Some More News - Even More News: Charlie Kirk, Right-Wing-Rage, And Kash Patel Realizing He Has A Job

Episode Date: September 12, 2025

Hi. Under The Desk News' V Spehar joins Katy, Cody, and Jonathan to talk about the assassination of Charlie Kirk. They discuss the details of the investigation, the Right's vitriolic attacks on the Left, the bizarre media canonization of Kirk, and the uncertain future of political rhetoric.As always, we recorded right before that big thing that happened.PATREON: https://patreon.com/somemorenewsMERCH: https://shop.somemorenews.comYOUTUBE MEMBERSHIP: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvlj0IzjSnNoduQF0l3VGng/joinPluto TV. Stream Now. Pay Never.#CharlieKirk #KashPatel #evenmorenewsSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Well, hello and welcome back to even more news, the first and only news podcast. My name is Katie Stoll. Couldn't agree more, even if I tried. I'm Cody. How you doing? Okay. Sure. I'm doing, okay.

But I am very excited to, welcome our guest, a first-time guest on even more news, journalist, podcaster, and commentator who you can see on Under the Desk News across all platforms. We're very excited to welcome V. Spear. Hi, V. Hi, thanks for having me, friends. I'm so excited to be here. A rough day to be a first-time guest, but we're very appreciative that you are here. I think it's best that we're together in this moment when nobody knows what to say or do. maybe between the bunch of us will come up with something

clipworthy that helps people. I think we'll land on something. And do not fret, loyal audience, because yes, Jonathan is also here. Hi. Thank goodness.

Hello. I already knew that, but I'm still relieved. Everybody can exhale. It's me. Obviously, this has been a very dark week in the news. So,

uh, Yesterday, Wednesday, Charlie Kirk was assassinated in front of a crowd of thousands of people and the video was circulated widely online rampantly. So I think a lot of us bore witness to that death and it's shocking and hard to watch. So we're recording this on Thursday afternoon. As of right now, we still do not know who. did this or why the FBI has circulated a few photos of a person of interest. The FBI had a lot of confusing messaging yesterday, which included Cash Patel saying a subject was in custody, and then it was

a person of interest that got let go. Just that's not the right term to use in that situation. I just, he just seems like a really, really terrible FBI director, but that's, I mean, it is a important in this situation, but... No, you got to put down your phone and do the job. So Charlie Kirk was shot from a campus building about 200 feet away from where he was speaking at Utah Valley University. I mean, I think the reactions to this have been... Some reactions, I will say, have been surprising, and some have not been surprising.

Perhaps we should start with the right-wing reaction, or the reaction broadly, from right of center, from Fox News on out. A lot of pretty frightening things have been said, especially considering that as of right now, we do not know who did this or why. Jesse Waters says they are at war with us, whether we want to accept it or not, they are at war with us,

and what are we going to do about it? They are at war with us. Whether we want to accept it or not, they are at war with us. What are we going to do about it? How much political violence are we going to tolerate? And that's the question we're just going to have to ask ourselves. Now, Charlie would want us to put as much pressure on these people as possible.

Dana nailed it. This is unacceptable and has to stop. And it has to stop now. And everybody's accountable. And we're watching what they're saying on television. And who's saying what? The politicians, the media, and all of these racists. out there. GOP representative Bob Onder. Some on the American left are undoubtedly well-meaning

people, but their ideology is pure evil. They hate the good, the truth, and the beautiful, and embrace the evil, the false and the ugly. GOP representative Clay Higgins wants every account online that made a joke or celebrated his death to be banned from all platforms forever. Nancy May says Democrats own what happened. Laura Lumer, I mean, we could go on. Look up any prominent right-wing figure and you're going to see a similar friend. which is, of course, horrific and absolutely terrifying. Either they're enraged and this is a radicalizing moment or this is, as Cody was saying, before we started recording, giving them permission to say the thoughts that they've already

thought. It's definitely terrifying. I have so many thoughts. I don't even know where to begin. I'm reacting to this specific. Yeah, it's hard to. It's hard to begin or talk about this. It's horrifying to see.

I don't, if you haven't yet, I don't recommend anybody see the video of it. I was scrolling and it just was in my face. Put a pin in that. I have thoughts on that as well. It is, it does seem a lot like they kind of got a permission slip to say all the things that they would like to say. We don't know who did this or why there are a lot of different theories and possibilities

and different angles of who could have done this for whatever reason. The reaction, I think, is maybe even part of the desire, where you know, like, if this happens, then this accelerates this into this. We've seen a lot of accelerationist mass shooters of the past. and kind of like poking like do a civil war do a civil war and but we don't know and uh i've saved my entire twitter feed was just people saying either uh this radicalized me but like most of them have like screen names like franco lover so i don't know if that really is maybe you've already been radicalized um a lot of people saying uh they did this they did this you did this um again

you don't know anything about what happened or why. Demoncrats, obviously. You kill the one man that was willing to come to you peacefully in debate. The talking is over. And these are all like, not just like, oh, this is a random account, like prominent accounts, tens of thousands and thousands of likes or retweets. We have a funny one, I'll say, amidst all the ones that are saying like, fine, fine, we'll do it. You're dead now, basically. James Woods came out and said, this is a turning point. Dear leftists, we can have a conversation or a civil war. One more shot from your side and you will not get this choice again. So he's like one more, which I thought was

