The David Pakman Show - 9/15/25: A dangerous moment for the US after Kirk shooting

Episode Date: September 15, 2025

-- On the Show: -- Every major Democratic voice and mainstream left commentator condemns Charlie Kirk’s murder, while Donald Trump and many on the right turn violence into mockery -- The Charlie Kirk shooting shows that a pro-gun, two-parent, law-enforcement family upbringing does not prevent shootings -- Kari Lake falsely blames college radicalization for Charlie Kirk's murder despite his killer's single virtual semester at Utah State University -- Trump and MAGA leaders pivot from facts to blaming platforms and push a crackdown that targets independent social media -- Trump uses a press conference about the Charlie Kirk killing to attack the left and repeat false narratives about investigations -- Trump responds to a condolence question about Charlie Kirk by pivoting to brag about the White House ballroom project -- Eric Trump frames Charlie Kirk’s death as proof of a “sleeping enemy” awoken and issues thinly veiled threats of retribution -- Fox News host Brian Kilmeade suggests involuntary lethal injection for people experiencing homelessness -- Calls to release full Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell records continue -- On the Bonus Show: Right-wing blames Charlie Kirk murder on "fascist" label, MSNBC vs Fox double standards over incendiary rhetoric, Kathy Hochul endorses Zohran Mamdani, and much more... 💻 Get Private Internet Access for 83% OFF + 4 months free at https://www.piavpn.com/David 🔬 Freedom From Religion Foundation: Text DAVID to 511511 or visit https://ffrf.us/school 🥐 Wildgrain: Use code PAKMAN for $30 off & free baked goods at https://wildgrain.com/pakman -- Become a Member: https://davidpakman.com/membership -- Subscribe to our (FREE) Substack newsletter: https://davidpakman.substack.com -- Get David's Books: https://davidpakman.com/echo -- TDPS Subreddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/thedavidpakmanshow -- David on Bluesky: https://davidpakman.com/bluesky -- David on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/davidpakmanshow (00:00) Kirk’s murder condemned, right mocks violence (07:39) Upbringing doesn’t prevent shootings (18:09) Kari Lake wrongly blames college (26:42) Trump/MAGA blame platforms, target social media (33:54) Trump attacks left, spreads false narratives (40:12) Trump pivots to White House ballroom brag (44:11) Eric Trump frames Kirk’s death as “enemy” awakening (50:28) Kilmeade suggests lethal injection for homeless (57:56) Calls for Epstein/Maxwell records continue  

Hey, this is Dan Harris, host of the 10% Happier Podcast. I'm here to tell you about a new series we're running this September on 10% Happier. The goal is to help you do your life better. The series is called Reset. It's all about hitting the reset button in many of the most crucial areas of your life. Each week will tackle a topic like how to reset your nervous system, how to reset your relationships, how to reset your career. We're going to bring on top-notch scientists and world-class meditation teachers to give you deep insights and actionable advice.

It's all delivered with our trademark blend of skepticism, humor, credibility, and practicality. 10% have here is self-help for smart people. Come join the party. Welcome, everybody. It is definitely the only time I can remember where doing this sort of work has felt like this. And I have had a lot of conversations with creation. over the weekend, having more of those conversations today. And there are a lot of really important things I think to talk about in the wake of this Charlie Kirk murder. And one of the

things I want to start with is this concept of condemnation. Anyone who knows me, you all know, I've already condemned Charlie Kirk's murder. There's no except for but or anything. We can talk about his political views. We can talk about whether we feel empathy for him. but I have condemned the murder and everyone I know on the left has done the same. Every serious person on the left has done the same. MAGA insists that the left is cheering this on. And that's just not true. You know, except in the most like random anecdotal corners of the internet, the left has denounced

this. Elon Musk, for example, retweeted some account with close to zero followers. saying something horrible. But the reality is that every notable left-wing voice, every major Democratic figure, elected officials at the state, local, federal level, every mainstream commentator, everyone has condemned what took place. Now, there are some people who have clarified. I don't feel empathy for Charlie Kirk personally because I found his political views vile because of the damage that he caused, the disinformation, the bigotry, fine. But even those people have condemned the violence, and that is a really important distinction.

You don't have to suddenly feel empathy for Charlie Kirk as a person to say unequivocally with no mitigation ifs, sands, or buts whatsoever. This kind of violence is wrong, period. And that is where there is now a really important contrast that becomes very stark. When the target is on the left, the right doesn't just fail to show empathy, which now they're angry about, even though Charlie Kirk himself said, oh, you know, empathy, empathy's not a great thing. The right not only lacks empathy when the targets are on the left, they mock, they

laugh, and sometimes they even cheer. You know, think back to when Nancy Pelosi's husband, Paul Pelosi, was brutally attacked with a hammer in their home. And remember, of course, that they were looking for Nancy Pelosi. Donald Trump Jr. made fun of it. It was widely ridiculed. It was dismissed as not something serious and important to condemn. More recently, when the Minnesota House Speaker, Melissa Hortman, was murdered, a sitting Republican senator and a lot of MAGA commentator, joked about it when Joe Biden announced he had cancer. There were a lot of influencers

who mocked him for it or who didn't even believe it or thought it was part of some conspiracy theory. And that's not even the whole list. Like I could just do an hour with examples. But the point here is they've laughed about all of it. They laughed. I mean, this is thinking back away now, but they laughed about Gabby Giffords when the congresswoman Gabby Giffords was shot. They turned Hillary Clinton collapsing from pneumonia into a campaign meme. And they mocked John Fetterman's stroke and they laughed at his debate performance when he was still recovering from it. And they jeered and cheered when Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died. And so over and over again, there's been this reflex of cruelty, cruelty as entertainment.

a people who have suffered as the kind of punchline to jokes. And this is not new. This is a longstanding pattern. And yet it's been the right that has claimed that the left celebrates when bad things happen to right-wingers, whether it was Rush Limbaugh's illness, Trump testing positive for COVID, any number of right-wing figures facing health issues, except it's not true. the reality is that mainstream Democrats and progressive commentators and all of us, we condemn those celebrations. We saw those and said, I hope they recover quickly. I mean, go fact check me on it.

