It Could Happen Here - Executive Disorder: White House Weekly #34

Episode Date: September 19, 2025

The gang discuss the suspected Charlie Kirk shooter, texts between him and his roommate, and how the Trump admin is using Kirk’s assassination to attack free speech by labeling Antifa a terrorist organization and promising to target activist groups funding terrorism. We also talk about ICE killing a single father in Chicago and deportations to Ghana. Sources: https://x.com/ConsulMexCho/status/1966636249910738951  https://www.dhs.gov/news/2025/09/12/dhs-statement-ice-officer-seriously-injured-line-duty-and-shooting-chicago-during  https://unraveledpress.com/what-happened-to-silverio-villegas-gonzalez/  https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.284773/gov.uscourts.dcd.284773.37.0_2.pdf  https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.284773/gov.uscourts.dcd.284773.41.0.pdf  https://calmatters.org/inside-the-newsroom/2025/04/calmatters-partners-with-evident-media-on-a-documentary-exposing-truth-behind-border-patrol-raid/ https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/09/16/us/tyler-robinson-charges.html  https://www.kenklippenstein.com/p/exclusive-leaked-messages-from-charlie https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/17/business/media/abc-jimmy-kimmel.html  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Today I'm joined by James Stout, Mia Wong, and Robert Evans. Yep. This episode, we're covering the week of September 11 to September 18th. Normally a week in history when very little happens. The most normal week of American politics. Yeah, yeah. Traditionally, nothing around the first third of September's days as ever mattered in American history.

We should schedule our calendar just to block out this whole section of the year. time. I already have it written down in my calendar as the week to forget. So I just spend it drinking. Robert, do you want to introduce our first topic? Yes. I mean, our first topic, as we talked about last week, is the fallout from the murder of Charlie Kirk, particularly its impact on free speech and the pretext it's being used for to justify a crackdown on the quote-unquote left, different NGOs and other organizations that are being accused of being part of a vast and let's say unlikely conspiracy to commit terrorism that has nothing to do with what's actually been discovered about Tyler Robinson, Charlie Kirk's killer, but nonetheless, it's

being used that way. And kind of the first thing to probably talk about is what's come out about Tyler Robinson's motivations in the time since we recorded our last episode. I was kind of surprised, Gare, when we recorded on Friday, I had expected us to need to do an update before Monday in order to, like, catch up. And really, there wasn't much that came out. No, I did a brief update confirming that he was living with a trans person,

but that was really all we knew at the time. That could be confirmed. That was pretty evergreen, as we suspected it might be. And I will say, frankly, the motive still remains not entirely clear, but we do have some more concrete details about his, like, online background. Yeah. And a few others, like, ancillary pieces, which is included in the charging document, as well as reporting on his Discord logs. Yeah, so I think we should talk first about the whole trans roommate thing of it all, because obviously, first off, this is one of the most massive reaches I've seen.

Like, they're always desperate to have a trans connection anytime there's a shooting. They were trying to establish this literally, like, seconds after it happened. And that's been the case with, like, the last year and a half or two worth of mass shootings. Yeah. Or at least a sizable number of them. Yeah. There was a meme, right, for why, it's like a 4-chan thing to suggest that any mass shooter was trans. And now it's just become reality.

Yeah. And in this case, the allegations started coming out from the police that his roommate was transgender. This was before the Discord logs had leaked. So I want you to talk a little bit, Gary. you found the Reddit profile of Tyler Robinson's roommate. Yeah. So first question is, do we know if they actually were trans? And do we know if they actually were in some sort of a relationship?

What is the actual evidence that exists to suggest that based on what we have so far? They did post about their transition on multiple subreddits and public facing posts. And they referred to having a boyfriend, BF, that was helping them cope with the results of the 2024 election. But that's really all we can tell from this, at the time, the public Reddit profile for the roommate of Tyler Robinson, who had, again, some sort of romantic relationship with the, like, nitty, gritty, you know, arc of their whole relationship is, like, not explicitly clear, but certainly have had a romantic relationship. Yeah, and I want to make it clear, which should be obvious to anyone who has, like, a third of a brain cell to rub together against the inside of their skull. there's not any evidence that this roommate was tied in any way to the Tyler Robinson's crimes and in fact the Egston evidence this the state is arguing this that the roommate had no prior knowledge and has been fully cooperative that the roommate is not involved not only is fully cooperative

but turned Tyler in like like in part or produced evidence that was now used in the charging document Tyler turned himself in with his father like officially but there was certainly conversations happening. Yeah, and it's one of those things. You can come down morally on that however you want. It's just a matter of there's absolutely no evidence as people like Matt Walsh are saying that this is part of some grand LGBT conspiracy. Their roommates seemed horrified to have been, and, you know, understandably terrified

to have been potentially implicated in a massive act, like massively famous act of murder, right? Like, that's a scary thing to come to like get a Discord message, realize. oh fuck now I'm potentially implicated in this so I do have some understanding for what a shocking moment that is like it's hard to imagine yeah dealing with that in any way shape or form that's just a wild thing to have happen in the middle of your fucking day presumably while you're at work or some shit this would have been around noon so I'm guessing they were on the job when they got these messages just a horrible horrible thing to deal with yeah let's go over some of the text exchanges was included in the charging document.

It's technically not an indictment because they did not charge via a grand jury. Yeah. It's a placeholder for that. Yeah. But it's referred to as like a charging information document. Yeah. That they included some text messages because it was the clearest evidence to lay out to charge them with the crime, though not the only evidence, as we will soon discuss. And these text logs are core to people like Walsh's current argument that the trans roommate must have actually been involved because they think that the message.

that I'm going to read here, were, like, scripted between the roommate and the shooter specifically to exonerate the roommate. And that's the conspiracy that people like Walsh are spreading. Let's go over this section of this document. Quote, the police interviewed Robinson's roommate, a biological male, who was involved in a romantic relationship with Robinson. The roommate told police that the roommate received messages from Robinson about the shooting and provided those messages to police. On September 10th, 2025, the roommate received a text message. from Robinson, which said, Drop what you are doing, look under my keyboard.

