It Could Happen Here - Charlie Kirk's Assassination: Sorting Fact from Fiction

Episode Date: September 15, 2025

Robert and Garrison discuss the memes, disinformation, and conflicting theories surrounding the political orientation of the Charlie Kirk assassin. Groyper? Antifa? Or just Reddit? See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. 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. And here's Heather with the weather. Well, it's beautiful out there, sunny and 75, almost a little chilly in the shade. Now, let's get a read on the inside of your car. It is hot. You've only been parked a short time, and it's already 99 degrees in there. Let's not leave children in the back seat while running errands. It only takes a few minutes for their body temperatures to rise.

and that could be fatal. Cars get hot, fast, and can be deadly. Never leave a child in a car. A message from Nitsa and the Ad Council. Do you want to hear the secrets of psychopaths, murderers, sex offenders? In this episode, I offer tips from them. I'm Dr. Leslie, forensic psychologist. This is a podcast where I cut through the noise with real talk.

When you were described to me as a forensic psychologist, I was like snooze. We ended up talking for hours, and I was like, this girl is my best friend. Let's talk about safety and strategies to protect yourself. and your loved ones, listen to Intentionally Disturbing on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Every case that is a cold case that has DNA. Right now in a backlog will be identified in our lifetime. On the new podcast, America's Crime Lab, every case has a story to tell, and the DNA holds the truth.

He never thought he was going to get caught, and I just looked at my computer screen. I was just like, ah, gotcha. This technology is already solving so many cases. Listen to America's Crime Lab on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. CallZone Media. Welcome back to It Could Happen Here, a podcast about it happening here. It, in this case, being an incredibly political shooting. And the thing that's happening, Garrison and I waiting through.

a river of disinformation and fever dreams to try and pull out some degree of truth and what is a very truth light environment right now. Garrison, how are you doing? Truth fluid, certainly. Truth fluid, yeah, that's a better way to phrase it. I have a growing headache that I think grows larger by the second. Yeah, just will not, will not cease. I guess you should first discuss how the shooter has been identified and arrested. Yes. We are recording this Friday evening for context. Yes, early evening.

There will be more information on the shooter and on the shooting. By the time you listen to this, we may include an update at the end, but we will be talking about stuff that is timeless, as in things that we know are false or true at the moment, and just generally our ethics on when do we feel confident saying a shooting or other kind of attack was left wing or right wing or something else. Like, when do we feel confident making those judgments and why? Because those are really relevant topics. And a lot of people just kind of go with what seems right based on the flow of info they're hearing, which is how disinformation spreads. So the last time we would have talked about this would be the ED episode that came out,

what was that Friday Garrison? Yeah, Thursday night, Friday morning. And basically right after we covered that early in the morning on Friday. President Trump was doing a media appearance on Fox News, and he was the person who announced that they had a suspect in custody, who they were pretty sure was it. Obviously, since the FBI had given the wrong, accused the wrong person, at least twice of doing this, people weren't sure if that meant anything. But it did come out very soon after that that a young man had essentially confessed to his father who negotiated him turning himself into the authorities. This young man is Tyler Robinson. He was born and raised in Utah. I think as far as we know, I woke up in the middle of the night, right as his name came out. I don't know why. It was weird. And so I just immediately started looking at the social media for his family because I was able to find his, like, mom and his dad's Facebook. The Lord works in mysterious ways.

So I can tell you, and this is something you'll find in the reporting. He came from a pretty normal Utah family, politically conservative. That's based on articles I've seen interviewing people who know the family and just based on publicly available information. Grunt-style T-shirt wearing father. Right. He dressed as Donald Trump. It's seemingly in a positive fashion for Halloween one year. His family were a very normal Utah family.

I found posts where they took pictures of them camping with their RVs, going out hunting. He was hunting from a young age. He had access to firearms from a young age, including like assault-style weapons from a young age. Again, very common for Utah. And, yeah, his family hunted and fished. And he seems to have been a very normal kid in that regard. kind of the thing that I found when I was doing my first dive into this that I thought was

worthwhile and the one thing that I really pulled out of that to share with people was in 2018 he dressed as a meme for Halloween and the specific meme was this meme that is not inherently political but is one that

this group of far right people who follow a guy named Nick Fuentes called the Groyker's like which doesn't mean that he was signaling to that because again like all of this stuff it's not just the Groypers who like this squatting Slav guy meme. That's what he dressed as. If you've seen this meme of like a squatting Slavic guy in a track suit with a cigarette

and a beer, he dressed like that for Halloween. There's a Groyper version of that squatting Slav guy. Well, no, there's a Pepe version. You're right, you're right. I need to be precise. There's a pepe version. And it is a meme that you can find shared in Groyper spaces, which again does not mean it's a Groyper meme.