Go back to my coverage when Donald Trump had COVID and was brought by helicopter to Walter Reed. You'll find that there was nothing gleeful or joyful about it whatsoever, even when these are our political opponents. And I know it's such a low bar, but this is sort of of where we are. And it is the right that has consistently failed this empathy test, not the left. And now they have the audacity to say, where's the empathy? Where's the empathy for Charlie Kirk here? And so that's the real culture that we have to talk about. On the right, the cruelty is a feature. It's not a bug. And when they see violence, suffering, illness, even death, it's all fair game, as long as the victim isn't one of their own.

This is not the fringe that is doing it. When Elon Musk retweets someone with zero followers saying something about how they're glad Charlie Kirk was killed or whatever, that is the fringe. When it's Republican senators and governors and presidential candidates and Trump himself over and over and over, you realize that much like all of the other ideas and policies and principles that they abandon when they're inconvenient, the cruelty is the entire point.

And so now, when someone like Charlie Kirk is murdered, we have roundly condemned it. I have made clear, if you want to end gun violence, there can't be any instances of gun violence that you say you are even tacitly okay with. Just not a single one. We've all been extraordinarily clear. They want to act like they've rediscovered morality and like we are cheering something that we are not cheering about. Suddenly they go, see, look, this is what the left is like. But the truth is actually the opposite. We have consistently condemned it. They have turned violence into a punchline. Now, I know that when you look around online, it's actually difficult to keep up with every single element of this and who was this person and what did they

say? Did they actually say it or did they not? So I think in a situation like this, first of all, I hate to say this. Getting offline is probably a good idea. I mean, I have stopped even looking at Twitter. No matter what I say on Twitter, I glance at the comments. It's a complete disgusting cesspool. It becomes, you know, me being Jewish becomes a focus as if that is anything to do with any of this. I mean, it's a mess.

So I do encourage people to get offline. But focus on what you can control, which is that I know you aren't cheering this. I know you are condemning this, and all we can do is repeat time and time again. They have cheered many times for this sort of stuff. We aren't cheering. We are disgusted and sickened by this. All right. Let's talk about the motive.

What was the motive of Charlie Kirk's shooter? There are widespread speculations now, endless speculations, in fact. But the most important thing about the motive is that whatever the motive was, being raised in this wildly pro-gun, totally MAGA family, didn't prevent the shooter from ending up a shooter. And that is so critical to understand. You know, there is rampant speculation. The shooter is trans. That was the motivation. The shooter is not trans. The shooter has a trans partner, and that was the motivation. We're going to follow up on that in a moment. But the point here is, clearly the shooter hated Charlie Kirk.

That we know, that we can say for sure. But in terms of the theories that are being spouted here, they are wild and completely, completely without evidence. One, of course, is based on the idea that the shooter is a groiper. Now, if a groiper isn't a term you've heard before, groopers are like more aligned with somebody like Nick Fuentes. They're clearly on the right, but they're sort of of the belief that Trump and Kirk are, in some sense, traders to the right

wing. You could say they are even to the right of Trump and Kirk. We don't know that that is the case at all. And so I think we should be careful about saying that that's what's going on. Another hypothesis has been, well, it's mental illness. We always hear that. And to some degree, I would argue, anybody who's willing to carry out such an attack on some level is mentally ill, but that can often be a distraction. The battle that is happening in the propaganda space and on social media is that those on the left want to argue that this was a right-wing shooting. Those on the right want to argue that this was a left-wing shooting. They want to categorize it. They want to be able to check the box under the category that is most convenient

to them. But every single one of these analyses that I've heard, and actually even calling it an analysis is a little bit generous, something that's been missing from this is that Trump and Maga and Republicans in their various forms have been telling us for years that certain traits are good and godly and they are the best environment for a kid to be brought up in. They tell us if you grow up in a Christian household, that's the best thing for kids. It's the best. But in this case, growing up in this Christian household, religious family, did not inoculate Tyler Robinson from becoming a shooter and going out and murdering someone. They tell us that growing up around guns protects people. It's better for the people that have the guns. It's better for other people

in society. Growing up around guns is a good thing. And in this case, growing up in a gun nut family led to Robinson knowing how to use a rifle to kill someone from 200 feet away. And so certainly in terms of the specifics and even just in terms of the environment, the gun culture didn't keep society safer. And in fact, had he not grown up in such a family,

he probably wouldn't have had the skill to hit Charlie Kirk from 200 feet away or whatever distance it was. And you can keep going with this. They tell us that growing up in a two-periodic, parent household prevents radicalization and it keeps kids out of trouble. And the problem is single parents. Yet Tyler Robinson grew up in the much lauded two-parent household. It wasn't two dads or two moms, which they tell us is worse. It was a mom and a dad. And just like that, we saw that

that didn't prevent him from becoming a shooter either. And so oftentimes the right loves to pigeonhole the problem of gun violence as an issue of urban young men. That's code for black, usually when they say urban men. They're talking about black men. But Tyler Robinson is just a rural white guy or maybe it's suburban, suburban white guy. His father was in law enforcement. We're told there is no better environment for a kid to grow up in than with a family in law enforcement. It keeps you on the straight and narrow and prevents you from becoming a criminal. Well, it didn't work. Despite growing up, son of a cop, he ended up an alleged killer. And so that's the real hypocrisy here. Every so-called safeguard that the right insists is going to keep kids on the right path. Christian upbringing,

