The Michael Knowles Show - Ep. 1815 - JD Vance Takes On Left-Wing Terror After Charlie Kirk Assassination

00:00:00.000 There are new developments in the investigation into Charlie Kirk's alleged assassin.

00:00:04.520 All important, we will get to them.

00:00:06.880 But perhaps even more important, there are new developments in the right's political response to the national trauma.

00:00:13.200 As no less a figure than the vice president filled in to host his friend's radio show from the White House

00:00:19.140 and inform the nation of the concrete actions being taken to dismantle left-wing terror.

00:00:25.880 I'm Michael Knowles. This is The Michael Knowles Show.

00:00:30.000 Welcome back to the show.

00:00:47.600 A lot of new developments here suggesting that perhaps this assassination was not just one guy planning and acting alone.

00:00:56.900 Maybe more people knew about this. Maybe more people were in on it.

00:01:00.040 We will get to that evidence in a moment.

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00:02:10.760 The vice president came on the radio yesterday and on podcast to host the Charlie Kirk Show.

00:02:18.060 I thought this was a beautiful gesture because J.D. Vance and Charlie Kirk were very, very close.

00:02:24.500 I thought it was a beautiful gesture at a personal level.

00:02:27.540 Politically, I thought this was a very, very important gesture.

00:02:30.520 Because Charlie, you have to remember, did about a million things.

00:02:35.280 He was organizing on campuses.

00:02:37.460 He was hosting debates.

00:02:38.860 He was giving speeches.

00:02:40.160 He was writing books.

00:02:41.340 He was hosting a radio show and podcast.

00:02:43.880 He was advising the government.

00:02:45.940 He did all of these things.

00:02:47.840 No one person is going to be able to fill those shoes.

00:02:52.380 Probably three people could not fill those shoes.

00:02:54.600 And so all of these projects that Charlie was running need to continue.

00:03:02.120 The family wants them to continue.

00:03:04.240 The organizations want them to continue.

00:03:05.800 America needs them to continue.

00:03:07.600 And so I thought it was a great consolation and a real message of strength and unity that the vice president came in and said,

00:03:15.100 okay, if we're going to need people to host Charlie Kirk's show for the foreseeable future,

00:03:21.920 if we're going to have a rotating band of friends of Charlie's coming in to host the show, I'll kick it off.

00:03:29.200 And not only was it a beautiful gesture, what he said substantively I think was really important.

00:03:35.340 Because the shock has worn off at this point, mostly worn off.

00:03:40.900 We're still in a period of mourning.

00:03:42.860 The funeral will be this weekend.

00:03:45.500 But we're also beginning to think politically again, practically.

00:03:50.520 What concrete actions will the government do to make sure that this will never happen again?

00:03:57.340 Because asking the left nicely doesn't seem to work.

00:04:02.540 And we will get to even more hideous responses from the left and the concrete actions that the right can take in response even to those in a moment.

00:04:11.520 Here is what the vice president had to say, along with White House advisor, deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller.

00:04:19.100 We're going to go after the NGO network that foments, facilitates, and engages in violence.

00:04:26.980 That's not okay.

00:04:27.920 We are going to channel all of the anger that we have over the organized campaign that led to this assassination to uproot and dismantle these terrorist networks.

00:04:39.580 This is the key.

00:04:41.620 Because the assassination of Charlie Kirk was not a one-off event that involves a single person.

00:04:49.060 That, I think, is what we've all understood over this past week.

00:04:56.100 The assassination of Charlie Kirk was reportedly foretold on social media.

00:05:02.960 There are companies that run those social media platforms.

00:05:05.800 There were other people who may have known about that.

00:05:08.500 The assassination of Charlie Kirk was dismissed and minimized, at least, in our elite media.

00:05:17.340 The assassination of Charlie Kirk was defended, in some cases in the elite media, in some cases by ordinary normies on social media.

00:05:27.420 The left-wing organizations that have targeted Kirk over the years, or just even take a step out and look at the broader left-wing violence against the right.

00:05:37.180 That violence often occurs within the context of organizations, notably Antifa, which has attacked many of us over the years violently in the attempt to injure or kill people.

00:05:49.400 And so it's organized, is the conclusion.

00:05:52.340 It's not just one person. 0.88

00:05:54.020 It's not just one lunatic. 0.92

00:05:56.640 It is organized. 0.96

00:05:57.620 It is like organized crime.

00:05:59.120 It is literally organized crime, I should say.

00:06:01.820 And so if you're going to stop the threat, if you're going to bring any modicum of justice, you need to treat it as what it is, which is organized crime.

00:06:12.700 And you need to use the tools that prosecutors and authorities have used for decades to dismantle organized crime.

00:06:20.120 Groups like the mob, groups like criminal gangs and cartels, groups like the Ku Klux Klan, groups that act as groups and organizations.

00:06:30.720 Right off the top, tells you that the vice president and the deputy chief of staff are taking this seriously.

00:06:36.860 Honestly, they understand the issue for what it is.

00:06:39.800 Then the vice president gets personal.

