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2025-09-11 Fifth Column

Day 2: Utah Governor Spencer Cox - ‘’We have a person of interest in custody’’ - the assassination of Turning Point USA’s Charlie Kirk

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Posted by Fred 2025-09-11 00:00|| E-Mail|| Front Page|| [1792 views ] Top

1 Getting to the point where some will invoke Lex Talionis, sometimes mistranslated as "The Law of the Claw".

Posted by Mercutio 2025-09-11 06:09|| 2025-09-11 06:09|| Front Page Top

2 I thought Gov. Cox (who I'd previously knew nothing about) was perfect in his speech and tone

Posted by Frank G 2025-09-11 07:28|| 2025-09-11 07:28|| Front Page Top

3 MSNBC Apologizes for Matthew Dowd’s ‘Unacceptable’ Comments Blaming Charlie Kirk’s ‘Hate Speech’ for Assassination, Suggesting He Was Shot by Excited Supporter

MSNBC Public Relations

@MSNBCPR
Statement from MSNBC president Rebecca Kutler: “During our breaking news coverage of the shooting of Charlie Kirk, Matthew Dowd made comments that were inappropriate, insensitive and unacceptable. We apologize for his statements, as has he. There is no place for violence in America, political or otherwise."

Posted by Woodrow 2025-09-11 08:03|| 2025-09-11 08:03|| Front Page Top

4 speculation matches my initial thoughts based on where Kirk was wounded.

Posted by Mercutio 2025-09-11 08:18|| 2025-09-11 08:18|| Front Page Top

5 In the interest of this country, both sides would be well advised to tone down the rhetoric.

Posted by European Conservative 2025-09-11 08:47|| 2025-09-11 08:47|| Front Page Top

6 Look away, remain silent and willfully ignore the patently obvious. Is that the Euro solution ?

Posted by Besoeker 2025-09-11 08:53|| 2025-09-11 08:53|| Front Page Top

7 Sorry EC, not buying your solution. This is exactly what the left says at times like these. We don't ambush/kill the other side. I have no more F**ks to give at this point. Charlie Kirk was always willing to debate the other point of view with words. The left has chosen to end debate with bullets.

You don't have a debate with cancer, you excise it.

Hold the judges and corrupt Soros DAs accountable for every violent offender they release.

Posted by Warthog 2025-09-11 09:28|| 2025-09-11 09:28|| Front Page Top

8 At this point you don't even know who the shooter is. But if tomorrow some enraged MAGA guy assassinates a leftist politician or journalist, because Democrats are vilified as the "party of murder", what then? And will you offer some prayers to him or her, too?

Tone it down, please, in the interest of your nation.

Posted by European Conservative 2025-09-11 10:27|| 2025-09-11 10:27|| Front Page Top

9 Wouldn't want to get all excited and have a heart attack?

Hate to break the news, but here, in this page, is this assassination being blamed on MAGA. The Ukrainian girl being murdered, even assassinated for being on the wrong train, blamed on MAGA, or at least the coverage of it. Hell, some three years ago President Brandon blamed everything wrong on Ultra MAGA.

Sit back. Just comply. Cede the public forum and spaces.

Posted by swksvolFF 2025-09-11 10:34|| 2025-09-11 10:34|| Front Page Top

10 #8 Are you for real?

Posted by Grom the Affective 2025-09-11 10:41|| 2025-09-11 10:41|| Front Page Top

11 If political discourse in America descends into "MAGA fascists" vs. "Marxist Democra Murderers", then you do no longer have a political debate. You're heading into civil war.

They really must be smiling these days in Moscow and Beijing.

Posted by European Conservative 2025-09-11 10:52|| 2025-09-11 10:52|| Front Page Top

12 Let's agree to disagree. No, I will not "tone down" my desire that justice be served on those who would do political violence - regardless of political affiliation. Our side does not do that. Can you name one instance of a MAGA supporter murdering someone? I ask that in all sincerity because I can't.

I will not stand idly by and be ushered gently into that good night.

If I look at Great Britain, France, Sweden - for example - what state are they in because of appeasement with the illegal alien problem?

