SIO512: NO It Was Not Staged. Stop Being Joe Rogan.

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:04 Thomas: Hello and welcome to Serious Inquiries Only. This is episode 512. I'm your host, Thomas Smith, and I need to have a talk with you. I gotta have a talk with everybody. Because I think maybe there's still places where, weirdly, as negative as I tend to think I am, somehow I'm still an optimist. And I found out that one place I'm an optimist is that I thought everyone was joking about the attempts being staged and Trump's ear and all that? I thought you all were doing a bit. I'll be honest. I thought most of you were just doing a little bit. Yeah, there's going to be a few people saying dumb stuff, but I thought you were doing a joke. It's not a good joke. I don't like it. I don't like anything that erodes our ability to know what the truth is, especially on the left where we can control it somewhat. That's who I'm speaking to, broadly speaking. It is all the things that I've been spending my entire career fighting against, which is misinformation, conspiracy theory, bad reasoning. So it's against all those things. So not a joke I'm a fan of, but I did think it was a joke. I thought people were trying to troll the conspiracy -believing MAGA and troll Trump by being silly about the ear in the Butler, Pennsylvania attempt. I don't, I no longer think that's true. I think that maybe it started that way. Maybe some people still are doing it ironically, but based on just posting a few statuses about this latest assassination attempt, I can't believe the numbers of people that are pushing back pretty hard on me just saying it wasn't staged. Encouraged. It's disappointing. I think it can't all be people doing it ironically. And even if it is, by the way, it's not cool to do stuff like that. You know what that reminds me of? That reminds me of 2014, 15, 16, leading into Trump, when the whole thing was, oh, am I being an ironic Nazi? Or am I Being a real Nazi? You don't know. You can't tell what I believe. You don't know what I believe. Yeah, I won't tell. I won't tell you what I actually believe. It's infuriating. Obviously, we can talk about how harmful one thing is versus another, and sure, fine, I'll grant you that there's different levels of harmful conspiracy theories and beliefs, and obviously, pretending to be a Nazi is among the worst things that you can pretend to be. No argument there. Doesn't make the other thing good. It doesn't. All right I've just gotta take a break and then we've got a lot to talk about a lot to talk apparently I had no idea so if you'd like to support the show patreon.com/seriouspod avoid the auto ads and get occasional goodies and early episodes and that kind of thing you know a quick programming note I had talked about on most shows that we were on a regular schedule and we were on a irregular schedule uh then I had a mishap a bad computer mishap. Lost a bunch of stuff, and that combined with some uh programming decisions uh we're a few we're a little bit late on this so apologies this episode is a little bit late um and it also happened that the thing I was going to talk about completely changed because I had one topic ready and then this happened and I just need to talk bout this so still largely on the weekly schedule uh this show is going to be out I don't even think I said that this show's supposed to be on saturday so yeah a few days late on this one apologies um but largely speaking uh I am staying on that schedule we are being more regular the other show that got hit was uh gavel gavel um and I'll talk about that over there but it we will catch up we'll get back on that schedule it's not a thing I'm abandoning it's something I very much take seriously and made a huge effort to make happen and just had a combination of bad things um quick note I don't know why windows allows you to delete delete your user folder. Was it my fault? Yes. But should it let you do that? No. And now I'm not on a Windows machine for my recording. That would be insane. But no, I did lose a bunch of stuff that just set me back work -wise, prep -wise and that kind of thing. So that sucked. That was a rough, I spent a lot of time also trying to recover it. And I went through efforts that I would have talked about because I was kind of letting, you know, I was having the AI kind of to help me do all this cool stuff. I was actually really excited. I thought I was going to get stuff back, but I didn't. So it didn't end up being a fun story. Anyway, got to get to it after this break. patreon.com/seriouspod. The show will be back to regular order post haste. All right, we'll take a break and then get back to it. All Right. There's many ways we could do this. There's so much, so much to talk about. In thinking about it and looking at, I did, gosh, I think two, three posts on Facebook. And I got so much response from people that I thought were more reasonable and skeptical than they are, apparently. First note, I apologize if any of this like makes you mad or something. I don't know what to say there. I think that I can't help that this is absolutely absurd to me. I think this is this this kind of thinking is I've just it's most like when I'm approaching a right wing conspiracy theorist in a conversation, which has only happened a few times, but I might try to take like different tacts. But I just I don't. This is like too close to home. These are these are my people thinking this. And I just, I don'T. So apologies if you're needing like a really delicate, patient take about why the fucking moon landing wasn't fake, essentially. But the left version of that, I'm not. That's not this. So I'm not trying to offend anybody. I'm not trying to make anyone feel dumb. Dumb. I just, I'm an honest guy and I have a very hard time with something like this where it is so fucking stupid that I can't I don't I Don't Know I'll do my best but it's it's really dumb so gonna do my best Apologies uh hey if you think you're like okay if you disagree with me which apparently I could be like half of you which worries me that we're I hope not but it could be based on numbers I'm seeing it could be anywhere from it's hard I don' t know if there's good polling on this, but it could be like 20 % of you to half. And if you include people who might be like conspiracy curious, it might be even more than that. So if you're someone who's like that, but you think of yourself as a reasonable person and you've listened to me, apparently for some length of time, I'm going to ask, hey, do me this, spot me one, do me one favor. Why don't you listen? You can be mad. It's fine. Whatever. I'm not I'm not personally insulting any of you, and I think I will probably get personal insults back, but I don't give a shit. It's fine. I would encourage, if anyone wants to engage, feel free to engage in the arguments. I have no problem with that. But one thing that's frustrating and that further frustrates me about this is that nobody actually does that that I see. They just do a bunch of vague stuff, ask a bunch of easily answerable questions. And then if I answer them, then I'm the asshole or something. And then they just don't believe me and carry on. It's anyway, point is, please give this a try. If you disagree with me, I would like the opportunity to try to convince you. And I will happily accept accept any feedback, emails, comments, trying to convince