Talking Out of Both Sides of His Mouth, Trump Calls for Violence, Non-Violence
Trump calls for peaceful response to shooting, including beating up people who disagree with him
Sept. 12: Trump calls for violence and non-that … Gunman appears to have been radicalized by the right in shooting that doesn’t count … FBI struggles to find ways around its director … Poll shows most Americans more American than American president …
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Responding on Thursday to the death of right-wing hate-monger Charlie Kirk, Pres. Donald Trump spoke out of both sides of his mouth. Idiomatically, but possibly literally, too, as one side of his face appeared desperate to escape.
With the 24th anniversary of 9/11 as his backdrop, Trump let the opportunity to calm and unite the nation slip away as if it were half of his face. The half that apparently tried to leave the 9/11 ceremony early.
Instead, Trump stoked the fires.
First, Trump gave the normal-president response, giving the nation a brief, flickering glimmer of what presidenting looked like from 1789-2017, 2021-2025:
“He was an advocate of nonviolence. That’s the way I like to see people.”
Kirk, of course, espoused nonviolence while espouting rhetoric that inspired non-nonviolence. But then, some media dipshit had the bright idea of posing a question to the other side of Trump’s mouth, which gave us this:
“We have radical left lunatics out there and we just have to beat the hell out of them.”
And to Trump’s point, we did, in fact, learn on Thursday that, yes, that horrific shooting Wednesday did arise from radical lunatics…
Campus Gunman Identified as Radical Right Lunatic
The shooter who roamed the high-school campus in Evergreen, CO, on Wednesday, seriously wounding two students before killing himself, has been identified as Desmond Holly, radical right lunatic.
The Denver Post reports that Desmond’s social media was filled with antisemitism, Nazis, and references to white supremacist slogans. As Desmond was 16 years old, this kind of social-media activity is what’s known as a cry for help. But the radical right claimed another victim Wednesday, as Desmond ended his shooting spree by killing himself.
Of course, Pres. Donald Trump didn’t have jackboot-shit to say about Desmond’s radicalization. Because Desmond didn’t shoot a personal friend of Trump’s, just children.
And Trump couldn’t really get specific about the motivations of Charlie Kirk’s shooter. Because he didn’t know them…
The FBI Is Operating As If It’s Run by Kash Patel and Dan Bongino
It’s worth keeping in mind that it took almost a week to find Luigi Mangione, the alleged probably-killer of United Health CEO Brian Thompson. So it might not be fair to blame the FBI or any law enforcement for the failure so far to even identify the killer of Charlie Kirk.
And preliminary reporting as I write this suggests they may have a suspect in custody. Still, we’ve already inventoried some of the bureau’s questionable and unquestionably bad missteps relevant to Wednesday’s shooting. And yesterday there was more…
As former police reporter David Simon wrote, when police announced they’d found a shoe print, they inadvertently revealed that it matches the treads of the trendy sneaker line “Hey Guilty Guy Burn Your Kicks.” So even if they do have a suspect, they might not have his shoes.
Early police radio traffic regarding possible people of interest included, according to the New York Times, a man with a bionic arm. Police are expected to offer a $6 million reward.
The crime scene was not immediately taped off or secured. In fact, I read somewhere that this didn’t happen until Thursday.
Instead of letting the professionals work, FBI Director Kash Patel and Deputy Director Dan Bongino flew to Utah and appeared alongside Gov. Spencer Cox (R-UT). With the FBI leaders literally standing next to him, Cox told the media, “We need as much help as we can get,” having so far only gotten help from Kash Patel and Dan Bongino.
As former FBI dudes explained on the TV, it is the opposite of helpful in the middle of a massive investigation for a field office to also have to handle the logistics of a visit from the brass, especially brassholes like Patel and Bongino. And if there is such a visit, it usually at least involves throwing a bone to local partners, or a morale boost for the team.
Newsfucker, neither Patel nor Bongino said a word. Not even a tiny word of encouragement, like that they’re resigning and are sorry for what they’ve done.
So, what is law enforcement doing? One thing they’re doing is running down a flood of false tips generated by decades of telling Americans “See something, say something,” as if people generally have any idea what the fuck is going on.
To wit, the instant that law enforcement released photos of the alleged apparent gunman, people who decided the images were too blurry “enhanced” them with AI, creating inaccurate images of the shooter but totally accurate images of innocent bastards who are gonna get reported and/or shot.
EXCLUSIVE One thing TFN has uncovered about the shooting is that good guys with guns — private security and law enforcement who were on the scene — did not, in fact, stop a bad guy with a gun.