kind of funny. We've had enough lies from the left and then you start regulating what's being set on these networks. It was what Jonathan alluded to. Your leftist neighbor wants to kill you. You guys just killed probably the nicest guy on our side and you're laughing about it. Please take it just a moment for lack of implications of that. If you vote Democrat at this point, you're a demonic evil person. I could go on and on and on. Just tons of people. saying they're demonic, they worship Malik, all that kind of stuff, because they've wanted to say that and no matter how many people were making jokes about it or even celebrating it, which I'm not saying is good, but you can legally do that. No matter how many people were saying that, they would have

reacted this way anyway. They'd already been saying these sort of things days prior about the crime on the train, the murder on the train. V, how was yesterday for you? Let's just open. There's so much to go through. Your initial impressions and reactions from yesterday. So I, of course, was like 2.30 in the afternoon. And I have someone of my team named Jed, who is a, he's our chronically online nerd.

I friggin love this guy, Jed. He is the king of the internet. And he has like multiple streams going on it all the time. He always knows stuff before it happens. he's like very dialed in. And he texted me and he's like, V, I think Charlie Kirk's going to die. I just saw a video of him getting shot at an event.

And this was less than six minutes or so after it had happened. And it's because he was on Hassan's stream. And Hassan had been sent the video. Hassan said, this video should not be viewed. I'm not going to show it right now. Jed obviously immediately found it. Told me about it. He's like, from what I'm witnessing, this is not a survivable injury.

This is a hit. Apparently, he said juggly. whatever that word is, jugular. He's like, it was so much blood, it's so much blood, I think he's going to die. So my initial reaction to this was the panic of someone on my team who had seen something that was egregious and that they shouldn't have seen and that they were looking for to try and make sure that we would be able to catch what was going on and the way that people were going to react because my channel is really known for holding you through really difficult times. Our first viral moment was during the pullout of Afghanistan, and we've covered acts of war, which this is sort of in line with that. So I said, Jed, just send it to me, and I viewed it. And this was the original one that I saw was from further back.

And I was like, my understanding of that particular injury and also having seen somebody be shot in the neck, like I was like, one, it's not a false flag. This is definitely, you know, a precision hit. It doesn't appear that it was through and through. people aren't going to understand that the bullet would have exploded in there. It's going to cause tissue damage. This is not like a knife cut where we could fix it. You won't be able to fix that particular injury. And he was like, yeah, man, I think so. So we immediately got on to try and get ahead of it. And I was like Charlie Kirk was shot at an event. This is not something I think is a survivable injury. People are, you know, like we say with all the time when a terrible thing happens, it takes a little

while for the good information to come out. What you'll get first is a ton of conspiracy and conjecture. So what I know is he's shot. I will let you know when we know what happens next. And there was one round of shot. So it does not appear that there is mass shooting going on and he caught a stray. So that was my first concern was Jed. My second concern was what we call the dust bunnies, which are all the people who follow under the dust news. Making sure that they got, I said, and there is a video out. You do not want to watch it. Please just take a break from it until we could kind of like get our arms around this because it's not like. like anything you've seen in a video game or a movie or online before, honestly. This is something that will change you if you watch it, especially if you watch it without being trained on how to watch this type of information. Especially, I think one part of it too is I think just the, you know, we all have parasycial relationships, healthy ones, unhealthy ones. None of them are really healthy. But it was, it's a completely agree, don't watch it. Especially knowing, knowing the person

even from a distance from behind a screen it is it is even I think even more disturbing in a way where like well this is the person

I see all the time there's a disconnect it's hard yeah it's yeah to these points yeah V I think that was the right move to try

and protect people this was happening while we were in the midst of our shoot getting set up I was in the of doing my stuff for next week's video and everyone's reacting and we're just getting through this. But they were like, don't watch it. Katie, don't watch it. And I tried not to, but it did come in my feed, the close up one. And let me tell you, a whole separate conversation is our

algorithm. Our whole separate conversation is what we allow to be posted and shared. It is absurd. It is deeply disturbing. So once I had said, don't watch the video. That's like saying don't eat the candy. I knew they were going to watch the video because people are curious and they, you know, I don't think they've experienced anything like this. So I immediately then went live because I was like, people are looking for a place to go. We went live. We had like 10,000 some people in the live. And I was like, I'm going to teach you how to watch the video. If you're going to do it because you're probably going to do it, and sometimes people have to see something to believe it. The responsible way to watch war footage

is to set it in your mind that you're going to watch it. You watch it one time. You close your eyes. you reimagine what you just saw. You tell your brain what you saw was real and you don't need to see it multiple times for that to be reinforced for you. What you saw was real. You can't believe that it's real. That was real. You only need to see it once. And then you actively use discipline to not watch it a million more times. And folks are like, okay, that's helpful because the reason why we watch it so many times is the first time you can't believe it. And then you're like zooming in to be like, I can't believe it. But it's your brain can't catch up with what it's seeing just why you need to like in your mind's eye replay it. And that is how you can kind of do

