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- [00:00]
A
Hey, it's John. I want to talk to you about Shopify. A lot of people talk to me about starting podcasts. This podcast is 10 years old. It's in a different place from a lot of podcasts because we're obviously part of a nonprofit institution and it's not a way that we are seeking to earn our livelihoods. But a lot of people look at this and say this is something I can really do to create a business and run the business and do it in a really comfortable, practical and serious way. Gotta wear a lot of different hats when you start your own business. Can be very intimidating. But one of the things that I know from a lot of people is that if your to do list is growing and growing and growing and that list starts to overrun your life, you need a tool that not only helps you out, but simplifies everything that can be a game changer for millions of businesses. That tool is Shopify, the commerce platform behind millions of businesses around the world and 10% of all e commerce in the US from household names to brands. Just getting started. You get started with your own design studio. With hundreds of ready to use templates. Shopify helps you build a beautiful online store to match your brand style. You can accelerate your content creation because it's packed with helpful AI tools that write product descriptions, page headlines, and even enhance your product photography. You get the word out like you have a marketing team behind you. Easily create email and social media campaigns wherever your customers are scrolling or strolling. And best yet, Shopify is your commerce expert with world class expertise in everything from managing inventory to international shipping to processing returns and beyond. If you're ready to sell, you're ready for Shopify. Turn your big business idea into Kaching. With Shopify on your side, sign up for your $1 per month trial and start selling today at shopify.com commentary go to shopify.com commentary that's shopify.com commentary hope for the Expect a worse Some preacher pain Some die of thirst no way of knowing this way it's going Hope for the best, expect the worst welcome to the Commentary Magazine daily podcast. Today is Monday, September 15, 2025. I'm John Bot Horetz, the editor of Commentary. Sometime today, the October issue of Commentary will be up commentary.org featuring our own Seth Mandel with a piece on how Israel is David become Goliath. And that's a good thing, not a bad thing. Our own Matt Continetti, our own Christine Rosen both have pieces that because I'm brain dead, I can't precisely. Okay. So, Matt, what's your we won't take offense, John. Don't take offense.
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B
I'm not taking offense. My p is how sad it would be that in celebrating the 200th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, we forget what that declaration stood for. And I point to recent remarks by one Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia on the Democratic side. And also, I'm sad to say, a speech that Vice President Vance delivered to the Claremont Institute earlier this year.
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C
And Christine, I write about this was all we all turned our stuff in before the Charlie Kirk assassination. But I was writing, I wrote about what I call hyper conspiracy, how the online world and the kind of political cultural morass that is our conspiracy theory culture now have combined to give us something rather bad.
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A
I have a piece in this issue called the Netflix Jews, which is about two series released by Netflix this year in the last 12 months on sitcoms, comic shows on Jewish themes. Nobody wants this. And long story short, and what they say about a topic we'll get to later, which is Hollywood and the way it treats and talks about and handles the subject of Jews and Jews in America. It's a very rich, very full, very interesting issue. So go to commentary.org and read to your heart's content. If you are a subscriber, you can read to your heart's content. If you are not a subscriber, you may have used up your view free reads this month. So go and subscribe and help support the podcast and help support our efforts and get involved in the storehouse of 80 years of commentaries, remarkable intellectual history literature, coverage of matters ranging from the Korean War to the war against the Houthis, Then and now, Cold War, the post Cold War some of the greatest 20th century literature appeared the Creation of Israel Creation of Israel Some of the greatest 20th century literature, short stories by Isaac Bashevis Singer, Cynthia Ozyk and others in our pages, commentary.org and of course, with me is always executive editor Abe Greenwald. Hi, Abe.
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D
Hi, John.
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A
The afore heard from Matthew Continetti of the American Enterprise Institute. Hi Matt. And Christine Rosen, also of the American Enterprise Institute. Hi, Christine.
- [05:43]
C
Hi, John.
- [05:44]
A
So of course we're here to think about everything that we have learned and been going through since the assassination of Charlie Kirk. And it's now it's like a pointless painting because there are like 22,000 different themes that we can raise. And here's the weird thing, I think everybody on every side, I'm sorry to do every side ism, but let's say Democrats and liberals who do not want to focus on the question of whether or not this was a crime committed by a leftist who is assassinating a conservative right wing Trump thought leader at the age of 31 and want to broaden this out or saying, well, we're living in a time of political violence. There was the murder of the Minnesota state representative, the setting of Josh Shapiro, the Democratic governor of Pennsylvania's house on fire, the attack on speaker, then, well, then minority, whatever, Nancy Pelosi's husband in their San Francisco townhouse. And now there's Charlie Kirk and there was of course, the Trump assassination attempts. And that we are, we are living through a time of increased political violence that seems to have been stimulated in some way or other by the Internet, chat groups, online communities and that, you know, we're living in a time of toxicity and we need to dial down the temperature. That's the kind of way that people want to talk about this, who do not want to focus on the question or want to divert the focus from the very specific fact that this one guy, this one 31 year old guy was shot with a high powered rifle from 200 yards away by apparently a 22 year old kid who, you know, is in a relationship with a trans person and was involved in weird online communities with political valences. We keep getting hints from the Governor of Utah, Spencer Cox, that tomorrow when, when he is arraigned, we will get more evidence and details to strengthen the case that this was a very specific political assassination that wasn't just, you know, a crazy person doing something crazy like the man who shot Gabrielle Giffords 14 years ago who said that something was wrong with grammar and that grammar was driving everybody crazy or, you know, something like that, things. I think that's true. It's all that's true. And so is the argument that there's something toxic and dangerous and horrible going on in America and that the Internet is to blame and that, you know, we need to, everybody needs to go outside and stop being on their phone so much. And that if you make that argument, you're also at the same time trying to soft pedal or downplay the specific political valence of this specific political act. And unless we look it in the face and examine it, and unless liberals and leftists and liberal intellectuals are willing to acknowledge that some of the ideas that they have been promulgating may be crossing over from the promulgation into real world action that we're never going to get anywhere and that this is not, things are not going to improve and that there's going to be more of this rather than less.