00:06:42.640 This is personal for a lot of us.

00:06:44.600 And I don't even just mean that Charlie's assassination is personal for his personal friends.

00:06:50.220 It feels personal to millions and millions of Americans who grew up watching his videos, who think of him like an older brother, like a teacher, like a family member, who have an intimate relationship with him because he was at the very least in their ears on his podcast that J.D. Vance is now hosting, or on their phones, on the TikTok clips of him graciously debating people.

00:07:14.780 It feels very, very personal.

00:07:18.060 And the attacks from the left feel very, very personal, too.

00:07:22.240 And they are very, very personal.

00:07:23.900 J.D. Vance recounted a story.

00:07:26.780 He's with his children.

00:07:28.420 And the left not only attacks him in the media, on social media, from a distance, in an opinion column, doesn't even just attack him when he's walking around in public in the street.

00:07:41.660 They start yelling at the kids.

00:07:44.780 My wife and I decided to take our kids to Disneyland one weekend.

00:07:49.380 But there was a loud and very cool minority that would shout at my children, who are 8, 5, and 3, whenever they got the opportunity. 0.99

00:07:58.120 You should disown your dad, you little s***. 0.98

00:08:00.360 After Charlie died, one of his friends and one of our senior White House staffers had left-leaning operatives in his neighborhood passing out leaflets telling people what he looked like and where he lived, encouraging neighbors to harass him or, God forbid, to do worse. 0.99

00:08:17.760 While he was mourning his dead friend, he and his wife had to worry about the political terrorists drawing a big target on the home he shares with his young children.

00:08:30.120 It is not possible to have a society with such people.

00:08:39.620 I'm not saying that we need to banish all of them to St. Helena.

00:08:42.640 Some of them we probably should.

00:08:43.720 But I'm saying that we need to correct their behavior by any just and legal means.

00:08:51.660 We will not tolerate this.

00:08:53.820 We will not tolerate people coming up to the children of public figures and shrieking at them on the street.

00:09:01.540 There's nothing conservative about tolerating that.

00:09:05.340 There's nothing American about tolerating that.

00:09:07.700 There's nothing civilized about tolerating that.

00:09:10.960 And we've had enough.

00:09:12.520 We've had enough of that.

00:09:13.800 And that will stop.

00:09:16.620 It's a personal touch to a broader political issue.

00:09:22.280 But really, one cannot separate the two.

00:09:25.540 This is something in a way that the feminists of the 1970s got correct. 1.00

00:09:29.840 Or maybe it was a self-fulfilling prophecy.

00:09:32.240 They used to chant, the personal is the political.

00:09:35.740 And they chanted this slogan as a way to do the opposite of what J.D. Vance is attempting to do.

00:09:41.860 But I suppose the observation is the same.

00:09:43.800 They said, you need to get personal.

00:09:45.020 You need to get up in people's faces.

00:09:46.220 You need to scream at people's kids.

00:09:48.320 You need to disrupt every aspect of their life. 0.81

00:09:50.060 You need to dox people.

00:09:50.920 You need to harass them.

00:09:52.040 You need to make them fear for their lives and their home.

00:09:54.540 We need to make the political feel more personal.

00:09:57.840 Well, you succeeded.

00:10:01.820 But we can't have a society that way.

00:10:05.100 You can't have a society if you don't think you can take your kids to Disneyland.

00:10:09.560 You can't have a society if you don't feel that you can be safe in your own home, in your own neighborhood.

00:10:14.180 And so the conditions that have led to this moment of particular degradation, those conditions need to be corrected.

00:10:23.600 And they need to be corrected by the civil society and where possible, where legal, where appropriate.

00:10:29.260 They need to be corrected by the government with great force.

00:10:32.480 How do we do that?

00:10:36.160 How do we set these kinds of limits?

00:10:37.920 The vice president addresses that directly as well.

00:10:40.360 We'll talk about that in one second.

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00:11:57.520 How do we live together?

00:11:59.580 That's the question on everyone's mind.

00:12:01.660 At least everyone on the right.

00:12:02.940 People on the left, I don't, maybe not.

00:12:04.420 They're too busy celebrating Charlie's assassination.

00:12:07.120 Many of them.

00:12:07.760 But the people on the right, we have this question, which is not just, how do we get revenge?

00:12:13.300 I don't think a lot of people are thinking that on the right.

00:12:16.060 It's not just, how do I protect myself individually?

00:12:19.760 Some more people are thinking that, but it is a broader question.

00:12:23.100 How do we live together?

00:12:24.860 How do we have a country?

00:12:25.880 And there's a shallow, glib answer that you're hearing from the Kumbaya corner, which is, well, we just need unity.

00:12:36.000 Yeah, you don't say, wow, thanks, Sherlock.

00:12:40.040 Well, we just need, how do we achieve unity?

00:12:43.760 J.D. addresses this head on.

00:12:45.040 There is no unity with people who scream at children over their parents' politics.

00:12:51.960 There is no unity with someone who lies about what Charlie Kirk said in order to excuse his murder.

