9/17/25: Charlie Kirk Shooter Charged, Tucker Rebukes Bibi, Leaked Tyler Robinson Discord

Summary

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Podcast Summary: "Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar"

Episode Date: September 17, 2025
Title: Charlie Kirk Shooter Charged, Tucker Rebukes Bibi, Leaked Tyler Robinson Discord

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Episode Overview

In this episode, Krystal Ball and Saagar Enjeti dive into breaking news about the formal charging of Tyler Robinson for the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, explore the wider social and political reactions, dissect a leaked Discord chat network connected to the shooter, and analyze the deepening divisions on free speech and political violence in America. They are joined by journalist Ken Klippenstein, who provides an exclusive look into Robinson's online world. Later, the team discusses Tucker Carlson's public rebuke of Benjamin Netanyahu and the intrigue surrounding Charlie Kirk's shifting stance on Israel before his death.

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Key Discussion Points

1. The Latest on the Charlie Kirk Assassination

[03:44 – 30:00]

• Tyler Robinson formally charged:
  • Robinson is charged with aggravated murder, a capital felony, with the death penalty or life without parole as possible sentences.
  • Ensuing discussion of the "victim targeting enhancement" under Utah law, as charges allege Robinson targeted Kirk for his political expression.
• (08:25) Reading from Robinson’s charging documents:
  • Robinson’s private messages to his trans roommate detail planning, motivation, and the steps taken during and after the shooting, including his intention to keep the attack secret ("I am still okay, my love, but stuck in Orem for a little while longer... I had enough of his hatred. Some hate can't be negotiated out... Had to leave the rifle in a bush").
• Speculation about motives:
  • Saagar isolates three possibilities—nihilistic notoriety, far-right antipathy, or a left-wing, gender/cultural grievance. The evidence backs the third (“...somebody in the LGBT world who thinks that Charlie Kirk is filled with hate towards them. This seems like it’s the third possibility.” [12:11])
  • Both hosts reflect on the hyper-individualized, contemporary “micro/macro blame” approach to analyzing political violence.
• Authenticity of the evidence:
  • Some skepticism from figures like Steve Bannon, who suggested the texts looked “scripted,” but hosts reason that the atypical text style matches Robinson’s documented high ACT score and atypical personality.
  • “It doesn’t read like a typical Gen Z text exchange... But he’s also not typical. He also just assassinated somebody.” (Saagar, [18:44])
• Surveillance & investigation realities:
  • Discussion on how near-impossible it is to "get away with" a political assassination in modern America, due to mass surveillance and social familiarity.

2. Media & Societal Response: Ezra Klein’s Reflection

[34:32 – 55:00]

• Ezra Klein’s essay "Charlie Kirk was practicing politics the right way" [34:36]:
  • Klein calls Charlie Kirk’s death not just a tragedy for the right, but a loss for all seeking robust democratic debate, even if they abhor his views.
  • Notable Quote:

    "We have to be able to see that the bullet that tore into him was an act of violence against us all. I actually believe that." (Ezra Klein, read on air [36:00])

• Backlash from the left and the right:
  • Hosts and Ken discuss outrage towards even basic sympathies for Kirk, indicative of deep national polarization.
  • “It’s ugly. So the counterargument is: He was not doing politics the right way...” (Saagar, [37:31])
• Debate about what constitutes ‘speech’ vs. ‘violence’:
  • Krystal, Saagar, and Ken bemoan the collapse of the distinction between debate (even offensive) and acts of violence.
  • They stress that responding to speech one abhors with violence is an existential threat to democracy.
  • “There’s violence and nonviolence. There’s not a middle ground.” (Krystal, [43:08])
• Cultural inflation of language and labeling:
  • Krystal warns against the tendency to call all adversaries "racist" or "bigot" and argues it’s intellectually and practically dangerous.
  • "To overinflate those definitions impugns people en masse in ways that are intentional... It's a real problem the left has had over the last 10 years." (Krystal, [51:00])

3. The Discord Leak—A Portrait of the Shooter’s Online Circle

[72:16 – 89:22]
(Interview with Ken Klippenstein)

• Ken's exclusive reporting:

  • Ken obtained and published messages from multiple Discord servers where Tyler Robinson participated.

  • His findings contradict mainstream hysteria that these spaces are cauldrons of extremism:

    “From what was sent to me, it was all pretty measured and sympathetic... I was surprised by the maturity of a lot of these young 20-something year old men.” (Ken, [74:08])

  • Members were shocked, horrified, and not at all celebrating the attack. National politics barely factored into their daily conversations.

• Nature of the Discords:
  • Closed circles, mostly IRL friends, discussions about everyday life, not organized political activity.
  • “Basically no conversation about national politics in here... Every social group has the guy who follows politics.” (Saagar, [77:34])
  • Community more defined by friendship and hobby talk than ideology; focus only sharpened on LGBT issues around Tyler’s crime.
• Law enforcement response:
  • Ken critiques the FBI’s tendency to surveil and label wide categories of "nihilistic violent extremists" (NVE), warning about the consequences of indiscriminate suspicion.
  • “It’s not a useful way to conceptualize the problem... The FBI has become so interested in what people believe and I, I see that as kind of distinct from the problem.” (Ken, [85:54])
• Discord as a platform:
  • Discord is unfairly demonized: "It’s basically WhatsApp for gaming... and there’s this hysteria, and I really think there’s like, an ageist component." (Ken, [87:32])

4. Tucker Carlson Rebukes Netanyahu—The Kirk-Israel Rift

[58:10 – 69:23]

• Tucker Carlson and others accuse Netanyahu and pro-Israel donors of pressuring Kirk:
  • Tucker:

    “Charlie didn’t hate Jews. He loved Jews. He loved the state of Israel, loved going there. He did not like Bibi Netanyahu... He was appalled by what was happening in Gaza. He was above all resentful that he believed Netanyahu was using the United States to prosecute his wars for the benefit of his country and that it was shameful and embarrassing and bad for the United States and he resented it.” (Tucker, quoted by Saagar, [58:41])

• “Intervention” summit and social pressure:
  • Details of a Hamptons meeting in early August, where Kirk faced pressure from donors like Bill Ackman and others regarding his drift from uncritical pro-Israel stances.
  • Krystal and Saagar note a timeline:
    • Kirk becomes publicly defiant about "free speech on Israel" almost immediately after this summit (see fiery Megyn Kelly interview, August 6).
    • “Ask me if that is a guy who just came out of a cordial session...” (Saagar, [62:43])
• Complexity of private vs. public positions:
  • They note how Kirk attempted to bridge divides among pro- and anti-Israel factions, and how private conversations can be wielded or misconstrued posthumously for factional gain.
• Saagar on conspiracy theories:
  • Explicit rejection of claims of any Israeli involvement in the killing: "Part of it is just on a baseline level... They couldn’t keep it secret." ([69:05])

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the shooter’s motives and America’s political climate:

  “You cannot get away with this in the United States anymore... Because in this world, hundreds of people know what we look like and somebody’s going to notice and somebody’s going to be not okay with you doing what you did.” — Saagar Enjeti [28:12]

• On the seriousness of the moment:

  “We have to be able to see that the bullet that tore into him was an act of violence against us all. I actually believe that.” — Ezra Klein (as read by Krystal) [36:00]

• On the Discord server’s reality:

  “From what was sent to me, it was all pretty measured and sympathetic... I was surprised by the maturity of a lot of these young 20-something year old men.” — Ken Klippenstein [74:08]

• On violence versus speech:

  “There’s violence and nonviolence. There’s not a middle ground.” — Krystal Ball [43:08]

• Re: overinflation of hate terms:

  “To overinflate those definitions impugns people en masse in ways that are intentional... It's a real problem the left has had over the last 10 years.” — Krystal Ball [51:00]

• Tucker’s critique of Netanyahu:

  "He did not like Bibi Netanyahu. He was appalled by what was happening in Gaza. He was above all resentful that he believed Netanyahu was using the United States to prosecute his wars for the benefit of his country and that it was shameful and embarrassing and bad for the United States." — (Tucker via Saagar) [58:41]

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Important Timestamps

• 03:44: Start of in-depth discussion on Charlie Kirk shooter case
• 08:11 – 10:50: Reading critical selections from charging documents
• 15:19: Micro vs. macro blame and the “hate climate”
• 17:42: Skepticism (“scripted texts”) and analysis of evidence
• 25:59: Discussion of Robinson’s family, evidence, and law enforcement insights
• 34:32 – 43:08: Ezra Klein's argument and national debate over violence in politics
• 58:10: Tucker Carlson segment on Kirk’s shifting Israel stance
• 62:10: Timeline analysis of donor pressure on Kirk regarding Israel
• 72:16 – 89:22: Ken Klippenstein’s reporting on the Discord leaks
• 81:03: Ken on the Discord as a space and law enforcement’s misunderstanding
• 85:54: Government surveillance, “NVE” classification
• 87:32: Critique of demonization of Discord

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Tone and Language

• Conversational yet serious, with frequent mutual probing and willingness to challenge each other's assumptions.
• Honest, reflective, sometimes exasperated by the state of the discourse and the rapid polarization in U.S. political culture.
• Frequent acknowledgment of the nuanced reality behind both personal motives and collective narrative-building.

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Summary Takeaways

• The Kirk shooting is shaping up to be a flashpoint in the debate about political violence—revealing fears, tribalism, and failures across mainstream and online communities.
• The reality of Robinson’s Discord network—a far more mundane, less politicized, and shock-stricken circle than many media portrayals suggest—demonstrates the dangers of reducing complex events to easy narratives about online radicalization.
• Tucker Carlson's and others’ commentary has turned attention to deep divides within the American right about Israel, as well as to how private pressures shape public positions—all further intensified by tragedy.
• The episode underscores a call for renewed respect for nonviolent debate and a plea for resisting the righteous urge to meet speech, even offensive, with violence or systematic erasure.