two parents, law enforcement in the family, respect for guns. All of that stuff was present in Tyler Robinson's life. And none of it mattered. For MAGA, Tyler Robinson's upbringing was really like their camelot. Red estate in the country. Grandma says everyone was MAGA. And so if these are the values that Republicans claim are the antidote to violence, to a life of crime, how do they explain that their model household produced the shooter? Trump even acknowledged this. How could this have happened given the right wing upbringing? Check this out. He's become radicalized. So many things I've been learned about him so quickly. He's become totally radicalized and crazy,

and it must have been traumatic because the parents are conservative people, supposed to be very nice people, living in Utah, and the father turns in the son. Boy, that's a tough deal. I actually asked somebody in the FBI, how often does that happen where knowing even the guilt

that a father will turn in or parents will turn in the son? And he said, almost never. So this really exposes what's been true all along. These talking points aren't really. really solutions. These are shields to avoid addressing the real issue. The only variable that shows up every single time is access to guns. The motives may differ, could be a personal grievance, could be ideology, could be mental health. But the common denominator is that someone angry had the tools and the training to kill somebody else. And if Robinson hadn't grown up

around firearms, it's unlikely he would have had the skill to hit someone from 200 feet away. And yet, instead of confronting reality, both sides rush into the mode of speculation, can we call this a left-wing attack, can we call it a right-wing attack? And the battle over the narrative is a distraction. The obsession with labels misses the deeper sickness here, which is that in America, if you have a grievance, you can turn it into violence because the weapons are there and Culturally, you know, we talk about this when we talk about, oh, in Switzerland, they have so many guns. Culturally, even if you don't believe it, even if many people don't believe it, the idea of guns as a way to solve interpersonal problems is too common.

So it's not about, oh, it's an urban issue. It's not about single parents. It's not about a godless household. This was a rural or suburban white kid from exactly the type of family that Republicans glorify. And still, he became a killer. allegedly. So the right is trying to spin this into a culture war sort of talking point situation, but the reality is that their perfect bubble in which the kid was raised isn't safe. So the better question isn't really what was his motive. It's why does this country make it so damn easy

for any grievance, any ideology, any angry young man to become a shooter? And they never want to talk about that. Now, just one other note. There's the idea that college radicalized him. him. We're going to talk about that later. He did a semester online during COVID. And so, by the way, not exactly at a liberal institution. So we're going to get back to the college thing. But the Camelot upbringing that every one of these Magus says this is the best possible thing, it ultimately produced a shooter. And if the argument is, well, the shooting came as a result of radicalization by the left, that certainly must have happened very recently. And 18, 19, 20 years of the right upbringing didn't even prevent that from happening. So either way, that's the most important

takeaway. If you've ever been blocked from going to certain websites or watching your favorite shows on Netflix because they're not available in your country, check out our sponsor private internet access, which is a VPN fully optimized for streaming and downloading large video files. It'll hide your real IP address and reroute your internet traffic through a secure server in any of 91 countries or all 50 US states. And this lets you access region restricted content on the web, as well as platforms like Netflix and Disney Plus and Amazon Prime, no matter where you are. I've been using private internet access to get soccer games from Argentina not available in the US. I love it. It's super easy. You open the app. You choose a server and you're in works

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You get an extra bonus show every day, commercial free audio and video streams of the show, available hours before the show is made public, and a whole bunch of other great stuff. And you're directly supporting the show at a time when, by the way, as you'll hear a little bit later today, It is sorely needed. Join pacman.com and you can use the coupon code. It will end soon, all one word, all lowercase, to save about 50% off of the cost of a membership. Let's talk about the indoctrination that comes from college according to the right wing. Carrie Lake failed, multi-time failed candidate, Carrie Lake, MAGA suckup, is blaming college for radicalizing Charlie Kirk's alleged shooter. The problem being, he didn't really go to college. He did one virtual semester during COVID, which is really difficult to imagine is going to become an extraordinary force of radicalization. Let's take a listen to what Carrie Lake had to say. We've got to stop this, folks. We can't let this go on. This violence has got to stop.

And I'm not going to say. And I'm not going to say our side is perfect, but damn it, this is coming from the other side. How does a 22-year-old become so filled with hate? Five years earlier, I was told he was a Trump. supporter and we sent our kids off to college and they brainwashed them i am making a plea to mothers out there do not send your children into these indoctrination camps so the one semester he did virtually at the not very woke utah state during covid is meant to supposedly over, replace or supplant 18, 19 years of being raised in a hardcore MAGA family, religious, gun enthusiasts.

As I said earlier in the show, a family that checked every box that MAGA says is the best environment for children to grow up in, we're supposed to believe, according to Kerry Lake, that just one semester of remote college during COVID changed all of that. And also, even though that was years ago, it only now led to the shooter allegedly taking action. The problem, of course, is that it doesn't make any sense. It doesn't make any sense not only because Utah State is not some radical left-wing indoctrination factory. It's, you could argue as mainstream as it gets or even probably a more a right-wing institution. But most importantly, I don't even really think Carrie Lake believes this. I think if Carrie Lake really believed it, she would keep her own kids out of college.

