once a year at least over the last 10 years.

I just, you know, it's hard. Yeah, it looks like this focus group was late July. Late July. Yeah. So the timeline there is quite interesting. in terms of about a week before this Hampton's event and yeah who knows what was happening on the sidelines of that you know people can say we didn't see any pressure or whatever but you know there could have been different conversations that that happened certainly and we're going to learn more about them but man it is uh it's ugly to watch what he is saying about Netanyahu by the way so Netanyahu has done multiple things one is that Netanyahu went on air and read a letter

that Kirk wrote to him in May, and he read a line of it that says, I love visiting Israel, I love Israel. And then he stops right there. Netanyahu does. Netanyahu stops. So Candice Owen said, release the whole letter because I know that that letter was actually a lot of criticism of you. And that makes sense.

Like, that's the kind of line that you start with. Hey, I love you. You're my good friend. Always supported you. But. And everything that comes out of the butt is what's important. Yeah. That was frustrating to Candace, Owens, Tucker, and others.

And also, Netanyahu went on air and said, I recently spoke with him, and apparently it was at this intervention, like he called into this thing. I recently spoke with Charlie Kirk and I invited him to come visit Israel, and now that visit won't happen. And if you notice the phrasing of that, it leaves out what Kirk's friends say, which is that Kirk told him no,

that he felt like it was. was an attempt to kind of bully him and pressure him. And he said no. So yes, that trip will not happen. Right. He's been assassinated. But you're leaving out a key detail. Yeah.

Very gross. You're trying to drape yourself in him. Yeah, it's very, very, very gross. And it's going to be used. I mean, this is all going to be used as a football. And the truth, probably, by the way, is that if we're trying to read between the lines and see what Charlie may or may not have said about Candace Owens or may or may or may or may not have said about Israel, the truth is probably that people who are reflecting

on their conversations are, I mean, like, he was trying to get along with different people in different conversations, and that's also a very difficult thing to do. If you, maybe he did disagree bitterly with Candace Owens on certain things, and I'm sure that's also the case. When his other friends confront him about another friend's politics that they disagree with bitterly, he's probably going to say, yeah, I don't agree with her. And then they can take that conversation and go forward, as opposed to him being like, hey listen you know

like if you're in a private conversation you're probably trying to get along with everyone and so you can probably have both of these things being true at once that Charlie was telling Candace and others

Matt Gates maybe privately that he was pressured with Netanyahu and then he was telling pro-Israel people that he was frustrated a bit with Candice like all of these things can be true at once right he didn't know that these conversations were going to turn into

a political football when he was assassinated. He was also asked by Greta Van Susser and what I think it was on air like Netanyahu's asked did you have anything to do with killing him? I've had people ask me if I think that Israel had anything to do with this.

I do not. And part of it is just on a baseline level I don't think even if Netanyahu would say wanted to do it none of the security services would I think participate in it because they could not do it secretly.

Like, there's too much coordination. Like, so it's just, that's why it's, like, you don't even have to investigate it any further than that, I think. They just, they, they couldn't, they couldn't keep it secret. Yeah. So it wouldn't even make the whiteboard. Because you can't do it. Like, they just can't do it. Yeah.

Yeah. So it happens that at the time he was killed, all of this was going on. Yeah. Which, as I've said, is like another layer of tragedy. That's right. So we'll obviously continue to follow this story. Let's bring in Ken Klippenstein now, Ryan, to talk about some of the messages from this Discord server Ken was able to obtain. Ah, come on. Why is this taking so long? This thing is ancient. Still using yesterday's tech upgrade to the ThinkPad X1 carbon, ultra-light, ultra-powerful, and built for serious productivity with Intel core ultra-processors, blazing speed, and AI-powered performance. It keeps up with your business, not the other way around.

Whoa, this thing moves. Stop hitting snooze on new tech. Win the tech search at Lenovo.com. Unlock AI experiences with the ThinkPad X1 Carbon, powered by Intel Core Ultra processors so you can work, create, and boost productivity all on one device. I'm Jorge Ramos. And I'm Paola Ramos.

