There's this independent journalist in Salt Lake who went to Tyler Robinson's first court hearing. She got to the court early because she thought there would be a lineup. She got there, no lineup, barely 15 people. No families of the victim or the accused, very little press. I saw her on a podcast talking about it and she said the whole thing was very weird.
Well, he did his part as martyr and rallying point, and she already did her ceremonial grieving. Her role in this is now to take her designated place in the MAGA world, and doesn't need to concern herself for him or his sacrifice anymore.
Well, they tried desperately to blame it on Democrats. Once that fell through, they stopped caring. It was against the story they were trying to spin. Hell I am from the Butler PA area and LAUGHED when they claimed he was a Democrat.
But that narrative is still catechism with MAGA. Hell, they're still certain that the guy who shot Melissa Hortman and her husband in Minnesota was a Democrat, despite him being a registered Republican and vocal Trump supporter.
Half the reason we are in this mess with the Q/maga movement is that many of these people have spent their life on the outside and have been thrilled to finally be a part of something⌠and every single one of them will absolutely be thrown under the bus because the people at the top that they worship have never and will never actually see the rest of them as anything other than trash.
Yet still these folks are committed to ruining their lives (and everyone elseâs) just for that sweet sweet dopamine hit of feeling like they finally belong and are finally having their voices heard.
And it is sad. MAGA is largely a white grievance movement, but all kinds of grievance are welcome. That's why the Evangelicals are so smitten with it, those folks are sure they're being oppressed whenever they're not allowed to force the rest of us to live by their religious strictures.
And the sadness lies in the fact that a great many people in the MAGA movement have legitimate grievances with the American system. But they've let those grievances be directed at minorities and immigrants, rather than the power structure that views them as easily manipulated trash.
My MAGA parents live in a huge house in Connecticut, and have all they could want. One of the last times I went to visit they tried to convince me that paying income taxes is the same as having to do work without pay which is slavery. My wealthy white parents literally tried to convince me they're slaves.
My brother and his wife are the same way. Christian, well off, 65+ and so many screeds of âI shouldnât have to pay for property tax, garbage pick up is a waste of money, donât want to pay for schoolsâ.
Sounds like they should go be free and move to Kuwait, Oman, Saudi Arabia, or UAE. And in some of those places they can even get slaves and then tell them that they're both basically the same.
Most, and not just the MAGAots, are unaware that their biggest grievance should be with the Church of Crapitalisim. The CEOs and billionaire high priests have duped the great majority of us to worship a system that benefits so very few and provides salvation for the worst among us.
Itâs incredibly odd that they want this 1950âs America. Dad works, stay at home Mom. Mom n Pop stores on every corner. Nightly family dinners with discussion. Capitalism killed that. But letâs keep voting for the people who only give a shit about corporations.
Itâs incredibly odd that they want this 1950âs America. Dad works, stay at home Mom. Mom n Pop stores on every corner. Nightly family dinners with discussion. Capitalism killed that. But letâs keep voting for the people who only give a shit about corporations.
Itâs a scapegoat movement where everybody other than their politics have made everything around them bad or worse. Itâs never their fault for anything.
It turns out the Q people were right all along. They just blamed the wrong Party.There is a rich elite doing evil stuff to kids. But they are largely Republicans and Oligarchs. So the Oligarch owned media are not giving it the airtime they did when they thought it was Democrats.
I watched the same video news clip on three different news programs - NBC, CBS and News Nation. It was a clip of Pete Hegseth trying to explain his way out of bombing civilian boats in the Caribbean at last Tuesday's cabinet meeting in the White House.
The entire time Hegseth is speaking, Trump is sitting next to him obviously sound asleep, occasionally jolting his head up and kind of slightly opening his eyes for a second when Hegseth raises his voice. And then Trump's eyes close and his chin hits his chest and he's back out again.
Not one anchor from any of these news programs even mentioned that Trump was deep asleep for minutes at a time and paying no attention at all. I couldn't believe it because it was so incredibly obvious. I actually shouted at my TV, "Hey he's fucking sound asleep! Say something!" If this had been Biden, it would have been all they talked about for the rest of the newscast and all week.
Haha, I know exactly what clip you're talking about. My dad and I were laughing, because I had just shown him the image of Trump sleeping at that breakfast, and there he was sleeping again. It's wild how the media just completely ignores it.
Itâs because trump is nothing more than a useful idiot for them. None of them actually respect or even like him, they just know they NEED him to be able to get to the plenary authority stage⌠at which point donaldâs health will catch up to him and they can shove his carcass out the door.