The roommate looked under the keyboard and found a note that stated, I had the opportunity to take out Charlie Kirk and I'm going to take it. Unquote. Police found a photograph of this note. The following text exchange then took place. After reading the note, the roommate responded,

What? With many question marks. You're joking, right? Robinson, I am still okay, my love, but I am stuck in Orm for a little while longer yet. 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'm sorry to involve you. Roommate. You weren't the one who did it, right? Many question marks. Robinson. I am. Sorry. Roommate.

I thought they caught the person. Robinson. No. They grabbed some crazy old dude that 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. There's one vehicle lingering. Roommate. Why? Robinson. Why did I do it? Roommate? Yeah. Robinson. I had enough of his

hatred. Some hate can't be negotiated out. If I'm 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. Roommate. How long have you been planning this? Robinson. A bit over a week, 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 to chance it. Robinson, I'm wishing I'd circle 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 know if it had a serial number, but it wouldn't trace to me. I worry about Prince I had to leave it in a bush where I changed outfits.

I didn't have the ability or time to bring it with. I might have to abandon it and hope they don't find Prince. How the fuck will I explain losing it to my old man? 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 O Woo on Fox News, I might have a stroke. Oh, God.

All right, I'm going to have to leave it. That really fucking sucks. Judging from today, I'd say grandpa's gun does just fine, IDK. I think that was a $2,000 scope. Robinson, delete this exchange, Robinson. My dad wants photos of the rifle. He says grandpa wants to know who has what. The feds released a photo of the rifle, and it is very unique.

He's calling me, RN, not answering. Robinson, since Trump got into office, my dad has been a pretty diehard mega. I'm going to turn myself in willingly. One of my neighbors here is a deputy for the sheriff. You are all I worry about love. Roommate, I'm much more worried about you. Robinson, don't talk to the media, please. Don't take any interviews or make any comments.

If police ask you questions, ask for a lawyer, and stay silent. That's the end of the exchange. Yep. Seems like this person fairly wisely stopped engaging with... Yeah, there's not a good response to give. that. No, there's not. Yeah. And Discord. Again, one of the, one thing I would hope this would bust is the, this has to have been a professional hitman assassin of some sort, which is a job that, I mean, it technically exists. Like, there are guys who are for the fucking Crips or the Bloods,

or you could call them professional hitman and that they kill people for money. But they're not, like, the people you see in movies. Like, they're, they're guys who will walk up with a 38 and gut shoot somebody and run the fuck off. Like, they're not, we're not talking about, like, smooth operators. Those people almost don't exist as a profession and certainly not as a standard thing in the United States. And that, that, like, the fact that he was having this kind of conversation on Discord. This is, I believe, regular text. Oh, these are regular, sorry, regular tech.

This is straight up, yeah, SMS, right? Like, yeah. He's messaging this shit through unencrypted lines and left a note under his keyboard and dropped the rifle in the woods. Like, this is all about what you'd expect from a 22-year-old kid who's a reasonably good shot with a rifle and had no real other skills. Like, it's what it looked like. Yes. This doesn't even seem like someone who spent a great deal of time planning, right? Yeah.

Or learning about that. They said they've been planning about it for about a week. Yeah. This lines up with what they said, right? Like, like. Yeah. And they seem almost surprised. Yeah.

I got this weird feeling reading it. Like, Tyler almost is shocked that they, did it. Like, there's this almost sense of being pulled by history. Yeah, seemingly confused by his own actions in a sense. Yeah, like watching himself almost. Yes. And, like, I inscribe, like, one of the things it sounds like, and this is a little unclear, but it sounds like in terms of those memes winding up, but he was doing that before, maybe even before he'd ever planned to shoot Kirk. That's just like a thing he did

for shit, for shits and giggles. People have pointed to that as being like, oh, well, obviously the roommate knew something was up, if the roommate was aware that Robinson was carving bullets, that's first of all, that's not a crime. No. People just do weird shit sometimes, especially if someone goes to the range often, maybe they're going to fucking scribble

on a bullet. Like that's not indication of anything that's legitimately concerning, frankly. Yeah. It's indication again that this guy was very online at a gamer. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But that's it. So, it's not just people like Walsh who are

casting doubt on the authenticity of these messages. Plenty of liberals people on the left have taken to suspecting that these could have been written by an quote-unquote FBI agent or law enforcement as fake evidence to frame the shooter. And people have pointed towards some weird verbiage like calling his dad his old man and referring to quote-unquote like law enforcement type language like interrogate and yeah to me this is not very confusing he talks like this because he's raised

Mormon and plays a lot of tactical video games thousands of hours I have I have a steam profile huge huge gamer and he might talk a little odd because he just did a fucking crazy thing I don't even think it's that odd like no it's not he people call

someone they're in love with my love that's a thing that happens in the world like that's not like a very normal what are we doing here yeah why are we questioning this part of the story yeah but and again like these texts were handed over to local police by robinson's roommate why fake evidence that would jeopardize the case when the police already have a lot of other evidence DNA ballistic evidence the the friend group discord chat where he also admitted to the crime right before he turned himself in like these text logs don't even even like make him out to be a crazy leftist. He talks like very vaguely about Kirk, like spreading

hatred. Yeah. He says nothing about politics. And again, as we'll talk about, because there's some evidence here suggesting that both Tyler and their roommate, like, their politics were mixed from what little we can glean about them, right? Or a very minor part of their lives in a sense. Yeah. They're not talking about redistribution of wealth. They're not talking about overthrowing the government. No, no, they're not talking about politics in that way. This seems more, like, personal to him. Yes, he's in love with a trans person, and he didn't like what Charlie Kirk said about trans people. Yeah.

And, like, if the government's going to fake messages, why would they do so in a way that exonerates the trans roommate, the real ideological target here? Yeah. Look at what the government is doing right now, right? They're going after, quote unquote, Antifa. They're going after the Open Society Foundation, George Soros, all of these left-wing NGOs. if they were faking this, would he not have referenced one of those organizations?