me, like, no problem. No problem. I have no problem with that whatsoever. Push back all you want. But in reading those comments, I think what I want to do is approach this in a different way. So people seem to believe that this White House correspondence dinner shooting was fake. A lot of people seemと believe that. When probed, I found that perhaps even more people, or at least a bunch of these folks, take as sort of one of their priors that, well, the ear thing, and they kind of reference like Trump's ear wasn't shot. That's bullshit. So therefore, this could also be bullshit. And so in looking at that, I was, again, very surprised by that, because that's news to me, because it's wrong. So I thought maybe do this in chronological order a bit. Can't go back to the beginning beginning, beginning, I'm sure. But I want to talk about Trump's ear and that shooting. I think I'm going to start with that. We'll see how far we can get. And then eventually, once I feel like I've gotten out everything about that, then we can kind of transition into the current shooting, the more recent shooting. Quick note, again, in an effort to try to catch up after that catastrophic loss, I'm probably just lightly editing this. I normally am pretty painstaking. I like to make it very smooth, take out all my bullshit ums and whatevers. But this will probably be like a lighter edit. Uh, and I'm actually just curious if anyone cares, like how, uh, if you have thoughts on that, let me know. Like if the more edited ones are much better or I'm just curious, like the return I get on that work, but it's, I don't really do it for that. Like I just am fastidious about it. And I like doing heavy editing. Um, all the editing I've handed off has been really not that. And so it's hard to get used to, but I'm Just curious, like if it makes any difference to anyone. If I did stuff like unedited, I have to be very prepped. Otherwise, it's just agony to me. I can't listen to myself not saying stuff correctly. It just bothers me too much. But anyway, that aside, light editing. But back to what I was talking about. I did these posts and I said that people are being Joe Rogan. You're being Joe Rogan if you're doing this. And I stand by that. That's another thing that gets me, the hypocrisy of it. The people who think that they're doing a different thing than what Joe Rogan is doing. And you can, oh, well, he's doing it for a different reason. Maybe. I think some of it. I mean, have you listened to a lot of Joe Rogan? I listen to a lot of Joe Rogan, fantastic podcast, and he's an idiot. He just does conspiracy stuff normally. I Think he's also developed political reasons more lately that he does stuff and he engages in certain things. But that conspiracy mindedness and that lack of critical faculties and ability to examine this stuff in a critical way, that's always been there. And it's the same as people doing this. So I'm sorry if that's a big insult to people. It's the truth. This is Joe Rogan shit. It. Oh, you know, before I move on, I actually should just get straight what the official story is, because I think that gets lost. Like even the facts that we have, I find people just don't aren't familiar with them. And it's one thing if you want to disbelieve them, but you got to first know what they are. And I actually a lot of people just Don't even know what they are so let me give just a quick overview of how this Butler Pennsylvania attempt happened, the official story. So July 13th, rally at Butler Farm Show Grounds near Butler, Pennsylvania. So Pennsylvania, big swing state. So as to the specific security arrangements, here's what we can say. The FBI says they had no information about any particular threats before the incident. Now that's Biden's FBI. I think that's just the FBI because when we had a normal president, it's pretty independent of the president. But you can at least say that that That shouldn't be Trump's FBI, right? I mean, unless you want to say he's got so many holdovers from his first term that be willing to lie. Anyway, but that's kind of a different claim. But, you know, taking that at its face, the Secret Service had increased Trump's security detail in recent weeks because of intelligence indicating that Iran was plotting to assassinate him, which is kind of interesting. And I'm just going from Wikipedia here. We're just trying to get the official story. So we're on the same page. So before the incident, attendees at Trump rallies were screened for prohibited items, including weapons. Secret Service also routinely screens and monitors buildings and businesses near such events, including structures outside security perimeters. The venue had, quote, two layers of security and outer area patrolled by state police and an inner perimeter manned by Secret Service agents, including an anti-sniper team on the roof behind the stage. Four counter sniper teams were assigned to the event. Four. Wow. Two from the Secret Service and two from from local law enforcement. One of them, comprising three snipers, local SWAT officer Greg Nichol, SWAT team member from Beaver County, Jason Woods, and a third shooter from Butler County SWAT team, I guess we don't have the name, was positioned inside a building owned by AGR International, the Pennsylvania State Police. Now, keep in mind, what's important about this is how many entities we're talking about. The Pennsylvania State police, which serves as Conaquinessing Townships. I don't know what the hell that is. Conaquinesing. There's probably some way to pronounce that that's way better than that. But their townships law enforcement agency was also involved in security matters while Butler Township Police were given traffic duties. Butler City sent no law enforcement personnel as the event was not within that city's boundary. So we got state police. We got like a township police. We got SWAT. We get, you know, FBI sort of involved. They're not there, I guess, but we got Secret Service. So we got at least three different entities of law enforcement involved in this. Now, I don't know how in the weeds to get here, because I think like this is the kind of thing that if people made certain conspiracy claims and I had to debunk them, then we could get more into the details of this. But I don' t want to bog this down too much. So let's suffice to say that Crooks, who is the shooter, not much is known about him. That's another thing that's a subject of conspiracy theories. That's a weird thing in and of itself. Again, I'm trying to decide what to get into. There's not that much that's known. Let me just read a little from his Wikipedia. Crooks attended Abraham Lincoln Elementary School from 2009 to 2014. By the way, he was 21, I believe, when he did this. One of Crooks' friends who attended school with him said he was a nice boy who kept to himself. Crookes began attending Neil Armstrong Middle School in 2015, but he transferred to Independence Middle School in 2016, where he remained until he entered high school in 2018. Gosh, so young. One investigation only found a lunch detention in middle school for chewing gum as bad behavior growing up. He joined the National Technical Honor Society in 2021 while a junior in high school. 