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Sasha Stone
Hi, this is Free Thinking through the fourth Turning. I'm Sasha Stone. There is no saving the left. There's only saving the country from them. I left the Democratic Party in 2020 because I couldn't take it anymore. I'm not sure what triggered my disgust, but all I know is that I could not go along with what the party had become and what I could see playing out every day on social media. I watched everyone I knew, every prominent person of power, justify their dehumanizing rhetoric, all aimed at one man and his supporters. I recoiled in horror. Then it felt like ice in my veins. Or worse, dark sludge, something like evil. Why are we doing this? I wondered. Why have we abandoned all of our principles of decency and kindness? What of the lawn signs that say everyone is welcome? For podcast listeners, a tweet from Clifton Duncan. The hate has no home here. Crowd keeps trying to kill people. I knew it was wrong. I also knew speaking out about it would be the end of my status online, many of my friendships, and eventually, by 2024, all of my income as my business was destroyed and my reputation collapsed for the sin of voting for and supporting Donald Trump. Now we're at the point on the left where all the words, the extreme hyperbole have been used up and nothing has changed. There was ever only one place left to go, and it was to take up arms and start shooting people. For podcast listeners, a tweet from real Donald Trump showing Cole Allen apprehended. Cole Allen, who was Trump's third, would be assassin like Luigi Mangione. And Tyler Robinson is not a madman, not like the shooter who murdered Melissa Hortman. He wasn't hearing voices. He wasn't suffering from ptsd. He made a sober and calculating decision to do what so many have been begging someone to do ever since Trump won. Here are some tiktoks.
TikTok User 1
Somebody just do it already, dude, Just do it. A lot of them always go to the same places, sometimes even together. Just do what needs to be done. Everybody will view you as a godlike figure, a hero, a folk legend. Just do what needs to be.
TikTok User 2
Who's gonna take the initiative to do it? I don't care how you do it, Just do it.
Anonymous Commentator
What are we gonna do with the MAGA people when this is all over? Whether it takes a year or 10 or 15, the officials that were complicit in this will all go to jail. But what are we gonna do with the everyday MAGA person that didn't technically break the law? Because I can't care about them, respect them, or even share a meal with these people ever again. So what do we do with them?
Anonymous Commentator 2
Nothing scares them more than us realizing that we outnumber them, we outsmart them, we're stronger than them, we want better for us than they ever will. And pretty soon I think we're going to be willing to do anything to take back our society and grow, not regression. So I guess how much longer until we make them scared? How much longer until they're the ones rocked back onto their heels? I think we're almost there. We just have to coordinate to that.
Sasha Stone
I just have to say Donald, record yourself running at full speed, Bitch.
TikTok User 2
I really have a feeling, and I'm not a psychic and I'm not trying to give anybody false hope, I have a feeling it's going to happen soon. Today's word of the day is assassinate. I will use it in a sentence. John Wilkes Booth assassinated Abraham Lincoln
Sasha Stone
and from Cole Allen's manifesto, quote. While I'm discussing this, I'll also go over my expected rules of engagement. Probably in terrible format, but I'm not military, so too bad. Administration officials, not including Mr. Patel. They are targets prioritized from highest ranking to lowest secret Service. They are targets only if necessary and to be incapacitated non lethally if possible. AKA I hope they're wearing body armor because center mass with shotguns messes up with people who aren't hotel security, not targets if at all possible. AKA unless they shoot at me. Capitol Police, same as hotel security. National Guard, same as hotel security. Hotel employees, not targets at all. Guests not targets at all. In order to minimize casualties. I will also be using buckshot rather than slugs. Less penetration through walls. I would still go through most everyone here to get to the targets if it were absolutely necessary on the basis that most people chose to attend a speech by a pedophile, rapist and traitor and are thus complicit. But I really hope it doesn't come to that. End quote Alan is a gamer and he talks about his potential assassination as if he's walking us through one of his first person shooter games he might live stream. He sees himself as a vigilante out for justice against the world's greatest evil. How does he come to these conclusions about Trump? Oh, I don't know. Maybe ask the legacy media and the Democrats who've been pushing these lies about Trump for 10 years. Cole Allen, like so many other would be assassins, took them at their word. He doesn't know it's all just politics, allen said. I'M no longer willing to permit a pedophile, rapist and traitor to coat my hands with his crimes. End quote. Which is not that different from what your average Democrat broadcasts on social media every day. After 10 years of dehumanizing language, they can't see the reality of who Trump is anymore, much less see his supporters as their fellow Americans. They can only see the delusion, the mirage, the supervillain they invented. And if he isn't even human anymore, then killing him is as easy as taking out the garbage. They speak in mantras. They mirror each other. Their hysteria spreads from person to person and ultimately unites them. They are as aligned and of one mind as a cult. They must believe they are still the resistance going to war on an insurmountable evil force that can't be defeated in any ordinary way. It requires something extraordinary, someone to just do it. Here are some tiktokers. He was not shot. He did not win. He is a fascist. What if the mark of the beast is that stupid red hat y' all be wearing?