00:12:57.900 There is no unity with someone who harasses an innocent family the day after the father of that family lost a dear friend.

00:13:05.400 There is no unity with the people who celebrate Charlie Kirk's assassination.

00:13:10.040 And there is no unity with the people who fund these articles, who pay the salaries of these terrorist sympathizers,

00:13:17.420 who argue that Charlie Kirk, a loving husband and father, deserved a shot to the neck because he spoke words with which they disagree.

00:13:29.980 Absolutely right.

00:13:31.160 And this is the key, and this is what you have to impress to your friends on the left, to liberals, but also to your friends on the right.

00:13:40.040 But we want unity.

00:13:42.860 We want a place where we can discuss ideas openly in a healthy way that is conducive to truth and virtue and human flourishing.

00:13:51.740 We want that.

00:13:52.680 We want a normal country.

00:13:55.240 But the left has dismantled the conditions that make that possible.

00:14:02.540 We had an open marketplace of ideas.

00:14:04.760 The left shot it up.

00:14:05.720 So you can say that we just need to redouble our peons to this great concept.

00:14:12.760 But practically speaking, that is not going to allow you to have a society in which that concept is real.

00:14:21.960 There has to be another step.

00:14:23.800 Step one, where we are right now, degradation, confusion, serious political violence.

00:14:32.000 Step two, question mark.

00:14:33.580 Step three, unity.

00:14:35.820 Step one, where we are now.

00:14:37.920 Step two, question mark.

00:14:39.080 Step three, robust marketplace of ideas.

00:14:42.000 What's the step two?

00:14:43.160 Step two, it is clear to me, whether we're talking about a marketplace of ideas or whether we're just talking about a society that is unified and moving forward together.

00:14:54.900 The step two is that we must suppress the antisocial elements and suicidal ideologies that make step three impossible.

00:15:06.620 We have to do that.

00:15:09.340 That idea is entirely in keeping with the First Amendment.

00:15:13.240 It's entirely in keeping with the Constitution.

00:15:15.420 It's entirely in keeping with the American tradition.

00:15:18.180 To use just the example of speech, there's a lot of speech that is not only not protected by the First Amendment, but cannot be protected by the First Amendment.

00:15:27.500 Because if it were, it would undermine the entire First Amendment.

00:15:31.480 You cannot protect things like fraud and have a First Amendment.

00:15:36.400 Because if you protect fraud, then you undermine everyone's confidence in speech.

00:15:43.040 You cannot protect direct threats.

00:15:46.760 If you protect direct threats, you will intimidate everyone from speaking.

00:15:52.620 You will undermine speech.

00:15:54.300 You cannot protect plenty of other things as well.

00:15:57.500 Obscenity, fighting words, so on and so forth.

00:16:00.440 And so, if you want to defend a robust and healthy debate, you need to use the government and the mechanisms of civil society in a just and prudent way to prosecute and to ostracize the people who are undermining the thing that we want.

00:16:24.820 That's what you have to do.

00:16:26.000 When people make direct threats, as the left does regularly, you can't just sit on your hands.

00:16:31.160 You have to ruthlessly prosecute them.

00:16:34.440 When organizations are funded, there are funders to these organizations.

00:16:39.460 When they are funded, when they promote through the mass media or through social media calls to violence against conservatives or anyone else.

00:16:48.560 You need to prosecute them where it is not appropriate to prosecute.

00:16:52.880 You need to ostracize them from polite society.

00:16:55.480 In some cases, people need to lose their jobs.

00:16:57.720 There have to be real consequences to dismantle the antisocial elements who promote suicidal ideologies that undermine and preclude the entire kind of society that we want.

00:17:10.120 The kind of society that is envisioned in the framework of our Constitution and by the great men who built our country.

00:17:17.720 That's what we have to do.

00:17:19.160 Final point on J.D.'s appearance on The Charlie Kirk Show.

00:17:23.940 And this, I think, was deeply, deeply inspiring to a lot of people.

00:17:29.260 He got down to what really matters.

00:17:32.220 What really matters?

00:17:33.420 What's it all about?

00:17:34.420 What do you believe?

00:17:35.440 Hey, what do you believe?

00:17:37.160 Let me ask you that question.

00:17:38.260 What do you believe?

00:17:38.920 I believe in freedom.

00:17:41.680 Okay, that's good.

00:17:42.420 What does that mean?

00:17:43.400 I believe in fairness.

00:17:44.940 I believe in justice.

00:17:46.540 Okay, that's all good.

00:17:47.780 I believe in America.

00:17:48.820 First line of the Godfather.

00:17:49.860 That's all good, too.

00:17:52.620 But what do you really believe?

00:17:54.540 All the way at the bottom, the most fundamental thing.

00:17:58.900 What did Charlie Kirk believe?

00:18:01.040 I can tell you that answer with 100% certainty.

00:18:03.960 And I think you know that answer, too.

00:18:05.480 And J.D. Vance gave that answer with great moral clarity and courage on the show.