Yeah. Would there not be a fucking black and red flag somewhere in there? Yeah, like, it would be so easy. If you're going to implicate someone, you could implicate them in text messages really easily. Like, it's ridiculous to suggest that, yeah, the state did this.

Yeah. Why would you fake that? Why would you fake it that way? Baffling. Incomprehensible. These texts are not load-bearing to this case. There's plenty of other evidence. And this isn't the same thing as like cops planting evidence or like a district attorney making subjective claims about intent.

Like you don't need to overestimate state intelligence here. No, we don't even need per what we have. There was no need for them to have done anything at all because Robinson specifically notes that as soon as pictures of the rifle were posted online by police, his dad fucking called him. His family knew. Because it is a unique gun. Yeah. It is an antique mouser that was sporterized and rebarreled, presumably personally, by his grandfather. Both his grandpa and his dad seemed to have recognized it immediately.

There was no getting away with it once the rifle was found. This is totally different from like the MS-13 tattoo thing where the Trump administration argued for an interpretation of tattoos and then printed out a picture with like very clearly photoshopped letters to draw a parallel between one. what they think the tattoos meant and their interpretation of it as letters and numbers, which Trump, in all of his genius, mistook for being actual tattoos and then they just ran with it

because no one has the capacity to tell the president you're wrong. This is completely different than faking all these text messages. There's metadata, there's cell phone records. It's probably still on the roommate's own phone. Like physical, a physical evidence. And like, subjectively saying

that you don't know any Gen Z that talks like this, that's not valid evidence. 22-year-olds know how to use punctuation. Yeah, let me tell you, as someone who grades hundreds of papers every year from people who are largely, but not all, between 18 and 25, yeah, young people can use punctuation. This is not like some kind of forensic fucking literary analysis required. And the information obtained in these chat logs

and through interviews with his parents, Matt's reporting by Ken Klippenstein, who got leaked messages from the shooter on Discord. Very similar. Like, lots of libs and people on the left are saying this is fake because they want the shooter to be conservative. And they think that these texts damage the narrative that they have chosen. I think that's why we're seeing people react so strongly to this. It's not about actually evaluating the evidence on like a base level, right? Like this guy grew up in a conservative Mormon family.

His dad's pretty mega. Robinson figured out he was bisexual and started to move a little bit to the left on like gender and sexuality issues and even like a lot of Gen Z straight guys kind of have this political profile, right? They're like pro-gun but their life revolves around like gaming

Discord and Reddit more than like the political. And they're probably often pro-capitalist. They're just not bigoted against queer people. Yeah, because that's not as common anymore. These aren't political partisans. Yeah. They're not even on R-slash bread tube. Like

yeah that's that's not what's happening he played he played he played furry sex games on steam when he was younger one of his steam names was Donald Trump because yeah he's 22 years old Trump was inaugurated when he was like 13 or whatever like hell god yeah it's crazy we fuck the kids up so bad it's it's a largely it's largely a political and like this what what he did is is existential violence manifesting a political action from someone who isn't otherwise overtly political, right? Because shooting Charlie Kirk, incredibly political action, even if that's not the way that the shooter maybe conceived it.

Yeah, like this person happened or it happened across a queer person who they are very fond of, right? They have queer people in their lives. That is not indicative of any politics other than they have a queer person in their life. If this person stand of the Soviet Union, we would fucking know about it. Oh, yeah, because they would be running with that. They'd have found a mosen the gun. Yeah, they would have used a mosen for one thing, so they would have missed.

I'm going to say, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. A little bit of mosen slander for you today to break up the horrors. Yeah. Speaking of crackdowns, crackdown on your wallet by buying these. Products and services. Beautiful. Lovely. town? You must excise it. Dig into the deep earth and cut it out. The village is ravaged.

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Think back to the early 2000s. You're flipping through TV channels, and then you hear this. I was rooting for you. We were all rooting for you. How dare you! Learn something from this! But, looking back 20 years later,

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Like how our pets actually change our brain chemistry, the psychology of office politics, whether happiness is even a real emotion. and my favorite episode, why do we all secretly crave external validation? It's so interesting to me that we are so quick to believe others' judgments of us and not our own. I found a study that said, not being liked actually creates similar levels of pain as physical pain. Like, no wonder we care so much.

So the secret is, if you want to be okay with not being liked, you have to know why your brain craves it in the first place. Learn more about the psychology of external validation, everyday life, and of course, your 20s. This September, listen to the psychology of your 20s on the IHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get, your podcasts. And we're back. Yeah, First Amendment crackdown, massive rhetoric coming out of Stephen Miller and from Pam Bondi

and basically every mouthpiece of the administration about going after the left. about dismantling, particularly organizations like the Open Society Foundation, going after George Soros and his son. There's talk about prosecuting people criminally and using the death penalty even on folks who are quote-unquote funding terrorism, a term which has been so broadly described by mouthpieces of the administration as to include potentially just about anybody. This could be like bail funds, environmental NGOs, legal support NGOs. is like it's really unclear at the exact form that this is going to take but this is stuff that

the administration has has pined about doing for a while yeah and it's unclear you know it's one of the big pieces of news that's happened within 24 hours of us recording this episode which we recorded on thursday the 18th is that uh trump has designated antifa a domestic terrorist organization that's not he said that what i'm saying is he said that he said he said he said those are words he has said words that he has said words that he is said words that he is said Words that he has said before, including in 2020. For the letter of the law, for one thing, there's a wild difference between what you could do legally to an international, a foreign terrorist organization. Yeah.

And domestic terrorist organization. Yeah. Because of the First Amendment, you can't just declare legally in terms of what is written law. The president can't just declare a group of people to be a domestic terrorist organization. It's usually an enhancement charge. Yes. And then just go after people who have spoken out or donated. money to legal charities that are randomly declared to be in support of that.