2022, he attended Bethel Park High School with high honors and won a $500 star award from the National Math and Science Initiative. Crooks earned a score of 1530 out of 1600 on the SAT. Jeez, that's a pretty good score. As well as perfect grades on three advanced placement exams. So this is a smart kid. Classmates and school officials characterized him as being quiet. Classmates said he was often bullied for various reasons, including his quiet demeanor and body odor, as well as for wearing camouflage hunting outfits for school. So it's got that history in there. Criminologists have suggested that the bullying and isolation may have contributed to Crooks' decision to assassinate Trump. Also, some behavior that is more what you would expect here. During his freshman year of high school, Crooks anonymously posted threats online warning students at Bethel Park High School not to come to school the next day. Crooks had claimed to have placed bombs inside the bathrooms in the school's cafeteria. Many students stayed home the following day. The threats were dismissed by the school administration and no legal actions were taken. So here's the thing. It's not really for sure known his politics. That's the things that is kind of weird. But also it's not entirely weird because a lot of these attempted assassins and successful assassins are dudes who just want some sort of attention or notoriety. I mean a lot these shooters are literally that. A lot of them are kind of amoral. There's some evidence here and there that maybe he supported Democrats at some point, but there's no there wasn't like a political manifesto. It seems to me that this is more about just being probably notoriety and maybe like not being a very happy kid, you know, but I don't know. But there's evidence that goes the other way. I mean, this is really all we have. So authorities have said that Crooks' political views are unknown and they have not determined whether his assassination attempt was politically motivated. Public records do not indicate his views. On January 20th, 2021, when Crooks was 17, he donated. He's so young to like trying to get trying to distill cogent, coherent political beliefs from a 17 year old dude. You know, like, who knows? He donated $15 to Progressive Turnout Project, a liberal voter turnout group through the Democratic Party Donation Platform Act Blue. His donation was made on the same day that President Biden was sworn into office. According to the Progressive Turns Out Project, he made the donation in response to an email about tuning into the inauguration. He unsubscribed from the group's mailing list in 2022. Crooks had been registered to vote since September 2021 when he turned 18. He registered as a Republican. So when people say Trump was shot by a Republican, it is technically true by registration, for sure. In 2022, Crooks wrote about George Orwell's essay, Shooting an Elephant, calling it a powerful allegory warning against adopting imperialistic policies. So that sounds, you know, a little more lefty. 2023 crooks showed his frustration with american politics in a school essay about ranked choice voting where he claimed quote divisive and incendiary campaigns are pulling the country apart in another essay crooks criticized how nasa handled the 1986 challenger disaster he blamed nasa's administrators for the incident claiming they were quote trying to live up to the lofty promises they made to congress which they were never going to be able to fulfill I don't know what you can glean from that. So you've got a tiny bit of evidence for like vaguely left stuff. You've got he registered Republican, which I think is pretty telling. That's a choice you make. So maybe he was a little bit who knows, maybe could have been a little but apolitical, could have been a libertarian, not a leftist by any stretch. I think there's good reason to believe he probably was vaguely right wing. But it's just it's hard to know if it was a political motive. It's just just really unknown. It may have been more, you know, somebody who doesn't want to live anymore, really. Seems like he probably intended to die at explosives as well. And maybe he wanted to kill President Trump to do something good for society. Maybe it was more about notoriety. Maybe it was about, again, he's been fascinated with guns and more hunting clothing since he was in high school. So there's that. So apart from the no obvious political motive, I guess set that weirdness aside, this is pretty much exactly who you would expect, right? Like this is who you you would expect to be a shooter of anybody. Maybe not usually this smart. It sounds like he was really smart, at least book smart. But short of that, I mean, lonely, bullied, isolated. It fits a lot of what you would already expect. Fascinated with guns, a gun person had already made a previous threat in his high school, you know, claiming he put bombs in the bathrooms. Somebody who's done that kind of thing. Now, as to how he was able to pull this off, I mean, it is pretty, it's pretty staggering. But it strikes me so much as just a series of bad, inept coincidences, really. And also Crooks like did a pretty good job of picking a spot where he wasn't too easily visible by the sniper team, which would have had the quickest chance of stopping him. Biggest mistake seems to be these buildings he was on were outside of the magnetic magnetometer, whatever weapons perimeter. So he was outside of that perimeter. And so that's why he was able to have guns. But I mean, it just seemed like ineptitude to not include that in the perimeter or to not have better security there. There are teams, one was in the building he was on, so they couldn't see him. Another team didn't have a good view of him, but it is pretty crazy. I mean, he was spotted 90 minutes before, but he was using a golf range finder. It's not as though they saw him with the gun, but they still were like trying to get him. But then it says, so the counter sniper texted images of Crooks to other members of the law enforcement before heading outside to find him and keep visual tabs on Crooks while backup arrived. Arrived crooks ran from his position and evaded a search joined by four other local police officers so it's like that seems I mean it's crazy to me law enforcement spotted uh crooks between 20 and 30 minutes before the shooting multiple law enforcement officers identified crooks and believed he might have been acting suspiciously near the event's magnetometer weapon detectors they expressed their suspicions over radio and the secret service was informed of this at some point now it's pretty crazy he gives him the runaround and then he he went back and like he didn't use used the ladder he had. He actually instead climbed up an AC and then went across a couple roofs. I guess that's kind of how he, it still seems, it seems insane. It is insane. What happened was insane. Here's what's even more insane. So a couple minutes before the shooting. Now, critically, it's only a couple of minutes and think how, you know, hard it is to get anything to happen with humans that fast. But a couple months, people started noticing him and there's a video. This isn't man. This is freaking crazy. Listen to this. They're just, it's amazing to think of when

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0:21:02 Clip: If he was doing the job, I wouldn't even be doing this, I'd be at some beautiful places before the ocean, the Mediterranean, the Atlantic, maybe the Pacific.

0:21:32 Clip: Yeah, look. Because we have millions and millions of people in our country that shouldn't be here.

