Speaker 1: What's going on. Thank you so much for listening to
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Speaker 2: Here is what a lot of conservatives have been.
Speaker 1: Thinking for people on the left, our friends on the
left who may not understand, who may not understand, what
conservatives are thinking today after the assassination of Charlie Kirk.
Speaker 2: We are wondering.
Speaker 1: If the ability to discuss issues and policies with one
another has been lost, gone forever because we thought most
conservatives thought I would I feel comfortable saying this, and
I would like to believe most Americans thought that we
could respect each other as human beings with different opinions.
Somewhere along the line, I think this has become an
antiquated way of thinking. And if you cannot respect each
other and each other's humanity, then.
Speaker 2: What is left right?
Speaker 1: And if you don't respect another person's opinion their ability
to disagree with you, then are we to believe that
you hate us for these opinions?
Speaker 2: Are we to believe that we are.
Speaker 1: Seen as obstacles for whatever utopian vision you want to enact,
and therefore you want.
Speaker 2: Us dead too?
Speaker 1: Because if you go on to social media and you
go look not very hard, particularly blue Sky for example,
Reddit is another one, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, it's all over.
There is a not small percentage of people that are
celebrating people in positions institutional, respected positions, teachers, school administrators,
government employees. Right there are people celebrating the murder of
a thirty one year old man, father of two, for
what he says, for what he talks about, for his opinions.
Charlie Kirk and I've said the same thing for years,
which is when the talking stops, the violence begins. And
that's why you engage in political discourse. If you cannot
engage in political discourse, because that's what politics is. It's
the debate and discussion about ideas and policies and how
to govern ourselves, how we function in this man made
construct of a constitutional republic, how we govern ourselves. If
we can't debate these things, then the only thing left
is force.
Speaker 2: That's it. Now, maybe some people think that they will.
Speaker 1: Be on the booted side of that force. Nobody ever
likes to think of themselves as being under the boot
in that equation. I suspect, but that's what Charlie Kirk believed.
He would say so frequently, when the talking stops, the
violence starts, and that's what is to be avoided. We
need to avoid the violence. And for going on to
college campuses speaking with college kids challenging their ideas. I've
said this for twenty years. Unchallenged ideas are easy to
hold easy. Nobody ever challenges you on him. And so
when Charlie Kirk would go to campuses and he would
take questions and answers from college kids. And by the way,
he would defend the college kids who disagreed with him.
They would come up to a microphone. He would treat
them with civility and respect. They would debate a topic,
they would ask him a question, they would go back
and forth. And if the crowd around him and like,
look the people who show up to see a Charlie
Kirk event at the colleges they were. They were more
often Charlie Kirk supporters, and somebody would get up at
the microphone and they would say some stuff and the
crowd would uh boo boo, you know whatever, and Charlie
Kirk would always silence them say stop, no, no, no,
let her speak, let him speak, go ahead, make your
point whatever, and have the debate and do it in
a face to face civil manner.
Speaker 2: And they killed him. Who do you think comes after him?
Speaker 1: See this is what is troubling me because if this
is what a civilian faces. Because Charlie Kirk was not
a politician, he had no power right except his voice. Now,
he built up talking or sorry, turning point USA. He
built them up, created this organization, harnessed the power of
yeah young voters, got them engaged, but also gave them
purpose and direction, particularly young men who desperately need that
and were not getting it. And he advised them get involved,
go to church, get married, have kids, be responsible, all
of the things that we would expect a male role model,
no matter the age, to tell young people, particularly young men.
And so to see the multi generational impact of his murder. Yesterday, boomers,
gen xers, gen z, everybody in between. There are people.
Charlie Kirk's been doing this for fifteen years. That's a
generation of kids through multiple turns of the four year
college programs that he's been going on to campuses doing
these videos. People have been watching him from the time
he was an eighteen year old to now to thirty one,
and you murdered him because you disagreed with him.
Speaker 2: That's what this comes down to.
Speaker 1: He was murdered because people did not want to hear him.
And this goes back to what Andrew Claven talked about
back in two thousand.
Speaker 2: That's what this is.
Speaker 1: In all the different forms, whether it's online censorship, deplatforming, cancellation,
whatever it is, murder, it's about shut up. We're not
going to engage in the debate with you. See, they
murdered Charlie Kirk because he's effective. He was effective. You
didn't have to agree with them. I didn't agree with
him on everything. I mean, I followed him on Twitter
and I would see some of his interviews.
Speaker 2: I watched one.
