SIO513: Debunking Butler Conspiracy Theories in Descending Order by Scope

Transcript

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

0:00:05 Thomas: Hello and welcome to Serious Inquiries Only. This is episode 513. I'm your host, Thomas Smith, and we are continuing on the conspiracy theories about Trump assassination attempts. Yep, if you didn't catch the last one, catch the one, it's part one. Sets up where we are. I gotta keep going. I got things to say. We gotta debunk. We're getting through it. But very interesting to talk about. I'm interested in this, but I'm also interested in our side, the left, stopping this, just knocking it the fuck off because it's stupid. So last time we went through it, I started down a journey of paring back the conspiracy theories as we go. So we start hot, you know, we start coming in hot with like the maximum, which is like no, no guns, no bullets, all fake sound, whatever. Ever and I think that's easily debunked as we covered last time by the fact that there are people who were shot and a guy who has died but including by the way he was shot in the head horrific horrific stuff protecting his family that happened you could talk to the family you could talk to the people you could talk to the guys you could there's no you'd have to be extreme alex jones do you think that they were crisis actors if you're going to start calling everybody crisis actors then you're alex Jones you are Alex Jones I'm sorry you might you might think you're you're a good version. You might think you're the good guy or doing it for a good reason or some shit. I don't care. I get that point where you're calling murder victims, crisis actors. I'll be honest. I Don't give a shit that that murder victim was a Trump supporter. That's disgusting. Really? Yeah. Uh, I think we should have a little more regard for human life, even though they voted for the horrible guy. I think we should in general, you know, and most importantly our epistemology needs to be better our grasp on the truth needs to be better I'll get to more of that meta conversation at some point eventually uh but this is where we're going to go we've so we've set that aside and the next thing we're going to look at is essentially okay maybe the shooter is real but maybe people let it happen that's a common one I see that's kind of like step next step back you know okay OK, in our constantly ever moving target, which, again, note that this isn't a good way to reason already. If you're that means you're starting with your conclusion that you want this to be fake. And then as we go, you have to keep taking a smaller and smaller position. That's not a goodway to reason. Already, but I'll entertain it. Why not? And we'll go through it. So we'll take our first break. By the way, you can get all these episodes early at Patreon dot com slash serious pod. Support the show. Skip the ads. Really valuable those who make this happen seriously I cannot tell you enough especially because I might lose half my fucking audience for doing this I don't even know I could lose a lot of you so people who support this please um please share that both share this where it needs to be heard and please support the show I might lose I might I really don't it's crazy it's crazy to think that I might use a significant chunk of audience if my facebook posts are any indication and here's the thing I just I don t want to lose you I want you to maybe be convinced or if you're not convinced, at least be open minded and maybe listen to the show for other reasons. But ultimately, that's a sacrifice I'm willing to make. We can't be Alex Jones. We can't be Joe Rogan. It's not even once. It's not good. Conspiracy theories, bullshit like this is not good for us. Forget the other side. It's not good for us. I'll talk more about that later because I don't even think it does what people think it is doing right now with Trump. But point Point is, if you are someone who thinks this is valuable, just keep in mind that you may be a dwindling few, And so I really appreciate your support. And I thank you from the bottom of my heart. All right, we'll take a break and then we'll move on to the next batch of conspiracy theory.

0:03:59 Thomas: All right. So like I said, we're going to we're gonna assume that now we're looking at, OK, maybe somebody let it happen, maybe Secret Service, police, whoever, maybe they let it happen. So that would mean that the bullets were all real. The gun was real the shooter was real but nobody was told and they just figured it was worth it to maybe kill a few people now note how many things this also like rules out this rules out the idea of fake shots or fake sounds or anything like anything like that is is wrong you've ruled it out absolutely ruled it out like you have to actually keep track of your fucking facts at all times and I'd also say we've ruled out any idea of trump being in on it because are you really telling me. So the bullets are real. The people, the guy who was killed and the people who were hit were real. Assuming you're with me on that. And again, if you're not, you're Alex Jones. That means for Trump to have been in on this, he would have had to been comfortable with being shot at to that degree of closeness. Do we really think that Donald Trump is like, yeah, you know what, for this election that I'm already going to win? Because I'm Donald Trump, by the way, a narcissist who thinks he wins every election, by the way. So Donald Trump would have to say, I need this extra one point or whatever it might do. I need it so bad. Or to be look, I want to be fair. You could at least think that Trump believed this would be the election swinger. I mean, I guess I I think that is not probable. I think Trump always thinks he's going to win. I some of his supporters I mean it's it's fucking stupid guys but like okay then you'd have to also think that he was comfortable with being shot to within a fucking millimeter of his life or or to take again I want to take the best version of it maybe he didn't think it would be that close um and then he just thought he would be shot at I just okay if you believe that I think you're crazy I don't think trump's willing to do that I don't think that doesn't make any sense so I honestly I think that rules it out I really don't think there's any chance already on the facts that we've barely established, it's a baseline stuff of just the people who were shot are real. And that happened. Just on that alone, you've ruled out a lot of stuff. You've ruled out Trump knowing about it. So that's pretty significant, right? Well, let's talk about, I guess from there, this other theory, you know, that maybe people knew about the shooter, but let it happen. Okay. So here's the problem with that. We have a lot of people whose job it is to provide security in something like this. It's not