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I'm not actually sure that where I'm beginning this video is where I should.
Actually, let's do this.
For the sake of posterity, what happened?
Yesterday, somebody attempted to assassinate Donald Trump.
On July 13th, at a Pennsylvania rally, somebody took to a rooftop and shot at the former president, hitting his ear.
It would appear with a bullet.
There are people trying to push another story.
The evidence actually doesn't point that way right now.
However, if that evidence comes out, then would be the time to accept it.
However, actually, I even have it.
There is a photo that actually shows the moment after.
So this is right before he cups his ear and can feel that something has gone wrong.
That actually appears to be the bullet as it exited his ear.
This was at a campaign rally.
And let me just say, unequivocally, it is something that should be condemned.
Unequivocally, it is something that we should not be engaging in conspiratorial thinking for.
I should not be mad and angry and disappointed with people I respected and am friends with and like, as people generally apparently happy to engage in conspiratorial thinking and not apparently internalizing what it actually means to be a skeptic and how that should be different.
Because while I am fine with a person going, hey, these things don't add up, could somebody like help me fill in some gaps, to go, these things don't add up, so I'm thinking it might have been staged as opposed to first trying to fill in those gaps.
That is no different than any conspiratorial thinking person.
And I know because I was one.
I was a Mormon.
I was a conservative.
I went through all of that and I deprogrammed from that.
And how disappointing I have been in the last however many hours it's been now since then that I am seeing these people who I thought were on the same page content to go that way.
But also to make light of it, to suggest that the only bad thing that happened was that the bullet missed these types of really gross, dark, terrible things.
When we are right now, this was at a campaign rally for an election.
There's still going to be an election.
Donald Trump will still be president if he is elected.
So whatever a person might have to say that sometimes violence is justified or whatever else, it seems to me that as long as elections are still happening, this isn't that time.
Let me get a little Rubio going over here.
This thing that happened was not a good thing if you agree that violence is rarely justified.
Well, I'm not going to be one of the people who say never, obviously.
Nobody truly believes never.
And that it should not be utilized when the freedom to vote is still an option.
Our country isn't there yet.
But let's say you don't actually agree with that or you think our country is there.
If you care about women's rights, if you care about gay rights, if you care about trans rights, if you care about health care, if you care about fair immigration policies, if you care about so many of the things that are different between just the Republican and the Democratic Party, and I'm talking to you about that as a leftist, recognizing that I do not support either party, but one of them is clearly much less evil than the other.
If you support all of those things, then yesterday was a terrible day.
Because now Donald Trump may be undefeatable.
At the very least, he will be very hard to defeat.
And I already know the comments that are coming.
Wow.
You really think this changed the vote?
Somebody was like, well, I wasn't going to vote for that monster, but now I am because he got shot.
Yep.
I do think that.
And I'm not going to explain why, but it'll probably be the last section of this.
I need another Rubio.
Here we go.
Let me do the.
It's I feel silly even being silly right now, ever having some silliness, because this is a serious topic.
And I'm so angry with everything where I'm so angry with people I liked, I guess, still like.
I'm not going to call anybody out individually, and not all of it is stuff that I was privy to publicly, rather that was publicly available, things that I am privy to also annoy me.
And so I'm just getting my thoughts out there to kind of have it out on the record to kind of say like, hey, guys, if you hate that side so much.
Why are you starting to become more like that side?
Because, yeah, there's hypocrisy, and this is the wildest thing is when you point something out like that, they'll be like, well, the Republicans, but.
So what you're saying is the you now your values are now whatever the Republicans say is OK to do not to be better than them.
I'm seeing that's a lot with like the the.
Well, Donald Trump made jokes about the attempt on Pelosi's life, her husband and overall what was her.
Yeah, he's fucking garbage for that.
And so are you.
If you're doing it now to.
Making light of it, making it seem to an audience of people that you don't abhor political violence.
It sucks and it's disgusting.
As far as the event itself, I was actually asleep when it happened.
I think I didn't wake up for three more hours of dealing with health stuff.
And I slept the day away.
I didn't wake up until like nine o'clock in the evening.
But when I woke up, the conspiracies had already taken off and they had gone bananas.
It's it has gone insane already to the point that this is such a high stakes thing.
The only option right now is for them to give as many details as possible very, very quickly.
And there's a ton of angles of this thing.
But please, if you don't know something, if it isn't confirmed, please stop saying you do.
I've seen idiots.
People were sharing the wrong shooter for a long time or the shooter's political party for a long time.
The shooter's motivation, which we still don't actually know.
Maybe by the time you watch this video, we will.
They were sharing so many details and saying so many things that weren't true to the point that somebody as I showed you this photo.
Let's go ahead and actually show you the video of the moment after this.
Now, the video is a different angle.
That photo, I think, is but this is the one that has you can see the bullet.
The trail of the bullet right after it leaves his ear.
Here is the video of the actual event of the moment of him getting hit.
And then I'm going to show you in a moment also the video that follow of him leaving.
But that'll be important for another reason.
So you see him.
Something happens.
His hand goes up.
It goes right to his ear.
And then he goes down.
The funny thing is his hand is actually in full open view when that happens.
