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2 gay phobia

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4 racism

5 anti-semitic}:

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SEE ASHLI BABBIT MARTYR //

ENFORCER THUGSWARM EG ED MARTIN // FASCISM NJ MAYOR

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SEE WAR ON XIAN BS WHITE GREIVANCE RACISM

CONSTANTLY BOASTS ABOUT HIS WH ACCESS/CLOUT?

TILLIS?

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AN 10 25

More than a month has passed since the fatal shooting of MAGA activist and Turning Point USA co-founder Charlie Kirk in Utah, and the murder continues to inspire an abundance of discussion on both the left and the right.

A long list of liberals, progressives, moderate Democrats and right-wing Never Trump conservatives are making it abundantly clear that while they had major disagreements with Kirk, they wholeheartedly condemn the killing. Progressive Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York), for example, was critical of Kirk's politics but is vehement in condemning the attack and saying that progressives need to debate those they disagree with — not resort to violence.

Many in the MAGA movement, however, are blaming Democrats and Never Trumpers for his murder despite the fact they condemned it in no uncertain terms.

In an article published on October 11, The Guardian's Peter Stone warns that MAGA Republicans are using Kirk's murder as a pretext to silence their political opponents.

"Donald Trump and MAGA allies have capitalized on the killing of right-wing influencer Charlie Kirk to expand attacks on liberal groups, donors, Democrats, and others by tarring many critics as the 'enemy within' and 'radical left' in a move that legal scholars and historians call authoritarian and anti-democratic," Stone warns. "Kirk's killing by a lone gunman spurred Trump and top allies to quickly launch conspiratorial charges against a bevy of political foes and an investigation of billionaire liberal donor George Soros. They also threatened legal action against TV network ABC after their late-night star Jimmy Kimmel's suspension over clumsy comments about Kirk ended."

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Stone emphasizes that Kirk's murder has "provided cover for a sprawling retribution drive by the president and MAGA world that endangers civil liberties against an array of critics in the media, universities, non-profits and other parts of American civil society, say scholars."

Steven Levitsky, a professor at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts outside Boston and author of the book "How Democracies Die," described MAGA's response to Kirk's murder as an example of "Page 1 in the authoritarian playbook."

Levitsky told The Guardian, "You use political violence as a pretext to go after your political enemies. Some of them have been chomping at the bit to do this. They're going after mainstream opponents and other critics. They're defining unacceptable behavior as broadly as possible….. The goal is to tilt the playing field by going after anybody in civil society who could challenge them. One way to weaken them is to go after the funders using a false pretense by linking them to violence or illegal behavior."

Former federal prosecutor Paul Rosenzweig is highly critical of MAGA's push for a federal racketeering investigation of billionaire Democratic donor George Soros following Kirk's murder.

Rosenzweig told The Guardian, "Trump’s invocation of RICO to investigate Soros is frivolously wrong-headed. It is yet another example of his weaponization of the law to target his enemies."

Russell Muirhead, chairman of the Department of Government at Dartmouth University told The Guardian, "Since Charlie Kirk's murder, President Trump has amplified and extended his penchant for leveling conspiracy charges. The target is 'domestic terrorist organizations,' which seems to include such peaceful pro-democratic anti-communist entities as George Soros' Open Society Foundations. The effect is to describe the entirety of 'the left' as a conspiracy, bent on destroying the country, including the Democratic Party."

Muirhead continued: “The risk here is clear: conspiracy charges convert peaceful political opponents into enemies. Once that is accomplished, they no longer need to be respected or tolerated. They can be folded into shadowy 'domestic terrorism networks' and imprisoned — or worse."

*Read Peter Stone's full article for The Guardian at this link.

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rww

10/09/2025

by

Kyle Mantyla

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REF 2

Axios

Oct 4, 2025 -

Politics & Policy

MAGA wages campaign to redefine "hate" after Kirk killing

al Axelrod,}:

Zachary Basu}:

Charlie Kirk speaking at a Turning Point USA Believers Summit conference in July 2024.

MAGA activists have launched a crusade against two of the nation's most storied civil rights watchdogs, accusing them of smearing conservatives as extremists.

Why it matters: For decades, the Anti-Defamation League and Southern Poverty Law Center have shaped America's understanding of hate. MAGA leaders — backed by the Trump administration and Elon Musk — are now trying to strip them of that influence.

Zoom in: FBI Director Kash Patel severed ties this week between the bureau and both the ADL and SPLC, the government's decades-long partners in tracking extremist networks, training FBI agents and consulting on hate-crime enforcement.

The rupture followed MAGA outrage that both organizations had listed Charlie Kirk's Turning Point USA in their online resources about hate groups.}:

The ADL accused Kirk's group of drawing "support from anti-Muslim bigots, alt-lite activists and some corners of the white supremacist alt-right," while the SPLC included the group on its "hate map," saying it has ties to "hard-right extremists."}:

Both pages predated Kirk's assassination, which MAGA activists argue was incited by the left's use of charged labels such as "fascist" and "Nazi." The ADL and SPLC both condemned the assassination.

Amid the backlash, the ADL removed its "Glossary of Extremism," saying some of the entries were outdated and were being "intentionally misrepresented and misused."}:

The SPLC kept its page posted, telling Axios: "We remain committed to exposing hate and extremism as we work to equip communities with knowledge and defend the rights and safety of marginalized people."}:

What they're saying: MAGA influencers have accused the groups of embodying the type of hate they were founded to combat.

"They are both part of an ecosystem leveraged by radical left vigilantes to dehumanize conservatives and stoke political violence. They provide the sheen of legitimacy for the left's violent foot soldiers," posted Kirk spokesman Andrew Kolvet.}:

Musk, who previously blamed the ADL for advertisers fleeing X over anti-semitic content, called both organizations "evil" and guilty of inciting Kirk's slaying.}:

"ADL has deep respect for the Federal Bureau of Investigation and law enforcement officers at all levels across the country who work tirelessly every single day to protect all Americans regardless of their ancestry, religion, ethnicity, faith, political affiliation or any other point of difference," the ADL said in a statement.

"In light of an unprecedented surge of antisemitism, we remain more committed than ever to our core purpose to protect the Jewish people."}:

Between the lines: Kirk drew scrutiny for comments about Islam being "incompatible with the West" and warnings about the "great replacement" of whites — rhetoric the watchdogs saw as echoing extremist talking points.

To many conservatives, that rhetoric doesn't merit a "hate" label: Its rejection by the mainstream is evidence that liberal elites are steering America away from what they see as its white Christian foundations.}:

MAGA sees the clash with the ADL and SPLC as less about Kirk than the freedom to debate politics and demographics without being branded hateful.}:

In other words, a movement consumed with fighting "cancel culture" is seeking to redraw the boundaries of permissible speech by targeting the referees.

"Charlie never believed in speech codes, and neither do we," said Jack Posobiec, a MAGA podcaster and longtime Kirk friend who has helped lead the campaigns against the ADL and SPLC.}:

Context: MAGA's backlash to the civil rights groups comes as the number of hate crimes in the past few years hit record levels. Analysts say antisemitic crimes rose again last year.

More than half of hate crimes recorded last year involved attacks motivated by race or ethnicity, the FBI Crime Data Explorer database showed.}:

Black Americans were the most targeted group, followed by Jewish Americans, then gay men, according to the data.}:

What to watch: MAGA's efforts to take down the ADL and SPLC go beyond just government partnerships.

Activists are now pressuring PayPal over its use of ADL and SPLC research to bar "extremists" from its platforms, and Google for prioritizing the groups' resource pages on search.}:

"America will be greater when these hate factories are discredited and disbanded," Posobiec said.}:

Axios' Russell Contreras contributed to this article.

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Jason Lalljee

Oct 4, 2025 -

Politics & Policy

ADL split marks FBI shift away from targeting right-wing violence, scholars say

FBI director Kash Patel ended the bureau's long-standing partnership with the Anti-Defamation League this week. Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

The FBI's split with the Anti-Defamation League this week is the latest evidence that the Trump administration is moving away from targeting hate groups in favor of investigating what it deems left-wing violence, scholars told Axios.

Why it matters: The ADL had, since at least 1940, worked with law enforcement to combat extremism and antisemitism, which the Trump administration has maintained is still a priority.

Go deeper (3 min. read)

Avery Lotz}:

Oct 2, 2025 -

Politics & Policy

Kash Patel cuts FBI ties with Anti-Defamation League

FBI Director Kash Patel ended the bureau's long-standing partnership with the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), the prominent civil rights group that has worked with law enforcement to combat antisemitism and extremism.

Why it matters: His announcement came after the ADL faced right-wing backlash for its web pages on the Christian Identity movement and Turning Point USA, the group founded by slain MAGA activist Charlie Kirk.

Go deeper (1 min. read)

Zachary Basu

Updated Sep 16, 2025 -

Politics & Policy

Republicans embrace speech limits

President Trump and MAGA spent years lampooning censorship, discrimination against conservatives, and progressive "cancel culture."

Now in power — and riding an outpouring of grief and fury over Charlie Kirk's tragic killing — they're enforcing speech codes to punish ideological opponents.

Why it matters: Backed by the Trump administration, digital vigilantes are demanding arrests, firings and deportations for anti-Kirk posts and remarks.

Go deeper (3 min. read)

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AN 10 25}:

Barbara F. Walter, author of “How Civil Wars Start and How to Stop Them, warned Sunday that democracy in the United States is in decline and President Donald Trump could create "fake emergencies" to intensify his campaign against his opponents.

Speaking ata podcast on*The Bulwark*posted Sunday morning, Walter said, "I think American democracy is in a really sad place, actually. It's in a place of democratic decline. It's probably likely in the near future to be in a place of economic decline. And these are things that are not going to turn around anytime soon. If you look at the underlying conditions for political violence, the United States, unfortunately, has all of them right now."

She continued: "Political violence tends to happen in countries with weak and declining democracy, especially democracies that are changing rapidly and moving more and more towards autocracy. We call those anocracies, and that's actually the most dangerous place to be. Full, healthy democracies almost never experience political violence."

She added that hardcore autocracies rarely experience political violence, and most of the violence happens in the middle.

"And since January 2025 of this year, America's democracy has declined faster than it ever has in its history. And it's declined faster than democracy in any other advanced industrialized democracy in the world," she added.

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Likening Trump to a "wannabe dictator," Walter said the president could use "fake emergencies" to "clamp down on citizens."

"These types of sort of fake emergencies allow these wannabe dictators to declare a state of emergency, declare martial law, and basically just clamp down on citizens so that citizens aren't allowed to leave their homes," she said.

She added: "There's curfews. Soldiers are now patrolling the streets. There's roadblocks. And this effectively ends democracy. So people were saying, okay, is theCharlie Kirk murder, and in particular, the Republican Party's reaction to it, that this is almost a declaration of war by the left. People were worried that that would be that type of situation."

Walter also warned that Trump does not see the American constitution as an impediment.

"I don't think Trump sees the Constitution as an impediment in any way. [Viktor] Orban did not see Hungary's Constitution as an impediment. He simply changed it. Netanyahu doesn't see Israel's Constitution as an impediment. You know, these guys are bullies and strongmen, and they just push their way through and see if anybody stops them," she said.

The analyst noted that following conservative activist Charlie Kirk's murder, many expected a war on the left by the Trump administration, but it didn't play out that way. The administration, she argued, is now looking for a bigger reason to ramp up its efforts to go after its opponents.

"The Trump administration isn't ready to declare a state of emergency and to basically take control of the potential hotspots for opposition. Those hotspots for opposition are going to be America's big cities," she said.

Walter added: "It's hard for most Americans to feel deeply threatened because an outspoken activist on the right was killed. They might be horrified by it. They might desperately wish it never happens again, but they don't feel personally threatened by it. And for people to be willing to give up their rights and freedoms to say, 'okay, martial law is okay with me.' They have to be, they have to truly believe that their and their family safety is threatened. And Charlie Kirk's murder didn't do that. So it's going to have to be something bigger than that," she said, noting that Trump is still trying to "create a situation" where he can "suddenly grab all power."

"That's where you have most of the people who disagree with Trump, feel threatened by Trump. And he doesn't have his soldiers in place there. He started to do that in Washington, D.C., in Los Angeles, and he tried to do that in Chicago. But he's not ready for the moment to sort of pull the trigger," she said.

Asked if this democratic backsliding could lead to a civil war in the U.S., Walter said, "So the main point I want to make is that citizens are much more powerful than they think they are. There's over 330 million of us. You know, think back to your time at school in the schoolyard. You know, everybody's seen bullies operate and and they see what happens when the you know, the kids in the schoolyard, dozens of them, just stand up."

She continued: "Bullies tend to wither. We have 300 and, you know, over 330 million Americans. And if we just in our own separate individual ways, simply just started silently and peacefully resisting, not voluntarily complying when we're told that to do something that's illegal .So there's a whole series of things. And then protest is the greatest tool," she added.

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9 25

In an article for the New York Timespublished Sunday, Steven Pinker, a professor of psychology at Harvard University, argued that modern political outrage operates according to what he calls mob logic, a form of communal outrage grounded in shared expectations and social coordination.

Pinker began by describing how theassassination of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk elicited an intense wave of symbolic reactions: Kirk was sanctified as a martyr, and dissenters were attacked for failing to show proper devotion.

The response, he contended, aligns with the phenomenon that economist Thomas Schelling and anthropologist John Tooby termed “common knowledge,” in which an event becomes a shared social signal that everyone knows, and everyone knows that everyone knows, and so on.

According to Pinker, communal outrage follows a predictable sequence:

A public attack is framed as targeting a person because of group identity. The story spreads rapidly — sometimes amplified or distorted. The victim becomes a symbolic figure for the group. The incident is treated as an intolerable violation, and doubt or questioning is stigmatized.

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The group then retaliates disproportionately, often targeting perceived enemies regardless of their actual involvement.

Pinker sees the post‑Kirk reaction as a textbook case: political leaders threatened reprisals, agencies pressured media, and public figures called for broad retribution. Meanwhile, private citizens demanded firings and punishments of anyone whose statements deviated from the sanctified narrative.

*The psychologist distinguished communal outrage from calculated revenge. He noted that revenge is targeted, proportional and strategic. Communal outrage, by contrast, solves a coordination dilemma — the problem of how a group acts in concert when multiple strategies exist but only one can succeed. Outrage becomes a focal point: a visible, unanimous act that signals dominance and enforces internal solidarity, he argued.

He identified two coordination problems that outrage resolves:

Dominance contest, when a group that fails to defend a member signals weakness and invites further attacks. A conspicuous rebuttal reasserts status in the face of the audience of rivals.

Internal cohesion, which means Individuals may hesitate to act unless they see others doing so. An outrage incident makes public the moment to unite and act together.

Pinker drew parallels with historical episodes of communal outrage — from the U.S. battleship Maine explosion, to the Reichstag fire, to the Arab Spring, to the reaction sparked by George Floyd’s killing — and notes that the outcomes differ depending on how the incident is framed and how “outrage entrepreneurs” shape the narrative.

"It’s often been pointed out that Mr. Trump and the MAGA movement have a chronic sense of being disrespected. Mr. Trump fumed for decades about being looked down on by coastal elites, and his pique has grown with each investigation, indictment and impeachment. For many of his followers, these insults merged with a smoldering resentment at the creeping takeover by leftist values in public life, from government mandates to popular entertainment," Pinker wrote.

He added: "Mr. Kirk’s killing is, for all of them, a perfect outrage incident. As an advocate of MAGA willing to take the battle to the enemy, Mr. Kirk was a pre-eminent symbol of the coalition. And his suspected killer, an internet-addled loner with a gun, nonetheless has enough left-adjacent trappings (a transgender partner, some antifascist memes) that he can be mentally fitted into a vast liberal conspiracy. The shooting was an unendurable public offense, which mobilized the coalition to muster its forces, in this case a combination of government muscle and social media shaming mobs, to rectify the affront."

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AN 9 25

MSNBC Daily opinion editor Jarvis DeBerry said Tennessee State University security did the right thing when they escorted two uninvited Charlie Kirk wannabes off the HBCU’s campus.

Both without permits, the two white men set up a table on the Nashville grounds, taped inflammatory signs to their table and dared Black students to “debate” them in Kirk’s “Prove Me Wrong” style. Students responded instead with jeers, gestures and laughingly bolted away with their signs before security intervened and escorted them away, seemingly for their own safety.

“The pair’s provocation was not received well at TSU, which, of course, was the visitors’ point: to be rejected, to characterize the Black students as intolerant of debate and to gloat that they’d won their arguments by virtue of the Black students being intolerant of their presence,” wrote DeBerry, noting the two made a point to record their dismissal for MAGA online fans to crucify.

DeBerry said it was unfortunate to see so many people on social media claiming TSU students, should have responded by debating the pair, especially since the men were not looking for debate.

“The proposition that the students should have debated their obnoxious guests reminds me of a theory being promoted in journalism circles some years ago,” said DeBerry, citing requests by editors that opinion writers and columnists sound off in comment sections.

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“[Reporters would] be showing that we’re real people, our editors insisted, and we’d be encouraging similarly civil people to participate, which would help transform the tone of such sections,” said DeBerry. “The guidance was based on the faulty premise that people were in the comments section for a good-faith exchange of ideas — when most were there only to be obnoxious and “pwn” the opposition.”

It was a faulty argument, and foolish to think “folks with such a mindset were interested in debate,” said DeBerry, who described the online exchange as a “waste of time.”

“This is good advice in real life, too,” DeBerry added. “That’s why the students shouldn’t feel any embarrassment or shame in not falling into the ‘debate me’ trap. Because that’s all it is: a trap.”

Real debates are intellectual exercises between people who are factually prepared and open to persuasion, said DeBerry. The ultimate goal is a pursuit of truth, not “owning” the opposition or grandstanding.

“It’s a shame that since Kirk’s death, arguing in bad faith has become characterized as virtuous and edifying. It’s not. And it’s not beneficial to try to rebut people making bad faith arguments because, by definition, people making bad faith arguments can’t be persuaded of anything,” DeBerry said. “No, the students at TSU didn’t owe the so-called debaters any of their time or attention. Like so many HBCU students since Kirk’s death, saying “Leave us alone” is enough.

Read the full MSNBC report at this link.

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RWW

09/24/2025

by

Kyle Mantyla

The killing of Charlie Kirk could turn the movement into a faith that outlives Donald Trump.

John Solomon’s Informing America set out to create an echo chamber to shape public opinion. It’s working.

State Board of Education picks Barton for advice on history.

Turning Point USA, which was co-founded by Charlie Kirk, helps organize and educate students in conservative principles.

InfoWars founder celebrates after DOJ asks questions about FBI special agent who responded to the Connecticut school shooting.

Twenty years ago, Chief Justice John Roberts took the oath of office and ushered in a new era for the Supreme Court. His 2005 confirmation vote marked the transition from the Rehnquist court—where a narrow majority of conservatives and moderates had largely maintained the status quo on abortion, affirmative action, and voting rights—into something much more reactionary.

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email 9 25 DRILLED // HEATED POD

kirk ai FF ripOff of

https://heated.world/p/charlie-kirks-extremism-was-fossil}:

no lnx

Charlie Kirk was a fossil fuel industry plant

Big Oil's money gave Kirk a larger platform to spread baseless climate conspiracy theories—as well as other extremist views.

Emily Atkin

Sep 18, 2025

The term “plant” is often used to describe someone whose success was not solely the result of a grassroots movement, but instead bolstered by powerful corporate interests who secretly poured massive amounts of money into ensuring their fame.

For example: Charlie Kirk was a fossil fuel industry plant. The right-wing activist murdered last week built his massive platform for racism, sexism, transphobia and climate denial in part by using anonymous funding from Big Oil.

Turning Point USA, the group Kirk founded to ignite a culture war on college campuses, has managed to hide much of its funding sources. Roughly half of the group’s $40 million in income in 2020 came from 10 anonymous donors, NBC News reported.

But in 2017, Kirk admitted that some of the group’s anonymous donors “are in the fossil fuel space.” Speaking to The New Yorker’s Jane Mayer, Kirk disclosed that he’d fundraised for TPUSA at the annual meeting of the Independent Petroleum Association of America (IPAA), as well as the 2017 board meeting of the National Mining Association.

In those meetings, Kirk promised oil and gas companies he’d fight “the myth that fossil fuels are dirty,” and target the “leftist professors” on college campuses who “perpetuated” the “myth.”

The meetings “went great,” Kirk told Mayer. The IPAA’s president, Barry Russell, wound up joining TPUSA’s advisory council, where he remains today. (Kirk had said that most advisory council members are also TPUSA donors).

How Kirk tried to re-popularize climate denial

Over the next nine years, Kirk worked to chip away at young Americans’ rising concerns about climate change. He did this by claiming climate science is still debated—and then peddling the conspiracy theory that all climate policies are a Democratic bid for government control.

“A tyrant’s fantasy is to have a massive green economy transition,” he said in 2023. “You can get rid of private property, you can control people’s movements. It’s fundamentally the abolition of civilization as we know it.”

To justify his claim that climate science is unsettled, Kirk would often cite “experts” who downplay the seriousness of planetary heating. For example, in 2023, Kirk claimed climate science is “debated” because “a Nobel prize winning scientist recently came out and said there is no real climate crisis.” Kirk also cited the opinions of John Coleman, the now-deceased founder of the Weather Channel, as evidence that climate change is a hoax.

But the experts Kirk cited were almost always unqualified. For example, Coleman was a meteorologist, not a climate scientist, and his claims were frequently debunked by publishing climate scientists. The Nobel-Prize-winning scientist Kirk referenced, John Clauser, is not a climate scientist, and won the Nobel for physics in the 1970s. No other Nobel Prize-winning physicist denies mainstream climate science; in fact, some of them are climate scientists themselves.

Coincidentally, Kirk never considered the opinions of publishing climate scientists to be credible. Instead, he reflexively dismissed their warnings as "garbage … designed for one thing: power and control.”

A YouTube caption for one of Kirk’s videos calls climate change “nonsense” and “boulder dash” [sic]

Kirk’s final climate segment

Kirk’s continued to frame climate change as a conspiracy in an interview with Trump’s Secretary of Energy Chris Wright three weeks before his death.

In the interview, Kirk and Wright spoke about the Department of Energy’s recently-released 151-page report claiming climate change is not a serious problem. That report was put together by five contrarian scientists personally recruited by Wright, a former fracking executive.

Kirk praised the report, and dismissed all criticism against it as politically motivated. “We think this is all politicized,” Kirk said. “This is driven towards a environmentalist agenda that is trying to weaken American energy dominance.”

Wright agreed, and said all the critics of his climate report only took issue with who wrote it—not the data within it. “They want to impugn the writers or impugn the way we reference people,” Wright said. “They want to find little things. What we want to talk about is the data.”

This, however, was objectively false. The data within Wright’s report was meticulously criticized by 85 publishing climate scientists, who issued a 439-page rebuttal pointing out various misrepresentations, messy citations, cherry-picking, and factual errors. In addition, many of the scientists cited in Wright’s report complained that their data was misrepresented, and explained their complaints in detail.

Perhaps the most mind-boggling part of Kirk’s final climate interview, however, was the argument he used to claim there can be no such thing as a scientific consensus about climate change.

”Science does not have consensus,” he said. “This is a very important thing. Right? Science says nothing. Scientists say things. Okay? Science never talks. Science is silent. This is a good thing that could apply to everything.”

Kirk was certainly correct that scientists say things. But over the course of his life, Kirk was set on ignoring most of them. For example, the vast majority of publishing climate scientists have been saying the same thing over and over for decades: That heat-trapping pollution from fossil fuels, industrial agriculture, and deforestation is steadily raising the average temperature of the planet—and that the warming poses an existential threat to human, animal and plant life.

Kirk ignored those scientists for a simple reason: Because listening to them would mean accepting that fossil fuels harm people. Neither Kirk nor his donors could accept that reality.

The inseparable connection between climate denial and right-wing extremism

The point of this newsletter is not to claim that Kirk was paid by the fossil fuel industry to say things he didn’t believe about climate change. I think most online political commentators genuinely believe what they’re saying, no matter who they’re funded by.

The point is to reinforce what has been true for decades: the fossil fuel industry is behind most of the climate disinformation you see and hear today.

Big Oil has spent billions sowing doubt about the reality and severity of climate change. They’ve done this for one reason: Solving climate change would require using less of their product, and using less of their product would hurt their bottom line.

Pretty much everyone with a massive following who spreads climate denial derives money or power from fossil fuels. The sooner everyone understands that, the better.

The other point here is to remind everyone about the inseparable connection between climate denial and other types of right-wing extremism. Often, you’ll hear climate activists debate whether it’s a good idea to get involved in larger movements for justice, or whether it’s better to just “stay in their lane” of climate policy.

The opposition to climate action is not having that debate. Instead, they are funding right-wing extremists who say things like the Civil Rights Act was "huge mistake;” that Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson was "a diversity hire;" that trans people are responsible for inflation; and that Taylor Swift should "submit to [her] husband." As long as “climate change is fake” is part of that rhetoric, they don’t care what the rest of it looks like.

Racism, sexism, and transphobia is being used to build the climate denier base. If you want climate action, you can’t pick and choose which you fight back against.

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AN 9 25

In their quest for retribution for the slaying of far-right podcaster Charlie Kirk, MAGA is "dragging their allies in government down a rabbit hole of online conspiracy theories," according to an Axiosreport.

Following the FBI's failure to connect Kirk's killer to any left-wing movement or ideology, MAGA, says Axios, is "hungry for a crackdown."

The problem is, Axios says, "its enemy is ill-defined, and its definition of success is wholly unclear. A lack of answers from the Trump administration could leave vast swathes of the base deeply disappointed."

In their desperation for someone or something to point their fingers at, "theories about sprawling 'leftist' networks, accomplices at the scene of Kirk's slaying in Utah, or overseas involvement are being treated as live leads — even in the absence of hard evidence," Axios explains.

One of those conspiracy theories is that Kirk's alleged assassin Tyler Robinson didn't act alone, despite any evidence of any accomplice(s). Another focuses on Robinson'stext messages with his roommate and alleged partner and friends, which conspiracy theorists allege were staged to clear others of any connection to knowledge of the shooting before it happened.

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Experts told NBC News that "the Trump administration appears to be using Kirk’s assassination as an excuse to crack down on left-wing people and groups."

"You've got to get to the bottom of these groups, you've got to get to the bottom of antifa, you've got to see if there's any connections to Butler," said "War Room" host and President Donald Trump's first term chief White House strategist Steve Bannon, referring to the 2024 assassination attempt Trump in Pennsylvania.'

"We've got a whole lot of work to do, and no, I'm not buying the script that was in thetext messages," he added.

Axios says that Trump's recent crackdown on the nonexistent antifa — a portmanteau for "Anti Fascist" — is also driving the conspiracy theories, despite the fact that experts say Robinson was anything but an anti-fascist even if he did write "Hey fascist! Catch!" on a bullet casing.

"Robinson is not a central-casting, rabble-rousing, far-left activist. He sounds about as far as you can get from antifa. He drove a Dodge Challenger, for goodness' sake,"quippedthe Daily Beast's David Gardner in an op-ed.

Another suggestion Axios calls "baseless" is that Israel was involved in Kirk's killing, leading to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to release avideodebunking it, calling it a "monstrous lie." VID]

"Conspiracy theories are an inevitable part of any assassination," Axios says. "But with MAGA's grip on the Trump administration, unproven speculation is being elevated into official policy."

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rww

09/23/2025

by

Kyle Mantyla

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rww

09/22/2025

by

Kyle Mantyla

The FBI and Justice officials closed the investigation, which a Justice Department appointee had called a “deep state” probe in early 2025.

The rightwing pundit’s meteoric career was in some ways a microcosm of the rise of Trump-era Christian nationalism.

The president unabashedly said that he views his opponents very differently from how the conservative activist did.

A who’s who of right-wing figures, conservative dignitaries, Trump administration officials and Trump himself regaled a sprawling crowd of tens of thousands with speeches that mixed religious appeals with personal remembrances of Kirk.

Donald Trump’s adviser used the Charlie Kirk memorial to warn of the “wickedness” of “our enemies.”

The murder of Charlie Kirk on the Utah Valley University campus has ratcheted up political tension at home and abroad. Kirk, a far-right commentator and founder of Turning Point USA (TPUSA), was fatally shot on September 10, 2025, while holding a question-and-answer session at an outdoor amphitheater. Kirk’s assassination, captured on video and rapidly disseminated online, has been weaponized by far-right activists, politicians, and extremist groups, many of whom are calling for retaliation and violent retribution. Some of those demanding action have millions of followers.

Brian Glenn, Trump’s favorite correspondent, is on a crusade to crush free speech.

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an 9 25

President Donald Trump may have rode the MAGA wave to the presidency twice and been the face of the movement, but one commentator is arguing that Trump may have been replaced as its de facto leader.

In a Monday op-ed for the Daily Beast, columnist Michael Rothkopf wrote that Trump had been usurped as the face of the MAGA movement following Sunday's memorial service for slain far-right activist Charlie Kirk. He observed that Trump was remarkably "not the center of attention" at the event, and "seemed almost out of place" given how his brash remarks collided with the somber nature of the ceremonies.

According to Rothkopf, the centerpieces of Kirk's funeral were his wife, Erika (who has assumed the role of leadership following her husband's murder) and Vice President JD Vance. But the Daily Beast columnist noted that in MAGA's next phase as an explicitly Christian nationalist movement, its central figure may be Jesus.

"On the face of it, it's hard to object to such a shift," Rothkopf wrote. "Clearly, such a move would be a big step up, a transition from one of the worst of men, a living catalogue of vices who has been supported his entire life by the wages of sin, to a deity, the epitome of virtue."

"But there are deeply troubling elements to this trend. First, of course, is the fact that not all Americans are Christian or even religious, and that one of the principles on which this country was founded was the separation of church and state," he continued. "Also troubling is the degree to which so many televangelists in America have themselves become corrupted by money and power. Nothing illustrates this fact so well as their embrace of as corrupt a person as Trump as an agent of a Higher Power, a quasi-religious figure himself."

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Rothkopf posited that given Trump's rise and his popularity with evangelical Christians, there is an element of "hucksterism and con-artistry" inherent among "prominent church leaders" who support Trump. He further asserted that evangelicals may be replacing "one type of hypocritical con with another," and that the essence of the MAGA movement is still one that pits righteous believers against sinful non-believers.

"Taking us from an America divided by politics to one divided by religion — into virtuous true believers and those who are destined for Hell — is not exactly progress," he wrote. "Further, putting a new face on this movement, even if it is the face of Jesus himself, will not exactly divest it of other elements like racism or misogyny. Certainly, studying the work of the man whose life was celebrated — and the fact that it was celebrated — on Sunday demonstrates this clearly."

Click here to read Rothkopf's op-ed in full (subscription required).

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an 9 25

Florida Attorney GeneralJames Uthmeier (R) has announced the launch of a new tool for members of the public to report “acts or threats of political violence" as well as social media posts of public school teachers, according to the Tampa Bay Times.

Uthmeier, chairman of the ironically named far-right "Florida Freedom Fund" political action committee associated with Governor Ron DeSantis (R-FL), has the backing of Florida Education Commissioner Anastasios Kamoutsas, who, recently sent a letter to public school superintendents threatening teachers who publicly express negative opinions about deceased far-right activist Charlie Kirk.

In a statement attached to Uthmeier's announcement, Kamoutsas said that “any educator who makes vile, despicable comments celebrating and encouraging violence in schools will be investigated and held accountable.”

According to The Tallahassee Democrat, Uthmeier said that "while the First Amendment will be upheld, threats of violence won’t be tolerated."

In the wake of Kirk's death, several Florida public school teachers have lost their jobs and status or been put on leave, including Karen Leader, an associate art history professor at Florida Atlantic University, placed on leave for posting about the right-wing podcaster's history of hate speech.

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A retired University of Florida professor lost his honorary title after posting about Kirk, “I did not want him to die. I reserve that wish for Trump," and other professors' posts are under investigation by the state along with teachers at several K-12 schools throughout the state.

“I didn’t say anything or do anything that encouraged violence at all,” Leader told Hyperallergic.“I did not say or do anything that celebrated his death, that said he deserved it, that in any way, shape or form, condoned violence.”

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AN 9 25

NBC News reports the federal investigation into the assassination of MAGA activist Charlie Kirk has yet to uncover a link between alleged shooter Tyler Robinson and the left-wing groups that President Donald Trump and his administration have pledged to prosecute.

“Every indication so far is that this was one guy who did one really bad thing because he found Kirk’s ideology personally offensive,” an anonymous source familiar with the investigation told NBC.

Two other anonymous sources familiar with the investigation told NBC it may not even be easy to charge Robinson at the federal level for the alleged assassination, considering Robinson, a Utah resident, did not travel from out of state to allegedly commit the murder. Kirk was shot during an open campus debate at Utah Valley University.

Additionally, Kirk is not a federal officer or elected official, which NBC reports further complicates categorizing the investigation as a federal matter.

Robinson is currently facing state charges, chiefly for aggravated murder and obstruction of justice, among others. State prosecutors are seeking the death penalty.

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Officially, Trump’s Department of Justice offered no comment on the issue.

“The investigation is ongoing and beyond that we decline to comment,” a spokesperson told NBC.

Thomas Brzozowski, former Justice Department’s counsel for domestic terrorism, told NBC News that while Kirk’s assassination appears to meet the definition of domestic terrorism, identifying a federal charge to bring against the shooter may prove a challenge.

“As is always the case, the FBI needs a federal hook to initiate an investigation,” Brzozowski said, adding that currently the FBI is “acting in an assistance to state authorities’ capacity.”

Prosecutors can seek a sentencing enhancement after conviction.

Despite the current absence of evidence linking the suspect to left-wing groups, White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller was quick to demonize such organizations, calling them a “vast domestic terror movement.”

“With God as my witness, we are going to use every resource we have at the Department of Justice, Homeland Security and throughout this government to identify, disrupt, dismantle and destroy these networks and make America safe again for the American people,” Miller said, according to NBC. “It will happen, and we will do it in Charlie’s name.”

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AN 9 25

Far-right MAGA pundit Candace Owens is claiming that Turning Point USA's Charlie Kirk was getting ready to convert to Catholicism near the end of his life, but evangelical Christian fundamentalists are denying that claim. And reporters Sam Stein and Will Sommer appeared skeptical about that alleged conversion during a conversation for the conservative website The Bulwark.

Kirk, who was 31 when he was fatally shot in Utah, was closely identified with evangelical Christian nationalism. And The Guardian's J. Oliver Conroy, in an article published on September 20, reports that Christian nationalists are "positioning Charlie Kirk as a martyr for their movement."

After Kirk's murder, his widow, Erika Kirk, posted, on Instagram, that the "world is evil" and declared, "They have no idea what they just ignited within this wife."

Author Jeff Sharlet, known for his writings on Christian nationalism, discussed Erika Kirk's comments with The Guardian — warning, "That's holy war, that's accelerationism, and it's incredibly powerful."

Conroy notes some of the other things far-right Christian nationalists have been saying since Kirk's death.

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In a video, megachurch pastor Matt Tuggle said of Kirk's murder, "If your pastor isn't telling you the left believes (in an) evil demonic belief system, you are in the wrong church."

Sean Feucht, a Christian nationalist pastor who worked with Kirk, said, "We know that the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church. The devil is not gonna win. The forces want us to be silent; they want us to shut up.… We need to be more bold."

Conroy describes Christian nationalism as "the belief that the U.S. is and should be an explicitly Christian nation."

"Kirk had been an evangelical Christian since childhood but earlier in his career, expressed reluctance at politicizing his religious views," Conroy explains. "That changed during the peak of the early pandemic, when Kirk made the acquaintance of several charismatic megachurch pastors protesting church lockdowns. He began to traffic in ideas influenced by the (New Apostolic Reformation),including the seven-mountain mandate. Turning Point USA also began to forge partnerships with churches."

*Read J. Oliver Conroy's full article for The Guardian at this link.

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yt grayzone 9 20 25

kirk horowitz, ackman; trump afraind of bibi canary bds

tampa pro gaza comedian vs bad hombre lost debate

senate of not prez

Billionaire Bill Ackman convened stormy Israel ‘intervention’ with Charlie Kirk, sources say - The Grayzone

billionaire Bill Ackman convened stormy Israel ‘intervention’ with Charlie Kirk, sources say

Max Blumenthal·September 15, 2025

A month before Charlie Kirk’s killing, billionaire pro-Israel moneyman Bill Ackman arranged an intervention in the Hamptons during which sources say he and others “hammered” Kirk for the conservative leader’s growing criticism of Israeli influence in Washington. Kirk came away fretting about Israeli “blackmail,” sources say, as he contemplated a Catholic conversion.

On September 11, one day after the assassination of Charlie Kirk, billionaire pro-Israel moneyman Bill Ackman took to Twitter/X to trumpet his relationship with the late conservative operative. “I feel incredibly privileged to have spent a day and shared a meal with @charliekirk11 this summer. He was a giant of a man.”

The Grayzone has spoken to five people with intimate knowledge of Kirk’s meeting with Ackman, which was held in early August. According to one source, Kirk was left upset after the gathering turned into an “intervention” where he was “hammered” for his increasingly skeptical views on the US special relationship with Israel, and for platforming prominent conservative critics of Israel at his TPUSA events.

Since publishing this report, The Grayzone has learned from one attendee of the Hamptons event that Ackman convened the influencers under the auspices of a discussion about Zohran Mamdani and the supposed threat he posed to the West if elected mayor of New York. But the meeting went off the rails when Ackman personally confronted Kirk about his views on Israel. The public face of UK Lawyers for Israel, Natasha Hausdorff, joined in the argument, and began “screaming” at Kirk, according to the attendee.

When his hosts presented him with a detailed list of every offense he supposedly committed against Israel, Kirk was “horrified,” said one person. Ackman also allegedly demanded Kirk rescind his invitation for Tucker Carlson to speak at his upcoming America Fest 2025 in December.

“The whole thing was a disaster,” said an attendee.

The Grayzone reported on September 12, citing a longtime associate of Kirk, that Netanyahu had offered to organize a massive infusion of pro-Israel money into TPUSA, and that Kirk refused. Another longtime friend of Kirk has told The Grayzone that the conservative activist also rejected an offer Netanyahu delivered two weeks before his death to meet with him in Jerusalem.

Kirk, according to one person with inside knowledge of the meeting with Ackman, said he left feeling as though he’d been subjected to “blackmail.”

In a series of text messages with The Grayzone, Ackman described these account of his meeting with Kirk as “totally false.” He pledged to release a public statement providing his own account of the event, but refused The Grayzone’s request for clarification or further details. He would not accept phone calls from this reporter.

“I think I can easily put this to bed,” Ackman promised, “I have receipts as they say.” He did not abide when asked to provide the so-called “receipts.”

In an apparent bid to reinforce the pro-Israel tone at the Hamptons meeting, Ackman hosted a coterie of pro-Israel operatives and conservative influencers at the off-the-record engagement. One was Instagram influencer Xaviaer DuRousseau of Prager U.