just just Secret Service. Even then, I think it would be pretty tough because Secret Service isn't just like Trump's personal guys. You know, like they maybe they could be friendly to Trump, especially by now. Maybe they could. I don't you know, I don't entirely know how that works, but that's an agency of people, you know that are willing to protect any and all presidents. So you'd have to get them to not see it or something or to not be aware. Because here's my point. There's going to be so many people involved in security there's the local police there's there's I think there's other law enforcement there as well you either have to fully get all of them on board hey hey uh local police you know like butler police officer butler pennsylvania local police officer here's the thing we're gonna there's a guy he's gonna shoot at the president we know it's gonna happen we're kind of cool with it we're mum's the word don't tell anybody that's actually in some ways the hardest one to justify because any person in that chain could fucking blow it at any time any of the people like one secret service person one police officer could a either be like that's fucking insane I'm going to the newspaper immediately that anyone would even ask me this by the way who's asking like what level of conspiracy would we have to be it for in order to pull that off it has to be somebody with power in order to go to the local police fucking people and the secret service and to tell them hey we're gonna let someone shoot at the president who would that have to be to even be able to give that order that'd have to be like the president and keep in mind that president at the time was biden it had to be somebody who was like trump or close because anyone else think about it even these trump Trump supporters, pretend the whole fucking police squad of Butler, Pennsylvania, pretend they're all diehard MAGA. Go ahead. Who would that have to be to give that order in order for them to not be like, well, this sounds like fucking bullshit. It would have to Trump himself or like somebody who is so visible that they're like, like could be taken to be speaking for Trump. Even then, let's say, I mean, it would have TO be Trump himself, like honestly. And even then, I think they'd be like, that's not a good idea. I don't think you should let someone shoot at you. That's fucking insane. Like they have a duty to not only, you know, the community as police officers, but they have duty to like the people who are there. They're these town police officers. This isn't the X-Files where it's like the fucking aliens can take over and make people do stuff. These are real people. So the whole whoever's going to be in charge of letting the guy shoot at Trump has to be OK with that whole thing. Now, imagine anyone less than someone Trump himself. Imagine it's Vance. I imagine it's, I don't know, fucking whoever, Bannon or something. I'm trying to think Stephen Miller, if you were that officer and you get that call or that meeting, wouldn't you just be like, well, it sounds like this person's trying to get Trump killed is what's like, wouldn't you just suspect it? Like, Hey, I think maybe this guy is trying to get you killed, Mr. President, or trying to like, this seems weird. You know, like there's that. I don't think functionally you could even do this. I really don't. I don't, I don't think, just think of how things happen, bureaucracy, how chain of command, think about how anyone does any fucking thing and think about the email the phone call the meeting that would have to be set up to make any of this happen now do you try to pare it down a little more and you say okay well maybe it was like one officer was aware somehow and they're like I'm not gonna well but then you've you've pared it down to like well then what is even is it even a false attack not really then Then you've pared it down to like, somebody on purpose did a bad job at security. And could you, do you think Trump ordered that and planned it? Who's the shooter? How did the, where'd the shooter come from? Did they hire the shooter that like, think of all the things you're ruling out. But I mean, that's just, so in some ways in thinking about it, like the whole, like, oh, well, just everybody stood down and they let the guy through security and they let him do that. That's actually harder to believe than anything. Thing. I think that's a theory people will go to as like the less crazy version. We're like, okay, maybe they didn't plan it, but I bet they let it happen. That's harder to believe. Now, incompetence is very easy to believe, I think, that virtually every anomaly in everything like this, if it's not just wrong, because often they're just wrong and made up, it's just anomaly hunting, and it's just incompetence. That I could believe. You're not going to get any argument from me. But that's not a conspiracy theory. That's not the argument. That's not what we're talking about. You can't retreat to that and then say you were still right all along. What we seem to have is a big lapse in security by Secret Service. There were, there's like congressional investigations about it because it was so bad. They did a bad job. Incompetence happens, especially with the Secret Service, they had a history of doing some incompetent shit. This was a particularly bad time uh and and and the stars aligned and think about it is it that crazy that people want to kill trump like there have only been a handful of assassination attempts how many would you expect you know like just just pretend there's no conspiracies there's just fucking president trump and how horrible he is and there's our country that's filled with nine zillion guns what what's your like baseline expectation rate of people trying to kill president trump for me it's honestly higher than this like my baseline expectation of how many people would try to kill trump is higher than the number we've seen so I think I like either they get foiled a lot or I think what's really the truth is it's actually pretty rare to a want to to do something like this be be stable enough mentally to kind of like make it happen uh and then see like actually follow through on it and be willing to throw your life away that's a that's a rare person you know like Lee Harvey Oswald was fucking weird he was it's a rare guy you know it's a rare rare thing that's happened a handful of times and you know real assassinations they happen of course but those are presidents who are actually pretty good in a lot of times you know Like Lincoln. Yeah, I guess there's lots of reasons why people would hate Lincoln. Forget that. JFK, like the people who would hate JFK enough to make that happen. There's that could have been that many. Think about how many people hate Trump enough to want to kill him. Like, if you gave all of the U.S. a button that could