That's not legal, which doesn't mean it won't happen. Let me be really clear. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But that's not what the law is about. And they've tried to do that in Atlanta with Stop Cop City and the Atlanta Solidarity Fund and going after the bail fund and people who had donated money to like the Forest Defense Fund. Right. And this Trump is similarly actually to Atlanta is also talked about using RICO charges to

get people in trouble who are, you know, funding these quote unquote domestic terror organizations. and on September 17th, Trump trothed, I am pleased to inform our many USA Patriots that I'm designating Antifa, a sick, dangerous, radical left disaster as a major terrorist organization. I will also be strongly recommending that those funding Antifa

be thoroughly investigated in accordance with the highest legal standards and practices. Thank you for your attention to this matter. Yeah, I mean, if they used the word of major, right, which doesn't necessarily, like there's a... Domestic terrorism is a concept that's nebulous. FTO, foreign terrorist organization is an extremely clear legal definition. He didn't use either of those.

This is, yeah, this is a thing that, like, Ted Cruz, and I think he enjoyed it, I'm sure there were other people involved, but Ted Cruz, and before 2020, 2019, tried to introduce a resolution in the Senate, condemning Antifa. This has been a thing. Marjor Taylor Green introduced legislation, which went nowhere, or talked about introducing legislation. I don't even know if she actually introduced it.

like this year about designating Antifa terrorist organization. It's been something like Andy Noe has been advocating for for years. It's a really important point that they have attempted and failed to do this numerous times because the law doesn't let them. And this is something that if you have been in the reporting on public shootings business, as long as I have been. One thing I can tell you is that in the wake of something like this, it was the same with Christchurch, and the immediately wake of Christchurch,

there was this really shocking moment where a bunch of conservative I talked to these people because I published the defining article on that shooting a shitload of conservative organizations

came out and said you know what maybe we've been wrong about demonizing Muslim immigrants maybe like that was really fucked up and we should

like those people were talking about that people who you would not expect it now they didn't keep talking that way they got over it pretty quick but what you have

in a moment like this is there's a limited period of time where people's shock and horror and surprise at what has happened creates spaces of possibility for folks who have an agenda and who have a clear plan for what to push, to push the Overton envelope in their direction, right? This is not a period of time that lasts forever. And the folks who are largely orchestrating the conservative response to Charlie Kirk's, murder are aware of this, and they are making the best use of this period of time that they can

get. Now, that doesn't mean the fact that this is a limited period of time, doesn't mean there are long-term consequences. Doesn't mean that they can't make significant progress on their plan to stifle free speech. Doesn't mean we're not in massive danger, because we are in danger, folks. I'm not telling you we're not. 100%. I'm telling you these spaces of possibility don't last forever, in part because the public moves on, and in part because there is always a backlash to the backlash. And you're seeing pieces of that already, right? We are seeing pieces of that. You see fucking Carl Rove of all motherfucking people wrote an article about how the administration is unfairly blaming liberals and leftists for the actions of an

individual shooter. Tucker Carlson came out and made a statement that like if the government is able to go after you for this, they'll come after conservatives at some point. And he's not wrong about it. I don't credit him doing that. because of a serious moral thing. I credit him to be a relatively intelligent guy who is like, no, no, no. If they're able to do this to whatever milk toast liberals,

eventually it'll happen to me, right? And specifically, like Pam Bondi, the Attorney General made some statements a few days ago about them going after, quote, unquote, hate speech. Yeah. Which spawned a whole bunch of conservative commentators, Stephen Crowder, Tucker Carlson, as well as Matt Walsh.

And under no circumstances, do you have to hand it to Matt Walsh? But this prompted them to be like, uh, no, actually. don't believe in hate speech as a legitimate legal category. There should be social consequences for people who celebrate the murder of an innocent man, but there should not be legal consequences for hate speech, right? We're fine with the government helping us, like, docks you and get you fired from your job. But prosecuting hate speech as a category is something that we do not

agree with, and neither did Charlie Kirk. So there's been like that small reaction, which then prompted Pam Bondi to be like, no, when I say hate speech, what I really mean is like threats and incitement to violence and like, okay. Fighting words, I think it's a legal term, right? Like incitements to violence. Yeah. And, you know, there's some stuff that's always been illegal and never been punished, for example, when conservatives, I've been dealing with this for years,

threaten to kill and rape activists and show up outside of their houses and harass them as a general rule, the police don't do anything. Yeah. If those activists are on the left, right? Even though that crosses the boundary into fighting words. However, they have legally could. They choose not to, right? But if someone is out there saying in the wake of the Charlie Kirk shooting, I want to incite people to kill this person, that is illegal.

You're not allowed to say, I want to incite people to murder this person. That is a crime. If you're posting and saying that, you have broken the law. They won't go after a conservative for doing that, but they'll go after you, right? Like, that is how things work, you know? Yeah. However, we have seen people who have been attacked for speech. that absolutely is not crossing the line into fighting words, right?

One of the better examples for this happened at Texas Tech. You've had variants of this happened at a couple of colleges all around the country. There's specifically at Texas Tech, which is, you know, one of Texas's kind of premier state schools. There was video of an incident on the day that Charlie Kirk was killed where a student was seen jumping or up and down, yelling profanity at a vigil in a free speech zone. outside of a student union building on the campus, saying y'all homey dead, making fun of people who were mourning Kirk's death. At one point, she touched a guy's hat. The video of her went viral. Governor Greg Abbott called for her to be arrested and expelled. She was expelled immediately. She was arrested and charged with assault shortly thereafter. Her family has not made a statement

very wisely. There's really nothing they could say that would be great at this point. there has been some pushback from student organizations in the state because this is blatantly illegal. Calling what she did assault is nonsense, in my opinion, from watching the video. She was at a free speech zone. Laughing y'all homely dead when someone is killed is not fighting words. That is not illegal. You are allowed to say stuff like that under the letter of the law. Does this mean this person won't get convicted of a crime?