Reached by phone by The Grayzone, DuRousseau sounded flustered when asked about his presence at the meeting. He repeatedly demanded to know how this reporter obtained his number, and eventually hung up, refusing to answer questions about the event.

Several Instagram posts by DuRousseau show him and his friend, conservative influencer Emily Wilson, in the Hamptons on August 8 outside Topping Rose House, a posh hotel and restaurant in Bridgehampton, New York.

Two weeks after the meeting, DeRousseau was reportedly junketed on an all-expenses-paid trip by the Israeli government to visit a Gaza Humanitarian Foundation “aid” hub guarded by the IDF on the Gaza frontier. There, he recorded an Instagram video denying that the population of the besieged Gaza Strip was experiencing a famine.

The Grayzone received a similarly agitated response from Wilson, known online as Emily Saves America. Following a phone call and exchange of text messages in which this reporter asked her numerous times about her attendance of the meeting in the Hamptons, Wilson refused to comment. Instagram photos place her in the Hamptons at the same time as DuRousseau.

CJ Pearson, a leading youth coordinator for the Republican National Committee, immediately referred The Grayzone to his communications director when asked if he attended the Hamptons gathering.

The strong-arm tactics of the pro-Israel billionaires who helped fuel the growth of TPUSA were said to have contributed to Kirk’s alienation with evangelical Christianity, which emphasizes uncritical support for Israel as a bedrock principle. Several sources with access to Kirk said he had begun attending Catholic mass with his wife, Erika, and was considering a conversion before his death.

Bree Solsdadt, a Catholic Twitter/X influencer, has publicly corroborated this account of Kirk’s religious realignment. Kirk’s friend, the podcaster and former TPUSA personality Candace Owens, also alluded to the shift when she reflected that he was undergoing a “spiritual transformation” before his death.

Israel-centric influencer summit in the Hamptons

The Grayzone has obtained a partial list of attendees alleged to have been in attendance at the Bridgehampton meeting convened by Ackman this August. They include:

Seth Dillon – Dillion is the CEO of Babylon Bee, the conservative answer to the liberal The Onion satire outlet. Dillon and his crew have derisively mocked famine-stricken Palestinians and their supporters in the West, since Israel’s slash-and-burn campaign began in the besieged Gaza Strip. An evangelical Christian with Jewish heritage, he has claimed, “I did not cease having Ashkenazi blood when I put my faith in Jesus Christ (also a Jew).” Dillon did not answer calls from The Grayzone.

Xaviaer DuRousseau – DuRousseau is employed by Prager U, the premier right-wing “edu-tainment” hub targeting the minds of American youth. His boss, Marissa Streit, is a veteran of the Israeli army’s Unit 8200 cyber-spying division. A Black self-described former progressive, DuRousseau now appears firmly in the pocket of right-wing Zionist forces. During his Israeli government-funded visit to a Gaza Humanitarian Foundation “aid” hub inside Gaza, DuRousseau falsely claimed the United Nations and Hamas were to blame for the hunger sweeping the local population. “If I were Israel, I wouldn’t even provide matching socks to Gaza, but here’s all the aid that y’all claim doesn’t exist,” he said in an Instagram video filmed in front of boxes of aid blocked from entering Gaza. “Instead of Hamas distributing the ramen noodles,” DuRousseau continued, “their leaders are eating it all and that’s why they’re on Ozempic.”

A post shared by Xaviaer DuRousseau 𓀀 (@xaviaer)

DuRousseau vigorously defended his close friend, podcaster Emily Wilson, after she stated that “if everyone in the state [of Alabama]” wanted the return of chattel slavery, “go ahead, why do I give a shit?”

Emily Wilson aka Emily Saves America– Wilson is a Los Angeles-based self-described libertarian podcaster and social media influencer with over 500,000 followers on Instagram. On September 9, she recalled on Twitter/X how “a HUGE black guy” robbed her when she was 13. “I hate to say it but things like that just change the way you see certain people. After that I always thought, ‘oh, you guys just hate me,’” she reflected. This month, she and DuRousseau recorded apodcast in which they framed pro-Palestine activist Greta Thunberg’s hairstyle as evidence of her being “slow and short bus.”

“I don’t hang out with anyone really less attractive than me,” Wilson stated in a separate appearance.

Arynne Wexler – A former Goldman Sachs trader seeking cachet in the world of online influencers, Wexler is a vociferously Zionist, self-described “non-lib girl in a crazylib world.” In an interview with pro-Israel podcaster Dave Rubin, Wexlerargued that “we need to bring bullying back” to enforce social norms, crack down on conspiracy theories, and stop the rise of antisemitism. Wexler has praised Ackman’s pro-Israel activism on multiple occasions. She did not answer calls from The Grayzone.

Natasha Hausdorff – The legal director of Zionist advocacy group UK Lawyers for Israel, Hausdorff is arguably the best-known figure associated with the organization. She was described in one headline by Israel’s most widely-read newspaper, the Adelson-owned Israel Hayom, as “the British attorney who fights Israel’s wars.”

Nate Friedman – Friedman is a young ultra-Zionist influencer best known for New York City man-on-the-street confrontations with Palestine solidarity activists, whom he’s accused of being paid protesters.

Ory Rinat – Rinat was the formerSpecial Media Advisor to Jared Kushner, the Trump son-in-law and advisor, before moving on to serve as White House chief digital officer during Trump’s first term. A Jewish pro-Israel operative said to have close ties Netanyahu’s government, Rinat now serves as CEO of Urban Legend, a PR firm which commands “an army of 700 social media influencers who command varying degrees of allegiance from audiences that collectively number in the tens of millions,” according to Wired.

CJ Pearson – The chair of the Republican National Committee’s Youth Advisory Council, Pearson appeared in photos in the Hamptons alongside Wilson and DeRousseau. The Grayzone is awaiting further information from Pearson’s communications director.

CJ Pearson (left) with Emily Wilson, Xavaier DeRousseau, and an unknown person in the Hamptons

Bill Ackman’s war

As The Grayzone reported on September 12, Kirk was besieged with angry calls and messages from pro-Israel donors to his organization following TPUSA’s Student Action Summit this July in Tampa, Florida. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had also phoned him, according to a longtime friend of Kirk, and offered to orchestrate a massive infusion of pro-Israel money into his organization.

A longtime friend of Kirk told The Grayzone the mounting pressure had left him “angry” and “frightened.”

Kirk vented about the pro-Israel intimidation campaign in an August 6 discussion with Megyn Kelly, a former Fox News host who was also growing more critical of Israeli influence in Washington.

“It’s all of the sudden, ‘Oh, Charlie: he’s no longer with us.’ Wait a second—what does ‘with us’ mean, exactly? I’m an American, okay? I represent this country,” Kirkcomplained.

“The more that you guys privately and publicly call our character into question—which is not isolated, it would be one thing if it were just one text, or two texts; it is dozens of texts—then we start to say, ‘whoa, hold the boat here,’” Kirk continued. “To be fair, some really good Jewish friends say, ‘that’s not all of us’… But these are leaders here. These are stakeholders.”

He went on: “I have less ability… to criticize the Israeli government than actual Israelis do. And that’s really, really weird.”

Kirk delivered his comments around the same time as the tumultuous meeting in the Hamptons with Ackman and the crew of pro-Israel influencers.

A month earlier, Kirk had opened the stage at his TPUSA Student Action Summit for a cathartic outpouring of frustration and rage about Israel’s political hammerlock on the Trump administration. At the conference, speakers from Carlson andKelly to the anti-Zionist Jewish comedian Dave Smith slammed Israel’s blood-soaked assault on the besieged Gaza Strip, branded Jeffrey Epstein as an Israeli intelligence asset, and openly taunted Zionist billionaires like Ackman for “getting away with scams” despite having “no actual skills.”

The mockery by Carlson was particularly galling for Ackman. One day after TPUSA’s conference, Ackman staged a 4,000 word Twitter/X meltdown defending his financial acumen, while insisting that he earned his vast fortune because, “I inherited good genes.”

In fact, the 59-year-old manager of the Pershing Square Capital hedge fund had presided over a precipitous decline in his own personal fortune through a series of bad bets. Between 2015 and 2018, amid a bull market, Ackman’s fund tallied embarrassingly negative returns that cost him an eye-popping $12 billion in losses. His“holy war” to short the multi-level marketing company Herbalife backfired, resulting in a devastating squeeze that cost him heavily. Ackman’s financial mishaps forced him to slash one fifth of his staff in 2018.

The billionaire also took issue with Carlson’s contention that he had been part of convicted sex offender and late Zionist financier Jeffrey Epstein’s “constellation of people.” Yet Carlson’s remarks were grounded in fact. Indeed, Ackman’s wife, the celebrity Israeli designer Neri Oxman, had gifted an artistic orb to Epstein after he plowed $125,000 in donations into her Media Lab at MIT. She was invited to lunch with Epstein on several occasions, according to the Boston Globe, and complied with MIT’s requirement to keep her gift to Epstein confidential.

Ackman has significantly elevated his public profile by leading fellow Zionist billionaires in a ruthless crackdown on post-October 7 Palestine solidarity activism in the US. By leveraging his fortune, Ackman helped dislodge the political scientist Claudine Gay as president of Harvard University, his alma mater, accusing her of adopting an insufficiently draconian policy toward students protesting Israel’s assault on Gaza.

After weeks of pummeling from Ackman, GOP members of Congress, and pro-Israel media, Gay finally quit when conservative activists produced evidence that she had plagiarized in her academic writing. While Ackman claimed victory, he howled with indignation when Business Insider returned the favor with a detailed article which documented multiple cases of plagiarism by his own wife, the designer Oxman. According to the outlet, Oxman “stole sentences and whole paragraphs from Wikipedia, other scholars and technical documents in her academic writing.”

Ackman responded by announcing that he would fund a plagiarism review of every MIT faculty member. He also delivered a 77-page lawsuit threat to Axel Springer, the publisher of Business Insider, accusing them of publishing claims “designed to cause her harm, principally because the reporters do not like me, my support for Israel, and my advocacy.” He quickly dropped the lawsuit, however, claiming he did so because Springer is “an important advocate against antisemitism.”

In May 2024, the Washington Post revealed Ackman as a leading member of a Whatsapp group of 50 ultra-wealthy Zionists coordinating counterinsurgency-style actions against student anti-genocide protesters at Columbia University.

According to the report, the millionaire cabal sought to buy off Black celebrities as propaganda puppets and dangled bribes before New York City Mayor Eric Adams to deploy the NYPD against student protesters. “Some members also offered to pay for private investigators to assist New York police in handling the protests, the chat log shows — an offer a member of the group reported in the chat that Adams accepted,” the Post reported.

This June 14, as Israel reeled at the Iranian response to its unprovoked assault days earlier, Ackman launched his next campaign: “@Israel needs our help to destroy Iran’s nuclear threat to the world…” the hedge funder declared on Twitter. “Israel does not have the equipment and armaments to complete the job. We do, and it does not require boots on the ground.”

Multiple sources, including a Trump administration official, have revealed to The Grayzone that Kirk personally visited Trump inside the White House to lobby him against attacking Iran. Trump “roared” at Kirk, one said, and shut down the conversation.

A month later, Kirk allowed the simmering rage within the conservative grassroots over Israel’s stranglehold on Washington to pour out at his TPUSA summit. Soon after, he was summoned to the Hamptons for a face-to-face with one of Netanyahu’s most influential allies in the US. Before Ackman and a cast of avaricious young influencers under Israel’s sway, he defied the billionaire power broker, then returned home to prepare for what would be his final speaking tour.

Following Kirk’s killing, Ackman ponied up a $1 million payout for anyone who provided information leading the capture of the shooter. That money may wind up with the father of the suspect, Tyler Robinson, who reportedly turned him in.

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HEADERS FROM FOUR:

merri ok not now tbl

SEE 2025 FUNDERS ALEX EPSTEIN

shivved ronna --> gotv = enforcer hit man trumpista?

see ariz fake elector bowyer indicted felony

only poso kirk defend jok on real am voice

see RW radio talk

esca amplify on mandella bs

see ziklag dirty trick on ~ johnson amend C &S evang

punked RT tenet media

hub?! 3 23 see tag

crm regular mma EVERY FREAKIN DAY?!

yikes see teneo hub

see islamophobe

SEE HYPE FEAR CONSIPRACY

see rfk vaxx covid bs

SEE CHRIS WRIGHT DENIAL BS DOE HACKS ENERGY DOMINANCE

see xian nat'list am founders xian BS

influencer incentive structure? is there an escalator hierarchy in right sphere?

see roadshow conf

SEE RACISM

see misogyny roadshow tradwife bs

see incubator

gen zz

see salem radio

SEE VIOLENCE CIVIL WAR SPIRITUAL WAR 1984 ~ 1776

rww Tags: Charlie Kirk Jack Hibbs Christian Nationalism Turning Point USA

MMA Tags: Charlie Kirk

freq on mma // ben shapiro

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AN 9 25

How a far-right influencer is using religion to plunder Charlie Kirk’s 'legacy'

OWENS

EDIT BD AN 9 25

If it feels like you’re being forced to honor and respect a demagogue and liar under penalty of … some bad thing, well, you’re not wrong.

As Radley Balko said Monday, “we're witnessing the most aggressive, fanatical crackdown on free speech in my lifetime. The speed and breadth of government censorship and private sector and nonprofit capitulation has been astonishing, as has the lack of urgency [or] silence from people who've long claimed to care about this stuff.”

How is this happening? Consider the case of Stephen King.

Yes, that Stephen King.

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Last week, on Twitter, the novelist quoted-tweeted remarks by Fox host Jesse Watters. “Charlie Kirk was not a ‘controversial’ or ‘polarizing’ man,” Watters said. “Charlie was a PATRIOT. THIS is a turning point and we all need to turn in the right direction. Rest in peace, my friend.”

It should be said first of all that this is a lie. Kirk was nothing but controversial and polarizing. That was his entire shtick. And that’s why Stephen King said: “He advocated for stoning gays to death. Just sayin’.”

This set off a firestorm of outrage, perhaps the loudest coming from US Senator Mike Lee of Utah: “Please share if you agree that the estate of Charlie Kirk should sue Stephen King for defamation over this heinously false accusation. He crossed a line. It will prove costly.”

Actually, it won’t. You can’t defame the dead. Defamation is about an injury to one’s reputation. You don’t have an injury, and you don’t have a reputation, when you’re dead. Once you’re dead, there’s nothing anyone can say to hurt you. Mike Lee, who is an attorney, knows that.

If litigation wasn’t Lee’s point, what was? Silencing a famous and (nominally) liberal critic of the broader totalitarian project. And he and others succeeded by forcing King to apologize. “I apologize for saying Charlie Kirk advocated stoning gays,” King said. “What he actually demonstrated was how some people cherry-pick Biblical passages.”

But King wasn’t wrong – not exactly. While it’s true that Kirk never said, “I hereby advocate for the stoning of gays to death,” he did say a Bible chapter, which calls for stoning a man who lies with another man, “affirms God’s perfect law when it comes to sexual matters.” That might not be advocacy, in the word’s strictest sense, but close enough.

The context matters, too. Kirk was criticizing Rachel Anne Accurso, the YouTube children’s video personality who goes by Ms Rachel. In June of last year, she made a biblical case for LGBTQ-plus inclusion. According to Factcheck.org, she said: “In Matthew 22, a religious teacher asked Jesus, what’s the most important commandment? And Jesus says, to love God and to ‘love your neighbor as yourself.’

“It doesn’t say love every neighbor except,” Ms Rachel said.

That’s what Kirk was responding to. Ms Rachel made no room for exceptions to God’s greatest law. In reply, Kirk did his own cherry-picking. He reached back to the Old Testament for a chapter that “affirms God’s perfect law when it comes to sexual matters.” Instead of including LGBTQ-plus people in God’s beloved community, as Jesus Christ might have done, he made the case for excluding them.

Ms Rachel advocated for love.

Kirk advocated for hate.

That Kirk did not explicitly advocate for the stoning of gays to death, in the strictest sense and syntax of those words, is therefore a distinction without a difference – unless, like Kirk, you’re a liar. In that case, the distinction between saying what you’re saying and not saying what you’re saying is important. If that collapses, so does your deception.

As long as the distinction between what is said and what is intended to be understood is in place, it’s possible to bully people into silence.

That’s what happened to Stephen King and others. They spoke the truth about Kirk – not the strict letter of it but the true spirit of it – but did not have the courage to stand by the truth after being accused of slander. And in the process of apologizing, they ended up affirming the lie, making it grow bigger, such that a USA Today story about King’s apology says that he “repeatedly apologized for a false accusation.” (After all, it must have been false if Stephen King apologized for it.)

I dwell on this episode, because it’s a microcosm of a much larger and more pernicious pattern in American politics in which the Republicans and their media allies (not just in the rightwing media) have taken the deceit that resides between what is said and what is intended to be understood, and have made that deceit structural, so such that telling the truth – in this case, saying plainly what Charlie Kirk meant, as opposed to what he said – is a radical act deserving of punishment.

The AP reported Monday that “after years of complaints from the right about ‘cancel culture’ from the left, some conservatives are seeking to upend the lives and careers of those who disparaged Charlie Kirk after his death. They are going after companies, educators, news outlets, political rivals and others they judge as promoting hate speech.”

Or as Radley Balko said, expanding on his first comment, “the extreme, opportunistic, completely disingenuous reaction to Kirk's murder also makes clear that if there's an Oklahoma City or 9/11-level attack in the next few years, this administration will absolutely exploit it to try to end our democracy and permanently entrench itself in power.”

I want to end with a small litmus test that can help determine what demagogues like Kirk really meant, so the courageous can fight back.

Try this: make their statements true.

Jesse Watters said Charlie Kirk was neither “controversial” nor “polarizing.” “Charlie was a PATRIOT,” the Fox host insisted. His death “is a turning point and we all need to turn in the right direction.”

Kirk was controversial. He was polarizing. As I said, that was his shtick. He advocated for the exclusion (hatred) of racial, sexual and religious minorities. What needs to happen for Watters’ words to be true?

“Patriot” needs to mean loyalty to white power and all that implies – unequal treatment, legal prejudice, exploitation, corruption, and a social order that’s rigidly hierarchical, with rich white men on top.

Only then is Charlie Kirk neither “controversial” nor “polarizing” man. Only then is it clear what Jesse Watters really meant when he said “THIS is a turning point and we all need to turn in the right direction.”

“THIS” is the end of liberty and justice for all.

And he’ll prove it by trying to silence you for saying so.

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an 9 25

see hayes on ellison tiktok fcc etc brendan carr on benny j nextstar

Jimmy Kimmel drew the wrath of Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Brendan Carr in response to the late-night host's comments on the murder of MAGA activist and Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk and the suspect in his shooting: 22-year-old Utah resident Tyler Robinson.

Kimmel argued that the suspect was part of the MAGA movement, not a leftist as President Donald Trump, Vice President JD Vance and others on the far right are saying. The late-night host never condoned the killing in any way, but rather, argued that the suspect had a MAGA ideology rather than a leftist ideology.

Disney, in response, suspended Kimmel's show indefinitely.

Now, according to Daily Beast reporter Cameron James, "America's largest ABC affiliate group," Sinclair, is saying that Kimmel must make a "meaningful personal donation" to Kirk's family.

"Media giant Sinclair also wants the comedian to 'issue a direct apology' to Kirk's family, claiming his suspension is not enough," James reports in an article published on September 18. "Kimmel has been suspended in a wave of MAGA anger, disguised as grief and decency, over comments made by the TV star about the murdered right-wing activist. Sinclair also announced they will air a tribute to Kirk in Kimmel’s Friday-night timeslot this week, and are offering the special to all ABC affiliates to air over the weekend."

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James adds, "Sinclair's Vice Chairman Jason Smith called Kimmel's comments on Kirk 'inappropriate and deeply insensitive at a critical moment for our country.'"

In an official statement released on September 17, Sinclair said it "will not lift the suspension of 'Jimmy Kimmel Live' on our stations until formal discussions are held with ABC regarding the network's commitment to professionalism and accountability."

*Read the full Daily Beast article at this link (subscription required).

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09/17/2025

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Kyle Mantyla

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The day after Charlie Kirk was shot and killed in Utah, I wrote in Slate about how worried I was about what was to come. What I saw in those first few hours after the murder was that “many conservatives are trying to make this into their Reichstag fire: the moment the movement has been waiting for to use as a pretext to suspend democratic rules, crush its opponents, and put itself fully in charge.”

It’s happening.

There is a massive MAGA crackdown on free speech underway, and of course the hypocrisy is stunning, but so is the velocity and the ferocity. What’s clear to me is that this is going to go far beyond standard “cancel culture” fare where angry internet vigilantes band together to get someone fired for a bad tweet (although that’s happening, too). Instead, we are seeing focused efforts from some of the most influential people in the Trump administration and in his orbit building out a framework to criminalize progressive organizing, chill liberal speech, penalize criticism of conservatives, and crush any media outlets that might report honestly on what’s happening.

The Trump universe is practically publishing its playbook here. The highest-up members of this administration are telling you exactly what they’re planning to do.

At the top of the list is designating liberal groups as domestic terror organizations. “It is a vast domestic terror movement,” Trump’s top policy advisor Stephen Miller said after he and vice president JD Vance took over an episode of the Charlie Kirk show. “With God as my witness, we are going to use every resource we have at the Department of Justice, Homeland Security and throughout this government to identify, disrupt, eliminate and destroy this network and make America safe again for the American people.”

Vance has singled out George Soros’s Open Society Foundation and the Ford Foundation as organizations he believes are funding these liberal terrorist groups. They are not — there is no vast network of violent left-wing groups, let alone foundations funding a vast network of violent left-wing groups. There is no evidence that the Kirk shooter was affiliated with any liberal organization (I’m not even sure the claims that his politics are clearly and unequivocally “left-wing” should be taken at face value, but that’s another post). Vance, the vice president of all of America, is out in public saying there is no “unity” with millions of his fellow citizens.

Trump has said he would like to designate Antifa a domestic terror organization. Despite being the scariest right-wing bogeyman, Antifa isn’t an organization at all. It’s an ideology, one adhered to by a smattering of anti-capitalists and anarchists, but on the right it has turned into a catch-all for “protesters we don’t like.” It seems to be expanding now into “people whose politics we don’t like” — that is, people who oppose Trump and the MAGA movement. Anyone who criticizes fascism could ostensibly be branded “antifa” by this administration.

The legal framework for all of this is unclear to put it mildly. But with a Supreme Court squarely in Trump’s pocket and a Democratic Party that is both out of power and entirely feckless when it comes to mounting any kind of resistance, I’m not sure that this administration needs the law on their side in order to do some serious damage. I’m not sure they need the law on their side in order to change the law. They certainly don’t need the law on their side in order to flout it.

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Marco Rubio’s State Department says it is deporting visa-holders who celebrated Kirk’s murder. Attorney General Pam Bondi said that “there’s free speech and then there’s hate speech,” which she seemed to define as any speech criticizing conservatives, and pledged, “we will absolutely target you, go after you, if you are targeting anyone with hate speech.” After a massive backlash (conservatives don’t really want hate speech criminalized, because that would pose some big problems for them) she clarified: “Hate speech that crosses the line into threats of violence is NOT protected by the First Amendment.

It’s a crime. For far too long, we’ve watched the radical left normalize threats, call for assassinations, and cheer on political violence. That era is over,” Bondi posted on X. Then, after an Office Depot employee refused to print out fliers for a Kirk vigil, she threatened to bring the full force of government down on anyone who doesn’t behave how she wants. “Businesses cannot discriminate,” she said. “If you want to go and print posters with Charlie’s pictures on them for a vigil, you have to let them do that. We can prosecute you for that.” (Of course, conservatives have been arguing for decades that businesses can discriminate, recently going all the way to the Supreme Court to argue that a baker should be able to discriminate against gay couples in making wedding cakes).

When ABC’s Jonathan Karl asked Trump for clarity on Bondi’s comments about hate speech, Trump said, “We’ll probably go after people like you because you treat me so unfairly, it’s hate. You have a lot of hate in your heart.” He then claimed that ABC had already been forced to pay him $16 million for a form of hate speech (not what happened) and told him, “maybe they’ll go after you.” He also saidthat he has asked Bondi to look into jailing non-violent protesters who confront him in public.

Trump issuing the New York Times, saying they defamed him and demanding $16 million. He already took $1.1 billion in funding away from NPR and public broadcasting. He has previously called for the FCC to pull the broadcasting licenses of NBC and ABC, and I have no doubt that those demands will be reupped in the wake of the Kirk murder. House Republicans are attempting to censure Rep. Ilhan Omar and remove her from her committee seats because they don’t like her comments about Kirk’s murder — which were not celebratory, but rather highlighting Republican hypocrisy.

There is an important distinction between the government penalizing speech and facing other consequences for what one says or writes in public. I don’t think the culture of snitching to peoples’ employers about their online conduct is a good one, and I think firing people for bad tweets is often an error. This is nuanced, of course. Some social media posts suggest that a person cannot do their job fairly, or that they will discriminate; some create liabilities for an employer. There isn’t a hard-and-fast rule at play when it comes to professional consequences for social media behavior. But there is a hard-and-fast rule at play when it comes to the government responding to speech and protest, and that is: *The government doesn’t get to punish speech and protest.

This is the rule by which the Trump administration is refusing to abide. Deporting people for their comments is the government punishing speech. Bringing RICO suits against liberal organizations is the government punishing speech.

This has a much broader chilling effect. Authoritarian governments don’t need to punish every single comment they dislike; they only need to create a culture of surveillance and make an example of a few in order to keep the many in line. I can feel it already, this sense — especially among journalists but I imagine others as well — that one must be extra careful about how one talks about this administration, that maybe it’s just not worth writing or saying certain things. In the wake of Kirk’s murder, some conservative activists made a website where users can submit social media comments about Kirk that they believe deserve punishment. This is the kind of snitch culture that is often cultivated in authoritarian regimes; it’s the making of a modern Stasi. It creates a climate in which people are scared to say what they think, even to their friends and relatives; it’s a climate in which there is only one acceptable ideology, and where The Truth comes from the regime rather than from reality.

The aim here is to use the full force of government to destroy any opposition to the MAGA regime. It is to make progressive organizing dangerous. It is to make liberal criticisms of these very authoritarian actions totally verboten.

I have to believe that they will not succeed — that too many Americans will find this unacceptable, that our courts will quash these efforts. Will this regime listen to the courts, though? And how long will it take before the public backlash is large enough to matter?

We are walking into an extremely dark era.

xx Jill https://jill.substack.com/p/welcome-to-right-wing-reeducation

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After Kirk shooting, right-wing media revive false narrative about attack on Minnesota legislators

Written by Matt Gertz

Published09/17/25

In the wake of the killing of Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk, many on the right have claimed that all political violence comes from the left, an argument used to justify a broad crackdown against their political enemies. The June shooting of two Democratic state legislators in Minnesota is the most prominent recent evidence against that argument (though hardly the only such case).

But several right-wing media figures have found a rhetorical solution by suggesting that the alleged Minnesota shooter — who reportedly had a “hit list” of dozens of other Democratic leaders and was, according to his friend and roommate, a supporter of President Donald Trump — is actually a leftist.

In fact, the right-wing media bubble is so impermeable to facts that contradict its narratives that prominent Republican figures, including Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Attorney General Pam Bondi, have pushed the same claims.

The right’s false narrative about the Minnesota shootings

Federal prosecutors allege that Vance Boelter committed “targeted political assassinations” when he shot and killed Minnesota House of Representatives Speaker Emerita Melissa Hortman and her husband, then shot and wounded Minnesota State Sen. John Hoffman and his wife, in the early morning hours of June 14.

:{:{Boelter, like many alleged perpetrators of political violence, seemed to be suffering from mental illness that muddled the clarity of his views. But his preferences appear to be with the political right — he was reportedly an evangelical Christian who preached against abortion and the LGBTQ community, and according to his roommate and longtime friend, he “supported Trump and tuned in to programming from Alex Jones’s conspiracy-filled Infowars site.”}:

And his targets were universally on the political left: Hortman, and Hoffman’s legislative district, were reportedly named in a “hit list” that law enforcement subsequently recovered from Boelter’s vehicle; the list also included Gov. Tim Walz, dozens of other Democratic lawmakers from Minnesota and elsewhere, and “figures with ties to the abortion rights movement, including Planned Parenthood.”}:

None of these facts should suggest that the political right or the Republican Party as a whole bear responsibility for Boelter’s alleged political violence or that their repression is justified to prevent similar attacks. They are relevant, however, to the question of whether political violence is solely directed from the left toward the right.

But while those facts were trickling out in the days following the attack, MAGA influencers were spinning up a narrative in which Boelter was actually a leftist. Some even suggested that the attacks may have been ordered by Walz, perhaps as retribution for the legislators supporting legislation the governor opposed. This argument rested on two ludicrously thin pieces of evidence. First, Walz had, in 2019, reappointed Boelter to a workforce development advisory board that reportedly “has about 60 members, many of whom are not politically connected or would have meaningful access to the governor or interactions with him.” Second, police found flyers with “No Kings” written on them in Boelter’s vehicle, which they said could have indicated he planned to target anti-Trump protests scheduled to take place later that day.

The right revives the false Minnesota narrative following Kirk’s killing

Many prominent right-wing figures seem to have either never heard any information about Boelter outside of those initial conspiracy theories, or learned of it but decided to hide the facts from their audiences. And now, in the wake of Kirk’s killing by an apparent leftist whose alleged motive was to stop Kirk’s “hate,” the false narrative has been revived by MAGA commentators who are trying to push back against arguments that the Minnesota shootings were a case of political violence from the right.

Fox & Friends co-host Brian Kilmeade, while listing recent cases of politically motivated killings on September 13, described the Minnesota shootings as follows: “And then, June 14, these Minnesota legislators were killed, something to do with what’s going on locally — they didn’t like what Tim Walz was doing, or a former staffer of Tim Walz.” Neither Kilmeade nor Fox’s graphic identified the legislators as Democrats.

Fox host Will Cain claimed on his Tuesday broadcast that “essentially bullets are flying in one direction,” but the left is trying “to make this a both-sides problem of political violence” by falsely attributing cases like the Minnesota shootings to the right.

“What we know about that particular suspect’s motivations remains somewhat unclear, but we do know that he had with him flyers that had No Kings Day protests solicitation on them,” Cain said. “There is also some suggestion he was upset about the way Hortman voted when it came to illegal immigrants and health care. Before we assume it is both sides, let’s get the facts on each instance.”

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From the September 16, 2025, edition of Fox News' The Will Cain Show

Newsmax host Rob Finnerty offered a similar explanation on his show later that night. “They're trying to pretend that what happened to Charlie Kirk has nothing to do with the left, that this happens all the time on both sides, which is not true,” he said, before turning to the Minnesota shootings.

“The problem with that, Melissa Hortman was a Democrat, and while her death was tragic, she was actually killed by another Democrat,” Finnerty claimed. “Not only that, a Democrat who worked directly for Tim Walz, was appointed by Tim Walz, the governor of Minnesota, Kamala's running mate, meaning that in this case, a Democrat literally assassinated another Democrat.”

“Because that's the left,” he continued. “That's what they do as a party, and it's not being covered by the rest of the media. It's being covered up.”

This narrative about the Minnesota shooting is so prevalent in right-wing media — and the GOP’s leaders are so ensconced within the right-wing media bubble — that Republican politicians have promoted it.

Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT), who is pathologically online, had posted shortly after the June attack that the shooter had been a “Marxist.” He later deleted his posts after being confronted by Sen. Tina Smith (D-MN), who had also been on the alleged “hit list.”

But three months later, their colleague Cruz also linked the Minnesota shooter to the left.

When Cruz called political violence “a left-wing problem” during a CNN interview on Tuesday, host Kaitlan Collins responded by pointing to the Minnesota shooting.

“You need to get your facts right,” Cruz replied. “The assassin there was not a right-wing assassin acting on a political motive. The assassin there was someone who had been an appointee of Tim Walz, and he was a deranged lunatic.”

Likewise, asked about the Minnesota shooting on Monday, Bondi said of the alleged killer, “I believe they said that they were supporters of Gov. Walz."

As I wrote last week, we can’t have a real conversation about political violence if we can’t admit that it has come from both sides. But many on the right just don’t seem capable of doing that, and they’re backfilling whatever explanations they can conjure up to avoid admitting the existence of political violence from the right.

// MMA

09/12/25 1:22 PM EDT

06/16/25 12:50 PM EDT

06/20/25

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AN 9 25

Senior Trump White House Counselor Peter Navarro is raging at “they” — seemingly Democrats and the left — for consequences he and fellow MAGA allies have brought on themselves, including prison time. And he appeared to blame the left for the assassination of Charlie Kirk as well.

In a Fox Business interview, Navarro, who has promoted conspiracy theories, highlighted on Tuesday his prison sentence and that of Steve Bannon, both for contempt of Congress. Both were sentenced to several months in prison.

But Navarro’s long litany of complaints went further. He blasted the disbarment recommendation of coup memo author John Eastman, and that of Jeff Clark—who reportedly “tried to help Trump subvert the 2020 election.”

He also suggested that “they” attempted to “bankrupt” former Trump personal attorney Rudy Giuliani.

READ MORE: ‘This Isn’t a Close Call’: Dem Floats Shutdown After Trump’s Reporter Threat

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And he appeared to blame the assassination of conservative commentator and activist Charlie Kirk on the left.

“As you know, ‘I Went to Prison, So You Won’t Have To’— it’s the book I wrote, and it’s just a warning,” Navarro told host Maria Bartiromo.

“Everybody involved in my imprisonment was a Democrat,” Navarro alleged, claiming he was a “political prisoner.”

“I’ll tell you this, this is the age of accountability, okay?” he declared. “If we don’t hold these people accountable, they’ll do it again.”

Navarro said that his book is “a warning to everybody in America that if they didn’t come for me and Donald Trump, put the Bannon in prison, bankrupt Rudy Giuliani, take away the law cards of Jeff Clark and John Eastman and kill, kill, kill Charlie Kirk, and try to kill President Trump — twice.”

READ MORE: ‘You Have a Lot of Hate’: Trump Threatens Reporter After Hate Speech Question

“There has to be accountability, ’cause they’re just gonna keep doing it,” Navarro declared, not specifying who “they” are, while having talked about Democrats.

Bartiromo chimed in, saying, “I mean, the level, the level that they have stooped to is so extraordinary, and it’s unbelievable. I mean, truly is unbelievable.”

She also did not explain who “they” are.

Navarro is also one of many on the right who appear to be placing blame on the left, as an entity, for the assassination of Charlie Kirk.

The Trump administration, and especially the President, has directly or indirectly blamed the “radical left” for the assassination of Charlie Kirk, even as the suspected shooter’s motives and political beliefs, if any, remain unclear.

“For years,” Trump said in an address from the Oval Office the night of Kirk’s killing, “those on the radical left have compared wonderful Americans, like Charlie, to Nazis and the world’s worst mass murderers and criminals. This kind of rhetoric is directly responsible for the terrorism that we’re seeing in our country today, and it must stop right now.”

Vice President JD Vance echoed Trump’s remarks on Monday, saying, “we have to talk about this incredibly destructive movement of left-wing extremism that has grown up over the last few years, and I believe is part of the reason why Charlie was killed by an assassin’s bullet.”

Attorney General Pam Bondi on Monday declared, “Yes, who killed Charlie [Kirk]?” Left wing radicals. And they will be held accountable.”

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The increasingly hostile political climate is showing no signs of abating, and some political scientists are worried about what that could mean for Americans in the near future.

That's according to a Tuesday essay by the New York Times' Thomas B. Edsall, who spoke with various experts about how the recent killing of far-right activist Charlie Kirk has inflamed political tensions across the United States. Some were particularly worried that President Donald Trump's harsh rhetoric toward the political left could significantly increase the chances of further political violence during his second term.

University of Chicago political scientist Robert Pape said that Kirk's death was the "most consequential assassination of an American political leader since the 1960s." He also pointed to past research he had conducted showing that tens of millions of Americans on both sides were showing an increasingly favorable attitude toward violence as a way to solve the country's problems, and harkened back to Americans' rush to go to war in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks.

READ MORE:'Causing quite a ruckus': Trump's biggest problem will be flying with him to England

"There are powerful reasons to worry how Republicans will react to the assassination of Kirk, but the main one is simply the most obvious: Kirk was beloved by millions of Republicans and now many millions more," he said. "As America saw after 9/11 in our politics leading to 70 percent of the public supporting the invasion of Iraq on flimsy evidence: mass sorrow can evolve into mass anger and then mass willingness to pursue aggressive policies that can lead to spirals of violence beyond anything imagined before the event."

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Other experts pushed back on Trump's repeated claims that the political left bore sole responsibility for political violence. University of Krakow, Poland psychology professor Katarzyna Jasko said the president's argument was "not justifiable" given the ample examples of right-wing political violence in recent years. She noted that her past research found that far-right political violence was not only more frequent than violent acts carried out but the left, but the intensity of violence committed by right-wing actors was far greater.

"Among radicalized individuals in the United States, those adhering to a left-wing ideology were markedly less likely to engage in violent ideologically motivated acts when compared to right-wing individuals. By contrast, we found no such difference between Islamist and right-wing individuals," Jasko wrote in a 2022 study.

Despite Trump's insistence that the left is exclusively responsible for the rise in political violence, the Trump administration was found to have deleted a Department of Justice study finding that far-right political violence far outpaced "all other types of terrorism," including both left-wing violence and Islamic terrorism. There has so far not been a specific ideological motive tied to the alleged shooter who has been charged with Charlie Kirk's murder.

READ MORE:Trump DOJ erases report showing far-right violence outpaces 'all other types of terrorism'

Click here to read Edsall's full essay in the New York Times (subscription required).

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AN 9 25

In an article for Slate published Tuesday, writer Luke Winkie argued that the political firestorm following the murder of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk is being fueled less by facts than by a volatile mixture of speculation, partisan narrative-building and ideological fear-mongering.

“It’s still too early to know the full answers to these questions, but that hasn’t stopped a whole bunch of people putting out a whole bunch of misinformation, half-truths and inflammatory claims on the matter,” Winkie wrote.

He argued that the right-wing reaction to Kirk’s death has escalated far beyond grief, turning into a sweeping crackdown on dissent and an attempt to reframe the shooting as a symptom of an imagined liberal conspiracy.

READ MORE:'I am not afraid of you!' Senator takes on Trump’s FBI director in explosive exchange

“Much of this has to do with who Kirk was,” Winkie wrote, describing the conservative figurehead as “a talented showman and cunning organizer” who played a pivotal role in the growth of the American right.

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But just as important to the fallout, Winkie maintained, is the murky identity of **:{Tyler Robinson, the alleged shooter.}:

Robinson, a 22-year-old from Utah, has become a canvas onto which various factions are projecting their worst fears, according to Winkie. Conservative leaders like Utah Gov. Spencer Cox (R) and White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller have cast Robinson as “deeply indoctrinated by leftist ideology.” However, Winkie pointed out that the actual evidence tells a far murkier story.