And I have to imagine Carrie Lake's own kids are going to go to college. And so she can stand on the stage and she's pleading with mothers. Don't send your kids to school. They're going to be indoctrinated. But when the time comes, I am sure that Carrie Lake is going to have no problem sending her kids off to higher education because I don't even think she believes this. This isn't really a principle. This is a performance. And it's another example of MAGA leaders telling their followers, you need to make a sacrifice, but they're never going to make the sacrifice. We need to sacrifice economically, they tell us. It's going to be a little painful in the short term because of the tariffs, but there's something good coming at the end of the rainbow. Just do it. But meanwhile,

Trump's not suffering. His billionaire buddies aren't suffering. The centimillionaireses, they're not suffering. You need to suffer. They don't. You need to sacrifice they don't. And so now Carrie Lake says your children shouldn't go to college, but hers, I'm sure, are going to. So I do think that there's a bigger story here that's important to talk about. This is a perfect example of something that authoritarian movements do. Now, in a moment, we're going to talk about the clamp down on media, social media, independent media that's coming as a result of this tragic killing. And that's also something that authoritarians love to do. But authoritarian's love to rewrite history to fit the narrative that they need. Now, you'll notice that I'll speak for myself. I said from the beginning,

whatever the motive of this shooter, whatever the ideology, whatever indoctrinated him, I am unequivocally on the side of condemning this, no matter how despicable Charlie Kirk's views were. I am on the side that violence is not the answer and that gun violence is not going to be the way to end gun violence. Gun violence is not going to be the way to improve society. That's me. But for them, tell whatever story will help to push your goals. And so when the facts become inconvenient, they are bent or reshaped or replaced with whatever is convenient to them. Now we've seen it. If you go back to January 6th, they insist it's a peaceful protest. We've seen it going back to November of 2020, where they insist Joe Biden didn't really win. It was Donald Trump who won. And so now we are seeing Kerry Lake insisting college radicalize the shooter. The real story is that he grew up in an environment that Carrie Lake believes is the perfect environment to grow up in. And if just one,

semester on his computer years ago is enough to undo 18, 19 years of the perfect idyllic upbringing in a pro-gun, MAGA, religious family, then maybe that environment isn't so good at raising kids. But that's not a reality they want to talk about. And so this is why authoritarianism can thrive in so many different scenarios. When you make people believe a lie about the past, You control their understanding of the present. They come to believe things about today based on things they've been lied to about the past. And then that affects their choices for the future. It's a classic from authoritarianism.

MAGA knows it. People like Stephen Miller know it. I don't know what Trump knows. You know, he doesn't seem particularly bright when it comes to this stuff. But Kerry Lake is doing it in real time. Now, one bonus clip here from Kerry Lake's speech yesterday at the Kennedy Center in memoriam. of Charlie Kirk, she says, the parents did a good job of raising him, but then they sent him off to be brainwashed. And this only reinforces exactly what I'm telling you. Take a look.

At one moment, that 22-year-old who shot Charlie was a baby in his mother's arms. And by all accounts, those parents did a good job raising him until he was sent off. off to be brainwashed. We have lived through the most horrific brainwashing campaign in the history of mankind. And the very fact that we're all here means we have somehow survived it. We've survived it. But too many youngsters are not surviving it. And we got to stand up. Because some things are non-negotiable. Our children's minds and futures are non-negotiable. So like I said earlier here and in the earlier segment, if this was a perfect upbringing and the parents did a good job for 18, 19 years, religion, guns, steeped in

you know, white people and Jesus and all the stuff they say is great. A couple months on his computer doing university undid all of that. Either colleges have figured out the most potent and powerful and rapid way in history to indoctrinate people, or maybe more likely, this upbringing that they consider to be perfect isn't actually the perfect model that they claim it to be. That's where I am on this issue. Donald Trump and Maga have wasted no time after Charlie Kirk's killing. Instead of waiting for the facts, they immediately pivoted to blaming the usual suspects.

It's the liberal media. It's social media. It's TikTok. It's podcasts. And of course, as Carrie Lake did, it's also universities. You can hear the talking points sort of forming in real time. And on Fox News, on right-wing radio, it's creeping into mainstream coverage. The problems are Reddit, TikTok, the platforms are the problem they are saying.

And the narrative is quickly becoming that this toxic online culture radicalized Tyler Robinson. Now, I will be the first to acknowledge. I've talked about it. I wrote about it in my book. I am the first to acknowledge. It is true that online spaces can foster extremism. But the target isn't extremist propaganda here. When you hear them talk about the problems with the platforms, they're not saying, you know, you go look for workout content. Next thing you know, you're on Jordan Peterson and the Nelk boys and Andrew Taint and all of these other people.

They are saying it's just the platforms that are the problem. And what do they mean by that? they mean that some of these platforms haven't bent to just Donald Trump and Stephen Miller telling them what they need to promote algorithmically and whatnot to. Here is a tweet, by the way, from Texas Governor Greg Abbott about the free speech clampdown that they are gloriously joyful about, where there is a picture of a young woman in handcuffs with the text, this is what happened to the person who was mocking Charlie Kirk's assassination at Texas Tech. Now, I don't mock the deaths of people. I don't celebrate

gun violence. I think this is all deplorable and disgusting. And even though I disagreed with Charlie Kirk about just about everything, disagreed with him about the Civil Rights Act, disagreed with him about Black pilots, disagreed with him about Martin Luther King, about abortion, bodily autonomy. I disagree with them about just about everything. I don't believe that the answer here is a clamp down on speech. And this is straight out of the authoritarian playbook. History is full of leaders who take a crisis. Doesn't matter what the crisis is, any crisis, they twist it into an excuse to silence critics