It's Texas. And she's a black woman. She might. And this is very chilling. This is deeply concerning, right? This is not the only case. There's a smaller university outside of Austin where, again, a student was videotaped celebrating at a vigil for Kirk's death. That person was expelled as well. There have been a number of teachers fired. Obviously, stuff like this has been happening all over the country, right? And this is deeply worrying. And even if the space of possibility closes on these people faster than they're expecting, if the crackdown on the Open Society Foundation doesn't happen if this Antifa stuff doesn't go any further than the last time they've talked about going after Antifa. Stuff like this is going to continue to happen, and it will only accelerate over the next couple of years, right? And that is a massive problem. Part of this culture shift can be seen in what some people are probably not very smartly calling the biggest attack on free speech they've ever seen in their life, which is on Wednesday evening, ABC put Jimmy Kimmel's show on hold, quote unquote, indefinitely, following pressure from the FCC and affiliate stations owned by NextStar. Before ABC's announcement, NextStar released a statement, quote, NextStars owned and partner television stations affiliated with the NBC television network will preempt Jimmy Kimmel live for the foreseeable future beginning with tonight's show. Nextstar strongly objects to the recent comments made by Mr. Kimmel concerning the killing of Charlie Kirk and will replace the show with other programming in its ABC affiliated markets, unquote.

Sinclair broadcasting also stated it would not air Kimmel's show and called on Kimmel to apologize to the Kirk family and donate to the Kirk family as well as TPUSA. Earlier that Wednesday, FCC chairman Brendan Carr advocated on the conservative podcaster Benny Johnson's show, quote, it's really sort of pastime that a lot of these licensed broadcasters themselves push back on Comcast Disney and say, we are not going to run Kimmel anymore until you straighten this out. And we, the licensed broadcaster, are running. the possibility of fines or license revocation from the FCC, if we continue to run content, that ends up being a pattern of news distortion, unquote.

Carr then made vague threats towards, like, direct FCC involvement. Quote, we can do this the easy way or the hard way. These companies can find ways to change conduct and take action, frankly, on Kimmel, or there's going to be additional work for the FCC ahead, unquote. The FCC controls broadcast licenses for local TV channels. and Neckstar is planning a merger with Tegna, which requires FCC approval. And this is obviously a coerced attack on free speech. And we've seen a lot of people shows and whatnot getting polled and people speaking out

getting in trouble because their companies are trying to do a merger, right? That's not new. Yes, this has happened with ABC already. This happened with CBS and Paramount. I think some people, including people on the right, are misunderstanding. some of the circumstances of the firing or the being put on hold, as well as what, like, Kimmel said. Like, Kimmel wasn't joking about or celebrating Kirk's death. What he did do is possibly, like, falsely insinuate that the shooter was MAGA when evidence at the time pointed otherwise.

Kimmel said, quote, we hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize the kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it, unquote. He then went on to tell a joke about how Trump did not seem very sad in the wake of Charlie Kirk's death, comparing the death to a goldfish in Trump's mind. That was the way the joke was framed. So that's what Kimmel actually said.

You can interpret that either way, whether he's just saying that Megas are desperately trying to make it look like he's not one of them and scoring political points, or you can interpret it as Kimmel kind of insinuating that the shooter probably is Mecca. I don't know Kimmel's mind. I'm not sure what he exactly meant by that. But the Rolling Stone reported that sources told them, quote, senior executives at ABC, its owner, Disney, and affiliates convened emergency meetings to figure out how to minimize the damage. Multiple execs felt Kimmel had not actually said anything over the line, but the threat

of Trump administration retaliation loomed, unquote. Yeah. And this is again, this is chilling. Absolutely chilling speech. The things he said were not in line with the best available evidence at the time that he said them. But they weren't hate speech. They were not incitement to violence. There was nothing illegal about them. And again, you had a fucking right-wing figure on television urging for homeless people to be executed. The involuntary lethal ejection to solve the homeless crisis, quote, just kill them.

He's not getting fired. No, he had to make a half-assed apology, but that's it. Yeah, like he had to pretend to be sorry. If I had a nickel for every time someone on Fox News said that, like, any mass shooter at all was linked to a trans person, like none of my trans friends would ever be homeless again. Like, they say this shit all the time and nothing happens, even though it is, I mean, literally just, it is straight up defamatory. Yep.

And they say that shit constantly and nothing happens. And this is just a really pure, I mean, example of, just blatant political suppression of speech and also this sort of like we talked about this with the mergers is the structural problem with the way that like the American quote unquote free press is supposed to be

structured which is that they're all for profit companies and because of that all you need to do is just buy out or threaten their profit enough and they'll just fall in line and that's what we've been watching with news outlet after news outlet after news outlet like firing anyone who said anything mean about Kirk

yep I think with that that concludes our Charlie Kirk assassination aftermath discussion for now but there is in fact other news this week happening James

do you have stuff yeah unfortunately I'm like I'm like bracing myself because I know that James's news is never that good either yeah so that's good news these days no really the passport thing was was killed right

the Mark Rubio yeah yeah there is some good news actually there was a bill, a writer on a bill that was introduced that would have given Marco Rubio the power to revoke passports for citizens for effectively political speech and the guise of speech protecting quote unquote terrorists. That failed, like that was polled by the sponsor, which is good. There was a backlash to it. And again, when there's backlashes, that's good. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's it's so annoying to have to like,

we all know that like pointing out the hypocrisy doesn't work as like a real strategy but like yeah there's if there's a way besides that to like actually channel resistance to these authoritarian and like speech chilling measures besides just smugly going like ha ha the party of free speech strikes again which i understand how that's emotionally compelling but no one cares it's not going to stop them from taking away your free speech no yeah speaking of free speech here's some Free ads. Yeah. There's a vile sickness in Abbas town.