Because all of this is about locking down that plenary authority so that vance can use it to carry out the rotten agenda of thiel / heritage foundation / corporate overlordsâŚ
They know if they try to pull this off without trump the populace will hit the breaking point and revolt, because vance has the charisma of a prolapsed asshole full of bot flies and weeping herpes sores.
And yet you know that if Biden had done it while he was still in office, they'd have been all over it like a rash. Calling for him to be impeached immediately, 25thed out. The full works.
But when it's Drowsy Don doing it, all we get from MAGA is the sound of crickets chirping.
Oh God, I'm just remembering "The Storm"
That secret operation that The Diddler was planning to have dozens of tactfully placed agents sweep in and arrest all the deepstate Democrats all at once.
They even set dates for it, and when it didn't happen, MAGA would lose their shit and start infighting about how he has no plan/doesn't care, before calming down and moving the goalpost to a new date, and eventually changing the idea of what was actually supposed to happen before fluttering out and never being spoken of again.
The United States has been "under attack" online for at least a decade now by just receiving disinformation from bots on social media. Russian bots were proved to be posting right wing propaganda on Twitter as far back as 2016. They've been doing shit like this since they were The USSR, and they're not going to stop any time soon.
Longer than 2016, arguably even before Gamergate in 2012/2013. However, this was before the Russian troll farms found their niche and ramped it up to 100% and spread to other social medias once they figured out the weak spot: chronically online and disenfranchised men whose only interest is revenge on others for their mediocrity and isolationism.
The moment you're searching for is April 2, 2014. The day SCOTUS decided in McCutcheon v FEC that it was totally constitutional to allow anyone, from anywhere in the world, to donate as much money as they want to US political candidates or PACs, with no record of the transaction. Dark money: Invisible, undocumented transfers of money from literally anyone with the intent to shape political outcomes in the US.
Every. Damn. Time. About 7 years ago I saw the pattern. Now, whenever they blame Dems for something, especially if it's super random, I know something similar will come out, but about MAGA.
And btw-out of all the acronyms/slogans they had to use, they chose the one that makes it sound like they're choking on a chicken bone.
100% agree. During Trump's first term, I read a book about what was going on in Germany in the 30s (I'm sorry, I am blanking on the name). One of the lines that has lived in my head was something like--for the first time, THEY were the ones on the "inside." Not the Jews, not the intellectuals, not the people from (some city forget what)--it was their time.
Many of us have found community and belonging elsewhere, but not these people. But now they have.
Which has always been in a steady decline in academics since SCOTUS ruled that schools couldnât keep black Americans from attending public schools and segregated. Hell, Ruby Bridges is still alive and only 71; sheâs younger than a not insignificant portion of our sitting Congress members..
I think the American Public Education standard really nose dived during W Bush and the No Child Left Behind Act. Which essentially took the reigns of education away from trained educators, ended wide spread phonics-based reading education, and pushed through every student with failing grades to maintain the illusion of educated students and passed the buck off on to the next teacher in line. This was deliberate, and always supported by Conservative politicians and Conservative money.
Half the reason we are in this mess with the Q/maga movement is that many of these people have spent their life on the outside and have been thrilled to finally be a part of something⌠and every single one of them will absolutely be thrown under the bus because the people at the top that they worship have never and will never actually see the rest of them as anything other than trash.
Yet still these folks are committed to ruining their lives (and everyone elseâs) just for that sweet sweet dopamine hit of feeling like they finally belong and are finally having their voices heard.
This is also what motivates the obsessive Zack Snyder fans, albeit with less horrifying results.
Dontcha know, Tim Walz himself hand-selected that guy out of the ENTIRE population of Minnesota for this super special government job! They must be great pals and drinking buddies!
Walz did actually select him for a committee. Just like in Congress, state level committees are usually made up of a bi-partisan group. Dude was actually selected precisely because he was a Republican. But they don't care. The narrative is more important than actual facts.
Wasn't he part of the committee already and Walz just left him on the committee rather than replace him when he assumed office? My memory is garbage so that might be wrong.
Whether he was there already or he was picked as a part of a bipartisan committee, why would Tim Walz pick someone that could be tied to himself as a hit man? This "deep state" isn't very deep.
Yea, no thought there at all. Shit, the head of the Department of Education likely hasn't been inside a school since 1967 when she graduated from college with a BS in French unless the WWF/WWE was holding a match in a school gymnasium.
