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The Headlines
The Manhunt for Charlie Kirk’s Killer, and Putin’s Defiant Message
00:11:31
Plus, why firefighters are sounding an alarm.
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- [00:03]
Tracy Mumford
From the New York Times, it's the Headlines. I'm Tracy Mumford. Today's Thursday, September 11th. Here's what we're covering. In Utah, a manhunt is underway as authorities search for the person who shot and killed Charlie Kirk, a close ally of President Trump and the influential founder of the country's foremost right wing youth activist group.
- [00:27]
Producer or Show Assistant
That's a lot of people. Utah.
- [00:31]
Tracy Mumford
Kirk was holding an event at Utah Valley University yesterday, about 45 minutes south of Salt Lake City. It was the first stop on what was supposed to be his nationwide tour of college campuses this fall put on by Kirk's organization, Turning Point usa.
- [00:45]
Producer or Show Assistant
All right, we're gonna get started, everybody. You know how it works. Question, answer. Thank you to Lane.
- [00:50]
Tracy Mumford
He spoke for about 20 minutes in front of a crowd of approximately 3,000 people taking questions from the audience, including some who had come to openly debate him. Do you know how many mass shooters there have been in America over the last 10 years? One man asked him about mass shootings in America, and just seconds later, Kirk was shot.
- [01:11]
Commentator or Guest
Charlie Kirk got shot.
- [01:13]
Tracy Mumford
Authorities say they believe the shooter fired from a nearby rooftop down onto the quad. Videos recorded at the scene show a person on the roof of a building about 150 yards away who then rushed off. Immediately after the shooting, two people were questioned by police and released, and numerous false posts have circulated online claiming to ID the shooter. But as of now, no one is in custody and the FBI has asked the public for their help in identifying the gunman. Kirk had his own security detail on site with him yesterday. Over the years, his events have sparked backlash and controversy as he's risen to become one of the most prominent stars on the right, denouncing woke culture, promoting Christian nationalism, and making inflammatory comments about Jewish, gay and black people. He made his first appearance on Fox News when he was in high school and had become, at just 31, a powerful and charismatic force in Trump's orbit. He texted regularly with Vice President J.D.
- [02:13]
Donald Trump
Vance to my great fellow Americans, I am filled with grief and anger at the heinous assassination of Charlie Kirk. On a.
- [02:22]
Tracy Mumford
In a video posted to social media last night, President Trump mourned Kirk's death as a dark moment for America and called out those he felt were to blame.
- [02:31]
Donald Trump
For years, those on the radical left have compared wonderful Americans like Charlie to Nazis and the world's worst mass murderers and criminals. This kind of rhetoric is directly responsible for the terrorism that we're seeing in our country today, and it must stop right now.
- [02:53]
Tracy Mumford
Trump's comments were echoed across the Right. Where the initial shock of Kirk's death almost instantly shifted into open calls for a political reckoning and even vengeance, including from Fox host Jesse Waters.
- [03:06]
Commentator or Guest
They are at war with us. Whether we want to accept it or not, they are at war with us, and what are we going to do about it? How much political violence are we going to tolerate? And that's the question we're just going to have to ask ourselves.
- [03:20]
Tracy Mumford
Kirk's killing, coming just months after the assassination of a Democratic lawmaker in Minnesota, along with multiple attempts on Trump's life and growing threats to judges, congresspeople and other public officials, has raised fears of more potential violence. A professor who conducts regular polls about the public's attitude toward political violence told the Times were basically a tinderbox of a country. He started conducting the polls in the aftermath of the attack on the Capitol on January 6th and said, quote, we are seeing more radicalized politics and more support for violence than at any point since we've been doing these studies in the past four years. This week, Russia has dramatically escalated its attacks in Ukraine and ratcheted up tensions with the West. On Sunday, it launched its largest missile and drone barrage of the entire war. And on Tuesday, a Russian bomb exploded in a crowd of older Ukrainians who were picking up their pension payments, killing at least 23 people. Then yesterday, Poland's prime minister said his country had faced a serious and, quote, large scale provocation after more than a dozen Russian drones entered the country's airspace, causing NATO to scramble fighter jets to shoot them down.
- [04:44]
Anton Troyanovsky
We're still trying to understand what exactly happened in Poland on Wednesday, how intentional was this incursion by Russian drones. But it really does make clear that Putin is prepared to keep taking risks here, to keep pushing the envelope, even if it means bringing NATO more directly into the conflict.