it without over traumatizing yourself. And I think it's actually important to tell people how to do this because a lot of people didn't go look at for that video. And it's just going to, this won't be the last time that something like this shows up in your feed. And you know, and there's been a lot. How am I supposed to say all of my thoughts here? Yeah. There's been a lot of comparison. You know, I saw a lot of people saying, well, I've seen videos from Gaza over the past couple years. I'm not desensitized to this. I hope, I mean, I am. This is nothing compared XYZ. Some of you haven't been seeing horrific genocide videos over the past couple years. And I understand where you're coming from. I hope that we're all always shocked and horrified by violence

like this. Well, the difference is this was an environment that we know. This is like when you see you know, war footage of Afghanistan or Gaza or anywhere else, you're looking at terrain that's not familiar to you so you can't picture yourself in that place. When you're looking at a college campus event, you picture yourself there so you personify the crime that's happening upon yourself much more easily. And I think that's the thing that, you know, people may not realize about the way they're processing. For sure. That's such a good point. But I, I, and then we all witnessed it on video, but there were thousands of people there in person. There are people in that front row his wife and child were there and now we're going to have a conversation an honest

conversation about Charlie Kirk because there is a lot of whitewashing going on in the media right now a lot of claims of him being the most reasonable person a lot of persons say you know and and we know that to be false but I also my and some people aren't going to like this but my values and my morality are such that I I am affected by the fact that we watch somebody die and I don't I'm not crying for Charlie Kirk I'm crying for all of us because this doesn't stop with him this is this is a sickness and I I am proud of that I am proud that I have feelings really complicated and intense feelings and by no means does that mean that I liked this man and I still think about his kids and all of us it could have just as easily been any of us he is a public figure who speaks politically and someone decided he wasn't going to do that anymore. And I think that's the hit that we all have to be honest about. There's a certain level of personification for this where immediately we felt like,

I do that. I go to schools and talk. I do that. It could be any of us. Nobody deserves to be anybody. Cody, I fear for you. I fear, not that we're Charlie, but like, but this escalation. So everybody that's making comments about like this.

People are furious and scared. scared. And also, I don't begrudge your feelings. I do not begrudge your own complicated experience for this. But we have got to keep an awareness of our humanity. We have got to keep an awareness of the fact that it's not just them, it's us. And that, um, you know, I get very disturbing messages. I create, I, I lock that up and compartmentalize it. But moments like this, you, you don't know what comes next. Are you, are we prepared for that? I'm not. Anyway, that said, no, Charlie Kirk. He had security.

He had security. He had everything he was supposed to have, right? And it still happens. And it's because it's the guns. We pulled me out of public events for the next two weeks just to try and figure out what a security plan look like. And I was supposed to go to a community college in my hometown that's like the easiest little thing. We were like, I'm like, I'll be safe there. I'm not worried about that.

My team was like, it's not just you. It's you and everybody who comes to see you now. Things are different. I mean, you know, that, again, you're there and you're at this event. You're just watching this person talk. You see talk all the time. It wasn't a mass shooting, you know, so thank goodness for that. That, like, you know, people were running fearful.

I'm sure that there was going to be another shot and then another shot and another shot. And, yeah, it's, you know, taking care of yourself and everybody who is on your team, everybody who will be there to attend random passers-by. This all gets heightened because we didn't just watch a video, a disturbing video of someone being shot and killed, but a video of someone we all are very familiar with and have opinions about, you know, we have discovered how revered he was on the right and how reviled he was on the left. So none of these, the reactions online surprise me, though, obviously I wish the Jesse Waters of

the world would tone it down but the president the president which we will talk about like you you you get confronted with this thing so and it seems when emotions are so heightened it seems very very hard for a lot of people to accept that you know that i believe that this man uh spread vile hatred um during his years of speaking and podcasting and everything else and that i don't believe he deserved to get gunned down. I think it should be a really normal thing to say. And I know there's nuanced even to that. Like I get that I am not part of one of the groups who he directly threatened and diminished

and marginalized, right? We've got a whole list of things. I don't think we're going to go through them of all these horrible things that he said about black people and Muslims. and the LGBTQ women and women on and on and on right um guns guns of course the famous clip that's being circulated the irony the irony of some of the things that he said no but so it's just like i think you know we can go a couple ways from this we can go a week or two and they'll all calm down just like they all calm down after january 6th right they're all mad at first uh on the right and then they're like oh wait

okay this is bad for us we don't care or the you know the Trump and Butler you know things and it depends on who the person is if and when they finally apprehend him if he is this guy that's in these photos if certain things were scrawled

on bullets that was reported by the Wall Street Journal that we don't really believe I keep saying we'll get into it and we do need to but like New York Times just reported that that was almost immediately exactly a senior ATF official was like I should say what this is if you haven't

explain that Yeah, it's important. The Wall Street Journal reported that the bullets had, I think the phrasing, if I have it here, transgender ideology and anti-antifa ideology. Anti-fascist ideology. Transgender and anti-fascist ideology. Right, that those things were on the bullets and that report may have just come from a Stephen. How much would you get on, this is a keychain that this, a bullet keychain that Ukraine sent me.

It's a Russian bullet. But anyway, like, how would you fit that much on there? Kill cis people or whatever, like, what would it be even? It's just like that photo of the Black's rule on the driveway. So full of shit, though. But at any rate, this seems to have come from a Stephen Crowder tweet about it. Like, oh, I have a guy in the ATF who sent me this. Then the New York Times, they talked to a senior ATF official.