kill JFK, how many people would have pushed it in 1963? If you gave All of the Country, the U-S, a button, that could Kill Trump right now, how may fucking people would push that button? I mean, it's got to be hundreds of millions, it has to be half the population, close, I mean who knows, maybe I'm exaggerating, but it's gotta be tens of millions. If you could magically push a button and take that, you know, and then extend it to like who's willing to actually go through what that would take. And yeah, it just turns out it's probably pretty rare. Like, it's just probably pretty rare that people have that, all those things, all those qualities at once. But I wouldn't think it'd be this rare. So my expectations are there, actually should be more. So if you're a conspiracy theorist about this, and especially if you're about, a conspiracy theorist about every single Trump assassination attempt so far, then your baseline view is that there should be none. Like, there's just, you wouldn't expect any. And that the only ones that have happened are lies or false flags or planned. I mean, that's weird to me. Incompetence, though, that happens. That happens quite a lot. And think back to my description of the official story. Think back to how many layers of law enforcement we had. So we obviously have Secret Service. We have state police, Pennsylvania State Police. And then we had the township, Butler Township Police officers who were given traffic duty, I guess you could argue, maybe they wouldn't have to be in on it, I guess. I mean, you're taking risks, but you would need to have as few people in on it as possible. And I'd already argue, like, I don't know who could be in on it. By the process I described before, like who who's giving that order and how? I just don't know. I really don't know. But we've already got the story of the police officers who were suspicious, tried to find him, that kind of evaded him. Are we saying, okay, well, you know, on purpose, they didn't find, I mean, look at, here's the thing. You look at details, it just falls apart. And a lot of these people, if you're going to say, well I don't have to know how it happened. Yes, you fucking do. Yes, you do have to go through this process. If you are going to make an insane fucking claim about a false flag conspiracy theory, you have to be specific about how it even could have happened I mean I'll go ahead and spot you like you don't have to have like dead to rights evidence you tell me even how it could have happened you don't get to just say because then you're doing again you're doing Joe fucking Rogan you're doing Alex Jones if you I don't hey all I know is and that's why I said that the post I did that's what I said what I did that's where I said this mode of reasoning is Joe Rogan doesn't mean you're the same guy or whatever. It doesn't mean you're as bad per se, but the mode of reasoning of it, Hey, look, all I know is it doesn't make much sense. Okay. Well then what does that mean? You have to contend with the implications of what you're saying to have a coherent view, or you just shut the fuck up. You can't just spread conspiracy theories for no reason. Okay back to it now again on this theory we have to believe that crooks is the legitimate shooter right and he's not in on it because I mean I guess I guess you the theory could be someone's putting him up to it but then again it can't be trump we've already ruled that out like if there's real live rounds and people are dying behind them, I mean, again, I just think, I don't know how you could think that. I think you have a bad theory of mind if you think that, and that's the thing. This is why I'm going to all this trouble and this is why this matters. I am very worried that we as a society are really losing our theory of mind, our ability to project minds onto other people and think about what would have to happen for certain things to be true. I deeply worry about that because it's not good. It means we'll all be more wrong about everything fucking all the time. And I think that snowballs. It's just not good, I mean, I get that on the right, there's not much I can do about it. On the left, I'm going to try to do something about it, so I guess we can just look at that binary possibility real quick. Either Crooks is who he is and wanted to kill Trump for one reason or another, or he's somehow put up to it, I guess. Then my question would be, how are you putting him up to? Like, let's say, let's look at that possibility. How are you finding this guy? Like what? I mean, he's got the exact background. He's got exact circumstances of somebody who would do this. And he happened, by the way, he happened to Google — he searched major depressive disorder, for one, because they cracked almost all of his devices. They cracked all his devices, they weren't able to crack a couple of accounts. Actually, yeah, let me just mention and debunk this real quick, or mostly debunk, because there was some wording that people seized on where Representative Mike Waltz, Republican from Florida, and he's on the 13-member House Bipartisan Task Force investigating the assassination attempt, told reporters in August that Crooks had multiple encrypted accounts on multiple platforms based in Belgium, New Zealand, and Germany. It remains unclear why Crooks have those accounts or what he used them for. Now that's language that people can see as, oh, encrypted, foreign account. Oh, he must be acting on, but it's like, that could just be like email. You know, I mean, And that just means and they actually clarified later in a statement that it's mainly overseas encrypted email accounts and it's no more sophisticated than any standard widely used Internet based email service. Oh, and I'm actually also seeing that they later said they did access them. So maybe they did get around it. But even if they didn't, it's not some foreign terrorist, whatever. It's just those that's where those are the countries where whatever these apps or services were based. And that you know they're based in foreign countries all the time there's plenty of other like email secure email ones um I could give some examples but it'd be speculating you know could be could be encrypted messaging could be encrypting emails and you know it sounds a little weird but if this is somebody who might have lived a lot of his life online maybe although it's kind of unknown he did have a lot of accounts that they got into but it's interesting we still don't have any like verified postings so maybe he just wasn't a poster maybe he was a reader anyway point is he might have had this kind of account for starting Discord stuff and not being traceable you know there's plenty of innocent explanations there's no reason to suspect that this is anything other than that and we actually have a decent amount of stuff about his behavior