and to suppress speech. And, you know, we could spend a whole show on examples. Erdogan did it in Turkey after a coup. attempt. They said, oh, security concerns mean we have to wipe out opposition media. Victor Orban in Hungary went after independent outlets labeling them foreign influenced when they became inconvenient. We've seen, I mean, look at Putin, right, shutting down alternatives to Twitter in Russia under the guise of keeping the nation stable. So what you are seeing right now is Donald Trump reaching for the same page in the manual. We've got a tragedy. We're going to use it to do a

crackdown. And notice, by the way, how the media, legacy and corporate media is mostly playing along. They may mean to. They may not. But there are even some independent and centrist outlets, non-political outlets, that have slipped into this very casually. They go, you know, the things that are going on on Reddit, the things that are going on on TikTok. And meanwhile, you've got MAGA platforms like Truth Social and Rumble and you've got right-wing extremist. telegram channels. These are fire hoses of violent rhetoric, conspiracy theories, openly insightful stuff. I-N-C-I-T-E is what I'm talking about. And they get a pass. And so the hypocrisy really couldn't be more obvious. When it is their platforms, it's free speech. And in fact, the Wright loves

to say this is a free speech platform, which I find one of the sort of dumbest doxymorons out there. When it's anyone else's platform or it's a neutral platform or it's a non-political platform, it's dangerous indoctrination and we've got to shut it down. So if this succeeds and later we're going to get into how this might affect us and specifically progressive independent media, if they succeed, if they use this to try to shut down Reddit or limited or say, hey, we really got to ban TikTok now or whatever, things are only going to get worse. YouTube and podcasts, independent media across the board are going to suffer. And that's only going to lead to more radicalization by not providing alternatives to that

Manosphere ecosystem that algorithmically gets people sucked into a lot of this stuff. So understand that when they talk about free speech, their version of free speech is Fox News, News Mac, and Truth Social are the only platforms left. Twitter becomes a right-wing farce, which it already has. Everybody else is either silenced or forced underground where the platforms won't have their content and they've got to figure out how to get their message out using. I guess their own platforms, which they have to create. So this is much bigger than TikTok or Reddit. This is about the precedent of tragedy weaponized into excuses to suppress speech and to do authoritarian

crackdowns. And so when they say we've got to go against the extremism, Trump said yesterday, the extremism is only on the left. And so by definition, when they go for the extremism, they're coming for the left. This is potentially the perfect moment to do it. It's clear they're setting their sights on progressive independent media, which we'll talk about after the break. There was a time when public education meant learning math, science, history, but now we are seeing Bible verses in biology class. We're seeing 10 commandments on the wall, religious chaplains taking the place of trained counselors, and it's all funded by taxpayer money through voucher programs that are sending public dollars to private religious schools. This is part of a broader effort to inject religion into public education. I'm against that.

And it often is coming at the expense of real academic standards and the well-being of the students. Now our sponsor, the Freedom from Religion Foundation, is fighting back. FFRF defends constitutional principles, takes legal action when schools cross the line, and protects students from religious coercion in public classrooms. If you believe in facts in protecting education and keeping religion out of public schools, I can tell you this is an organization very much worth supporting. To get involved, go to fFRF.org slash school or text David to 511-511. Message and data rates may apply.

The link is in the description. For the first time that I can remember in all of my years doing this, we have a president of the United States signaling that he is coming for us. Donald Trump spoke just hours ago and said a number of outrageous and disgusting things, but one of the things that Donald Trump revealed is that the left is already under investigation, that those who, I guess, said things that Trump wrongly believes may have radicalized Charlie Kirk's alleged shooter were already under investigation. Now, does this include me personally?

I have no idea. But it is clear where they are setting their sights and targets. Take a look at this. We'll see. we'll be announcing. They're already under investigation. They're already under investigation. This is a problem not only because it's personally terrifying.

This is a problem not only because it is a dangerous and disgusting authoritarian crackdown, if indeed it is what he is going to do. This is a problem because it is based, as is often the case with these folks, in misunderstandings or just straight up lies about the origins of this radicalization. And we need only look at another statement Donald Trump made during the same sort of press event to understand that, where Trump says, the only problem here is the left. Take a listen to this. Well, the problem is on the left.

Well, the problem is on the left. If you look at the problem, the problem is on the left. It's not on the right, like some people like to say on the right. The problem we have is on the left. And when you look at the agitators, you look at the scum that speaks so badly of our country, The American flag burnings all over the place. That's the left. That's not the right.

I do not believe that any political side is perfect. I would never go out there and suggest that there is no radicalization or extremism on the left because that's not true. There is some. But we have to be honest about proportion and we have to be honest about scale. And you can look at any report, CSIS, You can look at Anti-Defamation League, you can look at Pew, you can look at any of them. And overwhelmingly, political violence in the United States comes from the right. To the extent that it comes from the left, I also denounce it.

And we should do everything we can to stop it. I'm nonpartisan in that. I don't want any political violence. If I'm against violence, I can't also say, but some of it is okay, as long as it's perpetrated by the right side. Of course not. I would be a hypocrite. But being a hypocrite still sort of matters on the left.

For the right, it doesn't make any difference whatsoever. Any principle, any idea is immediately abandoned when politically inconvenient or applied in a way that they don't like. They just go, ah, the problem is only on the left here. So think about the combination of this. Donald Trump is saying the left is under investigation. We're looking at the platforms. We're looking at the media outlets.