0:21:48 Clip: It's up here, right on the roof, it's really up now, it went right on

0:21:56 Thomas: The video ends there, but think how crazy it is. I mean, they saw the guy like right before it happened, man, that is insane. And then here's the thing I kind of forgot about. So they try to alert it. Keep in mind, that's pretty far away. Like it is quite far away from Trump, but the Washington post says this was about 86 seconds before the shootings. It's not very Very long. I mean, there's this feeling that like something they should have been able to stop it, alert somebody. So they alert an officer and that says at 6 .08 p .m., local law enforcement officer report over the radio. Someone's on the roof. Police body cam footage revealed that at this point, a search operation began in which at least four Pennsylvania law enforcement officers focused on the rooftop Crooks was on and its immediate surroundings attempting to reach him. Hoisted by another officer, a Butler Township police officer attempted to climb the roof of the building in search of Crooks. Crooks spotted the officer whose hands were clinging to the edge of the roof, aimed his rifle at the officer, who then let go, falling eight feet to the ground and severely injuring his ankle. According to ABC, this encounter, which occurred about 40 seconds before Crooks opened fire, was the first time any law enforcement saw that the person on the roof had a gun. Crooks undertook the shooting immediately after the confrontation with the officer. So there's this feeling that surely this could have been prevented, and it could have, I mean, with better security. But like, I don't know, if you have any experience dealing with humans in any capacity, it all makes sense. You know, like it's not that easy. You see someone on the roof. No one saw he had a gun, but suspicious. They're kind of trying to find him. Then they can't find him, he evades the few officers they have. You know they're a bit understaffed, it says, in terms of security, but he evade them. Nobody quite sees he has a gun. But by the time anyone sees he as a gun he's literally about to start shooting. They could have hypothetically Secret Service was made aware that there was someone on a roof. I don't think they knew he had a gun, but he was on a rooftop and that was a couple minutes before shooting. So maybe they could have or should have just taken Trump away right then. But is it is it so insane? Is their response so insane as to demand a conspiracy theory? Or is it within kind of the reasonable possibilities and of incompetence slash coordinating humans is tricky slash this guy got pretty lucky crooks got pretty lucky and had picked a good position and was I don't know, pretty stealthy. It just doesn't demand a conspiracy theory to me. And so ultimately make it more into it later. But eight shots were fired before he was killed by a sniper. Seconds later, essentially. OK, just want to cover the basics. So we're on the same page now back to talking about these Facebook posts I made and some of the response and some of the conspiracy theories here. Now, I'm going to probably read a few comments. I'm not naming people. And I promise if this happens to be you, I promise you, I really not trying to like personally hurt you in any way. Or I just want to deal with what people are saying, because it's like if it were for these posts, I wouldn't believe this. I wouldn't believe that people are doing this. And maybe if you're someone who hasn't seen this, you might think, oh, that's social media. Yeah, but not really, because these are Facebook posts of people, listeners I have a long history with. I've interacted with these folks. I met many of these folks in person. And, you know, maybe this is still some sort of cherry picked sample because these people are going to be online more. Sure. But like these are real people. This isn't fake. And that's, that's concerning to me. Like for example, here's one, this is such a, so I'll, I'll fess up to what I wrote, even though I fully stand by it, but just so I don't want to like read someone's response to me without reading my original post. But here, my post was, and this was like the second one I did. When you do the quote, okay, okay. But isn't it convenient that blah, blah, blah. You're just doing Joe Rogan. That's Joe RogAN. It isn't different because the side you're accusing of doing conspiracies actually sucks. The quote, but what about these very cherry -picked things that aren't usually even accurate if you Google them? Aren't they a hell of a coincidence? Mode of reasoning is Joe Rogan. And the, oh, so you trust this administration to be telling you the truth? Modeof reasoning is also Joe Rogin. Maybe you're just Joe Rogon fans, but I don't think you are. So that's my post. One of, it looks like maybe four on the topic, actually. Someone responds, a name I recognize, not someone I've met, but I recognize this person. This is such an unserious way to engage with what's happening, capitals especially, in regards to Butler, Pennsylvania. Then another one. This one is someone I have met and have a long history with. I agree 100%, they say, but you got to admit he has a history of probable staged attacks. Parentheses, his ear was not shot. It's perfectly reasonable to think this could be the same kind of thing, but we shouldn't go around spreading conspiracy theories. We can't be doing that. Sure, be skeptical and curious, but don't turn into Rogan in the process. So I appreciate this person. I don't know. I guess they're kind of meeting me halfway or something, you know. So I I do see that like this group of people still wants to be critical thinkers and thinks of themselves that way. But they just think like this thing is a conspiracy, like this is different. And of course, I mean, that's what every conspiracy theorist has to think. There are some that just believe like so many conspiracy theories that I think they it's not really I wouldn't put them in the same category as like folks like this. Like the people who are like the hollow earth, the flat earth or whatever. It's a lot of earth stuff. But I will note that this is how it starts. You don't get to control how far and where conspiracy thinking leads. You don't Get to control that, you know, like once that starts taking off, once you lose your tether to truth as a group as a subgroup, I, you Know, it's not, there's no guarantee of where that ends. And I'm going to try not to talk too broad, like I want to talk in that higher level view about stuff. But I'm gonna try to stay focused. So I have a lot of thoughts on that, but I'll come back to that later. I also, by the way, I'm going to talk about the people who, there are some people who responded that they know it's fake, but they're kind of doing it in an effort to, you know, get back at Trump or they think it's like helping take down Trump in a way. I'm just acknowledging it in case that's you, because there may be a few of you. I'M SETTING THAT ASIDE FOR LATER. I ALSO THINK THAT'S A VERY WRONG WAY TO LOOK AT IT. FOR RIGHT NOW, I'M TALKING ABOUT THE PEOPLE WHO GENUINELY ARE OF THE VIEW OF SOME AMOUNT OF conspiracy theory. And I'm going to start with the Butler, Pennsylvania one. So this person, like I said, because I know them, I interacted with them a little more. And I want to read one more thing just to, again, get the picture, not trying to pile on, but just selected things from another response. It's all good. I know you're not being combative. I don't know, but I'm just not convinced his ear was hit. They never released an image of the injury. The image you show is inconclusive. I posted a picture of him bleeding. He continues, it's just that every single thing he says is a lie. He can't make a sentence without lying. So forgive me if I mistrust him. And he's willing to go to war rather than let the Epstein files come to light. If he's will to do that, then he's absolutely willing to kill an innocent man in order to make himself look like an immortal badass to his cult. I don't think the most recent