The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing - Edmund Burke

If freedom of speech is taken away, then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter - George Washington

Posted by Warthog 2025-09-11 11:07|| 2025-09-11 11:07|| Front Page Top

13 There is no bothsidesism here.
Where, exactly, has MAGA been calling for the murder of Democrats?
The Left do it all the time, it's called "stochastic terrorism".
We get it, you Europeans are terrified that the free lunch of NATO will end and you'll have to tighten your belts to survive.
The mittelstand is going away. It will close or move machinery to America and start up there. Just like all our factories closed up and moved lock, stock and barrel to China.

Posted by Elmomoter Mussolini9149 2025-09-11 11:17|| 2025-09-11 11:17|| Front Page Top

14 EC, if we tone it down we go the way of the UK and EU. We said no to that 250 yrs ago and our answer remains the same.

Posted by Rex Mundi 2025-09-11 11:17|| 2025-09-11 11:17|| Front Page Top

15 Decency

Posted by European Conservative 2025-09-11 11:32|| 2025-09-11 11:32|| Front Page Top

16 Conservative rhetoric has been calmed down since the 90s and more and more hate and suppression has been thrown their way.

They are well on their way to full radicalization and the left is going to find out real fast that the right is much better at violence than they are.

Posted by DarthVader 2025-09-11 12:06|| 2025-09-11 12:06|| Front Page Top

17 Making concessions to the Left is like making concessions to Islamists - it just increases their appetite.

Posted by Grom the Affective 2025-09-11 12:09|| 2025-09-11 12:09|| Front Page Top

18 The fallacy is believing the Left Reciprocates.
Tone It Down? Why? For what? What does that accomplish? If we tone it down - there is no expectation the Left will calm it down. The idea is dangerous in thinking we can help shape the calm by toning it down.

Posted by mossomo 2025-09-11 12:16|| 2025-09-11 12:16|| Front Page Top

19 ^ Sounds like Munich, doesn't it?

Posted by DarthVader 2025-09-11 12:18|| 2025-09-11 12:18|| Front Page Top

20 Assassination is violence. It is also political. There will not be violence instigated by MAGA, but neither will there be rhetorical or physical disarmament. The Feds have already identified the shooter but the perp has not been captured. The murder weapon was found and the ammo was decorated with political graffiti. I think we can dispense with the toleration of lawlessness. If the group behind the attack is not already identified as a terrorist org, Trump ought to take care of that immediately. We can add some more groups as this winds out.

Posted by Super Hose 2025-09-11 12:27|| 2025-09-11 12:27|| Front Page Top

21 If political discourse in America descends into "MAGA fascists" vs. "Marxist Democra Murderers", then you do no longer have a political debate. You're heading into civil war.

They've been calling us MAGA fascists since 2016 and it's pretty obvious that they are Marxists. Then you have not one but two assassination attempts on our President.

Yes, I would like to see it all toned down before we descend into civil war but when they're shooting real bullets at us they must know that some will be tempted to shoot back.

We know that for years on our college campuses, conservative speakers have met with violent protests. That is not acceptable. In future, if they need to be accompanied by the National Guard then so be it. Then the protesters can go to jail for a good, long time. If the college administrators don't like it, they can go to hell.

No, we don't know who the shooter was or what his motivations were and maybe we should remain calm until we know. But we can't help having our suspicions.

This gets back to some of my previous posts in which I ask where did the shooter get the gun, what drugs were in his system and with whom was he communicating? I'm still waiting for answers.

Posted by Abu Uluque 2025-09-11 12:33|| 2025-09-11 12:33|| Front Page Top

22 EUropeans!!!

Posted by Grom the Affective 2025-09-11 12:40|| 2025-09-11 12:40|| Front Page Top

23 For example, above in this post, we see that MSNBC's Matthew Dowd accuses Charlie Kirk of hate speech and so blames Kirk for creating an atmosphere in which violence can happen.

I don't know. I never followed Charlie Kirk. Did he engage in hate speech? How does Matthew Dowd define hate speech? Maybe it's just the truth that Dowd doesn't want to hear.

I would argue that Dowd himself was practicing hate speech by, in effect, saying that Kirk had it coming. That's projection, a classic Democrat tactic.

Remember when they called Bush Hitler? Now that was hate speech.

I was glad to hear that Dowd got fired but I do not advocate violence against him. I don't want him shot. I just want him to be unemployed. If Democrats tone it down, maybe we can too. But don't hold your breath.