And they're like, look, this report is not corroborated. That doesn't equate with the things I have heard about this investigation. and I'm involved in it. We don't know anything still. And so it could come out that this person is a white supremacist who wanted to, you know, get the race war started or whatever. It is very likely. This is just a kid who wants attention.

I mean, every single one of these shootings that we've seen, the common denominator is the person wants to be infamous or famous. It doesn't matter if they're black, white, female, whatever. They're typically white men. But the motivation for a high profile killer is almost old. always that they want some sort of eternal fame, some sort of attention for themselves. And they will use ideology to sort of like give themselves the excuse to do it. But at the end of the day, it is a very egocentric thing that they are doing. And so whether this person put whatever

it was on any of this information, I think it's crazy to think that somebody snuck into a closed campus, right, a campus environment, was able to pull off this shot, was able to escape and then just happen to leave the gun and the bullets around. Like this is all very suspicious. And it comes back to our institutions failing and being staffed by deeply unsurious people. I am genuinely concerned for the future of this country and for Charlie Kirk's family that the person in charge of this is a 22-year-old ship poster who got put in charge of the Department of Homeland Security and, like, domestic terrorism, and Cash Patel, who writes fantasy children's books about Donald Trump being a king and him being a wizard. That is the problem. Now you have

a real situation that requires actual professional adults, and you look around, and it's a fun reality show game anymore now is it real shit is happening and that i think is the anger that we can kind of invoke and say this shooter came out because he felt like our systems were failing in some ways so he needed to like be the vigilante justice he wasn't seeing in the systems that are supposed to protect us or the systems that are supposed to maintain the social contract we have with each other so he went out there and did it himself and the people who are in charge of holding him responsible, live in a Las Vegas and potentially with a honeypot girlfriend and are crazy eyes. Like they're not in a place where they're actually going to be able to like follow through

on any kind of protocol. They don't have law enforcement background. That shit scares the hell out of me. Yes. They're posters. That's why like Patel tweeted like, we got them. We got this person. And then like hour later like, ah, we let them go. That should be a bigger story. That's an embarrassment. It's an embarrassment. Donald Trump breaking the news and scooping the charge Charlie Kirk death is the most unusual thing on the planet. It's very weird. How many people were protecting the information from the news media and everywhere else that Charlie Kirk was dead so that the president could be the one to post it on truth social? It's wild.

Because by all accounts, it does seem that he probably died pretty much immediately. He would have died immediately less than a minute from that. And I understand holding that news to make sure the family is prepared, but then the president of the United States. What are we, what? Yeah, never seen anything like that before. It's highly unusual, very strange, and of course secondary to the main story here, but it is important to note. One thing I wanted to say that is incredibly frustrating about this moment in time and this dialogue is, of course, the framing of, you know, the radical left terrorists and the list circulating the president himself, saying all of these, these hits against right-wingers. and you're leaving out all of the other ones against the left wing.

About a month ago? About a month ago. I mean, what are we talking about here? Yeah, Melissa Hortman a few months ago. The governor of Pennsylvania, there was an assassination attempt with arson on him. You don't need me to list them. There's many. The guy, the Hortman murderer, had a list of other targets.

And also the ones, the list of things that have been done against the right, they're saying, oh, they did this. And the list is not a bunch of left wingers who did those things, right? The Butler, Pennsylvania assassination attempt of Trump. And I'm not saying it's a by the book right wing person. Most of these people are very disturbed and have a bizarre mismash of ideologies. But the Butler, Pennsylvania shooter had a list. of members of both parties on that list. This is not a clean cut thing.

So anyone who says like Elon Musk does that the left is the party of murder or whatever, he says they're either very stupid or in very bad faith. Yeah, they're deaf. I mean, they're doing the thing that again, we've talked about this. This is what they want to do.

They need some sort of, literally someone was like, posted like, this is our Reichstag fire. And we're going to use it to like, clamp down on the left. I've seen, again, I've got this huge document. I'm not going to read them all, but just sort of like, now's our opportunity. Let's put them in camps.

Let's round up the left. Let's do this. Let's do this. Trump said similar things, but this is what they've wanted. I'm not saying that they wanted Charlie Kirk to die, but like they are very clearly using this as an opportunity to do all of the things that they have wanted to do in framing. the left broadly Democrat, the Democratic Party is a terrorist organization,

all these things, so that they can either hurt them or imprison them or kill them or any number of things on the list. And it's very obvious and it happened immediately and the fact that we still don't know anything about the shooter, I think, illustrates that pretty clearly that they don't actually...

I'm afraid of us never knowing that much about the shooter and this narrative just... I mean, I'd rather have confirmation one of the other. I do too. But I am, when you talk about suspicious and not being able to trust the people investigating this and I, it does worry me that this is

something that will forever remain a kind of a question mark. And I hope that's not true. There's reports of them having a footprint, palm print, something. There's the photo and stuff. But I would rather know for sure not that we necessarily would

even if you catch the guy but right now the narrative being what it is without any evidence at all is terrifying it's terrifying it's terrifying it's dangerous I would also say that it's also scary

because even if we do find out information they won't care they will either say false flag misinformation, mainstream media narrative, or those ignore it.

