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Hey, everybody, it's Alison Gill, co host of the Daily Beans podcast. You know me as Mueller. She wrote a lot went down this week in the news, and I'm going to do my best to connect it all for you here on the Midas Touch Network. So for the week ending September 14, 2025, this is the breakdown. I'd like to start the show by congratulating my friend Eugene Carroll for winning in court yet again. This time, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals rejected Trump's bid to overturn the $83 million judgment against unanimous opinion said, quote, trump has failed to identify any grounds that would warrant reconsidering our prior holding on presidential immunity. We also conclude the district court did not err in any of the challenged rulings and that the jury's damages awards are fair and reasonable. Now, I assume Trump is going to appeal this one to the Supreme Court. And on any other planet, I would be able to say with confidence that the justices would uphold this verdict. But the fact that it has to do with presidential immunity and even though his defamation and the rape happened when he was out of office, that immunity part might just be enough to get them to take the case up. So we'll see. We'll cover it here. Now, speaking of the Supreme Court, and I know this feels like a decade ago, but it was this week the conservative justices rubber stamped racial profiling by ICE and the Department of Homeland Security. As we know, California sued to stop racial profiling and the lower courts blocked ICE from doing it. In a well reasoned ruling. But again, using the emergency docket with little to no explanation, the Supreme Court is going to allow racial profiling to continue for now. And Justice Sotomayor wrote a blistering dissent saying, quote, we should not have to live in a country where the government can seize anyone who looks Latino, speaks Spanish and appears to work at a low wage job rather than stand idly by while our constitutional freedoms are lost. I dissent now. The Supreme Court also used the emergency docket this week to withhold foreign aid funds. And and they used it to lift the block against firing a member of the Federal Trade Commission Despite a 90 year old precedent called Humphrey's executor from the Supreme Court. Now, in other news this week, Mike Johnson had to walk back the ridiculous lie he told about Donald Trump being an FBI informant that helped to take down Jeffrey Epstein. That lie was so ridiculous, in order for it to be true, you'd have to believe that Trump was working with Robert Mueller as part of the deep state. Now, the Backlash against Mike Johnson's remarks was so swift, he walked back his bullshit story saying, oh, well, what I meant was, more than a decade ago, Trump kicked Epstein out of Mar? A Lago, and he was one of the only people, as you know, prominent people, as everyone says, that was willing to help law enforcement go after this guy who was a disgusting child abuser, sex trafficker, and all the allegations. That's what they heard. So the President was helpful in that. Unquote. Ah, interesting. So Trump knew what Epstein was doing and has said nothing about it and actually made the guy who gave Jeffrey his sweetheart deal his labor secretary. Makes sense. And then we got the birthday book. Right, Directly from the Epstein estate pursuant to a House oversight subpoena. And unlike the tripe that the Department of Justice is trying to pass off in the name of transparency as the Epstein files, none of these documents have been scrubbed by Bondi or a team of a thousand FBI personnel. And for the first time, we actually saw the letter from Trump. And it sent chills down my spine because this is not a drawing of a grown woman. Of course, the right wing noise machine would have us all believe that the signatures don't match, which is laughable. But the book has other disturbing drawings and notes, like this one from Mar? A Lago member and rich guy with a photo of one of those big fake checks and a note that reads, jeffrey sells fully depreciated, real redacted, to Donald Trump for $22,500. Now, on its face, it seems like a vile joke at the expense of Trump and Jeffrey. But consider the definition of depreciation. It means the systematic allocation of the cost of a tangible asset over its useful life, accounting for its loss of value due to wear and tear, age, or obsolescence. And in the context of a notorious sex trafficker of minors, that meaning becomes really gross. And in a related story, Chuck Schumer did something. He added an amendment to release the Epstein files to the NDAA to force Republicans to vote a vote on it. And in short order, every single Republican, save two, voted to block the release of the files and continue the COVID up. The two Republican senators, by the way, that joined Democrats were Rand Paul and Josh Hawley. So I guess Murkowski and Collins drew the short straws this time around. All right, let's talk about the school shootings this week. First, three children were critically wounded in a shooting at a high school in Colorado. ABC News reported that while authorities are still looking into the shooter's motives, they believe he was radicalized by an extremist network and that he had a mission. Authorities said