You know, he had some conservative views, he had some liberal views. But for the most part he didn't really talk about it. And, you know, he was dating a trans individual. And I was told that, that was an issue that you could tell he didn't want to bring up around his parents, which I don't think is extraordinary. [00:00:15] That probably happens all the time. This whole thing of like, you know, if you're LGBT, therefore you must have this set of views. Most people aren't like that. They're mixed. Have you ever just had a conversation? People are all over the place. There's no category that people, most people fit into. [00:00:32] And what I found was it was way more complicated than than the, red team versus blue team thing that we saw in the first 48 hours after the shooting. There's been a lot of reporting about Tyler Robinson. That is the suspect who is accused of killing Charlie Kirk, shooting him [00:00:47] in the neck at a Utah university. And there's been a lot of squabbling about the political identity of this individual, to be quite honest with you. I think political violence in general is a really big problem in the country. It continues to grow as a problem in the country. [00:01:03] It's not quite as bad as it was in the late 60s or 70s, but it's really concerning when you have a public figure like Charlie Kirk getting shot and killed in the neck at a very public event, and this is all happening, happening at a time when I think a lot [00:01:19] of people just have lost complete trust in our institutions. The search for the suspect was completely ham handed, at least by the FBI. FBI Director Kash Patel is being, you know, criticized quite a bit as a result of that. [00:01:34] But I think the media has also really failed the American people. First off, before anyone could get arrested, there was already a ton of assumptions about the political identity of the suspect. Cable news was debating this and discussing it as if it was already a hard fact. [00:01:49] But there are also some arguments from those on the left that Tyler Robinson. No, he was actually a groyper, and they were spewing that without a shred of evidence to prove it. And then there's the original reporting, the exclusive from friend of the show, Ken Klippenstein, [00:02:05] where he actually spoke to childhood friends of Tyler Robinson, had access to the discord server that Tyler Robinson was active in. And that actually paints a more complicated picture. So joining us now is Ken Klippenstein. [00:02:22] You can follow and subscribe to his work over at Ken Klippenstein. Com. Really, really great reporting. And Ken, thank you so much for joining us. Hey, Anna. Good to be with you. Thank you for joining us. It's good to have you. You know, I always love the fact that you're willing to publish things [00:02:39] that other journalists or reporters are, for whatever reason, terrified to publish. Now, since you published this piece, reporters have also published some of the other exchanges text exchanges that Tyler Robinson allegedly had [00:02:54] with his roommate slash partner, as some are referring to the roommate. Before we get to what you were able to publish. What did you think about the exchange between Tyler Robinson and his roommate? [00:03:11] Because there are all sorts of theories about how that was totally manufactured and fake. I'm not sure I'm buying it, but I will admit that the way Tyler Robinson communicates seemed strange for a young man. Yeah, the tone in which he spoke was definitely different than how I saw him interact, which was much more informal and just kind [00:03:30] of like a normal guy in the discord chats. But I would imagine that the way that, you know, somebody talks to, someone you're intimate with and on top of that, after you've murdered somebody, allegedly, is probably going to make you behave [00:03:45] a little bit differently than your baseline would be. So to me, it's not that surprising that it's, different. I hope you'd act a little differently after something like that happens. Well. It's interesting because the exchange that you have, kind of. He appears to be a bit nonchalant. [00:04:01] Okay, so let's let's get to that, graphic here where someone in the discord server, posts Charlie Kirk got shot dead. Someone else says, I just saw the video. Rest in peace. Bro didn't deserve to go out like that. Sad. [00:04:18] And that's when, zealous monkey, that's Tyler Robinson responds and says, hey, guys, I have bad news for you all. It was me at UVU yesterday. I'm sorry for all of this. I'm surrendering through a share. A friend in a few moments. Thanks for all the good times and laughs. We've all been so amazing. [00:04:37] Or yeah, you've all been so amazing. Thank you for everything. So yeah, his communication style is definitely different there, but he is also simultaneously kind of nonchalant about the fact that he just shot and killed someone in broad daylight, in cold blood. What did you make of that? [00:04:53] Yeah, both. When he's talking to his partner privately and in the discord chat, everybody's just kind of shocked. And he just drops this thing like it's like, oh yeah, it's on a movie. Interesting, And then just moves on. And the people that I talked to in the chat, they were, you know, stunned, as you would expect, horrified. [00:05:10] Confused, traumatized, trying to piece through what happened. Because I think