You must excise it. Dig into the deep earth and cut it out. The village is ravaged. Entire families have been consumed. You know how waking up from a dream? A familiar place can look complete. alien. Get back everyone. He's going to next. And if you see the devil walking around inside of another man,

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everyday life. And of course, your 20s, this September. Listen to the psychology of your 20s on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. We are back. Don't worry, folks. It is all downhill from here, I'm afraid, because things have not been good outside of the coverage and repercussions to the Charlie Kirk shooting. And to start with, I want us to talk about Ghana. This is one of those stories that unfortunately has been kind of eclipsed this week, but it shouldn't be, so we're going to talk about it. So the United States has begun using Ghana as a pass-through to send people back to other countries in West Africa. In international law, when somebody has protection from being sent to a place and you send them back via another place that is called chain refoulement, right? One could probably also pronounce that as if it were a French word, but I have decided not to. In this instance, they're sending people to Ghana when their home countries have been deemed to be too dangerous by United States Corps or they are unable to send them back to that country for some other reason, right?

people in this part of the world don't need visas to travel so they can send them to neighboring countries without requiring, like, that Ghana can just bust them back, right? It doesn't require a great deal of paperwork. So a court has ordered the United States that there was an attempt, right, to secure protections for these people via them into a temporary restraining order to prevent them either being sent away. Some of them were in Ghana at the time the case was filed, right? So to prevent them being sent from Ghana to places where they may face, as we're about to hear, torture, death, pretty much the worst shit that can happen to people. So the court did order the United States to produce a document which details the exact nature of its agreement

with Ghana. At the time I'm writing, the United States has not produced that. Ghanaian sources have repeatedly suggested that one exists, right? In Ghanaian government, press conferences and internal Ghanaian news reporting. The case was bought by both Gambian and Nigerian citizens, right, so people who don't want to be returned to those countries. And their attempt to obtain a restraining order, in one instance, one of the people who bought the case fled after torture by the police and military and was explicitly told that if he came back, they would kill him. And what the US is doing here is using Ghana as a pass-through to send him back, right?

Jesus. Yeah, some of them also detailed in the case their transport. They said they were in straight jackets for 16 hours on the flight. The US, right, the government, the United States government in this instance, has once again claimed that these people are out of its hands and it has no way of stopping the government of Ghana from sending them back to these other countries, right? This is an argument that is attempted to make in several other instances. And I do just want to flag that, like, this use of third party countries for deportation

has much increased under the Trump administration that it was the Biden administration who began funding Panamanian deportations, right? Way before Donald Trump was even elected and I have documented that extensively in my series on the Darien Gap.

The court determined in this case that it didn't have the jurisdiction to grant the plaintiff's relief, right? So that means that they're not able to get a restraining order. One of the people had actually already been returned to the place where they had a convention against torture protection from

and was in hiding at the time at the court case, right? The judge said that the government's actions were part of a quoting here, pattern and widespread effort to evade the government's legal obligations by doing indirectly what it cannot do directly. We are recording this on the 18th of

September. It's a Thursday and about 15 minutes ago, another United States flight just landed in Ghana. So this practice appears to be outgoing. Secondly, what I want to talk about is sadly another shooting, the killing of Silverio Villegas Gonzalez in Chicago. Vegas Gonzalez was a 38-year-old father, a Mexican national, and he was shot by either one or two ice agents while driving away from them.

An ice statement claimed that he drove towards him and ended up dragging an agent a significant distance. Surveillance camera footage at the scene shows one agent talking to Vegas Gonzalez in his vehicle, We then see the vehicle reverse away from them and then move around them to the left when it sees a gap in traffic. The ICE agents have placed their vehicle, which is an SUV, in front of his vehicle, sort of cramping it into the curve. So he has to reverse backwards and then move forward and to the left in order to try and drive away, which is what he's trying to do, right? We can only see one of the officers in the footage. We see the other officer later in other footage. The officer in the footage does not appear to be dragged,

but he appears to draw his weapon. In Ice standard footage, we then see two officers pull Villegas Gonzalez from the vehicle and they begin administering first aid. We're just rewatching the footage now and you can see the other agent on the other side of the vehicle. This sounds very similar to the time that Ice shot at the car driving away just a few weeks ago.

Sure, and San Bernardino, absolutely, yeah. generally, I have no idea of what rules I are operating under. It's not considered best practice to open fire at a vehicle that is moving away from you unless it's actively endangering someone else's life, right? In part because even if it's endangering someone else's life, a handgun will not stop a car. Maybe you hit the driver, but the odds are just as good, if not much better, that it goes through a window and remains lethal going past the car

and endangering people's lives. Yeah. And also, it's worth mentioning, on the other side of the car from the officer who we see draw his gun is the other agent. Yes. Yeah.

So if you're shooting at the car, you're shooting at your other agents. Guns don't stop cars generally. Unless you're telling a 50 caliber anti-material rifle. Guns don't stop cars. Yeah. But they do stop people.

But they keep, bullets keep going when they make. Yes. It's just bad. It's a bad thing to do. It's irresponsible. It's normal cop shit. Yeah. So what we see is at least two shots fired. And then we begin to see that. Then they leave the screen of the surveillance camera. Right. So we don't see exactly like we're unable to see, I guess, where those bullets impact. The bystand of 40s then shows his vehicle crashed into the undercarriage of a large lorry, like a truck. Right. And he's hit that vehicle in a way that could also have been fatal, right? Like the the way that he's hit that vehicle, like the engine block of the car goes underneath. So it would be the driver who would take the main impact because the trailer is higher off the ground, right? Hopefully that's making sense to people. Totally. He's traveled about 100 feet in this time period. Unravel Press have a pretty good account of this. They've cobbled together. I think most of the open source video and also the surveillance video. There don't appear in those videos to be any other agent present. And when we see the agents rendering aid, none of them appears to be in the state someone

would be had they been dragged by a fast moving car. Also, again, with reference to shooting at a moving vehicle, if the moving vehicle is dragging your colleague, you're shooting also at your colleague if you shoot at the vehicle. So, unfortunately, none of this changes the fact that this guy is now dead, right? The Mexican consulate has confirmed his age. They said he was working as a cook as his profession and he was from Micho Khan. The consulate has been in touch with his family. Generally, I'm not familiar with this instance and what will happen. Generally, the Mexican consulate will help with returning the remains of Mexican nationals to their families in Mexico. That's most of what I have

on his death. It seems to have moved very quickly through the news cycle, which is unfortunate because obviously you have children who have lost a father here. This is a tragedy too. Yeah. No, this is tragic, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You know, and I'm sitting here haunted by the fact that they killed this guy two days after the Charlie Kirk shooting. I think

most of the people who are listening to the show right now don't know this happened. Yeah. These agents aren't going to get prosecuted into court of law for this, the same way that Absolutely not. The Charlie Kirk Assassin will. Yeah. Generally, like, local, there have been some cases, but I'm not really aware of any filed against Border Patrol agents.