they're trying to better understand that network and they're searching his phone, his home and his locker to learn more on who he was communicating with before the shooting. The 16 year old white male was found dead by a self inflicted gunshot wound. And these children, like all victims of mass shootings in America, were what Charlie Kirk considered acceptable losses in the fight to preserve the second amendment. And as you know by now, Charlie Kirk himself was killed last Wednesday in a school shooting on a college campus in Utah while arguing with a member of the audience about gun violence. Now, most Americans who aren't plugged into the news like we are are likely first learning about Charlie Kirk. But because no one in the media is willing to speak frankly about the man for fear of being fired, I guess I think many people's first impression of Charlie Kirk is going to be what the media is giving them. A picture of a young father and husband who reached across aisles to debate rivals at college campuses and on podcasts. Ezra Klein even wrote a fawning piece for the New York Times about how Charlie Kirk did politics the right way. So then why is everyone scared to quote the man directly and share his views? The views that Kirk himself proudly shouted from the rooftops? I think giving an accurate picture of who Charlie Kirk was doesn't glorify gun violence and the cowardice with which the media is approaching. This is kind of disturbing. So let's take a look at who Charlie Kirk actually was. He would have wanted you to know he was very proud of his views. In 2023, Charlie Kirk said that gun deaths were worth it to ensure the preservation of Second Amendment rights in the United States. At a 2023 event, Kirk called civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. Awful and not a good person as he decried the Civil Rights act. In a February 2024 Instagram post, he talked about the great replacement theory. He was also extremely racist, saying things like, I'm sorry, but if I see a black pilot, I'm not. I'm going to be like, boy, I hope he's qualified. In 2022, he asked, if you're a WNBA, pot smoking, black lesbian, do you get treated better than a United States Marine? In 2023, he said, happening all the time in urban America, prowling blacks, going around for fun, to target white people. And that's a fact. It's happening more and more. And he also said, if I'm dealing with somebody in customer service who's a moronic black woman. I wonder if she's there because of her excellence or because of affirmative action. And in 2024 he said we need Nuremberg style trials for every gender affirming clinic doctor. Now why are we hiding who he was from the public? Well, I guess it's easy to see why the media is treading so lightly on this matter. Matthew Dowd of MSNBC was fired for his remarks discussing Charlie Kirk's divisiveness. But meanwhile, Jesse Waters on Fox can call for a civil war and vow to avenge Charlie Kirk's death, which might have resulted in the subsequent bomb threats the following day at historically black colleges and universities UMass Annapolis and the DNC headquarters in D.C. and where was this level of coverage for the political assassinations of the Hortmans in Minnesota by a right wing domestic terrorist dressed like a copy of who had a list of 70 other Democrats that he was gunning for? And why is Governor Polis flying flags at half staff for Charlie Kirk but not the kids shot at the Colorado high school? Why is Trump lowering flags for Kirk but not the Hortman's or Jimmy Carter or John McCain? So let's talk about the manhunt. At first Kash Patel said they had a suspect in custody on Twitter, but then he said they released that guy. And then they had another suspect in custody, but they released that guy. And the local authorities said they didn't have anyone in custody. And by the following day, they still hadn't apprehended the gunman. But the Wall Street Journal felt it necessary to release a story from a single source about an alleged law enforcement memo saying that authorities had found bullets inside the rifle engraved with quote, expressions of transgender and anti fascist ideology. Now, I was immediately suspicious on the sourcing of this story and I wanted to share the story with my criticisms and questions like what are those exact expressions of transgender and antifascist ideologies? Where's the law enforcement memo? Show it to us. Who signed it? Who's your source? Is it Stephen Miller? But I decided to wait for clarification because I didn't want to spread this thinly sourced, shitty anti trans reporting. And I'm glad I waited because within two hours, the ATF pushed back on the Wall Street Journal story. The Times said a senior law enforcement official with direct knowledge of the investigation cautioned that that report had not been verified by the ATF and it did not match other summaries of the evidence and might turn out to have been misread or misinterpreted. And Then later that night, Trump released a video concluding to shooter who hadn't been identified or captured as a left wing lunatic. And then after Patel's social media mess, he insisted on flying out to Utah personally, delaying for hours a press conference for local law enforcement to release video and additional photos of the suspect because they had no leads and desperately needed the public's help. And of course, once there, Patel stood there and said nothing. Thanks. I wonder what he was thinking about. I wonder if he was thinking the manhunt might have gone more smoothly if he hadn't just gutted the FBI or if they hadn't put this guy in charge of counterterrorism. 