there's this impression being ginned up, particularly on cable news, where I think people don't understand what discord is. It's kind of like I would call it like WhatsApp. [00:05:26] It's like WhatsApp for gamers. Basically, you can make phone calls, text messages, video calls, that kind of thing. There's no algorithm. You just invite people to your server. It's what they call the kind of chat room that you that you talk in. And I think there's this sense that, oh, my God, he was communicating with them. [00:05:42] Therefore there's some sort of coordination or conspiracy going on. And at least in the several, the three or so chat rooms that I, was able to gain insight into, that wasn't the case at all. People were at first thought he was joking because they couldn't understand. Why would someone do something like this? [00:06:00] And that's not even to say that they liked or disliked Kirk. The my honest impression was they don't think about politics very much. These were a lot of people in their mid 20s in Utah, who I, you know, on reflection, prior, like a lot of people in the country disgusted with politics, [00:06:18] checked out as a result of that and probably don't even know who Kirk was. Yeah. You know that there were very few examples of any political discourse and any political discourse was pretty neutral. [00:06:34] Right? So, for instance, there was one example of Tyler Robinson giving results of the 2020 election, if I'm not mistaken. Yeah. Because he was, talking about where Trump stood in relation to Biden. And it just appeared to be, you know, reporting where both candidates are, [00:06:51] as votes were being counted. So it was pretty innocuous. There was no indication that he was like some sort of extremist or radical, Now, a childhood friend that you spoke to, told you the following. Yeah. I don't know what makes a person like him decide he's going to drive 260 miles upstate to shoot someone like Charlie Kirk, [00:07:09] then come back like nothing happened. It leaves a lot of room for speculation and theories, which is why I think they're so rampant. And he's right about that. Or he or she is right about that. There are definitely all sorts of theories right now. Lots of conspiracies. [00:07:25] And then there's Robinson's political ideology. Right. You write in the piece that Trump and company portrayed the alleged Utah shooter as left wing, and liberals portray him as right wing. Medicare is as messy as my daughter's room. It's almost impossible to wade through either one of those things, [00:07:41] and they've got thousands of plan options without any help from Medicare. So I had to do research, and after I did my research on Medicare advisors, only one Medicare advisor actually compares every plan nationwide to find the right fit for your needs and preferences. It's chapter Medicare Supplement Advantage part D, they cover it all. [00:08:00] On average, they save people over $1,100 a year. It's also free and easy. They can review your options in under 20 minutes if you're already on the best plan. Boom, they tell you. You get peace of mind. If not, they help you switch, visit chapters [00:08:17] or call the number on your screen today. I've heard people call him a groyper. The federal conclusion will inevitably be that he was a so-called nihilist violent extremist. And I wanted to ask you about that. So what is a nihilist violent extremist? [00:08:34] So that's a new threat category that the FBI created in January of this year, I think late January. And has been applying to a bunch of different groups, FBI Director Kash Patel and testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee today revealed that they have some huge number of cases against these [00:08:52] so-called nihilistic, violent extremists. I take issue with the designation Nation, because I think if you look at them, I don't think they're nihilistic. I do think they have beliefs. So but, you know, that's kind of neither here nor there. Basically, the FBI has created this new category to, to, to fit in these groups [00:09:10] that I think they don't really understand. And so they conclude, oh, they must not believe in anything. I'm not saying that this guy should be in that group. I think it's pretty clear from the, text messages that the Justice Department released yesterday that he was motivated, at the very least, in large part by his, [00:09:26] contempt and hatred for what? Charlie Kirk, said critical of the trans community. So that clearly was central to this. So I don't think he should be slapped with that label, but I think that's what's going to happen, because that's what the FBI is overwhelmingly focused on. [00:09:44] In another interesting detail in his testimony was there was a 300% increase in domestic terrorism cases that the bureau has opened up. So there is a huge crackdown going on now that, we don't hear very much about because the cases have not gone to trial yet. [00:09:59] But they are, you know, surging assets to what they perceive as this problem of people not believing anything. And we saw that same idea expressed on the part of these cable outlets that over the weekend, it was like every channel had some former FBI person saying, [00:10:16] these dangerous kids on the chat rooms are fomenting, you know, extremist. It's the young. What was the word he used before the, the groypers there's these young, the groypers. Yeah. Yeah, there's