Together we're launching The Moment, a new podcast about what it means to live through a time, as uncertain as this one. We sit down with politicians. I would be the first immigrant mayor in generations, but 40% of New Yorkers were born outside of this country. Artists and activists, I mean, do you ever feel demoralized? I might personally lose hope.

This individual might lose the faith, but there's an institution that doesn't lose faith. And that's what I believe in. To bring you depth and analysis from a unique Latino perspective. There's not a single day that Paola and I don't call, or text each other, sharing news and thoughts about what's happening in the country. This new podcast will be a way to make that ongoing intergenerational conversation public. Listen to The Moment with Jorge Ramos and Paola Ramos as part of the MyCultura podcast network on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

My name is Ed. Everyone say hello, Ed. I'm from a very rural background myself. My dad is a farmer, and my mom is a cousin. What do you get when a true crime producer walks into a comedy club? I know it sounds like the start of a bad joke, but that really was my reality nine years ago. I just normally do straight stand-up, but this is a bit different. On stage stood a comedian with a story that no one expected to hear. On 22nd of July 2015,

a 23-year-old man had killed his family. And then... He came to my house. So what do you get when a true crime producer walks into a comedy club? A new podcast called Wisecrack, where stand-up comedy and murder takes center stage. Available now. Listen to Wisecrack on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Independent journalist Ken Clippenstein had a big scoop yesterday.

Let me put up B1 here. This is from Ken Ken's substack exclusive leaked messages from Charlie Kirk assassin. So Ken spoke with people in Tyler Robinson's social circle and was able to get access to multiple discords that Robinson has been in in an effort to divine a little bit about, a little bit more about who this person is. This is one more scoop from Ken amid these FBI situations. Pretty impressive run, Ken, we're happy to have you here on Breaking Points. Thanks for joining us. Hey, guys. Thanks for having me. And I noticed that you said, you know, you're willing to publish these and the mainstream media isn't. You know, sometimes you are. Other times, I think you're just getting stuff that the mainstream media doesn't even have yet.

So they don't even get to suppress it before you're obtaining it and publishing it. So nice job on getting this stuff. But let's run through a little bit of it. So this is zealous monkey. That's, um, that's Tyler's Discord handle in this Discord. Is that right? Yeah, that's exactly right. And so he's saying, so this is the one where he kind of finally admits to this group. He's saying, hey, guys, I have bad news for you all. It was me at UVU yesterday. I'm sorry for all of this. I'm surrendering through a share of friend in a few moments. Thanks for all the good times and laughs. You've all been so amazing. Thank you all for everything. And before that, somebody had said Charlie Kirk got shot. dead. I just saw the video. Holy S. R-A-P. I guess Bro didn't deserve to go out like that sad. So talk a little bit about who you spoke to, what you can tell us about who you spoke to, and kind of what kind of person they understood Tyler to be. Yeah, so I talked to three people who knew him. All of them were involved in different Discord channels. There wasn't just one.

There were a bunch of them, just like no anyone uses social media. We use different channels. one of them knew him since childhood. And so he had a perspective on his development and growth and a kind of baseline for who he was, which I thought was interesting. But what was most surprising to me over the course of talking to these people was seeing those chats and thinking it was going to be like the sewer that Twitter is and that it would be, you know, a mix of different reactions. But from what was sent to me, it was all pretty measured and sympathetic. I thought there would be some, you know, gloating or cheering about it. And I was surprised that the maturity of a lot of these young 20-something-year-old men, and I mean, you just read one example where they said, you know, Broden deserved to go out like that.