00:18:14.680 Now, the most important truth Charlie told is this, that long ago a man, begotten, not made,

00:18:22.420 came down from heaven and by the Holy Spirit was incarnate of the Virgin Mary and became man.

00:18:29.160 For our sake, he was crucified under Pontius Pilate and suffered death and was buried and rose again on the third day.

00:18:37.200 Charlie believed, as I do, that all the truth he told flowed from that fundamental principle.

00:18:46.560 In all of the sadness and darkness that we've seen and continue to see over the last week and a half,

00:18:57.000 there are these little glimmers of hope because the darkness has not overcome the light.

00:19:02.360 The light shines in the darkness and still does.

00:19:05.300 The vice president of the United States, speaking for his assassinated friend on this major platform,

00:19:14.840 is proclaiming the Nicene Creed, the basic statement of belief of Christians going back to antiquity.

00:19:23.940 This is a beautiful thing and it calls to mind an image of a, I think it was a 13th century martyr, Christian martyr.

00:19:33.240 His name's Peter Martyr.

00:19:34.580 He was an Italian priest and he was assassinated.

00:19:39.820 He was assassinated by very antisocial elements for that matter.

00:19:42.940 And this is well attested to, when his assassin came up, he dropped an axe into his head, lopped off part of his head.

00:19:56.400 This is why you'll see Peter Martyr depicted with an axe, axe in his head.

00:20:00.420 And when he was attacked, he immediately began to recite the creed, Credo in Unum Deum.

00:20:07.960 And it's depicted beautifully because a legend then follows, may or may not have actually happened,

00:20:15.420 that as the blood was coming from his head, he dipped his finger in it and writes on the ground, Credo.

00:20:21.320 I believe in Latin.

00:20:23.960 I believe in God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, and in Jesus Christ, his only son, our Lord, and so on.

00:20:31.920 That is what Charlie basically believed.

00:20:34.880 That is what the vice president basically believes.

00:20:38.720 That is what not only the men who built our country have basically believed, but the men who built our whole civilization have believed.

00:20:46.640 That's the idea that animates the whole civilization, without which we do not have a civilization.

00:20:52.360 It does not mean that every individual who lives in this civilization has to believe that.

00:20:57.980 I wish that they would.

00:21:00.060 I encourage them to.

00:21:01.040 I know Charlie encouraged them to relentlessly and in charity.

00:21:05.820 But that's what our civilization believes.

00:21:09.000 And if we don't believe that, if we don't allow, at the very least, our public life to be inspired by that fact,

00:21:17.680 we will lose the whole thing.

00:21:19.920 Because you can't reason from nothing.

00:21:24.260 You can't do math from nothing.

00:21:28.580 If you want to do math, you have to begin with certain axioms.

00:21:32.940 A equals A. 0.76

00:21:34.340 A plus B equals B plus A.

00:21:36.340 If you've ever taken introductory math courses, you would know that.

00:21:39.500 These are axioms.

00:21:40.520 I can't prove them.

00:21:43.460 I need to believe them in order to prove anything else.

00:21:48.780 The same is true with reason.

00:21:51.120 You can't exactly prove the basic moral precepts, the things that all people everywhere just kind of know,

00:21:58.560 the natural law that's inscribed on every human heart.

00:22:01.040 You can't exactly prove them.

00:22:04.700 But if you don't believe them, you can't prove anything else.

00:22:07.860 This is what we must re-familiarize ourselves with.

00:22:14.600 This is what we must reassert.

00:22:17.740 These basic moral truths, these basic truths and moral goods that are not the asymptotic goal of endless debate,

00:22:27.800 but are rather the axioms without which debate is not possible.

00:22:33.260 That's what we got to do.

00:22:34.540 It's so important for the vice president to say this.

00:22:39.200 So fitting, given Charlie's mission, which ultimately comes down to religion.

00:22:44.500 Because all of our missions in this world are not merely to do things while we walk and then take a dirt nap,

00:22:52.620 but they're aimed at the eternal.

00:22:54.640 So, so important.

00:22:58.540 Everyone should take it to heart.

00:23:01.020 Everyone should believe it.

00:23:01.920 Or at the very least, act as though you believe it.

00:23:05.540 Act in accord with the civilization that has believed it.

00:23:09.340 Now, a lot of developments have come out in the investigation into the suspect.

00:23:14.600 The suspect upending some priors, making this seem a little bit more organized than previously understood.

00:23:21.480 What are we learning now?

00:23:22.900 Now, the suspect apparently used Discord.

00:23:27.660 He was all over the internet, posted on all sorts of weird platforms and forums.

00:23:35.980 Reportedly, the suspect confessed to the murder on Discord.

00:23:41.160 Now, previously, Discord had said that Discord, this social media platform, was not used to plan the murder.

00:23:49.000 And technically, that would still remain true, even if this report is correct.

00:23:53.440 Because the report is not that he said that he was going to commit the murder beforehand.

00:23:57.560 It's that he confessed afterward, a couple hours before he was apprehended by the authorities.

00:24:01.460 So Discord looks a little dodgy here.