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"It’s a reminder that there is a micro story and a macro story here—personal culpability, but also the climate we all help create. The line between them is not neat. That’s why these conversations are so hard, and why they matter."
— Krystal Ball

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Transcript

[Krystal Ball]

This is an iHeart podcast.

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[Krystal Ball]

Ah come on. Why is this taking so long? This thing is ancient.

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[Krystal Ball]

Independent media just played a truly massive role in this election and we are so excited about what that means for the future of the show.

[Ken Klippenstein]

This is the only place where you can find honest perspectives from the left.

[Krystal Ball]

And the right that simply does not exist anywhere else. So if that is something that's important.

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To you, Please go to BreakingPoints.com, become.

[Krystal Ball]

A member today and you'll get access to our full shows unedited ad, free and all put together for you every morning in your inbox. We need your help to build the future of independent news media and we hope to see you@breaking points.com.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Good morning and welcome to Breaking Points. Emily, I was just telling Mac I feel like we need to do like a four or five hour show.

[Krystal Ball]

Yeah, we could easily fill four to five hours.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Yeah, A lot to get through today.

[Krystal Ball]

Just yesterday was jam packed news day. Today's jam packed news day. Donald Trump is in the uk. He's doing a state visit. There's going to be all kinds of stuff for Crystal and Saga to talk about tomorrow. I'm sure they'll have stuff to talk about when it comes to Ukraine and all of that. But just, man, do we have a lot to get through.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Yes. And we've got a lot more information about the Charlie Kirk assassination. Start with that. We're also going to be joined after that by Ken Kibenstein who once again in the midst of one of these investigations, managed to get his hands on some significant documents and reporting and published it, giving us deeper insight into the kind of social network of the alleged shooter. So we'll, we'll be speaking with him. TikTok may be falling.

[Krystal Ball]

Maybe so.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Yes. So there's a deal with, what is it? Oracle. Andreessen Horowitz, Oracle's Larry Ellison's company now. The richest man in the world who has, by the way, donated millions upon millions of dollars to the friends of the idf. Like so that's who is now going to be owning a TikTok if this deal goes through. He's also going to own a lot of the rest of the media after the. What? Warner Brothers, cbs. Yeah. His son.

[Krystal Ball]

Yeah.

[Saagar Enjeti]

The Ellison family is going to own a lot of what's in front of your face.

[Krystal Ball]

Big chunk.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Yes.

[Krystal Ball]

Big chunk of it.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Yes. Kash Patel testified before the Senate yesterday.

[Krystal Ball]

Yes.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Interesting Epstein stuff there, right?

[Krystal Ball]

Yeah. We're going to break down the Epstein stuff. Of course he Talked also about other aspects, and we learned particularly some interesting details. I don't know if you saw this, Brian yet, but Chuck Grassley revealed some new documents about Arctic Frost, like Operation Arctic Frost, which is apparently an FBI probe into groups like Turning Point USA actually related to the 2020 and how they may have been. They were subpoenaed to nail down what the FBI thought was a conspiracy to overturn that election. So Cash Patel is talking all kinds of things yesterday. Epstein Kirk, January 6 still. And the Epstein stuff in particular is really worth picking through. It looks like it's possible he lied under oath. So we have a lot to get to on that front. Also, Luigi Mangioni, his terrorism charges were dropped yesterday, so obviously he's still on trial for murder. You're still charged with murder, but the terrorism aspect of that means the sentencing will be different.

[Saagar Enjeti]

And meanwhile, you and Crystal are in trouble.

[Krystal Ball]

Oh, gosh.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Or you guys can look this up. They're actually in trouble.

[Krystal Ball]

Me slash Crystal.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Nobody knows who's Crystal because Crystal reported as a journalist would do that. It matters, apparently to the public that Luigi is more attractive than Tyler Robinson. And you got in trouble for chuckling. Yeah, I think I wasn't paying attention, so I, like, dodged that bullet.

[Krystal Ball]

You made a Boogaloo Boys joke, but I think maybe it's just too much of a deep cut. Yeah, it's too much of a deep cut to get in trouble. Yeah.

[Saagar Enjeti]

We have Fox News watching our show now and clipping it and putting it up on their show.

[Krystal Ball]

Yeah. The sad part of it is that my streak of not wearing makeup for the Friday shows is over. If cable news producers are watching it.

[Saagar Enjeti]

I'm gonna work on it.

[Krystal Ball]

Yeah, we'll see.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Don't worry about those producers.

[Krystal Ball]

We'll see. There's only so much time in a day.

[Saagar Enjeti]

And then we'll be talking about the incursion, the ongoing incursion into Gaza. There is a systematic effort to destroy any building that has any connection to Gaza City history. We'll talk about that. As well as a new UN Commission on investigations determination that what everybody has been saying is true, that Israel is committing genocide, but this is now the United nations saying it. We'll talk about. Talk about that. As well as the Genoa dock workers resolving to go to launch a port strike on September 22 if the humanitarian flotilla on its way to Gaza is impeded. So we'll get into all of that. Let's start with Charlie Kirk.

[Krystal Ball]

Yes. So Tyler Robinson was formally charged in Utah yesterday, and we actually have a Clip of Robinson's interaction with the judge. We are going to go through the full charging document. It is about 10 pages long. We'll break out some of the critical moments of it. Let's first start with this video of Robinson and a judge yesterday in Utah. Mr. Robinson recount one. Aggravated murder, a capital felony in violation of Utah code annotated 76. 5 202.

[Saagar Enjeti]

In that on September 10, 2025, in Utah county, the defendant, Tyler James Robinson intentionally or knowingly caused the death of Charlie Kirk under the following circumstances.

[Krystal Ball]

The defendant knowingly created a great risk.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Of death to another individual other than Charlie Kirk and the defendant. Notice conviction of this offense may carry.

[Krystal Ball]

The death penalty or pursuant to Utah.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Code 76.3.207.7, a mandatory term of imprisonment for life without parole or an indeterminate term of not less than 25 years. That may be for life. Victim targeting enhancement in violation of Utah code annotated 76. 3.203.14 sub 2. Tyler James Robinson intentionally selected Charlie Kirk because of Tyler James Robinson's belief or.

[Krystal Ball]

Perception regarding Charlie Kirk's political expression. Notice if the trier of fact finds.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Beyond a reasonable doubt that the victim targeting enhancement applies.

[Krystal Ball]

So this is one critical excerpt from the charging documents. We can go through this on the screen right now. We're actually going to read through basically the whole thing because this is an exchange with Robinson and Robinson's roommate slash lover. Robinson said, I am still okay, my love, but in. Stuck in Orem for a little while longer. This is after the shooting. Shouldn't be long until I can come home, but I got to grab my rifle. Still, to be honest, I'd hoped to keep this secret till I died of old age. I am sorry to involve you. The roommate identified in the charging document as a roommate. You weren't the one who did it, right? Robinson? I am. I'm sorry. Roommate. I thought they caught the person. Robinson. No, they grabbed some crazy old dude, then interrogated someone in similar clothing. I had planned to grab my rifle from my drop point shortly after, but most of that side of town got locked down. It's quiet, almost enough to get out. But there's one vehicle lingering. The roommate says, why? Robinson says, why did I do it? Roommate? Yeah, Robinson. I had enough of his hatred. Some hate can't be negotiated out. If I am able to grab my rifle unseen, I will have left no evidence. Going to attempt to retrieve it again. Hopefully they have moved on. I haven't seen anything about them finding it. How long have you been planning This a bit over a week. Robinson replies, I believe I can get close to it, but there is a squad car parked right by it. I think they already swept that spot, but I don't want to chance it. Robinson goes on, I'm wishing I had circled back and grabbed it as soon as I got to my vehicle. I'm worried what my old man would do if I didn't bring back Grandpa's rifle. I don't even know if it had a serial number, but it wouldn't trace to me. I worry about prints. I had to leave it in a bush where I changed outfits. Didn't have the ability or time to bring it with. I might have to abandon it and hope they don't find Prince. How the fuck will explain losing it to my old man? Only thing I left was the rifle wrapped in a towel. Remember how I was engraving bullets? The fucking messages are mostly a big meme. If I see notices bulge uwu on Fox new, I might have a stroke. All right, I'm gonna have to leave it. That really fucking sucks. So, Ryan, a lot to break down from that exchange. Obviously, there are other messages being left out, which I'm curious what else the investigators have at this point, because what they're including in the charging document is just to make the charges stick. It's to make their point that they have evidence he did this. He did it because he said Charlie represented hate that can't be negotiated out. It's abundantly clear at this point that it was somebody who was targeting Kirk from the left. And there are all kinds of layers of irony, of course, going in. As they mentioned, the notices of bulges meme on the bullet engravings, all of that stuff obviously still exists. But what do you make of that exchange?

[Saagar Enjeti]

To me, going into it, there were three possible motivations that a shooter like this could have. One would be just pure nihilistic notoriety. Two would be fuentes groiper style. Well, I'm a white nationalist, and I think that this guy's too far to the left of, oh, they bitterly hated Charlie. Bitterly hate each other. Or from the left, somebody in the LGBT world who thinks that Charlie Kirk is filled with hate towards them. And so this seems like it's the third possibility.

[Krystal Ball]

Right.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Like, it just seems pretty clear.