TikTok User 3
Trump is so dumb for pissing off LA cause we don't have jobs. Like none of us have jobs. We have like Covid level amounts of free time to protest my dude, he's so dumb.
TikTok User 4
Hey Maga, you're feeling all powerful now, aren't you? You feel like yeah daddy baby did us justice. You know where our all of our nuclear power is in red states.
Sasha Stone
Bye bye.
Joshua Kuznick
You should have killed everyone in the Confederacy after the Civil War. Like that's it. We should have killed every single man, woman and after the Civil War. Abraham Lincoln was wrong. And this is why we're here today. Because there is a direct causality from history to now. I'm former MLB agent Joshua Kuznick and the Confederacy, no matter how you emo people feel from the south, we're all traitors, man, woman and child. I don't have time to parse this. Just like I don't have the time to parse the good Yahtzees in Germany. Kill em all I say. And Thaddeus Stevens was my favorite American of all time. Lincoln did not listen to him before he got shot. And if he did, America would be a very different place. A better place you could argue literally. Thaddeus Stevens wanted to take every single man, woman and child in the Confederacy, have them all executed in front of everyone as an example to never be a traitor to the United States ever again. And when that was over, all the slaves were to be freed and have all of the Southerners land given to them. We should have done that.
Sasha Stone
When they are confronted with the reality of real world violence and they must reckon with who and what they have become, they go on autopilot, make their canned statements about their generic political violence, but never atone for anything they've done to bring us to this point. All of them are culpable. The Democrats, the Never Trumpers, and the legacy media. For podcast listeners, a tweet by Bhatia Unger Sargon that says this is a lie. The gunman's manifesto was published six hours ago, but it's also a confession, an admission that the motive is damning to President Obama's side, hence the need to lie, and a tweet from Barack Obama. Although we don't yet have the details about the motives behind last night's shooting at the White House Correspondents Dinner, it's incumbent upon all of us to reject the idea that violence has any place in our democracy. Cole Allen is a victim of the Doomsday Cult and its dehumanizing propaganda machine. He is consumed by the delusion that keeps them locked away and terrified of the monsters outside. But by now, shouldn't they be asking themselves who the monsters really are? Maybe they should take a good long look in the mirror. For podcast listeners, a tweet from Kenoka, the Great Breaking I found Cole Allen's archived tweets. He predicted Kamala wins all swing states, compared Trump's win to Nazis getting elected and moved to blue sky. The scary part? He retweeted every mainstream Democrat on this platform. As Nietzsche once warned, whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you. If I thought I could save the left, I would start by telling them to stop calling Trump and his supporters Nazis. I would tell them that dehumanizing language almost always leads to violence. It has nowhere else to go. I would tell them it's long past time to accept that Donald Trump won in 2016 and in 2024 and they lost. It's time they reckoned with that, too. Their lies, their rage, their manufactured helplessness have taken them nowhere good. Three assassination attempts on Trump and the death of Charlie Kirk should be enough. I would tell them that we still have to share this country, even with, especially with people we don't agree with. I would tell them that they aren't better than half the country. I would tell them that they had no right to claim democracy for themselves. It doesn't belong to them. I would tell them that they've destroyed themselves trying to destroy Trump. They've wrecked families, relationships, marriages, friendships, communities, culture and all for what? To cling to the democracy that was never theirs to begin with? I have so much to tell them, if only they would listen. The violence against Trump supporters began in 2015 and continued throughout his first four years.