There’s no sign, for example, that Robinson was involved in organized leftist politics, let alone part of a radical network.

READ MORE:'He's not doing well': Psychologists say Trump showing telltale signs of 'early dementia

Instead, the 22 year-old appears to have been a quiet, somewhat socially isolated figure who drifted away from both formal education and political engagement.

“The revelation that right-wing media is most preoccupied with,” Winkie noted, “is Robinson’s romantic involvement with [a] queer roommate who is transitioning from male to female.”

This detail, Winkie suggested, has been opportunistically twisted to frame Robinson as “living an un-Christian lifestyle,” fueling a culture-war narrative that blames queer and trans people for the violence.

Winkie doesn’t downplay the horror of Kirk’s assassination, but he warns that the political response is careening toward authoritarianism.

READ MORE:'Something is wrong': MAGA pundits say Trump is 'lying to us' about Charlie Kirk shooting

He cited Attorney General Pam Bondi’s threat to gut First Amendment protections as a chilling example, after she said “some hate can’t be negotiated out.”

Robinson reportedly texted his partner before the shooting. Winkie noted this statement was more personal and emotionally driven than politically calculated.

The writer also highlighted the Discord server where Robinson had been active, a space some hoped would reveal the killer’s radicalization. Instead, the chats turned out to be mundane, filled mostly with “gamer memes and loose group-chat chatter.”

Winkie wrote, “It wasn’t very partisan.”

READ MORE:'Incredible corruption': Blockbuster report on Trump's new racket leaves critics stunned

After the assassination, one of Robinson’s friends posted a prayer for Kirk’s family.

“Here is a group of kids blindsided by the reality that one of their friends had taken such drastic, world-altering measures out of a misguided sense of vengeance,” Winkie wrote.

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Teachers, a realtor, a radio broadcaster and a pizzeria worker all fired in Kirk fallout

April Corbin Girnus, Nevada Current AN 9 25

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AN 9 25

On Tuesday, September 16, prosecutors announced that Tyler Robinson — the 22-year-old suspect in the fatal shooting of MAGA activist and Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk — is being charged with aggravated murder and said they will seek the death penalty.

The New York Times' Michael Barbaro discussed the case with reporters Jack Healy and Kenneth P. Vogel in a podcast posted on September 17. While Healy talked about the suspect's possible motives, Vogel got into what Barbaro described as a "rational for cracking down on left-wing groups across the country."

Vogel noted recent comments by Vice President JD Vance and White House adviser Stephen Miller calling for a crackdown on left-wing groups.

READ MORE: 'I'm the one asking the questions': CNN host cuts off Ted Cruz after he shouts over her

The Times reporter told Barbaro, "Miller (made) a really impassioned proclamation about how he and the federal government was going to use every resource at their disposal to go after and disrupt and dismantle and destroy these networks that he says, on the left, are making America unsafe."

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When Barbaro asked Vogel if there is "a sense" of "which groups specifically" Vance and Miller "are referring to," Vogel responded, "I think there are a number of groups that could probably fit into this category based on my conversations with people around the White House, around Trump's orbit."

"Two organizations specifically have come up," Vogel told Barbaro. "One of them is Open Society Foundations, and that's George Soros' philanthropic organization. And the other is the Ford Foundation. Now, they don't really do programming of their own. So, what seems to be at issue here is the organizations that they fund and what those organizations, in turn, are doing."

When Barbaro asked Vogel what groups Open Society and the Ford Foundation fund, the Times reporter explained, "Open Society, for instance — and, I believe, the Ford Foundation — were big funders of sort of racial justice groups around the Black Lives Matter movement. And some of those groups clearly were involved in organizing protests."

READ MORE:'Undisputed idiot king': Former NBC journalist calls Eric Trump 'the epitome of stupidity'

Vogel continued, "And it is theoretically possible that at some of the protests where some of these groups were involved in the organization, there may have been vandalism or violence…. But for people around the White House, it's really about what they think of as a broader network of liberal nonprofit groups and firms that administer them that they believe are stoking violence through really extreme rhetoric and polarization. And they attribute to these groups other seemingly disconnected acts of vandalism."

READ MORE:'Didn't work for you': CNN analyst confronts Trump's favorite pundit on political violence

*Listen to the full New York Times podcast at this link (subscription required).

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AN 9 25

Last week's murder of MAGA activist Charlie Kirk has prompted President Donald Trump to use him as a "symbol" to promote his own "political religion," according to a historian and journalist.

In a Tuesday essay for Religion News Service (RNS), former Harvard University professor Mark Silk lamented that Trump was using the shocking public killing of Kirk as an excuse to crack down on his ideological opponents, and accused the president of creating a "political religion" centered around hate and division. He contextualized Trump's response to Kirk's murder in former President Abraham Lincoln's reflection that in the wake of tragedies, presidents should speak "with malice toward none, with charity for all ... to bind up the nation’s wounds."

"Trump has, unsurprisingly, done nothing of the sort in this time of crisis, transgressing civil religious norms with utter self-awareness," Silk wrote.

READ MORE:'Something is wrong': MAGA pundits say Trump is 'lying to us' about Charlie Kirk shooting

In his RNS essay, Silk reminded readers that during an interview with Fox & Friends, Trump passed up an opportunity to be a uniter and instead said he "couldn't care less" about bringing the country together. Silk contrasted Trump's approach with that of Italian historian Emilio Gentile, who said that government should seek to create a "civil religion" that is built on "a plurality of ideas, free competition in the exercise of power and the ability of the governed to dismiss their governments through peaceful and constitutional methods."

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"In place of a civil religion that sacralizes the political system to include those with whom we disagree, Trump has embraced a political religion that excludes them — one that, as Gentile put it, 'is intolerant, invasive, and fundamentalist, and ... wishes to permeate every aspect of an individual’s life and of a society’s collective life,'" Silk wrote.

Silk also drew a parallel between Trump's response to Kirk's death with the 1930 death of far-right German paramilitary leader Horst Wessel. After Wessel was shot, his death became a rallying cry for the far-right movement in Germany that led to World War II. Silk worried that Trump's actions were making Charlie Kirk into an American Horst Wessel, to be propagandized for today's far-right movement in the United States.

HIGH RANKING? SS ? OFFICERS SWORN IN ON FLAG WITH HIS BLOOD ON IT?

"Today, the canonization of Charlie Kirk proceeds apace. Tributes to him as a stalwart of free speech rights have come from expected and unexpected quarters, even as some are fired from their jobs for daring to criticize him. There are songs celebrating him as a martyr to a great cause," Silk wrote. "He is fast becoming the Horst Wessel of Trump’s political religion."

READ MORE:'Increasingly senile wackjob': Expert says Trump too broken to destroy democracy on his own

Click here to read Silk's essay in full.

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AN 9 25

First Son Eric Trump's false claim that political violence is exclusively carried out by the American left prompted Emmy-winning journalist David Shuster to declare that President Donald Trump's second-oldest son was the "undisputed idiot king" and "a grotesque epitome of stupidity so profound he renders the rest of his family — already a display of moral and cognitive deformities that would confound Sigmund Freud — almost respectable by comparison."

After MAGA activist Charlie Kirk was killed by a lone gunman on a Utah college campus last week, Eric Trump recently joined a far-right podcast to lay blame for Kirk's murder at the feet of the left. This is despite the alleged shooter's staunch Republican family, non-partisan voter registration status and his own friends saying he never discussed politics.

"The bullets are only flying one way," Eric Trump told podcast host Will Cain. "Listen, there's fringe on both sides, 100%, but like, I don't know ... These people have tried to do everything they could to take us out of the game."

READ MORE:Trump DOJ erases report showing far-right violence outpaces 'all other types of terrorism'

In a Tuesday post to his Substack, Shuster — who is a veteran of NBC, CNN and Fox News — called Eric "the dumbest Trump, which is saying something." He went on to say that Trump's adult son saying that the left was the only side carrying political violence was "the intellectual equivalent of spraying manure in your own eyes while insisting it is perfume."

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"In this single sentence, Eric demonstrated the mental agility of a cornered sloth," Shuster wrote. "And the selective memory of a dung beetle rolling it’s own feculent ball across the lawn of public discourse."

Shuster pointed out that Eric Trump glossed over high-profile recent instances of right-wing violence, like the June murder of former Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman (D) and her husband Mark — in which the alleged killer also wounded Democratic state senator Jon Hoffman and his wife, Yvette. Shuster also reminded his readers that a man angry about vaccines fired on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia, and killed the police officer who confronted him. The former MSNBC host also didn't hold back in criticizing Eric Trump from using Kirk's murder to promote his new book.

"Eric was baffled when critics said the pledge looked opportunistic. Maybe the word itself baffled Eric since 'opportunistic' has five syllables," Shuster wrote. "...He is the family’s apex of ignorance. The pinnacle of self-important incompetence. The organism whose very existence makes the rest of the Trump clan’s failings appear almost tolerable."

READ MORE:'Didn't work for you': CNN analyst confronts Trump's favorite pundit on political violence

Click here to read Shuster's post in its entirety.

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AN 9 25

Many Christian nationalists and far-right MAGA Republicans have claimed that "holy war" or "jihad" is a concept that is unique to Islam. But quite a few religious scholars strongly disagree, emphasizing that is nothing inherently violent about either Islam or Christianity — and that an obsession with "holy war" comes from one's interpretation of the religion, not from the religion itself.

In an article published by on September 16, The New Republic's Gil Duran outlines the role that, in 2025, "holy war" is playing in Christian nationalism and the MAGA movement.

"Last week, in the hours after Charlie Kirk's assassination, the words 'demon' and 'evil' trended on X as some on the right portrayed his murder as the work of supernaturally possessed Democrats and leftists," Duran explains. "Major right-wing influencers echoed Carl Schmitt's ideas, calling for a political crackdown on Kirk’s critics. Chris Rufo, a prominent right-wing propagandist, called on law enforcement to 'infiltrate, disrupt, arrest, and incarcerate' the 'radical left.' This is where apocalyptic rhetoric always leads."

READ MORE:'Something is wrong': MAGA pundits say Trump is 'lying to us' about Charlie Kirk shooting

Duran notes that in Christian fundamentalist and MAGA circles, one is seeing a surge in "devil talk" and fear of The Antichrist.

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"Over time, the identity of Satan's Little Helper has shifted from Native Americans to Communists, Hitler and Saddam Hussein and Barack Obama — even barcodes and microchips have been implicated," Duran observes. "From colonial days to the AI era, the hunt for the Antichrist continues. Today's QAnon conspiracy theorists believe they are battling a cabal of cannibalistic Satanists. 'Unhumans,' a 2024 book praised by (Vice President) JD Vance, equated progressives with bloodthirsty 'unhuman' creatures. This turns politics into a zero-sum holy war."

Duran points to tech mogul and billionaire donor Peter Thiel as an example of a prominent figure in MAGA World who is obsessing over The Antichrist. In the past, Thiel was more of a libertarian. But in recent years, he has taken a decidedly MAGA turn.

"Thiel is not a theologian, scholar, or prophet," Duran writes. "So why pay attention to his biblical musings? Because Thiel is one of the world's most influential men, and his Antichrist speeches reveal his deep belief that religion is a weapon for political warfare —and he's right. Thiel's Antichrist fixation fits a long tradition in American politics. Since the nation's founding, Americans have sought to name the Antichrist — usually by pointing the finger at their political enemies."

READ MORE: 'Deeply troubling': Military expert warns Trump is unilaterally 'deciding to kill people'

Duran notes what historian Robert Fuller, author of the 1995 book "Naming the Antichrist: The History of an American Obsession," had to say about that role that "holy war" plays in Christian fundamentalism.

Duran quotes Fuller as saying, "The symbol of the Antichrist has played a surprisingly significant role in shaping Americans' self-understanding. Because they tend to view their nation as uniquely blessed by God, they have been especially prone to demonize their enemies…. Once we label our adversaries in these cosmic terms — all good versus all evil — now, there's going to be no compromise."

IN THE NAME OF MARTYR

Can Charlie Kirk really be considered a ‘martyr’? A Christianity historian explains

// BONDI ON HATE SPEECH

Trump’s AG scrambles to do 'damage control' after conservatives rage against free speech threat

AN 9 25

Senior Trump administration officials on Monday made fresh threats to crack down on a nonexistent left-wing “domestic terror movement” following last week’s assassination of Charlie Kirk—a move that critics called an attempt to exploit the far-right firebrand’s murder to advance an authoritarian agenda targeting nonviolent opposition.

Even as investigators work to determine the motive of Kirk’s killer, members of Trump’s inner circle and supporters have amplified an unfounded narrative of a coordinated leftist movement targeting conservatives.

According to The New York Times:

On Monday, two senior administration officials, who spoke anonymously to describe the internal planning, said that Cabinet secretaries and federal department heads were working to identify organizations that funded or supported violence against conservatives. The goal, they said, was to categorize left-wing activity that led to violence as domestic terrorism, an escalation that critics said could lay the groundwork for crushing anti-conservative dissent more broadly.

Appearing on the latest episode of “The Charlie Kirk Show” podcast—which was guest hosted by US Vice President JD Vance—White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller said that “we are going to use every resource we have at the Department of Justice, Homeland Security, and throughout this government to identify, disrupt, dismantle, and destroy these networks and make America safe again for the American people.”

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“It will happen, and we will do it in Charlie’s name,” Miller vowed.

Vance said during the podcast that he wanted to explore “all of the ways that we’re trying to figure out how to prevent this festering violence that you see on the far left from becoming even more and more mainstream.”

“You have the crazies on the far left who are saying, ‘Oh, Stephen Miller and JD Vance, they’re going to go after constitutionally protected speech,‘” the vice president said. “We’re going to go after the network that foments, facilitates, and engages in violence.”

Vance, who like Trump and numerous supporters claim to champion free speech, also took aim at “people who are celebrating” Kirk’s killing.

Another unnamed administration official told the Times Monday that government agencies would be investigating people, including those accused of vandalizing Tesla electric vehicles and dealerships and allegedly assaulting federal immigration agents, in an effort to implicate US leftists in political violence.

Vance and Miller’s threats ignored right-wing violence—which statistically outpaces left-wing attacks—including the recent assassinations of Democratic Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark Hortman, who were murdered in June by a right-wing masked gunman disguised as a police officer.

Investigative reporter Jason Paladino reported last week that the US Department of Justice apparently removed an academic study previously published on the National Institute for Justice’s online library showing that “since 1990, far-right extremists have committed far more ideologically motivated homicides than far-left or radical Islamist extremists, including 227 events that took more than 520 lives” versus “42 ideologically motivated attacks that took 78 lives” committed by “far-left extremists.”

Responding to Miller’s remarks, New Republic staff writer Greg Sargent noted on social media that “Stephen Miller was directly involved in one of the largest acts of organized domestic political violence the United States has seen in modern times, the January 6 [2021] insurrection.”

Congresswoman Diana DeGette (D-Colo.) weighed in Monday on Miller’s attempt to exploit Kirk’s murder, writing on the social media site Bluesky that “it’s never acceptable to kill someone for their political beliefs. But the Trump [administration] exploiting the shooting of Charlie Kirk to follow their authoritarian instincts and crack down on the left is incredibly disturbing.”

“We must end any form of political violence—and reject those who try to exploit it,” she added.

Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom noted Monday on social media that Miller “has already publicly labeled the Democratic Party as a terrorist organization.”

“This isn’t about crime and safety,” Newsom added. “It’s about dismantling our democratic institutions. We cannot allow acts of political violence to be weaponized and used to threaten tens of millions of Americans.”

The progressive Working Families Party (WFP) said Monday on social media that “JD Vance and Stephen Miller want to use the horrifying murder of Charlie Kirk to target and dismantle pro-democracy groups.”

“Their comments call to mind some of the darkest periods in US history,” WFP continued. “They’re dividing people based on what box we ticked on our voter registration.”

Vance and Miller “want to stoke fear and resentment to justify their un-American crackdowns on free speech, mass abductions of working people, and military takeovers of our cities,” WFP added. “This isn’t going to fly. We’ve survived crises like this before as a country, and we can choose to live in a place where our political freedoms are protected, where we settle disagreements with words not weapons, and where no one has to fear losing a loved one to gun violence.”

AN 9 25

Can Charlie Kirk really be considered a ‘martyr’? A Christianity historian explains

Charlie Kirk: white nationalist, conservative Christian, right-wing social media personality, shooting victim, and now, a “martyr”. That is, according to his supporters.

Since Kirk’s death last week, a number of his followers from the Christian right have ascribed him the title of “martyr”. President Donald Trump himself called Kirk a “martyr for truth and freedom”.

Similarly, Rob McCoy, a pastor emeritus from California, said at a Sunday morning church service

Today, we celebrate the life of Charlie Kirk, a 31-year-old God-fearing Christian man, a husband, father of two, a patriot, a civil rights activist, and now a Christian martyr.

Looking back at the history of martyrdom offers insight into what it means for Kirk to be hailed a martyr, both for his memory, and for the future of the United States.

From witness to criminal to witness again

The term martyr emerged in ancient law courts with the Greek word martus, meaning a witness or person who gives testimony.

From their earliest days, Christians appropriated it to refer to those who testified to the gospel of Jesus Christ. The gospel of Luke even concludes with Jesus telling his disciples: “You are witnesses – martyres – of these things” (Luke 24:48).

Early Christians regularly ran afoul of Roman authorities, and were brought to court as criminals. The charges generally revolved around questionable loyalty to the Roman state and religion. Could someone worship Jesus and also offer sacrifice to the traditional gods, including the emperor or his divine spirit (his “genius”)?

Christians and Romans alike thought not. From the 2nd century onward, accounts of these trials centred on a single question: “are you a Christian?”. If the answer was “yes”, execution followed.

For local authorities, the executed person was a criminal. But for fellow Christians, they were witnesses to the truth of the gospel, and their deaths were evidence of the Christian God. They were both witness and testimony – “martyrs” in every sense.

In 2004, scholar of early Christianity, Elizabeth Castelli, argued martyrs are born only after their death. The martyr isn’t a fact, but a figure produced by the stories told about them, and the honour afforded them in ritual commemorations. A person isn’t a martyr until other people within a specific community decide they are.

To understand what makes someone a martyr, we have to ask two questions:

  1. what are they a witness to? As in, what ideal or cause led to their death and how did their death testify to it?
  1. who are they a witness for? Who tells their story and who calls them a martyr?

Boundaries and borderline cases

The history of martyrdom is also a history of debates over what kind of death “counts”, and what role martyrs play in the church.

Questionable cases have accumulated through the decades. Some “martyrs” volunteered eagerly, perhaps too eagerly.

On April 29 304 CE, an archdeacon named Euplus stood outside the city council chamber in Catania, Sicily, shouting: “I want to die; I am a Christian”. After some discussion, the governor sentenced him to torture and he died of his injuries. Was this martyrdom, or suicide?

Under Christian emperors from the 4th century on, soldiers who died fighting Persians (or later Arabs) also came to be called martyrs. A soldier’s death is especially considered martyrdom if they fought against members of a different religion.

However, the soldier-martyr label has also raised anxieties. The most recent example came from the troubling claim by Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kyrill that Russian soldiers who die fighting in Ukraine are martyrs – despite fighting fellow Orthodox Christians. What do these soldiers testify to?

The stories of martyrs define community borders. Those who kill martyrs tend to be treated as enemies of the faith, whether they are Roman authorities, enemy combatants, or even people assumed to be complicit in the event.

The MAGA martyr

Let’s apply the two questions above to Charlie Kirk, who has been dubbed both “martyr” and “patron saint of MAGA”.

What would Kirk be a martyr to? To his supporters and those on the MAGA right, he died for free speech, for Judeo-Christian values, for a commitment to “Western civilisation”, and supposedly for the “truth” itself.

To others, especially those he attacked and denigrated publicly – such as queer and trans people, immigrants, Muslims and feminists – he died for white nationalism, hatred and exclusion.

This takes us back to the second question: who is Charlie Kirk a martyr for? Clearly, the answer to this is Christian nationalists, MAGA supporters and the broader American right.

He testified in life to their shared beliefs and values, and in death is their “patron saint”. The legacy of Kirk’s death will be to define who is part of this community, and who is excluded. The question then is, will a division framed in such polarising terms come to define American society as a whole?

From revenge to love

Following Kirk’s death, people on the far-right called for violent revenge against the left – even though the shooting suspect’s political motivations are unknown.

Media have reported a surge in radicalisation on right-wing platforms. There was even a website, now removed, dedicated to doxxing anyone who spoke negatively about Kirk and using that information to get them fired.

Against this rhetoric of revenge, the history of martyrdom offers a different way forward. The early theologian, Clement of Alexandria, said someone becomes a martyr not because of their death, but because of their love.

The only true witness, he argued, is love, because God is love. The only honour one can offer the martyrs is to love as they loved. Clement suggests it’s possible to reject vengeance and sectarianism, even if one loves the martyrs.

Jonathan L. Zecher, Associate Professor, Institute for Religion and Critical Inquiry, Australian Catholic University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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09/12/2025

by

Kyle Mantyla

Christian nationalist podcaster Joshua Haymes says that the only possible hope for America in the wake of Charlie Kirk's murder is "total defeat of leftist liberal ideology": "It's Christ or chaos."

RWW

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VID

09/15/2025

by

Kyle Mantyla

Glenn Beck declares that "Charlie Kirk was as much a civil rights leader as Martin Luther King": "[If] there's a Martin Luther King Boulevard, there should be a Charlie King Boulevard."

RWW

09/12/2025

by

Peter Montgomery

Family Research Council President Tony Perkins published a commentary Friday describing Charlie Kirk’s assassination and other violence in American life as evidence that “America is reaping what it has sown.” Perkins seemingly placed blame on the separation of church and state, though he did not use those exact words:

This is an incredibly charged moment for our country, but that should not distract from the fact that America is reaping what it has sown. Since the 1960s, a “long march through the institutions” sought to drive God, His word, and His authority from public life. The aim was to relegate faith to the private corners of society, never to influence the classroom, courtroom, or public square. Charlie Kirk and the movement he sparked stood up to the Left’s assault on college campuses, working tirelessly to challenge the godless influence on this generation.

Perkins argued that “returning civility to our nation” requires “confronting the spiritual decay at the heart of our crisis.” To Perkins’ credit, he urged people not to resort to violence in response to Kirk’s murder. “If our nation is to heal, we cannot let our righteous indignation at this unspeakable tragedy rule. We must not answer anger with anger or bloodshed with more bloodshed.”

Perkins cited Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. as a figure who showed Americans a better way by preaching and living out his belief in the redemptive power of love.

Perkins’ choice to quote King may reflect the wide respect that is shown the slain civil rights leader from across the political spectrum. Notably, Charlie Kirk did not share that respect, at least since December 2023 when his rhetoric shifted from calling MLK a “hero” and icon” to describing King as “awful” and “not a good person.”

Kirk’s public attack on King was part of a strategy to undermine support for the historic civil rights legislation passed in the 1960s, which Kirk labeled “a huge mistake.” Kirk told the audience at Turning Point USA’s 2023 America Fest that King “said one good thing he actually didn’t believe.”

Kirk followed his speech with social media attacks calling King “a false ‘god’ of race-obsessed modernity’ and dedicated a chunk of his "Charlie Kirk Show" program on the Jan. 15, 2024 King holiday to a denunciation of the “revolutionary” MLK.

Scholar Jonathan Rauch told WIRED that Kirk and TPUSA’s attack on King and the Civil Rights Act was an example of how “the fringe moves to the center at the speed of light” in right-wing politics.

“These guys are very good at moving the Overton window,” Rauch said. “That's what they do. They push and push and get things into the dialog that, until the day before yesterday, were unthinkable.”

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09/15/2025

by

Kyle Mantyla

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09/15/2025

by

Kyle Mantyla

White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller was Vice President JD Vance’s guest on Monday’s edition of “The Charlie Kirk Show,” just days after the right-wing political commentator was assassinated. The suspected gunman’s motives and political beliefs remain unclear, but the vice president pinned the blame for Kirk’s murder on “left-wing extremism.”

President Donald Trump reiterated his claim that radical leftists and Democratic supporters were responsible for the death of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, while taking questions from reporters on the tarmac at Morristown Airport in Morris County, New Jersey, on Sunday evening.

The adviser actually pleads for parents to pull their kids out of university.

After the shocking murder of MAGA influencer Charlie Kirk on Wednesday afternoon, tributes and expressions of grief poured in from conservative politicians and activists, along with expressions of sympathy and denunciations of political violence from both sides of the aisle. Now, however, numerous government and elected officials are taking their protection of Kirk’s legacy a step further, indicating they’ll use the power of their offices to discourage, punish, or, in some cases, fire anyone who speaks ill of him.

In the wake of horror, honest accountings of his life have not only become rare – they have also become dangerous.

Brian Kilmeade has a history of saying insulting things while on the air.

An exclusive report from Senator Adam Schiff exposes a coordinated misuse of federal funds for political propaganda.

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joe walsh on cnn tapper 9 25 said kids was norm conservative, made consc choice to go trump; walsh said he was mentor in TP days, now dem, pro democ

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AN 9 25

In the wake of the Charlie Kirk assassination, part of a distressing wave of political violence stalking this country, it would seem that the United States is coming apart at the seams, poised at the precipice of disintegration. So much hatred, so much anger, so much toxic rot, and so many, many guns. We are boiling a poisonous stew. Can anyone save us? Is there anyone or anything that can possibly cool us to a simmer, at least? At this time, it appears not—in fact, frighteningly, the rage that got us to this grim, spooky moment seems only to be spiraling.

Charlie Kirk had barely been declared dead when President Trump hideously used his killing to falsely blame and attack the Left. Trump seized the moment of widespread mourning to spread more hatred and division, in a reckless, angry televised speech that hurled blame at the Left despite not a scintilla of evidence about Kirk’s assassin or their politics. In a predictable yet grotesque display, Trump raged, “For years, those on the radical Left have compared wonderful Americans like Charlie to Nazis and the world’s worst mass murderers and criminals. This kind of rhetoric is directly responsible for the terrorism that we’re seeing in our country today, and it must stop right now.”

Trump went on to enumerate the attempts on his own life, the shooting of United Healthcare’s CEO, the shooting of Steve Scalise, and “attacks ICE agents”—zero mention of the assassinations of Democratic Minnesota lawmakers or others who don’t fit Trump’s vision of worthy right-wing martyrs.

It is not clear how we climb out of this cauldron we are boiling in. We must all condemn political violence on all fronts. We must also acknowledge that Kirk’s legacy of bigotry and division wages its own violence...

The man who said there were “good people on both sides” of the Charlottesville killings by right-wing white supremacists could not bring himself to even mention the tragic shootings of people on the other side of the political aisle.

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Soon after Kirk’s murder, Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) lunged for the political jugular,telling reporters, “Democrats own what happened today....some raging leftist lunatic put a bullet through his neck.” Mace hurled this profoundly reckless, irresponsible attack without a shred of evidence about the assassin’s politics.

These are not the people who are going to lead us out of this ugly toxic pit. They, along with Charlie Kirk, led us into it. Kirk became a wealthy influencer by spreading toxic rage and fear and division.

We can honor the sadness millions are feeling over Kirk’s murder, and maintain basic civil human decency, while also being honest about the deeply harmful and offensive things Charlie Kirk said. We can condemn political violence and Kirk’s murder while also condemning Charlie Kirk for the rotten, vile hatred he fomented.

And yes, while respecting that many are mourning, this is precisely the time to remind people of the hatred and division Kirk sowed and profited handsomely from.

Considerwhat Kirk said about Black women leaders and affirmative action. Assailing affirmative action “picks” Joy Reid, Michelle Obama, Ketanji Brown Jackson, and Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, Kirk said, sickeningly, “you do not have the brain processing power to otherwise be taken seriously” without affirmative action. “You had to steal a white person’s slot.”

Let’s sit with that for a moment. Charlie Kirk said these exceedingly smart, strong, successful Black women do not have brain processing power. This is the supposed hero for whom Trump lowered the flag to half-mast.

Kirk was an equal opportunity hater whocalled Martin Luther King, Jr. “awful,” and “not a good person,” whileinsisting, “We made a huge mistake when we passed the Civil Rights Act in the 1960s.”

In his gruesome rage against affirmative action and diversity, equity, and inclusion, Kirk alsospat out, “If I see a Black pilot, I’m going to be like, ‘Boy, I hope he’s qualified.’” That is some deeply racist garbage.

Kirkcalled gay and transgender people “groomers” who are “destructive,” opposed gay marriage, and campaigned against gender-affirming care for transgender people, insisting, “We must ban trans-affirming care—the entire country. Donald Trump needs to run on this issue,” Media Matters reported.

The legacy Kirk leaves behind burns on, a flame of reactionary anger and bigotry that keeps this country at a boiling point.

When Zohran Mamdani shocked the nation by winning the New York City Democratic primary,Kirk vented, hideously, “Twenty-four years ago a group of Muslims killed 2,753 people on 9/11…Now a Muslim Socialist is on pace to run New York City.” Kirk peddled in paranoid, racist, and Islamophobic right-wing nonsense. Hecalled Islam “the sword the Left is using to slit the throat of America.” How profoundly rotten and hateful can one be?

Because Kirk was so energetically prolific, one can find endless examples of his fearmongering and bigotry. What needs to be said now, even or especially in this moment, is that Charlie Kirk mightily helped foment the rage and division that seems to engulf and define our nation today. Kirk helped create this toxic, poisonous stew we are drowning in—he fed it and profited from it.

Despite the unseemly frothing of Trump, Mace, and others, we do not know—as of this writing—who shot Kirk or why. We do not know if it came from the left, the right, or something else altogether. It is reasonable and right to condemn all shootings and political violence. I absolutely condemn the violence and this murder, just as I condemn the bigotry Kirk fomented in his brief time on this earth.

It is not clear how we climb out of this cauldron we are boiling in. We must all condemn political violence on all fronts. We must also acknowledge that Kirk’s legacy of bigotry and division wages its own violence—a cultural, social violence that causes real pain, rage, enmity, fear, and isolation. The legacy Kirk leaves behind burns on, a flame of reactionary anger and bigotry that keeps this country at a boiling point.

No one person will save us. We can hope (and work) for a cooling period that at least lowers the flame and slows the spiral. We can all say, stop the violence, stop the shootings. And let’s also say, just as strongly—stop the hatred, stop the fearmongering, stop the bigotry.

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OOPS CONTEXT?

AN 9 25

CNN COOKIE HOSTAGE

Antisemitic incidents, partly fueled by campus protests, reached record-breaking high in 2024, according to the ADL

By Nicquel Terry Ellis, CNN

Tue April 22, 2025

Student demonstrators occupy the pro-Palestinian "Gaza Solidarity Encampment" on the West Lawn of Columbia University on April 24, 2024, in New York City.

Student demonstrators occupy the pro-Palestinian "Gaza Solidarity Encampment" on the West Lawn of Columbia University on April 24, 2024, in New York City. Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images

CNN

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Antisemitic incidents in the United States rose for the fourth consecutive year in 2024, hitting their highest level since the Anti-Defamation League started tracking them in 1979, according to the organization’s annual audit released Tuesday.

The audit identified 9,354 cases of assault, harassment, and vandalism in 2024, marking a 5% increase from 2023, when the ADL recorded 8,873 incidents, and a 344% surge over the past five years.

The record-breaking number is based on incidents reported by victims, the media, law enforcement, and partner groups, according to the ADL.

The majority of the incidents in 2024 — 6,552 — were classified as harassment, defined by the organization as cases where someone targets one or more Jewish people or people perceived to be Jewish with language that includes antisemitic slurs, stereotypes, or tropes. Vandalism was the second highest, with 2,606 incidents, marking a 20% increase from 2023.

During a news briefing on Tuesday, ADL leaders displayed images of some reported incidents.

These included swastikas and the phrase “Holocaust is a Hollywood Lie” painted on garages and buildings. They also highlighted a bomb threat at a synagogue in Youngstown, Ohio; Jewish diners at a Brooklyn, New York, restaurant being harassed by individuals saying “Hitler was on to something”; and a Jewish student at the University of Pittsburgh being assaulted in the Oakland neighborhood by a group who noticed he was wearing a Star of David necklace.

“If your idea of protesting Israeli government policies is to assault or harass or intimidate Jews, that doesn’t make you a political activist, that makes you a bigot,” Oren Segal, ADL’s senior vice president for counter-extremism and intelligence, said during the briefing.

“Our mission is not just to catalog antisemitism, it is to stop the defamation of the Jewish people and to secure fair treatment to all.”

For the first time, a majority of antisemitic incidents — 58% — were related to Israel or Zionism, with many occurring at anti-Israel rallies.

A view of Morgan Gateentrance to Harvard Yard at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in August 2024.

Related article

US colleges are making substantial progress on campus antisemitism, but work remains, ADL says

The ADL does not conflate general criticism of Israel or anti-Israel activism with antisemitism, the report says. “Legitimate political protest, support for Palestinian rights or expressions of opposition to Israeli policies” are not included in the audit.

“Hatred toward Israel was a driving force behind antisemitism across the U.S.,” Segal said in a statement.

“These incidents … serve as a clear reminder that silence is not an option,” Segal said.

The audit details where antisemitic incidents most commonly occur, noting that this “provides critical insight into how different environments contribute to — or fail to protect against — antisemitic activity.”

Antisemitic incidents on college campuses increased by 84% between 2023 and 2024, accounting for 18% of all incidents, the report says.

Many of these incidents occurred during protests on college campuses between mid-April and mid-May 2024 in response to the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza.

The Trump administration has revoked student visas and cut federal funding to colleges and universities accused of tolerating antisemitism.

ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt told CNN’s Dana Bash the rise in antisemitic incidents on college campuses is a “catastrophe” that has not received “nearly enough attention from the very institutions where it’s happening.”

Greenblatt told Bash he supports the federal government holding institutions accountable for antisemitic incidents, but cautioned the Trump administration to be clear about what student protestors are being charged with.

“I think if the administration does that, they will have all people of good faith on their side,” he said.

Candles left by participants stand over a sign that reads: "Against Antisemitism"

Related article

Nearly half of people across the globe harbor antisemitic beliefs, ADL says

Incidents in public areas and commercial spaces, including Jewish-owned businesses, also increased. However, non-Jewish K-12 schools experienced a decrease in antisemitism cases.

The three states with the highest number of incidents were New York, California, and New Jersey, according to the audit.

“Good people must stand up, push back, and confront antisemitism wherever it appears. And that starts with understanding what fuels it and learning to recognize it in all its forms,” Segal said.

The report noted the continued increase shows antisemitism “has become a persistent reality for American Jewish communities rather than a temporary spike in the months immediately after the Hamas-led attack on Israel on October 7, 2023.”

“This horrifying level of antisemitism should never be accepted and yet, as our data shows, it has become a persistent and grim reality for American Jewish communities,” Greenblatt said in a news release.

“Jewish Americans continue to be harassed, assaulted and targeted for who they are on a daily basis and everywhere they go. But let’s be clear: we will remain proud of our Jewish culture, religion and identities, and we will not be intimidated by bigots,” he said.

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Clemson employee suspended following social media posts mocking Charlie Kirk's death

Jessica Holdman, SC Daily Gazette

AN 9 25

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AN 9 25

Conservative leaders who initially rushed to blame “radical left” ideology in right‑wing activist Charlie Kirk’s killing have somewhat softened their tone since the suspect, 22‑year‑old Tyler Robinson of Utah, was identified.

In an article for the Guardian published Saturday, reporter Lauren Aratani noted that while they continue to condemn liberal ideas broadly, many conservatives shifted from harsh ideological indictments to more personal, cautious statements as new details emerged.

According to reports, Robinson's parents are registered Republicans. His own political leanings are still unclear. Authorities found social‑media photos showing him and his family posing with guns.

READ MORE:How Christianity’s 'kook' fringe went mainstream in Trump's MAGA world

The alleged shooter was reportedly raised in a suburban area near St. George, Utah, in what appeared to be a supportive home. He achieved top marks on standardized exams, kept a perfect GPA, and had strong academic standing, as shown by posts from family and friends.

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After finishing high school in 2021, he shared a video celebrating his acceptance at Utah State University along with a merit-based scholarship covering four years.

However, he only attended Utah State for one semester before taking a leave and did not return.

Still, some conservatives on social media are claiming he was "radicalized" at the university.

READ MORE:MSNBC host torches Supreme Court for 'treating 4th Amendment as negotiable'

Meanwhile, Utah’s Gov. Spencer Cox (R) told investigators Robinson was “deeply indoctrinated with leftist ideology,” citing but not detailing what led to that conclusion.

Early reporting claimed bullet casings from the suspect’s gun were engraved with trans‑and‑antifascist ideology, but media outlets later retracted or corrected some of those claims; what remains is that most of the inscriptions are reportedly memes or video‑game references.

Aratani noted that after the suspect’s identity was made public, some conservative critics shifted to emphasizing aspects like mental health, religious faith, or the need for prayer and compassion, rather than solely ideology. Earlier, many were calling for violence and revenge.

Rep. Nancy Mace (R‑S.C.), for instance, moved from demanding the death penalty to urging prayer for Robinson’s soul.

READ MORE:Trump blathering about his ballroom might be 'best thing he’s ever done': analysis

On Wednesday, the South Carolina Republican said “it’s time to bring back the death penalty” following Kirk’s murder.

But when his alleged murderer's identity was revealed on Friday, Mace said that Kirk “would want us to pray for such an evil and lost individual like Tyler Robinson to find Jesus Christ”.

“We will try to do the same,” she wrote on the social platform X.

The article also noted that White nationalist Nick Fuentes pushed back against suggestions that Robinson was a “Groyper,” a term for one of his followers, after reports surfaced about engravings on the bullets from the alleged shooter’s gun that fueled speculation about his beliefs.

The Groypers have long taken issue with Kirk, frequently heckling him at his events over the perception that Kirk is too centrist.

On social media, Fuentes declared, “Currently being framed for the murder of Charlie Kirk,” though in a streaming video he also said, “I pray to God there is no further violence.”

Despite the softening toward Robinson personally, many conservatives are still using Kirk’s death to attack liberal ideas and institutions, arguing that the broader political culture tolerates or even encourages hateful rhetoric, especially around gender identity and transgender issues.

Aratani highlighted how political narratives can shift when more facts come out: when the suspect was only a statistic or ideological cipher, criticism was sweeping. Once a specific background of the alleged shooter became identified, some of the most extreme rhetoric became more measured.

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RWW

09/11/2025

by

Kyle Mantyla

They’re calling him a martyr for free speech as they demand a violent crackdown on progressive dissent.

Tuesday’s assassination of far-right firebrand Charlie Kirk in Utah drew widespread condemnation from many of the same progressive figures who have previously decried his rampant bigotry, dismissal of gun deaths, and promotion of conspiracy theories including the “stolen” 2020 election.

“More people will be murdered if the Left isn’t crushed with the power of the state.”