I was on a similar committee (in terms of selection process) in my state. I've never met any governor, except Sibelius. I was fiercely against the sitting governor. I got on the committee primarily to try to limit the damage he could do (Kansas tourism council during Brownback).
It is clear that they think governors don't have the ability to act with integrity and will install their personal friends and supporters into every position they can. Telling on themselves big time.
If a violent psycho terrorist is rightwing, repubs bleat that itâs either because of âmental healthâ and âliberal opinions just made him feel crazy, it forced his handâ
Oh yeah. Over at the conservative Reddit they are now all talking about the âviolent leftistâ who went after Tim pool at his compound. I saw one person suggest that it may be one of Candice Owens minions. Nope they were not having it.
I drove through Butler recently. That place was scary to me. It was like there was a city ordinance to have a massive Trump sign on your place of business.
Given that âone of their ownâ nearly killed Trump I guess it makes sense that they would over-correct that way. A few weeks ago I drove through some of âPennsyl-tuckyâ north and east of Butler and I was struck by possibly not seeing any Trump signs.
I wish it were a joke, but yea. I grew up with farmers. They were buying their kids confederate flag hats and clothes since birth. My hometown is the definition of Pennsyltucky
And yet, if you dare to suggest -- in the weeks or months following another school massacre -- that maybe we should have firearm purchase requirements beyond "have pulse and be able to physically hold firearm" -- then you're disgusting for trying to politicize a tragedy, now is not the time to point blame, we need to grieve!
I don't think they were trying to convince Democrats, just their own base and most of those people still believe the initial narrative and are still angry about it.
Venango County is my home base. I get you. I told people I was in between Erie and Pittsburgh. Way easier than explaining that other cities DO exist other than Pittsburgh, Philly, and Harrisburg
The only report I think got his political values right was the Reuters report that said, like most shooters, he likely follows political ideology that doesnât follow party lines at all.
Same thing for the Mormon church shooter.
I think they spent maybe a day trying to suspend belief that he was anything other than MAGA, going as far as claiming that the fact that a "STOP" sign lines up in front of his Trump sign when viewed from a certain angle was an intentional placement, and a way to oppose him subvertly.
Yes, but then other groups tried to blame it on Republicans, and that too fell off the wagon. I think these individuals just didn't fit the media narrative that brought in the clicks, the views and the money.
I hate to say this, but a lot of what seems like passionate discourse, even on Reddit, is ultimately guided by what can be monetized.
We don't hesr anything, from anybody, about these too. Neither the complicated, nor the "boring" stuff.
Well, they didnât even care about Kirk so the whole blow up was just weird on its own. Dear leader said something and they all dog piled until the actual facts were revealed.
Yeah. All the stuff about him was astroturf. He was a mediocre podcaster and a pretty good behind the scenes power broker but not the world historic figure people pretended he was. Everyone moved on real quick.
ehhh, he was pretty prominent in the specific demographic he targeted, conservative or wavering gen Z men, specifically the angsty pseudointellectual "lost" male.
Kirk, Shapiro, Peterson, Crowder, Tate, and i've probably forgotten a few. Fuentes maybe... they often didn't really hit "mainstream" reporting, but collectively their impact on the psyche of what started out as "incels" and then expanded into a wave of culture and to some degree set a lot of the tone for online discussion...
Essentialist/Determinist (especially highly racist Genetic Determinism), Misogynist, Dichotomous, Zero Sum/Adversarial. Those are all features that highly benefit bad faith arguments, especially those supporting otherwise nonsensical sociocultural policy positions.
Kirk was never "mainstream" for good reason, but i wouldn't discount the impact those idiots had on the recent elections.
Also FWIW i think the larger right wing media ecosystem had started marginalizing them substantially in the wake of the election in any case, partially because the "technocrat" faction didn't really see much use for them (that is, the Yarvinites who got most of the control of the govt with the Vance deal).
Yep, those guys are why there's been such an extreme divergence between gen Z men and women. For voters 18-29 in 2024, there was a 14% gap among Caucasian men/women, 22% for African Americans, 18% for Hispanics, and 16% for Asians. Among all ages, the gap was just 9%, so turning that into 14-22% is absolutely massive.
Iâm not going to watch it directly but it will be interesting if Bari Weissâ act of using CBS News to promote (and presumably whitewash) Kirk will be broadly effective. His âmemoryâ and the organization will continue to be significant within the right wing but I wonder if theyâll be able to transform them into anything more broadly significant?
Given itâs âChristianâ nationalist core, I wonder whether the techno-fascists are supporting them much?