And I've seen that mistake. I really try to push back on this does not mean he definitely. was, but it does mean that he was a very online kid. And he traveled in spaces where he would have had access and would have been aware of Groyper's. That would have been one chunk of the online fever swamps that he would have been connected to and he would have had access to. We don't yet know at the time we're recording this what he believed or what his motivation was. The thing I thought was relevant to publish of this is that like, okay, we are dealing with an extremely online weirdo, right? And immediately after that, it came out exactly

what was carved onto the bullets that he had shot. And this was relevant in part because yesterday, the first day of news that we had about the bullets, the immediate claim that was leaked to Stephen Crowder through a source of his in the ATF was that

transgender symbols had been carved onto the bullets. That was not accurate. If you want some levity from this whole scene, listening to the sheriff giving the press conference, read the things he carved onto these bullets. We should just include

some of those clips here. We'll put it in here. Inscriptions on a fired casing read notices bulges capital OWO what's this question mark. Inscriptions on the three unfired casings read

Hey fascist exclamation point catch exclamation point up arrow symbol right arrow and symbol and three down arrow symbols. A second unfired casing red. Oh, Bella Chow, Bella Chow, Bella Chow, Chow. And a third unfired casing red, if you read this, you are gay. L.M.A.O. Just absolutely outstanding stuff. I mean, hearing a law

enforcement officer say that is beautiful. It reminds me of having to explain Bitcoin to all of the elderly detectives in West L.A. when I got a death threat against me. But this is like extremely online gamer nonsense. Gameer. Yeah. Average white male overly online gamer. At this point, that's what it looks like. It could have developed in a far right direction, could be developed in a far left direction, could be an ironic centrist. It could be any number of things. There's no single clear indication. Could be someone who doesn't map easily onto any of these traditional political compasses. Like, we don't know at this point. And what's kind of important that, and the reason what I thought was really important to get out to people is

that there will always be terrorist attacks from a wider, it's never, even if you want it to just be right-wingers. It's never just right-wingers who do domestic terrorism. That's never been the case, and it never will be the case. And one of the things that we're seeing, and we will increasingly see, is that even while there will be varying political motivations behind different attacks, the language that people who are carrying out attacks like this use is all kind of coming to a point together, right? They all have more in common with the way they message. The Christchurch shooter and this kid both found the need to put memes onto the weapons they were using. Inscribe the Internet onto tools of killing.

Mechanisms of death. Literally inscribing the Internet onto tools of death. That is a thing both of them did. Maybe for wildly different reasons. Maybe this guy was coming from a left-wing perspective, right? We just don't know. But this is where it's all coalescing around. And I think that is really important to note, right, the way that that happens.

Now, again, we wanted to talk about the things. that we can definitely say is disinformation. And one of the first counters to the whole transgender symbols carved onto bullets that came out was people putting up pictures of, there's a Turkish manufacturer called Turan, and they make bullets. And their logo, like on the back of a bullet, if you're not a gun person, every bullet has the logo of the manufacturer and the name of the caliber stamped onto the back, right? I mean, just for basic safety reasons, right?

Or nearly every bullet. 22 is a little too small. but like if you've got like around a nine millimeter or around a five five six or around a 30 at six which was the caliber he used apparently on the back of it you'll see the name of the manufacturer and then the caliber stamped in there right and so on the back of turan bullets is stamped t r in and some people started posting online this must be why they thought what they thought was transgender that like they saw a turan bullet and assumed it was trans and we know that wasn't the case because this was a 30 at six and turan does not make 30 out six ammunition we also know this was the case because they have now come out and said what was written on the bullets and what was mistaken for transgender arrows and the thing that was mistaken for transgender arrows was a reference to the video game hell divers. A fucking hell divers means. Yes. Again, very gamer online kid. Side note, it's not completely clear which bullet casing was attributed to transgender ideology. It could be an interpretation of the arrows or it could be the notices bulge, oh, whoa,

casing. And on that note, notices bulge oh, whoa, is not a Groyper meme. It's a meme making fun of furry sex role-playing, which predates the existence of Groypers by years. And as a meme has

since been reclaimed by furries and trans shit posters online, or trans only fans creators, or just trans people in general in the internet, many of which are also furies. But now we have various types of opposing or overlapping groups of people who use this meme online. It's not a right-wing

meme, just making fun of furries. It is also a meme used by people on the left and furries on the left and probably furries on the right, too, and non-furries. It's just a general internet meme. It's a Reddit tier joke now. I will say, the Helldivers meme also gives us kind of our, not a clear look, but a look at a possible political motivation. Now, it could be ironic in use. It could be just referential in use. But the full helldivers referenced bullet reads, hey, a fascist catch, followed by the hell diver's D-pad input for the 500-kilogram bomb. Right. Which is the arrows. Yeah, it's the down arrows. I think up arrow, side arrow, down, down, down, arrow, which some ATF agent, or someone initially thought could have been a reference

to the transgender symbol or the three arrows symbol coupled with the hey fascist section of that reference. Right. The Helldivers video game does use fascist as a term, but this also could be a more general political reference, either ironic or sincere

by referring to Charlie Kirk as a fascist. We do not know the actual intentionality behind this reference yet. One thing that is possibly tied it to anti-fascism is that another bullet reads Bella Chow, Bella Chow, Chow, misspelling Bella Chow, Chow. is a popular anti-fascist anthem, though the song has more recently also been used by Groyper's.