these young men in their basements and so on and so forth. And I didn't find any of that in the course of my reporting and looking [00:10:31] at the different chat rooms that, that, that, that the alleged shooter, spent, spent years on, obviously he has text messages that I won't have access to. I'm sure there are probably groups that I don't have access to, but the ones that I looked, I couldn't find any evidence of, [00:10:47] any of the other individuals or even the alleged shooter himself, expressing, I think, what any reasonable person would characterize as extremist. So I was surprised by that, by how different it was than what I was led to think. Right? I mean, look, if I had to take a bet prior to your reporting on this, I would [00:11:05] have probably assumed the discord server had all sorts of, you know, vitriol or. - Political. - Rhetoric. No, I went on here. I thought, okay, time to have my stomach turned and this is the job. So let's go through. - And I just think of my Twitter. - Worse. Yeah. I was going to say you could look at my DMs, and they're [00:11:21] probably people saying insane things in various groups that I'm in. So I expected the worst. And I, and I really looked you know, I'm a little annoyed that there are some conservative commentators that are like, oh, Klippenstein obviously just gave us the nice thing. No, I told them to go in there. I said, show me every hit for Trump, show me every hit for Biden, [00:11:39] show me every hit for. And I gave them a list of words and they screenshotted, showing me like them doing it in the computer so I could see that they were actually searching these things and there just wasn't anything there. I would have published it if there was. Is it weird that that gives me a little bit of, I don't want to say hope? [00:11:56] - It's like a weird word to you. - Know, I had the same reaction. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Because it that discord server like these chats, you can tell that there are young men from all walks of life who might have different political views, but they come together. [00:12:11] They like to talk about video games, they play video games together. And it's kind of a microcosm of what I think we used to have in this country where even if you're deeply political and you're obsessed with politics, you were able to kind of sit with ideas that disagreed with your own. [00:12:28] You can have friendships and relationships with people on the other side of the political aisle. I think you have a really good point here when you mention that those who are obsessed with politics today tend to be far more partizan and, you know, just kind of constrained by whatever label [00:12:44] they've decided to latch on to. But I wanted to also just kind of give voice to his childhood friend, who also told you it's been so terrible. And seeing it from an inside perspective is so frustrating. Meaning like the way Robinson is being described or talked about because he says, [00:13:01] I think the main thing that's caused so much confusion is that he was always generally apolitical for the most part. That's the big thing, but just never really talked politics, which is why it's so frustrating. So I do think that there's truth behind him being motivated by his anger [00:13:19] at Charlie Kirk's anti-trans rhetoric. Right? Because he, his childhood friend, identified him as bisexual, said that he is very open when it comes to LGBT issues, not a cookie cutter lefty. And, you know, obviously he liked guns. Was raised in Utah fishing. [00:13:38] Just very traditional, like, manly man type hobbies, you know, camping. So how do you square that circle when it comes to his family? Alleging that Tyler Robinson had become more extreme in his politics [00:13:53] in a leftward position? Yeah. Part of what made me want to do this story was seeing how much the administration initially, when it was asserting that he was a, I think they said member of the left or something like that. And I always look for attribution. Where are they getting that from? And they said the members of the family told us that. [00:14:11] And I had to laugh at that, not because it's necessarily untrue, but because if you ask my dear conservative mother what my views are, I don't think she'd be very I don't think she'd be very generous. It'd probably be like he's a crazy communist or something. Think about anyone's parents. How are they going to describe you? It's probably not going to be with a lot of subtlety, right? [00:14:27] Because. Not because you don't love them or you don't have a good relationship with them. They're just we're we have different lives, right? And they're a different generation and consume media differently than we do. So. So I wasn't saying the parents were lying or thinking that, but I thought, well, you know, it's people that are 30 years older than this guy probably have [00:14:43] completely different frame of reference. And it's in a it's in the state of Utah, which is culturally, generally pretty conservative. So I was just skeptical of that. When I talked to people, I found that I was right to be skeptical of that. Because his part. I just realized that whole perverse game that happens every time [00:15:00] there's a shooting, who's who's side is going to be who's side. Are we going to use this to embarrass them with? The whole thing just fell apart because I'm