Generally, DHS has an agency which investigates, like, use of force incidents, right? And it is, I will say, it is extremely, there have been times when agents have been charged. They are rare. I mean, and Stephen Miller's DHS, that seems very unlikely. Yeah, like, I'm aware. of some charges, for instance, in San Diego for like agents who have allowed

drugs to cross the border, right? Sure. It is pretty rare. Yeah, so let's talk about what ICE's occupation of Chicago has been like. Yeah. I kind of want to start with something that's been very frustrating, which is a lot of the way that Chicago

has been discussed in the wake of Trump and not deploying the National Guard there has been about oh if you resist Trump it will like you know you can defeat him and like that's true but also ice and border patrol are on the ground in Chicago as we're listening to this right now drag people from their homes the raids have gone to a significant extent the way that we expected them to they have been largely very very fast lightning raids a lot of them have been

an outlying part of Chicago land, which has been making it difficult to both track them and determine numbers, because a lot of these parts of these massive Chicago suburbs, we're going to talk about one later called Elgin. There has 100,000 people in it, but also doesn't have the kind of, I mean, they have like local journalists, but they don't have like the kind of press corps that the city of Chicago proper has. And so documentation of it is a much harder, which is part of why they've been striking out there. It's largely been ice. but Border Patrol has shown up and part of the Border Patrol

appearing has been that this has also been a giant PR blitz for Trump administration officials as the people at Unravelled have pointed out and we'll be talking to them more next week about what things have been like on the ground a senior Border Patrol official Gregory Bovino has claimed to we don't actually have like photograph evidence there

but he was posting on acts that he was he went to Franklin Park which is where Ice shot that guy a couple of days after the shooting he has been releasing an entire stream of TikTok and X posts to sort of advertise his presence in the city and doing this whole we did this in LA

we're doing this here now thing James you don't talk a little bit about who he is yeah I do so Bevino was at least until recently he's supposed to be as you say working in Chicago now his Twitter now reads commander op-at-large CA, Gregory Capevino, he was a chief patrol agent in the El Centro sector. When we saw Operation Return to Sender, right, Operation Return to Sender was December was

December of 2024. This happened under the Biden administration. This was the first of these Border Patrol roving stops, way north of the border, right? Up into Central Valley, stopping people in Home Depot's, stopping people who appeared to be Latino, Latina, Latine, on the street. I would say that Cal Matters has had a really good coverage of that, and I can link it in the show notes. We also saw the deployment of Border Patrol to LA, right? That was the El Centro. So people aren't familiar with El Centro, east of San Diego along the border, right?

It's sort of most of the way to Arizona if you're driving from San Diego. He is really, like, I would say a man of the moment in terms of Trump's Border Patrol, right? Like Border Patrol is an agency that's changed a lot over the years. there was a time with Border Patrol recruited from the Peace Corps. Now it's not that time. One thing that Bovino has been very good at in the sense of like doing what the administration wants from a Border Patrol agent right now is his use of social media. My understanding is that they have a whole team dedicated to this in the El Centro sector,

right, that they have videographers and photographers and such to make social media for the Border Patrol. And Bovino really seems to have been stepping up in importance. Like, he has this sort of, he also can cuts a very distinctive figure with this kind of cropped side haircut. Like, you can find a picture of his haircut online. We don't know how to describe it. His Twitter picture shows him holding an AR with a low-powered variable optic. Like, he is this new, like, tactical, aggressive, very aggressive social media presence, Border Patrol officer, right?

And we've seen El Centro Border Patrol station specifically be at the forefront of a lot of these. operations, as I said, even going back to the Biden era. If you're wondering, Border Patrol sectors are not just around the cities that they're named for, right? They can go a long way north. So the San Diego sector, the El Centro sector. These are not necessarily defined by places that you would recognize as being close to San Diego or El Centro, which is why you would have seen them operating as far north as Los Angeles. I'm not as familiar with northern border sectors. I haven't spent as much time there, but I would imagine that there is a Border patrol sector that pertains to the area that Chicago is in. So perhaps Bavino is now doing some

kind of operational command for these urban things rather than working in that sector. I'm not entirely sure. But yeah, that's who he is. Yeah. And he's been, you know, he's been making an enormous deal of, like, of showing up in Chicago. And this has been something that's increasingly this is part of what it means for, for ICE and Border Patrol to show up in a city is you get these fucking just absolutely hideous PR ops

on Tuesday Kersy Knoem last scene shooting a dog joined a raid in Elgin which is a

pretty far flung suburb of Chicago with about 100,000 people in it and she

showed up to do basically a PR junket at this raid at 5 in the morning in Elgin

where ice arrived with helicopters. They blew up someone's door and they grabbed a bunch of people and then they were forced to release two of the seven people they grabbed because they immediately turned out to be U.S. citizens. Kirst has denied that they detained them and said that, oh no, actually we just separated them for their protection while we did the operation and like that doesn't seem to be true from everything that we've heard from witnesses at the scene. But yeah, this is, you know, these are

the way that these enforcement operations, the way that these raids have gone is that the beginning of a major operation cycle is turned into these press circuits for people like Hersey Nome. Yeah, Nome's been on a few raids, like this has been a consistent thing, right, that these raids are a content creation exercise as much as a law

enforcement one. Yes, and an excuse to dress up, all that good stuff. Yeah, and you know, it's this, it's this like reveling both in this, you know, in this sort of like, like, like constructed like I'm holding an AR-15 look how tough I am image and also just in the cruelty

and the suffering in the same way that the alligator Alcatraz stuff was but it's worth noting that most of the raids have not looked like this like this was a raid where like you know people were woken up in this basically this random suburb at 5 in the morning

because like they heard an explosion and ice had blocked off all of their streets and their armored vehicles and helicopters most of what they've been are not like that They've been following the pattern established in LA of very, very rapid raids to avoid rep response networks, targeting a combination of houses, job sites, and, you know, places like Home Depot. And, you know, when we talked about this beginning a couple of weeks ago, we talked about how these people are being deployed largely from this naval base that is hours out from the city, right? And that's part of why a lot of these raids, although they have been going to the south side, which is significantly far away, but a lot of these raids have been in places like Elgin that are further north and are for more outlying because they are closer to this naval base than the core of the city of Chicago. And it's easier to do there because there's less resistance.