We're looking at all of it. And by the way, this is only a problem on the left. Now, you look at a bunch of different academic studies, and maybe I'll follow up on this later this week when I'm back in the studio and it's easier to do it. A number of studies have shown that when you start with ostensibly nonpartisan, non-political content on social media, the natural pipeline is to right-wing content. If you go on YouTube or TikTok and you want information about real estate wholesaling, supplements, workout routines, self-help. I could go on. You are extremely unlikely to be routed

into further and further left-wing content. You are very likely to end up following guys on steroids who teach you sales, who also say that unless you're religious, you're not going to succeed in sales, and by the way, they support Donald Trump. You're much more likely to end up fed content from the Jordan Peterson's of the world and the Andrew Tates and these sorts of people. So it's not only that Trump is sort of wrong and that the problem isn't only on the left. It's mostly on the right, but don't take my word for it or Trump's, right? Fact check both of us, and this is the difference. I don't pretend to be the ultimate source of truth.

My understanding of the data is that political violence in the U.S. comes mostly from the right and that the radicalization is mostly pushing to the right, whatever this anecdote says. But don't take my word for it, but don't take Trump's either. Go and find out for yourself. Okay. Meanwhile, Donald Trump, during the same press event, unable to get away from the same failed notions about economics. I just include this only as a sort of he still doesn't understand tariffs. Take a look. Okay. Okay.

Go ahead. How will you talk today? Good. We had talks going on. Scott Besson is there and some others. Jameson is here. And yeah, I think they're going fine. We're going to see, but we've hit them very hard in so many other ways.

I don't know if you know. Do you know what they're paying right now? What are they paying right now? You know what China is paying right now in tariffs? A lot. Yeah. So reminder, China is paying. zero in tariffs. The tariffs are paid by American companies. They pass the cost on to you in the

form of higher prices. And that's why prices are ticking up. But maybe even more disgusting and disturbing than all of this is how quickly Donald Trump has moved on from the killing of his supposed friend, Charlie Kirk. A cold-hearted Donald Trump within just hours of finding out about the identity of the alleged shooter of Charlie Kirk, his friend, Trump moved on, and he said, what about my ballroom that is over there? Don't believe me. Take a look at this clip. Trump given condolences for his loss. How are you holding up? Trump goes, pretty good. By the way, look over there. They are building my ballroom. Take a look. I can go over to the law for the 10th and a half good.

How are you holding up for the last day and a half good? I think very good. And by the way, right there, you see all the trucks. They just started construction of the new borough for the White House, which is something they've been trying to get, as you know, for about 150 years. And it's going to be a beauty. It'll be an absolute and magnificent structure. And I just see all the trucks.

We just started. So it'll get done very nicely. and it would be one of the best anywhere in the world, actually. Donald Trump was asked a simple human question. How are you holding up after the murder of Charlie Kirk, your supposed friend, your ally? And Trump goes very good. And by the way, look over there. We're building the ballroom.

It's going to be beautiful. It's not condolences for the family. It's not outrage about the killing. It's not the slightest sign of grief. It's very good. Look at my shiny new project. This is bizarre behavior. Now, if I am to be charitable, and I always try to be charitable, this could be a trauma or shock response from Donald Trump.

It's so painful and it's so overwhelming, the grief that Trump is experiencing, that he almost dissociates and he moves. on and he has to point to something else and go, I'm doing pretty well, even though he's not, and it's so difficult, he goes, look at my ballroom over there. I don't think that that's what this is. This tracks with how Trump always is. Everything is an opportunity to talk about himself. In the middle of a tragedy, his instinct is pivot away from the people and pivot towards spectacle. my big, beautiful ballroom and the branding and the legacy and the gold leaf and the gold trim. It's sort of the salesman in Trump. The fact that Charlie Kirk was gunned down doesn't even make him pause.

It becomes background noise for Donald Trump's next pitch of what he wants to sell you. And this is kind of sad. I mean, it does, in a way, I feel sad for Trump that he's so disconnected from feeling in this way. this is a pattern we've pointed out before. Trump doesn't really have friends in the normal sense of the word. He has allies who he's friendly with. He has employees. He has clingers and hangers on.

But he doesn't really seem to have these mutual emotional bonds that make loss palpable and tangible in any way. And this is why we saw the same thing after Puerto Rico, after COVID deaths, after soldiers killed in action. if the suffering doesn't personally touch Trump, it's almost like it doesn't exist or it becomes a prop for self-promotion. Charlie Kirk gave his career and ultimately gave his life to boosting Trump and boosting MAGA. And in the end, Trump can't even fake 15 seconds of real compassion. So, yeah, Trump seems emotionally hampered and limited for sure. Maybe this is a trauma response.

to some degree. But at the end of the day, it's the same thing we always see from Trump. And it is really, you want to talk about lack of empathy and lack of feeling. It's right there in the Oval Office. Eric Trump has never really been known to be the smart one. And he seemed to issue even more threats on Fox News showing up there yesterday just after Charlie Kirk's death. And he says that they have awoken that sleeping. enemy, which is yet another one of these very thinly veiled threats. Take a listen. They were being taught revisionist history in the classrooms. And honestly, it all changed. And honestly, that it all has Charlie's DNA in it. So we're going to miss a great friend,

but they have definitely awoken that, that's sleeping enemy. Eric, thank you. Condolences to you and friends. Now, Eric can't just stop there. He takes Charlie Kirk's death. says they've awoken a sleeping enemy. This is the maga script. Tragedy as proof of righteousness, victimhood as justification for escalation. By making themselves the Trump family, the MAGA movement, the victims, they justify escalating, which is sadly something that a lot of authoritarian do. And you wouldn't necessarily have assumed that the killing of Charlie Kirk would become a catalyst for an even bigger escalation of authoritarianism.

Maybe you would have assumed that, but that is ultimately what it has become. They rail against the snowflakes, they rail against victim culture, but they are addicted to it. They say this grievance culture on the left is bad. They are pushing the grievance culture because every single event, no matter how tragic,

simply becomes an excuse to say, we are the martyrs, we are the victims, we are under siege, and therefore retribution is justified. And my fear is that the MAGA people that rioted on January 6th are listening and that they are going to take action. And so when Eric Trump says they've awoken a sleeping enemy, these are threats plain and simple.