so december 6 2023 almost seven months before the shooting crooks rapidly cycled through several news websites including CNN, New York Times, Fox News, before visiting the Trump administration's archives. Then he visited seven gun websites, including one focused on the AR-15, similar to the rifle he would use in the attack. Later that day, he paid a visit to his local shooting range. Much of his online activity in the months before the shooting is not known because he frequently used a virtual private network. In January 2024, Crooks placed a $101 order online for more than two gallons of nitromethane, a fuel additive that can be used in explosives, giving his home address for delivery. The package did not arrive promptly. On January 31st, Crooks sent an email to the company asking what happened to the package. It's interesting. And I don't think we know for sure if he got the package and if it was used for explosives, but he did ultimately have those explosives, not only in his car, but He had improvised explosives in his house. So it's It's interesting to think what he had in mind and, you know, notable again, he's planning December and January. So whatever your conspiracy is, has to involve that, has to have two accounts. Who is this guy? You know, if he's, if it's just a patsy, I don't know how you arranged him to be doing all these things. Uh, you Know, on July 6th, this one I thought was particularly interesting. July 6, the same day he registered for the rally crooks search for quote, how far was Oswald from Kennedy. Yeah, I think maybe he did it. I think maybe this is the guy. Crooks also searched for information on power plants and the attempted assassination of Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico. He used a number of aliases and encrypted communication accounts to buy firearm supplies and bomb-making materials. On July 12th, Crooks went to a shooting range where he was a member to practice firing. Before going to the rally on July 13th, crooks purchased 50 rounds of ammunition and a ladder he requested the day off from work because he had something important to do telling his co-workers that he would return the next day so then maybe you try to go to other methods of still again you're reasoning backwards you're starting with what you want to be true and you're finding ways but let's say let's go with it again oh okay well maybe hmm maybe it uh let's see what could be next I mean they might say well maybe all all this is fake. All this record. They made up all this stuff. I just, for one, already you're dealing in crazy town. For two, this was Biden's government at the time. For three, people just aren't thinking about how hard it would be to actually do this. Again, this is what I resent most about this. It's a lack of thinking and it's disguised as some sophisticated thing. Oh, you you naive, you believe, no, man, I'm thinking harder than you about how things work. For example, that part about he called out of work, you know, well, he's got, you know, New York Times has talked to his bosses and got this information that he requested taking Saturday off because he had something important to do. So just think about that. If this isn't the guy for one it is but if it isn't where's the process where this happened where that you switched this out you know did you misidentify the body but then you like coincidentally this guy asked off of work and then is also now missing so it's definitely him he's dead did you you know it's like there's just no way to make all of that work you know so then then you have to say, well, he was either in on it and just, holy shit, were they proactive, you know, December, he's already laying down the groundwork for what he's about to do. And, you know like that, okay, that's nuts. Or he's not in on it, I guess. And so then you have to go the not in on it route. If he's not in it, then anyone who knew about it and was letting it happen was essentially thinking Trump was going to get murdered. So now just think about that. You're in a whole different conspiracy, right? I mean, we've established this stuff pretty fucking firmly. There is no other way. Like I'm going through all the possibilities. None of these are real possibilities. Like this is already stupid. So keep that in mind. Like the odds of all this being true, but just think logically about where we are. We know the shots were real. We know based on all this backstory and people interviewed that the guy is real and that he he seems like this exact shooter, like this kind of guy who would do this. And I don't believe that he's some paid actor hired to be doing is something. Cause like he's that's, that's a level of foresight, you know, um, to be during that, that far ahead of time before you even know that the rally is going to be there, you don't like, I just, there's no fucking way guys. There's no no fucking way. So then, then the only thing you're left with again, cause you slowly realize you're collapsing down to the official story. That's what's happening. And you've, you're down to, okay, well maybe, okay. Shooter was real guy. He was trying to really do that. He really shot those people, but maybe they let him do it. Well, I've already covered some of that, but I just want to add one more thing, which is at this point now that's just trying to murder Trump. So if anyone, Because they don't know that he's going to miss by a fucking millimeter. They have no goddamn idea because this is a real guy. They think they would they would think he's gonna kill him. So then if that's your conspiracy theory, then you're kind of saying that's like, well, someone on the left is doing it or someone who wants Trump dead is doing in it. It's no longer about the image. And think about, again, think about what that rules out. It's not longer about The Image of Trump, victorious, rising from the ashes with blood on him and putting his fist up. No, you're just signing his death warrant. That's what you think you're doing. If you're allowing this guy, who again, as we've covered, would have to be a real guy with a real motive to kill him and fires real bullets that come whizzing millimeters away from killing him. So that's a whole different conspiracy theory. You don't get credit for that. That if your whole thing is that you think this administration would do this kind of thing, you know, to try to juice their popularity. No, you're not. Not that. So we've safely eliminated all of that. OK, what is left? Is anything left? I think already. No, but we'll go through it just in case. Let's talk about, well, he wasn't really hit in the ear because I think maybe a lot of people listening are like, hey, forget all that. That I just know his ear wasn't hit and I'm realizing probably got to take a break. So why don't we take a quick break and then we'll talk about his fucking ear.