Right. And fans of Hearts of Iron Four, a diverse political bunch, one could say. We have talked about Bella Chow on this show before. In fact, we've used Bella Chow on multiple Cool Zone media shows. It was originally an Italian anti-fascist song that has since been adopted by anarchists and anti-fascists all around the globe. I've heard Bella Chow get played on loudspeakers countless times at anti-fascist events on the West Coast, as well as anarchist events on the East Coast. Though the song has since gained a whole other life through pop culture popularization with EDM and like dub step style remixes going viral, most normies probably first heard it on the Netflix show Money Heist and has been adopted into gamer culture via its use in Far Christ. Six and hearts of iron four. So again, could be an anti-fascist reference, could be video game shit, could be

uh, griper shit. There's just not enough to say at this point. Or it could be, could be a centrist, a political hodgepodge of that has resulted in this nihilistic outburst of violence similar to some of these like TCC school shootings. Yeah. We don't know. But there's currently a lot of people on the right who thinks it's an Antifa super soldier leftist. A lot of people on the left who think this is a Nick Fuentes-pilled Groyper.

And either of those could be true, but neither could be true. It could be a much a weirder third option. We don't have direct evidence to support a full reading of either of those things yet. And this is one I have seen people get kind of heated about being corrected on, particularly the bullet thing. And I think the reason why is that it seems like such a smoking gotcha. Of course they'd be this stupid. You really want it to be true. And it's when you feel like that about a case like this, about an attack like this, that like, oh, I really want this to be true. It would be really satisfying if this was the thing that had happened, that you need to be most hesitant to embrace that, right? I think that's what I'd say. Absolutely. If it's too good

to be sure, it feels too convenient, you should introspect greatly. Yeah. Robert and Garrison will be right back, but first, here's some ads. 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 a bad joke, but that really was my reality nine years ago. I just normally do straight stand-up, but this is.

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 do you want to hear the secrets of serial killers psychopass pedophiles robbers they are sitting there

waiting for the vulnerable thing they're waiting for the unprotected i'm dr leslie forensic psychologist i advocate for safety and awareness of predators while wearing pink when you were described to me as a forensic psychologist. I was like snooze. We ended up talking for hours and I was like, this girl is my best friend. This is a podcast where I cut through the noise with sarcasm, satire, and hard truths. I'm not going to fake it and force it for me. But would you force an orgasm? Because that's like a different layer. The car accident you didn't want to see but couldn't turn away from. In this episode, I discussed personal safety and self-defense tools, instincts, and strategies to protect yourself and your loved ones in every day.

life and high-risk situations. Listen to intentionally disturbing on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What would you do if one bad decision forced you to choose between a maximum security prison or the most brutal boot camp designed to be hell on earth? Unfortunately for Mark Lombardo, this was the choice he faced. He said, you are a number, a New York State number, and we own you. Shock incarceration, also known as boot camps, are short-term, highly regimented correctional programs that mimic military basic training. These programs aim to provide a shock of prison life, emphasizing strict discipline, physical training, hard labor, and rehabilitation programs.

Mark had one chance to complete this program and had no idea of the hell awaiting him the next six months. The first night was so overwhelming. and you don't know who's next to you. And we didn't know what to expect in the morning. Nobody tells you anything. Listen to shock incarceration on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hola, it's HoneyGerman.

And my podcast, Grasias Come Again, is back. This season, we're going even deeper into the world of music and entertainment with raw and honest conversations with some of your favorite Latin artists and celebrities. You didn't have to audition? No, I didn't audition. I haven't auditioned in, like, over 20, 25 years. Oh, wow.

That's a real G-talk right there. Oh, yeah. We've got some of the biggest actors, musicians, content creators, and culture shifters sharing their real stories of failure and success. You were destined to be a start. We talk all about what's viral and trending with a little bit of chisement, a lot of laughs,

and those amazing vivras you've come to expect. And, of course, we'll explore deeper topics dealing with identity, struggles, and all the issues affecting our Latin community. You feel like you get a little whitewash because you have to do the code switching? I won't say whitewash because at the end of the day, you know, I'm me. But the whole pretending and code, you know, it takes a toll on you.

Listen to the new season of Grasas Has Come Again as part of My Cultura Podcast Network on the IHartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. And we're back. There's been other things that is, kind of influencing this political uncertainty. A reporter for the young Turks, only the most reputable news outlet, has claimed on Twitter on Friday afternoon,

quote, according to Utah officials and police interviews with his family, Tyler Robinson hated Charlie Kirk because Kirk wasn't conservative enough. Robinson reportedly admired Nick Fuentes. Geo peers are now scrubbing ex-posts about Dems faster than DOJ erases Trump's name from In Epstein Files, unquote. Yeah. This claim from David Schuster, the report of the Young Turks, unsubstantiated. Yes.

But it is being spread as exact fact, and it seems like this claim is most likely misquoting and editorializing from a statement a family member gave to police, which has been described by the governor as a family member and the shooter discussing Charlie Kirk's upcoming visit to UVU campus. They talked about why they didn't like him and viewpoints he held. The family member also stated Kirk was full of hate and spreading hate, unquote. So that has been altered and shifted and interpreted in a lot of different ways to say that the shooter stated Kirk was full of hate and spreading hate, even though that's not what

this interview segment necessarily means, just that, quote unquote, they, meaning the family member and the shooter, didn't like Kirk. that's really all you can extrapolate from that piece of this police statement. But it's been spread and editorialized to mean a wild collection of different things. Yeah. Including by people on the right who are interpreting this statement as evidence that the shooter has said that Kirk was spreading hate, even though that's not actually clear from this interview either. No. It says that the family member stated Turley Kirk was full of hate and spreading hate, not the shooter. And likewise, one of the things I'm seeing spread a lot

is a claimed voter registration for Robinson. A. Tyler Robinson in Utah. Yeah. Again, there's a lot of them. A lot of Tyler Robinson's in Utah. The one that is spreading the most has a voter registration date of 01-01, 2001, which he just simply couldn't have.