- [05:07]
Tracy Mumford
Anton Troyanovsky is the Moscow bureau chief for the Times. He's been talking to analysts and people close to the Kremlin about what appears to be a new level of aggression from Russian President Vladimir Putin.
- [05:19]
Anton Troyanovsky
I think that really underscores how confident Putin is right now of having the upper hand on the battlefield and being able to face down a West that has been pretty scattered in figuring out how to respond. And an American president, President Trump, who has been repeatedly setting deadlines and warning of sanctions against Russia and then not following through. So we're in a moment right now where Putin very clearly believes that he's a position to dictate the terms to the end to this war. And so his message comes down to, I won't back down.
- [06:05]
Tracy Mumford
The Times has learned new details about the US Military strike on a boat the president claimed was carrying illegal drugs. When Trump announced the strike last week, he said there were 11 Venezuelan gang members on board and that it was heading to the United States. He justified it as an act of self defense. And Secretary of State Marco Rubio said drug smugglers pose a, quote, immediate threat to the country. But multiple officials now tell the Times that the boat appeared to have altered its course and turned away from the US before the American strike killed everyone on board. They said the crew seemed to have been spooked by a military aircraft that had been following the boat. Some legal specialists, including top retired military lawyers, say that revelation undercuts any claim of self defense. Several had already questioned whether even that rationale was valid, saying that killing low level smugglers as if their enemy combatants is a crime. One retired military lawyer told the Times he's concerned that what seemed to him to be in a legal order was able to be passed through the military chain of command and carried out. I think it's a terrible precedent, he said. We've crossed a line here.
- [07:26]
Firefighter Representative
Our jobs as firefighters are dangerous even when everything's going right. We now face a danger created by others, others who are driven not by public safety but by profits and nothing else.
- [07:39]
Tracy Mumford
Firefighters are raising urgent concerns about soaring costs and production delays for fire engines in the US in recent years, fire departments have seen prices jump and order backlogs grow, sometimes forcing them to wait years to replace trucks while struggling to keep older engines in service.
- [07:59]
Firefighter Representative
These delays have absolutely had dangerous impacts on the safety of our neighbors, and the prices are crippling municipal budgets.
- [08:07]
Tracy Mumford
Their warnings came yesterday in testimony to a bipartisan group of lawmakers on Capitol Hill. Senators were demanding more information about the fire engine supply chain after a recent Times investigation found that Wall street executives had upended the industry in an effort to boost profits. Fire engines used to be built by small local companies, but Starting in the mid-2000s, private equity swooped in and started buying those companies up. Now the industry's three largest firms control almost 80% of the market.
- [08:41]
Senator or Lawmaker
Gentlemen, I just, I implore you. You need to do right by these people over here. There are some things that are more important than money, and our people's lives are one of those.
- [08:50]
Tracy Mumford
At Wednesday's hearing, senators pressed manufacturers, including about whether they were colluding to keep prices high, an allegation they denied. In response to the questions, a senior executive at one of the main companies that builds fire engines said the industry had been strained by shortages in skilled labor and pandemic disruptions, among other factors. He said that his firm had just broken ground on a major expansion of its manufacturing facilities that could help ease the backlog. And finally, small businesses across the US Are finding themselves caught up in a very modern extortion scheme. It starts with a random message on WhatsApp. The scammer tells them, hey, someone has paid me money to post negative reviews of your business on Google and I'm about to post a whole bunch of one star write ups unless you pay me even more money not to. It's a big threat these days. Negative reviews can be the first thing that pops up when you search for a company, and a bad online reputation can cost thousands of dollars in lost business. One business owner who runs a contracting company told the times she paid $150 to someone with a Bangladesh phone number to remove negative reviews they'd posted. Then she paid another hundred dollars to someone in Pakistan to do the same. Even after that, 10 more bad reviews popped up. She stopped paying and eventually got Google to remove the bad reviews, though that can be a difficult and time consuming process. It took me eight years to get my reputation in the market and one guy can damage it in one day, she told the Times. The scam is not brand new, but it's flared up recently and some industries have been specifically targeted, including contractors, roofing companies and movers. Underneath it all is a complicated web of players who are now taking advantage of AI to pump out even more realistic sounding fake reviews at an enormous scale, casting doubt on the star ratings so many people have come to depend on. One former federal criminal investigator who has tracked the scams said, quote, there is this whole underworld that's underpinning what you see online. Those are the headlines today on the Daily More on Charlie Kirk's rise to power in the Maga movement and what his legacy will be. You can listen to that in the New York Times app or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Tracy Mumford. We'll be back tomorrow.