00:24:04.160 It looks like it's hiding something maybe, but not that it actually lied.

00:24:07.360 What did he write?

00:24:08.580 Reportedly, he writes,

00:24:09.680 Hey guys, I have bad news for you all.

00:24:12.160 It was me at UVU yesterday.

00:24:15.140 I'm sorry for all of this.

00:24:16.780 I'm surrendering through a share of friend in a few moments.

00:24:18.940 Thanks for all the good times and laughs.

00:24:20.860 You've all been so amazing.

00:24:22.060 Thank you for everything.

00:24:25.880 The import of this is not that we're learning something new about the character of this monster.

00:24:32.700 The import is the authorities are now looking into wider organization of this assassination.

00:24:40.180 The authorities are now looking into foreknowledge of the assassination.

00:24:44.040 And there we are finding a lot of very, very distressing clues.

00:24:51.700 Aaron Saberian at the Washington Free Beacon has found a series of posts.

00:24:57.080 One says, it'd be funny if someone like Charlie Kirk got shot on September 10th.

00:25:03.240 You can look at the date well before the assassination.

00:25:06.560 Another post.

00:25:09.900 September 10th will be a very interesting day.

00:25:12.500 Then, after September 10th, he reposts this and he says, I plead the fifth.

00:25:19.800 Again, this is, that post goes all the way back to August 6th.

00:25:26.040 Could be a coincidence.

00:25:27.960 Maybe not a coincidence.

00:25:30.080 Third post.

00:25:31.620 Charlie Kirk is coming to my college tomorrow.

00:25:33.640 I really hope someone evaporates him literally.

00:25:36.480 Immediately followed by, let's just say, something big will happen tomorrow.

00:25:40.340 Is that just a coincidence?

00:25:45.480 Followed by, Charles James Kirk, Mr. College Dropout, does not know what's coming tomorrow.

00:25:51.660 Be ready.

00:25:52.200 This isn't a threat.

00:25:53.040 It's a promise.

00:25:56.300 Maybe it's just all coincidences.

00:25:59.280 Whenever a conservative goes to speak at a college campus, there are threats.

00:26:04.840 That alone would seem to be a problem.

00:26:06.860 That alone would seem to be the sort of thing that the federal government needs to look into.

00:26:10.340 Whether we're talking about the university administration.

00:26:12.800 Whether we're talking about, from the government or civil society, the funding of the universities.

00:26:18.120 Whether we're talking about the student body.

00:26:19.880 Whether we're talking about prosecutions.

00:26:21.760 Sort of thing that they should look into.

00:26:25.000 I have a hard time believing these were all coincidental.

00:26:28.560 It'd be funny if someone like Charlie Kirk got shot on September 10th.

00:26:31.780 It's pretty specific.

00:26:33.440 September 10th will be a very interesting day.

00:26:36.740 Something big will happen tomorrow.

00:26:38.340 Charlie Kirk's coming to college.

00:26:39.360 I hope someone evaporates him literally.

00:26:42.380 Be ready.

00:26:43.160 This isn't a threat.

00:26:43.840 It's a promise.

00:26:45.000 If this murder was a conspiracy, as it increasingly appears to be.

00:26:52.560 If this murder was a conspiracy, we have every right and responsibility to wield the government

00:26:59.800 to dismantle the means by which the conspiracy was carried out.

00:27:02.600 This is hard for some people to understand because they're locked in a prison of liberal ideology,

00:27:11.120 individualist ideology that says we can never see groups.

00:27:14.320 We can only see individuals.

00:27:15.480 But human beings are social creatures.

00:27:18.340 We're the political animal.

00:27:19.460 We've known that since antiquity, since at least Aristotle.

00:27:22.560 And we act in concert with one another.

00:27:25.660 And when you want to root out problems, when you want to root out social problems,

00:27:29.440 you have to look at groups and organizations and clubs and conspiracies.

00:27:36.020 And you have to be willing to wield power against them.

00:27:39.280 President Trump is apparently on board with this, too.

00:27:41.400 Trump was asked in the Oval Office whether he would consider Antifa to be a terrorist organization.

00:27:47.120 Here's what he had to say.

00:27:47.740 Do you plan on designating Antifa, finally, a domestic terror organization?

00:27:55.820 Well, it's something I would do, yeah.

00:27:58.340 If I have support from the people back here, I think we'd start with Pam, I think.

00:28:02.100 But I would, if you give me, I would do that 100 percent.

00:28:05.880 And others also, by the way.

00:28:07.260 But Antifa is terrible.

00:28:10.140 Are there other groups that you can make up?

00:28:11.680 There are other groups, yeah.

00:28:12.660 There are other groups.

00:28:13.380 We have some pretty radical groups, and they got away with murder.

00:28:15.980 And also, I've been speaking to the attorney general about bringing RICO against some of the people that you've been reading about

00:28:23.420 that have been putting up millions and millions of dollars for agitation.

00:28:27.260 These aren't protests.

00:28:28.880 These are crimes, what they're doing, where they're throwing bricks at cars of ICE and Border Patrol.