News Reporter
A terrifying night of violence as Donald Trump supporters were attacked by an angry mob waiting for them outside a Trump rally. It happened in San Jose. As the crowd headed home, they were set upon. One young woman tried to take them on, proudly showing off her Trump shirt.
Anonymous Commentator 2
She's egging them on.
Sasha Stone
She's egging them on.
News Reporter
Then it turns scary. She's hit in the face with watermelon and raw eggs.
Sasha Stone
Oh my God.
News Reporter
She finds herself all alone and quartered, Crowd screaming obscenities. And no one came to her aid, not even the cops.
Sasha Stone
Someone ever get her in.
News Reporter
Finally, she gets back inside and finds sanctuary.
Concerned Viewer
I was so scared watching this video, afraid for what was going to happen next to this young lady. And why were the police officers holding the doors and not grabbing her and pulling her inside?
News Reporter
Headlines this morning say people leaving the rally were hunted and chased down like prey. Watch as this young man runs for his life. He's caught and knocked down. Look at the fear in his face as he attempts to flee.
TikTok User 2
Another fist fight's about to break out right now, but Trump supporter is getting fumbled right now.
News Reporter
This guy's Build the wall T shirt was ripped off his back. Then he's knocked and punched by six men.
Singer
Run. Get the hell out of here.
News Reporter
That's a reporter you hear telling him to flee.
TikTok User 2
Seven more people just come in, start punching me, Carl.
Joshua Kuznick
I look pretty bad.
News Reporter
The mob even followed the Trump supporters to their cars. Inside a parking garage, the assault continued. An SUV was drunk.
Sasha Stone
Is it really that surprising that nine years later someone would try to assassinate him?
Donald Trump
If you want to really see something that said, take a look at what happened.
Singer (duet with K)
It.
Sasha Stone
How is it that we as a nation were not brought to our needs after that? How is it that the left could simply soldier on with the same dehumanizing Nazi rhetoric as though none of this had happened? It should have been the day that changed everything, but somehow it wasn't. To them, they always had the fallback of blaming guns. They're all reading from the same script, and this is their only way out. For podcast listeners from Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta, we don't end gun violence in America by building a ballroom for Trump to Humanize someone is to have the courage to see them as the complicated, flawed, imperfect people they are. To dehumanize them is to convict them of high crimes and misdemeanors. In the court of public opinion, we have built a panopticon that decides guilt. And it's taken us all the way to this moment where political violence is just more fodder for the churn. Here is a clip of Trump on 60 Minutes.
Interviewer
The so called manifesto is a stunning thing to read, Mr. President. He appears to reference a motive. In it he writes this, quote, administration officials, they are targets. And he also wrote this. I am no longer willing to permit a pedophile, rapist and traitor to coat my hands with his crimes. What's your reaction?
Donald Trump
Well, I was waiting for you to read that because I knew you would because you're, you're, you're horrible people. Horrible people. Yeah, he did write that. I'm not a rapist. I didn't rape anybody.
Interviewer
Oh, you think he was referring to you?
Donald Trump
Excuse me, I'm not a pedophile. You read that crap from some sick person? I got associated with all stuff that has nothing to do with me. I was totally exonerated. Your friends on the other side of the plate are the ones that were involved with, let's say, Epstein or other things. But I said to myself, you know, I'll do this interview and they'll probably, I read the manifesto, you know, he's a sick person. But you should be ashamed of yourself reading that. Because I'm not any of those things, Mr. President, and I was never. Excuse me, excuse me. You shouldn't be reading that in 60 minutes. You're a disgrace. But go ahead, let's finish the interview.
Interviewer
The other thing that he wrote in disgraceful.