And yet conspiracies are still rising that it looks like even though he rests on that podium in a standard way that he grabs something off of the podium, cuts his ear and then puts it down.
That's a real conspiracy that I am seeing shared online that somebody presented.
This is reasonable to think might have not been what we saw because of when the reaction actually does seem so genuine.
And apparently you think this man who is so paranoid of assassination that some of the reasons why he likes McDonald's is because they don't know you're coming and they're less likely to poison you, that this guy has protocols because he thinks someone is going to kill him would say like, hey, let's set something up where you from 200 yards out or whatever it is, I think it maybe was 100 yards.
I've seen different numbers.
You from any number of yards out at short range.
This would be an unlikely shot to hit.
As I turn my head, skim my ear with a bullet.
If the goal was to kill somebody, that is an easy job to take on as far as the setup, the distance.
But that amount of distance to skim the ear, there are people suggesting that this was done on purpose.
Even though in that scenario, you are more likely to slip and kill the person.
That is a, by the way, tell me you don't shoot without time, you don't shoot.
There isn't a marksman alive who would go for sure.
I could skim the ear and not do damage.
Yeah.
From that distance.
Yeah.
Yeah.
As he's moving, I'll just get it right through the ear.
That's all.
Yeah.
Yeah.
For sure.
For sure.
I'll do that.
It's, it's annoying that the conspiracies are happening at all, but it's extra annoying when the conspiracies are stupid and that one is stupid.
That is a stupid one.
Stop being stupid.
I feel like I could talk about that for another fucking hour, but don't, if you're going to talk about it and you're going to say, Hey, here's this problem, this problem, here's this inconsistency.
Try not to be stupid.
Why is trying not to be stupid, not a value on one side over the other?
Because right now I'm seeing a whole lot on my own.
I, and the thing I'm mad about is it's not like they're not being stupid over there, but I expected of them.
The scorpions going to sting you.
Don't trust it and give it a ride across the lake or whatever the parable is, right?
Them I expect it from the, our side.
And I'm not even just saying like the Democrats, I don't even know if I'd call the Democrats my side.
Other atheists and skeptics.
Well, that's it.
That's interesting.
That's an interesting, you know, it is convenient.
It just hit his ear.
Very, very convenient that it just hit his ear.
Very because this is going to empower him, which that's true.
That is absolutely true.
And we're going to get to that.
But why is it not a value of.
Don't be fucking stupid.
I'm more, no, I'm not more mad at it, but it adds to the anger that if you're going to engage in these conversations and go out, I'm not going to buy the official narrative until I know more.
I'm not going to go with what makes the most sense here.
I'm going to pretend that in a country full of millions of people that somebody, which right now we know the shoot it's, this kind of goes to it online.
You see a lot of people mentioning the shooter was registered Republican, but you don't see them mention that he's actually donated to Democrat causes.
And when you don't do that and other people see that, who know the other detail, it looks like you're hiding something.
Because while I would still bring up that he was a Republican, I wouldn't omit the other thing to be deceptive just because it makes my case harder.
And I would argue that's the motivation to leave that detail out.
If your point stands, include the details that might undermine it and then defend it still.
That's how you win an argument, not I'm going to do what the other side does.
I'm going to only include the details that are convenient for me.
That's all I'm going to do.
The rhetoric's already getting bad and it's going to get way worse.
We're about to enter one of the pro I have to think the darkest political time in American history since the Civil War.
And I know that sounds very dramatic.
And I guess it's meant to be, because this whole fucking thing has been very dramatic.
There's a point where I was showering where I was just thinking about the last few years and the huge escalations and you have these, these, you know, big storms, big hurricanes since I was a kid, getting worse and worse, but also a pandemic.
And then Donald Trump even running in the first place and, and you know, something hopeful like the Obama administration followed by whatever you want to call the Trump administration.
The adjective, whatever you want to call that.
And then this, the sheer amount of drama of it all, the sheer amount of polarization and how much it reflects steps you see if you read about other civil wars in the past and, and how it's becoming more and more localized and how we are becoming less and less safe.
There was a moment I had in the shower where I was just like, how is this not like, if
I wasn't a better skeptic, I'd be convinced I was in a Truman show right now.
And that this is all just to see how I would react to living this ridiculous, dramatic life, both for things that happened in my life, health issues, all these kinds of things.
And there's just the things like, it seems beyond reality.
And then you see the people for whom you are trying to ally self yourself with become the same type of thinker and communicator that these horrible people are.
But justify it.
Well, why is it okay when they do it?
It isn't.
So don't sink to their level.
Don't be fucking stupid because they get to be stupid.
Don't be fucking stupid.
Don't be fucking stupid.
I wish I could make that the title of the episode.
I do.
Donald Trump.
Conspiracies I've already seen.
I'm going to run through those and then talk about the political impact and changing votes.
And I'll try and make it succinct and not go on another rant about don't be fucking stupid.
Conspiracies I've seen already.
Why do they stand him up after he was shot?
This is a right wing one that he's got shot at.
And then they cover him and then they stand him up, presenting him as another target.