[Krystal Ball]

Right. Doesn't seem like it was some sort of, like, communist William McKinley. It seems like it was a cultural, like you were saying, gender motivated.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Right, Right. Which is interesting because there's also something very contemporary about the way that we're analyzing this, how we're all trying to get inside the guy's head and divine his precise political ideology and his precise thoughts. When in the past, like you said, say McKinley or say some anarchist who killed a czar or somebody, or John Wills Booth killing Lincoln, what you do is you look for their associates and their political faction that they are connected with. What is the material political tendency that exists that is organized to carry out this action? And that's a materialist understanding of the world.

[Krystal Ball]

Right.

[Saagar Enjeti]

What we have is an ideological idealist even. And I don't mean idealist as in like somebody who loves the world, just idealist in kind of the Marxist sense of the term, where you're getting into somebody's ideas. And there's something very contemporary, like I said about that because it's neoliberal, it's individualistic, it's kind of pulling society apart. Just saying that there is no society. All we have are just individual thoughts. And then if we can figure out what this individual thought is that drove him to do this thing, then if we find the other people that share those thoughts, we crack down on all of that and that's the solution to it. And yeah, that's kind of a dark place to take this to. So, yeah, there's just something very present in our politics about just rooting through this guy's mind, trying to try to figure it out. Now, at the same time, maybe that's cope on my part, because going into this, I would have hoped that it was not somebody from the left, because I don't want to believe that the left is capable of doing that. And the left broadly did not do this. A person who felt Charlie Kirk was filled with hate did this.

[Krystal Ball]

And there's micro macro.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Yeah. And like you said, it's not. They're not communists, not socialists, not anarchists. And we're going to talk to Ken Klippenstein about this.

[Krystal Ball]

Not that we know.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Didn't seem to have. Who knows, we'll see. But like, it doesn't seem like he had those. It was more those cultural politics.

[Krystal Ball]

Yeah.

[Saagar Enjeti]

And now maybe we will find that there was some organized militia associated with this. Who knows? Yeah, no, I mean, there's still a lot to learn about.

[Krystal Ball]

I mean, there's Zizzian stuff out there. There's all kinds of weird possibilities that we haven't gotten to the bottom of yet. And there are a lot of unanswered questions that remain. I have been thinking about this in recent days along the lines of micro blame and macro blame. Microblame is important because, you know, this person, from what we know, would not have been stopped by Gavin Newsom or Joe Biden or Josh Shapiro or before the shooting happened, coming out. And in fact, Gavin Newsom sat down with Charlie Kirk and debated some of this, actually just within recent minds. It's not as though this person would have been persuaded to stop a plot of political violence by Barack Obama coming out and saying political violence is wrong. That's not the case. This person is responsible for pulling the trigger. As far as we know, as of right now, we're not saying any other questions are irrelevant, because they are. And I'm going to get to that in just one moment. But that's the micro blame. The macro blame is, yes, a climate where more and more people associate, I think, what are our good faith mainstream political disagreements with hate. And that's a different question. You know, that wouldn't be solved like that either. You snap your fingers, that wouldn't be solved like that either. But I do think that's something we genuinely need to think about. And of course, not saying, you know, someone brought this up, the over application of the term groomers by people on the right. I'm not saying, you know, something like that isn't wrong, but a conservative was just gunned down in cold blood on a college campus. So it's appropriate right now to spend a little bit of time reflecting on how we got from. From point A to point B. Ryan on that. I also think it's worth noting Steve Bannon has said he doesn't buy these text messages. He says they feel a little bit too scripted. He says it seems like a script, actually a bad script. What did you make of that? Some people we were talking to producer Mac before the show, he was saying even the word vehicle, using the word vehicle is a little weird in text messages to a friend. The old man line is one people have pulled out. I don't know.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Well, so I listened to Bannon's take on this, and, yeah, he's saying, I don't buy this. This feels like it's too convenient. It's too scripted. He's laying out all the evidence so that the FBI can just kind of tie this up in a bow and move on. But Bannon had one, I think misinterpretation. One thing that Bannon was saying was focusing on this, the gun. And so Bannon was saying, you're worried about how your parents are gonna react to the gun showing, Grandpa's gun being gone. I think they're gonna care more about the fact that you just allegedly killed somebody in cold blood. Right. That's a misunderstanding. The reason that Tyler is concerned about his parents not having an explanation for where the gun is is that he can't explain where the gun is, and it ties him to the killing. He's in. In his mind, he's still trying to get away with it. It's also. So I. But I think people also. Yes. Like, it doesn't read like a typical Gen Z text exchange.

[Krystal Ball]

Yeah.

[Saagar Enjeti]

He. Look at his ACT scores. This is not a typical Gen Z kid. He's like 99th percentile in acts after going to, I think, a Utah, Southern Utah public school.

[Krystal Ball]

Yeah.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Like, that is a different mind than the average Gen Z person. So you have to think about that when you're analyzing whether or not this could be authentic or not.

[Krystal Ball]

That's a good point.

[Saagar Enjeti]

It's not. It's not typical. But he's not. He's also not typical. He also just assassinated somebody.

[Krystal Ball]

Right.

[Saagar Enjeti]

It's not remotely typical.

[Krystal Ball]

Well, that's another thing that Bannon brought. Well, yeah, good point that Bannon brought up is he had time to write all of this. And he said, I don't buy that he had time to write. I think Bannon referred to it as a sonnet.

[Saagar Enjeti]

It sounds like he's sitting there looking at the squad car.

[Krystal Ball]

Right.

[Saagar Enjeti]

So he's got time and he's.

[Krystal Ball]

From this document or from this exchange even just sticking with it. He's talking about that he hasn't seen anyone saying they found the rifle yet, which meant he was following the news coverage.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Yeah, And. Right, exactly. Which is chilling on Twitter and. Yeah, probably TikTok or whatever.

[Krystal Ball]

Yeah.

[Saagar Enjeti]

And so there's also a part that is very Gen Z, which is y' all can't stop interacting on social media and texting like you guys just can't do it. Like. So he says towards the end, I don't have. I can't find the exact quote, but he says, this was something I would. I hoped I would be like, confessing to as an. Oh, as an old man on my deathbed or whatever guy you're texting in real time with another person. That fundamental disconnect does seem actually very Gen Z people. Like, they just tell everybody everything.

[Krystal Ball]

Yeah. It's an incontinence.

[Saagar Enjeti]

You are telling someone that you were hoping you would never tell anybody about this. You're telling somebody right now. Like Woodward and Bernstein. Who. Gen Z, look. Watergate. Look it up.

[Krystal Ball]

Complicit.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Yeah, they were the reporters. They were the Washington Post reporters who broke Watergate. They had a source called Deep Throat. They took the identity of that source to the source's grave. The deal was when the source died they could talk about it and they did not tell their friends about it at a party. This was the 70s and 80s and Bernstein in particular was he partied with the Hollywood crew to this day off of Watergate. Is he still alive? He might be. Anyway, he died out on that forever. Woodward just wrote books about it forever. Or wrote books about Washington. But they never told anybody and they didn't tell anybody the name and then say this is the secret that I'm hoping to take to my grave. So that part is so Gen Z that I don't think some Bob Woodward.

[Krystal Ball]

On a Discord server from the Arlington parking garage.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Yeah, yeah, right. Woodward in the parking garage. I'm in a parking garage meeting. FBI.

[Krystal Ball]

You won't believe it.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Number three in the FBI. Don't tell anybody. Yeah, so I don't think there's any Gen X detective that could concoct that level of Gen Z.

[Krystal Ball]

That's next level.

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[Krystal Ball]

Ah, come on. Why is this taking so long? This thing is ancient.

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[Krystal Ball]

Whoa. This thing moves.

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[Krystal Ball]

Other things from the charging Doc Robinson's mother, quote, explained that over the last year or so Robinson had become more political and had started to lean more to the left, becoming more pro gay and trans rights oriented. She stated that Robinson began to date his roommate, a biological male who was trans transitioning genders. This resulted in several discussions with family members, but especially between Robinson and his father with very different political views. In one conversation before the shooting, Robinson mentioned that Charlie Kirk would be holding an event at uvu, which Robinson said was, quote, a stupid venue for the event. Robinson accused Kirk of spreading hate. And then it goes on to say the family saw the surveillance image of the suspected shooter in the news, that it looked like their son confronted the son, brought the son into a family friend who was a deputy sheriff, retired deputy sheriff, and they convinced Robinson to go turn himself in. It looks like that the roommate is cooperating, Ryan. It seems like that's where they got some of these messages. Now the roommate received a text message From Robinson on September 10th, according to this, which said drop what you were doing, look under my keyboard. The roommate looked under the keyboard and found a note that stated, quote, I had the opportunity to take out Charlie Kirk and I'm going to take it. The police found a picture of the note. Apparently not the note, it's itself. Which might Ryan get to the reports that suggested something had been deleted and then that after the note is found that's when the exchange happens that we just read through.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Notice that they have a photo of that note.

[Krystal Ball]

Yes.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Not the note itself.

[Krystal Ball]

Not the note itself.

[Saagar Enjeti]

So where's the note? Did they burn the note? Throw the note away? Where's the note?

[Krystal Ball]

Well, yeah, I mean, let's get to this because there are, I think, a lot of remaining questions, including a big one, actually, that Megyn Kelly raised, which is how did Tyler Robinson, who was planning this for apparently a week, according to this exchange, know that on the roof there wouldn't be security? I'm sure you can go look at other Kirk events. And it's unusual for there to be security on a roof of a. Of a campus event. Grant everyone that. But after Butler big speaking tour, how do you know for sure there's not going to be anyone up there? How do you know for sure that you're going to have a clear line of sight to reach Kirk from there? That there aren't going to be banners that are put up or obstructions in one way or the other?

[Saagar Enjeti]

Maybe he went up the night before, like, we don't know.

[Krystal Ball]

Yeah, he may have. Yeah, absolutely.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Possible also, he could go and see if there's security and if there is, abort the mission.