attempt was staged. Oh, okay. I think that was a guy trying to do a thing and he failed and got caught. When they spend so much time lying and creating alternate facts and realities, it's easy to see how nobody knows what's true or not it shouldn't be a mystery why people don't believe the official narrative why would they but this is the part I want to get to so I'm glad I'm giving this person credit um they they say they don't believe this one was a stage but here's what they say about the butler one but the ear a blood packet with real blood question mark secret service jumps in to protect pop the blood cap smear voila it's easily and with no pics of the the image, I think they mean injury because that's what they said before. So I'll say, and with no pics of the injury and with subsequent photos showing no piece of his ear missing, no attempt to prove it happened, just take their word for it? Sorry, for me, that's not convincing. I wanted to read that because that is ridiculous. Like I'm not, again, I'm not trying, I responded, but I'll stop reading those responses. But I just want to give an indication of what kind of beliefs we're talking about. But that's the kind of thing that is so unrealistic and ridiculous that I worry. I greatly worry about our capabilities for skepticism, our capacity for skepticism. So what you heard in that one was, I think that was a better response than a lot of what I got. A lot of people came in, and I think this is telling that these people don't have a good argument. They just accused me of believing Trump on this stuff, which I find incredible, especially because of the ballroom one that just happened. And I made this point and people still did the thing that I was calling them out for on the post where I called him out for it. None of my information comes from Trump. None of the information on this ballroom shooting comes from the administration. I don't understand like this idea that you can, it's such an easy, like straw man thing to say, oh yeah. So this guy trusts the administration, huh? And that's an easy tactic because then it makes me look like a naive idiot and you're so smart, uh, for not trusting the administration that we all know is lying and that I don't trust you know I don'T trust them I would hope I mean maybe these people many of them might not know me but like if if any of them do and they could figure it out from my profile that I'm on the left I don't trust anything Trump says nothing came from them there's no part of this guy did this thing caught on surveillance did it at an event with a million press. There's a bunch of footage and angles and testimony about that. And he also has a manifesto that, that spelled out what he was trying to do. None of that came from Trump or the administration, none of it. It's, I, it's not, no part of this is believing the administration. I don't know what the fuck you're talking about. So, but going to the Butler, Pennsylvania one, that one's even more interesting because you know how, here's the thing that you don't get to do anymore if you're one of these folks if you are one of the folks that is citing the Butler, Pennsylvania thing and saying I can't believe you would believe the trump administration you no longer get to doing the thing where you try to own maga for forgetting who was president in 2020 because the same thing is happening whenever maga talks about oh this thing happened under you know under biden and covid and then it turns out they're talking about something that happened in 2020 when Trump was still president. Well, we have the same thing here. Butler, Pennsylvania, who was president? It was fucking Joe Biden. And so Biden's FBI is where a lot of this comes from. It's not Trump's FBI. And then you have to get, well, first off, it comes from the fact that this was a heavily attended event with everybody in the world having cameras, multiple, multiple angles of each other. And one case I'm going to talk about, we we have not only a dead-to-rights photograph of what happened, we also have a photograph of that person taking the photograph, which would be an incredible thing to manage if you were faking anything. So if you're someone who's saying that, you know, Butler, Pennsylvania, or broadly speaking, these could be staged because you can't trust the administration, sorry, you no longer get to do that own where you talk about the MAGA, you Know, saying that 2020 was under Biden when it was actually Trump, because you're doing the same thing. This was under Biden's FBI. This happened during the run up to the election, during campaigning. That's what he was doing when he was shot. Now, here's where the devil's in the details, because obviously Trump played this up. You know, he's going to play it up as much as he can. And I got to tell you, I just went through a mini, mini journey because you remember his doctor, Ronny Jackson? Jackson. I went through a bit of a jump scare here because I'm terrible with names. And for some reason I had associated Ronnie Jackson, Trump doctor with, remember that first doctor he had that was fucking insane? That was Harold Bornstein. I totally mixed this up because, oh, I just didn't tell you the jump scare. As I went to look up what Ronnie Jackson said about Trump's ear, I saw that that it was now Congressman Ronnie Jackson. And I had not made that connection. I've heard that name. It's just I didn't associate those two things. And so for a quick moment, I was like, that fucking weird doctor is a congressman. No, it turns out his second or whatever, like a later weird doctor as a congressman. So it's not that same one. But you remember that with the first one that had the funny picture is the one is like he had the letter saying Trump's laboratory results are astonishingly excellent and that Trump will be, quote, the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency. Oh boy. But it turned out that in 2018, he said that Trump had dictated that letter over the telephone and then sent a car to pick it up. It's so funny. So I thought it was that guy. No, that guy died. Here's the thing. That guy died January 8th, 2021, at age 73. Isn't it weird? The place and cause of death was not disclosed. I wonder if there's anything he might've died of around exactly that time that wouldn't be disclosed. Who knows? Uh, anyway, so not that guy, Ronnie Jackson, different guy. Now here's the thing. When I look at what Ronnie Jackson said, it's actually entirely reasonable. Um, I had seen things here or there that he might've been lying about the injury and exaggerating it. Uh, and I was going to tell you if he was, but as I look out at it, he didn't, that also was misinformation. There was a post that circulated that said, uh, and it had a fake post and said it took my entire ear off the whole ear. But I went to the doctor and he said, this is true. He said, you heal faster than anyone I've ever seen. Nobody is healthier than you. And the next day my ear was growing back. And the doctor said nobody regrows ears like that. I mean, this is obviously a joke, but there was also, I think, ones that were more plausible. I saw a fake quote that like it took the top of his ear off. But actually, Ronny Jackson never said that. What he said was actually pretty reasonable. Seems like exactly what happened to him, but like Trump might've played it up. The bandage that he appeared with at the, I think it was the RNC convention. That bandage was obviously kind of ridiculous and probably played up. And that's completely consistent with what we know of Trump. That doesn't mean this is an entire conspiracy and that was planned or staged or blah, blah, blah. Like that's just not even close to the same thing. Uh, isn't that Trump was shot. Now here's another thing. Here's another one that might surprise you. And I remember, I think I commented about this at the time on one show. Then there were these people who were like, oh, you know what? It wasn't the bullet. It was actually glass fragments from either the podium or the teleprompter. And there's a weird