Speaker 1: As a matter of fact, yesterday morning he was on
with Mark Halperin talking about the Charlotte light rail stabbing.
He's a commentator, he was a radio host. And here's
the thing. He was murdered because he was famous and
for what he was saying. And it has a lot
of people on the right now concerned that the only
difference between a left wing nut job murdering Charlie Kirk
and I have full confidence in saying that at this
point that that's where this is going. The evidence, it's
all falling out in the exact pattern I expected it
to as soon as I heard of the shooting. I
did not say this on the air, but I made
a prediction to producer Nick and producer Bernie. I said,
this is what I think is going to be about,
and it is now falling into place. And conservatives are
wondering if they did this to him, and I agree
with Charlie, does that mean they would do that to me?
And the answer they are coming to is, I guess
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Limited time offer. I will say that it is it's
times like these, It stays like these where I feel
like an impostor because I'm trying to find sort of
the right thing to say in a time of mourning
and a time of grief and anger. And you know,
I always struggle to find the words, and I find
other people to be far more eloquent with their thoughts
and their words, And so I compile lots of different
things that I come across that capture what people are.
Speaker 2: Thinking and what I'm thinking and how I'm feeling.
Speaker 1: And one of them is Romans twelve twenty one Do
not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.
And Andrew Walker, he's an ethics and public theology professor
at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, and he said, remember that
political violence is the refuge of a losing political movement
that cannot make good arguments or persuade naturally, so they
resort to raw power to quote win. But their manner
of victory is actually an admission of defeat that the
ideas themselves can't win. Charlie Kirk was the antithesis of
this loser mentality, a happy warrior, persuasive, daring, and fearless.
And I see one of our trolls on the text line, Yes,
I have identified you that you don't know who is they.
The suspect is still at large. You're making a lot
of assumptions about the shooter's motive. The Butler shooter was
deranged and had no political motivation, Joe, do you know that?
Because the like, we don't really know a whole lot
about that Butler shooter.
Speaker 2: Do we now?
Speaker 1: The other guy Ryan Ruth or Ruth, the other attempted
assassin of Donald Trump. He's representing himself and look, he's
definitely crazy, but he is animated by leftist arguments. You guys, like,
I'm done playing this game now, see yesterday. Change has
changed all of this For me. I'm done playing this
game where you pretend that your words don't inspire any
kind of political violence against people on the right, and
then you seize or pounce on any kind of violence
that even tangentially may be related to the quote right,
I'm seeing one seeing people that are referencing the murder
of the Minnesota Speaker of the House a couple of
months ago, and how though that was a Republican appointee.
That was a Republican Yeah, who was who claimed to
have done it.
Speaker 2: In order to help Tim Walls.
Speaker 1: So I understand that things don't always fall naturally into
like a political camp. However, the news that has come
out today is that they have recovered the weapon. They've
recovered AMMO, and on the AMMO are carvings, there's there's
language on the carvings and you'll never guess what the
language on the on the the unspent AMMO is. Yeah,
you probably will transgender stuff and quote anti fascism stuff,
but I'm sure it has.
Speaker 2: Nothing to do with politics.
Speaker 1: No, no, no, there are plenty of other reasons why
a deranged person would target Charlie Kirk from a high
perch sniper position at a college campus, firing a single
shot to kill him. See that when you when you
see the way it happened, and you know the details,
and you've been doing this as long as I've been
doing it. There are certain things that become immediately apparent,
even if I don't say them on the air, because
I do wait for more information to come out, as
I advised everybody to do yesterday. But now we have
more information, and the information tracks with exactly what I
initially thought. Most types of these shootings, right, they are
obviously deranged individuals. I would not be surprised if this
turns out to be another one of those individuals motivated
by a belief that they are in the wrong body
and that they are literally being erased, that they are
that people like Charlie Kirk are an existential threat to them,
that this is a war against trands.
Speaker 2: That's where this is leading. That's what this looks like.
It may not be.
Speaker 1: Maybe find a manifesto and it turns out that it's
a right winger that is mad that Charlie didn't go
far enough, because yeah, that makes sense, or as another
popular conspiracy among the Wolk white is now and the
anti Semites is that the Mossade took him out, that
the Israelis killed him for some reason or another. Like, No,
sometimes the most obvious explanation is the real explanation. It's
called Ockham's razor, and it is actually often the case.