0:27:36 Thomas: So, yeah, I think that's where a lot of people will probably be if they're still listening. And if you are, bless you. I appreciate it. Assuming you're, you know, you still, but you might be, well, look, his ear hasn't been— Here's the photos. There's no way his ear wasn't hit in there. Okay. I don't know why this is so important to you. Um, I don't, I don't really know what you're doing with that. Like he was bleeding. So think of what we've already established. Real bullets, real guy shooting, real people died behind him. By the way, you trace the trajectory. The people died at exactly the trajectory of between where the shooter was and Trump. So that's all real. And now we We got to go to some footage and this I'll have to describe it because it's visual, of course. But I want to I want to play this because I think it's very important. We have there is so much, so much footage of what happened. And it cannot like assuming you do the work to find the right footage. It simply cannot be fake because there's too much of it. There's a million bajillion different shots from different angles. That doesn't mean there isn't fake footage. There is fake footage is mostly fake. Still photography. There is some fake stuff, but you can quickly rule it out based on it not matching and meshing with the nine zillion other things. It's just, it's not possible to fake something with this many independent people filming it. Every single shot of him shows hundreds of people in the front row with their phones out. Any inconsistency will be exposed here. So this is real footage from real cameras. And well, actually, I think I'm going to talk about the still photographs because those are crazy. Doug Mills, a New York Times photographer, captured the bullet flying past Trump. It's insane. But important. Here's the most important thing. Even if you, I don't know, are trying to disbelieve this, I want to point something out. In the footage, you can see if you want to watch and it's completely in line with with this still photography, he was kind of rattling off photos. It's the very first shot whizzes past his head. He immediately stops and puts his hand to his ear and takes it off. And there is blood and a fucking story just to drive it home. I'm going to play. You can only hear the audio, but I'm gonna play and I'll describe it. But I mean, it might, it might help to hear what I'm talking about. Here we go. That first shot, he immediately grabs up to his ear. And you can't really see it in the video, but you can see it in the still photos that are incredible, that he instantly has blood right when he grabbed his ear on that first one, he has blood on his hand. Think about that. Think about it. There is no fucking chance that that is fake. That is instantaneous. There's a photographer who captured the bullet. It, there's just no way that would also mean again if this is some sort of scheme that would mean that the plan was for it to be his ear I guess and so you'd have to say and you can see his hand before he reaches out in these photographs there's nothing in his hand be like a magician there's nothing in his fucking hand. He reaches up, touches his ear, it's got blood right away. Right away. Right away, instant, within — where this is less than a second. So what's your remaining theory? Give me your best shot. Well, Trump knows that there's going to be a fake thing somehow. We've already we've already established it's not a fake things, real bullets. People died. You're Alex Jones, if you think otherwise. Wise. Well, Trump knew. Let's see. Trump knew the shooter's real, though. The shooter's real. Are you going to say the shooter is not real? OK, so they had to hire the shooter a year in advance, whatever it was, have so it could be realistic eight months in advance to start prepping for the rally that wasn't in the works yet. That's OK. The shooter travels, I guess, or something, even though he's going to end up living where No, we'll bring the rally to him. We've got, sir, we've got a, it's so stupid. We got, we got a Manchurian candidate type shooter or whatever you want to say. We got an active, we got a local asset, wherever you want to get shot. He's like, all right, Trump's like I need this. I need to, you know, I'm Trump and I always think I'm going to win at everything. Uh I need to risk getting shot in the fucking dome to get a meaningless bump in the polls because I trump just think it's that important or maybe maybe we'll stipulate that he was worried about losing he's like yeah so who do we have well we have — we've planted shooters in all the swing states sir and they've already started eight months ago doing their search history and training guns and and by the way they didn't start eight months We found people who had the lives that are exactly shooters will say, or maybe they knew it was Pennsylvania. Okay. We'll try to simplify it. There's just one, sir. We've had the Pennsylvania shooter ready for a while now for just such an occasion. When you, you Trump would think you were losing, even though you never think you're losing anything. Uh, and cause now Trump has to be in on it for the, for the year to be fake. Trump's got to have practiced for months to have a perfect sleight of hand blood packet that is not visible in a closeup. Photograph and is not visible from anywhere else in any of the million trillion bajillion photographs that we have and put footage but he's bad he's been working on his close-up magic that trump he's being inspired by some of those online videos you see and he's ready man but in he's like here's the thing though we're doing it real I'm not gonna pretend I'm gonna risk that people to see this is fake bullets we gotta do real bullets and the plan here's a plan you know what the plan is, is going to be right next to my head because that'll be heroic. We're not going to go like bulletproof vest. We're not doing any of that shit. Fuck that. We're not even going to do, just miss. I have a fake blood thing ready in my ear. Maybe I don't have to my hat. So my hat, I always wear these stupid hats. That's that's, you know, here's the benefit. And it's going to drip down blood exactly in the line with where our shooter that we've had ready for these eight months has been training in Butler, Pennsylvania with the security conveniently is going to not rope off that particular spot. All the lapses is all arranged. Nobody has leaked it. And guys, this is stupid. Do you see why I'm saying this is fucking stupid? It's fucking stupid. I'm I'm sorry that it might hurt your feelings that you were expressing a stupid thought. That doesn't mean you're dumb. You didn't think about it enough. This is dumb. Look at these photos. Oh, but Thomas, the photos are probably fake. Oh, okay. So now you got New York Times in on it. Boy, that's wow. That's a good get. Well done, Trump. How did you pull that one off? So you got the real shots. Trump's risking his life. He's going to sacrifice several of his supporters. By the way, here's a thought, Trump, Trump, why didn't you just have your fake shooter shoot once and then he'd be killed? By the way, the fake shooter willing to die too. Or maybe you didn't think he was going to die. Maybe they, okay, they lie to him and say, you're going to get away, but really he's going to Die. Okay. I guess I'm trying again. I'm Trying to help you as much as I