00:28:37.520 Absolutely right.

00:28:38.380 Now, some people are saying, all right, Trump should consider Antifa to be like Trendy Aragua or to be like Al-Qaeda or MS-13 or something.

00:28:47.080 Would that it were so simple?

00:28:48.160 Because Antifa is a terrorist organization that has tried to kill many conservatives over the years.

00:28:53.060 It does work in concert.

00:28:54.500 I gave just the one example of my personal interactions with them when two Antifa agents who were card-carrying members, as it were,

00:29:04.080 who would show up to Antifa meetings, Antifa bookshops, who were caught with explosive material on their bodies walking through TSA multiple occasions,

00:29:12.680 showed up with an explosive, threw it at the building when I walked on stage.

00:29:16.860 I was not injured at all.

00:29:18.640 Unfortunately, a female police officer was very seriously injured. 0.97

00:29:21.580 These are terrorists.

00:29:23.700 And they were prosecuted, or one of them was prosecuted, not even properly, slightly, got a little more than a slap on the wrist.

00:29:31.580 It's a good start, but you need more.

00:29:33.280 You need more.

00:29:34.280 But if they're American citizens, it's a different situation than if it's Osama bin Laden or something like that.

00:29:41.140 So that's the hard reality of it.

00:29:42.720 But it's much more difficult to dismantle a domestic terror organization than it is to dismantle a foreign terrorist terror organization.

00:29:49.680 So how do you do it?

00:29:50.960 You can do it.

00:29:52.740 It can be done.

00:29:54.820 The tactics that should be used, at least some of the tactics that should be used,

00:29:58.900 are the same tactics that activists used to dismantle the Ku Klux Klan in the 1980s and 90s.

00:30:04.560 We have a playbook for it.

00:30:06.000 The way that you could begin is by using civil suits, as the groups did against the Ku Klux Klan in the 80s,

00:30:13.560 and also by infiltrating and charging these terrorists with conspiracy, as federal agents did against the KKK in the 90s.

00:30:22.280 You can do it.

00:30:23.280 It's happened before.

00:30:25.080 There doesn't appear to be much appetite for this or concern when it involves a left-wing terror group, but there should be.

00:30:33.800 You have – these guys are not playing around.

00:30:38.300 And the elite media deny that Antifa even exists.

00:30:41.500 And when they're not denying that Antifa exists, they're promoting it.

00:30:45.240 Say anti-fascist, that's like General Patton and WW2, isn't it?

00:30:50.240 We hate fascists.

00:30:52.740 And implicitly, that's why we have to support a terrorist organization that tries to murder conservatives for having open dialogue on a college campus. 0.67

00:31:00.320 The reaction needs to have teeth. 0.99

00:31:05.400 I'm confident, listening to the vice president yesterday, listening to Stephen Miller yesterday, listening to the president yesterday, that it will.

00:31:12.800 But that – people respond to incentives.

00:31:16.540 And authority is real.

00:31:18.880 And politics requires concrete actions.

00:31:21.880 That's what needs to be taking place.

00:31:24.080 I'll give you a good place to start.

00:31:25.080 There is a left-wing streamer who goes by the name of Destiny.

00:31:28.740 His real name is Stephen Bunnell.

00:31:31.380 After Charlie Kirk's assassination, Stephen Bunnell called for conservatives to fear for their lives more often.

00:31:38.680 We'll get to that momentarily first.

00:31:40.700 My favorite comment yesterday is from Vinnie Durham, 8964. 0.97

00:31:43.540 He says, for argument's sake, let's say the fool who murdered Charlie Kirk was a right-winger. 0.97

00:31:47.180 Who are the ones celebrating his death? 0.98

00:31:49.020 I think this is what really drives it home politically for most Americans.

00:31:53.720 I said from the beginning, I said, look, all of the evidence points to this guy being a radical leftist.

00:32:01.120 All of the evidence up to and including his transgender furry boyfriend, but a lot of other stuff too.

00:32:09.880 It all points to him being on the left.

00:32:12.680 But let's just say that there's a 0.1% chance the guy's on the right.

00:32:16.980 It could be or that his ideology is incoherent or whatever.

00:32:19.780 That would have mattered if not for one fact, which is that the entire left dismissed, justified, and celebrated Charlie's assassination.

00:32:31.740 From the elite media all the way down to your cousins and neighbors and coworkers on Facebook.

00:32:37.900 That's the problem.

00:32:39.000 I'm not saying every single person, there were respectful statements put out by some prominent Democrat politicians.

00:32:47.600 There were dismissive statements made by some Democrat politicians.

00:32:50.820 Broadly speaking, it's pretty clear to me, the whole left excused and celebrated this.

00:32:58.640 So it actually doesn't matter. 0.88

00:33:00.740 The guy could be a fascist.

00:33:02.900 It actually wouldn't, that wouldn't change the political calculation now.

00:33:08.580 Because one side celebrates the murder of the other side and it doesn't go in the opposite direction.