[Krystal Ball]

Right? Yeah, entirely possible. Entirely possible. That's why normally you don't have a suspect like this alive, frankly. And so I'm sure we'll learn a lot more about Tyler Robinson's story on what happened.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Right. And also, I think one thing that people should take away from this to that point is that you basically cannot get away with this in the United States anymore.

[Krystal Ball]

Or could. Could Robinson have gotten away with it if he hadn't been turned in?

[Saagar Enjeti]

Well, you're gonna get turned in like, so the. Because the way. The reason you can't get away with this is mass. Mass surveillance. Ring cameras, dash cameras, security cameras. Cameras, cameras, cameras, absolutely everywhere. He. He very effectively, as the police said, walked with his head down, a hat pulled down, sunglasses, changed clothes. He did everything that he could, except he probably should have put on a Covid mask, and maybe that would have helped, like, you know, mask up now maybe Utah, it's not cool to, like, mask up, so.

[Krystal Ball]

Right. It might have looked suspicious. Right.

[Saagar Enjeti]

But you're gonna have some people masking anyway. Not that I'm giving advice here because I want people to get caught doing this, actually.

[Krystal Ball]

Yes.

[Saagar Enjeti]

So he did basically everything he could, and they still got a clear picture of him and. Yes. Okay. Let's imagine a world where your parents don't turn you in. In most cases. Your parents are turning you in for this.

[Krystal Ball]

I'm sorry.

[Saagar Enjeti]

If your parents don't turn you in, your cousin is going to turn you in, your uncle is going to turn you in, your aunt is going to turn you in, the person in your chemistry class is going to turn you in. In this world, hundreds of people know what we look like and somebody's going to notice and somebody's going to be not okay with you doing what you did. Some are going to be okay with it. Some will love you and won't turn you in. Some are going to turn you in. So that's why I'm saying even if you get away at the scene, in an era of mass surveillance and plus.

[Krystal Ball]

Well, that's an interesting part of the charging document. It talks about how they have surveillance footage of him going up to the roof and leaving the roof, but not of the shot happening. It doesn't mention that, of course, but it mentions. It talks about how you have surveillance video of him going up to the roof.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Right. There are spaces in this world that are not.

[Krystal Ball]

Well, I also find that. But that's what I thought. To your point, I think that's quite interesting because we also know there was.

[Saagar Enjeti]

That could get away with this. And a state level assassin like who is able to understand where all the cameras are and you've got, you know, Ocean's Eleven style or like, you know, maybe then you can get away with that type of assassination and you exfiltrate back to your country immediately and you're wearing a ski mask or something like that, like professional assassins. Okay. But like a regular person whose face is gonna be out there and they're not going anywhere. Like you can't get away with it.

[Krystal Ball]

So another odd.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Which is to me a good thing. So that means people are gonna have to. It goes back to the school shooter mindset like that you're going in and you're not coming back out.

[Krystal Ball]

Right. Which is again something different from this case. Especially when you have someone saying that they hoped to take the secret to their grave, but they had also.

[Saagar Enjeti]

And they're telling that to that to somebody.

[Krystal Ball]

Right. And posted about it in the Discord, one of the Discord servers as well. We'll get into that with Ken. But let's go ahead and bring this other element of the story in. This is something that people thought was very weird at first. This is a three. George Zinn. Do you remember the name George Zinn from the frenzy last week? This is according to tmz, the man.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Claiming he did It.

[Krystal Ball]

Yeah, he claimed he did it. The man accused of obstructing the Charlie Kirk murder probe is even in more hot water. He's now been charged with possessing child porn. George Zinn, who falsely told police he shot Kirk moments after the attack, was charged with obstruction of justice following the death of Charlie Kirk, quote. Now Zinn has been charged with four counts of sexual exploitation of a minor after FBI agents examined his phone and found images of underage girls dressed only in their underwear. According to court documents filed Tuesday by Utah prosecutors. The docs say Zinn admitted to the feds he gets, quote, sexually aroused by children. And you will remember, of course, he said after the shooting, he basically was saying that he did it. Right, Ryan? And then at one point, I think he said he did it. So he did that so that the shooter could get away. This is the story from George Zinn.

[Saagar Enjeti]

This whole storyline just feels designed to get people to believe that the official story is bogus.

[Krystal Ball]

Right, Right.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Like, you could. You could not stitch up a side narrative less compelling or more compelling, depending on your perspective here. Because if people don't know, this whole CSAA thing is a. It's almost a meme at this point that, like, if you are inconvenient to the government, look out. You're going to find. You're going to wind up with something on your. On your computer. So to see that used here now, I have no reason to think that, like, this guy is apparently a known figure around town.

[Krystal Ball]

Yeah.

[Saagar Enjeti]

One of those kind of many such cases. Weirdos.

[Krystal Ball]

Gadfly.

[Saagar Enjeti]

We're all gadflys around town. All the police, like, kind of knew his name.

[Krystal Ball]

Yeah.

[Saagar Enjeti]

And does a weirdo like that also have CSAA on his phone? I have no problem believing that.

[Krystal Ball]

Yep.

[Saagar Enjeti]

On the other hand, this is becoming a thing. And like, FBI, careful how many times you use that bullet.

[Krystal Ball]

I guess he said he wanted to cause a distraction for the actual gunman. But also at one point, he said he, quote, wanted to be a martyr for the person who was shot. Another quote. This is from the.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Just all of a sudden, he comes up with this plan.

[Krystal Ball]

It's weird. The DA tells the Salt Lake Tribune almost every political event you can think of, there was always George somewhere in the background listening. So he was, like, part of the local.

[Saagar Enjeti]

We have those here in D.C. we have more. We have several of their names.

[Krystal Ball]

That's another odd wrinkle in all of this. We learned a lot more yesterday, and.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Frankly, I wouldn't be surprised if some of them had shot sex, abuse I.

[Krystal Ball]

Would be surprised if some of them didn't. Right, yes.

[Saagar Enjeti]

So that's the anti conspiracy side, like these people, these weirdos exist.

[Krystal Ball]

That's true. Yes. And yeah, absolutely.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Take it from us, who do these public events.

[Krystal Ball]

Great point. Yes, great point. And get the weirdo messages and all of that stuff. Yes, we're probably more familiar than most with this type, but so this is all of the new details that we learned yesterday today from the charging document. Now the conversation about our national politics also took another kind of. It had another ugly wrinkle yesterday. Not a surprising one, but an ugly one related to more comments from Ezra Klein actually reflecting on the reaction that he got to his first reaction in the wake of Charlie Kirk's assassination. So here's a little bit.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Oh, go ahead, let's do them in a different order. 5.

[Krystal Ball]

Yeah, yeah.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Because so this was the piece that probably everybody in the country has seen at this point. His headline, charlie Kirk was practicing politics the right way. He gets enormous amount of blowback for this piece from obviously from the center.

[Krystal Ball]

Left and the left, which is really just saying Charlie Kirk was inviting debate and conversation.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Right.

[Krystal Ball]

Which Ezra Klein says don't agree with. The guy says things that I find very, very wrong. But, but the baseline foundational reality is that he was inviting debate and conversation. Hated or loved it.

[Saagar Enjeti]

It was nonviolent, it was speech. And so here. So then he, he then had already interviewed Ben Shapiro because Ben Shapiro was on a book tour. And so that interview was in the can before Charlie Kirk was assassinated. So he published that interview, but also added a kind of preamble response rebuttal to the criticism he got for the original piece. We can play just a little taste of that here.

[G]

A4 My reaction honestly is that it is too little to just say we oppose political violence in ways that surprise me. Given what I thought of Kirk's project, I wasn't am grieving for Kirk himself. Not because I knew him, I didn't. Not because he was a saint. He wasn't. Not because I agreed with him. No. Most of what he poured himself into trying to achieve, I pour myself into trying to prevent. But I find myself grieving for him because I recognized some commonality with him. He was murdered for participating in our politics. Somewhere beyond how much divided us, there was something that bonded us too. Some effort to change this country in ways that we think are good. I, I believe this so strongly that we have to be able to see that the bullet that tore into him was an act of violence against us all. I actually believe that. I don't know how to express this thought exactly. The nature of our politics right now, the truth of it is that it is ferocious, that our visions of what is good, our visions just of what is decent, have diverged. The stakes of our politics right now are frightening to me. The consequences for people are very real. We see each other as threats and to some degree we are right and it is somehow also true. It is true at the same time that we will be immeasurably worse off if that is all we are to each other. We are going to have to live here with each other. There will be no fever that breaks. There will be no permanent victory that routes or quiets those who disagree with us.

[Saagar Enjeti]

So for this, what I would find to be rather uncontroversial assertion. Yeah, like we're not going to fight our way out of. We're not going to shoot our way out of this. We all live in the same country. We're going to have to deal with this either violently or nonviolently. And he was dealing with it non violently in that that's the right way to deal with it. He's got an enormous amount of blowback. I've gotten my own for just agreeing with him.

[Krystal Ball]

Yes. I was looking at your feed and couldn't believe it.

[Saagar Enjeti]

It's ugly. It's ugly. And so the counter argument that you can probably read in comments section to this video right now is he was not doing politics the right way. The most. To me, the best point would be whatever his connect, like the denying the election or whatever January 6th, like. Cause if you can show that he was actually trying to overturn an election, okay, that's not the right way of doing things. I don't remember him being involved with January 6th, did he? I think some TPUSA buses came.

[Krystal Ball]

Yeah, they sent buses for the big Trump speech on the ellipse.

[Saagar Enjeti]

But the Trump speech was not like guaranteed to lead to an insurrection.

[Krystal Ball]

No, I mean again, Trump said peacefully, march on the Capitol. Whatever you think about, and I have all of many, many problems with how Trump handled that. It wasn't like a conspiracy plot by Turning Point.