That Transgender-Bullet Report
Early in the day on Thursday, the Wall Street Journal reported vaguely that bullets had been marked with messages relevant to fascism and transgender ideology. Whatever that is.
Typically, an inflammatory report like that would spur law enforcement to clarify, deny, or provide specifics. Nope. All quiet on the dipshit front.
Now, this is all speculative — because law enforcement hasn’t clarified, denied, or provided specifics — but it seems possible that the bullets did have some kind of markings. Because all bullets have markings. Manufacturer markings. (h/t)
And some of those markings might appear, to the untrained eye (the same kind of eye now overseeing federal law enforcement) to be loaded with meaning. Take Turan’s ammunition…
See the markings? Specifically… TRM? Or is that…TRN? (h/t) Other images were shared online definitely showing headstamps, as they’re called, reading “TRN”:
Is this what led to the “transgender” reporting? Who knows. There were also arrow markings that, who knows, resemble gender symbols or, y’know, existing headstamps that also incorporate arrows. It’s hard to etch on a tiny bullet “Love Is Love”!
Now, who’s the head of the ATF? Newsfuckers, would you believe me if I said it’s the secretary of the Army? Who (a) not law enforcement! and also (b) a little busy at the moment preparing for the ground invasion of Caracas.
But before Trump decided that the guy leading the U.S. Army should do it, who did Trump have running the ATF? I swear this is real:
MEDIA WATCH It took less than 24 hours for America’s leading journalism outlets to alert the nation how fucked up this investigation already is.
Now, it’s possible they’ve caught the guy. So none of this matters, right? Oh, but it do.
Catching two (2) guys first and announcing the guilt of one (1) of them, as Patel did, along with Trump’s statements about getting his enemies, all make it easier for the shooter’s defense to argue that the government had a low bar for getting the right guy and therefore got the wrong guy. Which they might have!
Kirk Remembered in Gaslight Vigils
Any number of people pointed out online that corporate media didn’t play clips of Charlie Kirk because it’s so hard to find any where he’s not shitting on some group of people.
In fact, while it’s been widely reported that his last words were about violence, no one seems to have noticed the subtle racism in them. Kirk had been asked about mass shootings and his response, the last sentence he said, was, “Counting or not counting gang violence?”
Get it? Gang violence. Kirk wanted to make sure we were counting urban (you know) shootings (committed by you know) and not just the mall and school shootings committed by white guys. That’s right, his last breath was a dog whistle.
Meanwhile, the right wing is literally, I shit you not, comparing Kirk to the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who opposed war and supported civil rights and unions. Eerily similar to the way Kirk didn’t.
Of course, millions of Americans will remember Kirk most not for his hate speech — or how that made him like MLK — but for his raw openness and vulnerability about his precious-metals needs:
CONFESSION I don’t follow these guys. Most days I assumed Charlie Kirk and Ben Shapiro were the same person.
I don’t follow them because (a) there’s already plenty of attention on them, (b) I don’t want to elevate their bullshit, and (c) my usual mission is to draw attention to systemic issues, not outrage bait. So forgive me if I lowballed just how low Kirk has stooped over the years.
I wasn’t aware of just how consistently vile and sweeping was his contempt for and dismissal of the humanity, let alone equality, of other people. And as much as a white dude can, I believe I appreciate what it means to say that his openness to debate is hardly mitigating when the humanity of Black/LGTBTQ+/women/non-Christians/everyone is not up for debate.
But I worry about that phrase: Not up for debate. It’s an idiom that means it’s settled, non-negotiable, immutable. All of which, yes.
But that doesn’t stop some assholes from debating it. And while my usual response is to ignore them, deny them oxygen, I think it’s important that if they are getting oxygen, the claims they make — the arguments that might be persuasive to stupid lonely boys — are answered somewhere, somehow in whatever fetid corner of the public square they chose to defecate. Because it’s not open for debate, we shouldn’t let it go unanswered.
Fear-Mongering Claims Two Casualties
I’m working on a longer piece about crime and fear (make sure you’re signed up for Bonus Stories if you wanna get it) but did wanna note one incident from yesterday, as Pres. Donald Trump and corporate media put the nation on DefCon Run For Your Lives.
Someone (not an official, not even giving their name) posted online (not an official site, but a random chat board) suggesting there was an active shooter at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, MD.
So when a midshipman thought they saw the shooter that they thought existed, they decided to do something about it just like Hollywood taught them. The midshipman batted the “shooter” in the head with a rifle, because in Hollywood that knocks people unconscious.