Charlie Kirk was obviously targeted for his politics. I'm not
going to pretend that this is like a both sides
ism kind of a thing. I've said it for now
several years that the left has a violence fetish and
you guys have proven yourself completely incapable of raining it
in on the left. So no, like, you're not going
to gaslight me and you're getting no benefit of the
doubt anymore, not for me, at least maybe from others,
but not for me. So when I was a kid,
my grandpa died with Alzheimer's, and before he died, my
mom and my dad took care of him as he
got worse. Forty years ago, there were no treatments and
not much support for caregivers and family. But things are
different today because of the work of so many people,
including the Alzheimer's Association of Western Carolina. It's a great
organization with awesome people with huge hearts. I've been a
supporter for twenty five years. This cause means a lot
to me. I participate in the annual Walk to end
Alzheimer's and I'm leading a Charlotte team again this year,
and it's called once again Pete's Pack. You can sign
up and you can join the team and walk with us.
It's on October eighteenth, that truest field. Sign up at
alz dot org slash Walk and then you can search
for my team name Pete's Pack. There's also a link
at thepetepod dot com. There's also a link in the
description of this podcast. Also, I'll be am seeing the
Gastonia Walk on October eleventh, and so you can make
a team and join that one too, or make a
donation and help me hit my goal of five thousand dollars.
If you do, I really appreciate it. There are a
bunch of other walks all over the Carolinas. You can
go to alz dot org slash walk for all the
dates and locations. We're closer than ever to stopping Alzheimer's.
Can you help us get there? Will you walk with me?
For a different future for families? For more time for treatments.
This is why we walk. Here's a pete tweet from Eric,
who says the people who have spent the last decade
shrieking that anyone even tangentially to the right is an
evil Nazi who must be stopped by any means necessary,
suddenly want to pretend that their words were meaningless when
some deranged lunatic heeds the call. Yeah, And this is
why I'm That's why I'm done listening to their words
at this point. I'm watching their actions because your words
mean nothing. They don't mean anything to me anymore. Let
me go over to the phones, and all right, let's
start with Chris.
Speaker 2: Welcome to the show. Hello, Chris, Hey, how you doing?
Speaker 3: First of all, eight years in the United States Marine
Corps therm this country armor, honorably.
Speaker 2: Welcome on them.
Speaker 3: I grew up in the South in the sixties, and
I am a minority. And the thing about all the few,
about all the folk called hate and discord and marginalizing
people all started when making America great again.
Speaker 2: They didn't all start there.
Speaker 3: That's where it basically when it all started.
Speaker 1: It didn't know it's been It's been a part of
the human condition since the humans began.
Speaker 3: Speaking, America ever been great again for minorities?
Speaker 2: Yeah, so, Chris.
Speaker 1: The the use of language, this all right, Chris. The
use of language, uh, to demonize and to degrade has
been around since language was developed.
Speaker 2: Did not begin with Mega, Okay, it did not.
Speaker 1: I will bring you back on, but I'm on location here,
I am on a remote location, so there's a bit
of a leg So I'm trying to give you time
to make your points. But that is not correct. The
rhetoric did not get bad with Donald Trump. There was
bad rhetoric before.
Speaker 3: Yeah, in the sixties and all these other people. Yeah
did back back in the sixties and sixties and all that.
Speaker 2: That's before then too.
Speaker 3: When has this country ever been with great for modulized minorities?
When can become me? When that's what we again.
Speaker 2: So you're so, I want to be clear, Chris.
Speaker 1: You're using the assassination of a conservative radio host to
talk about the plight of minorities in America.
Speaker 3: That's just part of it.
Speaker 4: The thing about it.
Speaker 1: Do you think that, Chris, Chris, do you think let's
think about hang on, Chris, Chris, Let's think about Chris, Chris,
Chris Okay, then you're done, Chris. Let's think about you're
back on hold. This is how I'm gonna have to
do it with you, I guess. Let's think about the
moment we are in. Let's think about how angry half
of the country is. And I'm talking really really angry,
and you served so you know these people I'm talking about,
right they are trained, they have weaponry, they are angry.
You've just seen the murder of somebody that your kids
look up to, your kids respect, that you feel like
is your friend. Charlie Kirk reached millions and millions of
people that they feel like they know him, and he
just got assassinated. And you want to blame conservatives for it.
Think about the moment you're in for a minute and
think about are you actually winning anybody over right now
with this line of uh, with this line of argument.
So I will ask that to you. Do you think
that you are winning over any hearts or minds, persuading
anybody right now with this line of argument?
Speaker 3: Do you expect you return when you still hate and
give out? What do you expect in return?