[Saagar Enjeti]

I don't think he was pro insurrection, but whatever. If you think he was, then okay, fine, I will acknowledge that is absolutely not the right way to do politics to sack the Capitol because you don't like the election. That's not. I don't associate him with that. Other people have said, well, he says things I think are racist. He says things that are sexist. He Says things are hateful towards LGBT people. He said, my friend Mehdi Hassan should be deported. Not okay with that, but it's speech. That is all within speech. And so that is what Ezra means by practicing politics the right way. It does not mean that he has good politics or the right politics or the correct politics, or shares your politics. That would be. That would be a different thing.

[Krystal Ball]

There's a willful misreading of it. I think for the sake of catharsis.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Ezra probably would have phrased it slightly differently.

[Ken Klippenstein]

Just.

[Saagar Enjeti]

But maybe not. Like, I don't know.

[Krystal Ball]

No, you should stand by it 100%. Because what he was talking about is that in the most basic sense, which is that he was on a college campus sending people. This is one of the coolest things that Charlie Kirk did, is sending people who disagreed with him to the front of the line and talking, talking. And I actually think there are all kinds of criticisms that can be made about doing politics for the algorithm and doing politics for TikTok and doing like that does all apply. But that's not what Ezra Klein is talking about. He's talking about the most basic skeletal sense of what Charlie Kirk was known for, which was going to college campuses and debating people and eagerly debating people and doing it with speech. Speech can have violent implications and consequences, but it is speech, and it is not violence in and of itself. And that is, I think, an argument that caught fire, particularly. It used to be sort of relegated to the fringes, faculty lounges, talking about Foucault and getting into what actually is. Like, it was very abstract, philosophical discussions about what actually is speech and violence and what is the line and all of that. And then it migrated into this very literal belief amongst. I mean, I've been accused of it. I don't know, like, if you have, Ryan, but when I was in college, I was accused of committing acts of violence with my speech. It's fucked up.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Yeah, yeah, it's completely fucked up sometimes. And you know, at his southern Utah event where he was killed, like, he started the event by saying, all right, give me the best libs Utah has to offer.

[Krystal Ball]

Best libs.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Give me the best libs.

[Krystal Ball]

Yep.

[Saagar Enjeti]

And so then another counterargument is, well, he's there in bad faith. Well, yeah, he's a right wing person. Like, he's not. Yes. And yes. And people say another argument is that he has these rhetorical tricks that he uses on college students where he kind of outmatches them.

[Ken Klippenstein]

Okay.

[Krystal Ball]

That's what debate and argument. Mehdi wrote a book about that. Rhetorical tricks.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Right. So if Mehdi went to a college campus and, like, and he would absolutely make mincemeat of anybody who came before him, including me, is that doing it the wrong way? Because, you know, he's using rhetorical tricks. No, it's still debate. It's still speech. You don't have to like it.

[Krystal Ball]

Yeah.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Doesn't mean you agree with it. But it is. It is not violent.

[Krystal Ball]

Yeah.

[Saagar Enjeti]

And he wasn't even part of the government because you could. You could also say, all right, well, this government is like, fueling a genocide, and it is ISIS out killing people, chaining them. They're awful. They're violent. He's not actually part of the government. He's a supporter of the government. So are 100 plus million people in this country gonna kill all of them? And that. So that gets to Ezra's other point. Let's say you disagree with Ezra.

[Krystal Ball]

Yep.

[Saagar Enjeti]

And you actually think he's not practicing politics the right way.

[Krystal Ball]

Yeah.

[Saagar Enjeti]

What is the right way?

[Krystal Ball]

Right. Is it violence?

[Saagar Enjeti]

Yeah. What's left?

[Krystal Ball]

Yeah. There's violence and nonviolence. There's not a middle ground.

[Saagar Enjeti]

And you can, like, so you will debate or not debate, like, so he can. Can he debate on college campuses or not? Okay, college campuses, they're off limits because the kids are too young. So then he. He can only debate older people. Like, it. It's. It becomes incoherent. It. At some point. Point pretty quickly. And it becomes just a way, I feel like, to show what tribe you're in.

[Krystal Ball]

Yes, it's exactly that. It feels like.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Which is cowardly.

[Krystal Ball]

What Ezra said was deeply unfashionable. It's like the fact that it's unfashionable is what's disturbing. Right. It is like the intellectual equivalent of, like, Crocs. It was him saying the Kumbaya stuff is true and accurate. And. And that isyeah. It's unfashionable because it's not edgy. It's not. AI was thinking about this this morning. It's not a rejection of the establishment. And you'd be hard pressed to find another show of people that are like. Our consensus across Crystal Saga, you and me, is that the establishment is broken and corrupt. And that's a problem. And so I think people who find themselves in our milieu, the fashion is to reflexively disagree with the establishment at every turn. Because the establishment is wrong. We all agree that the establishment is wrong. Well, in this case, I actually agree with the sort of, like, mainstream establishment about where our politics are going. And that's not fashionable. And it's a very cathartic reflex to want to disagree with the people who are saying anything nice about Charlie Kirk, who was friends with a president in power, a president abusing power. And so it's easy to just have that knee jerk reaction, to find your catharsis in it, because there's something that's much more fashionable about disagreeing with the establishment and the elites. And in this case, I actually think, you know, there's. The elites have a point.

[Saagar Enjeti]

And yeah, the other argument that, that people made was, okay, fine, Ezra, but you shouldn't lionize Charlie Kirk.

[Krystal Ball]

Yes.

[Saagar Enjeti]

And I'd have two responses to that. One is that I don't think he was lionizing Charlie Kerr. No, he's saying, I disagree with everything. I spend my life trying to block the things he wants to achieve. But what he was admiring objectively was the fact that he'd built this mass organization around the country, that he'd increased turnout among young people and had done that non violently and had elected a president. Just objectively, he's saying, like, I would have liked the left to have built that instead.

[Krystal Ball]

Yeah.

[Saagar Enjeti]

And so saying that you built power is not lionizing somebody, it is stating an objective fact.

[Krystal Ball]

Right.

[Saagar Enjeti]

And then he, like, I also would even go further and I had some people saying, why aren't you pointing out these like, racist things? He said whatever. Like, because I think in the moment after he's killed.

[Krystal Ball]

Thank you.

[Saagar Enjeti]

If you say, I don't think he should be killed.

[Krystal Ball]

Thank you.

[Saagar Enjeti]

But here's some bad things that I disagree with him over. You are backdoor, implicitly justifying to some people that the killing may have been okay. And that's why you have to stop doing that now. Everybody remembers this on the left when it came to Qasem Soleimani. Remember the assassination of Qasem Soleimani.

[Krystal Ball]

That was such a weird jump. But yes, I know where you're going with this.

[Saagar Enjeti]

I wish Charlie Kirk was here because he would, I think, appreciate this analogy. I'm not saying that he has cost him solemn money.

[Krystal Ball]

No, you are not.

[Saagar Enjeti]

But so right. Leading into the Iowa caucuses, Trump assassinated Qasem Soleimani. Again, this is a Trump move. Trump set up a peace deal. He asked Iraq to broker some peace talks with Iran and the irgc, which brought Qassem Soleimani, who was the head of the irgc, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps brought him to Baghdad. He flies into the civilian airport of Baghdad. He's in a car with his aides and we drone strike him as he's on the way to these peace talks. Sound familiar? We did it to Iran several years later. We just did it to Hamas a couple weeks ago. It's the most cowardly thing and counterproductive thing you can do. You put out a peace deal and then your adversaries gather to consider this peace deal, and then you kill them. Them Cowardly. Disgusting. And so every Democrat put out a statement saying, I deplore Qasem Soleimani's life and work. He's responsible for the killing of thousands of Americans, probably American troops in the Iraq war in the 2000s, as well as kind of a leading figure of building up the axis of resistance. And so every single Democrat said, I disagree with him, I hate who he is. However, Trump should not have done this, you know, cold blood, this extralegal assassination.

[Krystal Ball]

Yep.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Except Bernie Sanders. Yep, Bernie Sanders statement was clear and unequivocal. You do not assassinate figures like this. Like, this is not how we do things in the world. And you save your critique of the person for later because it's beside the point. The critique then justifies the killing in a way. And everyone on the left understood that in the moment. And everyone jumped on Elizabeth Warren and all the other Democrats who led with a mealy mouthed, I hate what this guy stands for. However. So the point is, if you're against the killing, you just say you're against the killing, the killing was wrong, and then you move on.

[Krystal Ball]

And I think the reason is, I mean, there are a bunch of reasons, but the one that stands out to me is that the killing is the much, much, much, much, much more important question in that moment than anything else. Right. It's black and white.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Exactly. Because it's totally uninteresting that an American politician doesn't agree with an IRGC commander's way that he carries out the killing of US Soldiers. Obviously you don't agree with that. And obviously if you're on the left, you don't agree with Charlie Kirk, who's on the right.

[Krystal Ball]

Right.

[Saagar Enjeti]

You need to say that.

[Krystal Ball]

Right.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Who doesn't know that?

[Krystal Ball]

Right, right. So, no, it doesn't give you any more credibility to condemn his murder while.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Saying it undermines your credibility thoroughly.

[Krystal Ball]

Just wanted to highlight what I thought was the most important point that Ezra made, which is he said, quote, much of what I would describe as Kirk's worst moments were standard fare MAGA Republicanism. And that is a hugely critical, I think, description from his perspective.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Right, right. And he says the chief proponent of which is the President of the United States. Yeah, you can't kill everybody who agrees with the president.