can. And Trump's like, it's gotta be the real thing. And I don't want to just shoot once, even though the first shot got my ear, uh, or at least, or in this theory, it went close enough that I can then get fake blood on my ear for for some reason. Um, but that's not enough. I want him to shoot eight times and kill as many people behind me as possible. Why? Cause I am evil. I'm going to do the evilest thing at all times just for that extra tiny boost in the polls that I think I'm losing, except I never think I am Donald Trump. And so he's right. He's ready for all that, you know, and he's been practicing his closeup magic. And then it happens. He is bleeding. It looks very real because it is. And then he's like you know I gotta get to the new york times photographer actually no so I guess under that theory it just all happened guys what are we doing here under that theory it all happened except he wasn't hit in the ear so he had fake blood but everything else everything else happened how it happened that's where we are but he's He's like, just get a millimeter away from it. Don't actually hit me in the head. I trust you, unnamed, unknown, secret shooter. Again, because if Trump's in on it, this is what it means. I trust him. They'll just barely miss me and kill people behind me. And then I'll put this fake blood on my ear. And that's the only difference. Everything else was real because the photographs captured the bullet, you know? Know, or let's say somehow it wasn't real. I struggling to think of how, like maybe the, okay, maybe the real plan is it's blanks and someone else shot the guys behind him, even though it did line up perfectly, but maybe, maybe we'll say Trump is not willing to risk it. He's, he's not, he's not going to risk being that close. So he's gonna either have the guy shoot not close to him or that's fake somehow someone else is shooting these people that no one saw by the way with thousands it's one thing to make up conspiracy theories about the jfk assassination which had the zapruder film and that's fucking it really and they didn't even know about that for a while um it wasn't really looked at or widely known until later it's One Thing that you can make up whatever you want apparently but in this day and age with that many cameras everywhere at all times. And these are quality cameras all the time. You're, this is just stupid, man. It's very stupid. And then, okay. So just to cover our last bases here. So he's not going to let it get that close, but he's going to do the ear thing with fake blood. But he's like, you know what? Fuck. We got to get to Doug Mills, New York times photographer. We've got to give to him and we got to, we got a, make sure that he's gotten to, and not only him the guy the person he sent the photos to because his story is that he didn't even know he captured this um but he well why don't we just listen to it here uh let's see this is kind of interesting this guy's a hell of a performer god best actor wow great first off greatest performance of a lifetime or maybe it's just jen you know all this guys what are we doing what are we doing these photos are real uh it's it's people want to say no they just doctored in the bullet hey man why did the new york times do that you think the new York times is gonna do and no one and by the way everyone involved in that process has got to be cool with it everyone it's got to hold up to scrutiny by theway and also the math holds up so the you know speed of bullets The shutter speed is one eight thousandth of a second. I think that's quite fast. And so if you do the math of, OK, an AR-15 style rifle to point two to three caliber, I don't fucking know guns, whatever. It's this type of bullet travel at roughly thirty two hundred feet per second. That means with a one eight hundredth of the second shutter speed. And this is an expert. I didn't do these calculations myself, but they seem right. Right. Uh, that would allow the bullet to travel approximately four tenths of a foot while the shutter is open. So 40% of foot, I mean, two, two fifths, four tenth. I don't know why he did those numbers, but what's four tenthS. We'll say it's a little less than half. So we'll say that's going to be something like four point whatever inches. And if you look at the photograph, I mean that's pretty plausible. That's about how much of a blur you see. Looks a little longer than that to me but it could also be here's the thing I don't know if it the air could look weird you know some amount of the blur there could be the air some amount and maybe our numbers are slightly off in terms of how fast something was going or how fast who knows but it's close it's roughly if I were to guess I'd say it's like eight inches so that's that's kind of interesting I wonder why that would be I don'T know if again where wherever the bullet is if it's if it'S It's altering the error in such a way that you see that kind of thing too. It's not just literally the bullet. But no, that's so, so this is real. This is all real. This happened. He got hit in the ear. Why the fuck are you so dedicated to the idea that he didn't get hit in the ear? Now, if you want to say someone played up the injury, okay. I don't think I ever finished reading what the doctor said. Did I? Because it ended up being pretty, pretty reasonable. I think I stopped that. So let's come back to that. Remember my Ronny Jackson thing? So there were fake quotes that he said Trump's ear miraculously grew back or whatever. And that's that's fake. But here's the letter that he issued. Sorry, paragraph two here, maybe. I've been with President Trump since that time, and I've evaluated and treated his wound daily. He is doing well. As reported and witnessed by the entire world, he sustained a gunshot wound to the right ear from a high-powered rifle used by the would-be assassin. The bullet passed coming less than a quarter of an inch from entering his head and struck the top of his right ear. The bullet track produced a two-centimeter-wide wound. Two centimeters. That's all they're claiming. Claiming. And by the way, I don't even know that this is gospel, but I kind of think it is true just because this person is a doctor. And this is pretty modest of a claim. Two centimeter wide wound. It's pretty small, right? That extended down to the cartilaginous surface of the ear. And I think that, you know, a lot of people are like, oh, if you lose cartilage, cartilage doesn't grow back. Well, it says it extended down two. So it sounds like maybe he didn't lose any cartilage and it's mainly skin yeah that's what it seems like back to the letter there was initially significant bleeding which we all saw and we now have we're all in agreement has to be true or the new york fucking times is in on the conspiracy so it was bleeding there's initially significant bleeding followed by marked swelling of the entire upper ear the swelling has since resolved and the wound is beginning to granulate and heal properly based on the highly vascular nature of the ear Ear means veins, means, you know, a lot of blood. There is still intermittent bleeding requiring a dressing to be in place. Given the broad and blunt nature of the wound itself, no sutures were required. See, they are not even claiming that he needed stitches, much less reconstructive surgery. So I don't know, man, get your facts straight about what even happened and what