Like Jonathan, you were citing all these other examples and like, well, they're saying that all these people were left-wingers, but they're not. They don't care. Yeah, they're just going to, they are automatically categorizing this

as what they want it to be. And even if there's more information, even if it's from Cash Patel, I don't think a lot of these people will care. Because again, it's less, it's less, and not for everybody. I'm not saying people aren't radicalized by this,

but I think it is less of a radicalization moment and more of a permission slip situation. I think they're hoping that people are radicalized by it. Like if you pull out and you look at the big picture of what's gone on and what the goals of this recovery would look like, focusing on being sad about Charlie Kirk is not going to be a big part of it. And it hasn't been.

Donald Trump had already moved on. He was outside today at the 9-11 thing doing the speech. Not having a stroke on camera. I don't know what was going on here. But they've already moved on. They were like thoughts and prayers, love his wife, so sorry to her. They've already moved on to things like the flags at half staff. Are they going to give them a state funeral?

How are they going to galvanize the group of young people that Charlie Kirk really held to? If you look at cult theory, what you need to look at is like how they're going to use the death of this person to further the goals of the cult. The goal of the cult is not justice for Charlie Kirk's death. The goal of the cult is to keep the cult together at this point. And there will be some kids since his audience was mostly children and very young people. know, like 13 to 24 or whatever, there'll be some people whose moms go, you are not doing this anymore. This went way too far. Oh my God, that man got killed. I don't want you on the internet in those places. This is too dangerous. You're going to be around dangerous things. And that's going to be some

of those folks. Then you're going to have some people who are like, well, it was kind of, I was here for the Charlie vibes and he's not here. And there is no heir apparent to who the next, you know, guru is for the right wing youth pipeline. And so they're going to sort of fall off. So what the right is going to try to do now is make sure that they can hold on to every person that they have. And one thing that I thought was interesting, Pew Research came out with this paper a couple months ago now saying, while one third of people get their news on TikTok, even more of them get their opinion and direction from the comments. And so you're seeing a lot of botting on Twitter and in the comments saying, this radicalize me, this is the left. And when you click on those places,

it's going nowhere, but it's reinforcing this narrative that if you're seeing this and you're going to the comments to get your opinion, here is the opinion you should have, whether that's organic or not. And I think that's something that we can point out for people to just keep in their mind and be wise to when you're looking at comments. That is a lot of manufactured consensus. Yes, we are being and have been actively manipulated for years and years and years in this way. I could tell there are happy bots. During the election season, I was obviously like helping campaign for Kamala. And all of a sudden, I'd never had bots before.

I would make a post about her. And there'd be all these posts like Kamala with blue hearts and all kinds of wacko stuff I'd never had my comments before. So you're trying to like block them or like get rid of that. So he's election was over. I never saw another blue heart comment again. So there are forces at work that do this kind of stuff on creators' content. And they do it without your consent. They bought out to people.

We are actively being manipulated all the time and shown things and having certain buttons pressed to trigger us, et cetera. And so is the right. And it's terrifying. It is super fucking scary. Oh, it's been a great summer of cinema, hasn't it, folks? The Star Trek's, the Four Brothers is his. We'll miss it when it's over. But guess what?

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Learn more at Appritude.com or call 1-888-8. I wanted to ask about this Trump video. Obviously, he broke the news in his truth social post. But then several hours later, they post a four-minute video of him, you know, blaming the radical left for all this. From the attack on my life in Butler, Pennsylvania last year, which killed a husband and father to the attacks on ice agents, to the vicious. murder of a health care executive in the streets of New York to the shooting of House

Majority Leader Steve Scalise and three others. Radical left political violence has hurt too many innocent people and taken too many lives. Tonight I ask all Americans to commit themselves to the American values for which Charlie Kirk lived and died. The video's odd. He sits in one place for a long time. It doesn't, I don't, I don't, I don't believe. it's an AI video. I believe there's definitely some manipulation or the what is it called with the inter... There's upscaling. There's some interpolation. The interpolation to make multiple takes blend together. You can see in certain parts where like the background kind of like morphs and shifts. That is like keyframe kind of interpolation where like it kind of blends them and then

smooths it out. As you know, Cody like speaking for four minutes off of prompter. all at once is difficult. That's why we put like bumpers and clips in the show. Sometimes you go full screen because we have to. Cody can go a long time. I can. You can't. But you know,

he's a 79 year old man who if the video of him this morning at the 9-11 Memorial is to be believed has a half a droopy face. It's very, it's all very odd. But in the video, but in the Oval Office video, he's all, he's like perfect and he's all shiny and he's like ready to go. It's very odd. No tangents, no breaths. Yeah, I think it's probably more editing in some ways, but there's definitely enhancements being made. Yeah. He probably sat down for like 15 minutes and just like set it a bunch and then they did the best that they could with it. And it's like it's not even like that in

itself is not a scandal. We're in this reality bending moment. Lots of other stuff is going on. I think the president's health is going to be much easier to make that like a big story in the news if he keeps showing up and it looks like he's had at least a mini-stroke then AI manipulation or what's this is this video real or not I think he's going to find that he probably can do AI videos if he wants and it's not going to be a big problem for that's the thing this video like this one much AI art he does they already don't They're already Once he's gone

There's going to be a lot He sits with AI Violence AI art by the way Where he says he's going to do a war at Chicago So maybe the rhetoric is maybe I'm balanced in another way I think the Oval Office video is Like you're saying it's like it's not a huge deal

In the context of everything But it is a harbinger Of things to come And keep your eye out I guess For all those little Look at his hands Keep looking at his hands because that's a tell.