sense in which for some reason that made people on the left feel better. That was like, Oh, that makes sense. Because then it could like still not be what Trump said, or it could still be not something that sounds as heroic as a bullet, but it would still explain the blood that's clearly coming from him. And that blows my mind. It's really interesting to think about that, because here's the thing. There was no glass. There wasn't anything that was shattered. There's no glass. And that entire thing seeming plausible to people on the left, in my opinion, is just because of the psychological dynamic of this. It has nothing to do with facts. And actually, I felt that too. I remember feeling a pang of like, oh, the glass, that makes more sense. Does that make more sense? Would it like is it like just think about it. Probability wise, is it more likely that he could have been hit by a glass shard of some kind than a bullet? Why would that be more likely? If anything, I think if there is shattered glass, you would expect a lot more wounds. Like if there was some sort of shattered glass causing an injury, the odds that it would do exactly what but it did, which is hit like a nick to Trump's ear a little bit and nothing else. That seems more improbable to me, not less. But isn't it so fascinating to think about that explanation, the glass shard, whatever hypothesis that fulfills a psychological need of people on the left to not believe Trump, I guess, or to think that something slightly less heroic or miraculous happened, but still be compatible with the facts. And I find that so interesting because it's entirely bullshit. There is no shattered glass, nothing that was glass shattered. Look it up. I got to tell you, one thing that this research drove home for me was reminding me of how fucking close we got, how close we got to not having to deal with this fucker anymore. I don't know what the alternate history would be. I really don't like, had he actually been killed, you know, I feel like there would have been a pretty big outpour. I don't know. I mean, it's so polarized. I remember the main thing that was funny about the Butler one was just how much it didn't matter. I didn't think it mattered. I mean we just kind of moved on because nobody gives a shit about him at all. That isn't already like a MAGA fanatic. And we're also so conditioned for 47 impossible things to happen before breakfast or whatever the fuck that quote. I don'T know what that's even from. Trump. But like the news cycle, we're so used to it being insane that really like a week later, it felt like we just kind of moved on. But, you know, maybe that's a chance to talk about something real quick, which is part of this conspiracy theory is that this delivered Trump the election. Now, I don't look too much into that because I mean, there's a lot I want to talk about in research and I am making a choice not to like try to go down that rabbit hole. But But I just want to note this. It doesn't seem like it. I mean, it's possible. I saw one thing that was like, yeah, well, you know, 18 percent of people said it was the most important issue. And those people, 81 percent voted in favor of Trump. And I was like that doesn't that's nothing. I mean if if someone were to say the assassination attempt when they voted for Trump, the assassination or sorry when they noted that the assassination attempted was the most important issue, who the fuck is that? And why wouldn't it be 100 % Trump supporters? I'm actually surprised. So that offers nothing. I saw that quote and I thought that was weird because that tells you nothing. Like, I'm sure there's a percent of it. You would have to know for that 18 % did it consist of people who already were voting for Trump anyway, in which case that's just a reason that MAGA people said. You know, because often often Trump people are just giving reasons they think other people will think are OK. You know that happens a lot because they don't want to admit their racism and such. It may have given him a boost. I don't know. But when that big like postmortem on the Kamala campaign thing came out that contended that the polling was always very bad. Bad, in which case that would mean Trump would have no like there'd be no incentive to try to do something like this to boost you in an election you're already going to win. And that is a chance to talk about how insane this would be. Actually, I want to get back to the the bullet and all that, and we will. But the biggest reason that conspiracy theories like this are not true has nothing to do with the Trump administration and what they say. That's a mistake I think people are making. It's very interesting. People are saying that I had somebody say this is actually I wanted to read this one, too, because it's I find it fascinating. Someone said, Hey, Thomas, you're going to hear this a bit. But here goes. I'm not a conspiracy guy. That's the bit you'll hear a bit of. It just seems that every one of the other side's crap they accuse the left of is exactly what they are doing. It's really hard to rule out that they would do this. Got another one. I don't know, man. When the every accusation is a confession, people are involved and something happens that fits their narrative of how the world works. I think it'd be silly to not be doubtful. And then another one, I don't think this is a false flag op or anything, but I also wouldn't be surprised if that were something this admin would do. This is the part that is the problem. It's not about what Trump says and how much he lies. It is not about that. The reason this is so obviously not stage one of many is that this doesn't happen. This event, this kind of thing does not happen in the world. Tell me, go ahead right now, tell me that one example of a staged assassination attempt that was confirmed to be planned by the person who was the target and was done somewhat successfully. Like, it's never happened. This is one thing I actually think AI is good for because asking these kind of like broad questions that I wouldn't really know how to phrase otherwise. Wise but I asked chat gpt and you know you can hey I'm open for counter examples if people want to point to stuff for history but I just asked gpt like is there any confirmed stage assassination attempt not only in the u .s but like ever and there's one thing in 1981 says james walwork hoax in new jersey walwork a republican candidate for governor was supposedly threatened by a gunman disguised as a doctor at a VA hospital. An FBI investigation later found it was a hoax by the hospital security chief, apparently for attention. Wahlwerk himself was not in on it and no shots were fired. There are also a couple of examples of people like making reports that ended up being fake. But there's nothing close to a... You know how... Guys, do you know how hard it would be to do something like this? It would be fucking impossible. Possible. And what I lament in any of this is that it thrives on people not doing the thinking. They're not doing The Work of Thinking. The only way these theories survive is by being virtually unexamined, by just spreading in a little petri dish of online bullshit where it's more about the psychology of how it makes you feel to say than it is about any facts. Now, Now there are little doctored photographs or AI photographs. There are things that like they point to for support. I'm not saying they knowingly are just like making it up or anything, but all you have to do is think about this for a second and it doesn't survive. The way it survives is by if challenged, people just go, hey, I don't know. Or they just do the like, oh, oh sure. Yeah, his ear was definitely hit and then they don't engage. If you try to engage with what this would have to be to be staged, it's not possible. I, I dare say it's not possible. Not only that, the idea is impossible. Like, and by that, I mean, who comes up with this plan? Tell me who comes up with the plan and then tell me how they implement it. And then tell me how they keep it covered up forever. There's