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B
I think the place to start is with the killer and what we learned about him over the course of the weekend. And Governor Cox of Utah seems to be considered a objective source by all sides and made an appearance on Meet the Press on Sunday where he really debunked the online myths that had been circulating over the weekend, that somehow the killer was maga or because he grew up in what seems to be a conservative, law abiding, patriotic household, that somehow meant he was conservative, law abiding and patriotic. And what we know about the assassin is he was steeped in video game culture and what Cox and others have called the deep Web. So very bizarre Internet subcultures, that he lived with an individual whom Cox described as his romantic partner, who is a biological male transitioning to female. That this individual is cooperating with authorities like the rest of the killer's family. But what we get from a, from this description that we have so far is someone who seems to fit the bill of a left wing radical, radicalized on the issue of transgender rights and specifically targeted Charlie Kirk. Because Charlie Kirk was considered to be spreading, quote, hate by this community. And this is where I think we run up into kind of the cognitive wall that is dividing the two Americas here, because the, the language that's used to describe a figure like Charlie Kirk is ubiquitous. He was called someone who was a hate monger spreading hate, who was dehumanizing individuals simply because he opposed trans surgeries for minors and biological men in women's sports. And it's the same language that's being applied to MAGA and Trump in general by describing this movement and Trump as a fascist. Just today there was a headline saying, well, Trump hasn't invaded Chicago yet by sending in federal law enforcement or the National Guard. This language of invasion, this is the type of rhetoric that is radicalizing individuals. And I've just one last thing. As we are reacting to the assassination of Charlie Kirk, the trial of Donald Trump's second would be assassin is taking place in Florida. And to follow that trial, the jury selection procedures, the defendant, Mr. Ruth, is representing himself. His opening statement, you get a window, a glimpse into what these Internet subcultures are saying about the right and about figures like Donald Trump and Charlie Kirk. And so we have to talk about this. It's not, it's not blame, it's not tit for tat to say. This is the culture that is spreading and is increasingly turning to violence.
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C
It's frustrating, isn't it because one of it's not a contradiction to say that there's wildly overheated rhetoric on both sides of the aisle and have. There has been for some time. That's just true. Just like the left can call up dozens of examples on the right, we can call up dozens of examples on the left. But it's also true that in this case, this clearly seem to be targeted political assassination. And I think the word that I've heard over and over from people who are trying to honestly wrestle with what this might mean is shift occurred. So even people who didn't like Charlie Kirk say something shifted. This, this was different than some of the other things that have been called political violence. And I would point to the behavior that's now frequently been called out, and rightfully so, of Senator Chris Murphy, who a few days before Charlie Kirk's murder was on a podcast saying, we're at war. Any means necessary to win this war. And as Matt, the implication is that Trump is a fascist and he must be stopped at any cost. That is a motivating sort of call to violence for the, for people whose minds not might not be steeped in a kind of reality and have a kind of normal support mechanism around them to stop them from spiraling into violent action, even if they're hearing violent words. And the fact that a few days later he's, you know, tut, tutting and saying something terrible is coming, that Trump's going to react to this, that behavior by, by an elected official is completely irresponsible. It's despicable, actually. He has been one of these people, and there are many of them, unfortunately. And so in this case with Charlie Kirk, I think we should also look across the pond. I know a phrase people hate. Look at the UK this weekend, there was a big Tommy Robinson rally. And part of that rally and part of the huge turnout was a memorial to Charlie Kirk and people saying free speech matters. So the speech aspect of this, I think, has touched the lives of people who aren't even involved in the kind of meme political culture on the right or the left. But they look at this and say, all right, this guy said a lot of stuff I don't agree with. But, you know, he'd go to campuses, put a micro microphone in front of his face and say, whoever disagrees with me more, step to the front of the line. I want to hear from you first and I want to debate you. And I didn't agree with everything Charlie Kirk said either. And I certainly didn't like all of his tone and rhetoric, particularly when he was younger and starting out. But he sat there and said over and over again, this is how we have to resolve our conflicts. We have to argue, we have to argue about them. And I didn't always like the way he argued. But that doesn't mean that speech is violence. And that's where I think Matt's point is really important to speech is violence is a can art of the left, not the right. And I think if that's what's been motivating a lot of these more violent, the more violent rhetoric online, the more violent tone of a lot of our elected officials in media, then that is something we have to grapple with.
- [14:50]
D
I think that liberals and Democrats are in a bit of a pickle here rhetorically, because thematically, because their anti Trump message that the one they've sort of settled on has essentially been defy law and order, arrest me, go stand by criminals, you know, defend genocidal slogans. You know, they have been on a campaign to legitimize revolutionary action and rhetoric ever since Trump appeared back on the scene and first appeared on the scene. That's happening in concert with, I think, more than one larger problem that's all encompassing that has to do with. It's not even both sides. It's just the country having to do with social atomization and every imaginable crazy sort of online community and conspiracy and sort of general coming apart at the seams and this breaking down of national fabric. So it's hard when you open up any story about this, anything, you don't even know which part to which part to tease out first in looking at.