Extremists and an anonymously run website are posting identifying details about people accused of celebrating Charlie Kirk’s murder online. Some of those targeted are now getting death threats.

"Democrats own this," the South Carolina Republican claimed. Police say the shooting suspect is not in custody.

Rep. Clay Higgins (R-LA) called for lifetime social media bans on all people who "belittle" the killing of MAGA influencer Charlie Kirk.

rww

09/11/2025

by

Kyle Mantyla

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zeteo

Black people
Black pilots
Black women
Civil rights
Death penalty
Democrats
Empathy
Feminism
Gay people
George Floyd
Great Replacement Theory
Guns
Jews
Martin Luther King Jr.
Muslims
Palestine
Transgender people

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note defund the left

mma

On the killing of Charlie Kirk, political violence, and the right’s response

Written by Matt Gertz

Published 09/12/25

Charlie Kirk, a powerful right-wing activist, popular podcaster, and close friend and ally to President Donald Trump, was shot and killed while speaking at a college in Utah on Wednesday. Politicians of both parties and commentators across the spectrum, including myself, have responded with condemnations of the act as both the tragic murder of a young husband and father and an act of political violence that must be anathema if we hope to preserve our country as a liberal democracy.

Rational people on all sides of the political spectrum abhor political violence and want to ratchet down the temperature, but this requires an honest assessment of what is happening: There have been far too many cases of political violence in recent years, and the targets are not limited by party, ideology, or creed.

Yet within the right-wing media bubble, long before there was even a suspect in custody, commentators cited Kirk’s killing as proof the left is at war with them. Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) on Thursday called out right-wing pundits who took Kirk’s death “as an opportunity to say we're at war so that they could get some of our conservative followers lathered up over this.” He added: “It seems like a cheap, disgusting, awful way to pretend like you're a leader of a conservative movement.”

Tillis cited two commentators in particular, but such rhetoric has been a staple throughout the right-wing media ecosystem since news broke that Kirk had been shot. It is what right-wing audiences are hearing right now — and what they have been hearing, to one extent or another, for quite some time.

“They are at war with us!” Fox News star Jesse Watters said on The Five, his network’s most-watched show, shortly after Kirk’s passing was announced.

“Whether we want to accept it or not, they are at war with us,” he continued. “And what are we gonna do about it? How much political violence are we going to tolerate? And that’s the question we’re just gonna have to ask ourselves.”

“THIS IS WAR,” posted Libs of TikTok. “Civil war,” was Andrew Tate’s take. “This is war,” commented Ian Miles Cheong. “This is a war, this is a war, this is a war,” Alex Jones said on his livestream. According to Steve Bannon, “We are at war in this country.” “We’re not supposed to say this,” posted Shaun Maguire. “But the truth is we’re at War.”

Many on the right were Kirk’s friends and are mourning his death. Some of them may fear for their own safety. But the narrative they have constructed relies on ignoring the recent spate of attacks targeting Democrats, the gruesome contemporaneous response to those attacks from some of the most influential voices on the right, and the chorus of Democratic officials who have condemned Kirk’s assassination.

There is no war, no righteous, violent struggle between a “left” and a “right.” A man was killed. His killer deserves to be brought to justice. Turning that into a “war” can only make the situation worse.

Terrorists have targeted political leaders of both parties

It is not true, as Eric Trump andDonald Trump Jr. both claimed in right-wing media interviews since Kirk’s slaying, that violence is “only going one way,” or, as right-wing radio host Dana Loesch put it on Watters’ prime-time show, that “it's not the right killing the left, it's the left killing the right.”

It seems both pointless and morally inappropriate to try to weigh attacks against one another to determine who has it “worse,” but it’s impossible to have a conversation if we can’t agree that political violence goes both ways.

The ideology of people who attack political figures doesn’t always map neatly onto a political party, in no small part because the assailant typically suffers from some form of mental illness. But Democrats have certainly been the targets of political violence in recent memory: In October 2022, a man broke into the home of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi seeking to kidnap her, and brutally assaulted her husband, Paul. In June, an assassin allegedly murdered a Democratic state legislator and her husband and wounded a second and his wife in Minnesota. Last month’s lethal attackon the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention by someone who authorities say “wanted to send a message against COVID-19 vaccines” should also be placed in this category.

It’s worth revisiting how right-wing media covered those domestic terror attacks, as it speaks to how its audience likely interprets them in an increasingly fragmented media landscape in which people can pick and choose news sources that confirm their biases.

After a man broke into the Pelosi residence and attacked Paul Pelosi with a hammer, MAGA influencers claimed based on effectively no evidence that the attacker, who turned out to be a deranged individual steeped in right-wing fever swamp conspiracy theories, had actually been let into the speaker’s house by her husband for the purposes of sex and subsequently attacked him as part of a lovers’ quarrel.

Donald Trump Jr. posted a photo of a pair of briefs and a hammer on a bed with the caption: “Got my Paul Pelosi Halloween costume ready.”

For months afterwards, Fox hosts including Watters alluded to such wild claims on their nationally broadcast programs, undeterred by body camera footage from the scene of the attack or basic human dignity.

Prominent MAGA social media influencers likewise responded to the Minnesota shootings by spinning up a false profile of the killer — in reality a Trump supporter who railed against abortion and the LGBTQ community — as a far-left supporter of Gov. Tim Walz. Laura Loomer and Mike Cernovich even suggested Walz might have orchestrated the attacks as political hits.

Fox’s right-wing propagandists, meanwhile, all but buried that story. There were no soul-searching reflections about political violence targeting the left on the programs of Watters, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, or Greg Gutfeld — instead, discussion on those shows the week after the attacks was limited to correspondent reports and headline reads. The week after the CDC shooting, those programs didn’t cover it at all.

Looking further back, the leading lights of the right-wing media aggressively sought to minimize and sanitize the Trump mob’s assault on the U.S. Capitol in 2021, and they alternatively blamed “incivility” from the left for a Trumpist sending mail bombs to a host of left-wing and Democratic targets and suggested those attacks were a “false flag.” And that’s to say nothing of other attacks apparently fueled by right-wing extremism that targeted Jewish, Latino, and Black Americans in Charleston, South Carolina; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; Buffalo, New York; and El Paso, Texas.

If you downplay right-wing violence against left-wing targets, it’s much easier to convince your viewers that the violence is all going in the other direction.

While the repeated declarations that they are at “war” with a murderous left are obviously corrosive, there have not been widespread direct calls for retaliatory violence from prominent right-wing media figures. But many are urging President Donald Trump, his administration, and congressional Republicans to respond with widespread political repression of the left and the Democratic Party.

“We can honor him [Kirk] and honor his memory and make it a living thing that we use this to take down the apparatus that's well-funded that is at the core of this anti-Americanism,” Steve Bannon said on his streaming show Friday. “It has to be a all-of-government approach. ... Let's go kick down some doors and perp walk some folks today.”

Laura Loomer, a conspiracy theorist and streamer who has Trump’s ear and regularly gets federal officials fired for insufficient demonstrated fealty to the president, declared Wednesday, “It’s time for the Trump administration to shut down, defund, & prosecute every single Leftist organization.” She later added: “All of the Leftist groups that pay for these radical protests need to be prosecuted. … More people will be murdered if the Left isn’t crushed with the power of the state.”

MAGA influencer Mike Cernovich demanded “congressional hearings now” on Wednesday, which he said should include “every billionaire funding far left wing extremism,” naming George Soros, Bill Gates, and Reid Hoffman. He also called for “massive RICO investigations now” to scrutinize “every dollar” and tagged Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel.

Former GOP Senate candidate Blake Masters echoed Cernovich, adding, “Either we destroy the NGO/donor patronage network that enables and foments” violence, “or it will destroy us.”

Sean Davis, co-founder of The Federalist, posted Wednesday that “the Democrat party is a domestic terrorist organization” and “terrorist Democrats will not stop. … And until they are stopped—until every single nutjob inciting this madness and cheering it on is held accountable and removed from civil society—it will not stop.” His outlet published a piece which declared that Democrats “need to be treated like the domestic terrorists they are.”

“The last time the radical Left orchestrated a wave of violence and terror, J. Edgar Hoover shut it all down within a few years,” Manhattan Institute senior fellow Christopher Rufo said. “It is time, within the confines of the law, to infiltrate, disrupt, arrest, and incarcerate all of those who are responsible for this chaos.”

YouTuber Benny Johnson claimed that “the modern Democrat party is a terrorist organization” and that the left-wing movement must be “ripped root and stem from our American republic and thrown into the fire where it belongs.”

Some are even suggesting that because the threat to the right is so clear, if Republican leaders don’t respond with such steps, the result will be some on the right taking matters into their own hands.

Davis posted on Thursday that if congressional Republicans don’t take “proper action” to protect “a population being hunted for sport,” then the result would be “improper reaction,” which he described as “a response that cannot be contained once it is out.”

Likewise, Cernovich wrote: “I’m choosing my words mindfully, don’t twist them. This is a prediction, not a preference. If Congressional GOP and Trump don’t act swiftly and ferociously, there will be retaliatory actions due to lawful means not being used. This is always what happens. RICO these fucks now!”

Trump appears to be responding to these demands for political retribution.

It is impossible to have a rational conversation about topics like lowering the political temperature and pushing back against the spread of political violence when the president of the United States is interested in those issues only as a cudgel against his political opponents.

On Wednesday evening, the editorial board of The Wall Street Journal urged Trump, himself the victim of two assassination attempts, to take advantage of “an opportunity for leadership” by seeking to lower the tenor of political rhetoric.

Any other president would not need to hear such advice — but Trump’s previous responses to attacks on Democratic targets demonstrate his lack of interest in bringing the country together. He mocked the brutal assault against Pelosi, said following the Minnesota shooting that it would be a “waste of time” to call Gov. Tim Walz because he is “so whacked out,” and completely ignored the CDC attack.

In an Oval Office address a few hours after Kirk was killed, Trump characteristically ignored the Journal’s counsel. He offered a testament to Kirk’s life and promised that the shooter, who at that point had not been publicly identified or taken into custody, would be brought to justice.

But he also attributed blame far beyond the person who took Kirk’s life, saying that the “rhetoric” of “the radical left” was “directly responsible for the terrorism that we’re seeing in our country today.” He went on to promise that his administration would go after the individuals and organizations he said “contributed to this atrocity and to other political violence,” adding that “radical-left political violence has hurt too many innocent people and taken too many lives.”

Trump did not name the targets of the action he promised to carry out. But a “straightforward reading of his rhetoric,” as The Atlantic’s Jonathan Chait noted, is that “the president of the United States is treating the political opposition as accessories to murder and threatening to use the full power of the government to attack it.”

On Friday, Fox & Friends co-host Ainsley Earhardt pointed to “radicals” on both the right and left and asked the president, “How do we fix this country? How do we come back together?”

Trump’s response made clear that he is uninterested in doing so. He excused “radicals on the right” as people who “don’t want to see crime,” saying, “They don't want these people coming in, we don't want you burning our shopping centers, we don’t want you shooting our people in the middle of the street.”

“The radicals on the left are the problem, and they are vicious and they are horrible and they are politically savvy,” he added, before running through a litany of grievances with his critics.

That message is echoing across MAGA media, a powerful information apparatus with a rare and unmediated grasp on its audience. It will fuel more vitriol, making it harder, not easier, to have honest conversations and reduce the threat of political violence in this country.

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an 9 25

As Republicans continue to threaten those posting negative opinions on conservative podcaster Charlie Kirk, including the Deputy Secretary of State andFlorida's Education Commissioner, social media activists have joined the campaign to hunt them down and, in some cases, get them fired from their jobs.

According to Salon, "Activists like [Libs of TikTok's] Chaya Raichik are trying to get liberals fired over insensitive remarks in the wake of Kirk's death."

Far-right activist Raichik, Salon says, has been the most active in the crusade against the critique, targeting everyone from a lecturer at Cal State University Monterrey Bay who posted on X, "“I cannot muster much sympathy, truly," to a U.S. Coast Guard employee, who captured a meme on Facebook with "“I don’t give a s--- about Charlie Kirk.”

While the lecturer, whose post asked, “What about all the kids, the many broken families from the over 258 school shootings 2020- present?” didn't seem to face any consequences beyond deleting his post, the Coast Guard said they are investigating the employee who posted the meme.

The Libs of TikTokker also targeted a former Twitter employee for posting "“As a long time fan this is incredibly disappointing," in reference to the moment of silence held for Kirk during a Yankee game.

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Raichick's efforts have led to several firings including a Middle Tennessee State University assistant dean, for posting what the university described as a "callous comment that said, "Looks like ol’ Charlie spoke his fate into existence. Hate begets hate. ZERO sympathy."

The far-right social media influencer is no stranger to doxxing, the act of publicly revealing a person's private or identifying information online without their consent.

"Raichik herself complained that she had been the victim of doxxing after the Washington Postrevealed her identity in 2022," Salon explains. "She had been operating her account anonymously up to that point."

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an 9 25

House and Senate Republicans are lashing out at Democrats en masse, blaming them for rhetoric they say led to Wednesday’s assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.

U.S. Rep. Bob Onder (R-MO), in a speech Thursday on the floor of the House of Representatives, attacked the left, charging that even those who are “well-meaning” abide by an ideology of “hate” that mirrors communist authoritarians and revolutionaries.

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“Well, everything has changed,” Congressman Onder claimed. “If we didn’t know it already, there is no longer any middle ground.”

“Some on the American left are undoubtedly well-meaning people. But their ideology is pure evil,” he charged. “They hate the good, the truth, and the beautiful, and embrace the evil, the false and the ugly.”

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READ MORE: ‘Fascist Playbook’: Trump Blasted for ‘Gas on the Fire’ Kirk Assassination Address

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“And they literally will kill those with whom they disagree just as their predecessor leftists—Marx, and Stalin, and Lenin, and Pol Pot, and Fidel Castro, did. “We must know that.”

Onder is not the only GOP lawmaker on Capitol Hill attacking the left in the wake of Kirk’s killing, despite the killer having not yet been identified or captured.

U.S. Senator Joni Ernst (R-IA) told Newsmax on Thursday morning that “what we are finding is that when you do have those strong conservative voices speaking truth to power you will find that when the left can no longer debate it, they can’t deny the truth, the only way they can silence those voices is through violence.”

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U.S. Rep. Clay Higgins (R-LA) went even further, vowing to use “Congressional authority” to “cancel” anyone who “belittled the assassination of Charlie Kirk.”

READ MORE: ‘I Love the 90s’: RFK Jr. Mocked for Latest Outdated Take on Mass Violence

“I’m basically going to cancel with extreme prejudice these evil, sick animals who celebrated Charlie Kirk’s assassination,” he wrote.

U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) declared on Wednesday that “Democrats own what happened today.”

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“Some raging leftist lunatic put a bullet through his neck,” she declared.

As of now, there is no suspect in custody, and the FBI has announced a $100,000 reward for information leading to a suspect’s arrest.

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AN 9 25

With tensions running high over the shocking assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, Congress erupting in "partisan shouting" yesterday on the House floor, and conservative pundits calling for war and retribution, one Republican is telling people to cool it.

National Journalcongressional policy reporter Nancy Vu reported Thursday that Sen.Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) has issued a sharp rebuke to his colleagues calling for violence.

"What I was really disgusted by yesterday is a couple of talking heads that sees this as an opportunity to say we're at war so that they could get some of our conservative followers lathered up over this," he said, "It seems like a cheap, disgusting, awful way to pretend like you're a leader of a conservative movement. And there were two in particular that I found particularly disgusting."

READ MORE:'Massively ignorant': Why this MAGA candidate is getting threats from Trump supporters

One talking head Tillis may have been referencing is Fox News host Jesse Watters,who told his viewers, "They are at war with us, whether we want to accept it or not. And what are we going to do about it?"

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Watters' comment was starkly different in tone compared to Tillis' initial reaction upon hearing of Kirk's assassination, in which he posted on X, "Political violence has no place in our society."

Another who may be the focus of Tillis's ire is Rep. Derrick Van Orden (R-Wis.), who was quick to blame the media for Kirk's murder.

When a reporter questioned Van Orden's claim, the far-right MAGA Republican responded, "You know what, knock it off ... You are responsible for that assassination yesterday. You should be ashamed of yourself."

READ MORE:'He did not care': Details emerge about 71 year-old mistakenly arrested after Kirk murder

While MAGA recoiled online at Tillis's condemnation of his colleagues, others agreed, with one noting, "This exact message should have come from Trump himself rather than a GOP representative."

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an 9 25

Group of students 'stood up and cheered' after Charlie Kirk was shot: eyewitness

U.S. right-wing activist and commentator Charlie Kirk throws hats to the crowd shortly before he was shot at a Utah Valley University speaking event in Orem, Utah, U.S. September 10, 2025. Trent Nelson/The Salt Lake Tribune via REUTERS

Ailia ZehraSeptember 10, 2025 | 08:21PM ET

An eyewitness at Utah Valley University described a chaotic scene during a campus event when conservative activist Charlie Kirk was shot, saying that a group of students celebrated the shooting.

The witness recounted hearing a gunshot and then seeing Kirk collapse, prompting panic among the audience.

"I did see a select group of students who stood up and cheered after that fact," the witness told ABC4.

READ MORE: MAGA activist Charlie Kirk shot during speech on Utah campus

This reaction added to the unsettling atmosphere as attendees scrambled for safety, per the eyewitness.

Kirk, the 31-year-old founder of Turning Point USA, was speaking at the university when he was struck in the neck by a single bullet. The shot reportedly came from a nearby building, approximately 200 yards away.

Video footage captured the moment, showing Kirk clutching his neck and collapsing in his chair. He was later confirmed dead, and authorities are treating the incident as a targeted act of political violence.

Another witness, speaking to ABC4.com, described the harrowing scene through tears.

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note no ref to kirk bef shot?

an 9 25

After MAGA activist and Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk was fatally shot in Utah on Wednesday afternoon, September 10, a long list of centrist Democrats, liberals and progressives wasted no time wholeheartedly condemning the attack — from California Gov. Gavin Newsom to former President Joe Biden to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

Former MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan, who is originally from the U.K., tweeted, "Charlie Kirk called me a 'lunatic' and a 'prostitute' and demanded I be deported. Nothing, nothing, justifies killing him, or robbing his kids of their dad. We don't know the identity or motive of the shooter but murder can never be the response to political disagreements."

On Fox News, however, far-right host Jesse Watters had a threatening tone when he called for retaliation against Kirk's critics.

READ MORE: 'He did not care': Details emerge about 71 year-old mistakenly arrested after Kirk murder

Watters told viewers, "They are at war with us, whether we want to accept it or not. And what are we going to do about it? Charlie would want us to put as much pressure on these people as possible….. This is unacceptable, and it 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 these rats out there. This can never happen again. It ends now…. This is a turning point."

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Watters called for the right to "avenge Charlie's death" — a comment that journalist Pete Twinklage found especially disturbing.

On X, formerly Twitter, Twinklage posted, "this is spectacularly dangerous rhetoric. the Murdochs need to bench Watters immediately. vowing to 'avenge' Kirk's horrific assassination instead of calling for calm is beyond irresponsible. the country is a tinderbox and this lunatic is juggling dynamite and matches."

Watters' comments are generating a lot of discussion on X.

READ MORE: Group of students 'stood up and cheered' after Charlie Kirk was shot: eyewitness

New Jersey-based Kim Hurdman tweeted, "Why would the Murdoch’s bench him? They installed him. The entire network promotes this mindset and ideology. Telling people their political opponents are enemy[.] They spent 40 yrs getting fabulously wealthy telling older white pp who to be afraid of and who to hate. Get real."

Journalist Jessica Durkin posted, "Meanwhile MSNBC is apologizing up and down because Matthew Dowd said the truth on that channel that Kirk speaks hate."

U.S. Marines veteran Gene Frenkel tweeted, "MSNBC fired Dowd.. Watters deserves the same."

Another U.S. Marines veteran, Paul Nun, commented, "Jesse Watters made an entire career around stoking division. He failed to mention the Republican terrorist who murdered Democratic politicians a few weeks ago."

X user Martin Judd remarked, "Murdochs have just announced the most radical far-right son will run the place. So he is not going to be of any help."

Journalist/author John L. Valentine wrote, "This punk isn't going to do anything but run his mouth. He's a TV warrior. Brave behind his desk. He'll leave the violence he's trying to incite to others. His call for more violence won't end the violence. It'll only exacerbate it."

READ MORE: 'None of us should tolerate this': Trump ripped over 'deplorable' promise of 'retribution'

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After it was confirmed that far-right activist Charlie Kirk died after being shot during a Wednesday event on a college campus, and while the shooter remains at large as of Wednesday evening, MAGA activists are still blaming the political left for Kirk's death on social media — and vowing revenge.

Initial responses to the news of Kirk's death, including from President Donald Trump, were encouraging conservatives to pray for the conservative commentator and his family. However, several MAGA influencers and other public figures influential on the far right insisted that Kirk's death should be seen as a mass mobilization event.

"Left-wing violence is out of control, and it’s not random," former Arizona Republican U.S. Senate candidate Blake Masters tweeted. "Either we destroy the NGO/donor patronage network that enables and foments it, or it will destroy us."

READ MORE:'Put two and two together': Conservative argues CNN told hosts to be soft on Trump-Epstein

:{:{MAGA influencer Sam Hyde called on his hundreds of thousands of X followers to watch the video of Kirk being struck by a bullet, writing "It could have been any one of us exercising the first amendment" while adding: "You all need to know what our enemies want." Conservative social media personality FischerKing tweeted: "If this isn't a wake-up call then we're never going to wake up."}:

Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk reposted a separate tweet from FischerKing, who said the "left-wing mainstream media" had created a "climate of hysteria against right-wing figures that could radicalize any number of unstable people to engage in political violence." Musk commented: "Exactly."}:

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"We're in a war," conspiracy theorist Alex Jones said in a video. "The left has been saying put a bullseye on Trump, put a bullseye on his supporters, they've been calling for violence ... they're going to attack."

"The Rubicon has been crossed. Not by Trump or MAGA, but by the far left," wrote far-right activist Mike Cernovich, who spawned the "Pizzagate" conspiracy theory. "Randy Paul can shove his book reports up his a--. F--- everyone who played footsie with these dark demonic forces. We will not be scolded any longer."

"The attack on Charlie Kirk and free speech is evil, pure and simple. The hate, violence and evil being peddled by radical extremists has no place in this country! Schools and social media have become breeding grounds for liberal hate," the Utah Republican Party's official X account posted. "Enough!"

READ MORE:House hearing derailed after Dem calls GOP rep 'lapdog to the president' in shouting match

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no lnx gmail

Hypocritical Conservatives Are Using Charlie Kirk's Horrific Murder to Cynically Smear the Left

Have they forgotten all the Trump supporters who have killed, attacked, and threatened both prominent Democrats and opponents of this president in recent years? I haven't - and I have a list of them.

Mehdi Hasan

Sep 11

On Wednesday, we witnessed the horrific killing of conservative activist Charlie Kirk while he was speaking at Utah Valley University. It was a shocking and unforgivable act of violence. At the time of writing, the shooter is still at large and the motive for the murder is unknown.

But that hasn’t stopped Kirk’s fellow conservatives and far-right influencers from weaponizing his tragic death to attack Democrats and blame ‘the left’ for all of the political violence in the United States.

Donald Trump gave an incendiary televised address in which he railed only against “radical left-wing political violence.” Elon Musk claimed “the left is the party of murder.” His fellow ‘Silicon Valley bro’ Shaun Maguire said “the Left lectured us for the last decade about the dangers of violence from the Right” but “the danger was actually on the Left.” Katie Miller, wife of far-right Stephen, accused liberals of having “blood on your hands.”

Such rhetoric from the right is as dishonest as it is dangerous.

Here are the actual facts for those with conveniently short memories.

The man who targeted and killed Democratic state lawmaker Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark in their home in Minnesota in June was a Trump supporter.

The man charged with the attempted assassination of Pennsylvania’s Democratic governor Josh Shapiro in April was a Trump supporter.

The man convicted of orchestrating a series of hootings at the homes of four Democratic elected officials in New Mexico in 2022 was a Trump supporter.

The man who tried to kidnap then Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and assaulted her husband Paul in 2022 was a Trump supporter.

The men who wanted to hang Mike Pence on Jan 6, 2021, were Trump supporters.

The man who killed the son of Obama-appointed District Judge Esther Salas in 2020 was a Trump supporter.

The men who were convicted of trying to kidnap Michigan’s Democratic governor Gretchen Whitmer in 2020 were Trump supporters.

The man who sent pipe bombs to the homes of Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, and other top Democrats in 2018 was a Trump supporter.

The man who killed left-wing activist Heather Heyer after driving his car into a crowd of counter-protesters in Charlottesville in 2017 was a Trump supporter.

There is no equivalent or even similar list of Obama or Biden supporters who have carried out murders, attempted murders, or violent attacks against Republicans or conservatives in recent years. In fact, according to statistics compiled by the ADL’s Center on Extremism, 2024 was the third year in a row in which all of the extremist-related killings in the United States were carried out by… right-wingers.

So conservatives can engage in as much faux outrage as they like over the supposed threat from ‘the left’ but the facts, as they themselves often like to say, don’t care about their feelings.

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MMA

September 3, 2025, edition of The Charlie Kirk Show, streamed on Rumble

CHARLIE KIRK (HOST): I want start with a story yesterday, which I love, and it was not getting enough coverage. We can go to the b-roll. President Donald Trump has been very clear that he wants to shrink the map and focus on hemispheric dominance. He was trying to end wars abroad and really focus on our own hemisphere being abused. Yesterday — this is the MAGA doctrine, otherwise known as the Monroe Doctrine 2.0 — President Donald Trump authorized a military strike yesterday of drug runners and drug traffickers of Tren de Aragua that were bringing life-ending drugs to the United States, you can kind of see here in a speedboat.

They're in international waters. I don't know all the legal technicalities here. Obviously, it passed the muster because they authorized it, and they did a drone strike in the Caribbean. Alex, what are your thoughts here? I'm at least thrilled finally that we're using military force in our own hemisphere against people that would have done harm against the American homeland. They actually are a much greater threat, what you are seeing on-screen are a much greater threat than Vladimir Putin. Those drug traffickers would've killed a lot more people than Russian soldiers. Alex Marlow.

ALEX MARLOW (EDITOR-IN-CHIEF, BREITBART): Yeah. You're absolutely right about this, Charlie, and this is just perfect in terms of Trump national security doctrine focusing on our hemisphere first, which — I will tell you, our national security editor at Breitbart News, Frances Martel, she's a Latin American woman, and I'll tell you, this hits such close to home with people who've survived — of ancestry who survived communism in our hemisphere, and have seen Democrat after Democrat and establishment Republican after establishment Republican in this country focus on Europe, focus on the Middle East, and not remember our own hemisphere.

Now we're all aware of the threat of Far East in China, but China's has an encroachment that's taking place into that exact hemisphere, into Central and South America, and so I look at all of this as countering China. But let's be specific about fentanyl and drugs and these gangs that are taking advantage of our open border and have created these industries that bring devastating drugs, the type of stuff that not just ruin lives, that ruin families, ruin communities. They come up into our country, and we've allowed it. We've tolerated it. And Trump comes in one fell swoop, wipes out a bunch of them, sends an unbelievable signal that if you try to bring this poison into America, you're going to face deadly consequences. It is just peak Trump, and I love it.

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MMA

September 3, 2025, edition of The Charlie Kirk Show, streamed on Rumble

CHARLIE KIRK (HOST): I want start with a story yesterday, which I love, and it was not getting enough coverage. We can go to the b-roll. President Donald Trump has been very clear that he wants to shrink the map and focus on hemispheric dominance. He was trying to end wars abroad and really focus on our own hemisphere being abused. Yesterday — this is the MAGA doctrine, otherwise known as the Monroe Doctrine 2.0 — President Donald Trump authorized a military strike yesterday of drug runners and drug traffickers of Tren de Aragua that were bringing life-ending drugs to the United States, you can kind of see here in a speedboat. They're in international waters. I don't know all the legal technicalities here. Obviously, it passed the muster because they authorized it, and they did a drone strike in the Caribbean. Alex, what are your thoughts here? I'm at least thrilled finally that we're using military force in our own hemisphere against people that would have done harm against the American homeland. They actually are a much greater threat, what you are seeing on-screen are a much greater threat than Vladimir Putin. Those drug traffickers would've killed a lot more people than Russian soldiers. Alex Marlow.

ALEX MARLOW (EDITOR-IN-CHIEF, BREITBART): Yeah. You're absolutely right about this, Charlie, and this is just perfect in terms of Trump national security doctrine focusing on our hemisphere first, which — I will tell you, our national security editor at Breitbart News, Frances Martel, she's a Latin American woman, and I'll tell you, this hits such close to home with people who've survived — of ancestry who survived communism in our hemisphere, and have seen Democrat after Democrat and establishment Republican after establishment Republican in this country focus on Europe, focus on the Middle East, and not remember our own hemisphere. Now we're all aware of the threat of Far East in China, but China's has an encroachment that's taking place into that exact hemisphere, into Central and South America, and so I look at all of this as countering China. But let's be specific about fentanyl and drugs and these gangs that are taking advantage of our open border and have created these industries that bring devastating drugs, the type of stuff that not just ruin lives, that ruin families, ruin communities. They come up into our country, and we've allowed it. We've tolerated it. And Trump comes in one fell swoop, wipes out a bunch of them, sends an unbelievable signal that if you try to bring this poison into America, you're going to face deadly consequences. It is just peak Trump, and I love it.

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MMA RANDOM

  1. ### Trump calls for FCC retribution against “FAKE NEWS” ABC and NBC — while touting the “great man” who “just bought CBS”

08/25/25 12:40 PM EDT

  1. ### As mass deportation intensifies, right-wing media expand their aim to include American citizens

08/25/25 11:50 AM EDT

  1. ### Newsmax host on Trump's DOJ investigations: “It clearly is payback time”

08/25/25 10:57 AM EDT

  1. ### New legal filings show the depths of Fox's loyalty to Trump

08/23/25 10:50 AM EDT

  1. ### Fox News' Raymond Arroyo says the National Museum of African American History and Culture “belies a hatred of the west and the founders in particular”

08/22/25 8:33 PM EDT

  1. ### Fox News chyron: “Bolton's learning the hard way”

08/22/25 7:51 PM EDT

  1. ### Fox's Greg Gutfeld and Jesse Watters on the FBI raid of John Bolton: “Some people say it's retribution. I say, who cares?”

08/22/25 6:23 PM EDT

  1. ### 9/11 conspiracy theorist Richard Gage says Ron Johnson will keynote his conference

08/22/25 4:47 PM EDT

  1. ### Charlie Kirk says he can’t find “Christ-like compassion” for long-term immigrants who don’t speak English

08/22/25 3:44 PM EDT

  1. ### Charlie Kirk threatens J.B. Pritzker and Brandon Johnson with the Insurrection Act and a federal takeover of Chicago

08/22/25 3:02 PM EDT

  1. ### Fox News' Bret Baier promised a “fair” and “balanced” interview with EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin that was anything but

08/22/25 2:43 PM EDT

  1. ### Right-wing media insist DC residents “are very happy” with the National Guard deployment

08/22/25 1:38 PM EDT

  1. ### Fox contributor Andrew McCarthy highlights Trump's history of using the FBI and Justice Department for retribution

08/22/25 12:22 PM EDT

  1. ### Laura Loomer wants ICE to livestream arrests for entertainment: “Make it exciting and show ICE agents tackling Juan and Jesus”

08/22/25 11:31 AM EDT

  1. ### Media Matters weekly newsletter, August 22

08/22/25 11:05 AM EDT

  1. ### Fox News panel expresses concern over FBI's Bolton raid

08/22/25 11:03 AM EDT

  1. ### Fox contributor Andy McCarthy suggests FBI's Bolton raid is “lawfare”

08/22/25 10:42 AM EDT

  1. ### Jesse Watters: “What Trump's doing in DC is a blueprint for every other city in the country”

08/21/25 8:39 PM EDT

  1. ### “These savages” -- Charlie Kirk calls Letitia James “the test case” and demands she “go to jail”

08/21/25 6:28 PM EDT

August 21, 2025, edition of The Charlie Kirk Show,streamed on Rumble

CHARLIE KIRK (HOST): Someone in the audience sent an email, freedom@charliekirk.com. They went a step further. They said, "Charlie, when are these people going to be disbarred or penalized for abusing their law licenses?" I mean, is there anything that we can do? I mean, what they've put President Trump through, is there any accountability for these savages? For these maniacs, what they have done to President Donald Trump?

ALEX MARLOW (GUEST): The test case is Tish James because she was so flagrant that remember, she was tweeting out what Trump owed each day just to poke the bear some more, to gloat, because of the interest rates that were going up. By the way, Trump should've been making money off of that $175 million that was up on bond. He could've invested that in gold, Charlie. He would've had a return on that investment. Trump is owed interest. This is really important. Trump should be paid interest on all the money he had put up on bond that was just sitting there for a year and a half. He's got to collect on that.

But Tish James is the test case. She should absolutely be disbarred. She should probably go to prison. I'm not an attorney, so I don't know for sure, but that would be something that should be in the realm of possibilities. There's no way she should be allowed to practice law at all in this country after this.

...

KIRK: Some people say, "Well, Charlie, you know, we should be better. We should rise above it." Let me tell you. You know what rising above it actually looks like? It looks like that you cannot allow these savages, you cannot allow these maniacs to just continue to go after this without any sort of recourse.

You need to make an example out of Letitia James. Tish James needs to completely be made an example. You know why? Because she tried to make an example of the National Rifle Association and also Project Veritas with James O'Keefe. Anyone that was within the New York turf, she sent out -- her little shock troops all the way after them. She sent her goons after Trump, after James O'Keefe. She sent her goons after the National Rifle Association. The NRA today was not -- is not the NRA of ten years ago, which by the way is a very powerful political thing.

They still exist, obviously, but they've been completely castrated because of Tish James. Like, 95 percent decrease in efficacy because of Tish James' -- her deceit, her treachery, and quite honestly, her dark spirit that she represents. She thinks like a KGB agent. She needs to go to jail. Tish James needs to go to jail.

  1. ### Fox News Radio caller says that Donald Trump is taking over DC in an effort to stop Epstein files release

08/21/25 MMA

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MMA

August 22, 2025, edition of The Charlie Kirk Show,streamed on Rumble

CHARLIE KIRK (HOST): Here's what he can do lawfully. He can surge federal agents, expand ATF, FBI, and USMS task forces, go after carjacking, gang cases, and route them all up to federal cases where appropriate. Project safe neighborhoods and enforcement zones. Also, go down on this fugitive carjacking crackdowns. US Marshals -- flood the zone with US Marshals. An emergency backstop, if necessary, declare the Insurrection Act. Insurrection Act 10 U.S.C. (251–253) allows limited federal troop deployment as extreme last resort, but I don't think that should be off the table. Chicago has become more dangerous than third world cities.

And it's working in DC. Could you imagine if you're able to say in one week in Chicago, there's not a single murder? It's unheard of. Not a single murder in DC for a week. The DC template can now be scaled. Making America great again means making our Midwestern cities great again. Revive Chicago. Revive Detroit. Revive Minneapolis -- okay, that might be tough. That's a third world Somali slum. The city has a death wish.

...

I want President Trump to do everything he possibly can. I'm going to talk to him. I'm going to say, "Man, Mr. President, I'm 100 percent behind you. Whatever you need to do a federal takeover of Chicago and make this a test case, I will do whatever I possibly can, Mr. President." I'm going to probably shoot him a message later on.

Black men have a cumulative incidence of being shot in Chicago of 11 percent by age 40. That means one out of ten Black men have been shot by the time they reach 40 in Chicago. In Chicago, one out of ten Black men have been shot by the age of 40. That's in Chicago.

...

Declare a national emergency, flood the zone with ATF, FBI, take -- have an entire task force, make Chicago another test case.

One -- hold on. If anyone, like, thinks I'm wrong here, if one in ten Black men have been shot by the age of 40, how is that not an emergency? Seriously, what is your argument? If one in ten Black men are shot by the age of 40, how is that not an emergency? That means if you have a basketball team -- if you have a basketball team at Simeon High School where Derrick Rose went, and it's 20 people on the basketball team, that means two of the people on that basketball team will be shot by the age of 40. Email us as always freedom@charliekirk.com.

Sweet home Chicago, take it over. Seize it. Roll in the tanks just like we said in DC. Mr. Johnson, Mr. Pritzker, you are next, and you are woefully unprepared for what is coming. Law and order is coming, and we will liberate my favorite city, Chicago.

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mma

As mass deportation intensifies, right-wing media expand their aim to include American citizens

MAGA volk: Right-wing media personalities are expanding their hostility toward undocumented immigrants and now are targeting naturalized and native-born citizens in an assault on American identity

Written by Jason Campbell

Research contributions from John Whitehouse

Published 08/25/25

Since its inception, the MAGA movement has focused energy on trying to purge the United States of people who do not have legal status in the country. The Trump administration’s mass deportation efforts accelerated this summer after passage of the One Big Beautiful Bill, alongside the opening of new migrant detention centers. Now, MAGA media are extending that hostility toward immigrants to take aim at naturalized and native-born citizens in an assault on American identity itself.

This weekend, MAGA personality Jack Posobiec shared a meme asking Americans what kind of “stock” they are, and suggested that new citizens are somehow less “American” than others. Lest anyone doubt his intent, on Monday morning, he shared it again. (“Foundation stock” is a term used for animal breeding, for what it’s worth.)

Citation

Via @JackPosobiec

The notion of certain Americans being less “American” has escalated in right-wing media in recent months.

In July, The Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh launched an attack on Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar (R-FL) for proposing legislation, The Dignity Act, to allow certain undocumented immigrants to apply for legal status. During his tirade, Walsh said Salazar is “not American” and should “go back to Cuba” — a startling claim given that Salazar is an American citizen who was born in the United States.

In a follow-up rant, Walsh doubled down on his attacks and argued that citizenship does not give a person equal claim to American identity “as someone who's lived in the country their entire life, who speaks the language, respects the culture, has ancestral ties to the country and its history."

Salazar is not the first U.S. citizen to have their national identity come under assault in recent months. After winning the Democratic mayoral primary in New York City, Zohran Mamdani was attacked across the right-wing media ecosystem. Many of these smears focused on his Islamic faith or his political views, but some targeted his status as a naturalized citizen. Right-wing pundit Jack Posobiec said Mamdani is “not an American,” and the Article III Project’s Will Chamberlain wrote: “Denaturalize and deport Zohran Mamdani."

Minneapolis mayoral candidate Omar Fateh has received similar attacks. Posobiec also claimed Fateh is “not an American,” while Walsh acknowledged that Fateh “was born in America, but he’s not actually an American."

Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) has long been a target of right-wing media. In April, Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk said Omar has not “assimilated to America” and is instead trying “to infect the United States of America with her radical, anti-American Mohammadism, amongst her extreme leftist beliefs."

On Newsmax, Mercedes Schlapp attacked another common target for right-wing media, saying “I’m thinking that maybe they should deport Rashida Tlaib."