Can we talk about what's happened with the media's representation of Charlie Kirk over the last 24 hours? It's been very interesting to see. I think, so first of all, everyone in the media knows who Charlie Kirk is. Do the majority of Americans know Charlie Kirk? I'll be honest. I was so surprised by the amount of people that I have seen posting about this and him. people are so mad

I live in the mountains in a mixed political environment that's all I'm going to say folks but I've been surprised at people that do present themselves

as moderate being like oh I'm just gutted I don't believe in everything that he's said but I do appreciate that he would have

conversations they know they know who he is they know who he is way more than I ever thought one thing I would tell you how my

my sister and people our age know how he is is because their sons secretly watch Charlie Kirk on YouTube and then say to their moms, oh my God, no, he's just like trying to do, you know, he's just trying to bring people into the conversation mom. So I think a lot of people know Charlie Kirk by the way that their sons say they're watching the show, which is like how I used to explain Beavis and Butthead to my mom when I was like, it's just a cartoon. They're like, they're like rock stars on a cartoon. It's just funny. It's like, no, that's not. what it was. And Beavis wasn't just talking about great replacement theory. No, he wasn't. I don't think they give him the whole thing. And then I think moms are like, oh.

Yes. And like in Newsom, when he interviewed Charlie, he's like, yeah, my son's a huge fan of yours. So I agree. I do think that that's it. I will also, since a lot of the people that I did see are moms with people in their late teens, early 20s. So I think that does check out. Anyway, go ahead, Cody. Oh, I was just going to sort of, I guess, ask you. to ask in the future in these conversations I'm always very curious and we'll get into some of the writing

and things people are saying but when I hear like oh yeah oh my God so I you know I didn't I don't agree with everything he says but this this this like what I'm not going to do that like do you like no I know but just sort of like when when they're saying like well I don't agree with everything

I think it's it's interesting to say like well what things don't you know like do you know the extreme things and are those the things that you don't I don't think they do. I genuinely don't think they do. I think we're talking about people that have peripherally heard of him. If maybe seen some clip, maybe have seen the very nice social media posts of him with his family and said, that's sweet. Because, yeah, those are sweet videos of him with his daughter, really sweet.

And, you know, I think it's more that. We're talking about people that aren't super dialed in politics. And it's not to say that I wouldn't push back or have that conversation. I am just saying as a battering back. I'm just like, well, like what? But, you know, like just fine, asking those. Maybe if I had the opportunity in person, I would. But it's more, I'm just trying to articulate that I was surprised that from all walks of life, seeing people talk about this person.

When I knew that he was a prominent figure, however, I didn't quite realize the reach. Yeah. Well, Kelsey, he's been on campuses for 10 years. For a very long time now, yeah. Campuses all across the country. His whole goal was to reach young people. they grow up exactly but the idea of like like this esra klein op-ed in the new york times charlie kirk was practicing politics the right way brian stelter was on cnn this morning talking about how

people were using his words of uh to comfort themselves um and you really have to ignore the specifics of what he said to maintain this idea of like well he was one of us in this in the civility world right um Because he may have gone to college campuses and talked with people who didn't agree with him as a bit. But like he was not civil. But right. But his words and what he believed should happen and the way people who are not straight white men should live was of course decidedly uncivil. And the media's kind of canonized him very, very quickly. Yeah.

As a moderate, like a moderate civil, good faith. I've seen a lot of people say and you do have to ignore all these other things that he said Yeah, you are completely ignoring it and, you know, whitewashing, sane washing, whatever you want to say retroactively, I guess

in the name of civility. And I do think that that's a delicate dance right now, or at least in the immediate hours afterwards. But like that's just a total lie in misrepresentation. You can't say that someone who literally said that the Civil Rights Act was a mistake was anything less than extreme. You can't say that someone, he even said as an extreme, right. You can't say that, okay, he's showing up for a conversation, but that doesn't

mean that that's a good faith conversation. That doesn't mean that he isn't, this is perhaps the least egregious example, but one of a little girl at one of his events asking, saying nervously, I want to be a journalist, go into political science. And I'm wondering what your advice is. And he says, well, do you also want to have kids in a husband? Well, you should be going to college to get a husband. There's nothing wrong with that. Completely. Like, that's an absurd thing to try to pretend that this is our moderate representation of the moderate voice. I think it's an New York Times did a good job on the obituary. I'm not sure if you've seen the New York Times obituary, not the Ezra Klein thing.

But I thought they were pretty fair. They came out with it first, and it was like, here's Charlie Kirk, here's who he was to the right, here's who he was. And they listed a bunch of things that he had said and a bunch of, you know, beliefs that he held openly. And you decide for yourself. And I think that they did it in the most measured way. Yeah. And people are mad at them for saying, of course, for being honest. And I think that's the telling part is that.

this sort of like play at civility to not include that. But if you do include it, then people get mad. It's like, well, he said that. So what do you want me to do? After Melissa Hortman and her husband and their dog were murdered in their home for political reasons, the right made memes about it. They made jokes about it. Even political, other elected officials from the right made jokes about it, nightmare on Wall Street and different things.