no, never been anyone from 2024 from Butler, Pennsylvania, who was like, yep, no, it was fake ever. You know what happens when Trump tries to fake something, he draws the fucking sharpie of the hurricane's path on the thingy. That's Trump trying to do a false flag. That is how dumb he is. That is how bad they are at this thing. The only way these theories survive is by not looking at any of the actual details, not immersing yourself in the entire story of what would have had to happen and actually trying to test your hypothesis against that. This would be an extraordinary thing. Talk about priors. There is no prior for, there's not one single prior for this. There's no, if there was a huge history of people staging attacks in very public settings successfully, or even like not quite successfully, but at least we had that to look at as an example, then I guess maybe you'd have something like if there's a history of this, there is, it's not like this happened. Oh, it only happened 70 times in our nation's history it's never fucking happened it's not a thing that happens this is so like when you're looking at the probability of did this thing happen you got to at least start with your priors that's usually how it works right I mean if somebody just claimed yeah and then trump he turned into a big blueberry and rolled off the stage like in willy wonka the reason that's insane is like that doesn't fucking happen. I sound insane explaining this, but like this is that level of thing almost. It's that rare. This hasn't happened ever. Something that is close enough to this. People can point to a few things. They can point you a few false flags that might have been false flags. I'm not saying that's never happened, but this is a campaign event with thousands of people, with media everywhere, with high resolution cameras pointed at a 360 degree angle around Trump. And you're telling me he's going to try to pull off a blood packet trick? Does no one have any experience in theater? That doesn't work. Even in theater, or wouldn't you, you've got like, like take a Broadway show. Those folks are some of the best in the world at what this would be if it were fake. Again, if we're talking like a fake blood situation and that's the thing we got to keep our theory straight because the other thing you can do is throw spaghetti at the wall. And if it's not this theory, it's this other theory. It's not this other theories, this third theory, and they aren't compatible and you can't just jump from them willy nilly because then what you're doing is starting with the belief that it's fake and then trying to find how it would be fake. And that's not sound reasoning. So we'll start with a fake blood hypothesis, maybe. Like maybe the idea is he wasn't really shot. I guess we'll have to assume there was still a shooter, but we'll get to that. But there is a blood packet. Take a Broadway show. That is the highest trained people for this kind of thing. And they have the benefit of the audience being pretty much in one direction. And still it looks fucking fake. It's not even close. If you're off to the side, often you can see the entirety of how fake it is. Now imagine it's 360 degrees of high resolution photography, infinite fucking camera sources, and a bunch of people who would be heavily motivated to debunk this bullshit. You think you're going to pull that off? And second, with how impossible that would be, you think you'RE going to attempt that? Do you think someone would attempt that? You'd have to be fucking stupid. Imagine how bad the press would be if you get the photograph. Wait, Trump grabbed a little blood pack. You could see he grabbed something and then like put it on his head and it's fake. Like you can see or one of the agents did or whatever. You know, the risk of that, the risk versus reward, that would be the end of your political career. I know we say that about a lot of stuff with Trump. I think this would be, and by end I mean he'd lose like 3 % support and that would enough to be fatal in our stupid system where it's like 50 -50 every time. Because obviously the diehards would still be for him and all that. But this would be a joke. He'd be a a laughingstock if he tried to fake an assassination attempt. That would, that would be insane. So the risk is immensely high. The reward is what, I mean, he already was winning. Um, yes, he did get now not to be confused with this. He did get an insanely good image out of that. And it, it actually was incredible. Like when you, when you look back at the video, it was pretty fucking incredible that he had the presence of mind at his old diapered age to realize that he's been hit at least enough to be bleeding, but the threat is gone because everybody confirms, and this is another conspiracy theory, that the fact that he celebrated means he wasn't ever in danger. Nope. If you listen to the video, which I'll play, you can hear that they're saying the shooter's dead, the shooter is down. Essentially, they didn't say dead, but the shooter was down. And so he knows that he is not in danger anymore. And he does the celebratory thing. That was a strong image. Like, honestly, that's powerful. And I can't believe that fucking happened. I can't believe how close we got. I started to say that. I CAN'T believe how fucking close we Got. We got a goddamn inch away from not dealing with this fucker anymore. It's just, it's insane. It's absolutely insane. And people, I think, take that as a sign that it would have had to be fake, but that, that's even harder to do. That'S so hard to do too. And dangerous. Here's some footage by a photographer. He's actually, in the footage, you can see his better cameras. I don't know if this is like double footage, maybe at a GoPro. I don' t know. Some sort of footage of footage. But you can hear kind of how powerful this moment was. And it's, boy, this is something. So right now he's being helped up by the, you know, six or seven Secret Service. You can't hear him in this one. You're going to hear him and other ones. But we're just going to hear the crowd. I hadn't heard the crowd make this noise before. He's about to raise his arm. Boy. Now, people think it's too good. That's too good. Has to be fake. Well, first off, again, everything Trump does, every lie he tells is fucking stupid. So the fact that it's so good to me is like that's more realistic. He had the wherewithal because he's a showman. That's the one thing that he has always been. He had the wherewithal to take advantage of a miraculous fucking luck. Miraculous luck, man. But you just think about that. You think about how close you look at the diagrams. We got so close to being done with this fucker. And then to think about the crowd, that's all these sycophants and they hear these shots happen. They see what just happened in front of their eyes and they don't know like if their God is dead and then their fucking God gets up and does that. God, they must have creamed their goddamn pants. You can hear it. What that's, I mean, this is obviously this is, these are all people I hate and disagree with, but like just the, the amount to them that that was powerful just really hit me with that audio. Like Jesus fucking Christ, this asshole got so lucky. He got so fucking lucky, but let's take a step back because I sort of started small with the blood packet thing, but I actually think it makes more sense to start big and go to small because that's how it happens. If you ever have these debates, they start big. And then people retreat and retreat and retreat to the smallest claim they can usually. But also just logically speaking, it's a good way to look at it. So the biggest claim would be, you know, this whole thing's a hoax. There wasn't actually any shots. You know, there wasn't it was just a kind of play acted sort of thing. You could start there. That's just belied by the photographic and documentary evidence and the fact that someone was fucking killed. Someone was killed and some people were are wounded. Let's listen to two people who are wounded for a moment.