There's been a bunch of raids in Elgin. They took a student from a community college. They've just been dragging people from their homes and workplaces. There was a very, very well-publicized raid in Naperville, which is another sort of outlying suburb where they grabbed people who were fixing someone's roof. Was that the one where people remained on the roof? Yeah.

For some time. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Really horrible scene. People are extremely pissed off. There's another story that has gotten very, very little coverage that was horrifying in

this plains, which is the suburb just north of O'Hare, where ice agents and masks did a very, very standard thing. This is a kind of standard ice tactic where they wait for people to get back into a truck and then they block the truck off with their trucks

to prevent it from leaving. And I'm going to read a CBS report of what happened next because I think it's important to understand what it's actually like for these people. Edgar, who's one of the people who was in the car,

said that when the agent originally came to the passenger door, He tried holding the door closed, preventing him from opening it. He said at the time that he and his family had no idea who was at the vehicle and everyone was scared. When the agent tried opening the door, Edgar said he was tased in the face. That's when he told everyone in the truck to run for their lives. Despite being a U.S. citizen, they ran out of fear. So what's happening here is there's these two brothers and their dad who is undocumented.

the two brothers were born in Chicago and they block off this car they show up in masks the people in the car have absolutely no idea who they are and when they try to not get their car broken into they tase this guy who was an American citizen in the face he has to go to the hospital

because they tased him in the face right yeah and this there are stories like this this is a particularly bad one but there are stories like the rest of the raids that we've been talking about every single day in Chicago that do not

break containment at all in a country that is literally entirely just talking about Charlie Kirk there are people being dragged from their homes there are people being dragged from their fucking places of work they're being dragged from their schools and you know this is this is just what the US is right now

now as fucking unbelievably bleak as this is right and people are terrified but they're also angry and people are also organizing. And as we saw in LA, people are forming rapid response networks and they're showing up in places that I never

would have thought. I mean, maybe there'd be NGO networks, but they're doing things in places I just wouldn't have thought possible. I want to close this by, there was a report on Thursday by Sean Mulcai, who's the news editor at the reader, which is a good

independent outlet in Chicago. So ICE tried the same tactic of blockading someone's truck and grabbing them in a suburb called Wheaton, Illinois. And a bunch of people, when they tried to do the smash and grab of this person's truck, a whole bunch of people showed up and confronted them and screamed at them and recorded them. And this caused the ice people to take off and run away without detaining the person. And this is a stunning development.

If you know anything about either Chicago land or evangelicalism, Wheaton is the home of Wheaton College, which is one of like the three big right-wing Christian universities alongside like Brigham Young and Liberty. This is wild. This was one of the home bases of power of the Bush era moral majority, right? Like, Wheaton College is a school where dancing was illegal until 2003. Like, they banned dancing for 143 years. And if people in Wheaton are showing up to do direct reactions against ICE, these people,

they're cooked, right? They will be able to do a significant amount of damage. They have been doing significant amounts of damage. We've just been talking about the amount of. damage they've been doing. But if this is what is happening in places that used to be moral majority strongholds, right, places that produce some of the most famous, like, Christian right wingers who shaped an entire half century of American politics. If people there are showing up and doing direct actions against Eisenberg, things are fucking changing. People are radicalizing

very quickly. And despite everything that's been happening, despite all of the Kirk stuff, Trump's Polling keeps getting worse and worse. And I think this is a good reminder that, like, these people, part of the reason they're moving so fast and so hard right now is because they know they are staggeringly unpopular. And they have to get their crackdown and they have to build a political and legal power right now before it gets even worse for them.

And they're terrified that, you know, if there are a thousand weatons. What a wild phrase. If enough people resist them, they don't have the capacity to, to stop them because everybody fucking hates these people and they hate what they're doing. Nobody actually

likes, you know, shock troopers showing up in the neighborhoods and dragging the people they love away from them. And it's going to be a really, really long and hard battle, but the fact that people are fighting in places where that would have been unimaginable even

10 years ago is, I think, at least a small sign of hope in the darkness. Yeah. And that's probably where we ought to end. Is a small sign of hope in the darkness. If you would like to contact us, you can do so by using our Proton mail email address, coolzone tips at proton.me.

It's encrypted if you use an encrypted email address to send. We reported the news. We reported the news. It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, poolzonemedia.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. You must excise it. Dig into the deep earth and cut it out. From IHeart podcasts and Grimm and Mild from Aaron Manky, this is Havoc Town, a new fiction podcast set in the Bridgewater Audio Universe, starring Jewel State and Ray Wise. Listen to Havoc Town on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

I'm Bridget Armstrong, host of the new podcast, The Curse of America's Next Top Model. investigating the real story behind that iconic show. I ended up having anorexia issues, bulimia issues. By talking to the models, the producers, and the people who profited from it all. We basically sold our souls, and they got rich. If you were so rooting for her and saw her drowning, what did you help her? Listen to the curse of America's Next Top Model on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast.

Hi, it's Honey German, and I'm back with season two of my podcast, Grazias, come again. We got you when it comes to the latest in music and entertainment with interviews 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 25 years.

Oh, wow. That's a real G-talk right there. Oh, yeah. We'll talk about all that's viral and trending with a little bit of cheesemeter and a whole lot of laughs. And of course, the great bevras you've come to expect. Listen to the new season of Grasias Come Again on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast.

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.