To put a fine point on the issue, there is a demographic thread that unites Salazar, Mamdani, Fateh, Omar, and Tlaib — they are all non-white citizens. As Kirk’s executive producer and co-host, Andrew Kolvet, declared last month: “Just by stats, by history, yeah, [being] white probably helps be an American.” He then called for an “immigration moratorium” in the United States.

While hostility to undocumented immigrants also characterized President Donald Trump’s first administration, the current racially focused rhetoric on the right has been building for years.

In 2022, an 18-year-old gunman killed 10 people in Buffalo, New York. He left behind a 180-page racist manifesto filled with hateful rants about the “great replacement” conspiracy theory — once relegated to the fringe of online discourse — which argues that white people in the U.S. are being intentionally replaced with non-white foreigners. Three years after the Buffalo attack, claiming “the great replacement is real” is no longer a fringe idea; it’s a bedrock talking point in right-wing media.

This mentality is linked with growing suggestions that the United States is not “a nation of immigrants,” as Fox host Rachel Campos-Duffy argued in July, but “a nation of settlers.” Some personalities are even attacking the Statue of Liberty; Walsh claimed the famous poem at its base, which offered haven to “your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,” “in no way represents any kind of core American value."

MAGA attacks on Americans’ identities also extend to religion. Kirk said that Islam is “not compatible with Western civilization” and “fundamentally is at odds with the fiber and the DNA of our existence, of our birthright” under the U.S. Constitution, which “cannot coexist with Islam.” Muslims are dangerous, according to Kirk, plotting to “conquer” the United States “whether by sword” or “having a lot of babies.” And this view seemingly extends into the Trump administration, where Christian nationalist figures fill Trump’s religious liberty commission.

In the MAGA consciousness, America is not a melting pot but a homogenous identity, a MAGA “Volk,” and anyone else’s protections of legal immigration status or even citizenship can be removed at any point. This is why we see growing calls from the right for curtailing dual citizenship and demands to end all immigration into the United States. Kirk recently said that “America was at its peak when we halted immigration for 40 years and we dropped our foreign-born percentage to its lowest level ever. We should be unafraid to do that."

It’s not only immigrants and Muslim Americans who right-wing media are seeking to target. For MAGA, Democrats and the left are also incompatible with American identity. Kirk claimed that Democrats “don’t love the United States of America. They are at war with the American republic. There is no appealing to their higher angels. … There’s only the lower demons of the Democrat Party.” Fox’s Jesse Watters accused Democrats of “straight-up treason” over immigration policy. Laura Ingraham suggested Democrats opposing the Trump administration are trying to start an “armed rebellion,” and Newsmax’s Chris Plante asked, “At what point are they to be declared a terrorist organization?"

Manufacturing the friend-enemy distinction through political rhetoric and then enforcing that divide throughout society is an integral aspect of fascism: Those loyal to the regime are considered friends while those opposed are cast into the outer darkness, treated as enemies of the state, traitors, or parasites on the body politic. By calling into question the citizenship of immigrants, Muslims, and anyone who opposes the MAGA ideology, the right’s assault on American identity under the Trump administration is shaping a chilling new reality for our country.

And the MAGA assault on American identity is not just rhetorical — the angry rants on podcasts and social media platforms today could become White House policy tomorrow. Trump has mused about deporting U.S. citizens found guilty of a crime. Right-wing media have likewise campaigned to denaturalize and deport citizens.

“Not everyone in this country is an American,” said Walsh, “even the ones with legal status."

We’re seeing the end result of that mentality now: MAGA media want the Trump administration to target those with legal status next. Charlie Kirk made that clear, connecting all of these threads when he said, “If you're not an American, that's fine. Go back to your place of origin. … Just go back. Hasta la vista. But we have a culture to protect. We have a country to love. No man can serve two masters. Christ our Lord said that. We have a heritage to preserve."

//

  1. ### The right-wing media campaign to denaturalize and deport American citizens

:{03/26/25

  1. ### Fox's Greg Gutfeld and Jesse Watters on the FBI raid of John Bolton: “Some people say it's retribution. I say, who cares?”

:{08/22/25

  1. ### Charlie Kirk says he can’t find “Christ-like compassion” for long-term immigrants who don’t speak English

08/22/25

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August 19, 2025, edition of The Charlie Kirk Show

CHARLIE KIRK (HOST): You've taken on the entire kind of climate science world. Energy department attacks climate science in contentious report. By the way, you're in safe company here. We think this is all politicized. This is driven towards a environmentalist agenda that is trying to weaken American energy dominance. The agency asked five client skeptics to write a report criticizing the consensus on global warming.

First of all, science does not have consensus. This is a very important thing. Right? Science says nothing. Scientists say things. Okay? Science never talks. Science is silent. This is a good thing that could apply to everything. Scientists say things. And scientists, like we learned during COVID, we learned during the lockdowns, learned during the vaccines, can say a lot of different things with the data.

Now, again, global warming does not have consensus like the second law of thermodynamics. Global warming does not have consensus like a object at rest will stay at rest. Your reaction, Mr. Secretary, and how you think about this because they — again, let me read this New York Times article, The consensus on global warming. What an outrageous claim. Your thoughts, sir.

CHRIS WRIGHT (GUEST): Yeah. I always give the contrast between the science, which is what the left likes, which is the opposite of science. Science is a process of challenge and engagement and debate and wrestling with data. And if the data doesn't agree with your model, your model is wrong. Where the science is this top-down, authority-driven thing used with COVID to me was the climate movement in fast forward. The science told you what to do.

But as you said, Charlie, look at those critics. They critique the authors. Five skeptics. Well, skeptical of what? They presented — these are five highly distinguished scientists. One of them was undersecretary for science in the Obama administration, provost at Caltech, PhD from MIT. All of those scientists were accomplished scientists that are also tired of this censorship of the science, censoring real science and real process of engagement. But even on my CNN interview a couple weeks ago, I went on to talk about the climate report. There are zero questions about climate change. Zero. They want to impugn the writers or impugn the way we reference people. They want to find little things. What we want to talk about is the data.

Let's talk about climate science. Like, it's a real phenomenon. It's a slow-moving phenomenon, not even remotely close to the world's biggest problem, but it's used by the left to justify big government and top-down control of everything. Let's be honest. Let's engage in real science, as you said. That's what we're about. And I'm excited to have that debate over four years. We're going to end a lot of children's nightmares. We're going to end a lot of people trying to be pushed around and bullied by people that don't know what they're talking about. Like, I've spent twenty years studying climate science as physical data, and the people who were passionate about it never want to debate me because they don't know anything about it. But we're going to have that debate whether they want it or not.

KIRK: Science is a process. It doesn't tell you anything. People tell you. Science is a method. It's a methodology. And good science, which again is a verb, they they act as if, well, science, you know, puts something out. No. You do science. You go in exploration of truth. And then once you have a conclusion, you have to measure it, you have to analyze it, you have to inquire it, you have to cross-reference it. And by the way, we're bringing back that methodology to our government, RFK at HHS, and you at the Department of Energy.

// NOTE Data NO SUPPORT

  1. ### Charlie Kirk calls for a DC-style takeover of “all of America's greatest cities”

:{08/21/25

  1. ### Charlie Kirk says immigrants are not real Americans and calls for the end of dual citizenship

:{08/19/25

  1. ### Charlie Kirk: “I'm still in touch with people from Greenland. I'm trying to be careful because I'm not a government official, so I don't want to get too involved in all that stuff.”

08/15/25

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  1. ### Charlie Kirk: “Isn't it time to start indicting these mayors? I mean, they're allowed to just fight against President Trump's immigration policy.”

08/14/25

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MMA

August 12, 2025, edition of The Charlie Kirk Show, posted to Rumble

CHARLIE KIRK (HOST): I'm getting a little exhausted doing these segments, and it's fine. Schiff did this. We leaked that. Russiagate conspiracy, Brennan, Clapper. Great. Fine.

It's time for action. Kash Patel, Dan Bongino, Pam Bondi — these are good people. I think they agree it's time for action. We really are getting to a moment where all these stories are helpful. All these stories are interesting. All these stories get headlines, but I'm not here to mislead you the audience, honestly.

And I feel as if we keep on covering these stories that we could talk forever and ever and ever, but I don't want to mislead those of you right now that want what's best. You could talk forever, but people will be very angry if you can talk endlessly about it, but never indict anyone. I'm going to yield to Bondi and Bongino and Kash, and JD said something similar, who's the best. JD is the greatest. JD is not — the ball is not in his court in this sense. He's the vice president of United States.

But in some ways, I wonder, was it the best decision to leak this? Shouldn't we have just been indicted and then leak it?

What I'm getting at is, here, is that it's nice to, OK, great. Great for ratings. Yay. Charlie Kirk Show. Woo hoo. I — enough. But not leak, by the way, release, just to be clear. Not leak — release.

But at this moment of time, indictments matter infinitely more than press conferences, declassifications, and social media trending. Because here's what's happening. Let me just say this for the my administration, you know, buddies that are watching and for some of the audience.

The more that we see these documents, if we do not get high-profile indictments, it'll be worse than you ignoring it. Just saying. All of these leaks are very helpful. It's nice for our show. It boosts ratings. People love watching it. I don't care about that. I want what's right.

But let me just say, the more that we see these leaks, the more that we see this stuff come out, there is an expectation that is now brewing amongst the audience. And where do you get anger in life? Anger comes when expectations and reality are misaligned. It's a great rule for life. So when you have rising expectations and reality does not meet those expectations, you're going to have angry people. So I hope, and it is my great prayer that this is leading towards massive indictments, because boy, do we need it.

//

  1. ### Charlie Kirk calls to deploy the military against Americans: “Chicago, New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Portland, San Francisco. We got a big military. We should be willing to use it.”

08/11/25 1:12 PM EDT

  1. ### Media Matters weekly newsletter, August 8

08/08/25 10:43 AM EDT

  1. ### Charlie Kirk: “It's time to federalize DC, roll in the tanks, bring in the military”

08/06/25

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rww

08/12/2025

by

Kyle Mantyla

Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, said on Monday night that President Donald Trump is just getting warmed up when using federal agents and troops in Washington, D.C.

The far-right influencer, who has the ear of President Trump, called the Georgia lawmaker a “lying fake Christian whore.”

Being an antifeminist, it turns out, is no shield against abusive male power.

Donald Trump has faced an onslaught of criticism from opponents and Maga diehards alike, on issues such as Jeffrey Epstein, the war with Iran, and his steadfast alliance with Israel in the face of genocide. But among the ever dangerous far right, which has generally applauded Trump’s efforts to deport thousands of people a day, his actions of late have stirred rage among a group experts say has benefited greatly from his administration’s law-enforcement pivots.

Memes shared by the White House, DHS, and ICE have used catchy TikTok tunes to normalize mass deportation and Christian nationalist narratives. Experts say that’s the point.

What happens in politics is downstream of what happens in the church.

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MMA

August 11, 2025, edition of The Charlie Kirk Show, streamed on Rumble

CHARLIE KIRK (HOST): This is President Donald Trump saying once we liberate DC — and by the way, I guarantee the crime's gonna go whoop. It's gonna go way down.

And then the media will say, oh, it's only going down because he brought in the military. Exactly. We need full military occupation of these cities until the crime desists. Period.

We need a desisting of crime in our cities. We're not gooing to put up with it. I want to be able to walk Magnificent Mile in Chicago without having to look over my shoulder. Do you know crime is so bad in Chicago that if you get a fender bender — there's a new thing that the youths are doing. Remember, we have a big teenage problem of crime in our country, that teenagers will bang the back of your car as a fender bender. You come out to go trade insurance, and then they steal your car. In Chicago, the new guidance is that if you get a fender bender, drive to the nearest police station to trade insurance just in case they're there to steal your car. It's a real thing. It's happening all the time. By the way, get a burner. We advertise it all the time here on our program.

I don't want to live in that country. You shouldn't either. Simple fix. You steal a car, 25 years in prison. I don't care if you're a teenager. I don't care if — well, I was raised without a dad. Well, you're going to go meet a new dad in jail. We're done. We're not putting up with it. We need more prisons, and we need more prisoners.

:{:{Enough of this — and I honestly you know, I was once part of this whole prison reform thing. I look back at it, and I just cringe at myself. It's a totally wrong premise. We are soft on crime in this country. We need discipline. We need — honestly, we need the humiliation of criminals. We need order. You don't live in a nation if you can't walk the streets of San Francisco at night. You don't live in a country when young teenage girls can't walk the streets of LA. How is that a free society? You are appeasing the criminals.}:

Stop coddling criminals because they happen to be a protected class. We don't believe in protected classes anymore, by the way. We're done with that. Game over. No more protected classes. We are all citizens made in the image of God. Oh, you're protected class because, you know, different skin color. Wrong. That regime was defeated back in November. That whole worldview was gone. Over. Done. Kaput. Sayonara. Instead, a new worldview has ascended, which is we're not going to make accommodations for criminals. We're going through mass deportations. If you're Black and commit a crime, you go to jail. If you're white and you commit a crime, you go to jail. Human equality, doesn't matter. Doesn't matter your background. We are all treated equal under the law, and that is a biblical principle.}:

So once we liberate Washington DC, and we will liberate it. Now, again, I want to say, President Donald Trump, he's gotta go play to win here. The one piece of caution we'd have to say is that if we just kind of do this symbolically, we will lose. The criminals will win. We got to go hard. We gotta go big league. We're talking national guard, tanks — every street, you need military.

And if people are afraid, oh, well, Donald Trump is a fascist because he's bringing the military. Well, you're an anarchist. We're not fascist. We're order. Call them a name right back. You're an anarchist. You want the criminals, the thugs, the gang members, and the worst of society to run the streets of DC. We're not going to put up with it.

By the way, spare me the lecture. You guys militarized Washington DC after January 6, but you wouldn't move them a couple blocks north to the criminals because you acted as if, oh, all the people in on January 6 are the greatest threat ever because they went in with a pocket Constitution to go say a prayer in the US Capitol. Once we liberate DC, you better believe it — Chicago, New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Portland, San Francisco. We got a big military. We should be willing to use it.

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MMA 8 25

Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk called pictures of starving children in Gaza “propaganda” and “emotional, visual, optical warfare” and claimed the “lies against Israel are relentless,” showing The New York Times’ picture of the 18-month-old suffering from malnutrition and emphasizing his “muscular disorder.”Kirk’s guest Rabbi Pesach Wolicki also claimed Palestinians in Gaza are “not emaciated. They're not starving. The people of Gaza are not starving. But Hamas needs to perpetuate this narrative.” Real America’s Voice, *The Charlie Kirk Show*, [7/28/25]

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mma

  1. ### Charlie Kirk: “It's time to federalize DC, roll in the tanks, bring in the military”

08/06/25

August 6, 2025, edition of The Charlie Kirk Show, posted to Rumble

CHARLIE KIRK (HOST): I believe it's time to exercise the federalization of Washington, DC. Bring in the troops, cut out the crime. Federalize Washington, DC. President Trump has the power to do it. He has exercising home rule over the nation's capital. Make DC the safest city in America. Bring in the marines. Call in the Insurrection Act. Make the crime go to zero. Use it as an example. Make DC as safe as Tokyo. Make DC as safe as Singapore. Make DC as safe as Seoul, South Korea. We can do it, but we choose not to because we don't want to offend the teenagers. You see, I know so many of you when you're out at night, you're worried about teenager crime. How can we call ourselves a superpower when our great capital is a dangerous dump? Beijing isn't like this. Tokyo's not like this, but DC is, and it's because we're choosing. It's time to federalize DC, roll in the tanks, bring in the military. Federalize the town, and bring teenage crime to zero.z

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AN 8 25

Long before President Donald Trump formed a close bond with far-right white Christian nationalists and promoted the conspiracy theory that former President Barack Obama was really born in Kenya instead of the United States, critics accused the religious right of being racist. The Rev. Jerry Falwell Sr., founder of the Moral Majority, was a staunch defender of segregation and Jim Crow laws during the 1950s and 1960s — although he later reversed that position.

In a blistering article published on August 4, Salon's Amanda Marcotte argues that a major Trump ally in the MAGA movement—Turning Point USA's Charlie Kirk — is using fundamentalist Christianity to obscure a racist agenda.

Kirk, Marcotte notes, said, in 2016, that he embraced a "secular worldview" — and in 2018, he criticized other Republicans for failing to respect the "separation of church and state."

READ MORE: Don't 'have any other choice': Outrage grows in the midwest as political crisis spirals

"By 2022," Marcotte observes, "he was falsely claiming the separation of church and state is 'a fabrication' made up by 'secular humanists.' Kirk's commitment to theocracy isn’t half-baked. He believes in the Christian nationalist concept of the Seven Mountains Mandate, which calls on far-right Christians to control not just all government, but media, business and education. This idea drove many of the rioters to the Capitol on January 6, where some displayed Appeal to Heaven flags to demonstrate their belief in total Christian Right domination."

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Marcotte continues, "There are many reasons that Kirk underwent this change. Religious fanaticism is central to Donald Trump's base of support; the Capitol insurrection was evidence of this. And while the Religious Right has steered Republicans for decades, the situation grew worse during Joe Biden's presidency, as right-wing media churned out ever-more-radical content denouncing LGBTQ rights and women's equality."

The Salon journalist emphasizes that Kirk's transition from "secular" rhetoric to full-blown Christian nationalism goes beyond anti-gay and anti-feminist views and is "deeply rooted in the history of white evangelicalism" and its "racism."

"Kirk, like decades of Christian Right leaders before him, has found that loudly proclaiming your faith is an effective way to whitewash overt bigotry against people of color," Marcotte explains. "And he has much to answer for when it comes to race-baiting. As Ali Breland of Mother Jones reported in 2024, Kirk has 'hosted far-right and white supremacist figures on his podcast and has tweeted in support of whiteness, earning praise from white supremacists.' This isn't by accident, either. Kirk routinely expresses his own racist views."

READ MORE: 'Middle-aged Manson girls': Far-right 'bloodthirsty' MAGA women mocked in scathing take-down

Marcotte continues, "He suggested Black pilots are unqualified. He blamed a Black fire chief in Austin, Texas, for flooding deaths that occurred a three-hour drive away from the city. He denounced the passage of the 1965 Civil Rights Act and tried to discredit the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. as 'awful' and 'not a good person.'"

Kirk, according to Marcotte, also praised the late evangelical pastor John MacArthur — who defended slavery as godly.

"MacArthur was no outlier in his views, which is why he’s received such an outpouring of praise from the Christian Right since his death," Marcotte warns. "As historian Randall Balmer detailed in an influential Politico Magazine article published in 2014, the modern Religious Right was formed for 'protecting segregated schools'…. Early in his career, Falwell gave a sermon in which he declared that integration 'will destroy our race eventually,' warning that after school desegregation, legalized interracial marriage would be next…. Since the racist cannot justify their views rationally, instead they blame God, who is conveniently never around to answer questions."

Marcotte adds, "It’s a pathetic excuse for small-minded people. No wonder Charlie Kirk embraced it so wholeheartedly."

READ MORE: One state has always been a magnet for big-time sleazeballs — as the Epstein saga proves

*Amanda Marcotte's full article for Salon is available at this link.

REF

Kirk initially made his name by being the most obnoxious of the “debate me” bros. As far as titles go, it’s like winning “Most Stinky” at the Litter Box Olympics, but Republicans love men who are the worst, so it turned him into an overnight MAGA star. Kirk, who wanted to seem like a young and “hip” Republican when he started out, claimed in 2016 to have a “secular worldview.” Two years later, he criticized older Republicans for ignoring the “separation of church and state.” His organization, Turning Point USA, cited their values as “fiscal responsibility, free markets, and limited government.”

More recently, however, Kirk and TPUSA have undergone a dramatic Christian right makeover. As NBC News reported, he has “become one of the nation’s most prominent voices calling on Christians to view conservative political activism as central to Jesus’ calling for their lives.” By 2022, he was falsely claiming the separation of church and state is “a fabrication” made up by “secular humanists.” (In fact, it was “made up” by Thomas Jefferson.)

Kirk’s commitment to theocracy isn’t half-baked. He believes in the Christian nationalist concept of the Seven Mountains Mandate, which calls on far-right Christians to control not just all government, but media, business and education.

Kirk’s commitment to theocracy isn’t half-baked. He believes in the Christian nationalist concept of the Seven Mountains Mandate, which calls on far-right Christians to control not just all government, but media, business and education. This idea drove many of the rioters to the Capitol on Jan. 6, where some displayed Appeal to Heaven flags to demonstrate their belief in total Christian right domination.

There are many reasons that Kirk underwent this change. Religious fanaticism is central to Donald Trump’s base of support; the Capitol insurrection was evidence of this. And while the religious right has steered Republicans for decades, the situation grew worse during Joe Biden’s presidency, as right-wing media churned out ever-more-radical content denouncing LGBTQ rights and women’s equality. By starting Turning Point Faith in 2021, Kirk was hopping on the “trad” trend. He denounced the “LGBTQ agenda,” and equated homosexuality with “grooming” children for sexual abuse. (He said this while partnering with a pastor who did time in federal prison for attempted “coercion and enticement” of a minor for sex.) He has called on women to forgo education and careers so they can instead focus on being submissive housewives.

But another reason is deeply rooted in the history of white evangelicalism: Racism. Kirk, like decades of Christian right leaders before him, has found that loudly proclaiming your faith is an effective way to whitewash overt bigotry against people of color. And he has much to answer for when it comes to race-baiting. As Ali Breland of Mother Jones reported in 2024, Kirk has “hosted far-right and white supremacist figures on his podcast and has tweeted in support of whiteness, earning praise from white supremacists.”

This isn’t by accident, either. Kirk routinely expresses his own racist views. He suggested Black pilots are unqualified. He blamed a Black fire chief in Austin, Texas, for flooding deaths that occurred a three-hour drive away from the city. He denounced the passage of the 1965 Civil Rights Act and tried to discredit the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. as “awful” and “not a good person.”

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Last month, Kirkdevoted a chunk of his podcast to honoring the influential evangelical pastor John MacArthur, who passed away on July 14 at the age of 86. Kirk called him “one of the most influential Protestant minds since the Reformation,” and a “legend” who “never bowed to the gods of this age” and “never apologized for Scripture.” Soaring language — but it’s a euphemism. One of MacArthur’s most famous old-fashioned beliefs was that slavery was godly.

In 2001, MacArthur delivered an infamous sermon at his California megachurch. He argued that Black people are cursed by God to be “servile people” who are “doomed to perpetual slavery.” There have been twisted efforts to rationalize what he said here, but the context of his entire sermon made his meaning quite clear. He’s invoking an argument that white Southerners used in the 19th century, claiming Black people were descended from the biblical figure of Canaan, Noah’s grandson, who is cursed by God in the Book of Genesis to be a “servant of servants.” MacArthur claimed the descendants of Canaan populated Africa and carried this curse with them.

Eleven years later, he had not changed his mind. In an interview, MacArthur said, “It is a little strange that we have such an aversion to slavery.” He agreed that some slaveowners committed “abuses,” but then he noted our society hasn’t outlawed marriage or parenthood, institutions that have also had abuses. MacArthur argued that “working for a gentle, caring, loving master was the best of all possible worlds” for slaves who “had no other opportunity.” Then he equated being enslaved to a white man to being an obedient servant of Jesus.

MacArthur was no outlier in his views, which is why he’s received such an outpouring of praise from the Christian right since his death. As historian Randall Balmer detailed in an influential POLITICO Magazine article published in 2014, the modern religious right was formed for “protecting segregated schools.”

Jerry Falwell, who founded the Moral Majority, the preeminent Christian right organization of the 1980s, got his start as an outspoken segregationist. Like Kirk, Falwell was a staunch opponent of King, preaching against him and other civil rights leaders as “communists” who were “exploiting every incident to bring about violence and bloodshed.”

Early in his career, Falwell gave a sermon in which he declared that integration “will destroy our race eventually,” warning that after school desegregation, legalized interracial marriage would be next. “A pastor friend of mine tells me that a couple of opposite race live next door to his church as man and wife,” he declared, horrified.

Falwell was wrong on the morals, but right on the facts. After Richard Loving, a white man in Virginia, was arrested for marrying Mildred Jeter, a Black woman, the couple sued the Commonwealth. Virginia, of course, is where Falwell lived and pastored the Thomas Road Baptist Church. In 1967, the Supreme Court declared interracial marriage legal nationwide. In the early ’70s, he opposed the federal government’s efforts to integrate private religious schools, saying, “In some states it’s easier to open a massage parlor than to open a Christian school.”

As historian Anthea Butler has argued, “racism inflected almost every point of evangelicalism along the way.”

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That’s the tradition Kirk is plugging into as he embraces both Christian nationalism and racist politics, which have always been deeply intertwined. In 2020, he and his favorite far-right pastor, Rob McCoy, released a podcast in which they denounced Black Lives Matter as “malevolent,” “anti-American” and “anti-Christian.” He hasargued that the proper Christian view on immigration is not to “welcome the stranger” because “foreigners can become your masters.” When New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani ate biryani with his fingers — which is a normal practice in India, where his parents are from — Kirk used it to imply that the Muslim politician cannot be a real American because “we have utensils.”

Using religion as a cover for racism has long held this appeal for a simple reason: It puts an ennobling gloss on ugly feelings. It dresses up bigotry as if it were about faith and philosophy, instead of cruelty. It’s also about escaping responsibility. Since the racist cannot justify their views rationally, instead they blame God, who is conveniently never around to answer questions. It’s a pathetic excuse for small-minded people. No wonder Charlie Kirk embraced it so wholeheartedly.

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AN 8 25

For many years, Florida was considered a volatile swing state that, depending on the candidate, could go either Democrat or Republican in statewide races. Former Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama both carried Florida twice, and in the state's 2018 gubernatorial race, Democratic former Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum just barely lost to Republican now-Gov. Ron DeSantis.

But since then, Florida has taken a deep-red turn. DeSantis ran as a far-right culture warrior in 2022 and was reelected by 19 percent; Donald Trump carried Florida by roughly 14 percent in 2024. And Florida has become a bastion of MAGA politics, from DeSantis to conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer to Sen. Rick Scott to U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi (Florida's former state attorney general) to Trump himself.

In an article published by The Guardian on August 6, journalist Oliver Laughland describes a 400-mile journey across Florida —where he took a close look at the state's MAGA machine.

READ MORE: 'Living in a fantasy world': Critics pounce as Trump interview goes off-the-rails

Laughland describes a Turning Point USA event at the Tampa Convention Center, where, in July, a who's-who of MAGA — including British comedian Russell Brand — could be found and "conspiracy theories, grievance politics and Christian nationalism" were on full display.

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"Ahead of me, Russell Brand sits on a white sofa, broadcasting live on the conservative video-streaming service Rumble," Laughland explains. "His guest is the 'alt-right' influencer Jack Posobiec. To the left, along an alleyway lined with small broadcast booths, is the longtime Donald Trump adviser and self-proclaimed 'dirty trickster' Roger Stone, who is holding court on a podcast. To the rear, on a large metal scaffold, is Steve Bannon’s 'War Room' channel, busy cutting between live footage of a small protest outside the event and adverts for various Trump-aligned products….. In the arena next to the mezzanine, a conveyor belt of MAGA superstars walk out to deliver keynote speeches, accompanied by spitting-flame cannon, pounding dubstep, spinning lasers and strobe lights."

Laughland continues, "Brand delivers a bizarre diatribe — part standup comedy, part evangelical sermon — about his newfound conversion to Christianity in a word salad of alliteration and non sequiturs…. He is immediately followed by Tom Homan, Trump’s loudmouth border czar."

But that Turning Point USA event in Tampa was only one of the MAGA-related things Laughland observed in Florida. Four hours south of Tampa, he notes, is the "Alligator Alcatraz" detention center. And Palm Beach is home to Trump's Mar-a-Lago, home to countless MAGA events.

READ MORE: 'Open civil war': Retired federal judge calls Trump a 'tyrant' and MAGA 'anti-rule of law'

"My colleague Tom Silverstone and I came here as the first stop on a journey across…. Florida," Laughland notes. "Once the quintessential swing state, it is now solidly Republican — and home to some of the president's vast sources of personal wealth, including his beach club, Mar-a-Lago. It is also one of the hubs of his mass‑deportation program."

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CONF 7 25

MMA

  1. ### Charlie Kirk accuses Rep. Jasmine Crockett of being part of an “attempt to eliminate the white population in this country”

08/04/25

mma

  1. ### Fox News since Monday: 85 minutes talking about Sydney Sweeney, 3 minutes talking about Epstein

07/31/25 2:12 PM EDT

  1. ### Charlie Kirk: “I do think that there is a direct correlation between someone's testosterone and their politics”

07/31/25 1:15 PM EDT

  1. ### Fox News shields EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin as he promotes the most destructive climate rollback in EPA history

07/31/25 12:45 PM EDT

  1. ### Newsmax's Greg Kelly tells Charlie Kirk: “A lot of folks think that you're going to be leading this country some day”

07/31/25 9:25 AM EDT

  1. ### Laura Ingraham: “When imports go down, that's actually good”

07/30/25 7:41 PM EDT

  1. ### Greg Gutfeld: “Making a profit off anti-semitism is absolutely genius”

07/30/25 5:56 PM EDT

  1. ### On MSNBC's Deadline: White House, Angelo Carusone calls on Steve Bannon to release interview recordings with Epstein he’s sitting on

07/30/25 5:53 PM EDT

  1. ### On MSNBC's Deadline: White House, Angelo Carusone explains how Trump is pandering to QAnon as part of his Epstein media strategy

07/30/25 5:22 PM EDT

  1. ### Fox News host Steve Doocy rails against government spending for school supplies

07/30/25 4:10 PM EDT

  1. ### Fox News has aired 168 segments about Tulsi Gabbard's revisionist claims regarding Russia, Obama, and the 2016 election

07/30/25 1:02 PM EDT

  1. ### Jesse Watters on the deportation process: “We want them treated humanely, don't get me wrong. But this is not high on our list of priorities.”

07/29/25 6:38 PM EDT

  1. ### Joe Rogan calls Donald Trump’s mass deportations “scary” and “fucking crazy”

07/29/25 4:49 PM EDT

  1. ### Laura Loomer pushes baseless Islamophobic claims in the wake of NYC shooting

07/29/25 1:06 PM EDT

  1. ### Charlie Kirk says Sen. John Thune should turn off the Senate air conditioning to force through Trump nominees

07/29/25 12:50 PM EDT

  1. ### Charlie Kirk: “The Jezebel spirit has just infected an entire generation of young ladies”

07/29/25 11:27 AM EDT

  1. ### Daily Wire host rants against “so-called gay adoption and IVF and surrogacy”: “Abject moral horror”

07/29/25 10:59 AM EDT

  1. ### On MSNBC's The Weeknight, Angelo Carusone explains Donald Trump's struggle to maintain narrative dominance amid the Epstein scandal

07/28/25 8:05 PM EDT

  1. ### Right-leaning podcasters call out the Trump administration’s 2016 election claims as a “distraction” from Jeffrey Epstein

07/28/25 5:46 PM EDT

  1. ### On SiriusXM's Young American with Dylan Douglas, Media Matters' Matt Gertz explains how the Epstein scandal is fracturing MAGA

07/28/25 5:10 PM EDT

  1. ### Tim Dillon: America is “funding a famine” in Gaza

07/28/25 3:58 PM EDT

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MMA

July 24, 2025, edition of Thoughtcrime, posted to Rumble

ANDREW KOLVET (CO-HOST): Yeah. But this is interesting because I want to contrast this in our final minute here with the what — I know we don't have to play the clip, but Matt Walsh went after Maria Elvira Salazar, who's a Republican out of Miami. She's Cuban. I believe she's born in America. Right? Am I — am I wrong?

JACK POSOBIEC (CO-HOST): In Miami. Yeah.

KOLVET: Born in Miami. Still has a very thick Hispanic accent, Latin accent. But she's a Republican, former TV anchor, and Matt Walsh is coming under some fire for saying “deport her. She's not an American.” So he's saying she's not American.

But when I see that clip, it feels completely different. You know? Now I — we have blasted Maria Elvira Salazar for her soft amnesty push probably more than anybody else, actually. But I would say, like, you know, Cubans, the ones that have come to America and largely are in Florida, they embody an American ethos to me. Like, when I look at it, they're grateful.

POSOBIEC: Our secretary of state is Cuban.

KOLVET: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Marco Rubio is 10 out of 10. They're grateful. They love our — they love markets. They love the Constitution, the rule of law. They're anti-tyrant. They're anti — I mean, they have so much about them that I love and that I naturally feel kinship with.

And so, again, it's sort of like, what is an American? It's not necessarily — I even wrote in my little thing. I didn't read that part, but it's most likely you're white. I mean, just by stats, by history, yeah, white probably helps be an American.

But if you're not white, don't be antagonistic to those who are, and don't be bitter about it. Be grateful to live in the country. I think those things matter still. Right? And I guess, you know, if you go down certain rabbit holes online that wouldn't fly.

For me, it does, especially when I look at the Cuban community in in Miami. But I would say, like, in general, we have to — I would love to see us do immigration moratorium. We going to deal with how many we've had come in this country who are not American, and yet they're living here. They're walking around us, and they don't represent kinship or community or brotherhood from a nation standpoint.

*Axiosnoted recentlythat Andrew Kolvet is the executive producer of Charlie Kirk's podcast. Kolvet is also a co-host of the Thoughtcrime podcast, alongside Kirk.

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MMA

  1. ### Podcaster Shawn Ryan on Trump's mass deportation plans: “The economy is gonna face some consequences. I think it already probably is.”

07/16/25 4:32 PM EDT

  1. ### TikTok propelled our account into a pro-eating disorder void

07/16/25 3:32 PM EDT

  1. ### Project 2025 contributors celebrate the Trump administration moving to dismantle the Department of Education

07/16/25 3:17 PM EDT

  1. ### Alex Jones lashes out at Trump over Epstein: “That's a cult”

07/16/25 3:02 PM EDT

  1. ### Charlie Kirk: “As President Donald Trump is upset on Truth Social, I do not think he's attacking all of you in the rank-and-file. Instead, President Donald Trump is venting off some anger right now.”

07/16/25 2:28 PM EDT

  1. ### Charlie Kirk on Epstein disclosure: “I am worried it's starting to seep in to lower propensity voters”

07/16/25 2:18 PM EDT

  1. ### Charlie Kirk complains of “young women that are infected with the Jezebel spirit that had no interest in getting married or having children, that wanted to be the boss of the relationship”

07/16/25 1:47 PM EDT

  1. ### Fox News host Jesse Watters says Gov. Gavin Newsom has undergone “political sex change surgery”

07/16/25 1:46 PM EDT

  1. ### Charlie Kirk complains about a lack of Epstein messaging from the Trump administration: “We're basically having to do the PR work of the administration”

07/16/25 1:36 PM EDT

  1. ### Charlie Kirk on the Trump administration and Epstein: “We're getting flooded with thousands, hundreds of thousands of comments that are very unhappy”

07/16/25 1:18 PM EDT

  1. ### How MAGA propagandists responded to Trump’s demand to shut up about Epstein

07/16/25 10:17 AM EDT

  1. ### Newsmax host: “You may have noticed the Epstein story was almost nowhere to be found, though, on Fox News these last couple of days”

07/16/25 8:03 AM EDT

  1. ### On MSNBC's The Weeknight, Angelo Carusone discusses the Epstein files story and why it's still simmering in MAGA media even as Fox News moves on

07/15/25 8:30 PM EDT

  1. ### Steve Bannon suggests that a special counsel will be named within days to look at Crossfire Hurricane, the 2020 election, January 6, and more

07/15/25 5:57 PM EDT

  1. ### PBD Podcast panelist calls out Ben Shapiro's take on the Epstein files: “Absolutely horseshit”

07/15/25 3:33 PM EDT

  1. ### Daily Wire host on Minneapolis mayoral candidate Omar Fateh: “He was born in America, but he's not actually an American”

07/15/25 2:52 PM EDT

  1. ### Fox scrambles as Trump tariffs start to show up in prices and inflation accelerates

07/15/25 2:19 PM EDT

  1. ### Ben Shapiro calls on Steve Bannon to release his Epstein tapes: “Release the Epstein tapes, Steve.”

07/15/25 12:53 PM EDT

  1. ### Charlie Kirk now says he will continue to talk about Jeffrey Epstein: “When I said for the time being, I was talking yesterday.”

07/15/25 12:49 PM EDT

  1. ### Right-wing media claimed the “worst of the worst” would be housed at Florida's new immigrant detention center. Hundreds of detainees have no criminal record.

07/15/25

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but joined thugswarm on stage megyn on stage at conf?

Charlie Kirk: “I'm done talking about Epstein for the time being. I'm gonna trust my friends in the administration.” 07/14/25

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an 7 25

in 2024, the United States enjoyed a $7.4 billion trade surplus with Brazil, meaning the U.S. is importing a lot more goods to Brazil than Brazil is importing to the U.S. But U.S. President Donald Trump is threatening Brazil with a 50 percent tariff — not for economic reasons, but because he claims that far-right former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro is being treated unfairly.

Bolsonaro is on trial for what Brazilian prosecutors are describing as a coup attempt. In 2022, Bolsonaro was voted out of office and lost to left-wing now-President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, but he tried to stay in office nonetheless — not unlike Trump after he lost the United States' 2020 presidential election to Democrat Joe Biden and made false, repeatedly debunked claims of widespread voter fraud.

If Trump follows through with his 50 percent tariff on Brazilian goods, all the coffee that Brazil imports to the U.S. could become a lot more expensive (as Frank Sinatra famously sang, "they've got an awful lot of coffee in Brazil"). But according to The Guardian's Tom Phillips, Trump's threat is only making things worse — not better — for Bolsonaro.

READ MORE:'I'm done with this': Retiring GOP senator uses profanity in veiled threat to Trump

"Bolsonaro could face up to 43 years in prison if found guilty of masterminding a botched coup attempt after losing the 2022 presidential election," Phillips reports from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in an article published on July 16. "He is expected to be convicted and sentenced by the (Brazilian) Supreme Court in the coming weeks…. The U.S. president apparently expected his intervention to improve the outlook for Bolsonaro, 70, who is already banned from running in next year's election. Bolsonaro's senator son, Flávio, urged Lula's administration to immediately cave in to Trump's ultimatum by offering his father an amnesty from prosecution…. But a week after Trump's tariff announcement, the ploy seems to be backfiring badly."

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Phillips continues, "The move has reinvigorated Bolsonaro's left-wing rivals, given Lula a bounce in the polls and prompted a wave of public anger, largely focused on the Bolsonaro clan who have spent years portraying themselves as flag-loving nationalists."

On Tuesday, July 15, Brazil's Estado de São Paulo — a conservative publication — slammed Bolsonaro as an opportunist, saying, "Jair Bolsonaro couldn't care less about Brazil. He's a phony patriot."