00:33:14.400 Case in point, Stephen Bonnell, who had this to say after the assassination of Charlie Kirk.

00:33:20.300 I shout out the crime statistics.

00:33:22.520 Not exactly like.

00:33:23.580 I need, you need conservatives to be afraid of getting killed when they go to events so that they look to their leadership to turn down the temperature.

00:33:30.880 The issue is right now, they don't feel like there's any fear.

00:33:37.580 Like, I don't know, I don't know, it's like memes.

00:33:39.760 It's just memes to everybody, I guess.

00:33:41.440 I don't know, bro, I don't know.

00:33:42.440 I don't care.

00:33:42.940 I'm playing video games, okay?

00:33:43.940 I'm done today.

00:33:44.580 I don't care. 1.00

00:33:45.500 God, it's gonna be so fucking gay if I get killed in the next two months of shit I'm doing. 1.00

00:33:49.600 All the shit out here. 1.00

00:33:50.640 Please don't, anybody. 1.00

00:33:51.820 Make any actual, the most weak ass fucking bullshit speeches on my side. 1.00

00:33:57.700 God, if it happens, holy shit, I'm gonna make a death note before I go out. 1.00

00:34:00.880 To go live and not, God, it's so, it's so optics. 0.99

00:34:07.880 Hard to make sense of what he's saying.

00:34:09.360 The first part is clear enough, though.

00:34:10.800 He says conservatives need to fear for their lives when they go out to go do events.

00:34:14.900 You need to make them fear for their lives. 0.92

00:34:17.580 You need to, you need to make them think you're gonna murder them.

00:34:21.500 So, look, he obviously should be prosecuted.

00:34:24.720 That is not protected speech.

00:34:25.960 That's an incitement to violence.

00:34:27.740 Clear as day.

00:34:28.920 Stephen Bonnell should be prosecuted.

00:34:31.240 He should spend a long time in prison for that.

00:34:34.180 No question.

00:34:35.020 But, more broadly, these people should not be permitted in public.

00:34:42.680 They should not be permitted in clubs.

00:34:45.540 They should be fired from their workplaces if they say things like this.

00:34:49.160 They should be ostracized from all of polite society.

00:34:52.240 Not so that we can shrink the acceptable discourse.

00:34:58.120 It's quite the opposite. 0.99

00:35:00.140 What he is saying is, you need to threaten to murder conservatives so that they shut their mouths, 0.98

00:35:06.300 so that we don't have to deal with their open marketplace of ideas. 0.92

00:35:08.800 What he is articulating is, as Chesterton calls it, the thought that stops thought.

00:35:14.720 That is a thought that urgently must be stopped in order to have the goods and the kind of society that people claim that they want.

00:35:23.660 He's not the only one.

00:35:24.620 There's another prominent left-wing streamer, Hassan something or other, Piker, Hassan Piker.

00:35:29.120 Here's an example just from last year.

00:35:31.720 Tom Cotton posted something on Twitter.

00:35:33.480 Here, Hassan Piker responds with a diagram of how to make the gun, the homemade gun that killed Shinzo Abe in Japan, Prime Minister of Japan.

00:35:46.560 An obvious threat, a call to action to murder a sitting Republican senator.

00:35:54.560 He should be prosecuted.

00:35:57.140 Hassan Piker should be prosecuted.

00:35:58.960 The government needs to come in and bring the force of actual government authority down and punish him for breaking the law.

00:36:09.340 If the government does not do that, you'll get more of this.

00:36:14.120 You'll get more threats against conservatives.

00:36:16.660 You will very likely get more injuries and murders of conservatives.

00:36:20.800 You will shrink the vaunted marketplace of ideas.

00:36:25.020 You will undermine all of society.

00:36:27.020 Furthermore, any organization that hosts that person should be vigorously investigated, should be shunned from polite society.

00:36:37.880 If it receives any federal funding, that funding should be cut off.

00:36:41.180 These people need to be ostracized.

00:36:44.540 Their behavior is cancerous to society.

00:36:48.520 And we've been kind of nice and squishy about it in the past, and we've been just giving them the grace of, well, just one more chance.

00:36:57.820 Just one more chance.

00:36:58.600 They can't really believe what they're saying.

00:37:00.020 They don't really mean it.

00:37:00.880 They don't.

00:37:01.580 Enough.

00:37:02.440 Enough.

00:37:02.960 We've had enough.

00:37:03.780 I've had enough.

00:37:05.700 There's a study that just came out from YouGov.

00:37:07.760 Liberals are eight times as likely as conservatives to celebrate the death of their opponents.

00:37:14.620 This just came out.

00:37:16.780 This came out after the assassination of Charlie.

00:37:18.920 24% of respondents who describe themselves as very liberal said it is always or usually acceptable to be happy about the death of a political figure they oppose.

00:37:27.460 Only 3% of those who describe themselves as very conservative answered that way.

00:37:31.660 A conservative reads those numbers, and we're ashamed.

00:37:34.140 We're ashamed that 3% of people who are very conservative would say, well, you know, sometimes I'm happy when my opponents die.