Outside Hollywood, that pisses people off, so the “shooter” — an actual cop — midshot the midshipman. They both landed in the hospital.
Meanwhile, the poster turns out to be a dipshitman who used to be a midshipman and was posting from his parents’ house in the Midwest. Great job, everyone. Heroes all.
Trump Remembers Erases 9/11
I’m not one of those 9/11-sanctifyers. I don’t know what kind of boob thinks any adult on Sept. 11, 2001, needs to be told today, “Never forget.”
Oh, right, that thing with the buildings and the planes and the boom. Slipped my mind1.
Too often, “Never forget” translates as: Buy my performative or policy shit or you hate 9/11.
None of which means I’m not sentimental about 9/11. As a native New Yorker, and a writer at CNN in New York, I spent much of 9/12 tracking down rumors that the passengers on Flight 93 voted to fight back. So when I read Pres. Donald Trump’s 9/11 remarks yesterday — because I try to give you Newsfuckers the full story, not just what’s reported — I was enraged.
Here’s what he said: “[H]ere in Virginia and in New York and in the skies over Pennsylvania, Americans did not hesitate.” Yes, motherfucker, they did. I know, because one of their relatives told me. In the skies over Pennsylvania, Americans — including a gay American — did in fact hesitate.
They weren’t sure what to do. They discussed and debated. They tried to piece together what was known and what wasn’t. And then, amidst an emergency infinitely more dire and immediate than any Trump has used to justify autocracy, what did they do? They voted.
Deliberation. Democracy. Ostensibly those most American of ideals, upheld at a time of fear and uncertainty and raw humanity 24 years ago, but erased in a second yesterday by that least American of presidents for a macho-sounding flourish.
POST-MORTEM POST-SCRIPT Vice President JD Vance on Thursday visited with Charlie Kirk’s family, canceling his appearance at a 9/11 memorial as the nation’s vice president to go do personal shit because of his feelings. Never forget.
TOUCHING TRIBUTE Trump was asked on Thursday how he was doing just 24 hours after his friend had his throat shot out. Trump delivered this inspiring response:
Q: How are you holding up over the last day and a half, sir?
Trump: I think very good. And by the way, right there, you see all the trucks? They’ve just started construction of the new ballroom for the White House, which is something they’ve been trying to get, as you know, for about 150 years. And it’s gonna be a beauty. Absolutely magnificent construction. We just started, so it’ll get done very nicely. And it will be one of the best anywhere in the world, actually.
Healing a nation.
Actually, Never Forget This
Most people are reasonable. Most of our country is not seething with hate. Most of our country did not vote for Donald Trump.
And most of us do not like what he’s doing. Because he’s un-American, and we’re not.
Only 32% of Americans say they’ll feel safer with U.S. troops on their streets, a new poll finds. That’s not even a third of us. It’s not even all of the people who either share Trump’s malignancies or fell for them.
Four out of five Americans feel safe where they live, rejecting Trump’s fear-mongering or assuming he’s mongering it about somewhere else. Most Americans, even half of Republicans, have successfully resisted Trump’s insistence on fearing cities.
That’s despite being exposed on a daily basis to fear-mongering Hollywood crime fantasies in programming such as Law and Order, CSI, and Fox.
Not surprisingly, given their rejection of his claim that our current fictional hellscape requires giving him lots of power, all Americans reject giving Trump unchecked power.
Nine out of ten Democrats say Trump should abide by court orders2. And so do seven out of ten Republicans. This is great news, but also a burden on us.
Because it means it’s still possible to talk to them. Which is great news.
TCB
CONFESSION Yesterday I posted and then deleted mockery of CNN for writing “…didn’t use to…” instead of “…didn’t used to…” They were right. I was wrong. I use to know this shit.
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RESOURCES
Go get ‘em, kids! Remember, most of America already agrees with you…
TFN creator and writer Jonathan Larsen co-created Up w/ Chris Hayes and wrote for Countdown with Keith Olbermann at MSNBC, helped launch CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360° and Air America Radio, and has also worked at The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and The Young Turks.
Subtle reference to a Kids in the Hall bit. Anyone remember it?
Please see me after class, one out of ten Democrats.
Apparently the suspect in custody for the Kirk assassination was turned in by a family member. Kudos to the brave leaders of the FBI, whose brilliant investigation.... oh, never mind.
I think the most important thing to know about all of this clownfuckery is that it's intentionally pushing out of sight the need to RELEASE THE EPSTEIN FILES!! After all, it's what Charlie would have wanted...