talking to these, young men who who? I'm not saying they're unintelligent, but, like, they clearly are unfamiliar with a lot like Groyper. I don't think a lot of these people would even know what that meant. [00:15:16] It's just such a specific that's such a, subcultural like word, you know what I mean? Like even knowing what that is evinces a lot of, like, awareness of the political space. So talking to them, I found out it's like, you know, he had some conservative views, [00:15:32] he had some liberal views, but for the most part he didn't really talk about it. And, you know, he was dating a trans individual and I was told that, that was an issue that you could tell he didn't want to bring up around his parents, which I don't think is extraordinary. That probably happens all the time. [00:15:49] But, but but yeah, I just realized it was like this whole thing of like, you know, if you're Are LGBT. Therefore, you must have this set of views. Most people aren't like that there. Have you ever just had a conversation? People are all over the place. There's no category that people, most people fit into. [00:16:08] It's one of my favorite things to, you know, talk politics with normies. I find normies way more interesting than people who are, like, deeply into politics, because you will see that they're a mixture of right and left ideology. You know, I have a family member, in-laws. [00:16:26] But one of my in-laws, definitely. I mean, they're Cuban, so identifies as conservative. Voted for Trump. I remember having a discussion about our health care system and, when this person was going to give birth, basically didn't make enough money [00:16:43] to buy private health care insurance. And so she was like, yeah, I had to go on the Medicaid program here. And it was awesome. It's so good. They should expand that. And I'm like, okay, okay, you know what I'm saying? So most people are not like making policy preferences based on the political label [00:17:02] or the partizanship that it's attached to. The idea is so Washington brain. It's like the idea that, Latinos are going to vote for Rubio because he's Latino and everybody's on the same side, right? Well, that quickly went out the window, right? - Like people aren't like that. - Yeah, that's that's very true. [00:17:17] So I do think that there's some evidence here that he was motivated by, you know, thinking that it made sense to meet hatred with murder and violence. And so, you know, he did identify Charlie Kirk as someone who's spreading hate. [00:17:34] Those were some of the other messages. And I think that the problem that we're facing as a country is actually deeper than, oh, is the left more violent or is the right more violent? I think that we have descended into this environment of political violence [00:17:49] that seems to be getting worse, and I feel like it gets egged on to some extent by the media, by politicians, by the elite. I don't think it's necessarily even done in a cynical way. It's just the Partizan brain that has completely taken over [00:18:05] political media and our politicians, and unfortunately, they kind of have a monopoly on the debate and the discussion. And I feel like it's fueling this ideology where people think it's okay to engage in political violence as a means of solving whatever issue they think the country faces. [00:18:21] - What do you make of that? - Yeah, I agree. I think that the incentives are all messed up. Like in government, how often do you see Chuck Schumer getting up there and saying, Donald Trump is just such an existential threat, and we're all going to be. And and when I see something like that, I think, okay, what is he not saying [00:18:38] while he's making this big theater of how angry he is at Trump and how Trump is going to just, you know, wipe us off the face of the earth if we don't do X, Y, and Z. He's not talking about Medicaid. He's not talking about Medicare. He's not talking about other policy stuff. So to a large extent, I think that they use the theater of like [00:18:55] just everything is superlative. Everything is the biggest threat ever and the most important election ever. They use that to not have to make specific policy promises that would actually cost them in terms of their, base of, you know, power support and donors, that kind of thing. [00:19:11] And so, I see it as a cop out in a lot of ways and useful to them to to just, like, ratchet up rhetoric and sound like, look, I'm doing all this really exciting stuff, not just the Democrats. Trump too, when he does these, when he when he blows up the boat in, in the, Caribbean, no serious person, [00:19:31] even hawks in the drug war thinks blowing up one boat is going to have an appreciable effect on the drug war. He does it so that he can flex and say, look at how serious I am about this thing, because he's under pressure to deliver on whatever it is that he ran on. In this case, it's talking about the drug war, [00:19:47] because the way that they're rationalizing both legally and rhetorically, strikes like those are saying, and the reason people sympathize with it is not necessarily because they want to, you know, kill people. It's because there is a real fentanyl problem. And they have been told that by doing this, we are going to fix the fentanyl problem. [00:20:03] And so since he's not actually going to fix that in a systemic way, you've got to create this theater