Posted by Abu Uluque 2025-09-11 13:04|| 2025-09-11 13:04|| Front Page Top

24 How we try to think about such things here though sometimes steps are skipped. The twitter thread is worth reading, too. Note that the tweet was posted before he saw the FBI announcement about finding the gun and engraved ammunition, which strongly suggests Black Bloc/Antifa or a wannabe. What odds the shooter will turn out to be either autistic or mentally ill, and therefore persuadable — whether through self-radicalization or grooming?

I don't know anything other than public information about the assassination of Charlie Kirk.

However, a primer follows about patterns in past political assassinations. I will sketch what scenarios an intelligence analyst would come up with looking at this one.

The first and…
— Eric S. Raymond (@esrtweet) September 11, 2025

The first and most important rule in this kind of investigation is: when you hear hoofbeats, think horses not zebras.

In political assassinations, as an ordinary murders, the correct suspect is usually the most obvious suspect. Airport-thriller-style convoluted plots and false-flag ops pulled off by unlikely people or organizations are rare in the real world.

Accordingly, when you're trying to solve a political assassination, the right question to ask is "Who said they wanted him dead?"

Then, you infiltrate those organizations, or arrest a bunch of members, and do contact tracing. Usually you do in fact find your killer that way. It's not very different from ordinary police work except for the stakes.

There are broadly speaking three different kinds of assassin: the nutter, the zealot, and the pro. They are not difficult to distinguish once you got your hands on them.

Nutters don't have a coherent political ideology, though they may spout semi-random slogans that political actors can seize on to pretend that they do. They generally have quite an obvious history of mental illness

Before capture, given the kind of public evidence we have now in Charlie Kirk's assassination, it's difficult to tell the zealots from the pros by their MO. It used to be easier, but as I noted in a previous post sniper doctrine and technique have been leaking into popular culture for decades.

It's easier to spot the nutters; they tend to have poor forward-planning capacity. A very obvious way this manifests is a weak or non-existent plan for exfiltrating after the hit. Thus, the nutter is very likely to get caught quite soon after the assassination, often at the site.

This also produces a false-prominence effect - people think political assassins are more likely to be nutters than is actually the case.

Pros - professional assassins working for intelligence agencies or militaries - are also rare. They do occasionally strike - as when, for example the Bulgarian secret service whacked Pope John Paul - but high-profile public assassinations carry a risk of diplomatic and political blowback the most nations are unwilling to assume.

Also, trained assassins are a scarce resource and exfiltrating in the hue and cry following a very public assassination is chancy. Usually you're going to send them against more obscure targets like exiled dissidents that you think might still be dangerous, hoping not to trigger a full law-enforcement and counterintelligence response.

There's been talk in some of the wackier corners of the Right that the Mossad did this one. No analyst would take this seriously; the blowback risk to the Israelis is far too high to justify any gain. Same goes for the Russians, though they have a higher risk tolerance than the Israelis and had a much higher tolerance in Soviet times.

In the case of Charlie Kirk it's pretty high odds we're looking at a zealot. That's usually the way to bet, and in this case, the quality of his exfiltration plan and the fact that he has successfully disappeared raises the odds.

Given all these factors, LEOs are going to be looking for zealots associated with domestic organizations that said they wanted Charlie Kirk dead.

Yes, this seems boring and obvious. The main point I'm trying to drive home here is that the boring and obvious theory about a political assassination is usually the correct one.

Accordingly, the first place investigators of the assassination of Charlie Kirk are going to be looking is gun clubs associated with Antifa and the hard left, like the John Brown Gun Club and Redneck Revolt.

It's not certain that Kirk's assassin is a member of one of those groups, but if you had to place a bet that would be where to put it.

Posted by trailing wife 2025-09-11 13:22|| 2025-09-11 13:22|| Front Page Top

25 "Freedom," Rumsfeld once said, "is untidy."
It certainly is. Freedom of speech is great, but words do have consequences.

We certainly don't agree on many things here, but this forum is a stellar example that civil discourse is possible.

If it's possible here, it should be possible for the whole country.

Posted by European Conservative 2025-09-11 14:05|| 2025-09-11 14:05|| Front Page Top

26 EC, I truly value your perspective, but those on the left (which does not include you) who are calling today for an end to "political violence" are sort of like the Japanese ambassador offering to call it a draw on December 8. Or, if you like, it's a cheat and retreat strategy.