Lula is standing up to Trump. The photo published with Phillips' article shows him wearing a hat that reads, in all caps, "O BRASIL E DOS BRASILEIROS" — which, in Portuguese, means "Brazil is for Brazilians."

READ MORE:'Good evidence': New data shows the 'surest sign' Trump policies are making inflation rise

Silvana Marques, a Brazilian teacher and activist who is vehemently critical of Trump and Bolsonaro, is urging Brazilian officials not to cave in to "crazy" Trump and considers the Bolsonaros "a family of traitors."

Marques told The Guardian, "We cannot allow this to happen…. And the Americans must be thinking: Are we really going to have to pay 50 percent more for the things we import from Brazil just to defend this worn-out old horse?"

READ MORE:'Disgusting': Fox hosts pilloried for 'super racist' segment 'calling themselves Nazis'

*Read Tom Phillips' full article for The Guardian at this link.

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RWW

07/09/2025

by

Kyle Mantyla

Trump officials say there’s no deeper Epstein conspiracy they can reveal. The right has reacted with fury.

Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene has yet to encounter a national tragedy that she won't spread conspiracies about.

"It's not just incompetence. This is DEI working to undermine meritocratic institutions, and more people likely died than otherwise would have because of DEI."

Rep. Derrick Van Orden (R-Wis.) insists he helped get $1 billion for hospitals in his state hit by Trump’s tax bill. Except his governor and state legislature did that.

A July 8 letter asks HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. to allow its use only up to seven weeks of pregnancy and in-person, among other changes. The majority of U.S. abortions involve mifepristone.

Vance Boelter, who allegedly shot Melissa Hortman, a Democratic Minnesota state representative, and her husband, Mark Hortman, on June 14, 2025, studied at Christ for the Nations Institute in Dallas. The group is a Bible school linked to the New Apostolic Reformation, or NAR.

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MMA

  1. ### Charlie Kirk called for Trump to put tariffs on Brazil in response to the trial of Bolsonaro. Trump just did.

07/10/25

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Charlie Kirk on Texas flooding: “What you are not being told by the media anywhere is that the death toll likely would not have been as high if it wasn't for DEI”

07/09/25 MMA

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MMA

  1. ### Charlie Kirk responds to Trump's remarks on farm and hotel workers: “If you want to break our coalition, go and push amnesty”

07/07/25

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an 7 25

On Tuesday, a federal judge issued a 128-page ruling striking down President Donald Trump's ban on asylum applications for immigrants crossing the Southern border of the United States that he issued earlier this year via executive order. Some of Trump's most outspoken supporters are furious over the decision.

U.S. District Judge Randolph Moss — who former President Barack Obama appointed to the District of Columbia in 2014 — ruled that Trump's asylum ban violated the Immigration and Naturalization Act (INA) and was an illegal attempt to install an "extra-statutory, extra-regulatory regime for repatriating or removing individuals from the United States." He added that "nothing in the INA or the Constitution grants the President or his delegees the sweeping authority asserted in the Proclamation and implementing guidance."

According to Politico legal correspondent Kyle Cheney, Judge Moss also designated asylum seekers as a protected class. This would appear to insulate his ruling from the recent Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) decision that prevented lower court judges from issuing nationwide injunctions.

READ MORE:'Can anyone spell recession?' Trump slammed as jobs report stuns economists

Moss' decision was met with widespread outrage by Trump supporters on social media. MAGA influencer Gunther Eagleman characterized Moss' ruling as "ordering President Trump to reopen the border," adding: "Ignore this political HACK!" Charlie Kirk, who is the founder of far-right group Turning Point USA, also blasted the decision in a post to his X account.

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"There are a lot of conservatives who recklessly call for judicial rulings they don't like to be ignored. I have fought against that; it would be hugely destructive to throw out our constitutional balance of powers for the sake of a temper tantrum," Kirk tweeted. "But it is 100% not acceptable for a traitor on the federal bench to side with invaders in abolishing America. Period."

Far-right influencer Chaya Raichik's LibsofTikTok X account, which has more than four million followers, also piled on after Moss' decision was announced. She accused Moss of being an "activist judge who wants to turn the US into a Biden-era open border disaster."

Even though Moss has been a member of the D.C. District Court for more than a decade, his legal career stretches back nearly 40 years, when he was a clerk for U.S. District Judge Pierre Leval (an appointee of Democrat Bill Clinton) in 1986 in the Southern District of New York. He then clerked for SCOTUS Associate Justice John Paul Stevens (an appointee of Republican Gerald Ford) in the late eighties.

READ MORE:Republicans 'facing real general election problems' over Trump Medicaid cuts: ex-GOP rep

Click here to read Moss' full ruling.

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mma

[## Charlie Kirk condemns Zohran Mamdani for how he “disgustingly” eats rice: “We in the West value cleanliness. We have utensils.” 07/01/25

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mma

Half of the top 10 online shows spread misinformation or false narratives about Hurricane Helene in 2024

The videos have 5.7 million combined views on YouTube and Rumble

Special ProgramsClimate & Energy

Written by Ilana Berger

Published 06/26/25

Media Matters found that popular online shows also pushed right-wing misinformation about hurricane recovery efforts after reviewing episodes from the 10 programs with the largest followings (based on a previous Media Matters study) that were streamed or uploaded in the two weeks between September 27, 2024, when Hurricane Helene made landfall, and October 11, 2024. These shows continue to stream as this year's extreme weather season progresses.

For this study, we reviewed all 62 original long-form audio and video content streamed or published by the top 10 online shows in the two weeks between September 27, 2024, when the storm made landfall, and October 11, 2024, for discussion about hurricanes, particularly Helene or Milton (which made landfall in Florida on October 9, 2024), as well as related government response and recovery efforts. While Helene was the focus of the study, our scope did include incidental mentions of Milton because of its timing.

We found that 5 of the top online shows adopted right-wing media talking points and misinformation about Hurricane Helene: The Joe Rogan Experience, The Ben Shapiro Show, The Charlie Kirk Show, Stay Free with Russell Brand,and Candace. (The top shows we reviewed that did not contain relevant hurricane misinformation during this period were: The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast, This Past Weekend with Theo Von, What Now? with Trevor Noah, Full Send Podcast, and The Dr. Phil Podcast.)

Nearly one-third of the episodes these programs posted during the study period — 15 of 48 in total, or 31% — spread misinformation or amplified misleading narratives during the two-week period following Hurricane Helene. As reported in our previous study, these five shows had a combined reach of 121 million total subscribers across streaming platforms (YouTube, Spotify, Rumble, Twitch, and Kick) and social media platforms that are used to amplify and promote these shows (Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok): The Joe Rogan Experience (39.9 million), The Ben Shapiro Show (25 million), Stay Free with Russell Brand (22.5 million), The Charlie Kirk Show(18.6 million), and Candace (15 million).

According to Kirk, the fact that “all the outskirts of western North Carolina are some of the reddest parts of the country” proved that “the more conservative that you are, like East Palestine, the more Trump you are, your federal government just doesn't care about you.” Kirk later claimed that “Democrats don’t care — they hope that everyone there is disenfranchised” because “this could flip North Carolina, by the way, to a blue state. Maybe that’s why they’re doing this.”

“They wonder why Trump is so popular,” Kirk said. “They wonder why our movement is ascendant. This is an elementary breakdown of why government exists. Government exists first and foremost to serve its citizens.”

Ben Shapiro spoke with then-presidential candidate Donald Trump on October 8, 2024, who proceeded to attack the Biden administration’s disaster relief efforts and tout his own campaign.

“I'm leading in all of the swing states,” Trump said. “The incompetence of what they're doing with the hurricane and we have another coming. I mean I think Ron's going to do a very good job and maybe save them but they're not going to do anything, they're just incompetent.”

Shapiro also used the storm to attack Harris’ campaign, claiming that Trump’s presence “on the ground in Valdosta, Georgia, … was making Kamala and Joe very upset, so they had to stage some photo ops” in order “to pretend that she actually does something for a living, and then she ran away.”

On Candace, host Candace Owens read from a viewer’s email asking, “Have you heard anything about people committing suicide in the hurricane-struck areas that Kamala and Biden have completely neglected? She is evil and it starts from her hidden roots.”

Owens responded by claiming she had received other “emails from people that are in the military saying that they were supposed to go around and help in the hurricane — now they’re being sent overseas to the Middle East.”

“That’s your tax dollars at work,” she told her audience. “Americans are suffering — nothing. Sorry, feel the hurricane, the flood. We’ve got to go defend the borders and the people of foreign nations.” Owens concluded that “our politicians have completely sold us out. They lie to us about everything.”

By leaving out important context about how the government appropriates funding for disaster relief and the process for states to receive federal aid, these programs deceptively painted a vivid picture of government leaders who were deprioritizing America and could not be trusted.

Discussions on top online shows largely mimicked the misinformation being pushed by the right, repeating inaccurate claims about the hurricane’s cause and jumping to extreme and unsupported conclusions about recovery efforts.

Fact: Federal assistance includes substantial aid beyond the initial $750 payment

As the federal response began to unfold following the storm, Fox News amplified false claims that hurricane victims were eligible for only $750 in aid for all damages. In reality, this amount was just the beginning of available assistance.

The White House confirmed at the time that emergency aid “can include a one-time $750 payment to help with essential items like food, water, baby formula and other emergency supplies. After registering for disaster assistance, individuals may also qualify to receive disaster-related financial assistance to repair storm-related damage to homes and replace personal property, as well as assistance to find a temporary place to stay.” But online shows spread the same misinformation:

Fact: FEMA’s disaster relief program is separate from its immigrant assistance programs

On the campaign trail last October, Trump said, “The Harris-Biden administration says they don’t have any money” for hurricane relief. “They spent it all on illegal migrants,” he claimed. “They stole the FEMA money just like they stole it from a bank, so they could give it to their illegal immigrants that they want to have vote for them.”

A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson categorically denied the accusation that the money was spent on “illegal migrants” instead of hurricane victims. “These claims are completely false,” they said, clarifying that the Shelter and Services Program, which provides assistance to migrants, “is a completely separate, appropriated grant program that was authorized and funded by Congress and is not associated in any way with FEMA's disaster-related authorities or funding streams.” But the same misinformation was repeated online by The Charlie Kirk Show.

Fact: There is no evidence to suggest that disaster aid was distributed based on race

In 2022, a clip of Vice President Kamala Harris discussing Florida relief efforts in response to Hurricane Ian caught the attention of right-wing media and GOP figures, who accused her of planning to allocate resources based on race. The clip was from an interview with actress Priyanka Chopra, who asked the vice president about relief efforts and what the Biden administration was doing to combat climate change, specifically given that people in the poorest countries are most affected by the climate crisis.

Harris responded that “we have to address this in a way that is about giving resources based on equity, understanding that we fight for equality, but we also need to fight for equity; understanding that not everyone starts out at the same place. And if we want people to be in an equal place, sometimes we have to take into account those disparities and do that work.” At the time, The Associated Press assessed the claim that Harris planned to distribute aid based on race as “false” — but it still reappeared during top online shows’ coverage of Hurricane Helene.

Fact: Hurricane relief funding requires congressional approval and is separate from foreign aid spending

In the wake of Hurricane Helene, right-wing media complained about the Biden administration’s pledge to give $157 million to Lebanon, incorrectly claiming that the foreign humanitarian aid was being taken from funds that would otherwise be used for domestic disaster relief. Fox News host Sean Hannity misleadingly suggested foreign aid is competing for funding with disaster relief. Top online shows spread similar misinformation in the storm’s aftermath, suggesting the federal response was tied to military assistance for Ukraine.

The Department of Homeland Security, which houses FEMA, does not directly fund Ukraine’s military like the Department of Defense does, though it does provide some relief for Ukrainian nationals who come to the U.S. The aid package that was passed by Congress in 2024 had been vetted for months before the hurricane occurred, and passed with bipartisan support. American military aid for Ukraine, which has largely come in the form of weapons and equipment, has faced criticism from the right and the left. Defense funding is unrelated to disaster relief, however, and no government programs were cut to pay for the aid to Ukraine.

At the end of May, FEMA “denied North Carolina's request for the agency to match 100% of the state funds for Helene cleanup.” On June 10, Trump announced plans for states to “wean off of” FEMA aid and “bring it down to the state level” after the 2025 hurricane season, which started at the beginning of the month. Just a few days later, the head of FEMA’s crucial National Coordination Response Center resigned.

Not only has the Trump administration further weakened emergency response mechanisms that top online hosts and right-wing media previously complained about, it has set the stage for more misinformation to interfere with relief efforts over the next few months.

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AHA STRICT FR MACHO BS FASCISM

ice PROTESTS LA

mma

  1. ### Sean Hannity says Gavin Newsom “should be arrested”

:{:{06/09/25 }:

  1. ### OutKick's Dan Dakich says Simone Biles “showed her stupidity” by defending trans inclusion in sports

:{:{06/09/25}:

  1. ### While calling for the military to be deployed to Los Angeles, Charlie Kirk uses a chart sourced to a white nationalist website

:{:{06/09/25}:

While calling for the military to be deployed to Los Angeles, Charlie Kirk uses a chart sourced to a white nationalist website

Written by Jason Campbell

Published 06/09/25

During his June 9 broadcast, Charlie Kirk used a chart sourced to the white nationalist organization American Renaissance.

The graph shows the decline of the white population in Los Angeles over multiple decades. Kirk displayed the graph after claiming, “This is the great replacement theory” — referring to a white nationalist conspiracy theory — and while saying, “You can see the white population collapse in L.A. That's intentional. They've wanted it that way.”

Kirk has a history of promoting the replacement theory and other racist myths.

The Southern Poverty Law Center labels American Renaissance a hate organization, saying it “promotes pseudo-scientific studies and research that purport to show the inferiority of blacks to whites.”

During this segment, Kirk also called on President Donald Trump to “fully deploy the military in the streets, take back the streets of LA.” Earlier in this show, he said, “We must be unafraid to declare the Insurrection Act of 1807.”

Video

Citation

From the June 9, 2025, edition of The Charlie Kirk Show, streamed on Rumble

CHARLIE KIRK (HOST): We haven't even talked about reforming our legal system. We need a shutoff of all immigration in this country. Period. End of story. Moratorium. This right here should be a five-alarm fire. We knew that this was here, but my goodness, it's gonna keep on bubbling up. It's gonna keep on continuing. Because what we have here is not just the bandits of the Democrat Party, but then you have Gavin Newsom and you have Karen Bass defending what is happening in the streets. You have Gavin Newsom suing Donald Trump because he is so in favor of this.

What do you see all those different foreign flags? You have the Black liberation flag. I don't know what that is. Is that the Argentinian flag? Great. And then you have the Palestinian flag. Understand there is intersectionality here. If you want to properly understand the left, you must understand intersectionality. What do the Palestinian pro-Hamas people have to do with the white, liberal, purple-haired jihadis and then also with the La Raza folks with BLM? They all hate Christendom. They hate Western civilization. They hate what we have built. This is a global movement of freaks and misanthropes. Anti-Israel, anti-West, anti-America, anti-capitalism, anti-law, anti-order, and it all comes together. The same people that are doing the Gaza encampments are the same people that are now waving the La Raza Mexican flag. It is order versus anarchy. It is chaos versus structure. It is against everything that we believe in in the West. Everything.

And we're not gonna put up with it. I think President Trump should fully deploy the military in the streets, take back the streets of LA. Do it and do it fast. We're not gonna allow Floydapalooza happen again. Civilization's on the line. Because you know what happened in 2020? So many Black and Hispanic people got unnecessarily killed because of the rise in crime. If this mob broke into your home and killed your family, they won't defend it as a cry of protest.

This is the great replacement theory. Remember we talked about how they wanna replace white Anglo-Saxon Christian protestants with Mexican, Nicaraguans, with El Salvadorians. You have seen the result of the great replacement. In California, one in four people have been born outside the U.S. Let me say that again. One in four people in California have been born outside the U.S. You can see the white population collapse in L.A. That's intentional. They've wanted it that way.

These are not protests. These are riots. And the leaders — Karen Bass and Gavin Newsom, which I'll talk about more, are being held hostage by these insurgents. We want our country back, and we have a big heart. We have that open — you know, oh, yes. We're gonna take care of everybody. But as it says in the Bible, we're gonna build the wall like it says in the Book of Nehemiah, and we're gonna build it strong, and we're gonna build it high. And if you do not assimilate, and if you are an agent of disorder, of chaos, and confusion — adios, hasta la vista, baby. We will find you and your family, and we will return you. All 20, 25, 30 million. Every single one of you are going back.

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RWW

06/18/2025

by

Kyle Mantyla

Three years after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, allowing states to ban abortion, the justices have decided to let states ban another politically controversial form of health care—this time, gender-affirming medical treatments for minors.

As coverage of the horrific shootings in Minnesota has unfolded, the focus has turned to the alleged murderer’s time at a little-known Bible school in Dallas called Christ for the Nations Institute (CFNI). Most simply refer to it as a “Christian school,” a “religious college,” or a “theology school”—all of which are, strictly speaking, correct—while others, like Mother Jones’s Kiera Butler, more accurately describe it as “a Bible college popular among Christian nationalists.” Yet even that doesn’t fully describe the school’s ties to recent episodes of political violence. Because despite CFNI’s insistence that “this is not who we are,” we should not be surprised that a violent murderer came out of this school. While it was once considered a fringe establishment, CFNI is far more mainstream now than at any point in its history.

About halfway through the Young Women’s Leadership Summit in Grapevine, Texas, I got a talking to from Turning Point USA comms.

Andrew Kolvet, the organization’s chief spokesman, peeled me away from the line of young women I was speaking to warn me that he had gotten complaints about me, though he couldn’t name what they were beyond “weird questions”, and if I kept interviewing attendees under 18, I’d be removed from the conference. “I’m very familiar with your work,” Kolvet said. He reminded me these girls are “innocent,” and to lay off.

Tucker Carlson brawled with Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and humiliated the senator for old time’s sake in a wild exchange during an interview set to be released on Wednesday.

Far-right activist Laura Loomer has slammed “fake” MAGA supporters in a series of posts on X claiming her conservative critics are using an antisemitic slur against her.

The “Appeal to Heaven” flag, a popular symbol for Christian nationalists that was waved by January 6 rioters, was raised over the Small Business Administration headquarters last week.

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mma

After Israel launched airstrikes at Iranian nuclear and residential infrastructure on June 12, right-wing media figures rushed to fearmonger that supposed Democratic “open border” policies allowed Iranian “sleeper cells” into the country that might now execute terrorist attacks on U.S. soil.

Israel announced it had initiated a series of strikes aimed at Iran’s nuclear facilities and missile factories which have reportedly killed top Iranian military commanders and civilian scientists. In response, Iran vowed retaliation against what it called the country’s “foolish act.” President Donald Trump called the attack “excellent” and warned that there would be “more to come.”

Some right-wing media figures have already started fearmongering about the possibility of Iranian sleeper cells committing terrorism on U.S. soil in response to the Israeli strikes. Several have also blamed former President Joe Biden for this threat due to his alleged “open border” policies.

Right-wing figures fearmonger about the possibility of “terror attacks” from Iranian sleeper cells supposedly let into the U.S. under Biden

Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk warned his followers: “Keep your head on a swivel. Biden let millions of people into America. Iran might activate some sleeper cells against Americans. Stay armed.”

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Trump ally and self-proclaimed “proud Islamophobe” Laura Loomer urged people to be “very careful today and this weekend in American cities and tourist locations” because “Iran has many sleeper cells in the US. Iranian proxies from HAMAS and Hezbollah will likely retaliate on US soil to kill Americans in acts of Islamic terror as a form of retaliation to the Israeli air strikes.” She also claimed “there are millions of jihadi sleeper cells in our country thanks to the Democrats open border polices.”

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On former Trump adviser Steve Bannon’s War Room, MAGA media influencer Jack Posobiec also suggested that the U.S. is “very vulnerable” to attacks planned inside the country because “under four years of the Biden administration, … the border was completely open,” adding later that the U.S. is “vulnerable to this type of attack from sleeper cells from any of our adversaries or potential sabotage teams around the world.”

Video

Citation

From the June 13, 2025, edition of Real America's Voice's War Room

On The National Report, Newsmax host Jon Glasgow said, “We’ve had millions of people pour in over the borders. Is there a possibility of some sleeper cells here in the United States that Iran might try to activate?” Newsmax host Rob Astorino replied, “There's no question. I mean, that's been their plan the whole time.”

Appearing on Newsmax’s Rob Schmitt Tonight, retired Army Lt. Col. Tony Shaffer claimed that Israel “could well have essentially limited all options that the Iranians have, except for potentially some sleeper cells, which we are definitely still worried about here in the United States.” Newsmax host Bianca de la Garza responded, “As we have to be. Joe Biden opened borders for four years.”

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MMA

Right-wing media call for “overwhelming force” and arrests in LA protests

Written by Chloe Simon & Reed McMaster

Published 06/12/25

Protests in Los Angeles have been ongoing as Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids continue to target migrant communities. In response, right-wing media have urged the Trump administration and law enforcement to crack down harder on protesters, called for Democratic officials to be arrested, and suggested the protesters were funded by outside groups.

Fox News host Laura Ingraham and others encouraged President Donald Trump to employ the Insurrection Act against protesters while Daily Wire host Matt Walsh said Trump should use “overwhelming force.” Fox host Sean Hannity and War Room host Steve Bannon have called for arrests of Democratic officials, and The Daily Caller blamed a “Pro-Chinese Communist Millionaire” for funding the protests.

Protests erupted after the Trump administration conducted ICE raids in LA and sent in troops

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  1. ### Theo Von calls AI provision in GOP's One Big Beautiful Bill “really sketchy”

:{:{06/09/25}:

  1. ### Laura Loomer praises Chinese government for recognizing “the threat of Islam”

:{:{06/09/25}:

  1. ### Charlie Kirk responding to protests in Los Angeles: “We must be unafraid to declare the Insurrection Act of 1807”

:{:{06/09/25}:

  1. ### Steve Bannon calls for the arrest of Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass

:{:{06/09/25}:

  1. ### Sean Hannity calls for mandatory military service for every American

:{:{06/04/25}:

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mma

## harlie Kirk guest host says Pride Month is “cultural tyranny” and “we should just get rid of it altogether” 06/03/25 3:01 PM EDT

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raw

6 25

'My tolerance with the American Jews' has 'completely run out': Charlie Kirk

https://www.rawstory.com/charlie-kirk-jews/ "'My tolerance with the American Jews' has 'completely run out': Charlie Kirk")

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mma

May 29, 2025, edition ofThe Charlie Kirk Show, streamed on Rumble

CHARLIE KIRK (HOST): Let me see if my story is in here. The Wall Street Journal. Let me see. It might be here because it's a great segue way. I actually meant to see — there was a whole story that they did on Harvard, or just that school in Boston. I went to school in Boston. Yeah. You're not fooling anybody. OK? Doesn't have the allure it used to. Trying to find this story here. I think it's here somewhere. Let me see. Anyway, it should be on the front page tomorrow. Front page story.

In the story, which is online, it will soon be printed in the print copy, I am quoted by saying, Charlie, every time he sees President Trump, reminds him to, quote, crush these universities with every power that he has. That is true. That is not fake news. In fact, yesterday, when I was with President Trump — I mean, he was already there. I'm not taking credit for it. But I was certainly affirming it. I said, you need to crush Harvard in its current form. And he says, oh, I am, and I plan to. Make an example out of them.

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AN 5 25

MAGA is outraged today after a three-judge panel struck down the brunt of President Donald Trump’s "Liberation Day" tariffs. The panel ruled that the tariffs Trump imposed under the International Economic Emergency Powers Act (IEEPA) were "unlawful” and that the power to impose tariffs lies with Congress. The three-judge panel also ruled that the president cannot usurp the power of Congress in this matter by invoking an emergency.

The panel from the Court of International Trade consists of judges appointed by Ronald Reagan, Barack Obama and Donald Trump.

Nevertheless, right-wing influencer Charlie Kirk called the people behind the ruling “activist judges.”

“What is even the point of having a president?!” Kirk posted. “FACT CHECK: While the Constitution grants Congress the power to impose tariffs, Congress delegated much of that power to the Executive Branch in the Trade Expansion Act of 1962, which allows for adjustments to tariff rates without needing Congressional action. Courts have given the executive branch broad authority to negotiate trade, that is until now.”

READ MORE: 'Everyone is afraid to tell him': Trump brutally mocked following 'meltdown' with reporter

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“Judicial activism strikes again,” posted another X user, who was quick to point out that the three judge panel ruled from a “New York-based Court.” “Three unelected judges apparently wield more power than the President of the United States.”

Most of the negative reactions decried the corruption of “activist” or “unelected” judges.

“The federal court’s decision to block Trump’s tariffs exposes judicial overreach at its worst,” wrote X user Jesse Cohen. “Unelected judges overriding executive authority to protect globalist interests? Classic D.C. swamp behavior.”

“OMG, THE JUDICIAL TAKEOVER IS ALMOST COMPLETE!” wrote right-wing podcaster Mark Levin.

READ MORE: Donald Trump finally faces his reckoning

But while reaction from MAGA accounts burned with anger, other business-minded conservative accounts said either nothing or accepted the ruling with composure.

The X account of best-selling author Dave Ramsey, who built a prolific career on offering financial advice had nothing to say about the judicial panel decision.

Other pro-business accounts, including ruby-red Republican strategist Russ Latino, asked audiences to see the upside of the ruling.

“A few positives: 1. Your daughter can have more than 2 dolls. 2. Small businesses in your community that rely on imports, with tight margins, may not have to declare bankruptcy. 3. One day, when someone you don’t like is in the Oval Office, their power will be limited,” Latino posted.

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mma

Charlie Kirk says David Hogg looks like “a survivor from a concentration camp”

05/27/25

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MMA

  1. ### Charlie Kirk: “Maybe we just got to make an example out of Thom Tillis”

05/16/25 2:52 PM EDT

  1. ### Right-wing media use a controversial geoengineering program to undermine tried and true climate solutions

05/16/25 2:43 PM EDT

  1. ### Charlie Kirk says “I think we gotta keep SALT out of the way” of the budget bill

05/16/25 2:42 PM EDT

  1. ### Charlie Kirk: “I was just texting with the White House staff today. ... I want to get my marching orders, and they were really quick to respond.”

:{:{05/16/25}:

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  1. ### Charlie Kirk: “I was just texting with the White House staff today. ... I want to get my marching orders, and they were really quick to respond.”

05/16/25 2:25 PM EDT

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spoke at sjsu

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MMA ODD TO ADMIT DEFEAT? SURE TO IMPLODE? HE IS ON WEAPONIZ TEAM BS

  1. ### Charlie Kirk: “I did everything I could to make [Ed Martin] the permanent D.C. US attorney, but Thom Tillis from North Carolina had other plans”

05/15/25

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MMA

“It needs to stop.” Ben Shapiro calls out Trump's “skeezy stuff” like the crypto scheme and accepting a plane from Qatar.

05/12/25

Charlie Kirk: “These are members of Congress that stormed into a federal ICE facility despite warnings. They should absolutely be charged for this.”}:

05/12/25

May 12, 2025, edition ofThe Charlie Kirk Show, streamed on Rumble

CHARLIE KIRK (HOST): This is a very easy one for my friend, Kash Patel and Pam Bondi. Very easy. They went after American patriots for peacefully walking into the United States Capitol building, nonviolently, while being invited, while doors were opened, and they stayed within the lanes, the little rope lines. These are members of Congress that stormed into a federal ICE facility despite warnings. They should absolutely be charged for this, without a doubt. No one is above the law, is what we've always been saying. No one is above the law.

...

KIRK: And that's exactly what should happen. You see, the Democrats have a big problem with Immigration Customs and Enforcement. But if you assault ICE, you get consequences. If you storm an ICE facility, there will be consequences. Rob Menendez complained that they had put their hands on a member of Congress. Oh, I must have missed the memo that he was an untouchable. He thinks they should be invulnerable, that he is royalty. And by the way, his dad is literally a traitor. Bob Menendez sold our country out to Egypt for gold bars while on the Senate foreign intelligence committee, selling out American secrets for cash. And did — he also had multiple instances of near misses with the law. This guy was a disgusting person.

...

KIRK: Throw the book at them. Kash and Pam, you got all the details you need — charge these members of Congress. The facts are there. They stormed the facility. They assaulted our ICE officers. They think they are above the law. They tried to put President Trump in jail for 700 years for something he did not do. They are begging you to indict them and do it. Don't make a big show of it. Indite them. Charge them. The only way that we end the lawfare chapter in this country is reciprocity. They came after us, they assaulted ICE officers, and we will go after them.

  1. ### Fox’s comically pathetic spin for a foreign government gifting Trump a $400 million plane

05/12/25

  1. ### Steve Bannon: “Certain members of Congress should be arrested this afternoon for their activities on this situation up in Newark”

:{:{05/12/25}:

May 12, 2025, edition of Real America's Voice's War Room

STEVE BANNON (HOST): This hurtling towards a constitutional crisis, which we are hurtling towards, it must be resolved by the end of June. When the Supreme Court leaves for the summer, they're not back until October. This cannot fester over the summer. This issue, particularly about the deportations.

Something else, I believe certain members of Congress should be arrested this afternoon for their activities on this situation up in Newark. The mayor was already arrested.

I think Stephen Miller, as we started here on the show with Rogan O'Handley, DC Draino, to talk about the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus like President Lincoln did during the Civil War, that this is something that has to be on the table.

I believe that this is going to be even a bigger part of the controversy. I think it's gonna become part of the conversation. I know Stephen Miller and the crack team over there, he's deputy White House counsel — chief of staff for policy, I think Stephen and his team are all over this. Remember Stephen ran America First Law, which is outstanding, did so much of the great work.

This is the convergence of the crises, right? You have the constitutional crisis on the mass deportations and really President Trump's power under Article 2. The judge in San Francisco on Friday said he doesn't have the ability to either cut costs of personnel at 21 separate federal agencies, so the whole Article 2 powers of the president now being challenged by, let's face it, radical Marxist — neo-Marxist, a judicial supremacists in the federal judiciary, it's got to be taken care of.

They asked me at the Financial Times situation on Saturday night, what happens to the Supreme Court's rules? I said, hey, we're going to see at the time. It's that open a question.

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rww

05/06/2025

by

Kyle Mantyla

The odds that President Donald Trump’s controversial nominee to serve as US attorney for Washington, DC, reaches confirmation are rapidly diminishing as he faces public pushback from a key Republican on Capitol Hill.

President Donald Trump ordered the Department of Justice to “take all necessary action” to help free former Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters, who is serving a nine-year sentence in Colorado for breaching election equipment security in a bid to uncover voter fraud.

On Monday, Daily Wire contributor Matt Walsh used his show to defend Shiloh Hendrix, a racist woman accused of calling a Black child the N-word. After lauding the people who contributed to her online fundraiser, Walsh complained that it’s not socially acceptable for white people to say the N-word.

As the College of Cardinals prepare to vote on a new pope this week, conservative U.S. Catholics are trying to woo them with expensive meals and donations if “the right pope” is selected.

This general embrace of the culture war stands in stark contrast to the administration’s low-key triangulation on abortion. That mutedness was a feature of the 2024 campaign and has, somewhat surprisingly, continued into the early months of Trump’s second term.

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AN 525

TILLIS ~ ED MARTIN

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05/05/2025 rww

by

Kyle Mantyla

The president complained that due process rights are interfering with his mass deportations.

President Donald Trump attempted to take credit for parts of the economy which he considers “good,” while blaming former President Joe Biden for other parts he considers “bad.”

President Donald Trump offered a message of support to the Jan. 6 insurrectionists when he met with a former Proud Boys militant in Mar-a-Lago over the weekend.

State Superintendent Ryan Walters bypassed oversight to push Christian Nationalism and right-wing conspiracies into public classrooms.

In this segment, I examine the notion that there was something exceptionally Christian about America's founding era. Last week, I fact-checked Charlie Kirk's viral video defense of the belief that America was founded as a Christian nation in the legal sense. Most of what Kirk had to say was irrelevant or incorrect.

The 9/11 truther denounced Trump’s nominee for U.S. surgeon general and claimed the COVID-19 vaccine is “killing millions of people.”

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WSJ pundits demolish right-wing talking points defending Hegseth: “It all comes back again to this basic point that something's wrong at the top levels”}:

04/24/25

fox stars pass on defending Hegseth amid Pentagon “chaos”

Written by Matt Gertz

:{:{Published 04/25/25}:

Fox News’ biggest stars have stopped defending Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth amid the weeklong firestorm over their former colleague’s dysfunctional management of the Pentagon and his potentially illegal handling of classified information.

Three months after Vice President JD Vance broke a 50-50 Senate tie to install the historically underqualified Hegseth at the Pentagon, journalists routinely describe a department in “chaos.” Five top Hegseth aides have left the department since last Friday amid reports of “vicious rivalries,” and a “leadership vacuum.” Reporters further revealed that Hegseth had shared details about U.S. strikes in Yemen in a second unsecured Signal chat, potentially endangering U.S. service members, and had the app installed on his Pentagon computer.

Hegseth responded to his growing list of scandals with a combative Tuesday appearance on Fox & Friends, whose hosts defended his conduct.

But other Fox hosts have been silent, even after rallying to support Hegseth when his nomination came under fire and again following the first revelation of his use of Signal to share attack plans.

Fox’s evening lineup of The Ingraham Angle, Jesse Watters Primetime, Hannity, and Gutfeld!have ignored Hegseth’s struggles this week (a passing remark from guest Jimmy Failla to host Laura Ingraham was the only mention of the story on any of those shows).The Five, the Fox panel show which features Jesse Watters, Greg Gutfeld, Jeanine Pirro, and Dana Perino, also has not covered the subject.

Even Will Cain, who spent years sharing the couch with Hegseth as co-hosts of Fox & Friends’ weekend edition, hasn’t mentioned his former colleague’s name on his afternoon show this week. (He did not comment on Fox correspondent Kevin Corke’s report about the Signal story during Monday’s program.)

As Fox’s stars take a pass, full-throated defenses of Hegseth’s leadership are coming from the likes of MAGA stalwarts like Charlie Kirk, Benny Johnson, and Laura Loomer, while their corporate cousins at The Wall Street Journal editorial board savage his handling of the Pentagon.

Two explanations seem plausible for why Fox’s biggest stars have gone silent as their former colleague comes under fire:

Either way, this disaster was the predictable result of President Donald Trump putting a former Fox weekend host with little relevant experience in charge of the Pentagon. The secretary of defense oversees a massive budget and bureaucracy and has the authority under certain circumstances to launch nuclear weapons and end human civilization. The risks of handing the position over to someone because of their takes on TV are almost incalculably high.

Hegseth is currently struggling to manage the Pentagon when its biggest problem is a costly, ineffective, and apparently unending bombing campaign in Yemen. How will he respond if India and Pakistan start trading fire?

  1. ### Fox stars pass on defending Hegseth amid Pentagon “chaos”

04/25/25

//

  1. ### Trump used Fox to vet his defense secretary. It isn’t going well — but now the network is fighting back.

:{:{12/04/24}:

  1. ### Fox propagandists scramble to explain former colleagues texting war plans to a reporter

:{:{03/25/25}:

  1. ### The Pete Hegseth debacle was inevitable

04/23/2

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mma

Trump proposed sending US citizens to a foreign prison. Even his sycophantic supporter Charlie Kirk opposes the idea. 04/23/25

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rww

04/04/2025

by

Kyle Mantyla

Charlie Kirk says that with Trump back in office, he no longer has to fear being hauled out of bed by the FBI in the middle of the night: "For 4 years, we lived under a Soviet-style sword of Damocles that was kind of hanging over us, that could drop at any time."

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MMA March 21, 2025, edition of The Charlie Kirk Show, streamed on Rumble

CHARLIE KIRK (HOST): I think — and let me let me interrupt you because we're running out of time here, and that's a great question. I live in an amazing medical freedom state here in Arizona, so I take this stuff for granted.

I want to try to work with Bobby Kennedy and President Trump to use some sort of federal money to say that you cannot force these extra vaccines on kids, especially those in religious environments. It's a serious issue, and I know producer Andrew's dealing with this right now in the free state of California. And anything beyond the 1980 schedule. And that is with — so I mean, you're talking about a — they're mandating the COVID shot now for six months old. And this is outrageous stuff, and so I think there has to be a role for the federal government. And my other piece of advice, David, we gotta go to a break, is try to work through the courts. There has to be some decision somewhere. It used to be ten vaccines. Now it's 72 shots for our babies. Something's not right, and our kids are sicker than ever.

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Charlie Kirk: “What you see in the markets could be best described as a little bit of expulsion”](https://www.mediamatters.org/charlie-kirk/charlie-kirk-what-you-see-markets-could-be-best-described-little-bit-expulsion)

03/13/25

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this is foray into mano? // bernie in red state town hall

Charlie Kirk has a history of violent and bigoted rhetoric. He was the first guest on California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s podcast.

Special ProgramsLGBTQ

Written by Vesper Henry

Research contributions from Alyssa Tirrell

Published 03/10/25 mma

California Gov. Gavin Newsom has launched a self-titled podcast billed as “real talk about what impacts listeners most” with “no spin” and “no script.” His first guest was one of right-wing media’s most incendiary talking heads – Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk. Kirk, who has attacked Newsom and his policies on his own show several times, has a history of espousing violent and bigoted rhetoric.

:

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Right-wing media cheer Trump's anti-Christian bias task force after years of laying the groundwork

Right-wing commentators have spent years claiming that the Biden administration was “waging spiritual warfare against Christianity” and that “the left wants to drive Christians out of the public square”

Written by Payton Armstrong

Published 02/27/25 mma

A task force created by President Donald Trump to eradicate alleged “anti-Christian bias” is drawing praise from right-wing media figures — some of whom have spent years baselessly claiming that Christians are a persecuted group in the United States, even though experts say there’s no such widespread bias.

Right-wing commentators celebrated Trump’s task force as “a cultural resurgency” and declared that “this is the counter-revolution against their color revolution that occurred in the summer of 2020.”

In one instance, Christian nationalist media figure Lance Wallnau joined Steve Bannon’s podcast to praise the task force as the first step in the “recapturing of institutions,” naming education, media, business, and government among the institutions he wants to infuse with “the ideas of Western civilization, which is the ideas of Christian civilization.” This appears to be a reference to the Seven Mountain Mandate popularized by Wallnau, which instructs Christians to impose fundamentalist values on American society by conquering the “seven mountains” of cultural influence in American life: government, education, media, religion, family, business, and entertainment.

Experts have argued “there is no widespread anti-Christian bias in our society" and that Trump’s anti-Christian bias task force is actually “enshrining Christian privilege in our society.”