they're claiming. The president was initially treated by the medical staff at Butler Memorial Hospital in Butler, Pennsylvania, who did an excellent job of evaluating him and treating his wound. I want to thank them for their outstanding care. They provided a thorough evaluation for additional injuries that included a CT of his head. He will have further evaluations, including a comprehensive hearing exam as needed. He will follow up with his primary care physician, blah, blah. So now, I mean, reading that, like, I don't know, man, maybe the bandage wasn't even fake. I mean it looked pretty, I like, okay. As far as I'm willing to go is that one bandage we all saw that looked a little bit exaggerated. Exaggerated. Maybe that was exaggerated for effect, but I mean, if this doctor is saying, look, it's vascular, there's a lot of blood and there is, you get hit and nicked on your head anywhere. There's a Lot of Blood There. That's how it goes. And again, the frame by frame, one 8,000th of a second frames. I mean I'm not saying he took them that fast, but the frame by frame very quick in succession that we're able to capture the bullet revealed that his hand went up to his head immediately. There was nothing in his fucking hand. It came down. There Was Blood blood on his hand immediately. So the blood is real. The fact that he got hit is real and what's left? What's left to be a conspiracy, folks? What do you got? Feel free. Try anything you want on me. Seriously, if you are somebody who disagrees with me and you made it this far, first off, that's awesome. I actually appreciate that. That means you're willing to try to get to the truth here. What is remaining? And you don't just get to say, I don't know. All I know. No, no, we've gone through the possibilities. His ear, it was slightly hit. You know, it's not that much. And they didn't claim it was that much maybe if you want to find a place, I dunno, I haven't exhausted the internet. If there's a place where someone on the right or Trump himself said something that was exaggerated about the wound, then I'm all, yeah, I'm only, I just realized I said I'm on ears um yeah I would agree with you there but what is that that's what trump always does that's what he always fucking does he always exaggerates what happened but it happened it fucking happened he got hit in the ear slightly it's it's a graze but like it produced a lot of blood and by the way that would be terrifying I don't care because it's trump but like that'd be fucking terrifying this happened people died people fucking died stop being alex jones stop being Joe Rogan. Stop. It's fucking ridiculous. So that's Butler for you. That really happened.

0:48:20 Thomas: Again, if you disagree, try me. You know, what remains with the facts that we actually know, what remains? And it's not going to be much. And you can always come up with something crazy that might be consistent. But why are you doing that? Why? Why do you think that it's so crazy that someone tried to kill Trump and and I mean it is fucking great it's fucking crazy don't get me wrong but it's not like supernatural this doesn't demand a a crazy conspiracy theory explanation it demands a little bit of incompetence a little bit a lot of luck fucking luck for the shooter but also luck for Trump god damn he got lucky I mean it is it is really hard to contend with that but there's no there's no conspiracy that makes that less crazy. It only makes it more crazy. You're only adding on to how fucking crazy it is. If you add conspiracy theory, crazy things happen in the world, man, weird, just chance things, they happen. Um, so where should we get to next? I think maybe I, uh, I can either talk about the Butler shooting or talk more generally about people's motivations for believing these conspiracy theories. Well, maybe in the waning moments of this one, I want to talk about there's a lot of tactics people take to not admit they're wrong or to kind of still have their cake and eat it too. I don't know if that's the right expression, but then we get a round of like, okay, here's one. The fact that there's a wing of MAGA who thinks they were, as in they were staged, is an important part. Sadly, also that there are some of us who do is as well. And I'm not saying this is anything too wrong with this comment, but another one, you've got to Google consensus reality. We've lost it. Unfortunately, nobody even agrees on what's happening anymore. And yeah, I know that's like the point of what I'm saying. I'm saying this, but there's this thing where people do like, they don't want to defend their stupid conspiracy theory. And I don't know that this is everybody. Uh, some people might just be making this comment for God knows what reasons. Maybe they think I don't know this or something, but You know, they might just want to echo it, whatever. But I think there's this really like kind of cowardly thing people do where they instead of defending their belief, they try to justify why it's OK that they believe it and that they're saying it, you know, and it's hard to say. This is why people retreat a little bit. Oh, well, you know, the fact that we don't know and the fact that so many people believe it's a conspiracy is just, I mean, that's just a sign of how bad this administration is and how broken our reality is. It's like, yeah, why are you saying that? You know what it reminds me of a little? And again, I confess I can't know for sure what folks are meaning or intending when they, I can only say what they're writing and what they are writing uh if they're not just disagreeing with me and thinking this is conspiracy stuff which we've already covered they're often doing these weird like meta comments about like hey let people have this or you know you can't be sure or like hey yeah no one knows anything anymore those kind of things it does remind me a little of when we cover on where there's woke where there's someone comes up with an insane stupid or believes an insanely stupid theory or story about like trans people or the college kids or the whatever. And then it's debunked and they'll always do the same thing. Well, it's telling that I found it so believable, you know? So that's just, even if it's not true, it is a sign that it was so believable. That's a sign of how crazy these people are. It reminds me a little of that, you know, maybe not literally that, but like, Like, why can't we just say what we believe and engage with each other? It's so weird. I at least respect the people who are like, if they disagree with me, they're actually engaging. That's nice. But but, you know, I admit I'm I am I'm flabbergasted at this. I'm not saying that I'm commenting in a way that's like the most inviting, but I'm sorry. Like, this is stupid. It's really fucking stupid. And I guess if you're if your response is to try to say like yeah but it's okay because facts don't matter anymore I just think you're very very very wrong I think that uh and and we can also talk about the people who say yeah but this is great because this is hurting trump I don't think that's how it works maybe I have enough time to talk about that even though it might be a little out of order but I don't want to get into the whole next shooting yet people there are there's a group of people who think this is you know like hey now finally these conspiracy theories are to our benefit so don't don't fuck