Now, that said, people pointed out that Utah's voter registration shit is bad and this does seem like a placeholder that someone put in. But also the county's not right because he didn't live in Lehigh, Utah, and that's where this is listed for. I'm not saying This guy definitely wasn't, he may have been a registered Republican, but it looks like we don't have the information to say that yet. Likewise, there's an article that was published recently in The Guardian where they talked to someone who was a friend of his in high school who said that he was like the only leftist in a family of Republicans and was angry about it.

The exact quote was that Robinson was, quote, pretty left on everything, the only member of his family that was really leftist. The rest of his family was very hard Republican. and that Robinson would, quote, always just be ranting and arguing about them, unquote. And it does look CNN is saying that they have found Tyler Robinson's actual voter registration data, and CNN says he's registered as unaffiliated with a political party and is listed as an active, which means he has not voted in either of the two last general elections. Sure. So again, there's just nothing clear we can say, right?

Yeah, it's hard to take both of this young term. reporter and a high school friend from four years ago. Not great sources for someone's current political outlook. Absolutely not. And contradictory. So it's really, really unclear. Also, this is just one friend. You would want more than one source to substantiate this claim. And perhaps by Sunday night when this airs, there will be more information. Quick update on this, literally minutes after Robert and I recorded, The Guardian retracted those quotes from the shooter's alleged high school classmate, which described the shooter as a leftist. The source contacted the Guardian again and said that they could not accurately remember the

details of their relationship in high school. So the Guardian has pulled those quotes. But certainly right now, the way people have latched on to narratives to satisfy the current emotional turmoil that people are in because of the hyper-reality around this shooting and the possible consequences it could mean for the fate of this whole country. I understand why people are quick to really hook their version of reality onto these claims. Yes. But currently, there is no clear version of reality. Yeah.

And I just want to caution people if you care about knowing reality yourself. And there's two different questions here, right? What is useful? What is valuable? What protects people? And then what gets us closer to the truth, right? part of why, as soon as I found that photo of him dressed as a meme for Halloween

and recognized the implications of it, I put it up there is because I thought it was relevant that it said something about his background, but also it got discussion and just people bringing up how complicated this guy's background is did a positive thing, which was a gut discussion away from absolutely baseless allegations that this was a transgender terrorist attack and also it's all the kind of shit that had been spreading on their right, right?

And that was valuable. However, I've been really careful about not saying this guy is a grope berth, even though that sure would be convenient, because, again, at the time we're recording this, there's just not that evidence. Every new fact that comes out about this guy right now is wavering in this gray area where, you know, like one of the other things, when I posted correcting the voter registration card, somebody posted like, okay, but he donated to Trump's campaign. No, he did not. A different guy with his name donated to Donald Trump.

the Tyler Robinson, who is currently in custody for shooting Charlie Kirk, has no record of federal election donations per CNN, right? These are very convincing when you see them just sort of sliding across your newsfeed. And if you're not checking up on every new thing you see, it feels like obviously this guy's a right winger, obviously he's a groyper. I've seen so many pieces of evidence when you actually haven't seen any evidence at all. And even those two things can get conflated, right? Saying he's a groyper is different than saying he's a right winger. Like a groyper is a a very specific branch of alt-right slash far-right community slash ideology revolving around the America First streamer Nick Fuentes and a collection of memes associated with this

movement, which have historically beefed with Charlie Kirk for not being sufficiently to the right, as some more openly white supremacist neo-Nazis have been. This beef between Fuentes and Kirk was largely dissolved after Kirk started adopting more and more far-right beliefs and adopted the Great Replacement Theory. which settled down the quote-unquote Groyper war, which many people are assuming that this shooting is a part of, with some Groyper, Nick Fuentes fan, killing Charlie Kirk,

possibly as a legitimate part of the quote-unquote Groyper war, but also maybe just has like an ironic memetic act. So when you say Groyper, that should refer to a very specific thing, not necessarily just this guy used right-wing memes or these memes aren't even right-wing, but like... No, they could be, but they're not inherently. This man could be.

but they're not inherently nor are they really the main use of this saying ha ha if you read this you are gay could just be an average overly online male gamer on the internet a lot of people talk like that a lot of gay people talk like that

a lot of fascist people talk about that is this homophobia or a 20 year old right it could be either or yeah and we don't need to just jump to one specific thing to build a singular narrative when a fluid situation is still rapidly unfolding. Not if, again, you want to feel like,

and you want to really be better than the other side, who don't give a shit about the truth, who just care about what's convenient and how many people they can get to believe a convenient fact, right? If you don't want to be that kind of person, if you think that's bad, and I do, and you do, and we all do here at Cool Zone,

that you do kind of owe it to yourself to care about stuff like this, even if it's less convenient. By the way, if you're not an investigator, you don't have to be delving into all this. It's enough to just know the fact that I saw something that looked like evidence this guy donated to a campaign. Do I know that that's him?