22 year old Thomas Fugate, who they recently had to replace because of the swift backlash they received for this move. Or maybe Kash was wishing that he hadn't fired the special agent in charge of the Utah FBI field office just last month. Her name is Metab Syed. Patel didn't give a reason for her firing, but we could probably guess. Or maybe Koch was thinking about the fact that he assigned one third of what remains of the FBI to help ICE roll up on our neighbors in unmarked vans wearing masks. And as Asha Rangappa points out, you know what would be good FBI experience for identifying violent criminals in large crowds? The agents who investigated January 6th. But they've all been fired. Now, Friday morning, Trump announced in a media interview that they had the suspect in custody. And the governor of Utah proudly declared, we got him. Yeah, I mean, guess technically you have him, but you didn't exactly get him. His father turned him in and he surrendered to authorities. They might have had better luck catching him if we had a national gun serial number registry, but Republicans don't want that. Andrew Weissman reminded us on Thursday that if it was a car, you can instantly get the entire ownership history of the car, but with the gun, the same is not true. Maybe it should be. So they have the suspect and I won't name him because I think these mass shooters want the attention and I think they're showing off for each other. But we've learned quite a bit about him. We also learned that those phrases etched on the bullets are notices bulge. If you're reading this, you're gay. Lmao. Hey, fascist catch with a series of arrows after it and the lyrics to Chow Bella. Now some of these are troll memes and some come from a video game called Helldivers 2. None of them espouse transgender or anti fascist ideology because in the video game you're from super earth. In the 22nd century, which is now a united planet under a system called managed democracy. Managed democracy is an authoritarian state that uses propaganda to convince citizens and the people fighting for it that they're actually in a democracy when they're not. So the game satirizes authoritarianism and nationalism. And hey, fascist catch is part of the game. And the left, right down, down, down arrows. That's from the game too. It's a controller sequence used to drop a 500 kilogram bomb on your enemy. And Chow Bella is an anti fascist anthem from World War II, and it's often used in some Helldivers 2 montages. The notices bulge and if you read this, you're gay. Those are just homophobic trolls used by the terminally online but the media so desperately wanted to paint the shooter as a liberal that their own confirmation bias led them to conclusions that were not only wrong, but actually dangerous. The Wall Street Journal is an example. They said the shooter expressed transgender ideology. Nope. Even the BBC said the messages on the bullets were references to antifa. Nope. The Washington Post reported that the shooter didn't like Charlie Kirk because Charlie Kirk was full of hate. But then they had to retract that too, it says Cox said a family member told investigators that at a recent family dinner, Robinson had mentioned Kirk coming to the school and discussed why he didn't like Kirk. The family member told authorities that Robinson and a third relative discussed their dislike of Kirk. That's what Cox said. The person who spoke to authorities said the third family member described Kirk as full of hate, not the shooter, a third family member. And here's the correction. A previous version of this PO of this post incorrectly said that Utah governor Spencer Cox said a family member of the shooter told authorities that he was full of hate. So the shooter didn't like Charlie Kirk, but not because he thought Charlie Kirk was full of hate. We don't know yet why he didn't like Charlie Kirk, but it's of note that there's a whole group of terminally online young white men who don't like Charlie Kirk. They are fans of white supremacist Nick Fuentes and they're called groipers. Maybe that's why the shooter didn't like Kirk. Maybe he's not right wing enough. Or maybe the shooter didn't like Charlie Kirk because Laura Loomer told everybody to disown Kirk. In a since deleted post from just two months ago, Loomer said, I don't ever want to hear Charlie Kirk claim he's pro Trump ever again. After this weekend, I'd say he has revealed himself as a political opportunist and I have had a front row seat to witness the mental gymnastics for the last 10 years. Lately, Charlie has decided to behave like a charlatan, claiming to be pro Trump one day while he stabs Trump in the back the next. The point here, we don't know. But now that the right wingers have learned who the shooter isn't, that he's not a woke Marxist, transgender liberal, foreign antifa Democrat, they're changing their tune. Listen to Rep. Nancy Mace on Thursday before the shooter was identified and content warning for slurs.