Trump issued an executive order on “eradicating anti-Christian bias,” but experts say “there is no widespread anti-Christian bias in our society”

The Associated Press reported that “critics said Trump is claiming to see persecution in distorted case descriptions, a calendar coincidence and other situations that, while raising concerns, don’t add up to a pattern.”As noted by the Associated Press, “Christianity is by far the largest faith in America, and Christian conservatives have a strong grip on the levers of government.” The Associated Press, [2/13/25]|}:

* When Transgender Day of Visibility coincided with Easter in 2024, right-wing media figures — especially on Fox News and Newsmax — claimed that the Biden administration was attacking Christians.Right-wing media used the day to warn Christians that they were under attack after Biden’s statements recognizing Transgender Day of Visibility, with Fox’s Jesse Watters arguing that Biden is “waging spiritual warfare against Christianity.” Between Fox and Newsmax, the networks combined aired more than 4 hours of coverage and nearly 80 segments, slamming Biden for his “demonic” remarks which they said amounted to an “attack on Christian faith.” Media Matters, [4/2/24, 4/2/24]

Carlson again falsely claimed that Vaughn was facing felony charges “from the Biden administration for praying at an abortion clinic and daring to sing hymns,” adding that “from the perspective of the people who run the country there’s really just one enemy, and that’s faithful Christians.”During a Tucker Carlson Uncensored clip posted on X, Carlson said: “If you’re interested in who they really hate, well, look at what's happening. So Christian churches across the country have been burning and no one in the government is doing anything about it. Look at how Christian churches were treated during Covid … we talked the other day to a guy who is facing 11 years in prison, federal felony charges from the Biden administration, for praying at an abortion clinic and daring to sing hymns. So if you are a faithful Christian — not a fake Christian, David French Christian, but an actual Christian, of the kind this country has always had, of the kind this country was created to harbor actually — you are seen as an enemy by the people who run it.” Twitter/X, [4/18/24]|}:

Fox host Laura Ingraham repeatedly lamented the supposed anti-Christian bias of the Biden administration, including in an interview with Vaughn where she suggested that “singing hymns and peacefully expressing your traditional Christian beliefs can get you thrown behind bars.” During the interview, Ingraham’s show displayed a chyron that read: “Liberals fighting to wipe out Christian values.” FoxNews.com, [1/31/24]|}:

Following a deadly shooting at a Christian private school in Nashville, Tennessee, Ingraham claimed the Biden White House and “the left” had been “ginning up anti-Christian sentiment” by allegedly teaching kids “to treat Christians as haters and mortal threats to their existence.”Ingraham told her audience: “Isn’t it also the case that the left in America — and even this White House — is ginning up, without saying the words necessarily, but ginning up anti-Christian sentiment by referring to trans activists as heroes and their bravery for standing up against the intolerant class, the haters. So these kids are learning to treat Christians as haters and mortal threats to their existence.” Fox News, *The Ingraham Angle*, [4/11/23; Media Matters, 4/12/23]|}:

Sean Davis, CEO of The Federalist, argued that by charging anti-abortion protesters under the FACE ACT, “the Biden regime clearly desires to make being a pro-life Christian a crime.” As documented by Media Matters, anti-abortion figures baselessly accused the Biden Department of Justice of weaponizing the FACE Act against protestors convicted of harassment at abortion clinics. Twitter/X, [6/21/24; Media Matters, 6/11/24]|}:

While hosting Jack Phillips — a Colorado baker who had been sued for refusing to make a trans-themed cake — Fox’s Laura Ingraham declared that “the left wants to drive Christians out of the public square.”Ingraham added: “You don't even have a right to have a small business if you're a Christian today. You certainly don't have any conscience right, you have no religious rights, you have no First Amendment rights, if you clash with what they believe to be, you know, the supremely protected among us.” Fox News, *The Ingraham Angle*, [1/30/23; Associated Press, 10/8/24]|}:

Turning Point USA’s Charlie Kirk has relentlessly claimed that Christian values in the U.S. are under attack, claiming that they could be thrown in prison.At a 2023 TPUSA pastor’s summit, Kirk warned pastors that “if we continue theological disputes and don't focus on liberty, then we're going to be having those theological disputes from prison.” Ahead of the 2024 election, Kirk claimed that pro-choice Democrats would “create a secret police that will audit, intimidate, raid every single” pregnancy center in the U.S., saying that when that happens, “we'll be like, wow, I really wish that we Christians would have bought ourselves a little more time so that our nonprofits, our leaders, wouldn't go to federal prison.” NPR, [10/24/24; Media Matters, 4/27/23; Real America’s Voice, The Charlie Kirk Show, 8/16/24]|}:

Tucker Carlson suggested that the “trans movement is targeting Christians,” citing the Covenant school shooting.Carlson claimed that “the trans movement is the mirror image of Christianity and therefore its natural enemy,” declaring that “Christianity and transgender orthodoxy” are on a “collision course” and claiming that “one side is likely to draw blood before the other side.” Rolling Stone, [3/28/23]|}:

On Fox News, Oklahoma state superintendent Ryan Walters lamented that a Harris/Walz administration would “trans the kids“ and “push all faith out of the public square,” as now-White House faith director Paula White-Cain bragged that Trump was “promising in his second term to do even more for Christians as he shares the same values.”White-Cain called for national “revival” and “turning our hearts back to God” and Walters declared that a Harris/Walz administration would be the “most anti-Christian administration in American history.” FoxNews.com, [8/10/24; Religion News Service, 2/21/25]|}:

On Sebastian Gorka’s Salem Media podcast, Breitbart’s Thomas Williams said that the U.S. is a “post-Christian society, but in many ways an anti-Christian society.”Gorka — who is now the counterterrorism chief in Trump’s administration — replied, “right,” and Williams added, “We are a Judeo-Christian nation by its foundation, and in the value system that understands what the family is, what society is.” Salem Media, *America First with Sebastian Gorka*, [6/14/23; CBS News, 1/7/25]|}:

* Fox host Emily Compagno labeled the U.S. an “anti-Christian, anti-Judeo-Christian society.”Compagno cited backlash to a graduation speech from Kansas City Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker that reportedly attacked the LGBTQ community and told “women to forget about a career and serve their man instead.” Fox News, *Gutfeld!*, [6/11/24; OutSports, 5/13/24]

Former Trump DOJ official Jeff Clark told Bannon that a second Trump administration needed a “beefed up” religious liberty task force to fight anti-Christian sentiment in the U.S., citing a story he heard about a “school district that was prohibiting bus drivers even from wearing Christmas regalia.” Responding to a campaign speech where Trump pledged to create an anti-Christian bias task force if elected, Clark said: “That's wonderful to announce, especially in an increasingly anti-Christian world. I mean, I'd seen a story about a school district that was prohibiting bus drivers even from wearing Christmas regalia to entertain the students a little bit. I mean things have gone into bonkers land. And look, in the first Trump term, we did have a religious liberty task force. And I think we need an even more beefed up one.” Real America’s Voice, *War Room*, [12/20/23; Fox News, 12/19/23]|}:

* Charlie Kirk applauded the task force’s creation, declaring that “this is the counter-revolution against their color revolution that occurred in the summer of 2020.” He said, “We are proudly defending our heritage as inheriting the values of the Bible,” adding, “This is a cultural resurgency. No longer should you be afraid to share your faith. No longer should you be afraid to share your political values. This is the counter-revolution against their color revolution that occurred in the summer of 2020, and it is ascendant.” Real America’s Voice, *The Charlie Kirk Show*, [2/6/25]

Steve Bannon celebrated the announcement and hosted media figure Lance Wallnau — a “prophet” and self-described Christian nationalist — with the two discussing right-wing Christians’ “recapturing of institutions” including “education, of media, of business, of government.”Bannon and Wallnau discussed how the task force can be used “to seize the institutions of the federal government” with “the ideas of Western civilization, which is the ideas of Christian civilization.” Wallnau said that “there are three arteries that make this happen: legislation, litigation, and the shaping of public opinion,” adding, “because people like you, as long as we can shape the public opinion, the secret sauce is you've got to work with the awakening that's happening and move with it in such a way that you litigate and you legislate, but never get too far ahead of public persuasion.” Real America’s Voice, *War Room*, [2/7/25; Media Matters; 9/27/24; Rolling Stone, 9/29/22]|}:

Video

Citation

From the February 7, 2025, edition of Real America's Voice's War Room

Fox host Jeanine Pirro praised the task force’s creation and attacked the FBI and the Biden administration for supposedly targeting Catholics, a claim that was found to be baseless after an internal investigation.Pirro noted that Trump “went to two prayer breakfasts this morning and he talked about eradicating anti-Christian bias,” and complained about “when the FBI director Christopher Wray came out and really told us no one at the FBI was targeting Christians and Senator Hawley came out and they found that leaked memo that the FBI was investigating Catholics and priests were gone to so they could then inform on parishioners who were considered domestic terrorists.” The New York Times reported that “Republicans claimed the bureau’s memo was evidence of an anti-conservative strain among F.B.I. ranks, but an internal investigation failed to uncover any ‘malicious intent.’” Fox News, *The Five*, [2/6/25; New York Times, 4/18/24]|}:

//

  1. ### Trump and his MAGA allies increasingly embrace extreme prophetic media

05/30/24

  1. ### Trump scheduled to address right-wing media “prophets” and pastors who claim he’s “anointed to be King”

10/18/24

  1. ### Oklahoma state superintendent says pastor and right-wing commentator suggested his new Bible mandate in public schools

07/08/24

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02/10/2025 RWW

by

Kyle Mantyla

There’s little about the White House’s hiring practices that appear normal. For example, asking applicants, "Was Jan. 6 an inside job?” is ludicrous.

Musk and Trump say they promote free speech. They seem to only defend racist speech.

Collecting donors, voters, TikTok viewers and high-powered friends on his way into Trump’s inner circle.

Recently, Montana state Rep. Lukas Schubert took to X to warn that “South Africa stands as a reminder of what’s to come in America” if Democrats “implement their explicit anti-white discrimination policies.” But Schubert has spread other far-right, racist talking points on X, including the claim that diversity as a “code word” for “anti-white.”

Kanye West made a Super Bowl ad on his phone to promote a website he’s currently using to sell t-shirts with swastikas on them.

Usually, when Republicans want to push Christian Nationalist legislation, it’s through bills promoting the Ten Commandments in schools under the guise of “history and tradition” or attacking LGBTQ people using the rationale that they violate God’s preferences as expressed in the Bible. But sometimes they just take the hoods off and dispense with even trying to come up with a secular-sounding justification for their religious agenda.

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REF

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A portrait of Charlie Kirk.

NO LNX

How Charlie Kirk Became the Youth Whisperer of the American Right

Collecting donors, voters, TikTok viewers and high-powered friends on his way into Trump’s inner circle.

By Robert Draper

Robert Draper covers politics for The Times. For this article, he interviewed Charlie Kirk four times and attended a donor meeting and a ball celebrating Donald Trump’s inauguration.

Feb. 10, 2025

About an hour before Donald J. Trump took the oath of office, Charlie Kirk was sitting in the Capitol Rotunda when he glanced down at his iPhone. What the 31-year-old conservative activist and media personality saw caused him to swallow laughter. A reporter for The Daily Beast had posted on X: “‘Charlie Kirk has better seats than every member of Congress. Tells you how little Trump thinks of Congress,’ one GOP lawmaker tells me.” Twenty minutes later, Kirk saw that a Republican senator from Indiana, Jim Banks, had posted a rebuttal of sorts: “Charlie Kirk has done more than most members of congress combined to get us to this point today.”

Kirk found himself wondering how everyone would have reacted had he taken the much-closer seat he was originally offered. Instead, because the event had been moved inside, he and his wife were seated a couple of dozen rows from the stage. Kirk lives in Scottsdale, Ariz., but brought his wife and two young children with him to stay at the sleek Salamander hotel in Washington for 10 days in January as the Trump administration took power, just as he had uprooted his family three days after the election and installed them for a two-month stay in a condo in Palm Beach, Fla., near Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate.

Like so many others in the MAGA ecosystem, Kirk is acutely attuned to wherever the Trump-related action is. The difference is that Kirk always seems to find his way to the center of the action whenever he shows up to it. During Trump’s first presidency, Kirk told me, he visited the White House “a hundred-plus” times. And within days of Trump’s victory in November, Kirk had become one of an intimate group of advisers vetting prospective White House appointees to determine whether they had shown unflagging loyalty to Trump. On more than one occasion, according to two sources with knowledge of the events, Kirk was in the room with the president-elect to discuss potential cabinet nominees.

Kirk’s proximity to Trump is especially notable when you consider that he has never held office, worked in the White House or held a campaign staff position. He draws his value elsewhere. Kirk is the head of Turning Point USA, the nation’s pre-eminent conservative youth organization, which he started when he was 18. It has chapters at more than 850 colleges that register students to vote, bring conservative speakers to campus and organize a nationwide network of right-wing student-government leaders. Turning Point’s half dozen or so annual events, featuring the biggest names on the right from Trump on down, are slick productions that draw enormous crowds.

But perhaps most important is that Kirk’s dominant voice, via his podcast and his ubiquity on social media, has earned him credibility among conservatives as a die-hard Trump devotee. He has become a close friend of the president’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., with whom Kirk traveled to Greenland on Jan. 7 — wearing a “Charlie”-embroidered flight jacket for the occasion — to publicize Trump’s proclaimed intent to acquire the Arctic territory. And Kirk was an early champion of JD Vance as Trump was deciding whether the senator would be his running mate.

ImageCharlie Kirk at a desk with his name on it.

Charlie Kirk temporarily moved his podcast studio to Palm Beach, Fla., to be close to Donald Trump’s transition team.Credit...Dina Litovsky for The New York Times

Kirk was among a select group at Trump’s private party two days before the inauguration at the Trump National Golf Club in Virginia. The night before Trump was sworn in, Turning Point hosted a black-tie gala at which some 1,500 attendees paid from $5,000 to $15,000 (with some V.I.P.s paying more) to be in the company of Trump luminaries including Vance; Trump’s nominee for director of the F.B.I., Kash Patel; and Don Jr., who described Kirk onstage as “one of the true rock stars of this movement.” The following evening, an S.U.V. ferried Kirk from one inaugural ball to the next. Two days later, he was visiting the 47th president in the White House — and again the day after that.

During the Trump years, Kirk’s two nonprofit entities, Turning Point USA and the political-action organization Turning Point Action, have grown from a total revenue of $4.3 million in 2016 to $92.4 million in 2023, a vast majority of it from donations. Through his podcast, his many speaking appearances and the books he has written, such as the 2020 best seller “The MAGA Doctrine,” Kirk has become a millionaire.

Trump, in turn, has come to view Kirk as one of his closest allies. Kirk visited Mar-a-Lago in early February 2021, during the ex-president’s nadir, and was photographed smiling alongside him. Four years later, at the president-elect’s golf-club party, Trump singled out Kirk for praise. “Charlie Kirk, what he’s done with the young people,” he said in a video I obtained. He went on to boast about his campaign’s sharp uptick among such voters. “Actually, other than Hispanic, that was probably our biggest swing. So, Charlie, I appreciate what you did.”

Image

:{:{Kirk visited Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago in a display of loyalty in February 2021, when support for the former president in the Republican Party was sagging:}:

I asked a major donor to both Trump and Turning Point, Doug Deason, the president of a family investment management firm, how Kirk had achieved such prominence at so young an age. “People see him,” Deason replied, “and they just want to help, because he has the best of intentions and the abilities that none of us have seen in one person.” Deason expressed awe for Kirk’s oratorical prowess, for his “genius-level intelligence,” for his expertise in history and the Bible and for his acute political instincts. “Trump won,” he said. “But would he have won it without Charlie? I don’t know.”

Unmentioned by Deason was one more rare skill: Kirk’s mastery at promoting his indispensability while never appearing crassly boastful in the manner of, say, Trump himself. I saw a vivid illustration of this in December while attending Turning Point’s annual donor meeting, held at the Four Seasons Resort in Palm Beach. Kirk’s two-hour presentation that morning to several hundred moneyed conservatives in the ballroom was more like a Hollywood screenwriter’s movie pitch than the year-end financial summation it happened to be. Spoken without notes and accompanied by splashy videos (many of them juxtaposing Kirk with Trump), his message was unambiguous: Turning Point’s benefactors had gotten more than their money’s worth in the 2024 election cycle and might therefore see their way to one last donation later that evening, when they would all gather at Mar-a-Lago for a Turning Point gala.

Early in his presentation, Kirk gravely informed his donors, “I do not do hyperbole.” Coming from someone who labeled Kamala Harris “Kamala the Communist,” this remark seemed to be a tell, with other hyperbolizing likely to follow. “For the first time in my 12 years of doing this, the bad guys are finally on defense,” Kirk told his listeners, adding, “High school boys are the most conservative that they have been in the last 50 years.” He referred to exit polls showing that compared with 2020, Harris lost from 2 to 24 percentage points of support among voters under 30 in six of seven swing states, enough to steer each state to Trump. “The youth vote won Trump the White House,” Kirk declared flatly.

And who exactly had won the youth vote for Trump? Kirk’s statements at the presentation — “We registered tens of thousands of new voters and delivered the youth vote in record numbers” — encouraged only one plausible explanation. Kirk also recited a flurry of mostly inferential data to suggest that Turning Point Action was crucial to flipping Arizona and played a major role in Trump’s eight-point gain in support among Black men.

After he finished, an elderly man near the back of the room stood up and said: “You are the most extraordinary young person I have ever met. And what you’ve accomplished — you helped save us.”

At the front two tables sat several of Turning Point’s megadonors — among them the Houston software entrepreneur Mike Rydin; the Florida philanthropist Rebecca Dunn; and Stacey Feinberg, who inherited a fortune from her father, the sports agent Bob Woolf, who represented the basketball legends Julius Erving and Larry Bird. A couple of weeks after the donor presentation, while touring Turning Point’s five-building campus in Phoenix, I noticed that three of the buildings were named for those three donors.

I also realized I’d seen one of those names recently. It was in a statement from Trump emailed by his transition team. “I am pleased to announce Stacey Feinberg will be our next United States Ambassador to Luxembourg,” it read.

I texted Kirk to ask if he had played a hand in the selection of Feinberg, who was not a major player in Trump’s world but certainly was in Kirk’s. He wouldn’t say. He didn’t have to.

Image

Kirk accompanied his friend Donald Trump Jr. to Greenland in January, as the president-elect was expressing his desire to acquire the Danish territory.Credit...From Charlie Kirk.

Over dinner in Palm Beach in December, Kirk confided the new mission he had assigned to himself: making an example out of some Republican senator who was not reflexively obedient to Trump — perhaps Joni Ernst of Iowa, Mike Rounds of South Dakota or Mike Crapo of Idaho — by backing a primary challenger.

“At least one successful primarying,” he said as he picked at his salmon. (Kirk does not drink, avoids gluten and lactose and carries a bottle of olive oil and his own branded hot sauce with him to impart flavor to otherwise austere meals.) Kirk explained that he was only talking about Republicans in safely red states who, in his view, “have taken advantage of Republican primary voters far too long. It’s an objective fact. They’re not in line with what those voters want. They’re sending money to Ukraine. They’re not strong on immigration. So this is not a veiled threat. I see no good reason not to go after Crapo or Rounds.” As Kirk saw it, “The behavioral and voting patterns of Senate Republicans would change with one successful primary.”

At the time, Trump’s first choice to be attorney general, Matt Gaetz, had already withdrawn his name from consideration when it became evident that he was unlikely to secure enough support from Senate Republicans to be confirmed. Now it was Trump’s nominee for secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, who seemed to be facing opposition from Ernst over his stance against women serving in combat and allegations that he had committed sexual assault.

Kirk had circulated a clip on social media of the Iowa senator, a veteran, offering supportive words to transgender individuals serving in the military, with the ominous warning: “People in Iowa have a well-funded primary challenger ready against her. Her political career is in serious jeopardy.” About six weeks later, Kirk gleefully announced on X, “BREAKING: Iowa Senator Joni Ernst has announced she is officially backing Pete Hegseth for SecDef.”

But Kirk’s goal of MAGA-fying the Senate came with an ulterior motive, which he alluded to during our dinner by bringing up Ronna McDaniel, the former chairwoman of the Republican National Committee, whom Kirk played a key role in ousting. In the wake of the disappointing 2022 midterm elections, Kirk sent an email to every committee member of the R.N.C., asserting that McDaniel’s organization had underperformed while pointedly adding, “In my position, I interact with more large donors than almost anyone in the movement.”

McDaniel then committed a fatal error. She not only defended herself on Fox News Radio but also insinuated that Turning Point had failed in its mission of turning out young voters. Kirk informed his staff that they were at war. His relentless yearlong campaign against McDaniel — from attacks branding her a “loser” to encouraging Republican county chairs to withdraw their support for her — finally paid off last February, when Trump said he wanted McDaniel out; his daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, became co-chair until she stepped down in January. (McDaniel did not respond to a request for comment.)

“We got Ronna, and now we want a senator,” Kirk said with a satisfied smile, all but spelling out what he also wanted: to be feared. ENFORCER

“I started listening to Rush when I was a junior in high school,” Kirk recalled with a nostalgic glint in his eyes, referring to Rush Limbaugh, the godfather of conservative talk radio who died of cancer in 2021. “Listening, I was like, This guy is unbelievable! Because you’re looking for someone in high school to affirm your beliefs. I would never forget: on my lunch break, from like 12:17 to 12:55, I’d listen. Just me. I went all in on Rush.”

Image

:{:{Kirk, an early convert to Tea Party conservatism while still in high school, gave his first speeches in 2011 at Illinois Tea Party rallies.Credit...From Charlie Kir.}:

k}:

The adolescent Charlie Kirk — a lanky high school basketball player in the affluent Chicago suburb Prospect Heights — could not possibly foresee Limbaugh befriending his future self, headlining the young man’s events and, in 2019, sending his organization a check for $1 million. Still, before Kirk had fully developed a worldview of his own, he possessed a gift for stirring the affection of older people, many of them inordinately wealthy.

In 2010, the year Kirk discovered Limbaugh, the reactionary Republican wave calling itself the Tea Party took back the House from the Democrats. Young Charlie, then a high school junior, caught the fever. In 2011, he and a classmate formed Wheeling High School Against Cookie Inflation to protest escalating prices in the school cafeteria. By early 2012, Kirk was smitten with the astringent libertarian worldview of Ron Paul and speaking at local Tea Party rallies. “Some of my best friends are liberals,” he declared at one event, adding: “They’re liberals that voted for Obama and said: ‘You know what? I’m tired of trillion-dollar deficits. I’m going to step up. I’m going to say I was wrong and join your cause.’” That year, he wrote an op-ed for Breitbart lamenting the influence of the New York Times columnist Paul Krugman in Kirk’s A.P. Economics textbook.

The Breitbart screed led to an appearance on Fox News to discuss the national debt, which in turn led to a speaking gig at Benedictine University. Standing in the audience was a 71-year-old local restaurateur and Tea Party activist named Bill Montgomery. After the speech, Montgomery approached Kirk and urged him to spread his message to college campuses rather than attending college himself.

Kirk had been rejected by West Point and then accepted by Baylor University, but he was coming to wonder whether college life was for him. Kirk says his parents were not happy to hear this. His mother was a counselor at a mental-health clinic, and his father was an architect whose firm designed Trump Tower in New York. They did not envision a career in campus politicking for their son. He requested 90 days to prove them wrong.

“He was 18 going on 46,” recalled Joe Walsh, an Illinois Tea Party congressman at the time who was an early political mentor until the two became estranged over Kirk’s embrace of Trump. “And his mission, to go on college campuses and introduce the idea of free markets, was a slam dunk for getting money from old Republican farts.”

Kirk’s father came up with the name Turning Point USA, which Montgomery, the Tea Party activist, then registered in July 2012. (Montgomery remained affiliated with Turning Point until his death in 2020.) The next month, Kirk managed to score an appearance on Neil Cavuto’s Fox News show, broadcast from the Republican National Convention in Tampa, Fla. Kirk used the temporary convention-hall pass given to him by Fox to wander the corridors. In a stairwell, he spotted a man in a cowboy hat and recognized him as the conservative investment manager Foster Friess, whom Kirk had just read about in a Politico article about megadonors. The 18-year-old introduced himself, laughed at Friess’s folksy jokes and explained the mission of Turning Point — to be to young conservatives what the progressive organization MoveOn.org was for the left. A few days later, a $10,000 check from Friess arrived in his parents’ mailbox.

Kirk’s knack for making an indelible first impression served him well a year later, when he spoke at a local event hosted by the Job Creators Alliance, founded by the Home Depot chief executive, Bernard Marcus. In the audience was Allie Hanley, a resident of Palm Beach and the wife of the brick magnate Lee Hanley. She implored the 19-year-old speaker to come to Palm Beach and meet her circle of friends, even offering to pay for his flight and put him up in their guest bedroom. Kirk ended up staying in Palm Beach for several months. Walsh, who served on Turning Point USA’s advisory board, recalled visiting Kirk in Palm Beach during this period, at dinner with several new donors. “They treated him like an adorable puppy,” he said.

Just after the November 2014 midterms, in which the Republicans retook the Senate, Kirk spoke at one of Palm Beach’s most prestigious conservative events, the Restoration Weekend hosted by the nativist David Horowitz Freedom Center in the palatial Breakers hotel complex. Senator Jeff Sessions and his top aide, Stephen Miller — both men two years away from becoming top Trump administration appointees — were among those in attendance. So were several prominent Florida Republican donors, including Rebecca Dunn. Within a month, Turning Point would receive a profusion of six-figure donations from Dunn and others.

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:{:{The night before Trump was sworn in, some 1,500 guests paid a minimum of $5,000 to attend a black-tie gala hosted in Washington by Kirk’s organization.Credit...Dina Litovsky for The New York Times.}:

Kirk was, at 23, the youngest speaker at the Republican National Convention in July 2016. A California donor, Carla Sands, then put him in touch with Doug Deason, the president of a family investment management firm in Dallas with over $1 billion in assets. Just before Kirk was to fly to Dallas, Deason informed him that he had a fund-raising luncheon to attend that same day in Fort Worth and that Kirk could be his plus-one. The honoree at the event was the Republican presidential nominee, Donald Trump.

Kirk had yet to meet Trump. A late convert like many other Republicans, he had initially supported Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin and then Senator Ted Cruz. At lunch, Kirk sat at a table with Trump but did not get a chance to have a conversation with him. The highlight of the day instead turned out to be when Deason introduced him to two other well-heeled Dallasites, Gentry Beach Jr. and Tommy Hicks Jr., both of whom happened to be close friends with another Junior, the nominee’s eldest son. The two men asked Kirk’s thoughts on how the Trump campaign could better attract young voters. Most of Kirk’s suggestions — more campus events, a more aggressive presence on social media — were standard-issue. But he added a novel thought. “The kids need to go out there and advocate,” Kirk said of Trump’s own children. “You’d have this Avengers squad of Trumps everywhere.”

Shortly after the Fort Worth event, Hicks and Beach took Kirk to Trump Tower to meet Don Jr., who told me: “I was pretty reluctant to bring on another so-called campaign expert, especially when I learned how young he was. I said, ‘We don’t need another person who doesn’t know anything — we’ve already got plenty of those.’ But within five minutes of listening to him, I said, ‘Congratulations, you’re on my team.’” Don Jr. confessed that his campaign schedule was slapdash and that he hadn’t given much thought to how to use Twitter. By the end of their meeting, the 22-year-old Kirk decided to take a three-month hiatus from Turning Point to become Don Jr.’s scheduler, social media coordinator and steady provider of diet Red Bulls.

Following Trump’s astonishing victory over Hillary Clinton, Kirk returned to duty as the MAGA movement’s campus organizer. He drew a modest $49,000 salary from Turning Point USA, still stayed in the homes of donors and still wore a shabby wardrobe, until Don Jr., Deason, Deason’s father, Beach and Hicks chipped in to buy Kirk a $10,000 gift certificate at a men’s clothing store in Trump Tower as a Christmas gift. But things were about to change.

In 2017, he experienced the frisson of a sitting president’s retweeting his 140-character outbursts. He eagerly signed on to every available Fox News slot, cognizant of the channel’s faithful viewer in the White House. At the end of the year, Kirk attended Don Jr.’s birthday party at Mar-a-Lago. There, for the first time, he felt the stare of the president, then saw his hand motion for Kirk to come sit beside him. The two spoke for 40 minutes. At the end of their conversation, the president’s son-in-law and top adviser, Jared Kushner, walked up to their table.

After Trump made the introduction, Kushner and Kirk discussed how the administration had been getting hammered by right-wing media ever since the former Breitbart publisher Steve Bannon was pushed out of his job as White House senior adviser. Kirk assured Kushner that he was well acquainted with the journalists in question and could help broker peace. Kushner told me recently that Kirk would prove himself useful in many ways. “The thing about Charlie is that he always delivers,” he said. “When I first met him, he started out with this ambitious goal of trying to explain Trumpism to the younger generation — which, back then, popular culture and the media were against. But he was willing to take that on. And the ideas he always came to us with were good ones. He was professional, easy to deal with. Nothing ever leaked to the press. He just got stuff done.”

After that evening at Mar-a-Lago, Kirk had no difficulty gaining access to the Oval Office, and his calls to Trump were regularly patched in by the White House switchboard operator. Now and again, the president called him on his cellphone. “He came to gain the trust through consistency, loyalty, intelligent commentary and building a spectacular network,” Don Jr. told me. “He earned that seat at the table.”

Still, amid the Darwinian maneuvering in the Trump orbit, Kirk’s growing influence seemed to escape notice. “I was known as the youth guy,” he told me with evident amusement. “I was seen as harmless. So no one attacked me.”

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Kirk and his wife, Erika (right), at Turning Point’s preinaugural ball.Credit...Dina Litovsky for The New York Times

By this time, Turning Point was well on its way to muscling aside the pre-existing conservative youth groups, Young America’s Foundation (started by William F. Buckley Jr. in 1960) and Young Americans for Liberty (founded by Students for Ron Paul in 2008). The memberships of the older organizations were once proudly curated — bow-tied intellectuals for Y.A.F., libertarians for Y.A.L. — but they were seeking relevancy in the new zeitgeist of the right. Y.A.F. sponsored provocative speeches on campuses by conservative personalities like Ann Coulter and Ben Shapiro, while a member of a Y.A.L. chapter at Iowa State University invited the white supremacist Nick Fuentes to speak on campus in 2018. Kirk was one step ahead of them: Turning Point had become an advocacy arm for Trump.

Kirk’s competition did not recede quietly. In 2017, the Y.A.L. chairman, Jeff Frazee, circulated an email in which he accused Turning Point of stealing a Y.A.L. chapter’s email list. The following year, Y.A.F.’s general counsel, Kimberly Begg, wrote a 12-page memo detailing instances where Turning Point had exaggerated its reach on college campuses. (Kirk denied these claims. Frazee did not respond to an email seeking comment. Begg, in an email, would not address her earlier assertions but instead praised “the great work of TPUSA.”)

Turning Point, meanwhile, was playing an entirely different game on college campuses. While other conservative youth groups had contented themselves with offering up celebrity speakers, Kirk’s group was training and even funding student-government candidates, as a kind of PAC for youngsters. While its predecessors merely scolded liberalism in academia, Turning Point established Professor Watchlist, a project to expose “radical” academics, including those who were critical of Turning Point. And where Y.A.L. and Y.A.F. might host happy hours, Turning Point threw high-production national gatherings raucous enough to draw a police response.

Kirk had arrived at a time when #MeToo and #BlackLivesMatter were met with Trump’s own denial of sexual assault and porn-star-payoff allegations and his revanchist defense of Confederate statues. A post-truth era of performative hyperbole was unfolding. At the end of 2017, with the help of Deason and a few other donors, Kirk hired Turning Point’s first breakout star, Candace Owens, a controversial Black conservative who had gained notoriety for her YouTube comments playing down the white-supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Va., that year. (Owens left Turning Point in 2019, amid an uproar over her comments seeming to defend Hitler, for a more lucrative deal with Ben Shapiro’s Daily Wire. She left The Daily Wire last year following a string of antisemitic comments. Both Owens and Shapiro continue to be featured speakers at Turning Point events; The Daily Wire is distributing a documentary produced by Turning Point USA called “Identity Crisis,” about what it refers to as gender ideology.)

But Kirk was fast becoming a celebrity in his own right — an heir to Limbaugh, his staccato monologues casting liberal views as evil and savaging sacred icons like the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (“a bad guy”) and the Civil Rights Act (“a mistake”). “I think Charlie made his transition when he became more of a media figure rather than just a college-campus guy,” said the Republican political consultant and Trump adviser Alex Bruesewitz, who first came to know Kirk in 2014. “He developed a connection with his audience that very few people in the media have. It’s given him tremendous power.”

“When Foster Friess first started going on about this kid Charlie Kirk who hadn’t gone to college and was so incredibly brilliant, I remember thinking, Well, Foster got scammed by some smart-talking kid,” Tucker Carlson told me during a recent phone conversation. “The reason I’m such a fan of Charlie’s is that I was proven wrong. It’s almost a paradox how young people tend to be more ossified than older people in their thinking, less willing to be disabused of their illusions. But I’ve seen Charlie’s willingness to reassess his assumptions, and that’s, like, amazing to me.”

Carlson was mainly referring to Kirk’s harsh reappraisal of the Iraq war and the national-security state. But the same tendency applies to Kirk’s assessment of religion’s role in American politics. For years, he was reticent on the subject. That changed, he told me, during the pandemic lockdowns — “the stupidest thing ever,” in his view. He was equally appalled by the refusal by most church leaders to lead the charge against lockdowns. “That really got me asking the question: What is the church? What is its role? And it brought me on a journey, a very serious period of studying our first principles, our beliefs.”

Kirk spent the lockdowns and the Black Lives Matter demonstrations in Phoenix as a guest of the parents of his future wife, Erika Frantzve, a former Miss Arizona who now hosts a podcast and has a line of faith-themed streetwear. “I did a lot of reading on postmodernism,” he recalled. “And I started realizing that what was happening was a slow-motion cultural revolution fulfilling the hopes and ambitions of Angela Davis, Jacques Derrida and Michel Foucault. This was their contention, that in order to usher in something new, this culture must be incinerated. That, I think, is a very objective reading of it. What they were saying was actually the same thing a religious person would say, that everyone lives by some agreed-upon code of conduct. The question is: What code? And by what inheritance do we acknowledge what is good and evil, what is right and wrong?”

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At the Turning Point ball, Donald Trump Jr. described Kirk as “one of the true rock stars of this movement.”Credit...Dina Litovsky for The New York Times.

The preferred code, Kirk decided, was the canon of Western values that — as he learned from reading the British historian Tom Holland — had their roots in Christianity. Kirk told me he then turned to the writings of Dr. Larry P. Arnn, the president of Hillsdale College, where Kirk had been taking online courses. From Arnn’s 2012 book, “The Founders’ Key,” Kirk concluded “that Western Christian morality gave us these two documents, the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.” While expressing great admiration for Kirk as “a serious-minded person” who “built a great thing,” Arnn told me that this was a slight misrepresentation of his view. Thomas Jefferson, he pointed out, “was probably not an orthodox Christian” and was more influenced in his writing by the laws of nature than by the notion of a Christian God.

A third intellectual, the conservative author Christopher Caldwell, supplied Kirk’s final eye-opener. “I take the Caldwellian view, from his book ‘The Age of Entitlement,’” Kirk told me, “that we went through a new founding in the ’60s and that the Civil Rights Act has actually superseded the U.S. Constitution as its reference point. In fact, I bet if you polled Americans, most of them would have more reverence for the Civil Rights Act than the Constitution. I could be wrong,” he added, “but I think I’m right.”

He went on. “Covid for me was a lot of thinking and reading time, while the whole civilization was collapsing. And I saw the wokies appealing to a moral order that they said was true and good. And I said, Well, we think ours is.”

Kirk emerged from the lockdowns a Christian nationalist culture warrior determined to fuse his new ideology with MAGA populism. In 2021, he founded TPUSA Faith, whose stated mission was “empowering Christians to put their faith into action,” in part by encouraging pastors “to join in civic, social and cultural discussions.”

That February, he became one of the first conservative leaders to see the political potential in JD Vance. The extent of Kirk’s role in Vance’s ascent, which has not been previously reported, was especially significant because of the Ohio Senate candidate’s earlier view of Trump as an “idiot” and an American version of Hitler. Kirk texted Don Jr.’s political adviser, Andy Surabian, “Andy, I’m telling you, he’s had a conversion, he’s one of us.”

Kirk lent his imprimatur by hosting Vance on his podcast, where Vance suggested that people without children should pay higher taxes than parents. (“I totally agree,” Kirk replied.) That September, Kirk’s political arm, Turning Point Action, officially endorsed Vance. Surabian, meanwhile, took Kirk’s recommendation to Don Jr., who was a fan of Vance’s best-selling memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy.” Don Jr. befriended Vance, while Surabian became a senior campaign adviser. Two weeks before the Ohio primary in April 2022, Trump himself endorsed Vance, ensuring his victory.

“There were few louder voices constantly advocating for JD down in Mar-a-Lago than Charlie,” Surabian said. “His support was particularly important because he’s very much viewed by Team Trump as an avatar for where the MAGA base is.”

Two years later, Kirk was again in Trump’s ear talking up Vance — this time as his optimal running mate. As Kirk recalled to me: “I saw JD as someone who would crush it with high-propensity suburban Republicans. People in Scottsdale, Ariz., or Highland Park in Dallas, or Buckhead in Atlanta. They read The Journal. They hate the left. They don’t like Trump, but they like his policies. We’re talking about a couple hundred thousand voters that could determine the future of the election.”

Kirk pitched the 39-year-old Ohio senator to Trump as a fresh-faced MAGA torchbearer who would serve as “a convert on the ticket,” uniquely positioned to sway Trump skeptics since Vance had been one himself. “My father’s always going to come to his conclusions,” Don Jr. said, “but Charlie and Tucker and I and a few others went all in for JD.”

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Among the many right-wing media personalities at the Turning Point ball was Ben Shapiro, a frequent speaker at Kirk’s events. Shapiro’s company, The Daily Wire, is distributing a documentary produced by Turning Point USA.Credit...Dina Litovsky for The New York Times

Trump’s decision to select Vance is one for which Kirk has been careful not to claim credit. To maximize his influence on the 2024 election, Kirk sought territory all his own. For some time, his digital team had been advising him to make full use of TikTok, the social platform with ties to the Chinese government and known for its punchy video snippets. Kirk was hesitant. A TikTok account run by Turning Point staff members had been taken down more than once for violating community standards, and he refused to engage in self-censorship. But in early 2024, as legislators on both sides of the aisle contemplated a ban on TikTok, Kirk sensed that he had leverage.

Last March, he posted on X: “TikTok says it’s not a Chinese propaganda arm and shouldn’t be banned by the U.S. Congress. Well, let’s put it to a test. I am going to make another attempt at starting an official Charlie Kirk TikTok account. We’ve been kicked off the platform several times even while maintaining and growing successful channels across all other social media. If the account thrives without garbage bans, strikes, and throttling I will consider changing my position on the platform.”