So it's like not necessarily people that, you know, liked or disliked him. It was just seeing the humanity of it and having what I thought was a human response. And that is the exact opposite of how this entire thing has been portrayed by the major media since the shooting. I spent a lot of the weekend just pulling together clips of cable news channels saying that, you know, the dangerous threat of these young men extremists and discord channels. And that's just not what I found in the course of my reporting. So tell us a little bit about some of the reflections you heard from people who knew him because in the story there's some really interesting stuff. So one quote here,

even the goodbye message he sent in one of our servers was so hard to believe. We all just thought, what a weird joke to make. Yeah, I don't know what makes a person like him decide he's going to drive 260 miles upstate to shoot someone like Charlie Kirk, then come back like nothing happened. It leaves a lot of room for speculation in theories, which is why I think they're so rampant. So, Ken, from this, it sounds like a lot of people who were chatting with him in these servers and knew him for years. Also, as we hear in many of these cases, were surprised that he would be capable of that level of

evil. Yeah, they were shocked and horrified. And I honestly, it's hard to report on a story like this and, you know, try to have the remove that you need to as reporter and not have this responsive. Like, these are really young men who are 23, 24. And you can imagine if someone you had known and been friendly with for years, you find this out about them. I mean, that's got to be really traumatic. And in addition to that, you have FBI director, Cash Patel saying, we're going to investigate everyone in these channels, which, you know, some measure of investigation is warranted. But just this kind of assumption that you see ricoishing around on social media.

that oh they must have been in on it not only is that not true it's kind of gross because it's like they're probably going through stuff just like anyone else who saw the shooting was i mean not just probably they are and i think it's really hard for them and they're just kind of shocked i think they're still processing it um and that surprised me because it wasn't the kind of um nihilistic attitude that i think were led to believe exists not just on the part of young men but on these social media platforms in general and about which there's all this hysteria and fear mongering about i mean they were way more thoughtful than i was at 22 or 23 like i hope i wouldn't approve of a horrible act like that i don't think i would but i can definitely find people who did on

on other social media platforms so i was surprised by the by the depth of the response and one thing that wasn't terribly surprised me but i think it's worth mentioning is that there's basically no conversation about national politics in here um which It's important to, like, I'm not surprised by it, but just gauging the news coverage, you would suspect that these discords are just like hotbeds of, you know, radical national political discussion. But in fact, not at all. You had them search and found, it's founding and put this, put this one up here. One mention of Trump, which is, he says, an impeachment inquiry has been placed against Donald Trump. He could get booted out if they find he committed the S he's accused of, which is actually slightly nice.

Because Trump in 2019, this is the Ukraine thing, like the perfect phone call. He did do the thing he was accused of and he did not get impeached. So, oh for one on his political analysis there. But then on election night in 2020, that is the only reference to Biden. Well, somebody asks Tyler, zealous monkey, who is winning the election? You would know, which is an interesting insight. It shows like, and we understand this political. that every social group has like this the guy who follows politics and that guy is actually

pretty influential because he then is the filter through which a lot of his friends then understand politics which is why our show for instance I think is interesting because like a lot of those people watch our show they get they they get their news from us and then they share it with or they read your substack then they share information with their social circle so he responds accurately. Biden is in the lead, electoral votes-wise, but there's still some swing states that haven't finished voting, as well as most of the West Coast raw votes. Donald is in the lead by a little over one million votes. They ask him who is probably going to win. He says, I'm not sure. And they ask, when will we know? Not until pretty late, but we should have a pretty

good idea by the end of the night, unless it's really close or something. Doesn't sound like he cares that much. Just kind of objective, like, FYI, guys. Like, this is what we'll know here. So that That was all they could find when it came to the national politics. And then I want to ask you about this one post, the kind of goodbye post that's religious in nature. Somebody posted on here, hey, everyone, if you have not seen the news yet, Tyler's post above is true. He was taken in Acustia earlier today for the shooting of Charlie Kirk. Regardless of the horrible actions that took place, we must take this moment to remember that God is a living and loving God who loves all his children. calls sinners to be his saint, and I ask that you all take a quiet moment to pray for Tyler

and his repentance. While Charlie Kirk's politics were not acceptable to some, I ask that we all say a prayer for him and his family during these confusing times. Love you all. God bless. Now, I think some people have read that and said, this is just cover so that folks in this discord don't get brought under the cloud of suspicion themselves, which they're already under. I don't read it that way. That, to me, feels like earnest religiosity in a way that you can't fake. Emily would be better, actually. Emily, is that?