00:37:42.720 We're ashamed of that fact.

00:37:46.540 24% of very liberal respondents.

00:37:50.380 Eight times the number.

00:37:52.620 That is extremely antisocial behavior.

00:37:55.440 That needs to be discouraged with every lawful means at our disposal.

00:38:00.300 You cannot have a society that way.

00:38:02.300 That isn't part of the free marketplace of ideas.

00:38:05.740 That isn't part of the open-minded ethos of our modern – maybe I guess it is part of the open-minded ethos of our modern society.

00:38:13.700 This is what our modern society gets you.

00:38:16.360 Can't tolerate it.

00:38:18.840 Happily, firings are taking place.

00:38:22.820 Clemson University posted this yesterday.

00:38:24.920 Following an immediate and deliberate investigation into inappropriate social media content, Clemson today terminated an employee due to their social media posts.

00:38:32.300 After being notified on Friday to stay out of the classroom, two faculty members now have been removed from their teaching duties pending investigation for termination.

00:38:39.860 The university will continue to follow required processes with urgency.

00:38:44.060 As these are personnel matters, no further details are available at this time.

00:38:48.260 Clemson's commitment to the safety and well-being of our campus community remains our top priority.

00:38:52.160 Good.

00:38:52.820 That's a good start is what I call that.

00:38:54.540 You have to do that.

00:38:57.600 You can't have a company where half of the employees think that the other half are going to try to murder them or at the very least would encourage their murder or at the very least would celebrate their murder.

00:39:09.660 You can't have a company that way and you can't have a society that way.

00:39:16.080 A number of teachers have made these sorts of comments and there are too many of these to count.

00:39:21.520 But these are teachers.

00:39:22.340 These are people who are in front of kids every day.

00:39:26.980 And here's one example being reported. 1.00

00:39:29.520 Far-right a-holes have a target on their backs and deserve to die. 1.00

00:39:32.080 One down, millions to go. 1.00

00:39:33.460 You see a lot of this kind of stuff.

00:39:35.480 All of them need to be fired, of course.

00:39:38.140 But I want to have a little word of prudence here.

00:39:42.540 What we're talking about is a political reform for a problem that we have allowed to fester for way, way too long.

00:39:50.040 A problem that has fundamentally undermined even the vaunted open marketplace of ideas and fundamentally undermined our society.

00:39:56.800 This is long overdue and it's terribly, terribly sad and tragic that Charlie Kirk had to be assassinated for people to wake up and come to their senses.

00:40:05.560 So what we're talking about is a political reform to defend the free speech tradition as it actually exists in the United States.

00:40:15.080 Not some ideological nonsense that's meant to undermine the entire premise of the country.

00:40:20.960 With any political reform, it is wise to err on the side of caution.

00:40:26.740 No one wants to say, as you saw from the numbers, conservatives, we don't want vigilante political violence.

00:40:32.040 We don't want any of that kind of stuff.

00:40:33.540 We don't want pogroms.

00:40:34.620 We don't want to overreach.

00:40:37.600 We want action, though, and we want consequences, and we need them.

00:40:41.900 So one way to think about this is that certain industries, more than others, more urgently need to fire these people.

00:40:49.180 Education.

00:40:49.820 You cannot have these people teaching your children.

00:40:51.760 They need to find something else to do.

00:40:53.640 They need to find some other way to support themselves.

00:40:55.780 Any teacher at any level of education who posts anything like this, the defense of the murder of someone for expressing it, they all need to be fired.

00:41:07.280 And there needs to be consequences for school districts that don't fire them.

00:41:11.360 Easy.

00:41:12.040 Easy one.

00:41:12.480 Health care.

00:41:13.420 You cannot have a hospital operating where the patients think that the nurses want to murder them or the doctors want to murder them.

00:41:22.880 Health care, you've got to fire these people fast if they're found in health care. 0.99

00:41:27.100 The service industry.

00:41:28.660 We can't go into a restaurant if we think that the kitchen staff or the waiters want us to be murdered or encouraging our murder.

00:41:36.120 I can't eat the food.

00:41:38.500 Service industry, you've got to fire a lot of those people.

00:41:41.560 In other industries, it's less urgent.

00:41:44.280 And there's limited resources and there's limited time in the day.

00:41:47.360 So we need to prioritize what really matters.

00:41:49.260 We need to get on this fast.

00:41:50.700 There's so much more to talk about.

00:41:52.100 Specifically speaking of health care, Bobby Kennedy said something so, so interesting about Charlie and his legacy yesterday on the show.

00:41:58.240 We don't have time to get to it today.

00:42:00.340 Much, much more to get to.

00:42:01.460 We'll get to it, I guess, tomorrow.

00:42:02.980 The rest of the show continues now.

00:42:04.620 See you over in the Membrum Segmentum.

00:42:21.920 We'll see you over in the Membrum Segmentum.

The Michael Knowles Show - September 16, 2025

Ep. 1815 - JD Vance Takes On Left-Wing Terror After Charlie Kirk Assassination

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