- [16:08]
A
You know, Yuvalovin has a piece at the Free Press this morning as part of this larger symposium. And he says everyone's saying the problem is we're too divisive. This country is so divided and we're so divisive, and there's too much division. And he says the point is not that there's too much division, but that there's not enough debate, there's not enough disagreement, there's not enough conflict, meaning that people are siloed. They hear what they want to hear, they don't. They end up not hearing. The algorithm serves them up more things that they want to hear and occasionally something that will get them angry. And that rather than getting used to the idea that you hold an opinion and that somebody else holds another opinion and they live next door to you. And so on the one hand, you're a Sanders voter and the guy Next to you, you know, is a Vivek Ramaswam voter. And you still have to figure out who's going to trim the hedge that is half his and half yours. And that's what it means to live in a democratic society. That. That's what's lost. You know, Charlie Kirk said, we all have to. We all have to have these moments of, you know, we need to argue, we need to discuss it, it's true, but there's something much larger here. People go to college campuses, for example, and they never hear a countervailing opinion. And therefore, when they hear it, and it rings harshly on their ears because they are unused to the hearing of it. The notion that that opinion is so beyond the bounds of what is acceptable, that action must be taken. And that action, of course, is on a gigantic spectrum. Some of the action might be, you go complain to a dean that this person said something that was, you know, made you feel really unhapp. Isn't there something you can do about it to, maybe I should shoot that person? I mean, the. The impulse is not that different, except the thing. The shift where you cross from hate that idea. I don't want to hear it. It offends me and hurts me. And somebody should stop that opinion from being expressed because I don't like feeling uncomfortable in this way. To. That opinion is so evil that the person who expresses it should be dead now. And the death of that person will make the world a better place.
- [18:37]
C
It's also a struggle, I think, and this is where social media exacerbates an existing problem of human nature, and that's that we like to strawman our enemy and say they're all. They. It's that use of the word. Like, they think this, they do that, and we are. I think part of the reason that. That this podcast is good for all of us and for hopefully for our listeners, too, is that we really do struggle not to do that. We try to. We don't always succeed, but we try to find those specific cases and say, well, yeah, in this case, this was the behavior, this was the action, this was that the elected official did and what social media allows people to do. And I think Yuval's piece describes this really well, is allow you to. You're arguing, but you're arguing with a straw man. And it's really satisfying to argue with a straw man, because the straw man is always going to be wrong and you're always going to be right. And that can deepen your core conviction that they are actually out to get you in the end. And I think that feedback loop, how to disrupt that. I think Charlie Kirk was trying to find a way to do that by being in person on a hostile college campus with views that he knew most of those students didn't agree with, and then to argue with them about it. Now how we do that in the rest of the world is, is the challenge of the next generation. They, this Gen Z group has to find a way to resolve those political conflicts or to agree to disagree in a way that doesn't constantly straw man the other side.
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A
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So you get top tier fabrics and and craftsmanship at half the price of similar brands. I'm going to be putting on those sweaters as soon as it gets cool enough to need them. I spent the summer wearing quints polos. I am a quince man through and through. It's a go to across the board. You know they got accessories of all kinds. Just go to quinte.com to see what I'm talking about. You keep it classic and cool this fall with long lasting staples from quints. Go to quints.com commentary for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. That's quite n c.com commentary free shipping and 365 day returns. Quint.com commentary I think one of the reasons that conservatives are so outraged and offended by the way liberals have been what about in this and saying well what about the Minnesota state representative? What about Paul Pelosi? What about this? What about that Is that it is a continuum with we've been arguing for relatively uncontroversial things in the course of time, right? Tax rates should be lower so that people should have more of their money. Government should be smaller because it encroaches on our freedoms and it's a very inefficient way of distributing and managing resources. The traditional family is a good thing because not only does it speak to the deepest religious truths that we've been taught if we are from religious backgrounds, but also it seems to work better. Society is better and all of that. And for holding opinions like this and other things, and America should be strong and we should attack our enemies and defeat them so that they won't attack us again. And for holding views like this, for the last quarter century or more, we have been treated as though we are demonic and evil. And now something evil has been done to somebody who holds these views. And everybody on the other side is like, we never said that. We never said anything. Jonathan Chait said on Friday, no Democrat has celebrated Charlie Kirk's murder. Now, it may well be true that no elected official in Washington of the, you know what are there 215 members of the House and 47 members of the Senate who are Democrats came out and said, thank God Charlie Kirk was murdered. But we have all seen, all over the Internet all week people say he got what he deserved. If you, you know, if you pedal hate, you're going to, you know, maybe this isn't a good thing, but it's certainly something that is understandable. And he is like a major American political commentator. And so we're like, you get to a point where it's like, go that far? Well, okay, he has jobs in his jobs at leading publications, let's just say that. And it's like, are you, if you're going to do this and say this and act this way, how in the wake of this monstrous event, are we going to have any kind of ability to have common cause with you on how to go forward to prevent more of this in the future? You're just saying it didn't happen. We're standing there, you're Frank Drebin in front of the fireworks factory exploding saying, there's nothing to see here.
- [26:34]
B
Look, I mean, we still have the kind of pro forma statements from media saying that the motive of the killer has not been determined. Now, we had within 24 hours of the assassination, descriptions of the messages on the, on the cartridges. And the initial description of the cartridges said that they were inscribed with anti fascist and transgender related statements. And that report was challenged somehow or walked back. What did we find?
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A
It was true.
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B
It was true. It was totally true. And just because these statements were written in the kind of bizarre pigeon lunga franca of the deep web doesn't mean that that was not an accurate description of what was written on the bullets. And then what we find out about the assassin's personal life confirms it further. Now there's also the clue or the indication that there may be a manifesto based on discord messages that the assassin was Sending around after the shooting, actually after the shooting. And then just this morning before we went to record, Aaron Saberium of the Free Beacon has an excellent scoop that the FBI investigating Twitter messages and social media messages from trans linked online communities suggesting foreknowledge of the assassination.
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A
These are facts.
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B
You can't just ignore them. And that's what I said.