We have to think about them that way. This is the coded language that MAGA falls back on, paint themselves as peaceful until supposedly someone pushes them too far and now they have to take action. Now it's, listen, the left pushed it. Now we've got to take action. And so when Trump does his, we don't want violence, but if you don't stop us, who knows what might happen? It's the exact same sort of thing.

And so this is a message meant to intimidate. It's meant to suggest that MAGA's enemies should be ready for a backlash without Eric Trump ever having to spell out what it is. It's similar to Trump's rhetoric on January 6, 2021 that led to the riots. And Eric Trump is back to tell. this sort of, you know, too perfect to be true anecdote type to suggest that everyone supports this idea. And in fact, he has one of these stories. It's these with tears in my eyes, they said, sir, Eric says that on the way to the studio, an older Jamaican man said to him

in broken English, how sorry he is about Charlie Kirk. Take a listen. And it kind of rings true here. That's exactly what you did. Literally, as I was showing up to the studio, Maria, there was an older Jamaican man who came up to me in very broken English and said, Mr. Trump, I'm very sorry about Charlie Kirk. He was an amazing Christian. I am Charlie Kirk, right? Yeah, the guy was sobbing and he just said, sir, please, please do something about it. And then during the very same interview, Eric Trump back to these sorts of thinly veiled threats. Everybody, I've had employees, Maria, call me and say, my children, my 17-year-old daughter has been in her room crying. It's changed her immensely. I mean, this

is transcending not only the youth generation, but also the older generations. This is a hit on our country. It's a hit on our movement. It's a hit on Christianity. It's a hit on religion. It's a hit on freedom. It's, you know, kind of, you know, emphasizes the economy between, you know, good and evil in this country. And they truly have awoken that sleeping giant, just not within the youth vote, but really transcending everybody who's in this nation. It's had such a profound effect on this nation. And seeing Erica on there, she was so

unbelievably articulate, so unbelievably strong. This could have been the greatest mistake these people have ever made. And Eric, you have a new memoir. This is, this is, this is very serious. I wish that I could come to you and say, there's no real concern here about escalating violence. I wish that I could say that to you, but I'd be lying. And I don't know exactly where the violence might come from. I don't know who would be the target of the violence, but this is shaping up to be extraordinarily scary. And I know some creators that are taking pretty drastic measures as a result. We'll talk about that more later or maybe tomorrow. One of the best upgrades I've ever made to the meals I make at home is wild grain. Wild grain lets me have high quality baked goods ready at home whenever

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description. Fox News host Brian Kilmead suggested simply killing homeless people. And why would that be something that a Fox News host suggests? Well, to some degree, we are seeing a great disinhibition. explain that in a moment. Let's take a look at the clip of what he had to say. Billions of dollars to mental health and the homeless population, a lot of them don't want to take the programs. A lot of them don't want to get the help that is necessary. You can't give them a choice. Either you take the resources that we're going to give you or you decide that you're going to be locked up in gym. That's the way it has to be now. Or involuntary lethal injection or something. Just kill them.

Brian, why did it have to get to this point? Right. I would say this. We're not voting for the right people in North Carolina, wake up. So Brian Kilmead is floating involuntary lethal injection for people living on the street. His co-hosts barely flinch and they just keep going. Think about what that means. We've got a host of the most watched right wing network saying that the solution to poverty and to mental illness is state-sanctioned murder. No outrage, no accountability other than a bad apology. And to, in a sense, this was so bad that Fox News even made him apologize. Take a look at the apology.

In the morning, we were discussing the murder of Arena Zerushka and Charlotte, North Carolina. How to stop these kinds of attacks by homeless, mentally ill assailants, including institutionalizing or jailing such people so they cannot attack again. Now, during that discussion, I wrongly said they should get lethal interjections. I apologize for that extremely callous remark. I'm obviously aware that not all mentally ill homeless people act as the perpetrator did in North Carolina and that so many homeless people deserve our empathy and compassion. Why is it that this is going on?

There is a great disinhibition taking place here, and it comes from the top. The disinhibition, when the president of the United States, says, we're just going to federalize and militarize, wow, I did not expect to struggle with that one, militarize Washington, D.C. It's justified because Trump said it is. We're going to roll through the streets and oppress and suppress. So, of course, if you're a Fox News host, you go, let's go even further. We see this tragic instance of gun violence, the essentially assassination of Charlie Kirk. By the way, there were 20 other shootings on that day. They got relatively little attention. But, okay, we had a day with 21 shootings, might have been 25,

might have been 30. And they, to a degree, now have said it's open season on liberals. And so, of course, Brian Kilmead is disinhibited. And this, by the way, the specifics of lethal injection, this all has a very ugly history. States like North Carolina forcibly sterilized, poor people into the 1970s. Hitler admired American race laws when he designed his system. And so we like to pretend that there's nothing American about Brian Kilmead's rhetoric. And I would argue there shouldn't be anything considered American about that. But it unfortunately is sort of part of the ugly side of America's DNA.

And Kilmead still wants it to be part of it, I guess. Here's the other piece of this. This is kind of where our system will naturally drift when you commodify survival. Capitalism in its most extreme forms treats housing, health care, and food as products that you earn. And if you haven't earned them, you don't get them. Now, you might say, David, that sounds like socialist rhetoric. Now, you all know I'm not a socialist.