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0:53:25 Clip: Than anything. I mean, I was in the service, went through a war, didn't even get a scratch, and then you go to a rally and you get shot in a crowd. What were you mad about? The security, the fact they tried to shoot the president, shot into a defenseless crowd. Pennsylvania residents David Dutch and Jim Copenhaver didn't know each other until they became linked by tragedy. They each were hit with bullets aimed at former president trump during that assassination attempt in Butler, Jim, when did you realize something was wrong when I saw part of my sleeve go away and I heard I mean I heard it distinctly um and then I turned around to my friend I said I think I was shot Copenhaver who is 74 now walks with a cane he was shot twice one bullet tore into his tricep, a scar he could show us, but the other bullet is still lodged in his body, taking chunks of his colon and leaving him with nerve damage. Feels like somebody's taking a cigarette and burning right in the middle of my leg. Attorneys for both men say this video shows them getting shot. Copenhaver in the white long sleeve, Dutch further right in the American flag t-shirt. The bullet that hit Dutch split his liver. It was like getting hit with a sledgehammer right in my chest.

0:54:45 Thomas: Jesus. God. Hey, not for nothing. These aren't my favorite people, obviously. These are MAGA voters who went to a Trump rally, but not for nothing. A firefighter who died protecting his family, and we're going to insult that person's memory by making up this shit? I mean, that's fucking insane. At what point are you just Alex Jones? Do you think because the targets of your bullshit conspiracy theories are are instead of children, it's a firefighter protecting his family. But I guess he voted for Trump. So fuck him. Like, I mean, how much better than Alex Jones do you think you are if you're spreading this? Really? So if you think those two Pennsylvania men who are speaking and the additional person who died are lying, I don't know how to help you. I don' t. But I don''t think you do. See, that's the thing. I think you would have to jump. I Not realizing that the implication is these people would have to be in on it and lying. And we're willing to get shot and die in the name of what, a percentage point on the polls? No, that's silly. That's not, it's not worth entertaining. It is, you see why I'm, I'm not capable of pretending this is anything other than fucking stupid. I mean, I had a lot of tone policers on the post, like, oh, okay. You don't have to be like a dick about it. I'm sorry, I'm not trying to be mean. This is stupid. The ideas are stupid. I don't think you're stupid. I hope not. I think you might be spreading stupid ideas. They're really fucking dumb. And they're not just like a little dumb. They're really dumb. That's what I'm trying to get through. So, okay, if we're going to be in reality town, if anyone is coming with me on this journey and they think it was staged in any way, you would have to concede that this happened, right? Unless you think MAGA, geniuses that they are in the Trump administration, and keep in mind how tight this circle would have to be to pull off a conspiracy like this, and have no leaks. Every single scandal that Trump has had, there's been leakers. Every fucking one. Every goddamn one, there is somebody who's like, Like, I guess this is too far. I'm leaking what I'm going to testify about whatever, but not this one. So how, how few people would have to be involved for nobody to leak it? It'd have to been minuscule. And yet, if you want to say this didn't happen yet, you have to say whoever, whatever group we'll call them, the shadowy figures that pull this off. That has to be so small, but also so effective as to find volunteers who would die, who were were from Pennsylvania, authentically, were known to the community, like part of the community. And they, but they were willing to make the sacrifice. Okay. That's silly. All right. We all agree that's silly now we move to the, ah, let's go ahead. Let's move a little bit back. Let's pair back. Let'S get a little more modest. Okay, well they weren't in on it. Cause that's insane. No way. Okay but, but I saw some comments to this effect. MAGA is willing to sacrifice their own. Okay so then we'll go to that next phase. But I'm looking at the time and I'm, Here's the thing. I don't know how long this is going to be. I don'T know how much I need to say until I say it, but we're not particularly close to done, so I'm going to go about, I don' t know, somewhere around an hour each time and kind of call it and keep going. If you want to make sure you get the parts two through X, however many it is, if you want to making sure you can get them right away, patreon.com/seriouspod. Either way, they'll come out, but I don't know the schedule yet because I don't even know how many it's going to be. But we're going to go to the next phase of conspiracy theory next, which I think is something like, well, maybe people let it happen. Maybe they didn't cause it, but maybe some people let it happen, and we'll see how that stands up to scrutiny, and then we'll keep going. We'll see where we get. All right. Thanks so much for listening, everyone. Really appreciate you, and we will see you next time for more of this.

0:54:46 Clip: Yes, I could feel my ribs were all busted up, so I was kind of just holding, holding it. Pennsylvania's governor says firefighter Corey Compantori was shot and killed while trying to protect his family at the rally.

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