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A
It's worse than that, to borrow Abe's formulation, because the Wall Street Journal was the first major news outlet to report the bul casing things. Now, the Wall Street Journal is a major American newspaper, right? It has sourcing rules and evidence and all this. So generally speaking, the media will give a place like the Wall Street Journal the benefit of the doubt that they were. They've been following proper procedure on whether or not they're publishing this stuff. And the Journal itself, we don't really understand why then like 12 hours later backed off what it had first reported. Now what is, what does that tell me? Or what does it tell you? Tells me that somebody at the FBI leaked this in. Maybe you would tell leaked it to the Wall Street Journal, which published it. And whoever leaked it to the Wall Street Journal published it was way out over their skis because they hadn't caught him yet. And they didn't need to have this information public because it's the sort of thing that you, you know, that you often keep facts in a murder investigation from the public so that you can hit it, you can hit the suspect with them to see how they react or respond or others as a means of focusing on whether or not you're going to get a confession, that sort of thing. And somebody got all excited, told somebody at the Journal the Journal published a leak. And the response of the mainstream media because the leak implicated a protected moral class, that is to say transgendered people. The leak in a Guild publication had to be contested. People were saying, everyone's talking too fast. Everybody take a step back. This is so irresponsible. Blah, blah, blah. When does that ever happen to a leak from a law enforcement source? This is like one of the few cases in which I can think of, yeah, like if it came out in, you know, if it was somebody's Twitter feed, who said bullet? And my friend the FBI tells me that, you know, it was a trend, there were trans messages or something like that, right? Then it's like, well, I don't know if this guy. Somebody could be making this up. But the Wall Street Journal has no incentive to make up stuff about the bullet casings of the, of the found at the site. And that's the other aspect of this, which is the implicated crime and criminals here, the motivations liberals do not to look at it in the face. And so what they would like to do is separate the motive from the act. Because if the motive says there's a community of people who are supportive of trans rights or are trans themselves or whatever, who are hungry to use violence against people who, you know, disagree with them, then we got a problem that needs to be addressed societally and through law as opposed to they need to be treated with compat. Everybody has to love them. If they don't get what they want, they're all going to kill themselves or their, you know, kids are going to kill themselves. And so separate it out, split it away, divide it and don't go there. And that's where people on the right feel like they're being gaslit. Well, yeah, they are, over and over again.
- [31:49]
B
And it was the same, same way that liberals treated Islamist violence.
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A
Well, let's go to that because there's that detail.
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B
Before Abe, we should just remind everyone this assassination took place what, a week after the Annunciation school shooting, two weeks after. It's the same thing. It's the same thing in this case. In that case, rather the shooter was trans, but again believed that these children were somehow represented threats to its existence. That's what we're up against and we need to have a conversation about fighting that.
- [32:26]
A
Well, Abe, so you were noticing there was a follow up terrorist event or would be terrorist event in Utah yesterday, Right? We got news of it mid afternoon, I think. I think I saw it while I was watching some football game.
- [32:40]
D
Yeah, there was a explosive device or devices that didn't detonate said underneath or on local Fox News vans, I believe in Salt Lake City. And two suspects were arrested with Arabic names.
- [32:56]
A
Yeah, they appear to be father and son or they're at least related because the last name is Nasir and one's 58 and one's 32. But they caught them and they arrested them and they arraigned them and they released their names. Right. So by the way, charge them with.
- [33:14]
D
Possession of explosive devices and possession of weapons of mass destruction. Do you see that? I don't yet know what that means.
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A
I think that means chemical search of.
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C
Their house might have uncovered something. I would assume the search of the.
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D
Property, it could be an extraordinarily important.
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C
Bomb building, accelerator, bomb, building stuff.
- [33:32]
A
Yeah, yeah.
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B
I think the threshold by just incidentally, I think the threshold for a weapon of mass destruction is Lower than there.
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A
Is some kind of chemical agent that used in larger quantities could, yeah, could be, could be a big bomb. So it's a material that is like so as I said, I don't think it's kerosene or gasoline, but it could be something, could be a lot of.
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C
Fertilizer, could be a small amount of C4, it could be a whole range.
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A
I mean, it is, yeah, C4 is a big. Right. Okay. So anyway, so what have you found in your, in your search?
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D
So I, when I woke up this morning, I wanted to see what the latest developments on it were. So I just googled it as one does and Axios has covered it, Fox has of course covered it. And no, I saw nothing and a lot of local coverage didn't see a story about it at least as, as, as of this morning in the New York Times, Washington Post or Wall Street Journal.
- [34:30]
A
So, and why would now let us speculate irresponsibly as to why that would be. It's a, it's the biggest news story in the world right now. I mean people are like as Christine said, hundreds of thousands of people are turning out in London to participate in vigils after this event. You know, people all over the place. This is the biggest news story in the world. There is a development in which two people in, you know, in, in the proximity of the, of the event are setting potential weapons of mass destruction. You. The New York Times covers things now with two paragraphs in one of these roundups. If you ever click on the web where it's the news of the story of Charlie Kirk and they will literally have just a two paragraph thing that would say two men have been arrested in connection with the placing of a device under a FOX News truck and their names are so and so and so and so and more more to come. Like five minutes to draft, put it in, you know, have a longer story when you have it. If they didn't do it, it's because they chose that. It's, it's an irrational and remarkable in the sense that it's unusual, that's what you would ordinarily expect. If they haven't done it, it's because the last name is Nasir. If the last name were Johnson or you know, like one of the Johnsons from Blazing Saddles, Howard Johnson, Van Johnson, Olson and Johnson, whoever, then that would would have been just fine. But the name is Nasir and they're not going to put it in the New York Times if they can help it until they get more.
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C
It's the same reason that the mainstream outlets that want to talk speak to the motive of Charlie Kirk's assassin. Instead, they're trying to shift coverage to how this might endanger other trans people. If we talk about the fact that he was involved with someone who is trans and that, that happens all the time. And I think it happens with Islamic crime. It happens with, with any crime about or that surrounds race. And it's now happening with anything with trans. And it's not that they won't entirely cover it, although in this case, obviously they're not covering it. It's that they, they will cover it with such a lens, they shape the aperture so narrowly that people who don't have other mainstream or alternative news sources will never hear the stuff that we tend to discuss. And those different information silos, exacerbated obviously by the online world, make it difficult for people to even reckon with what reality is. It's, and you know, the Norm MacDonald meme continues to be completely true about like the real victims are the possible, the retaliation against the group that actually assassinated someone. So that I'm seeing a lot more of those stories crop up in the last 48 hours among mainstream outlets about the trans implications in our main thing.