Like, that sounded pretty credible. Yeah. Like, I couldn't make that up. No. Like, I couldn't put that together. No. Like, that's somebody who believes what he's saying there. So, I mean, so Ken, what did you take away from that and these other messages?

Yeah. So I didn't get into it in the story, but just in my conversation with the people, what I was told is that it wasn't even that they're all religious it was described to me as just a mix of different guys and I was reminded of how differently politics is seen by people who are not obsessives like us where it's like people can have different views people can have different religious views and it's not that big of a deal and as was described to me you know a lot of these guys knew each other in person another thing I wish I'd gone into in the story was that these most of them were physical like real IRL friends these were not just random people on the internet so these are people that knew each other pretty well and um again as was described to me they had a range of different views and it just didn't sound like that big of a deal to them and i think that's part of why this is so traumatic to them because they clearly didn't understand the importance that uh robinson had assigned in his mind uh we now know from the text messages released um his views on uh his is frankly hatred of charley kirk's position on uh trans

issues. I don't think that people really thought about that kind of stuff very much. And I really looked. I had my source going to the messages and had them query certain things. And the returns were basically like the Trump example that we said, oh, there was an election in 2020. Obviously, that's the day that everybody checks in for like 48 hours or whatever it is and has an opinion. And then they check out. And that's not unusual. I think that's actually probably how most of the country is. Yeah. Where it's kind of like occasionally, oh, I wonder what that is. And then you just go back to what it was you were doing. So again, I was just struck by how much, like, all of this stuff was just not on the

radar of the people involved. And again, that is so different than the picture of this Discord group is some hotbed of radical ferment and just this snake pit of extremism, just not true at all. These are just guys having fun. So you had them search for, I assume, LGBT, trans, gay. Like, what are they mostly talking about in these discreet? Well, and Ken, like, also kind of a question about that, too, like, who is in the Discord, how many people are in the Discord?

Are they active all day? Like, just give us the nature, too, of what you're able to ascertain about what was going on in the servers. I would guess each one is somewhere in the dozens. Because, again, these were all like, you know, these were all pretty close friends. This wasn't like just everybody jumps in. That's one thing that's distinct about Discord. They have individual servers.

It's not Twitter where just everyone's on there all the time. These are people that know each other. And did they know each other in IRL? Like, did they know each other from school mostly? I don't know how exactly, but they all live in Utah. Some of them moved and kept in touch. But I would imagine school, yeah, because these guys are like 22, 23, 24. I mean, the exact group that the entire media had this performative thing about after the election,

saying we've got to get more in touch with them and understand them. And then they go and call these guys basically terror. for like the last five days. I mean, these news segments are crazy. I can't tell you how many former FBI agents I've seen on cable news saying we have to take seriously the threat of these young men, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And when I, so much so that, I mean, I was skeptical, but when I came into this, I thought I would find some of that.

I found zero of that in these chat rooms. I mean, and I guess the counter would be maybe they're saying it off platform or whatever, but I don't, that's not the vibe that I get from these things because it's just, they're easy going. I posted some of the pictures. They're posting like, oh, I had to. fix this thing in my house, check this out. What do you think? Or like a really cold day today. Just kind of like normal stuff, regular stuff. And so these don't remotely seem like Fuentes or