[Krystal Ball]

And again, like this is Donald Trump won the popular vote this time. Charlie Kirk was winning hearts and minds on social media. Like there are a lot, a lot, a lot of people who followed that guy. He had a lot of fans. Donald Trump has a lot of fans. There are a lot of people who believe what Charlie Kirk and Donald Trump believe. And some of them, by the way, Sager and I believe what some of what Donald Trump and Charlie Kirk believe and is just the idea that you are, we've inflated. And Ryan, you wrote a fantastic piece about this. I always talk about, but elephant in the zoom about the overinflation of definitions that the left has engaged in. And I'm not again saying that the right doesn't do it too. And I shouldn't even be doing this throat clearing again because a conservative was just shot in cold blood on a college campus. But that's a real problem I think that the left has had over the last 10 years is over inflating some of these definitions. Racism, bigotry, sexism, misogyny. Again, there are real, practical, literal definitions of some of those terms that can be applied to people on the right. Like, I'll debate whether I'm a sexist racist all day. I'm fine, we'll do it. But to over inflate those definitions impugns people en masse in ways that are intentional. I think on the left they wouldn't say, yes, I do agree that every person who voted for Donald Trump is a racist in some respect. That's the argument. But actually it's literally not true. Charlie Kirk did not believe that people were inferior because of their race. He did not believe that. His quotes in context did not say that. And he didn't live his life that way. He worshiped with people of all faith, of all stripes and all different backgrounds. He had turning point outreach to young black conservatives and young black Americans. He was like nothing but compassionate towards gay conservatives and actually gay liberals when he was in conversation with them. So disagree with how he handles those things, sure. But to impugn him and say that he thinks people are lesser than in like actual, like their worth as human beings, that's a different question than what you think the policy implications of his beliefs are. And that's what I think gets really, really dangerous.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Yeah. And one of the quotes that I see going around all the time is where he said something like, if I see a black pilot. I'm going to wonder if they're worse. Yes, and I understand why everyone on the left sees that as a completely racist thing to say. You see a black person and your mind goes inferior. The point that he was trying to make, I'm not defending him here, but the point he was trying to make was because of the existence of, in their minds, quotas. I don't think there are quotas, but let's say there were quotas. In his mind, he thinks there are quotas where affirmative action requires an airline to hire X number of black candidates, whether or not they have X number of black qualified candidates. That's in his mind. So his mind then says, oh, this person was hired to fill this quota. So what he's saying is affirmative action actually fuels racism rather than redresses racism. So I agree or disagree with that. That's the point he's making there, which is a different point than the one that I think people were jumping on him for. And with, you know, he was, you know, coming after Sheila Jackson Lee and Michelle Obama saying that they don't have the brain power and Ketanji Brown Jackson, they don't have the brain power that they needed affirmative action. Like, I think that's just objectively ridiculous. Like, I think they obviously are extremely smart women, but what he was saying is that they suspect that they said that they benefited from affirmative action.

[Krystal Ball]

Right. So you then are.

[Saagar Enjeti]

So he's like, well, if you saying that, what you're acknowledging. So you know, it's getting down in the weeds of. And a lot of his following does have bias against black people. Like, I think significant number. So, like, I get where people are coming from, but that's the conversation that was going on.

[Krystal Ball]

Yeah, it was an argument that you get from Thomas Sowell, Clarence Thomas, Walter Williams about the effects of affirmative action. We don't have to go into any more of that.

[Saagar Enjeti]

But Clarence Thomas hated it more than anybody.

[Krystal Ball]

Right. And okay, so we've been talking about this for like 50 minutes now. And I just want to say because these conversations are so fraught and the experience, I don't know about you, Ryan, over the last week has been like incredibly depressing. The way everyone is racing to get clips or get like just.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Right. And we haven't even gotten into. I know Crystal and Saga did, but the whole right wing organizing safe spaces and getting into cancel culture.

[Krystal Ball]

Well, yeah, there's that too. There's just an explosion of cancel culture all around. And it's because everybody is on edge and everybody's trying to cope with this in different ways, many of which I think are algorithmically programmed to be incredibly ugly. Because actually you don't have to say things. You literally just don't have to say things. But when the seduction of the algorithm is right in front of you, promising those dopamine hits for likes and retweets, people err on the side of posting, unfortunately.

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[Krystal Ball]

Ah, come on. Why is this taking so long? This thing is ancient.

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[Krystal Ball]

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[Krystal Ball]

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[Krystal Ball]

Let'S get to Tucker Carlson Ryan, who did a stream just last night with some other prominent friends of Charlie Kirk's, remembering Charlie Kirk and of course, then getting into some of the controversial questions about whether or not Kirk was moving on the question of foreign policy towards Israel in the days and weeks before his death. So let's roll this video of Tucker Carlson.

[Saagar Enjeti]

A slight I don't think I've ever seen anything lower than his attempt to hijack Charlie's memory and use it for his own political ends, particularly because what he said was completely untrue. Charlie didn't hate Jews. He loved Jews. He had tons of friends who were Jews. He loved the state of Israel, loved going there. He did not like Bibi Netanyahu. And he said that to me many.

[Ken Klippenstein]

Times and he said to people around.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Him many times he felt that Bibi Netanyahu was a, a very destructive force. He was appalled by what was happening in Gaza. He was above all resentful that he believed Netanyahu was using the United States to prosecute his wars for the benefit of his country and that it was shameful and embarrassing and bad for the United States and he resented it.

[Krystal Ball]

So the, if you, if you're not like super hyper online, you may have missed some of the context about the Ackman saga. But this is becoming a really significant subplot in the broader conversation about what happened to Charlie Kirk. Bill Ackman and others allegedly convened what's now being billed as sort of an intervention for Charlie Kirk in the Hamptons in early August. And Ackman and others who were there have rejected the characterization of it as an intervention. It was sort of billed as an influencer summit for people on the right. And apparently they talked about Israel as part of their conversations in the Hamptons. But Tucker Carlson, Matt Gaetz, Candace Owens.

[Saagar Enjeti]

And others last night.

[Krystal Ball]

Yeah. Are coming out and saying Charlie did express to them he was privately and he talked about this publicly too. So it's not exactly surprising. But. But privately had expressed he was under pretty significant pressure from the pro Israel side to not give a platform to people like Dave Smith who were Critical of Israel. In fact, actually Charlie had Sager on. People probably remember, I believe it was back in July, late July. So before this influencer summit to talk about Epstein documents. A potential Israel connection. Epstein documents. And that really was. Was upsetting.

[Saagar Enjeti]

And have Sager on after saga was on. Tucker is more. Even more infuriating.

[Krystal Ball]

Yes. Extra to the Ackmans of the world.

[Saagar Enjeti]

And had Ackman at his conference. I mean, it had Tucker at his conference trashing Ackman.

[Krystal Ball]

You pointed out as we were prepping this segment, an interesting bit of the timeline.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Yeah. So if you want to actually try to get a sense of what. Because what went down at this meeting, slash intervention, whatever you want to call it, understand this. The dates are August 4th and August 5th and it was held in the Hamptons. If you watch this show, you have probably seen the viral clip of Charlie Kirk on Megyn Kelly's program really lashing out at people who are coming after him saying stop telling me what I can say and I can't say about my own government. Who do you think you are? How dare you attack my moral character. You've seen this clip probably. If you haven't, you can go find it. You can look up when that appearance was. That was August 6th. And he is heated in that clip. He is worked up. So according to Ackman and Seth Dillon and others who were. Seth Dillon also acknowledged that he was there invited by Kirk. It was cordial. It was just some chit chat, some good food and some panels and everything was fine. According to Kirk's friends, he felt intimidated and he felt like he was being pushed in an aggressive posture with money being used as the pressure. So those are the two different claims about this event that was held on the 4th and the 5th. Go and rewatch his appearance on Megyn Kelly on the sixth.

[Krystal Ball]

Yeah.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Take his temperature. And you ask me if that is a guy who just came out of a cordial session where they just, you know, shared some blueberry muffin tops and enjoyed, you know, the Bridgeport views.

[Krystal Ball]

Well, and there's also the possibility that conversations happened on the sidelines. Of course. Right. That other people who parted something ticked him off. Yeah, right.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Something. Something made him very angry right before that Megyn Kelly appearance.

[Krystal Ball]

Well, and I think, you know, he'd been getting this for months. And same with a lot of people. Yeah, for months and months and months. And some of the reporting is now that actually you can see this. He convened a focus group of young conservatives on Israel. And one of the things that people were saying More and more, or that people are saying he was privately expressing is that what was really driving some of the upset on the young right is just being told what they can and cannot. It wasn't necessarily about policy so much as it was about speech and so much as it was about, like, offering any criticism. And that's what was really sort of driving him to be more public about some of this. And.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Yeah, I mean, September 2nd.

[Krystal Ball]

What was September 2nd?

[Saagar Enjeti]

The focus group.

[Krystal Ball]

Oh, I think he did one earlier in the summer, too. But, yeah, that was another thing that had been happening actually, after. Yeah, I had intended to send him a note and I never did it to just thank him for being honest and standing up back then.

[Saagar Enjeti]

But it's a reminder. You gotta send those messages 100%.

[Krystal Ball]

Yeah. Yep, you do. But. And also for his conversation with Sager, which was very well done and very fair. And I think people underestimate how hard that is to do. Just like people underestimate, people on the left underestimate how hard it is for you and Crystal to sit next to Sagar and me sometimes. And people on the right underestimate how hard it is, like, how much backlash we get. You know what I mean? Like. But it's just people underestimate what goes on behind the scenes. And, like, the trash that you get for just sitting next to someone who disagrees with you and who your friends disagree with, it's constant. And I can't imagine, especially for somebody like Charlie Kirk, who had been going back to. Back and forth to Israel probably, probably like once a year, at least over the last 10 years. I just, you know, it's hard.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Yeah. It looks like this focus group was late July.