- [37:18]
B
It's the same thing, by the way, in the way the liberal mind comprehends Israel and Gaza, right? What's going to happen to the Gazans now that Hamas killed 1200 Jews and kidnapped several hundred more? That immediate leap to whatever group is in the hierarchy of victimhood, that's the tell. And it's happening again and it's just preventing half the country, it seems, from reckoning with the significance of, of Charlie Kirk's assassination.
- [37:51]
A
I just want to point out we.
- [37:53]
D
Saw it last week, too. We saw before the assassination of Charlie Kirk in the case of the young Ukrainian refugee who was stabbed to death on a train in North Carolina. There was no national coverage until there had to be, until social media, the online. Right. And Trump, Trump pushed it.
- [38:14]
B
Trump has the power to take something. And just as an example, Trump had a truth over the weekend about a disgusting crime that took place in Dallas involving a prominent Indian American. And I had no idea that this took place until Donald Trump truthed about it. So this is one of the sources of Trump's power and also appeal because people understand that the only way sometimes to get through the narrative, the choking narrative that governs the way we talk about politics or what issues matter is through Trump.
- [38:55]
A
Well, I want to just point out that in the May 25, 2025 issue of Commentary. Hannah Myers. We published an article called Trans Criminals the Problem We Refused to Define. Now remember, we don't know where Tyler Robinson is on this spectrum. We only know that his roommate, with whom he had a romantic relationship, is transitioning. However, here's the point, because it gets to what it is that we are willing to look at and what we're not willing to look at, or what not we, but what the common culture wants not to connect the dots to. Right, here's what Hannah writes. In January, transgender repeat knife offender Jaya Cruz fatally stabbed a postal worker after jockeying over places in the sandwich line at a Manhattan deli. A few weeks later, transgender Nicole Suarez, Pre pursued by ICE for previous crimes, stalked and then raped a 14 year old boy in a bodega bathroom in East Harlem. In February, 18 year old transgender Trinity Shockley was arrested after planning a mass Valentine's Day shooting. Shockley failed, where Tennessee transgender Audrey Hale succeeded. Hale gunned down six kids and adults at the Covenant School in Nashville. Right. So all of these cases raise a very obvious question. Do transgender Americans commit crime at higher rates or of different types than cisgender Americans? The answer is we have no idea. Whereas crime data exists for all other demographics, we are systematically not collecting or analyzing stats for trans offenders. And we know anecdotally that there are these trans cases in prisons where people are assigning themselves male, males are assigning themselves the female gender, getting themselves put into female populations in prisons and raping female prisoners.
- [40:49]
C
Yes, hacking female prisoners.
- [40:51]
A
Hacking and raping female prisoners. And as Hannah says, maybe this is nothing, maybe this is just. It tracks with numbers in general. But this is a, this is. We are being told that this is a distinct population in America. And therefore the idea that may, and we should be counting it as a distinct population and therefore the behavioral aspects of this distinct population should be collected. And we are refusing to do it. Just as we don't like to talk about black on white crime. So the mayor of Charlotte doesn't want to make a big deal out of Irina's murder at the hands of a, of a black schizophrenic on a train who said, I got the white girl, or whatever it is that he said as he was walking off the car. That does not fit with the image of American society, that the dominant culture, which remains the dominant culture, even if it's not the dominant political force in the country, remains locked down to and breaking. So that every time we need to have a more honest or frank conversation about these things, we have to break down doors and smash glass and go through barriers and deal with this entropic resistance to facing the reality that we have to face so that we know how to combat the evil that is among us and try to stop it. We've had two major mass shootings at religious schools by transgender people. Audrey Hale and the kid at Annunciation. That's two. I know there's 330 million people in America, but there are clear parallels and valences between these two events, including family having worked at the school or the kid having gone to the school or something like that. Do other people at religious schools, parents, administrators, all that need to worry about what to do if a kid starts going trans? Because, will, is this a meme that is going around? Is it something that will become emphasized in a way that will make it an outsized threat? Or is it not? Or is it nothing and we shouldn't really be examining it, but you can't tell me it's nothing without proving to me it's nothing. Right? So that. And I think that's sort of where the gaslighting goes on.
- [43:18]
B
And I think the point is most people know it's something. And I'm not even sure you just called it the dominant culture. I think it's the culture of powerful legacy institutions, but the truth is, it's not. This type of politically correct hyper progressivism we're talking about is not dominant in the country. It's dominant in the cities, it's dominant in the universities, it's dominant in the legacy media, and it's dominant in entertainment, but not the rest, not the country.
- [43:48]
A
And that's why we're seeing this Transmission points. I'm just right.
- [43:52]
B
But they're under challenge. They're under challenge.
- [43:54]
A
Yes.
- [43:55]
B
And that's the. That's the culture war of our time. And. And I think we can see that in this. We should just mention, before we turn to another topic, the tremendous outpouring of support for Charlie Kirk for Turning Point usa, for the principles that Kirk espoused. It's incredible to see the turnout at the Kennedy center vigil, which attracted significant political figures, including the speaker of the House of Representatives. The news that just Turning Point is swamped with applications now for new chapters, that the funeral or memorial service for Charlie Kirk will be held next Sunday at an NFL stadium. And I want to be surprised if they fill up quite a bit of that stadium, if not the entire thing. President Trump says he will be there as well. So that is where the culture actually is. But it has been obscured for so many years by these cultural and the trans. But you, yes, you accurately call the transmission points of the culture that kind of just, you know, Bob Turrell called it the culture smog.
- [45:08]
A
Right.
- [45:08]
B
30 years ago. They kind of, it's, they mask what actually is hap. What people normally think with these extremely ideologized viewpoints. And I think, as we've said on the podcast a lot, I think the trans issue is where it just begins to snap. People just cannot accept this type of antinomianism that with a wave of your hand and one utterance of your speech, you have redefined your bodily nature as a human being. People look at that and go, are you crazy? What's answer may be yes. And second look at what's happening now that there's, there's this ideology that is murderous connected to it.