Posted by Matt 2025-09-11 14:11|| 2025-09-11 14:11|| Front Page Top

27 Transgender question just before shot may well be a clue to a conspiracy.

..."
The officials added they are examining the conduct of one or more people on the university grounds to determine whether there were accomplices, including specific questions asked or statements made to Kirk from the crowd before he was mortally wounded.

“There are some activities we believe will turn out to not be coincidences,” one official said.

Another official said law enforcement and foreign partners have flagged some social media and other communications suggesting that a few people may have prior knowledge that Kirk would be harmed or did not know “what’s coming” when he arrived at the Utah campus.

“We are looking to see if those were guesses or based on real threat knowledge and whether there was a connection to ideology or bad actors and to those on the ground that we have suspicions about,” one official said."

https://justthenews.com/government/federal-agencies/fbi-utah-authorities-have-recovered-gun-used-charlie-kirk-assassination

Posted by NoMoreBS 2025-09-11 14:20|| 2025-09-11 14:20|| Front Page Top

28 Here's spicy one.

Shorter:
Gun Culture killed Kirk. Kirk's gun culture. His own damn fault. Oh and the assassin, totally was aiming for the artery.

But sure, let's do battered spouse and get called every name in the book when being explained to why I deserved to get hit, why did I make you do it, and by the way, better not tell anyone...and I'll be watching.

Posted by swksvolFF 2025-09-11 15:07|| 2025-09-11 15:07|| Front Page Top

29 Free discourse between disagreeing sides was Charlie’s gig. He did it well. He built bridges. Somebody demo’d the bridge. It looks like it is Antifa. I believe that they should be designated as a terrorist organization at this point and rounded up on Federal charges. Someone can try to take his spot as a bridge builder, but we seem to have created quite a few sociopaths in the last several decades. Reaching out to folks that have no moral compass seems useless to me.

Posted by Super Hose 2025-09-11 15:16|| 2025-09-11 15:16|| Front Page Top

30 /\ Antifa declared a terrorist org is a damn good idea.

Posted by Besoeker 2025-09-11 15:51|| 2025-09-11 15:51|| Front Page Top

31 FWIW - Gateway Pundit has interesting find-
"BREAKING: Social Media Users Believe They May Have Identified Charlie Kirk’s Shooter, a Transgender Biological Man Who Had a Song Called ‘Charlie Kirk Dead at 31’ on SoundCloud (UPDATED)"

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2025/09/breaking-social-media-users-believe-they-may-have/

Posted by NoMoreBS 2025-09-11 16:02|| 2025-09-11 16:02|| Front Page Top

I've always liked the Rantburg motto. It's one of the things that attracted me to this site many years ago after the first 9/11. Sure, the guys off to the side are getting a bit uncivil. Sometimes we fall short. But it's a good idea to try to live up to it.

Posted by Abu Uluque 2025-09-11 16:02|| 2025-09-11 16:02|| Front Page Top

33 I will continue my civil and well reasoned proposal. Declare Antifa a terrorist organization. Charge its supporters. The well reasoned part: no need to deal with the race baiters as Antifa is predominantly white. If my proposal is rejected, I am willing to settle for a compromise outcome: hit Antifa with a RICO and lock up all their supporters.

Posted by Super Hose 2025-09-11 17:26|| 2025-09-11 17:26|| Front Page Top

34 Making concessions to the Left is like making concessions to Islamists - it just increases their appetite.

I am reminded of a conversation with a rancher recently about feral hogs. He said, "They are a menace when they are going around digging up the ground, menacing the cows when feed hay is dropped...but once they get a taste of blood, they become something else; something more aggressive."

Now they have their Goblet of Blood, long thirsted after two, two, attempts on Trump - that we know of - and there is a lot of deep drinking.

Posted by swksvolFF 2025-09-11 22:55|| 2025-09-11 22:55|| Front Page Top

23:23 746
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22:55 swksvolFF
22:48 Skidmark
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20:57 Frank G
20:52 Airandee
19:38 Megabyses
19:34 SteveS
18:56 Mercutio
18:34 trailing wife
18:29 trailing wife
18:26 Matt
18:24 Frank G
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