Do I absolutely know that that's him? Because it's possible multiple people have the same name and some of them may have made a donation or not, right? Don't just pass your eyes over stuff like this and be like, all right, I've done all I need to do. But do purchase from these advertisers. 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 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. Well, 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 IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Do you want to hear the secrets of serial killers, psychopaths, pedophiles, robbers? They are sitting there waiting for the vulnerable thing. They're waiting for the unprotected. I'm Dr. Leslie, forensic psychologist. I advocate for safety and awareness of predators while wearing pink. When you were described to me as a forensic psychologist, I was like snooze. We ended up talking for hours, and I was like, this girl is my best friend.

This is a podcast where I cut through the noise with sarcasm, satire, and hard truths. I'm not going to fake it and force it for me. But would you force an orgasm? Because that's like a different layer. The car accident you didn't want to see, but couldn't turn away from. In this episode, I discussed personal safety and self-defense tools, instincts, and strategies to protect yourself and your loved ones in everyday life and high-risk situations. Listen to Intentionally Disturbing on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

What would you do if one bad decision forced you to choose between a maximum security prison or the most brutal boot camp designed to be hell on earth? Unfortunately for Mark Lombardo, this was the choice he faced. He said, you are a number, a New York state number, and we own you. Shock incarceration, also known as boot. camps are short-term, highly regimented correctional programs that mimic military basic training. These programs aim to provide a shock of prison life, emphasizing strict discipline, physical training, hard labor, and rehabilitation programs. Mark had one chance to complete this program and had no idea of the hell awaiting him the next six months. The first night was so overwhelming and you

don't know who's next to you. And we didn't know what to expect in the morning. Nobody tells you anything. Listen to shock incarceration on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. A foot washed up a shoe with some bones in it. They had no idea who it was. Most everything was burned up pretty good from the fire that not a whole lot was salvageable. These are the coldest of cold cases, but everything is about to change. Every case that is a cold case that has DNA.

Right now in the backlog will be identified. in our lifetime. A small lab in Texas is cracking the code on DNA. Using new scientific tools, they're finding clues in evidence so tiny you might just miss it. He never thought he was going to get caught, and I just looked at my computer screen. I was just like, ah, gotcha.

On America's Crime Lab, we'll learn about victims and survivors, and you'll meet the team behind the scenes at Othrum, the Houston Lab that takes on the most hopeless cases, to finally solve the unsolvable. of the unsolvable. Listen to America's Crime Lab on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,

or wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back. One other aspect that people's reaction to the shooting is demonstrating, and we've seen this with other major events, major political events, violent political events, the past few years,

is how this shows a new fracturing of reality. because what eventually gets proven about the shooter will probably be insignificant to the narratives that people have already latched on to and have baked into reality so far. And this conceptual splitting of reality is going to fall squarely along some partisan and political lines, right?

Conservatives will have a conception of the shooting which differs heavily from the conception of the shooting held by people on the left. Many people on the left are going to believe that this shooter was a gropeper forever, no matter what comes out in the next few weeks to months, they will have, in their version of reality,

the idea that this guy was a Groyper. Similarly, people on the right are going to believe, to the fullest, to the fullest, except to their hearts, that this guy was Antifa. Yeah. The actual reality is going to matter

very little compared to these two beliefs. And, like, the killing of Charlie Kirk has memetic potential for several large, discreet, and overlapping online groups. Many different online communities or groups could have encouraged or influenced this killing. Anti-fascists certainly could have.

The Groyper right could have. The Forchan right could have. Terrorgram could have. Yeah. All different and possibly overlapping communities. In-cell culture. Yeah. Irony poisoned centrists.

J. Reg. Nialists. Accelerationists. A normal garden variety Trumpist Republican who got angry over Epstein stuff could have done this. There's no evidence of that. I'm not saying, but I'm just saying like there's, we literally like it could be so many things at this point. And as satisfying as it is to just collapse this guy down to Antifa or Groyper, it's very likely it could just be a third weirder option. It could be the weirder option, right? Especially if you look at the nihilist trend of violence that we've covered on this show

from TCC with ties to other extremist groups, the multiple school shootings that have used nostalgia and online references and references to previous shootings, this could also line up with that framework. As Robert said, the inscription of memes on to tools of death is a commonality across many of these gruesome acts of violence, from Christchurch to the Minneapolis school shooting just a month ago to this assassination in September. Yeah. Now, I think it is worth talking about how Groypers and how Nick Fintes himself has responded

to this, because that is telling, right? Totally. Whether or not this guy is a Gropier, a lot. of groipers have publicly speculated that he is their guy. Or people on 4chan have speculated that he is a griper. Not your average 4chan user necessarily is a groiper. I think

this distinction is also important. That is valid, yes. But yeah, you have seen a lot of people on the right, suspect that this guy could be a groiper. Certainly some groopers have themselves, as well as 4chan users. And Nick Fuentes does seem a little bit nervous, but he could be nervous for a lot of reasons.