- [45:52]
A
Mike and Alyssa are always trying to outdo each other. When Alyssa got a small water bottle, Mike showed up with a 4 liter jug. When Mike started gardening, Alyssa started beekeeping. Oh, come on. They called a truce for their holiday and used Expedia trip planner to collaborate on all the details of their trip. Once there, Mike still did more laps around the pool. Whatever. You were made to outdo your holidays. We were made to help organize the competition. Expedia made to travel. I'm Oliver Darcy. And I'm John Passantino.
- [46:24]
B
We have spent years covering the inner workings of the news media, tech, politics, Hollywood and power. Now through our nightly newsletter status.
- [46:33]
A
And we're bringing that same reporting and sharp analysis to a new podcast, Power Lines.
- [46:38]
C
Every Friday, we're breaking down the biggest.
- [46:40]
B
Stories shaping the industry, explaining why they.
- [46:42]
A
Matter, and saying the things most people.
- [46:44]
B
Are thinking but too timid to say out loud.
- [46:47]
A
No spin, no fluff, just sharp analysis.
- [46:50]
C
That isn't afraid to call it like it is.
- [46:51]
A
We also pull back the curtain via our exclusive reporting to take you behind the scenes. My understanding having reported this is that the Pentagon protested to CNN and tried to effectively exile the CNN producer.
- [47:06]
C
And when the moment calls for it.
- [47:08]
A
We'Ve got some hot takes. I just think Brad Pitt, honestly, he kind of seems a little washed up. Oh, my God. That's Power lines presented by Status. Follow power lines and listen on Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music, or your favorite podcast app.
- [47:28]
C
They didn't listen. A few years ago, right after the pandemic, when parents were noticing, a lot of this happened, especially the transgender stuff coming into the popular culture of what their children consumed on television and books and parents would raise concern. And we knew about this, because on the conservative side of the aisle, we were covering a lot of this stuff, but I think a regular parent didn't realize that their kid was being shown a chart about what it means to be a gender unicorn in second grade. And there was a lot of pushback, and there were parents going to school boards and they were. Some of them were called terrorists for raising these objections. And there was still an effort that was largely successful on the part of this cultural force to say, you're just intolerant, you're just transphobic, you're just bigoted. And I do think that's shifted now. That is a huge shift as a result of these killings by transgender people and by, obviously the most recent. This most recent case with Charlie.
- [48:17]
A
You know, one of the things to note on. On social media, the counter response to the assassination, which is this very systematic and deliberate effort by people on the right to go through social media feeds and Facebook and TikTok and Instagram and Twitter and find people who say they celebrate Charlie Kirk's killing, which apparently it's too difficult for Jonathan Che to see people like him to see in the hundreds and thousands of. And that there does seem to be an extraordinarily disproportionate number of them who are teachers who work in the education system. Now, this comes as no surprise to anybody who has been living, who has been wildly conscious on an hourly basis of what's gone on with Jewish people on college campuses and at schools and stuff since October 7th. And I'm not sure it comes as much of a surprise to most very engaged conservatives, but it should come as a surprise to the people who aren't paying attention. And if their response to these discoveries again in the hundreds and thousands, you know, he got what he deserved. People making kids, you know, teachers in classrooms showing kids the video of the assassinate, you know, showing the 10 second clip of the assassination explaining why it was justified. That kind of thing. Yeah, it shocks the conscience. It is wildly inappropriate. And this world of educators and then also medical professionals, and this is a big thing after October 7th with Jews. It's like, well, you know, I don't know if I want this person thinks that it's okay for somebody to assassinate a conservative and somebody comes in to an emergency room with, I don't know, Christ is Lord tattooed on them or, you know, some symbol on their body suggesting that they are an evangelical or a conservative or, you know, Trump 2024, something like that. How can we know that that person will get the proper kind of medical care from somebody who believes that it's okay to kill people who disagree, who espouse the things that Charlie Gork espoused. And so these efforts to name and shame and expose people are rearing in horror. And I think, I think we're all, we all understand there is something a little more than a little discomfiting in sort of like just going at somebody who wasn't really even thinking much about what the hell that they were doing and, you know, just like blathered something out to impress their friends and then, you know, and then basically their lives are ended. That's why people are calling this right wing canceling culture. It isn't. It's a security and safety issue for kids and people, as I say, in hospitals and that sort of thing. But it is like the horrified reaction of liberals in the left to this effort to out those who have these views is a sign that they genuinely do not understand how alarming this has been to people who don't share their opinions over such a long period of time.
- [51:47]
C
They also have not experienced what a lot of conservatives in fields where they're working, that they're working in that they know to be culturally liberal. What those conservatives have spent decades doing, which is hiding their political beliefs from their employer and from their fellow employees, and that living behind a shadow and not expressing one's political views, which, by the way, used to be the norm everywhere. Like, people just, you didn't talk about politics and religion in certain company. And that includes, included largely at the workplace. Once that broke down and left wing views were the, became the norm in many places of employment, conservatives were quiet. And I think part of the alarm on the part of the cultural left right now is suddenly they're hearing from a lot more people that they're not going to be quiet. And even if it's just based on the principle of free speech, like you have the right to express your view, that is shocking them because actually the, the conspiracy of silence that a lot of conservatives engaged in just to protect their employment. And that's ending as well.