What happened next has not been previously reported. Within days of posting his offer, Kirk received a call from Tony Sayegh, a former Trump administration Treasury official who was now lobbying for a group that represented the major TikTok investor ByteDance. “We want to prove to you that we’re for free speech,” Sayegh recalled telling him. After their conversation, Kirk’s digital team began to meet over Zoom with TikTok officials, who described how to avoid A.I.-generated content moderation.

Kirk’s TikTok account, @RealCharlieKirk, went up in April. Almost immediately, he realized that the engagement numbers eclipsed those on Instagram. Kirk began to record videos on campuses for a series titled “You’ve Been Brainwashed,” flying from one to the next on a private plane leased by his donors. He engaged in rapid-fire debates with liberal students 10 years younger than him, demanding that they answer questions like “Do you think men can give birth?” and, regarding Harris, “What’s her greatest accomplishment as vice president?”

The debate snippets went viral, some garnering as many as 50 million views, according to TikTok data. Kirk’s account would end up drawing more followers than the accounts of Fox News, Carlson, Vance and the Harris campaign. According to a national survey done by TikTok, the platform’s users under 30 who voted for Trump trusted Kirk more than any other individual. Still, the viewers were not just young voters. Kirk began to realize this in June, when, he says, Black concession workers at Turning Point’s three-day event in Detroit, the People’s Convention, approached him and asked to take selfies, saying they had seen him on TikTok. It was a revelation of which Washington consultants and even Kirk’s own digital team was unaware: The platform made famous by Taylor Swift fans was also a favorite of the working class.

But Kirk’s most audacious move of the 2024 cycle was one that was well out of his traditional youth lane. That summer, he announced that Turning Point Action would invest $108 million in a Chase the Vote program aimed at turning out low-propensity Republican-leaning voters — those who liked Trump but hadn’t always gotten around to voting for him, or voting at all — in the battleground states Arizona and Wisconsin. Central to the effort would be encouraging early voting.

This amounted to an about-face for Kirk. When I first heard him speak in person at a Republican fund-raiser in Goodyear, Ariz., before the 2022 midterms, he equated the practice with fraud. “And look, I’m going to go out on a limb,” he told his audience. “If we don’t get declared as the winner this November, I will go back and I’ll say it’s because the moderates in the state did not ban mass mail-in voting and they did not ban the drop boxes.”

Kirk learned the hard way from that election, in which his entire slate of far-right statewide candidates was defeated, not to discourage any legal method of voting. Many other conservative leaders remained skeptical of voting by mail and early voting in general.

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Kirk and his wife, a former Miss Arizona who hosts a podcast and has a line of faith-themed streetwear, arriving at the gala.Credit...Dina Litovsky for The New York Times

In the end, according to data published by The Times, Kirk was onto something: Roughly 30,000 Arizona Republicans who hadn’t voted since at least 2018 did so in 2024, about 10,000 more than the same type of voters who cast their ballots for Harris. This margin by itself all but closed Trump’s shortfall in 2020 of 10,457 votes.

At the donor presentation, Kirk claimed that Turning Point Action had identified, contacted and ultimately persuaded 220,000 Arizona voters to cast their ballots. “Look at the numbers,” he told his donors by way of comparing Trump’s totals in 2020 with those of 2024. “You fall 10,000 votes short. You win by 187,000. And we chase 220,000. It just about fits, right?”

I spoke with several Arizona Republican election officials and consultants who found Kirk’s deductive leap to be self-aggrandizing in the extreme. Low-propensity voter chasing wasn’t a new concept. It was used to successful effect in 2020, well before Turning Point Action began playing a role in Arizona turnout. The officials listed several organizations — the R.N.C., the National Republican Congressional Committee, Elon Musk’s America PAC and American Majority — that were all engaged in Arizona ballot-chasing in 2024.

For that matter, said Shelby Busch, the vice chair of the Maricopa County Republican Party, “the counties and state party played a critical role in turning out the vote. In my county, we had the state’s voting data, and we built our own operation to turn out voters who hadn’t voted in 2022. I can’t speak to what Turning Point did or didn’t do, because they wouldn’t coordinate with us. But to suggest they were solely responsible discredits thousands of precinct committee persons who worked very hard on this election.”

Moreover, in deep-red Yavapai County, the election recorder, Michelle Burchill, told me that after the election, her office received hundreds of calls from voters who had been erroneously told by Turning Point Action door-knockers that their mail-in ballot hadn’t been counted and that they needed to have their ballot cured. When a Turning Point Action worker handed Burchill a list of 39 such voters, the election recorder quickly determined that 38 of their ballots had been legitimately invalidated because they had already been cast early and in person.

“It was a waste of our time, the voters’ time and really of Turning Point’s time,” Burchill told me. “Turning Point is very popular here in Arizona. I think their resources could have been better used in other areas.”

The day after the inauguration, Kirk met me in the lobby of the Salamander hotel for a late lunch. A few aides hovered around him while Monica Crowley, a former Fox News contributor now awaiting confirmation as a senior State Department official, chatted on her cellphone at a nearby table. Kirk was palpably wired. He apologized for descending into clichés like “surreal” and “incredibly satisfying” in an effort to describe his hours in the Capitol Rotunda for the inauguration. Things would only get more discombobulating in the days to come: a return to the Oval Office, Turning Point’s obtaining White House press credentials, Kirk’s riding aboard Air Force Two with his friend the vice president. For the first time since I met him, Kirk seemed to be about what one expects of a 31-year-old who has suddenly found himself ringside to the unfolding of his imagined “American renaissance.”

In our previous conversations, Kirk hinted that Turning Point’s success owed at least as much to its aesthetic appeal as it did its ideological aims. Its events were fun. Its participants were attractive. The Democrats’ royalty — the Kennedys, Obama — were cool. Kirk wanted that for the conservative movement. I thought about this at his preinaugural gala as he introduced the event’s two main acts: Kid Rock, the 54-year-old metal rapper and Trump enthusiast, and a remodeled version of the ’70s-era disco group the Village People, “President Trump’s favorite band,” as Kirk described them onstage.

In the end, Taylor Swift and Cardi B’s candidate had lost. But, I asked Kirk in the Salamander dining room, was Kirk really content just to create a parallel universe in which conservatives subsisted off whatever cool they could muster? Or was it his aim to seize the entire culture and bend it to conservatism’s will?

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From left, Donald Trump Jr.; Vice President JD Vance; Sergio Gor, the director of the White House Presidential Personnel Office; and Kirk dancing at the gala with members of the Village People to their song “Y.M.C.A.,” a staple of Trump rallies.Credit...From Charlie Kirk

“We want to transform the culture,” Kirk immediately replied.

“How?” I asked. “Beyond just electing new leaders, I mean.”

“I mean,” he said, with a vague but expansive gesture, “more high school chapters, more college chapters. Obviously digital social media. The podcast plays a big role in that. The influencer kind of army.”

Sitting up straighter, he went on. “And beyond that, I think a lot of it’s going to be happening organically. Like, to have every major tech C.E.O. standing up behind President Trump. Yes, President Trump wanted them there. But they also wanted to be there, too. And that is a signal! I mean, you had Apple, TikTok, Amazon, Google, Meta, Elon, all the major communication companies. And they were giving tacit approval of this new administration. Giving standing ovations. It’s politics now influencing culture.”

Weren’t these guys really just currying favor so that Trump didn’t punish everyone but Musk for being late to the party?

“Of course that’s right,” he said. “Do I think they’re, like, adherents to MAGA? No, that’s not the thing. Though I think actually some of those tech C.E.O.s are more right-wing than they would let on.”

Regardless, there they were — just like the Republican senators would soon be there to confirm Trump’s nominees, under threat of being primaried by Turning Point Action. And, Kirk said, “one of the biggest complaints we’ve always had as conservatives — and it was warranted — is: Give us a fair shot on your platforms, and we’ll win the culture.”

He leaned back in his chair with a faint smile. “Well,” he said, “we were right.”

A correction was made on Feb. 10, 2025: An earlier version of this article misstated the role of the Chinese government in the social platform TikTok. While the government has ties to the platform’s parent company, it does not own TikTok.

When we learn of a mistake, we acknowledge it with a correction. If you spot an error, please let us know at nytnews@nytimes.com.Learn more

Robert Draper is based in Washington and writes about domestic politics. He is the author of several books and has been a journalist for three decades. More about Robert Draper

See more on: U.S. Politics, 2024 Elections: News, Polls and Analysis, Turning Point USA

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mma

February 4, 2025, edition of The Charlie Kirk Show, streamed on Rumble

CHARLIE KIRK (HOST): 8 US code 1324 says it is a federal law to harbor an illegal alien. It is a crime punishable up to five years in prison. The law defines, quote, harboring an illegal alien is considered a felony and can carry serious penalties. If convicted, the individual can face five years for every — each instance of harboring and ten years if it was done for financial gain. Encouraging or assisting illegal immigration, 8 US code 1324 sub-dash 1a part 4 — it is also illegal to encourage or assist someone in entering or remaining in the United States illegally. Penalties for this can also include significant prison time depending on the nature and the scope of the offense. Yesterday, a clip surfaced of the deeply unpopular governor of New Jersey, Governor Phil Murphy, who was in some sort of a interview and was bragging. He was bragging that he is breaking a federal law. Governor Phil Murphy is breaking 8 US code section 1324. So smug, almost taunting the federal government to come after him.

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KIRK: So we don't quite know what that means. An immigration status, not where she wants it to be. Is it someone illegal, someone waiting for paperwork? We don't quite know. But it sure sounds like the way he ended that statement that he is taunting federal authorities saying, I'm breaking the law, what are you gonna do? I'm the governor of New Jersey. Well, Tom Homan had some very sharp words in response to this.

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KIRK: We have no choice. If Governor Murphy is breaking federal law and taunting and provoking the feds, just file an indictment. You don't have to raid the governor's mansion. You don't have to make some big spectacle, but you have no choice. You don't get to selectively choose which immigration laws you're going to live under. And I would do a wide-sweeping indictment of everybody involved in such circumstances. Either we're a nation of laws or we are not. And if you do not like 8 US code section 1324, then go to the House of Representatives and have them change the law. Change the law. Don't say I'm not going to live under those laws.

Remember they were telling us under President Trump, no one is above the law? Well, here you have a governor admitting that he's breaking federal law. And in a non-dramatic way, very matter of fact, very business, you don't need to do a big press conference. Investigate it. If it is true that the governor of New Jersey is indeed harboring an illegal alien, file an indictment. Make him stand and say, hey, you can turn yourself in whenever you want. You can go bring your state troopers. You will come in for processing. You have a week to do so. We're not gonna go raid the governor's mansion. We're not gonna go make a big spectacle out of it. We're not gonna go do the Mar-a-Lago thing, But we've investigated it, you're breaking the law. You have one week to turn yourself into the Southern District of New York — or the New Jersey US attorney's office, and thanks for playing. And then Governor Murphy is gonna have to — he's gonna try to make himself to be some martyr, a martyr for harboring an illegal alien against federal law.

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mma

  1. ### Charlie Kirk suggests removing chickenpox and hepatitis B from childhood vaccine schedule

01/29/25 5:11 PM EST

  1. ### Charlie Kirk: “For any Republican senator out there, if you vote against Bobby Kennedy, there will be primaries”

01/29/25 3:34 PM EST

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MMA

Charlie Kirk praises Trump's tariff threats against Colombia as “masculine”

01/27/25

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mma

After Trump sets January 6 rioters free, Fox News changes its tune on pardons for violent offenders

During a stretch of Fox programming full of backtracking and excuses for Trump’s pardons, Laura Ingraham hosted two pardoned rioters to rewrite their stories

Written by Alicia Sadowski, Jane Lee, Isabella Corrao & Helena Hind

Published 01/22/25

President Donald Trump has issued pardons or commuted the sentences of all January 6 offenders, violent and nonviolent, flouting the advice of Fox hosts who previously urged him to grant a narrower pardon. With this day one action, Trump has freed over 1,500 offenders, including “violent offenders who went after the police” and “some of the most notorious participants in the attack,” individuals convicted of conspiracy, a rioter who carried a firearm, and a rioter who faced a long list of assault charges.

Fox News hosts maintained for years that violent offenders should not be pardoned

In the immediate aftermath of January 6, Fox News personalities spoke out against the insurrection, with some privately begging the administration to stop the Capitol attack. Even after Trump changed his tune on January 6 offenders and began suggesting pardons for them, Fox News maintained that those who had physically attacked law enforcement should not be among the pardoned.

Even though these Fox hosts argued against pardoning violent offenders from January 6 as recently as December, since Monday, Fox hosts have clearly and at times explicitly supported Trump’s decision to pardon all offenders.

On her Fox News show, Ingraham hosted two people who were issued pardons by Trump and allowed them to rewrite their offenses. During the attack on January 6, Ingraham texted then-Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows, imploring him to get Trump to take action, writing: “Mark, the president needs to tell people in the Capitol to go home. This is hurting all of us. He is destroying his legacy.” Four years later, she’s hosting participants and defending Trump’s blanket pardons.

Video

From the January 21, 2025, edition of Fox News' The Ingraham Angle

LARGE STEEL SCREW

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commute peltier

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During the final hours of his presidency — with President-elect Donald Trump's inauguration only hours away — Joe Biden announced his last-minute preemptive pardons, making it clear that he was determined to shield those he pardoned from frivolous prosecutions under the new administration.

The pardons included Dr. Anthony Fauci, former director the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID); Gen. Mark Milley, ex-chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; and former members of the January 6 Select Committee, including ex-Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyoming) and ex-Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Illinois).

Biden, in his announcement, stated, "Our nation relies on dedicated, selfless public servants every day. They are the lifeblood of our democracy." In certain cases, some have even been threatened with criminal prosecutions, including General Mark A. Milley, Dr. Anthony Fauci, and members and staff of the Select Committee to investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol…. These public servants have served our nation with honor and distinction and do not deserve to be the targets of unjustified and politically motivated prosecutions."

READ MORE:Biden preemptively pardons members of January 6 panel and other Trump targets

The outgoing president emphatically added that "the issuance of these pardons should not be mistaken as an acknowledgment that any individual engaged in any wrongdoing, nor should acceptance be misconstrued as an admission of guilt for any offense."

On X, formerly Twitter, far-right Trump supporters were quick to attack Biden for the pardons, from Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Georgia) to Fox News' Laura Ingraham.

Greene tweeted, "Pardoned because they are guilty of CRIMES. Never forget what they did and who the Democrats are. The mask is completely OFF."

Ingraham posted, "With the Fauci and Milley pardons, Biden shows that he is the one who will violate any norm. Good riddance to him, his puppet masters and all those who enabled The Lie. ("Biden's as sharp as ever.") A new dawn is here!"

READ MORE:Trump’s second term could face the 'same disastrous end' as Grover Cleveland’s: presidential historian

Infowars host Alex Jones remarked, "Biden issues 11th hour pardons of globalist crime syndicate members! The DEEP STATE is running scared!"

Turning Point USA's Charlie Kirk wrote, "Biden just preemptively pardoned Fauci, Liz Cheney, Adam Kinzinger, Mark Milley and all staff of the J6 Committee. They know at noon everything changes. This is a provocation. Shock and awe time. High noon is almost here."

Kylie Jane Kremer, executive director of Women for America First, tweeted: "F**K YOU to the Deep State & the Staffers who are lying & pretending Joe Biden is pardoning anyone. Joe Biden DOESN'T HAVE THE MENTAL CAPACITY TO PARDON ANYONE! An investigation needs to be opened on these treasonous pigs who just pardoned the J6 Committee, Milley, & Fauci TODAY."

But other X users have applauded the preemptive pardons.

The conservative Republicans Against Trump posted a statement from Milley.

The ex-Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman stated, "After forty-three years of faithful service in uniform to our Nation, protecting and defending the Constitution, I do not wish to spend whatever remaining time the Lord grants me fighting those who unjustly might seek retribution for perceived slights. I do not want to put my family, my friends, and those with whom I served through the resulting distraction, expense, and anxiety."

CNN's Dana Bash tweeted that Fauci said he is "very appreciative" of the preemptive pardon he received and added, "As (Biden) said, we did nothing wrong, but the baseless accusations and threats are real for me and my family."

MeidasTouch's Ron Filipkowski argued, "I personally am not a fan of the preemptive pardons for many reasons, but I will say the manic, unhinged and furious reactions of MAGA Republicans, which include calling for state court prosecutions and MORE congressional investigations, proves Biden's point on why he did it."

KrassenCast's Ed Krassenstein tweeted, "If you’re upset about Biden pardoning individuals Trump is likely to target with a weaponized justice system, let’s not forget what happened during Trump’s first term. Trump literally used his pardon power to reward people for trying to obstruct a criminal investigation into himself. Trump pardoned Michael Flynn, who was convicted of lying to the FBI during its investigation into TRUMP."

Krassenstein continued, "He pardoned Paul Manafort, who was convicted of witness tampering and obstructing the DOJ's investigation into Trump. And he pardoned Steve Bannon, who was charged with defrauding Trump’s own supporters through a fundraising scheme."

Liberal firebrand and former MSNBC host Keith Olbermann posted, "Breaking: Biden preemptively pardons Liz Cheney, Fauci, Milley, J6 officers Good. Screws Trump, overshadows his inauguration, ruins his day, protects American heroes."

Olbermann also tweeted, "Should pardon millions including all media. Should pardon Megyn Kelly for once pissing Trump off. Pardon everybody It ain't Sun Tzu here but when your opponent goes farcical, out farce him."

:==

omg // maui fire BS? MMA

Jesse Watters says “there’s a good chance the homeless started” the California fires

01/09/25 6:21 PM EST

  1. ### On CNN, Rep. Jasmine Crockett pushes back on baseless right-wing media claims that DEI has hindered the LAFD wildfire response

01/09/25 1:46 PM EST

  1. ### Charlie Kirk says Donald Trump should threaten to withhold federal assistance to California

01/09/25

january 9, 2025, edition of The Charlie Kirk Show, streamed on Rumble

CHARLIE KIRK (HOST): And when California, in a couple of weeks, comes crawling back for federal assistance, Trump should say, listen, I'm not gonna give you a dime unless you fire the lesbian Kristens. You mandate the proper forest management and stop controlled burns that Newsom has stopped. You cut it out with California's failed diversity, equity, inclusion homeless spending. You require water capture instead of flushing it into the ocean. We're not gonna pay for this anymore. This is your own making.

When Florida gets hurt by a hurricane — hit by a hurricane, FPL, Florida Power and Light, has power coming back in a couple days. They also build their homes in a certain way to be hurricane proof. California, they're so left-wing, they're so liberal, they're so out of touch, they're so earth worshiping, and now entire neighborhoods are gone as if an atomic bomb was dropped. In 2020, Pacific Palisades voted 70% for Joe Biden. So it's 70-30.

This looks like Ukraine, not our own country. Oh, but it's funny you mentioned that. Because Joe Biden and Senate Republicans have sent a lot of money to Ukraine. A lot. In fact, we just we spent $250 billion to Ukraine. This is the current ruling class regime. And just oh, by the way, didn't didn't you know this? The Los Angeles Fire Department just donated surplus supplies to Ukraine.

----

  1. ### Charlie Kirk says California Democrats are “living in the tragedy of your own making”

01/09/25

January 9, 2025, edition of The Charlie Kirk Show, streamed on Rumble

CHARLIE KIRK (HOST): And I do not wish harm on anybody because of their politics. I don't. However, for every person that has advocated, raised money, bundled, and donated to Democrats, you are living in the tragedy of your own making. And you guys were told by The New York Times, The Washington Post, right-wing people like Elon Musk and right-wing people like Charlie Kirk are making it seem like woke ideologies doesn't harm you, and now you don't have a driveway. And now everything you own is gone. We were fearmongering.

We were pouncing. Republicans pounce. We're too divisive. Turns out we were right. It turns out all of you in this audience were right. It turns out that every single one of us. And I gotta be honest though, there's a lot of America First and Patriots that no longer have homes too. I know of fifteen conservative people, some of which that work on our team that I mentioned yesterday, their entire home is gone. And again, I do not take delight in anybody's suffering. I do not take joy in people's misery. But the Democrat Party has been wanting America to commit suicide over the last decade. And now they don't have a home. And I do feel sorry for them.

But I hope some of these Democrats, that now everything they own is gone — look at that. So, and look, I don't wanna overly politicize this. Blake, can you pull up the precinct map of how Pacific Palisades voted? Let's just go straight at the third rail of this whole thing. It's 80-20 Democrat. Am I right? Let get the precinct map. Let's make sure we get it right. I want The New York Times precinct map. No one deserves to suffer because of their politics.

However, if you have voted a certain way, this is what you wanted. This used to be a conservative area back in the 1950s. Eight out of ten of those houses you're seeing are left-wing Democrats. Eight out of ten. And that's a tragedy. They don't deserve it. They're American citizens. They deserve help. But they advocated for this. They donated for to Joe Biden. They raised money for Kamala Harris. And this is why politics matters.

---

Charlie Kirk: “I sure hope that Pam Bondi and President Trump open a robust criminal investigation into Gavin Newsom and Mayor Bass”

01/09/25

January 9, 2025, edition of The Charlie Kirk Show, streamed on Rumble

CHARLIE KIRK (HOST): So you have this kind of perfect storm of wokeism, and that is what you're seeing. Let's see more b-roll, by the way, of all the burning. What you are seeing right there is a perfect storm of wokeism. We can't take the water because of the Delta smelt. We can't clean up the brush because of the grasshoppers. We can't put out the fire because guess what? When you start to prioritize diversity and sexuality over merit, things tend to not go well. This is exactly what we have been warning about as conservatives.

For, as conservatives, we've been warning about this for years. Hey, when a tragedy strikes, it doesn't matter how many diversity points you have. Remember Pete Buttigieg trying to figure out the flight crisis, that disaster? And what is the response from Gavin Newsom? The same thing that they'll say anytime that there is a police killing.

Oh, systemic racism.

They just say climate change. Define the term, Gavin Newsom. Define the term. What do you mean by climate change exactly? Was it climate change that put the trio of lesbian Kristins in charge of the fire department? Was it climate change that decided not to capture the water and put it into a reservoir? Was it climate change that decided not to clean up the brush? Or no, instead it was the opposite. It was the cult of earth worshiping environmentalism. Your ideology is why your people are suffering. This is a choice. This is not an act of God. It is an act of man.

And Gavin Newsom, you better preserve your documents because I sure hope that Pam Bondi and President Trump open a robust criminal investigation into Gavin Newsom and Mayor Bass. Because in 10 days and 23 hours, you might be facing a very serious federal criminal investigation because you deserve it. This is beyond gross negligence. You might be complicit for the murder and arson of your own citizens. So preserve your documents, Gavin Newsom.

----

Right-wing media figures baselessly claim LA wildfires are burning out of control because the fire chief is an LGBTQ woman who supports DEI

01/09/25

===

  1. ### Charlie Kirk calls for eliminating sign language interpreters during emergency briefings: “It's a distraction”

01/08/25 2:08 PM EST

  1. ### Charlie Kirk: “I've had a chance to sit down with Mark Zuckerberg. I'm getting to know Mark Zuckerberg.”

01/08/25 mma

===

---

rww

01/08/2025

by

Kyle Mantyla

How the onetime Christian student organization convinced pastors to turn their flocks into GOP voters.

Major MAGA figures are set to attend the black-tie event, hosted by a publishing house whose marquee author has advocated for a “dictator” to run the U.S.

I watched the Jan. 6 defendants’ daylong press conference. It revealed an alarming trend.

Mr. Musk has fallen out with prominent right-wing Americans who say they are worried that their agenda may be sidelined in favor of his own — and that he is willing to silence them on X.

Apparently, Eric Metaxas has changed his mind again about the relatives of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Just over two weeks after Metaxas apologized for saying that Bonhoeffer’s descendants were Jew-haters and pro-Hamas, he did it again.

---

12 24 conf gaetz homan trump greenland panama canal?

===

rww

12/23/2024

by

Peter Montgomery

Dominionist leaders attending the youth-focused Turning Point USA AmericaFest conference in Phoenix over the weekend portrayed Donald Trump’s election as a spiritual warfare victory, and urged Christian-right activists to “occupy” more territory by building a bigger Republican majority in Congress.

The AmericaFest speaker lineup included Trump, other MAGA politicians, right-wing commentators like Tucker Carlson, and dominionists like Lance Wallnau. House Speaker Mike Johnson cancelled a planned appearance after becoming the target of MAGA rage over a bipartisan budget deal that was attacked by Elon Musk.

In recent years, TPUSA founder Charlie Kirk has made a public shift from promoting a kind a snarky, irreverent libertarianism to embracing an aggressive Christian nationalism that characterizes much of the MAGA movement today.

Broadcasting from AmericaFest’s media row on Thursday night was “FlashPoint,” a show launched by televangelist Kenneth Copeland’s Victory Channel in the fall of 2020 that has been a platform for pro-Trump propaganda and prophesying. One panelist was Pastor Rob McCoy, a spiritual mentor to Kirk, who told viewers that he had been at TPUSA’s headquarters on election night, and that when Pennsylvania was called for Trump, Kirk started weeping and said, “All glory to God.”

A recurring theme from the show’s host Gene Bailey and his panelists was that Trump’s victory is no reason for the church to relax. Wallnau said that conservative evangelical Christians are the key to keeping the political pendulum swinging to the right in the midterm elections two years from now:

It’s a spiritual battle…The swing to the right is going to impact the midterms if we seize the moment. And the secret is 40 million evangelical Christians, who know apocalyptically that America is right now in an early phase of an awakening. We have to push that issue, and all we’ve gotta do is flip about 20 seats, and we could see the sustained reformation Trump is attempting for 48 months continuously.

“Advance! Advance! Advance!” urged Wallnau, a promoter of Seven Mountains Dominionism who believes that right-wing Christians are meant to take control of every sphere of influence in society. Leading up to the 2024 election, Wallnau partnered with the America First Policy Institute, a think tank founded by former Trump administration officials, to merge revival-style worship and pro-Trump voter turnout in a “Courage Tour” of key swing-state counties.

One aspect of the increasingly dominionist religious-right movement in America is hostility toward Christians who do not share their religious and political “biblical worldview.” Joining Wallnau and McCoy on FlashPoint was Lucas Miles, senior director for faith at TPUSA. “We’re going to eradicate wokeism from the American pulpit,” Miles vowed. He said TPUSA’s American Pastor Project would pressure pastors to make a commitment to what TPUSA considers “primary historical biblical Christianity doctrine” and encourage congregants to leave churches that don’t sign on. He called it a plan to see “the woke church defunded.”

Joining the conversation was Pastor Keith Craft of Elevate Life Church in Frisco, Texas. Craft said that God told him in advance that Trump would win the election. He quoted a passage from the biblical book of Isaiah that “the government shall be upon his shoulder” and “to the increase of his government there shall be no end.”

Craft said that only 4 percent of Christians have a biblical worldview. The idea that very few evangelicals have an acceptable worldview is promoted by evangelical pollster George Barna, who is affiliated with the Family Research Council’s Center for Biblical Worldview. The assertion that most evangelicals and their pastors don’t meet FRC’s standard reveals just how narrowly religious-right leaders define acceptable views of the Bible.

Christian-right podcaster and producer Kylie Jean Tannehill also joined the panel, saying the Holy Spirit is the movement’s “ultimate weapon of warfare that is often underutilized.”

“The Bible is really clear: ‘on Earth as it is in Heaven,’” she said. “That means I don’t just sit around, I get to occupy…I’m not living life on Earth waiting to be in Heaven, I’m bringing Heaven to Earth.”

===

mma

December 18, 2024, edition of The Charlie Kirk Show, streamed on Rumble

CHARLIE KIRK (HOST): We we hosted the president in Atlanta, Georgia, two days before. Then we hosted the president in Vegas. So the president does three events in Georgia, ours being the last one ending at 11 pm. Red eyes all the way to Vegas, does a whole tour out west. Right? Arizona. He goes up to Carson City, ends with us in Vegas.

Wakes up the next morning at 6 am, flies to Austin, does a press conference, does 3 hours sharp with Rogan, flies to Novi, Michigan, three hours late, ends at midnight, and flies down to Mar-a-Lago and holds court on the plane all the way till 3:30 AM eastern, holding court, making phone calls, waking people up, getting things going. Now we could talk endlessly about Donald Trump's life force of energy. People say it's the McDonald's. Honestly, it's hard to disprove.

The deeper question, though, is I love being able to just be able to call the president straight up. It's hard to describe how rare that is because — do you think, PBD, the more layering is a sign of insecurity? Is it a sign of elitism? What is it? Psychoanalyze people that have platoons of handlers and you can't deal direct.

===

===

rww 12 24

12/18/2024

by

Kyle Mantyla

LOL. Jason Rapert of the National Association of Christian Lawmakers proudly bestowed upon Charlie Kirk an award "in honor of a lifetime of service to God and country."

===

We unraveled the $122 million web of climate denial, political extremism, and Trump ties to Project 2025

Mapped: How 6 Billionaire Family Fortunes Fund Project 2025 - DeSmog

As scrutiny of Project 2025 continues to grow, defenders of the Heritage Foundation-led initiative, which would reshape federal governance and give the next Republican president unprecedented new powers, say it’s the criticism — not the 922-page plan itself — that’s too extreme.

In a piece published last month, Fox News cited prominent conservatives who feel there’s “nothing radical” about the endeavor. The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board has accused detractors of “panic-mongering” and tried to reframe Project 2025’s sprawling “Mandate for Leadership” blueprint as more boring than scary — a milquetoast white paper that simply “melds the work of some 400 scholars and analysts from an eclectic mix of center-right groups.” This echoes Heritage’s insistence that Project 2025, while conservative, is anything but fringe.

But the findings from DeSmog’s recent investigation into Project 2025’s funding sources tell a very different story. Our wide-ranging analysis of public financial disclosure forms found that the groups on Project 2025’s advisory board — whose experts largely helped to draft the plan — are heavily funded by just six family fortunes. Since 2020, foundations linked to these billionaire families have contributed over $122 million to Project 2025 groups, including at least 290 individual donations to 49 nonprofits that contributed to the Mandate for Leadership documents or are on the initiative’s advisory board. We’ve mapped the funding ties between the billionaire families and the Project 2025 individuals and organizations in an interactive graphic, below.

Groups that received funds from the six family fortunes are far from the political mainstream, according to DeSmog’s analysis, including entities that actively deny the science of anthropogenic climate change — as well as organizations that have been classified as hate groups by the Southern Poverty Law Center. DeSmog’s review also uncovered additional ties between the six families and the Trump/Vance ticket, though both candidates have tried to distance themselves from the initiative in recent months. Indeed, Richard and Elizabeth Uihlein — the billionaire founders of the Uline packaging company, whose charitable donations tie them closely to Project 2025 — are among the former president’s biggest donors.

Project 2025 styles itself as populist, moderate, and far from the politics of Washington. Heritage Foundation President Kevin D. Roberts hails it as a plan for the perennially downtrodden, hard-laboring folks “who shower afterwork instead of before.” Its funding sources — elite, extreme, and closely tied to the Trump campaign — suggest exactly the opposite.

The Donors

Though the Mandate pledges to “prioritize the economic prosperity of ordinary Americans” and pry influence away from “America’s corporate and political elites,” the funding that produced it comes from the upper echelons of the billionaire class.

And not just any billionaires. The six family dynasties providing significant support to Project 2025 — Bradley, Coors, Koch, Scaife, Seid, and Uihlein — all have long histories of fighting for financial and environmental deregulation. Three of the six families have promoted climate denial consistently enough to appear in DeSmog’s Climate Disinformation Database, which tracks the people and organizations doing the most to undermine decarbonization efforts.

They include oil and gas magnate Charles G. Koch and his Koch Family Foundations; the Scaife Family Foundations, which tap vast wealth from the Mellon aluminum, oil, and banking fortune; and chemicals-and-electronics industrialist Barre Seid, whose recent, record-setting $1.6 billion gift to a nonprofit controlled by Federalist Society co-chair Leonard A. Leo has been a major source of Project 2025 money.

While the Heritage Foundation suggests a diverse conservative coalition gave rise to the Mandate for Leadership, the six family fortunes’ giving patterns were remarkably similar. Of the 49 Project 2025 groups, 37 percent received funding from at least three of the six families. 70 percent of the 49 groups received funding from at least two of the families. (In a few cases, the donations were to sister 501(c)4 lobbying arms that share offices and staff.) The average donation was over $420,000.

*Related:See DeSmog’s coverage of Trump Megadonor Tim Dunn’s Plan That’s More Extreme Than Project 2025

Links to Climate Denial

For decades, oil and gas magnate Charles G. Koch and his late brother David fought vigorously for environmental deregulation, including by supporting groups that sow doubt about the science of manmade climate change. Foundations linked to Koch gave at least $9.6 billion to 15 Project 2025 groups since 2020. But four of the lesser-known families — Bradley, Scaife, Seid, and Uihlein — gave even more, and all six family fortunes helped to fund Project 2025 groups that have denied the science of manmade climate change.

:{:{Of the 10 groups that the six families funded most heavily, seven are in DeSmog’s Climate Disinformation Database.}: That includes more than :{$11 million to the Heritage Foundation; }:

$8.3 million to Turning Point USA, which has provided a platform for well-known climate deniers like Alex Epstein;

and $4.6 million to the Texas Public Policy Foundation, which in 2015 published an op-ed claiming warming is “obviously not initiated by the burning of fossil fuels”. In total, foundations linked to the six families gave to 15 Project 2025 groups with entries in DeSmog’s Climate Disinformation Database.}:

That wasn’t the only form of extremism DeSmog uncovered. Four Project 2025 organizations that received donations from the six billionaire fortunes since 2020 are classified as hate groups by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), a leading civil rights watchdog group. These include the Alliance Defending Freedom, an anti-LGBTQ group that received over $1.6 million in donations from Bradley and Koch; The Center for Immigration Studies, an anti-immigrant group that received $650,000 from Scaife; Eagle Forum, an anti-government and anti-immigrant group that received over $100,000 from Koch and Uihlein; and Family Research Council, an anti-abortion group that received $25,000 from Seid.

Of the six billionaire families, only Coors-linked foundations — run by heirs to the Coors brewing fortune — did not donate to at least one SPLC-designated hate group.

Links to the Trump Campaign

For months, Donald J. Trump has publicly disavowed Project 2025, claiming to know nothing about the initiative. That stance conflicts with subsequent media reports, including resurfaced video of the former president and current Republican presidential nominee saying, as a keynote speaker at a 2022 Heritage Foundation event, that Heritage would “lay the groundwork & detail plans for exactly what our movement will do.” The Washington Post reported that Trump flew in a private plane to the event with Heritage President Kevin Roberts.

Trump’s running mate, Ohio Senator JD Vance, has also been the subject of intense scrutiny for numerous ties to Project 2025 — including writing the foreword to Roberts’ forthcoming book. DeSmog’s investigation also uncovered numerous ties between Vance and Project 2025 advisory groups, including a previously unreported 2017 keynote speech at a Heritage event.

But while the candidates continue to downplay any Project 2025 connections, one link is unavoidable: a billionaire family that heavily supports Project 2025 groups is among their campaign’s biggest donors, according to Federal Election Commission data.

In May, Richard and Elizabeth Uihlein, the founders of the Uline packaging company, each donated $5 million to Make America Great Again, Inc., a super PAC supporting Trump’s reelection. That’s not including the more than $48 million Richard contributed to Restoration PAC, a pro-Trump political action committee, last quarter alone. Restoration PAC has spent over $12.9 million this year on political advertising, including ads supporting Trump and attacking his opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris.

Since 2020, the Ed Uihlein Foundation, which is run by the Uihleins and named in honor of Richard’s father, has donated at least $13.4 million to 13 different Project 2025 groups.

The map below is interactive. Click on a donor to see the groups it funded with dollar amounts, or a nonprofit to see which of the six family fortunes made donations.

[GFX]

---

===

MMA Charlie Kirk warns “primaries are going to be launched” against senators opposing Trump nominees

12/05/24

---

note NOT 50% of vote?

WANNABE ENFORCER? or just chest beat on win

Charlie Kirk guest says “there will be Armageddon for any senator who does not step in line” with Trump's appointees

11/19/24

https://www.mediamatters.org/charlie-kirk/charlie-kirk-guest-says-there-will-be-armageddon-any-senator-who-does-not-step-line)

November 19, 2024 edition of The Charlie Kirk Show, streamed on Rumble

CHARLIE KIRK (HOST): The significance of this is immense. And confirming the cabinet — personnel is policy. Personnel is policy. It's going to require a pressure campaign, and all we have to do is have Republican senators actually listen to their voters. Quite a concept. And to actually fulfill the mandate. Darren, if you had to describe what is the mandate that the voters gave Donald Trump?

DARREN BEATTIE (GUEST): The mandate is to clean up our government and restore legitimacy to our government and set America — I keep saying, the stakes of this are not just a politically successful second term, which I fully expect. The stakes of this are much longer, much deeper, much more powerful. The stakes of this are if we do this right — and we need the right people to do it right — if we do this right, we're setting America up for success and freedom into the end of the century. This is setting America up, which was so close to the bottom of the trash heap.

We've been brought so far down into the sewage pit by people like Biden, by people like Harris, by people like Merrick Garland, and I can go on and on and on, to the point that we're on a trajectory to being worse than a third world country because — it's like we don't even have some of the freedoms of third world countries. We have the squalor, but none of the freedom, worst of both worlds. That's where we were headed. This is a singular opportunity to set America aright, not just for this term, but for the remainder of the century and beyond. That's what's at stake, and that's why it's so critical to have the right people for the job. But you have people like Elon Musk, Vivek, Matt Gaetz, Tulsi Gabbard, it's actually a possibility. And that's why we need to be a 100% committed. No compromises, not wavering on anything. There will — we need to make it very clear, there will be Armageddon for any senator who does not step in line.

===

aha short window for shock and awe smash and grab, recess appt in maj sen; bannon beat chest, to puff up signif of win and his role in it; push advantage/ big mo?

//

Fox News’ Jason Chaffetz threatens Republicans who refuse to confirm Fox & Friends weekend co-host Pete Hegseth for Secretary of Defense

11/12/24 MMA

Charlie Kirk threatens to remove Sen. John Thune (R-SD) as majority leader

11/13/24

---

YIKES TRUMP ADMIN

MMA Trump defense secretary pick Pete Hegseth said in 2020 that the United States should “just get rid of the U.N.”

11/13/24 2:02 PM EST

Charlie Kirk threatens to remove Sen. John Thune (R-SD) as majority leader}:

11/13/24 1:07 PM EST

  1. ### Project 2025 leader Kevin Roberts says he's “escastic” over Trump's cabinet picks: “This is exceeding our expectations”

11/13/24 12:57 PM EST

  1. ### Steve Bannon calls for a military tribunal to try retired General Mark Milley for treason

11/13/24 12:50 PM EST

  1. ### Trump picked Fox & Friends Weekend co-host Pete Hegseth to be secretary of defense. Here's some of what he's said on the air.

11/13/24 12:22 PM EST

  1. ### A comprehensive review of the revolving door between Fox and the second Trump administration

:{:{11/13/24}:

---

mma