Groyper types. No, not at all. And I was frustrated by that too, because I saw it was almost like QAnon where these liberals were just picking out these very specific and just reading all of this stuff into it. There's absolutely no evidence for that. There is evidence for that. He cared strongly about LGBT issues. And I mentioned that towards the top of the story. And now from the text messages that have been released. We know that that was a, you know, motivating factor in what Robinson did. But, but outside of that, I don't, I wasn't able to find very much. Yeah. And Ken, you're doing this in the context of your reporting about law enforcement getting, like, tuned into the NVE category. And you've covered this. But I think that's the nonviolent, or the nihilistic

violent extremism, yeah. Right. So. tell us a little bit because I think this is important and actually maybe even important to some folks on the right who are concerned about aggravating needlessly aggravating, you know, angsty, angry, downtrodden young men about how the government has started to categorize and potentially even surveil some people in those categories. Yeah, I have many of the same concerns here, which is not that the two groups are similar at all. There's some ugly groups like Order of the Nine, you know, real things that exist. They do terrible things, no question about it.

But when I read a lot of these things, I just think it's not a useful way to conceptualize the problem. People that don't care about anything that don't. It's like there's a deep-seated rejection of participation in society and stuff that's real there. But just saying that this is totally random and there's essentially no cause for it. I think that's a mistake. I think we should try to understand what's leading to this stuff. But anyways, that's a new designation that they created earlier this year. And in many, I think the impression I get from people in Bureau is that it's a replacement

for a category that they had before, which was called anti-government, anti-authority violent extremists. So this is kind of under the Trump administration, this is the new conceptualization of the domestic, which is to say American threat. And so they're going to be focused on Americans. And again, I'm not saying that these groups don't weren't focused. the question is, do we want to conceptualize the problem as just random stuff just falling from the sky like a meteor? Or do we want to try to understand, like, what is really going on here? Or just prosecute crimes instead of obsessing about ideologies and things.

I mean, FBI has become so interested in what people believe. And I see that as kind of distinct from the problem. Yeah, so I think the one thing we can take from this is that Discord caught some unfair strays in this. Yeah. This does not remotely seem to be the place. FBI's queued up for this. Or anything else. Yeah, during the Discord leaks,

that was the platform where Jack Tershiera, the U.S. Airmen disclosed all those classified records. So as a consequence of that, people in the intelligence community are really paranoid about this platform. And when you see on the cable news segments about it, they don't know what it is. It's evident that they think it's some kind of,

I mean, it's basically WhatsApp for gaming. You can make phone calls, you can text, you can send pictures, that kind of thing. That's all it is. And there's this hysteria. And I really think there's like an ageist component to it because a lot of these guys like governor cox of utah who come out and say oh you need to log off like leave the platforms or whatever he's still using facebook he's still using youtube he's still

using twitter and that's fine i mean it's good that he's trying to reach the public but to act like this is some kind of alien exotic thing when the reality is it's just gen z um uh WhatsApp or probably not even that much anymore because it's become so popular and then to exoticize it and pretend like it's some scary thing it's just blows the whole thing out of proportion. It's just another platform. I don't see what the hysteria is. And I guess part of it is that they just don't understand what it is. Maybe the name is scary. Discord. Oh, my God, chaos. Well, and I think the fact that the servers aren't, you know, in a sense that like it's probably maybe healthier. I know it goes in both directions sometimes with Discord, but.

Oh, no, I totally agree. It doesn't have an algorithm. It's just a bunch of chat rooms, basically. And so you decide who's in it. And to me, that's health. Like, I agree with you. I think that's healthier. But to a lot of people, it's like, whoa, this is foreign. I thought it was like Twitter where everybody sees everything all the time. Right. It feels like it's behind closed doors, which it is literally behind closed doors, but there's just something about that feels different than the performative social media where it's all for public consumption, like global public consumption.

I totally agree. And so maybe that's what's more suspect about it to people. I don't know. But Ken, this was a super interesting story. Thank you for your reporting and for joining us on the show. Thanks so much, guys. And where can people subscribe to the substack? I'm on Ken Clippenstein.com.

Ken Clippenstein. All right, go check it out. If you head over there, you see a big endorsement from Ryan Grum, of all people. That is true. There you go. Not easy to get, guys. That's right. Precious.

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