- [52:39]
A
All right, well, let's, let's just shift topics to the very interesting and hard to parse behavior of the Trump administration following the Israeli attack on the, on the building in Gutter from the air, and the fact that we keep getting told that it was an unsuccessful attack in that, you know, the targets weren't killed and other people might have been killed. Trump saying it's bad and Qatar is a good ally. And, you know, if you got to be very careful when you do stuff like this. And then, you know, however long it was since the attack. This weekend, the Secretary of State travels to Israel. This is what we call a mixed message in, you know, that's diplomatic speak for a mixed message, which is if you're really mad at Israel and you think it's done something wrong and should be condemned, the Secretary of State doesn't go and pay a pretty ceremonial visit to Holy Land where he prays at the Western Wall, puts a. I think, puts a note in the wall, and most importantly, participates in the opening of what is called the Pilgrim's Walk 25 years ago. Seth Mandel has written very well about this for us. In an area of East Jerusalem, there was literally a kind of moment in architectural history, excuse me, not archite history, archeological history, where tile was found, an area was excavated and over the last 20. And it was the discovery of the Davidic Temple, the place where the kings of Israel, following the Davidic line likely lived, you know, in, in the years before the destruction of the first temple. And to get. If you were a Jew coming from. A Hebrew coming from elsewhere in Israel, and you wanted to go to the temple grounds to, to do your sacrifice, you had to be purified in order. You had to be cleansed and purified before you could enter the temple grounds. And there was this path, it turns out, which we did not really know, about 800 yards long or something like that. The pilgrims would come through on the path, go into a ritual bath, cleanse themselves, come out of it, and then enter. Site has now been fully excavated. It is the final proof of the Jewish existence in the Holy land dating back 3,000 years, not 2,000 years, not 23,000 years. It is a landmark moment in the history of archeology and it is a very important ideological statement because 25 years ago, people may or may not remember when Bill Clinton was trying to convince Yasser Arafat to accept a deal to take a Palestinian state. And then they would deal with the fact that Palestinians have been there and Jews have been there. And Arafat said, no, the Jewish connection to the land of Israel is a myth. There were no Jews here. It's all. It's all nonsense triggering this amazing Israeli response, which was to spend an enormous amount of resource, enormous amount of time. A lot of American philanthropy went into this remarkable American philanthropy and this discovery and excavation of the. Of the Tvetic castle site. And now the finding of the Pilgrim's Rock. And what happened this weekend, the opening of the Pilgrim's Rock was attended by the Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, when we are supposedly in some kind of a diplomatic Bruegas. That's the word. Fight, quarrel in Yiddish with Israel over its behavior in Qatar. So I take that to mean that we are not in a brogus with Israel over gutter, that the brigas is surface and a stunt and for show, and that Trump wants to do it in order to sort of, like, wave to the gutteries and say, you know, we don't really. We don't want Israel to, like, invade you and destroy you. And. Yeah, yeah, we know you hate it. But you know what? Marco Rubio, I think maybe I said to you guys before, he may be the first Secretary of State or senior official in the State Department, with the exception of Ambassador Friedman and Ambassador Huckabee, to go Disputed by Resolution 242 Disputed territories, East Jerusalem, in this case, as a guest of the government of Israel or accompanied by Israeli, as an American, with Israeli officials thus implicitly accepting the. And Rubio said, called, I think called Jerusalem, the eternal capital of Israel at the. At the Western Wall, and then stood next to Netanyahu, I think, this morning in gutter, as Netanyahu said, we don't apologize to anybody for this attack. No one is safe anywhere. Not in. Not in gutter, not in Qatar. I'm sorry, I'm sorry. He's going to gutter. Is that it?
- [57:38]
B
I don't think he is.
- [57:40]
A
He's not.
- [57:40]
B
I think he's going to England to meet Trump.
- [57:42]
A
He's a brave part on my part. I apologize.
- [57:45]
B
The Iranians are in Qatar, which I think is an interesting contrast to where Rubio is.
- [57:50]
A
But here's the thing. Rubio was standing next to Netanyahu, said, we don't apologize for what we did. We'll do it again if we have to. Da, da, da. And he didn't say, no, no, no, don't you say that. Whatever. He stood there as he said it, meaning that Netanyahu knew he could say it without consequence. So I don't think that there is any daylight here between America and Israel. In fact, does anybody read this differently?
- [58:15]
B
I mean, I think that a lot of people who are more sympathetic to the Palestinian side want to read in to some of Trump's comments. Daylight between the United States and Israel. But from what we can see, there's been no cost imposed on Israel by the United States for the attack on the Hamas leadership in Qatar. And I think the Qatari response is worth highlighting because not only are they welcoming Iran, which shot missiles at them, by the way. I guess they don't care about that. It's only when Israel strikes terrorists on their territory that the Qataris become concerned. And then they've also telegraphed to their various, you know, journalistic mouthpieces that, you know, they're so outraged because they the attack really violated the United States pledge of protection over Qatar. Well, protection over what? I mean, protection for the Qatari's ability to harbor terrorists. Did they think that that would really be the extent? And maybe under Obama that was what the pledge meant. But I think in the Trump foreign policy, that's not what anyone should expect. I think Trump has the view that nations will pursue their own interests, and in this case, Israel pursued its own interests by striking the Hamas leadership. And it might not have done so as effectively as Trump would have liked, but nonetheless, it's been done. And now these Hamas terrorists, they don't have safe harbor anymore.
- [59:56]
A
Okay, and maybe we should conclude with a set of recommendations and a cultural observation relating to last night's Emmy Awards. So if you look at the list of the Emmy Awards given, I'm pretty, I, as a cultural consumer am pretty happy with the results of the Emmys. The studio won almost everything in comedy. It's a really, really good show. It's a, if you haven't watched it.
- [60:24]
B
Commentary recommendation.