[Krystal Ball]

Late July.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Yeah.

[Krystal Ball]

So the timeline there is quite interesting.

[Saagar Enjeti]

In terms of it was about a week before this Hamptons event.

[Krystal Ball]

And, yeah, who knows what was happening on the sidelines of that. You know, people can say we didn't see any pressure or whatever, but, you know, there could have been different conversations that happened, certainly, and we're going to learn more about them. But, man, it is.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Unwatch what he is saying about Netanyahu, by the way. So Netanyahu has done multiple things. One is that Netanyahu went on air and read a letter that Kirk wrote to him in May. And he read a line of it that says, I love visiting Israel. I love Israel. And then he stops right there.

[Krystal Ball]

Netanyahu does.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Netanyahu stops. So Candace Owens said, release the whole letter. Because I know that that letter was actually a lot of criticism of you and that makes sense. Like, that's the kind of line that you start with, hey, I love you. You're my good friend, always supported you. But. And everything that comes after the but is what's important. That was frustrating to Candace Owens, Tucker and others. And also, so Netanyahu went on air and said, I recently spoke with him and apparently it was at this intervention, like he called into this thing. I recently spoke with Charlie Kirk and I invited him to come visit Israel. And now that visit won't happen. And if you notice the phrasing of that, it leaves out what Kirk's friends say, which is that Kirk told him no, that he felt like it was an attempt to kind of bully him and pressure him him. And he said no. So, yes, that trip will not happen. He's been assassinated. But you're leaving out a key detail.

[Krystal Ball]

Yeah, very gross.

[Saagar Enjeti]

You're trying to drape yourself in him.

[Krystal Ball]

Yeah, that's very, very, very gross. And it's going to be used. I mean, this is all going to be used as a football. And the truth probably, by the way, is that if we're trying to read between the lines and see what Charlie may or may not have said about Candace Owens or may or may not have said about Israel, the truth is probably that people who are reflecting on their conversations are. I mean, he was trying to get along with different people in different conversations. And that's also a very difficult thing to do. If you maybe he did disagree bitterly with Candace Owens on certain things. And I'm sure that's also the case when his other friends confront him about another friend's politics that they disagree with bitterly, he's probably going to say, yeah, I don't agree with her. And then they can take that conversation and go forward, as opposed to him being like, hey, listen, if you're in a private conversation, you're probably trying to get along with everyone. And so you can probably have both of these things being true at once, that Charlie was telling Candace and others, Matt Gaetz, maybe privately, that he was frustrated with Netanyahu, and then he was telling pro Israel people that he was frustrated a bit with Candace. All of these things can be true at once.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Right.

[Krystal Ball]

He didn't know that these conversations were going to turn into political football when he was assassinated.

[Saagar Enjeti]

He was also asked by Greta Van Suster, I think it was on air, like Netanyahu was asked, did you have anything to do with killing him? I've had people ask me if I think that Israel had anything to do with this. I do not. And part of it is just on a baseline level. I don't think even if Netanyahu, say, wanted to do it, none of the security services would, I think, participate in it because they could not do it secretly. Like, there's too much coordination. Like, so it's just, that's why it's like you don't even have to investigate it any further than that. I think they just, they, they couldn't, they, they couldn't keep it secret.

[Krystal Ball]

Yeah.

[Saagar Enjeti]

So it wouldn't even make the whiteboard because you can't do it. Like they just can't do it.

[Krystal Ball]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Saagar Enjeti]

So it happens that at the time he was killed, all of this was going on, which, as I've said, is like another layer of tragedy.

[Krystal Ball]

That's right. So we'll obviously continue to follow this story. Let's bring in Ken Klippenstein now, Ryan, to talk about some of the messages from this discord server, Ken was able to obtain.

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[Krystal Ball]

Ugh. Come on. Why is this taking so long? This thing is ancient.

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[Krystal Ball]

Whoa. This thing moves.

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[Saagar Enjeti]

Independent journalist Ken Klippenstein had a big scoop yesterday. Put up B1 here. This is from Ken's substack exclusive leaked messages from Charlie Kirk assassin. So Ken spoke with people in Tyler Robinson's social circle and was able to get access to multiple discords that Robinson has been in in an effort to divine a little bit about a little bit more about who this person is. This is one more scoop from Ken amid these FBI situations. Pretty impressive run, Ken. We're happy to have you here on Breaking Points. Thanks for joining us.

[Ken Klippenstein]

Hey guys, thanks for having me.

[Saagar Enjeti]

And I noticed that you said you're willing to publish these and the mainstream media isn't. Sometimes you are. Other times I think you're just getting stuff that the mainstream media doesn't even have yet. They don't even get to suppress it before you're obtaining it and publishing it. So nice job on getting this stuff. Let's run through a little bit of it. So this is Zealous Monkey. That's Tyler's Discord handle in this Discord. Is that right?

[Ken Klippenstein]

Yeah, that's exactly right.

[Saagar Enjeti]

So he's saying. So this is the one where he kind of finally admits to this group. He's saying, hey guys, I have bad news for you all. It was me at UVU yesterday. I'm sorry for all of this.

[Krystal Ball]

This.

[Saagar Enjeti]

I'm surrendering through a sheriff friend in a few moments. Thanks for all the good times and laughs. You've all been so amazing. Thank you all for everything. And before that, somebody had said, charlie Kirk got shot dead. I just saw the video. Holy S R A P. I guess bro didn't deserve to go out like that. Sad. So talk a little bit about, like, who you spoke to, what you can tell us about who you spoke to and kind of what, what kind of person they understood Tyler to be.

[Ken Klippenstein]

Yeah. So I talked to three people who knew him. All of them were involved in different discord channels. There wasn't just one, there were a bunch of them. Just like how anyone uses social media, we use different channels. One of them knew him since childhood and so he had a perspective on his development and growth and a kind of baseline for who he was, which I thought was interesting. But what was most surprising to me over the course of talking to these people was seeing those chats and thinking it was going to be like the sewer that Twitter is and that it would be, you know, a mix of different reactions. But from what was sent to me, it was all pretty measured and sympathetic. I thought there would be some, you know, gloating or cheering about it. And I was surprised that the maturity of a lot of these young 20 something year old men. And I mean, you just read one example where they said, you know, bro didn't go out. Bro didn't deserve to go out like that. So it's like not necessarily people that, you know, liked or disliked him. It was just seeing the humanity of it and having what I thought was a human response. And that is the exact opposite of how this entire thing has been portrayed by the major media since the shooting. I spent a lot of the weekend just pulling together clips of news, cable news channels saying that, you know, the dangerous threat of these young men, extremists and discord channels. And that's just not what I found in the course of my reporting.

[Krystal Ball]

So tell us a little bit about some of the reflections you heard from people who knew him. Because in the story there is some really interesting stuff. So one quote here, even the goodbye message he sent in one of our servers was so hard to believe. We all just thought, what a weird joke to make. Yeah, I don't know what makes a person like him decide he's going to drive 260 miles upstate to shoot someone like Charlie Kirk, then come back like nothing happened. It leaves a lot of room for speculation and theories, for which is why I think they're so rampant. So, Ken, from this, it sounds like a lot of people who were chatting with him in these servers and knew him for years also as we hear in many of these cases were surprised that he would be capable of that level of evil.

[Ken Klippenstein]

Yeah, they were shocked and horrified. And I honestly, it's hard to report on a story like this and, you know, try to have the remove that you need to as a reporter and not have this response of like, these are really young men who are 23, 24, and you can imagine if someone you had known and been friendly with for years, you find this out about them. I mean, that's gotta be really traumatic. And in addition to that, you have FBI Director Kash Patel saying, we're going to investigate everyone in these channels, which, you know, some measure of investigation is warranted. But just this kind of assumption that you see ricocheting around on social media that, oh, they must have been in on it. Not only is that not true, it's kind of gross because it's like they're probably going through stuff just like anyone else who saw the shooting was. I mean, not just probably, they are. And I think it's really hard for them and they're just kind of shocked. I think they're still processing it. And that surprised me because it wasn't the kind of nihilistic attitude that I think we're led to believe exists, not just on the part of young men, but on these social media platforms in general and about which there's all this hysteria and fear mongering about. I mean, they were way more thoughtful than I was at 22 or 23. Like, I hope I wouldn't approve of a horrible act like that. I don't think I would, but I can definitely find people who did on other social media platforms. So I was surprised by the, by the depth of the response.