Speaker 2: I expect to be I expect to not be murdered.
Speaker 1: Well, if you're having a political If you're having a
political debate about an issue, I expect you don't kill me.
Speaker 2: Is that too much to ask?
Speaker 1: Bro?
Speaker 3: It's karma.
Speaker 2: So he deserved it.
Speaker 3: This country has a problem with guns.
Speaker 1: Too, No, Chris, Chris, let's stay on the Let's stay
on the point that you're making, which is he deserved
it because he was saying things that you don't like.
Speaker 3: Well, he'll hate me.
Speaker 4: You think it's hate, and so it takes me away.
Speaker 3: These two was rights goes to the rights. They're going
to push back.
Speaker 2: He didn't take. He wasn't arguing about taking people's rights.
Speaker 3: It's karma.
Speaker 2: See again, Chris, thank you.
Speaker 1: I want to, Chris, I really do, sincerely thank you
for highlighting the exact mentality that conservatives believe half of
the country feels towards them. And what you're telling me
is that if I disagree with you on a policy,
then you.
Speaker 2: Can kill me. Way, he didn't take anything away from anybody.
He was a civilian, Chris. He didn't take a single thing.
Speaker 3: He did not take in the schoolroom.
Speaker 4: When you do it, Chris, Chris, he didn't, Chris.
Speaker 1: All right, you're back on hold, Chris. He did not
take a single thing from a single person. He didn't
take anything. He had no power to take anything from anybody.
He got engaged in political discourse, and he said, we
have to keep talking, we have to keep debating. He
would go on campuses specifically to do so, because when
you stop talking, then violence breaks out. And the fear
now and the anger that a lot of people on
the right have is exactly what you just articulated. This
is what they think, most leftists and most Democrats think.
And Chris, you've just articulated that everything. So how am
I supposed to Chris? How am I supposed to now
deal with you when we're if I encounter you and
you disagree with me, and I now know that you
think I should die? What do you think I'm going
to approach you doing?
Speaker 3: No, no, no, no, I don't think you should die?
Speaker 2: Yes, you do. You just said that. You just said
it was karma.
Speaker 4: Husband hag got bashed in in half the country laughed
and bush it was her? What about that?
Speaker 2: What about what I missed the first part of what
you said? What about what.
Speaker 4: About when husband's head got bashed in and the president
himself laughed and made a joke of it, and he wushed,
that was her what about that?
Speaker 2: Yeah? So I I objected to that.
Speaker 1: There were a lot of people on the right that
were angry at the way Trump handled that.
Speaker 2: Absolutely.
Speaker 3: Once the hate speech stopped from the top, it was
stopped in the bottom, it sold down just like a weever.
Speaker 1: Okay, So all right, so okay, let's all right, So
let's let's follow that thread. Where does the hate speech
on the left start? There's your problem, Chris, there's your
there's your blind spot, there's your problem.
Speaker 3: I would you don't know?
Speaker 2: You don't because no, you don't. Chris.
Speaker 1: You can say that, but I don't believe it, because
you just said that murdering a guy for his political
beliefs was karma. So I don't believe you when you
now say, oh, I love you, you're a brother.
Speaker 2: No, no, you don't. You don't love me. I disagree
with you.
Speaker 1: You you obviously have this hatred in your heart for
people who disagree with you and wish to engage in
a debate.
Speaker 3: I don't have any.
Speaker 2: Sure you do.
Speaker 1: Are you happy that Charlie Kirk is dead?
Speaker 3: It's so state you can cut it with a blood, right, But.
Speaker 1: But in your view, Chris, think about think about how blinded,
Think about how blinded you are here is that you
can't see or hear any hate coming from the left
despite the attempted assassination attempts on Donald Trump.
Speaker 3: Right the way, are we trying to kick everybody out
of the country?
Speaker 2: That that's not what you said.
Speaker 1: No, none of all of those are policy. These are
all policy debates. These are policy debates, and people disagree
with you and your preferred course of action. And you
don't think that anything your side says is hate.
Speaker 3: We're being marginalized, We're being pushed.
Speaker 2: Back, You're being marginalized. How so how give me one,
Give me one, give me away your.
Speaker 1: Marginalized, Chris, Chris, give me a way that you have
been marginalized.
Speaker 3: Who are right of being taken away?
Speaker 1: That's not an answer, and you don't have one, And
I think that pretty well proves you're full of crap.
And you're probably pretty happy that Charlie Kirk got murdered.