So I think even if the left didn't make memes or jokes about Charlie Kirk's death, and when I say the left, I mean like what they might consider. that are left-wing media, we would still be ahead of the civility curve when it comes to how do we receive this type of news and these types of tragedies. I don't know that they had to go all the way to try. And again, the left media is always trying to meet in the middle with the right. One, I think they're afraid to get picked on or called out. And two, they're like, they constantly have this like optimism that somehow this is going to be the one that brings us back to center and things back to normal. And it's never going back to normal. So you have to kind of like be realistic about

where it was, and I think the New York Times was the most realistic without adding a bunch of, you know, opinion to it. It was just like, boop, boop, boop, take what you want from it. It's just because I just think a lot of people maybe, there's plenty of people that celebrate every single thing in that list, you know. And I think that there's also other people that are like, well, that has to be a misrepresentation. That's taken out of context. And look, I'm afraid of being taken out of context. I do think it's easy to get misrepresentation. And I do think it's easy to get misrepresented, but when somebody says the same thing over and over again,

the context doesn't change things that much. You know, it just doesn't. And everybody's very heightened in emotions right now, but I do think maybe they're like, oh,

there of course, the left is misrepresenting, misframing, and it's like, no, this is just the straight up fact. Yeah, I think they're afraid of... He said horrific things. I think we might be do, and I think we might be due for another gut punch from this situation as Charlie Kirk is a human, because for whatever reason, he and his wife were doing a countdown to September 16th when they're going to make some big announcement. I don't know. But I am sorry for what that

might be. Yeah. I saw that as well. And I think, you know, obviously there was a lot of things that hit me yesterday, not. And I think like, you know, I think of Charlie Kirk and his rhetoric and who he was as a job and I don't align with any of that. And then I think of like just like as a person who exists in this world, the things that were relatable and hurt and scared me. And that was one of them, right? Like looking forward to announcing probably good news with your wife is something that was stolen for you because of maybe it maybe because of the work that you do. Maybe not because of the work that you do. But I just, I struggled more with is this the first millennial who has been assassinated in a political or gun violence way on a major stage? You know,

all these types of things and knowing that nothing will change. Steve Scalise got shot at during a congressional baseball practice and that changed nothing. Even when they shot at people who survived, it changes nothing for them. So I think it was hard to see someone of like my age, someone

who, as much as we don't align on beliefs, was doing stuff that I'm doing at the same time, and then to watch them be assassinated, like was very like facing your own mortality for young people type thing. And for millennials, or, you know, anybody younger than that.

It was, it's just impossibly difficult. And then to be met with so much hate from his community is like, oh, my God, we really aren't going to change anything, huh? Even this didn't make us stop for a second. I wanted to add that there was a school shooting yesterday. Yes. In addition to this. I don't know if we, I don't think we've mentioned that yet.

And bomb threats and hoaxes and a false, uh, the report of a mass shooting at UMass, which was a false alert like swatting is going on all over the place it's it's no surprise yeah well and then it was just this framing of like of i think you laid out very well some of the complex emotions that this has brought up at least for those of us here i'm sure for people at home as well but especially since that we work in a similar medium talking about politics in the news and there's that yeah but there's also just the juxtaposition of like well wait a minute i'm i'm i'm i'm We're against violence. I am against guns. We on by and large, the Democratic Party are people that are voting for regulations on gun control that I've been talking for decades now about trying to stop the scourge of violence and the increasing rhetoric. And it's like we can't win here. We can't. I don't. I don't. Instead, but we are getting piled upon about like we did this. We did this. We did. this. Again, don't know who shot this. We don't know who the shooter was, but it's overwhelming

and adds as such an interest, a terrible layer to this. Yeah, and the tense like juxtapositions and contradictions because, you know, from him, we've, we alluded to that quote of him saying, like, well, you know, a certain amount of gun deaths a year is like a worthwhile sacrifice to keep our guns. It's promoting, you know, the genocide in Gaza, all these sort of like violent parts of his ideology and his political project and then you have all the feelings that you're talking about and just the sort of that tension is it's very hard to sift through it just it just made me think is it was it worth it Charlie like you made us so much money you got to marry a former pageant girl you were on top of the world for the world that you

wanted to be in was it worth it was it worth it everything that you did right and all of this rhetoric and defending guns and defending the right-wing extremism and having no checks and really rallying these people to hate. And like, was it worth it? And I think it made me look at my work and go, is this worth it? Like, what am I doing? What am I going to do here? There was somebody, one of the kids from the UnFuck America tour was on stream last night talking about how their career was over now because their whole career was sort of focused on like this back and forth debate bro culture of like going after Charlie Kirk and trying to get them to debate them. and then the right kids try to get Hassan to debate them.

And it was sort of fun. It was gamified for some level of people who haven't fully reached adulthood and consequence yet. It was gamified still. They were learning about the world. And now they're like, it's over. That's over. And for me, I'm like, okay, is this worth it?