He put out a video. I watched the entire Nick Fuentes stream last night. Oh, good. Thank God. He was acting a little bizarre, talking very philosophical, almost as if he was, like, doing ketamine beforehand. Like, he was talking about how the structure of society and, like, a spiritual structure as well, will influence society to cause events to happen,

which kind of stress test and demonstrate the direction of society going. And he basically talked about the assassination as one of these events of society unfolding itself to determine what path is going to get taken. Are things going to get more violent and more divisive? Or will this event alter reality's course in a more positive direction? It was very interesting. He was talking about how he feels some responsibility

for the arc that this country has gone on, how he's made a lot of mistakes when he's younger. You could interpret this as trying to pick up new supporters and try to fill in the Charlie Kirk-sized hole in the American right. But it's unclear. He was talking quite emotionally about what the past few years of his life have been. And again, making that comment that, like, I want all of my fans to stand down, et cetera, it's noteworthy of where Fuentes' head is, right?

Yeah. And of the media environment he must exist in terms of, like, personally, what comes to him. And I'm very curious. If I could somehow know everything Nick Fuentes has been texted and been texting over the last 72 hours. God, that would be fascinating. He said the people on the left were telling him it's his responsibility to try to turn things down, and he was kind of upset about that.

And during the stream, Fuentes was not discussing the shooter as if the shooter was a grope or even suspecting the shooter was a groiper. Nick telling his audience or whoever listening to put down your arms and not jump to quick emotional violence

was in reference to retaliatory violence against the left for their killing. of Charlie Kerr. That was the way Fuentes was talking about the shooting through the course of this hour-long stream. It did not seem to me that he was trying to cover his bases in case the shooter was a gropeer. That wasn't how he was discussing it. He certainly laid a lot of blame on the left. He seemed very scared about the direction of the country. Someone showed up with a weapon to his house less than a year ago. And I think some of his fear is absolutely genuine. It's not just

trying to cover his ass in case this guy turns out to be a gropeer. No, he's in danger because of the things he did. He invited the danger into his life by being Nick Fuentes, but he is in danger. Yeah. Yeah. No, it was a very odd stream. I tune into Nick Fuentes every once in a while just to keep track of what he was doing. Like a healthy person.

It's my job. I know. I woke up at 4 a.m. to stalk a murderer's family on Facebook. Garrison. So it was in the first 15 minutes of the stream where Nick discussed these more theoretical elements, how spiritual or societal forces kind of use people as puppets, not in a fully NPC way, but as an evolutionary method of charting the path of society. Nick then went to go on to discuss Charlie Kirk, how he's beefed with Charlie in the past,

how they've disagreed on nearly everything, but goes on to say some nice. things about Charlie for the first time, and then calls for everyone to lay down their arms. Now it's not the time to jump to quick action. We should reflect, etc., etc. But in those first 15 minutes, he talks about what this shooting means for American culture. And I've been watching some of his other recent streams where he's kind of been going after some of his fans for just being completely like brain dead, just repeating racist tropes with no real thought, just talking about Hitler in this memified way. And it feels like he's sort of reflecting

on both what he's done with his life ever since he's been a teenager and the world that he has helped bring into being. He talks about never having much of a actual sincere participation in politics, how it's always been so bombastic and memetic. And it appears as if he's kind of stuck doing this bit forever.

Like he decided that this is what his life was going to be as a teenager. And now he's in his mid-20s. And from these other recent streams, it feels like he's kind of fed up with how his audience is just appearing completely mindless, very larpy, endlessly repeating Hitler references, reflexive racism, and how he's trapped himself in this political game. A quote he said is that this is not a game. This is life and death. And as we've just seen, like this is literally life and death. This is not just online memes anymore. We can't treat politics as an online meme game anymore because these real life characters are getting killed. He framed a lot of this in very spiritual warfare language. Like they killed Charlie for being

Christian for talking about Jesus. Though stressing to his listeners like Jesus do not actually pick up arms and fight. Yeah. And people should calm down and reflect because how the country handles this event will be heavily deterministic. Yes. In what the country looks at like going forward. That's what he was expressing. Right. Yeah. And I think that that's a really important point for people to get across that like there's there's the immediate battle in front of us, right? Which is why it's so tempting sometimes to take the easy. Oh, this guy was one of theirs. That means we don't have to keep thinking about it or it means that we can kind of just like move forward with this as another right wing attack. And there's a degree to which, you know, it's good

just for the rights narrative machine to get upset by the fact that even if it turns out this guy had a left wing motivation, he's weirder and more confusing than they want him to be. And he's not, you know, the transgender terrorist

they were hoping he would be. Certainly not trans. Right. To give them permission to do all the fucked up shit they wanted to do, you know? If they need permission. I mean,

they seem to feel like they need an excuse, I do think. Trump creates permission. Some of his followers might appreciate permission, I guess. Yeah.

One thing that is undeniable is there was an extreme desire from a lot of these guys for this to be tied in with their ongoing attacks on trans people in the left. Totally. And so I understand even the argument that like anything that disrupts their narrative train there, even if it winds up not being accurate, there's a value in it. I do understand that argument. But on a larger thing, if we just care about terrorism and like why people get radicalized to do things and how and understanding these phenomenon. Like actually understanding how our country is unfolding.

Right. That influence all of our lives, right? And usually, usually what happens is not a single guy getting shot for a specific reason. Usually a bunch of people who had nothing to do with the grievances expressed getting shot, right? That's usually when somebody decides to pick up a gun and go into public because they got radicalized. Usually a bunch of random innocent people die, which is, again, why it's just really important to try to understand the underlying dynamics, even in a specific case like this, and why I actually do care about the truth here, even though that that's not as convenient maybe as we'd like it to be. I don't know.