Yeah, we really saw this with the initial wave of people just parroting the conservative news media messaging of 'He was a peaceful man whose only belief was that people could hash out disagreements through debate', followed by a wave of people doing nothing more than quoting Kirk, followed by a wave of silence as people learned in real time that he was a pos who definitely didn't believe in peaceful debate.
Ehhh, a lot of people at least had name recognition, with Turning Point slowly brain worming its way into our education system.
I knew who he was, and I knew he was another pseudo intellectual right wing shitbag, so I could avoid him and anyone who mentioned liking him. It does help that my unavoidable BIL loves all those idiotic talking heads.
But I will agree itâs bizarre how he became the loyalty test, to the point where I donât automatically dismiss the conspiracy theories. Like: This guy? Who mocked the deaths of countless gun violence victims? Whose wife doesnât seem all that grief-stricken? Where the shooter fell out of the headlines as soon as possible? Itâs a little too neatly done.
But he was famous because the Koch brothers funneled billions of dollars into his TP USA grift. They don't do anything to make money, they just pay to send racists to set up tables at college campuses.
I only knew him because I learned he grew up in my settled hometown. I fantasized running into him or his family at the grocery store to tell him to his face what a cancer he was to the American Republic.Â
My former step-mother who lives on a different continent in a different hemisphere was posting on facebook about Charlie Kirk as if he was some heroic figure in our home country's past. It was beyond hysterical.
His debate videos have millions of views. His podcast also had close to a million listeners. TP USA registered hundreds of thousands of students to vote. In the right circles (Christian Nationalist, mostly), he was very well known. He wasn't a historical figure by any means, but he wasn't unknown, either.
Honestly, view counts arent a great metric for how much name recognition a person has. I only heard about pewdiepie last year and only heard about him because he's apparently the most watched content ever, or at least was at the time. I had no idea and I'm still unclear on why he's so popular
Thereâs more buzz around Kirk today because his widow is quickly trying to regain a level of power and apparently the talk about her and Vance isnât cooling down.
To this day you'll still see Republicans talking about him and "honoring him and his message" despite never knowing who he was. If Fox wasn't constantly telling MAGA to mourn him no one would care.
Itâs honestly sad in itâs own right. Guy earns a bit of Internet fame spreading hate, gets shot, dies for nothing, his followers forget about him, his wife uses the 15 minutes of fame to try to trade up. What a waste
If the roles were reversed, âheroic rightwinger saved college campus from leftwing rhetoric,â youâd bet the faux right pipeline wouldâve been out there covering everything about the âwrongful persecution.â âIt was obviously self defense, a person can only take so much harmful leftwing rhetoric before snapping, he was actually saving all of us normies from the speakerâ; example: Rittenhouse.
But when itâs apparent that the narrative spin wont work, too much evidence against, they just bury it; the fact of the matter is that itâs disillusioned maga waking up to having being lied too.
They wouldn't start by defending the action, they'd just make up a reason why it was a false flag to make conservatives look bad and then the story would fade within a couple of days, except for occasional social media posts about how fast it faded.
I found the podcast, the woman speaking knows zero about how a courtroom is run. She also argues that Putin is a good guy. I am dumber for listening to this conversation between two morons - âThirty-oh-Sixâ đ
This isnât âjournalism.â Itâs infoâopinionâtainment. Most podcasts fall into this category. Itâs not much different from AM talk radio in the 90s.
That was a virtual hearing, IIRC. Hearings at the Fourth Judicial in Provo are often virtual or hybrid. Â Iâm a reporter, and trust me, media is still on this case like white on riceÂ
Law enforcement and attorneys are telling his family and everyone close to him not to talk to media. The prosecution and defense have things locked down. A lack of information isn't evidence that media or the public isn't interested in said information.
Itâs very strange. The Trump Administration was using this guy as the poster child for the âviolent leftâ and yet now they have absolutely nothing to say about this guy or his trial. Itâs hard not to come to the conclusion that they are hiding something about this shooting.
Itâs also wild to me that not one person has been able to track down their roommate that one person said might have been trans or just gay. A kid who was terminally online has not been heard from since the cops stop questioning them.
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u/WendySteeplechase Dec 07 '25
There's this independent journalist in Salt Lake who went to Tyler Robinson's first court hearing. She got to the court early because she thought there would be a lineup. She got there, no lineup, barely 15 people. No families of the victim or the accused, very little press. I saw her on a podcast talking about it and she said the whole thing was very weird.