Is coming on every single day and trying to point out the flaws in certain people in the right who are super extremists and dangerous? Like, is that worth it? Is it what is it we're fucking doing? It's like what I've been feeling since yesterday and today is like business as usual can't be business as usual. The way we talk about the news, the way we're used to sort of going back and forth and having no consequence, there's consequence.

So what does our work look like now? All of us here. You know, we still have to fight fascism. We still have to fight for our communities and the rights that are being stripped away. But in what way we do that, I think that's the anger I have is I feel like the systems to push back on anything are now dangerous lanes full of dead bodies and crazy

people and like how do we rebuild a pathway of civility to talk about our differences and make the world a better place for everyone, not just whatever this is. Yeah, I know. And that's my crash out on your show. You shouldn't have invited me the day after.

No, it's such a good point and it's something I think about a lot. You know, there's you want your company to grow You want more people to be a part of your platform. You want to reach more people. And for a while, even before this, I have been struggling myself with what's the balance? How much of myself, of ourselves, how much am I asking our team to give?

Do you want to elevate your profile up anymore? Do you want to reach more people? Because when you do, you are reaching more of the other kinds of. of people as well. What are the long-term ramifications? What if somebody takes something you say out of context and uses it to justify something really egregious? There are so many questions that weigh on my mind and in my heart even prior to this. And I think it's valuable. And I am so grateful for this community and for the other shows. I listen to your platform because it makes me feel not alone and I think it's valuable but it is it's a terrifying reality and it's really hard

to parse out and navigate what's the best choice for for me and for everybody yeah it's a huge I know he's your friend but I like I'm waiting for Robert Evans to tell me what to do like I don't know is that not a good one probably no I mean probably tell you to start like a kitchen fire at home to I listen to too much behind the bastards and too much it could happen here and I'm like, Robert Evans, what do we do? I know. I was thinking that we should reach out to him to get the band back together soon. But, yeah, Robert would probably encourage everybody.

It's the worst year ever again, Katie. We need to get the band back together. So what you're saying is you want this exact show, but you want to replace me with someone else is what you're saying. No, replace me with Robert, and then I can tune in for an episode and he can tell us all what to do. No, it's great. Like, I like Robert.

He is also here. It's great. Just think of all the people in our community that I go listen to and try to like gain something from, you know? I haven't checked into Robert's feed. But I would imagine it would be along the lines of

shoring up your own community and your own resources. He'd probably suggest protecting yourself and other things. And yeah, maybe start a kitchen fire or a commune. Just for fun. Just for fun.

And that's just the kitchen fire things are just to blow off the team. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, learning new skills and, yeah, building community and keeping safe and protecting yourself and reaching out to those who might be having a harder time with having just seen that. Yes. And being a support system for each other.

Yeah. V, you are a wonderful guest. And as I alluded to, normally we start, we ease. into things up top and ask questions and get to know people. But I do feel like we got to know you throughout the show. But before we go, if you could give us a little, just describe what it is. I've gotten a good sense throughout this show. But describe what you guys do over there and plug it and all the things.

So the show is called Under the Desk News. It's on all your social media platforms. Started on TikTok, really starting to grow on YouTube. We're getting in our long form era now. Also have a substack if you'd like to support the substack. Love the long-form love the substackery. And the promise of Under the Desk News is to give you the day's news and events in a calm way from a safe space. So it's a place where we know horrible things are happening and we're going to talk about those horrible things.

But I don't use video or photos typically. So if you're a sensory person or a news avoidant person, this is a place you can kind of just check in. Give me two, three minutes of your day when you're in the bathroom or right before you go to sleep. I'm going to tell you what happened in a way that allows you to process it. It feels smart, but not feel like all shook up about it. It's like, it's Monday night, and here's what happened. We use a nice calm voice. We get right through it.

No big deal. Oh, you're the opposite of this. What are you talking about? Our content machine is like grinding up. Yeah, me and Cody are opposite. That feels more emotionally sustainable and whatnot. Katie, are you defecting from our standpoint? It can be.

It can be. I do a lot of crying before I do episodes sometime. So I just get it out or after. Yeah. So come on over here. It's physically, I perform it from under my desk. So it's a physical safe space. And the fans over there have called themselves the dust bunnies because, again, we are just there to sort of observe what's going on and not always to like take it on our heart. We do some calls to action and some action item things. But over there, it's really like, hey, let me give you the basics of what's going on. So you don't get scared in real life when somebody brings it up or feel like you're not caught up on things. love that definitely everybody should go check that out um sounds like a really really good still check this out we'll get your blood pressure back us again we'll get a calmer pop one day yes me and alex perlman are best friends he's the screaming guy on ticot and i think you need both right you need a place to release your your righteous rage and you need a place to be like okay i i i miss

the news today but it's bedtime can be just tell me quick what happened and then i'll release my righteous range the next day with the podcast. Perfect. It's, yeah, they go hand in hand. It takes all of us. It takes all of us. Well, thank you again so much for joining us today of all days. Thank you, everybody, for listening, for watching, as always.

Just really appreciate you all. I hope you are able to take care of yourself for the next few days. It was you weighed through these very complicated feelings. I hope you are able to take a step back from social media. It can be helpful to look sometimes, but it is disgusting out there on all sides. So, yeah, just take care of yourselves. And we'll be back Monday.

And also, we love you very much. Much, I see, I see, I see.