[Saagar Enjeti]

And one thing that wasn't terribly surprising me, but I think it's worth mentioning is that there's basically no conversation about national politics in here, which is important to, to like, I'm not surprised by it, but just gauging the news coverage, you would suspect that these discords are just like hotbeds of, you know, radical national political discussion. But in fact, not at all. You, you had them search and found it's founding and put this, put this one up here. One mention of Trump, which is, he says an impeachment inquiry has been placed against Donald Trump. He could get booted out if they find he committed the escape s he's accused of, which is actually slightly naive because Trump in 2019, this is the Ukraine thing, like the perfect phone call. He did do the thing he was accused of and he did not get impeached. So 0 for 1 on his political analysis there. But then on election night in 2020, that is the only reference to Biden. Well, somebody asks Tyler, zealous monkey, who is winning the election. You would know, which is an interesting insight. It shows like, and we understand this politically that every social group has like this, the guy who follows politics. And that guy is actually pretty influential because he then is the filter through which a lot of his friends then understand politics. Which is why our show, for instance, I think is interesting because like those people watch our show, they get their news from us and then they share it with or they read your substack, then they share information with their social circle. So he responds accurately. Biden is in the lead electoral votes wise, but there are still some swing states that haven't finished voting as well as most of the west coast raw votes. Donald is in the lead by a little over 1 million votes. They ask him who is probably going to win. He says, I'm not sure. And they ask when will we know? Not until pretty late, but we should have a pretty good idea by the end of the night. Unless it's really close or something. Doesn't sound like he cares that much. Just kind of objective. Like FYI, guys like this is, this is what we'll know here. So that was all they could find when it came to the national politics. And then I want to ask you about this one post, the kind of goodbye post that's religious in nature. Somebody posted on here. Hey everyone, if you have not seen the news yet, Tyler's post above is true. He was taken into custody earlier today for the shooting of Charlie Kirk. Regardless of the horrible actions that took place, we must take this moment to remember that God is a living and loving God who loves all his children. God calls sinners to be his saints. And I ask that you all take a quiet moment to pray for Tyler and his repentance. While Charlie Kirk's politics were not acceptable to some, I ask that we all say a prayer for him and his family during the these confusing times. Love you all. God bless. Now, I think some people have read that and said this is just cover so that folks in this discord don't get brought under the cloud of suspicion themselves, which they're already under. I don't read it that way. That to me feels like earnest religiosity in a way that you can't fake. Emily would be better. Actually, Emily is that. That sounded pretty credible, like I couldn't make that up. No, like, I couldn't put that together. No, like, that's. That's somebody who believes what he's saying there. So, I mean. So, Ken, what did you take away from that and these other messages?

[Ken Klippenstein]

Yeah, so I didn't get into it in the story, but just in my conversation with people, what I was told is that it wasn't even that they're all religious. It was described to me as just a mix of different guys. And I was reminded of how differently politics is seen by people who are not obsessives like us, where it's like, people can have different views, people can have different religious views, and it's not that big of a deal. And as was described to me, you know, a lot of these guys knew each other in person. Another thing I wish I'd gone into in the story was that these. Most of them were physical, like, real IRL friends. These were not just random people on the Internet. So these were people that knew each other pretty well. And again, as was described to me, they had a range of different views, and it just didn't sound like that big of a deal to them. And I think that's part of why this is so traumatic to them, because they clearly didn't understand the importance of that. Robinson had assigned, in his mind, we now know from the text messages released, his views on his, frankly, hatred of Charlie Kirk's position on trans issues. I don't think that people really thought about that kind of stuff very much. And I really looked. I had my source go into the messages, and I had him query certain things. And the returns were basically like the Trump example that we said, oh, there was an election in 2020. Obviously, that's the day that everybody checks in for, like, 48 hours or whatever it is and has an opinion, and then they check out. And that's not unusual. I think that's actually probably how most of the country is, where it's kind of like, occasionally, oh, I wonder what that is. And then you just go back to what it was you were doing. So, again, I was just struck by how much, like, all of this stuff was just not on the radar of the people involved. And again, that is so different than. And the picture of this discord group is some hotbed of radical ferment and just this snake pit of extremism. Just not true at all. These are just guys having fun.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Yeah. What are they? So you had them search for, I assume, lgbt, trans, gay. Like, what are they mostly talking about in these discords?

[Krystal Ball]

Well, and Ken also Kind of a question about that, too. Like, who is in the Discords? How many people are in the Discords? Are they active all day? Like, just give us the nature, too, of what you're able to ascertain about. About what was going on in the servers.

[Ken Klippenstein]

I would guess each one is somewhere in the dozens, because, again, these were all, like, you know, these were all pretty close friends. This wasn't like just everybody jumps in. That's one thing that's distinct about discord. They have individual servers. It's not Twitter, where just everyone's on there all the time. These are people that know each other.

[Krystal Ball]

And did they know each other in irl? Like, do they know each other from school mostly?

[Ken Klippenstein]

I don't. I don't know how exactly, but they all live in Utah. Some of them moved and kept in touch, but I would imagine school. Yeah, because these guys are like, 22, 23, 24. I mean, the exact group that the entire media had this performative thing about after the election saying, we've got to get more in touch with them and understand them, and then they go and call these guys basically terrorists for, like, the last five days. I mean, these new segments are crazy. I can't tell you how many former FBI agents I've seen on cable news saying, we have to take seriously the threat of these young men, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And when I. So much so that, I mean, I was skeptical, but when I came into this, I thought I would find some of that. I found zero of that in these chat rooms. I mean, and I guess the counter would be, maybe they're saying it off platform or whatever, but I don't. That's not the vibe that I get from these things, because it's just. They're easygoing. I posted some of the pictures. They're posting like, oh, I had to fix this thing in my house. Check this out. What do you think? Or like, really cold day today. Just kind of like normal stuff, regular stuff.

[Saagar Enjeti]

And so these don't remotely seem like Fuentes or Groiper types.

[Ken Klippenstein]

No, not at all. And I was frustrated by that, too, because I saw it was almost like QAnon, where these liberals were just picking out these very specific and just reading all of this stuff into it. There's absolutely no evidence for that. There is evidence for that. He cared strongly about LGBT issues, and I mentioned that towards the top of the story. And now from the text messages that have been released, we know that that was a motivating factor in what Robinson did. But outside of That I wasn't able to find very much.

[Krystal Ball]

Yeah. And Ken, you're doing this in the context of your reporting about law enforcement getting tuned into the NVE category and you've covered this, but I think that's the nonviolent, the nihilistic violence.

[Ken Klippenstein]

Nihilistic, violent extremism.

[Krystal Ball]

Yeah, right. So. So tell us a little bit, because I think this is important and actually maybe even important to some folks on the right who are concerned about aggravating, needlessly aggravating, angsty, angry, downtrodden young men about how the government has started to categorize and potentially even surveil some people in those categories.

[Ken Klippenstein]

Yeah, I have many of the same concerns here, which is not that the two groups are similar at all. There are some ugly groups like Order of the Nine, you know, real things that exist and they do terrible things, no question about it. But when I read a lot of these things, I just think it's not a useful way to conceptualize the problem. People that don't care about anything, that don't. It's like there's a deep seated rejection of participation in society and stuff that's, that's real there. But just saying that this is totally random and there's essentially no cause for it, I think that's a mistake. I think we should try to understand what's, what's leading to this stuff. But anyways, that's a new designation that they created earlier this year and in many. I think the impression I get from people in bureau is that it's a replacement for a category that they had before, which was called anti government, anti authority, violent extremists. So this is kind of under the Trump administration. This is the new conceptualization of the, the domestic, which is to say American threat. And so they're going to be focused on Americans. And again, I'm not saying that these groups don't, weren't focused. The question is, do we want to conceptualize the problem as just random stuff just falling from the sky like a meteor, or do we want to try to understand, like what is really going, going on here or just prosecute crimes instead of obsessing about ideologies and things? I mean, the FBI has become so interested in, in what people believe and I, I see that as kind of distinct from the problem.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Yeah. So I think the one thing we can take from this is that discord caught some unfair strays in this.

[Ken Klippenstein]

Oh yeah.

[Saagar Enjeti]

This does not remotely seem to be the place FBI's queued up, radicalized or anything else.

[Ken Klippenstein]

Yeah, during the Discord leaks, that was the platform where Jack Tertiera, the US Airman, disclosed all his classified records. So as a consequence of that, people in the intelligence community are really paranoid about this platform. And when you see on the cable news segments about it, they don't know what it is. It's evident that they think it's some kind of. I mean, it's basically WhatsApp for gaming. You can make phone calls, you can text, you can send pictures, that kind of thing. That's all it is. And there's this hysteria, and I really think there's like, an ageist component to it because a lot of these guys, like Governor Cox of Utah who come out and say, oh, you need to log off, like, leave the platforms or whatever. He's still using Facebook, he's still using YouTube, he's still using Twitter. And that's fine. I mean, it's good that he's trying to reach the public. But to act like this is some kind of alien, exotic thing when the reality is it's just Gen Z, WhatsApp, or probably not even that much anymore because it's become so popular, and then to exoticize it and pretend like it's some scary thing is just blows the whole thing out of proportion. It's just another platform. I don't see what the hysteria is. And I guess part of it is that they just don't understand what it is. Maybe the name is Scary. Discord. Oh, my God. Chaos.

[Krystal Ball]

Well, and I think the fact that the servers aren't, you know, in a sense, that, like, it's. It's probably, maybe healthier. I know it goes in both directions sometimes with Discord, but.

[Ken Klippenstein]

Oh, no, I totally agree. It doesn't have an algorithm. It's just a bunch of chat rooms, basically. And so you decide who's in it. That. And to me, that's health. Like, I agree with you. I think that's healthier.

[Krystal Ball]

But.

[Ken Klippenstein]

But to a lot of people, it's like, whoa, this is foreign. I thought it was like Twitter, where everybody sees everything all the time, Right?

[Krystal Ball]

It feels like it's behind closed doors, which it is literally behind closed doors. But there's just something about that. It feels different that. Than the performative social media, where it's all for public consumption, like global public consumption.

[Ken Klippenstein]

I totally agree.

[Krystal Ball]

So maybe that's what's more suspect about it to people. I don't know. But, Ken, this was a super interesting story. Thank you for your reporting and for joining us on the show.

[Ken Klippenstein]

Thanks so much, guys.

[Krystal Ball]

And where can people subscribe to the substack?

[Ken Klippenstein]

I'm on Ken klippenstein.com Ken Klippenstein all.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Right, go check it out.

[Krystal Ball]

If you head over there, you see a big endorsement from Ryan Grimm of all, all people.

[Ken Klippenstein]

That is true.

[Saagar Enjeti]

There you go.

[Ken Klippenstein]

Well, not easy to get guys.

[Saagar Enjeti]

That's right. Precious. All right, see you Ken.

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[Ken Klippenstein]

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[Krystal Ball]

This is an Iheart podcast.