What else do we want to talk about here? No, I mean, like, I think this event will be extremely important. Something that Fuentes talked about is how even if you've never met Kirk, if whether you hate Kirk or whether you love Kirk, Kirk has been a parasocial force in probably everyone who's listening to this, their lives for years. And watching him bleed out gruesomely is massively affecting. I think the reason why people are reacting to this so much more strongly than the murder of a state senator and her husband is that we did not have a personal relationship with that state senator, nor was there a video of them gruesomely bleeding out. And people's emotions affect

how they understand reality, and the Charlie Kirk murder has been emotionally affecting for a lot people, both positively and negatively. And it was very graphic, and it's spread around, like watching someone who you know, whether personally or parasocially, die on video through the medium in which they gained their fame is going to be a very large, it's a use of really bad pun, a turning point for the USA. And I think that's part of why everyone's so volatile around this issue, because I think everyone realizes how important this moment will be, despite the deaths of Palestinian children vastly, vastly outnumbering the deaths of one conservative commentator.

Yeah, and you know, like, logically, we could all say that that's wrong and fucked up, but like, you just, you know, that's how people work, right? It's how people work. We all know that's how people work. I'm not saying that's okay. I'm just, you know. No, but it's, it's the way, it's the way things work. Yeah.

And I don't know, like, because again, we, again, still cannot say at this point that there, was just a Vanity Fair article came out that's kind of repeating some of the Groyper stuff, but I looked in my post is their source on that, so they don't have anything new on the Groyper front. No, they're just thinking that the Squatting Slav meme is evidence tied to the Pepe version of the meme, which is then linked to Groyper,

which is a specific type of Pepe, not the skinny Pepe. I'm so tired, Robert. I'm really tired. I don't know if this guy liked Nick Fuentes. I will say he probably had an opinion about Nick Fuentes. he was aware of them, the dude, right? Like, he was that level of online, for sure.

Yeah, I mean, which 22-year-old gamer male doesn't? And that's the thing. Right, exactly. Again, it's like I was talking about before we knew who it was, when we just had the video, because I did accurately anticipate that it was someone who learned how to shoot through hunting with a bolt-action rifle. That's just what the shot looked like to me when I saw it.

Yeah. Which wound up being accurate. And there were a lot of people who were, like, questioning that on the grounds of, like, well, though, this had to be like a trained sniper or something like that. This looks like a professional hit to me, Robert, or a Mossad agent, either or. Yeah, like, no, literally all we knew is that it was somebody who was able to, like, competent with a firearm.

That's all you could say. And probably it was not a semi-automatic because people in stressful situations, if they can, usually keep shooting, right? They would have fired more than one shot most likely. Yeah, that's all we could say, which narrowed it down to everyone in Utah. like that's what I try to emphasize this is that like what I can say from this is that anyone in Utah

could have shot Charlie Kirk at that point and sure enough it turned out being almost like average 22 year old Eutonian Yeah Utah like deposit a normal Utah kid That's what this guy looks like so far Yeah and there's a lot of like

semi-racist or semi-misogynist gamers out there They're not necessarily groipers Right And we don't even know how racist this guy was there's no indication one way or another. He's certainly had an awareness of online culture, but everyone who makes a helldivers to reference

is going to have a pretty large awareness of online culture, and that does not indicate what his quote-unquote beliefs are, just an awareness and existence within that culture. Yep. Well, I can't think of anything else to say at the moment about this. It's unclear to me the degree to which this has shifted, the national discourse on it. I have seen it looks like the way in which the conservatives are talking about this guy in the

shooting, it looks like they have changed. At least some of them. Just because it's less clear, at least a number of people, right? We're seeing... The Groyper counter narrative has introduced doubt, which will influence some conservatives' understanding of the shooting.

Others will keep hitting that leftist Antifa line. I have seen certain people claim that the Groyper narrative is even changing the way Trump talks about the shooting, because Trump is not referencing Charlie Kirk as much or is avoiding questions about how he's feeling in regards to Kirk's death. Trump has never cared about Charlie Kirk, okay?

Vance certainly has. He's like closer to like Vance's orbit, but Donald Trump doesn't give a single fuck about Charlie Kirk. Absolutely not. This little, this little puny man. Like, no, Trump does not care. It makes sense that one asked how Trump feels about, about Charlie Kirk's death. And if he's feeling okay, he's like, yeah, I feel fine.

What I'm really excited about is that we're constructing the new White House ballroom. It's the Rose Garden. Yeah. Like, that's not indication that Trump's been told that this guy's actually a rightist and now has to not talk about how the left is ruining the country. No, it's that Trump does not care about Charlie Kirk that much, and it's been a few days. So, yeah, he's going to move on. Yeah, and that's, you know, if you're wanting to game theory this out, of the ethics of just muddying the waters,

to disrupt their momentum? Well, there's an argument to be made there. I can see the utility in that. My utility is, I would say, at the very least, equal to that. Right. That's having an accurate understanding of these events. To predict future trends and, like, understand the trajectory of political violence in the United States.