Oh no, no, you're all about love. We have no
hate on on our side. It's just for some reason,
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for the details. This is the problem trying to have
a conversation with Chris, and this is what Charlie Kirk
tried to do as well.
Speaker 2: I've been trying to do it as well.
Speaker 1: I always enjoy talking to people that are on the
other side of the political issue, right if they are
operating in good faith, because I believe, and I've said
this before, I said it today, unchallenged ideas are easy
to hold. You don't know your own argument, if you
don't know your opponent's argument. I don't look to say
Donald Trump to tell me what to think about particular issues.
Anything he has a view on an issue, oh fantastic,
I have the same view. I have a different view
whatever it is. When you make an assertion, you make
a claim, I'm going to ask you for evidence of
that claim, as Chris attempted when he said he's being marginalized.
And I know it's usually not a good thing in
radio to have a bunch of dead air, but the
dead air with Chris was important. He literally had no
evidence to support his claim, and he does not believe
that there is any kind of top down rhetoric on
the left that would inspire the kind of violence that
we are seeing by the left. It wasn't a right
winger that attempted to assassinate Supreme Court Justice Kavanaugh.
Speaker 2: Wasn't a right winger.
Speaker 1: The attempted assassinations of Donald Trump not right wingers.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 1: Gabby Gifford's assassin attempted assassination, not.
Speaker 2: A right winger.
Speaker 1: Dude thought that grammar was like somehow infiltrating the world
and taking it over, something like the guy was deranged.
That's not to say that there isn't right wing violence.
Of course there is, and it's condemned. It should be condemned. However,
if you can only spot it on one side, you're
part of the problem.
Speaker 2: Let me go over to Travis. Hello, Travis, welcome to
the program.
Speaker 5: Thanks for making itself available. Sure, yesterday I just I
felt emotionally weighed down, and as I was trying to
assess what it feels like a build up, We've had
two people now die on camera. We got we watched
them die, the one on the bus and then this,
you know, Charlie Kirk. And I'm not the kind of
person who seeks those out. So for me, it's just
I think it's emotionally draining for me. Yeah, there's an
emotional connection, but if I if I try to dig
under that, it's not just connected emotionally, it's we can't
agree on how to address crime, and we demon that
mean well when I say, we ain't even a left
demonizers those who want to address crime, and then we
have someone like Joey because it's shocked, right, So it's
so black and white. We can't transcend this wall dividing
us on something as simple as crime on the way
to work, and then we give violent results. And I
know as O bioliologists come out of hiding and she
makes them comments. You know what, Fine, if you are
to speak d find a way to transcend the partisan divide.
If you want to focus on mental health, fine, do both, right,
But we gotta get to a point where it's not
black and white, and by that I mean start contrast.
We've got to get to where we can work together
on the face and stop building up hat that stills
over and what we saw. Anyway, Thanks you.
Speaker 2: All right, Travis. I appreciate the call, Sarah. Thank you.
Speaker 1: Mark Antonio right, he's a writer at a National Review,
and he says we cannot become numb to this. It
doesn't matter what Charlie Kirk's politics are, what political causes
he has supported, or which politicians he's associated with, defending, excusing,
or justifying the attempt to murder a fellow citizen as
some online freaks and cable news gruls have done.
Speaker 2: What he says for what.
Speaker 1: Murdering him for what he says or for what he
believes is the sign of a black heart and a
disordered mind. We are staring into the abyss. The moment
when Americans of goodwill abstained from entering the public arena
as politicians, as activists, as citizens will be the moment
that we review our god given right to govern ourselves.
If we are cowed by violence and the threat of
violence into staying silent and devoiding political discourse, we are
no longer free. James Woods, the actor who knew Charlie Kirk,
he said, I enjoyed dinners with Charlie, but I worried
for his safety. The left says they want national conversations, Well,
Charlie Kirk actually did that in the lions Den, no less,
at left leaning venues, hoping that facts and common sense
would prevail, and they murdered him for it. This is
folks on the left. You do not have to listen
to me. You do not have to believe me. You
can dismiss everything that I am telling you and you
can just brush it aside and think, what would Chris
ay Karma a right? And none of this is happening
on their side, right. You don't have to believe me,
but I will tell you there is a great anger today.
There is a massive amount of grief and you're not
going to like the next guy that comes along, who's
not going to be as nice as Charlie Kirk. All right,
that'll do it for this episode. Thank you so much
for listening. I could not do the show without your
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vpetecallanershow dot com. Again, thank you so much for listening,
and don't break anything while I'm gone.