Sasha Stone
So let's get this straight once and for all. Trump is someone who is not afraid to say offensive things at a time when an entire movement believes words are violence. But violence is a way to stop the words. For podcast listeners, a tweet from Eric Doherty. Historic photo released at 10:15pm President Trump rushes into the Oval Office after an assassination attempt. Flanked by Marco Rubio, Pete Hegseth, JD Vance, Stephen Miller and more. Trump's efforts to build a ballroom, transform the Kennedy center, clean up the streets, end wars, protect women in sports, use the tariffs to bring back jobs and protect children from the cult are all maga. Make America great again. People say he's doing it for himself, but maybe he's doing it because he loves this country. We give him the benefit of the doubt because it's the right thing to do. And if you can't get all the way there, at least get halfway there. Get to the part where he's the guy from the Apprentice who built all of those gold buildings in Vegas. To see him for who and what he is will heal the pathology that has consumed the left. But we know if three assassination attempts won't do it, nothing will. A part of me really did think that if Trump won again in 2024, the mass delusion would be punctured at long last. Maybe it would be like that moment in Salem in 1692 when the accusations became so ridiculous that the whole fantasy collapsed. But that never happened. Instead, everything got worse. The hyperbole got worse. Detainment centers were concentration camps. ICE officers were the Gestapo. Trump wasn't just a rapist, racist, dictator, felon, demagogue, criminal. But now he was also a pedophile and before long, a war criminal. They had nowhere left to go except to wish for his death, to manifest it and make posts about it on TikTok. Here are some tiktokers.
TikTok User 5
If the one thing happens that everybody is talking about this morning and hopeful for, I think I will reconsider this whole religion and God thing because he
Sasha Stone
might be looking out for us at this point. The White House chef has a job to do. It's a duty, really.
Anonymous Commentator 2
You have a job to do.
TikTok User 6
You know, even if he's not dead, which would be really great if he is. Even if he's not dead, the sense of community that has been established on the Internet surrounding the hope for his
Sasha Stone
death
TikTok User 7
as terrible news. It didn't happen. One person can't have everything. I can't be this hot and this talented and also get every single thing that I want. The universe is not gonna give me everything. But what we did get. What we did get was just like a few hours, just a glimpse into what it might feel like one day when it does happen. And listen, I've seen those hands. I've seen those hands. That day's coming, but it's not today. Today he golfs.
Anonymous Commentator
What's this casket gonna look like?
TikTok User 2
You know, it's gonna be gold and
Anonymous Commentator
gaudy, but, like, is it gonna be, like, sparkly?
Sasha Stone
He's not. He's not. And the reason why I know is
TikTok User 6
that good things don't happen.
TikTok User 8
Do we think he's still eating and drinking fluids, or is he, like, on IV and with a catheter? Maybe he has labored breathing and he's sleeping a lot and probably even more confused than normal.
Joshua Kuznick
I'm really looking forward to seeing grown ass MAGA supporters blubber like little when he does die.
TikTok User 8
I hope when it happens they like use the Amber Alert system or something. So we're all just walking around, like about our day, and then suddenly everyone's phones are like. And we all look down and we all get the news at the same time. Wouldn't that be amazing? And then we all just look around. We're like, is this real? Is it happening? Did it happen? Then we turn on the playlists in review.
Anonymous Commentator 3
When it happens, there will be no tears of sadness shed by me. Not for a man who brought back concentration camps, who ripped families apart by hired thugs, who pardoned police unalivers from January 6th who was partaking in the Epstein activities that involve children. There will be no tears of sorrow cried for him or his family for that matter. Maybe tears of joy, but no tears of sadness. Zero for the man who joked about feeding human beings to alligators.
TikTok User 4
You guys. Even the Lincoln Project is posting about it. Did the first just turn into a celebration? You guys, you. You guys. Why am I not seeing more about this? Did it just happen?
Singer
I'm.
TikTok User 4
I'm hype. Been hyped since I saw the first word of it. Anyway, I won't be sleeping tonight.