And that's what my interest in, stressing evidentiary standards for understanding the motivations behind this attack and the online communities and cultures that this attack has a much. merge from. Right. And I would say if you're looking in your own life, how can I tell which side of things I'm on? Just imagine everything was reversed in the case where like you think this is really clear evidence that this person was motivated by whoever you hate the most and that whatever ideology you hate is why they did it. If it were the opposite and the same level of evidence was being used to accuse someone who was on your side of things, would you consider the evidence presented

enough, right? And that's what I'm looking at is I have not seen enough evidence to buy into either side fully yet. I can make a case in my head that he's a groiper, and there's some pieces of evidence that fit with that. And I can make a case in my head

that he's a guy who hates Charlie Kirk, and there's quotes from some interviews that would back that up. But neither of them is a solid, at the moment that we're recording this, is a solid hypothesis to me. Or just a vaguely right-wing board gamer. Right. Or just a right wing for who has zoomer angst and it manifested this way as many other people have manifested

their zoomer angst through an act of political violence yeah like groyper a very specific term means a specific thing it doesn't just mean a gen z conservative yep no it does not and uh i think that's we're going to have to leave you for the day we may have appended an update to this depending on what else is out i i do think that most of what we're talking about is pretty even though there will be more information at the time you listen to it pretty timeless in terms of how you should think about shit like this. How you react to whatever the next assassination is going to be, because this is an increasing trend in American politics.

Look, if you care, and if your stance, if your principled stance with all the evidence is, I don't care, all that matters is defeating the right. So all I care about is what's convenient in terms of disrupting their narratives, then go on and live your life. But that's not the way we're going to do things here when we look at these attacks. We are going to try to figure out what happened, even if it's inconvenient. and it may be, you know, we don't know what this guy yet. Touch some fucking grass.

Before you touch grass, I'm recording one more update Sunday morning. Yesterday, right-wing outlets and then Axios and now even more mainstream outlets started reporting that the shooter, Tyler Robinson, had a transgender roommate, and that investigators believe the two had some sort of romantic relationship. Some information from law enforcement officials about this investigation has been shown to be dubious at best, but it is true that the shooter had a roommate who does appear to be transgender. The roommate's TikTok can be traced to a Reddit account where they post about being trans, and post on R-slash trans, R-Slas trans-DIY, as well as R-slash-4-Tran,

and also posts on R-slash green text and R-slash 4-Cham. Also active in a variety of video game subredits, Magic the Gathering, meme subreddit, r-slash distressing memes, R-slash Reddit moment, R-slash unpopular opinion, R-slash Lord of the Rings memes, R-slash prehistoric memes, R-slash-dank meme, R-slash nothing ever happens. Also post on R-slash-by-IRL, R-S-anarch capitalism, R-slash Jordan Peterson, as well as the 4-chan themed subreddits. I should also note that scrolling these subredits is not necessarily indicative of someone's political orientation. I myself scroll many of these subredits, as do largely apolitical friends of mine who check out these subredits regularly just for shits and giggles.

This is politics as meme. Subredits like Political Compass and T.P. USA are popular political subredits with explicitly comedic purpose, including making fun. of Charlie Kirk in a memified fashion. And I don't know if the roommate visited those two specific subredits, but I'm just using them as an example. Utah Governor Spencer Cox says that the roommate did not have any knowledge of Tyler Robinson's planned attack and has been incredibly cooperative throughout the course of the investigation. Sources have told Axios that investigators initially wanted information about the roommate's gender identity to not be publicly reported. The right is certainly eager to make any sort of transgender

connection to this shooting. The New York Post is referred to this shooting as another shooting by trans people and their advocates. The actual motivation of the shooter is still currently unknown. Governor Cox has described his ideology as leftist, while also noting, quote, there was a lot of gaming going on. Friends have confirmed that there was that deep dark internet, Reddit culture, and other dark places of the internet where this person.

was going deep. You saw that on the casings. I didn't have any idea what those inscriptions meant, but they are certainly the memeification that is happening in our society today. Unquote. That's pretty much all we know so far. Now go touch some grass. It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Coolzone Media, visit our website, Coolzonemedia.com. Or check us out on the IHeart Radio app. Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can now find sources for It Could Happen here listed directly in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening.

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 IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Don't let biased algorithms or degree screens or exclusive professional networks or stereotypes. Don't let anything keep you from discovering the half of the workforce who are stars. Workers skilled through alternative routes rather than a bachelor's degree. It's time to take you from discovering the half of the workforce who are stars. It's time to tear the paper ceiling and see the stars beyond it. Find out how you can make stars part of your talent strategy at tear the paper sealing.org. Brought to you by opportunity at work in the ad council. Do you want to hear the secrets of psychopaths, murderers, sex offenders? In this episode, I offer tips from them. I'm Dr. Leslie, forensic psychologist. This is a podcast where I cut through the noise

with real talk. When you were described to me as a forensic psychologist, I was like, snooze. We ended up talking for hours, and I was like, this girl is my best friend. Let's talk about safety and strategies to protect yourself and your loved ones. Listen to intentionally disturbing on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What would you do if one bad decision forced you to choose between a maximum security prison or the most brutal boot camp designed to be hell on earth? Unfortunately for Mark Lombardo, this was the choice he faced. He said, you are a number, a New York State number, and we own you. Listen to shock incarceration on the IHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

This is an IHeart podcast.