But if you look at social democracies, countries that are capitalist countries, but they are regulated, they ensure that no one falls too low when it comes to standard of living. Social democracies, which are capitalist countries, again, I repeat it because people seem to forget, they say we have a market economy. If you want to sell some kind of expensive basketball sneaker for $200, you can do it. But we are going to look at certain things, housing, health care, maybe even food, as things that just everybody deserves. We are a better society and everyone has more dignity when everybody has a place to live.

And if you can't afford a place to live, you don't get punished as if it's a personal failing. The logic of inject the homeless with lethal injection is that if you don't have a home, it's a personal failing and you deserve some kind of punishment. Now, I am on a personal level, the whole like, I like working hard, I want to build something, I don't want help from others. On a personal level, I identify with that. But I also recognize that my circumstances, which I had no involvement in creating, allowed me to be in a position to do that. And so even if that resonates with me, I still believe in a strong social safety net.

There are a lot of these people on the right who go, well, I was able to just figure out how to be successful and afford a home and food and health care and whatever. Therefore, anyone should be able to do it. And if they don't, it's their fault and the government should do nothing to help. put aside for a moment that from a fiscal perspective, it's actually better just to pay for these things than to incur the costs of people not having homes and not having health care and not having food, which makes them desperate, which raises crime and causes social costs. Forget about that for a second. I don't know if they care about that.

Why can't we consider that just because we were in a position to do something, others may not have been? Why can't we imagine that? Anyway, this is like social Darwinism dressed up as business. casual. And if you follow this logic to the extreme, you get what Kilmead said, which is like, hey, we found some unproductive people by our definition of productivity. Why don't we just eliminate them? So I started the show by saying the cruelty isn't a bug. It's not a bug. It's a feature. And it's also the business model. And I don't believe that Fox airs this sort of stuff by accident. This is how they keep people glued to the screen. And the more shocking, the better.

the more dehumanizing, the better. Kilmead was apparently forced to apologize. He's not going to be punished. He'll probably get a ratings bump. And in Trump's America, saying the unsayable isn't a career-ending scandal. It's sort of like a resume builder. Wow. Kilmead's got some edgy stuff.

We often see, and this is, you know, we get back to retribution and violence leading to more violence. You often see, over the last 150 years, dehumanization, right. before violence. And so if there are people willing to say this out loud, lethal injection for homeless people, imagine what they're willing to say or push for behind the scenes. And that's terrifying. This is a window into the authoritarian mindset. Everything is pushing them in this direction. And by the way, if you think we've forgotten about those files, we haven't. So guys, where are the Epstein files? Because while everybody's understandably focused on Charlie Kirk's assassination. Trump is killing people with a strike on a Venezuelan vote, a boat. We are all left

to wonder, where are the Epstein files? And we're not going to forget. Now, I know that there are a lot of people posting to social media that there was a motive to have Kirk killed, to distract from the Epstein files. I don't believe that. There is no evidence of that whatsoever. But where we are is that there are a lot of people in Trump's circle who would love to move on from the Epstein files, whatever the opportunity is to do that. And so where we are today is that the House Oversight Committee has dumped 33,000 pages of Justice Department files and Epstein's estate documents are out, the birthday book, the sketches, the photos, all of that stuff. but we do not have the key documents, and we aren't forgetting about it. Every time a Republican goes, we released 33,000 pages. It sounds like progress.

It sounds like we're moving in a direction that is going to be one of transparency and full disclosure. But if you just scratch beneath the surface a little bit, we find that we are nowhere near the transparency we were promised on the Epstein files. Senate Republicans kill the Democratic amendment. which would have forced the release of all the files, which is what we want. Many of the pages that have been released are heavily redacted. I saw one page that has like just the page number on it or like one word. Everything else has been redacted.

And we still have the really important materials. The client lists, the detailed flight logs, the correspondence with powerful people, it's sealed. And so when Trump talks about transparency, we get lawsuits, denials, and excuses. And the piece that almost never makes it into the headlines is that Trump has skin in the game here. He shows up in pictures with Epstein. His name is in the birthday book. He's on record saying he knows Epstein, likes them young, and all of this stuff. So my pledge to you is that I am not going to forget about this.

Legacy and corporate media have gone along with bearing the story. They have benefited from the Venezuela situation. the Charlie Kirk assassination, not because they are planned distractions, but because they are convenient distractions. And by playing all of that up, we get away from where are the damn files? I'm not going to get distracted. Kirk's murder matters. We are now worried about an authoritarian crackdown. We're worried about retribution and so on. Venezuela matters. Was that even legal? J.D. Vance said, I don't give a shit if it's legal. It matters. and we're going to talk about it. But the files matter too, because we've got the survivors

who we finally have started to hear from, but who have been mostly ignored since this entire thing started. The powerful being held accountable also matters. And the longer they delay, now we get a week and a half from the Kirk murder. Next week we may get something else. They can cast doubt. They can argue that is a closed book because the files did come out. And until the full truth is out, we need to remember that the question doesn't go away. So I will ask again, where are the Epstein files? We're not forgetting about it. We've got a great bonus show for you today.

We're going to talk about the use of the term fascist because Trump has also used it against the left, even though it's assumed any time you hear the word fascist, it's someone from the left using it about the right. Trump has used it about the left before. We're going to talk about an MSNBC reporter that was fired for a comment he made immediately after the Kirk shooting and whether that was justified. We are also going to talk about Governor Kathy Hokel endorsing Mamdani for mayor of New York City and a whole bunch of other stuff.

All of it on today's bonus show. Sign up at joinpackman.com. You'll get instant access. You'll get the bonus show. you'll get the commercial free audio video streams and all of it. Also make sure you're subscribed to my substack, substack.com. We've got some great substack lives planned for this week. So we'll see you on the bonus show and back with a new show tomorrow.