Sasha Stone
If he dies, I'm going to wear a ball gown. I'm going to wear a gown.
TikTok User 9
I'm not trying to be funny. I don't think most of the people in here are actually trying to be funny. We are all looking forward to the big, beautiful obituary of the tangerine tinted twat waffle. I'm absolutely excited. Dead ass excited about him kicking the bucket. Okay? I don't care who fucking hears it. I have the playlist, the food planned out. I'm gonna do Indian tacos, NDN tacos, which is basically the same thing, but in Native American fry bread. I am going to be putting up Christmas lights. The playlist is absolutely lit. I think it's got something like 200 songs. Oh, from scratch. I'm making a rum cake. Two layer rum cake with buttercream frosting. And I've also, as of yesterday, I started looking into how to give my employees a paid day off for it. So, yeah, it's going to be a lit party everywhere. So I don't know where you get the idea that I was trying to make a funny. I'm serious. I will be partying.
Sasha Stone
There is no saving the left. There is only saving America from them. I can only Hope in those dark nights of the soul when I worry about the future, the future of this country, the future for my daughter that the scrappy coalition known as MAGA can hold the line. Thank you for listening to my podcast, sashastone.com. i'll be posting a longer interview with my friend Andy Shulman on the fourth Turning sometime tomorrow. And if you like my work, you can always leave a tip on the main page. There's a link for the tip jar or become a paid subscriber. As you know, I put nothing behind the paywall, so your support keeps this site going and it means the world to me. And sometimes I don't know what I would do without you guys. I really don't. Thank you from my heart. And remember, to thine own self be true.
Singer
Bless my heart, bless my soul. I didn't think I'd make it to 22 years old. There must be someone of above senior. Come on, Britney, you gotta come on now.
Singer (duet with K)
You gotta hold.
Singer
On. So with my heart and bless yours too. I don't know where I'm gonna go, don't know what I'm gonna do. Well, must be somebody up above singing.
Singer (duet with K)
Come on, baby girl, you gotta get back up. You got to hold.
TikTok User 5
Out.
Singer
They gotta hold
Sasha Stone
on.
Singer (duet with K)
Yeah, you got to wait. Yeah, you got.
Singer
No, I don't want to wait. So bless my heart, bless my mind. I got so much I want to do but I ain't got much time so must be somebody oh my God
Singer (duet with K)
say to come here baby girl, they gotta get back up. You gotta hold.
Singer
On,
Singer (duet with K)
Dad, you gotta wait. But I don't want to wait.
Singer
No, I don't want to wait. You got to hold
Donald Trump
on.
Singer
When the world ain't treating you right, you got to hold on. And everybody disrespected. You got to hold on, you got to hold
Donald Trump
on.
Podcast: Free Thinking Through the Fourth Turning with Sasha Stone
Host: Sasha Stone
Episode Date: April 27, 2026
In this searing, intensely personal episode, Sasha Stone discusses her disillusionment with the American left and the Democratic Party, which she left in 2020. Drawing from political events, social media posts, and high-profile acts of violence, Stone explores the escalation of political rhetoric and its consequences––culminating in three assassination attempts on Donald Trump and the death of Charlie Kirk. The episode intersperses Stone’s narrative with real social media quotes and news clips, offering a raw critique of how, in her view, dehumanization and extreme partisanship have caused the left to lose both its moral and political footing.
Sasha Stone’s delivery alternates between impassioned critique and solemn reflection, peppered with sarcasm and dark humor. The episode is unflinching in its assessment of the American left, blaming its rhetoric for a culture of dehumanization. There’s a persistent plea for self-awareness and humility, as Stone mourns the breakdown of civility and the rise of political violence.
"There is No Saving the Left" provides a provocative, controversial, and deeply personal look at the perceived transformation of American progressive politics. It’s a polemic warning against the dangers of dehumanization and hyper-partisanship, urging a return to shared humanity across political divides. For listeners unfamiliar with Sasha Stone’s journey, this episode lays bare both her grievances and her hope for the country's future—if only Americans can “hold the line,” resist political hysteria, and reclaim decency.