- [60:25]
A
Yeah, very. A lot of what we're about to talk about are commentary recommendations, actually. So the studio won like practically everything. And it's a, it's a really interesting, unusual like what you want out of this streaming era, which is people doing things you haven't really seen before. Something that we have seen before but is being done at the highest possible level of excellence and execution. The Pit won not only for drama series, but for no Wiley's lead acting and for Catherine Lanasa supporting acting as Dana, the head nurse. And Sean Hatosi winning for guest actor for his performance as the other comes in later in the show. Anyway, all extremely deserved. I think probably Andor was marginally better than the Pit aesthetically, creatively. But Andor did win an Emmy for writing Slow Horses, the other great series on Apple tv, the spy series starring Gary Oldman, one for directing. And the show brilliant, very punishing but very brilliant show. Adolescence like swept its categories for acting, directing, writing this four episode series on Netflix about the murder of a 13 year old boy in a grammar school in England. So all of that was pretty good. Here was the bad. So the head of the television academy came out. His name is Abrego Chris Abrego to announce that they were giving a special award to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. And how wonderful Ernie and Big Bird and Skip Gates is finding our roots and how, you know, the Corporation has spent 60 years trying to deal with our diversity and helping us express our differences but bring us together as a people and free speech, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And art and the highest level of art. So much art. And the art is great. And we need to really focus on, on art and all of that. And I just want to point out that Chris Abrego, this expostulator of art before he became involved in the television academy and then the head of it, these are the kind of shows that he produced to bring art to the American people. He made a lot of reality programming for VH1, including my Fair Brady. That was the show about how the guy who played Peter Brady married this kind of exhibitionistic lunatic. That was the Surreal Life, Fame Games, Celebrity Paranormal Project, Rock of Love with Bret Michaels, America's Most Smartest Model, Megan Wants a Millionaire, Bridal Plasti Lala's Full Court Life and for the Love of Ray J and Rock of I guess I mentioned Rock of Love so that this is, this is the man who speaks for art and how it elevates us and brings us together as a people producing garbage. He produced garbage that degraded our culture. And then he hands off a prize and makes a big political speech about the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Goodbye, Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Good luck to you taxpayers aren't going to give you any more money and you can see if you can get some psychotic billionaire to give you all the money that you want to continue with your wonderful program of anti fascist diversity. And of course the other two moments are the other main moment and this is where the culture functions. So two celebrities appeared on the red carpet and then one won an award. Hannah Einbinder on Hacks supporting actress and Javier Bardem, the Academy Award winning actor who was on the red carpet nominated for playing Eric and Lyle Menendez's father was wearing a keffiyeh, was, you know, interviewed by the, on E. By the, you know, in the pre. On the red carpet saying genocide and Palestine. I will no longer, you know, he signed this letter, you know, I will not participate that I will not allow work for anybody who supports it as complicit in the genocide and da da da, da da. And so I loved Javier Bardem and now I hope that he falls off a, you know, falls off a cliff and takes off his or chokes on his keffiyeh or something like that. I don't need to hear from him. I want him to act. Shut up and sing. Leave me alone. Don't, don't, you know, pour your poison into my ears. But Hannah Einbinder, who is like 30 years old, is a comedian on this part Unhacks, in which, interestingly enough, she plays a humorless millennium millennial comedy writer.
- [65:03]
B
Humorless comedy writer.
- [65:05]
A
Yeah, right. Came out. She is the daughter of Lorraine Newman, one of the original cast members of Saturday Night Live. And she was standing there and she had two things, one of which is that she had on her lapel the hands, the red hands. Now, if everybody remembers, the red hands is a image of a Palestinian murderer who held up his red hands to demonstrate that he had the, you know, to celebrate the blood of Jews on his hands. So that's great. That was really wonderful. She's Jewish, by the way, of course. And then at the end of her Emmy winning speech, she said f ice and free Palestine and walked off the stage. And then at the backstage, asked why she made this political statement, she said, I feel an obligation to show that Jewish people do not stand with Israel effectively. Or being Jewish doesn't mean being supportive, whatever. So I only point this out.
- [66:03]
B
She called it an ethno nationalist project.
- [66:06]
A
Yes, yes. So she's an anti Zionist, hostile to the state of Israel. Why does this matter? Not only match one person, people have made did very little political speechifying, except for Mr. Abrego in between producing, you know, my 2,000 pound sex life, you know, making his little statement about.
- [66:28]
B
About even Stephen Colbert.
- [66:29]
A
Was Stephen Colbert relatively restrained?
- [66:32]
B
He said he just loves America and he's looking for work.
- [66:34]
A
Right. But the point is that nobody opened their mouth on the other side. There wasn't a single person. And Nate Bargazzi, the host of the show, clearly chosen not only because he's this wildly successful standup comedian, but because he is the least offensive person for the CBS audience. He's not going to go anywhere politically. If he were, he would go pro Trump or sort of Trump adjacent. He didn't do it. He talked about the Boys and Girls Club of America mostly. And so, but nobody said, you know, I'd like the hot please, even totally anodyne, something like, please send the hostages home or let's have a prayer for the hostages or even, you know, let's say a prayer for Charlie Kirk or something like. There would. No, there was, there was one voice, not 10,000 voices of political controversy on the stage, but there's no countervailing voice. And that's where the culture smog that you mentioned or the cultural dominance of the, of the left and these views hold sway because she knew she was fine, but there was no other person in that room who could have known that getting up and saying, I'd just like to say, you know, I just wish our deepest condolences to Erica Kirk on the horrible assassination of her husband. If a person had said that that person would have difficulty getting work tomorrow.
- [67:56]
B
What would have been the reaction from the audience as well?
- [68:00]
A
Yeah, exactly. So that's our recommendation, our recommendations. My recommendations are the big Emmy winners, the Studio Adolescents and the Pit. My other recommendation is that you should write angry and hostile tweets about Hannah Einbinder and find her email address and send her emails, sending her copies of the Jewish state, articles from Commentary, that sort of thing. Not that she is. Not that there's any way in which her performative, ignorant, ignoramus, self loving, self hating Jew personality is going to be converted to sweet reason.
- [68:40]
B
We just have to spend a moment about how she's a useful idiot because her post Emmy remarks have been posted by something called the Quds News Network with video. But as they're, as they are quoting her egregious denunciation of Israel, the Quds News Network is masking her bare arms and shoulders. So there you go, Hannah. She's both condemning the Jewish people and the state of Israel while the, well.
- [69:14]
A
Her modesty while she is being presented immodest.
- [69:17]
B
So I wonder what the police for the enforcement of virtue would say about Hannah Ein Binder's body and body of work.
- [69:26]
A
We'll be back tomorrow. For Matt, Christine and Abe, I'm John Pugharts. Keep the candle burning.