it up man like that's what some of the ones were and to nicer meaner degrees of the comments um and I just think that gets the causality pretty much backwards um I don't think that the right and the MAGA believe conspiracy theories because of anything we would ever say It might be that the conspiracy theories are coinciding with ours more now because Trump is unpopular. But the causality goes that way. There's a reason why all their goddamn conspiracy theories were about Hillary Clinton. It's because they are motivated to want to hate her. Sexism, politics, but sexism, let's face it. You know, there wasn't the same degree of conspiracy theory about all Democrats equally. You know it's certain it's Obama because of race. Probably it's Hillary because of her gender largely. I mean they are motivated to believe certain things. There's also a certain amount of just chaos theory of like, you know, what happens to appear weird in certain directions. Of course, it's not like deterministic based on what they want, but it's largely speaking. Speaking, the things that are going to grab purchase are going to be the things that serve their biases the most and now that Trump is doing the dumbest possible shit, the most unpopular possible shit people on the right are more willing to say there's a conspiracy, you know, maybe Israel told him to do the Iran war or maybe like there's all these theories that they're more likely to believe I don't but the mistake I think people are making is they're thinking that, OK, well, now that what MAGA is saying about Trump is kind of closer to what we're saying in terms of these conspiracy theories, that means we're helping or something or like we're but like I think in both cases, both before and after, they just weren't listening to us. We weren't really a factor, you know, so that whatever that tiny amount of gain you think there could be by further ruining the information environment by, by just putting out this dumb shit. And this is assuming you don't believe it. By the way, I cover the people who believe it when it comes to Butler. Now I'm covering the people who said like, yeah, well, you know, I don't belief it, but this is a good tactic or it serves them right. Or some amount of like nihilism about the truth. If you think this is good tactic, I disagree. I do not think this is a good tactic. I really don't. Because fundamentally, if you as a group of people, and we'll call us the left or whatever, if we lose track of reality, if we lose touch with reality, first off, there's a whole lot of normies out there still. And those normies vote, and honestly, they tend to be the swing voter more than you and I. In fact, you and I are never the fucking swing voter. It's these normies. And it is a benefit to be this side that still holds more purchase on the truth and that's still looked at as the serious party that appeals to the normies if both sides are looked at is well they're just one's a conspiracy theorist that way and the other is conspiracy theorists the other way we're gonna lose that advantage and I don't think we can keep our soul god damn it I don'T THINK WE CAN KEEP OUR SOUL I DON'T MEAN THAT IN A SPIRITUAL WAY OR A I I mean that in in like well I don't know take it how you want but I mean it in like a a conscience way and our moral kind of compass sort of way. Just look at what happened with MAGA. Before it was MAGA, it was the Tea Party and it was like the right has been stoking this stuff and it got out of fucking control. The people who were stoking this stuff in the 2000s and the 2010s, the pre-Trump era, they're not the same people who benefited from it, largely speaking. Like the people who are stoking it were Republicans that then got killed by it. You can't just control this. Have you seen Jurassic Park? You don't get to just control it. Now, to us, it looks like, well, the right is the right. And they've been it's like a steady line of they've been doing stuff and winning. But really, the Right is many things. And the conspiracy theory, like people that have grown and grown and grown on the right have displaced other people on the right who maybe thought they could control them like you don't get to neatly control conspiracy theory thinking when you lose because the bad thinking that goes into believing this shit is bad it's just bad and it's bad all the time and we aren't going to be successful in saying well we'll only let our bad thinking apply in these situations and we won't let our mad thinking and our lack of skepticism critical thinking we won't let it pollute these other things. I just, I do not think you can trust that. Also in order to govern, if we ever want to be the side that governs, we, we ought, we have to keep in touch on the truth. You know, like there's just no chance. Look, look at what Trump's side does with power because of their idiot conspiracy theories. You might think that ours'll be, we'll be, it'll be good somehow. It'll all work out. But again, you can't control that. Once, once you're encouraging, once you become a group of people that doesn't base their thoughts on reality, you can't control where that goes. I'm sorry. You can't. It is not good. We need to do what we can on our side to keep hold of the truth, to keep some connection, as much connection as we can to the truth. And it is just not that hard to know the truth here. That's another thing. Well, it's impossible to know. Well, I don't know. I just looked at everything that happened, Butler, and all the evidence we have. And I think we know it as reasonable as anything else. That we know it's not hard to know that still I mean I'll grant it's it's harder given that there's a lot more misinformation but if you look for trusted sources if you look for sources that you know you can trust because it doesn't make any sense for them to be lying like the new york times is not editing in a bullet for trump like what do you really think that do you think they're editing into a photo a bullet for Trump they're making that up and if they're not doing that the whole fucking thing falls apart so yeah we can be pretty pretty certain. We know, we know it. I do know what happened. He got hit in the ear with a bullet or I mean, I'll leave a slight possibility that like the bullet technically, it was like the air from the, I don't know, you know, leave a light caveat, but that's not important. He got hit by the bullet. The bullet, put it this way. The bullet caused the bleeding. He had a wound on his ear and it healed well because it wasn't really that bad that's the truth that's what happened stop doing this people stop fucking doing it all right I think I still want to I don't want to spend too much more time on this but I have to at least talk about the Ballmer one we can discuss that and some of what goes into why we know that it's real uh I guess I'll leave that for next episode thank you so much for listening again spread this please if you think it needs to be spread and thank you for listening and supporting. Who knows how many folks I've lost with this, but look, I'm not going to dedicate my life to skepticism and proper thinking, and then the minute it's convenient, just fucking abandon that. I think that's sickening. I can't believe people can do that. Just fucking think. Take a second, step back, realize what's happening here. All right. Thanks for listening. See you next time.