of, look how tough I'm being. Just like I was talking about with with, the Democrats. So I think that's really what's happening here. And the side effect of that, I think the unintended consequence of that is everyone just goes crazy because you're just on operating on, [00:20:22] you know, full cylinder, you know, just ringing the alarm all the time. And some people are going to take that seriously. I mean, that's the reason why I see this administration as like the kayfabe, like presidency. Everything does feel like wrestling, like the kind of wrestling theater [00:20:40] that you can expect, right? Nothing's really real, but it's exciting and it seems like something real is happening. Yeah. The National Guard deployments, I oppose those, and I think that's bad just because it's corrosive to Democratic Attitudes to just see troops marching around. [00:20:56] That being said, they're not going to do anything. This is a show. They don't the rules of engagement. They don't have authority to shoot at someone. When I interview them, they many of the people I talk to, they're like, I'm not going to do that. Even if they tell me to, I'll go to jail before I shoot at somebody who hasn't done anything wrong. - So thank God. - Yeah. [00:21:11] - So that's great. - Yeah. So but then the Democrats look at that and they say, okay, look it's a military coup is coming. They're going to overthrow the country. Very convenient for them because then they don't have to deliver on anything. They don't need to have any actual policy concessions. They can just say, look how scary the other side is and any sort of nuance. [00:21:29] Talk about why this is a dumb idea and a waste of money and a waste of time. And and like I said before, corrosive to democratic culture, that that all goes out the window and everyone goes home in a limo. Trump gets his theater to say, look at how badly I'm triggering the libs. The libs get triggered and scare their base. Everyone benefits except the public. [00:21:46] Yeah, and I feel like we're constantly stuck in this, like, doom loop of hysteria, right? You're making people panic and like, what Trump is doing is wrong. Obviously, I disagree with what he's doing with deploying the National Guard as well. But the way that it's discussed, the way that it's marketed by Democrats, I think [00:22:05] leads to a lot of hysteria, a lot of fear, which could potentially lead to someone taking matters in their own hands because they think they're going to do something right in saving the country. So that's something to keep in mind. I want to end on one other question, because I think it's [00:22:20] worth talking about the symbols that were found on the bullets, and what they represent, because there's been a lot of, like, mixed reporting about that as well. You know, starting with the initial Wall Street Journal piece that claimed that there were pro-trans symbols on those bullets. And then, you know, later, you know, other reporting poured cold water on that. [00:22:40] But there were symbols on the bullets. What did they mean? Yeah. So in one case, I think there were like five arrows or three arrows or something. And, this is the rare case where I was sympathetic to the federal agents because this stuff is so insular. The gaming subculture in which of which he was a part that I could see why you [00:22:58] would look at that and think, okay, maybe that's the three arrows from Antifa, which I think is what the federal agents that that leaked that to remember who it was. Initially, jumped to that conclusion, and thought that and then in the case of what was written on it, what did he write? [00:23:13] He said, catch fascist or something like that. Like, I can see why you would think that that's Antifa. And so I started looking. Right. Exactly. All of those things on their face, you know, it makes sense for that. But I think now that you look at the text messages that he was sharing [00:23:28] with his partner and saying, saying, oh, you're going to see this on TV soon and, you know, or making gaming references even in the text messages. I'm not I'm not trying to say that he didn't hold certain, left wing views, [00:23:44] particularly on LGBT issues, but I'm just saying it's like this is such a subtle, A manner of speaking, that they had developed, that it's like you've got to really just sit down, hunker down and try to figure [00:24:00] out what it is that they mean by all this. And what I found was it was way more complicated than than the, red team versus blue team thing that we saw in the first 48 hours after the shooting. Yeah. Look, I think the nuance, the truth lies in the nuance. And you can't really simplify people the way that we've been simplifying, you [00:24:19] know, whether it's mass shooters, whether it's public figures, it doesn't matter. I mean, in this case, I think the story is actually a lot more complicated. I think the motivation, the motive behind the shooting so far is pretty clear. And no matter what what he did was wrong, he murdered someone. [00:24:36] So I'm really thankful for the kind of reporting you do because you like to actually dive into that nuance and help people kind of understand what's going on beneath the surface. So everyone, please check out Ken Klippenstein reporting over at Ken Klippenstein comm. And Ken, thank you again for joining us. [00:24:52] Thanks so much, Anna. Good seeing you again.