There's a lot of people who will bring up how the Secret Service acted after that or how Trump acted after that and completely ignore the fact that they actually said to him and he relayed it, showing he understood what they said, that the shooter had been taken out.
That they were clear and the shooter is down.
They literally say that.
You can hear it on the mics.
Clear, clear.
The shooter is down here.
The shooter is down.
I shouldn't do the it's it's in it's in poor taste today to do the impression.
And so I'll probably only do it three more times.
He said he confirms that he knows the shooter is down.
People said the same thing about, well, the the false flag people.
Well.
Why a person who is just going to be shot at doesn't care if they leave their shoes behind.
There's a person who hit the ground when he says, let me get my shoes.
He's probably referring to shoes that are maybe could be partially on still or slipped off as he got it and just wants to walk away.
And that's literally I was thinking this is the most understandable thing.
I don't want I wouldn't want to walk barefoot either in that scenario.
And again, he already knows the guy is dead.
He already knows that the shooter is down.
That's also why you then see because there are people going, why did the Secret Service let him be so defiant of their protection after they get him up?
And let me show you what that looks like, because I'm going to show you a video of why he probably just won the next election.
The man who was just shot, apparently in the ear, two inches, one inch away from death, probably two inches more than one, right?
I don't know my how thick this area to me is anyway, very close to death.
Does this.
They're surrounding him.
They're headed to take him off and boom, he literally makes sure that his face is in view and is pumping his fist and he's mouthing the word fight, fight, fight.
And actually, he ends up doing it again once they get off the stage, the fist up again.
And it ends up with this picture coming out of the whole thing.
This photo we're going to talk about in a moment, but the American flag is in the background.
The blood from the gunshot wound is on his face.
They are trying to push him out and he appears to be because not everybody knows that the shooter is down, appears to care more about signaling to his supporters than the danger he's in.
But again, he does know this is a man who even if there's anything impressive about him, it might be this.
Even in this scenario was thinking about what it will look like, what he does next.
So people are going to ignore ultimately the whole thing about, let me get my shoes.
Let's get them up.
Are you ready?
No, I'm not ready.
It sounds like he's actually not wanting to get moved until he said, we know the shooter's dead.
They're going to ignore all of that.
That photo in isolation might be enough to win him the election.
It really could be now.
Other conspiracies I saw, uh, it was a false flag to get that shot of him with his fist up in the flag of the background.
Uh, that's a dumb one.
That picture that we just got that, that, that was the goal.
You're at a GOP rally.
Your idea that a photo when thousands of people are there and all of them have cameras and now people's, uh, what is it like reaction instinct to something happening is to pull out their cameras.
The idea of like, what are the odds that somebody would have caught that angle high, very high and that there'd be a flag in the background in one of those photos also very high.
It's a GOP rally.
Are you nuts?
Are you dumb?
Don't be fucking stupid.
It was a false attack to help him win.
He's already winning.
He's already on track to win.
And while the guy cheats, this is not his style of cheating.
He is terrified of being assassinated.
That bullet was far too close for comfort to be the idea that you think he would consent to that.
Don't be stupid.
That's the unofficial title of this episode.
Don't be fucking stupid.
Biden called for it.
So you must think that the DNC is so stupid that they know that in the past, if he were to survive it or die, they'll lose the election.
That an assassination attempt at all is basically the best thing for a politician successful or not.
It would be better for the party, obviously, had it been successful than him.
But the idea that Biden would do it with all that would be at stake and would do it in a way that wasn't successful.
Don't be fucking stupid.
And then there's, oh, did you know that Biden denied him secret more yet requested more secret service and it was denied.
Now, it turns out that's just actually not true.
In fact, the opposite seems to be true, that he did request more secret service and no more security recently and that he was granted it.
My biggest fear, honestly, is that this is the beginning of more political violence, that we have opened another Pandora's box, that right now it's going to be wall to wall coverage.
And what happened when that was school shootings?
We've seen more political violence in recent years, and this is an escalation even of that.
And my worry is definitely for more political violence headed toward politicians and then eventually toward other people like myself, a loud mouth leftist queer who wants to get on the Internet and say, hey, these people fucking suck and they're evil and yet has to sometimes come on and say to his own side, don't be fucking stupid.
It's funny because the reason why I'm not now sleeping for the people who were celebrating this and we're so excited, imagine the difference in the rest of today had he been successful.
I'll tell you this.
Next time I go to bed, I'd be sleeping with the gun in my bed.
I said the gun, I say a gun, the gun, the one of my guns I love.
I love the most.
And I call it the gun because the the escalation of political violence, I think, would have been even worse.
I don't feel that inclination yet.
It'll still be near my bed, but not in it.
Let's see.
I have notes of mostly going off script for the whole thing.
I know I've got to talk about the political impact, but I think I covered all that stuff.
And by the way, I do want to point out the double standard from the GOP.
Yeah, it's going to be on full display and it's going to feel unfair because it always has been unfair.
But that's not a reason to sink to the level.
Trump joked about every like so much has joked about political violence before and taking political violence not seriously, like January 6th, like the Pelosi attacks.
And yet right now, every debate, even between like just people, friends, if there's a Trump person on one side, every debate is going to have some element of do you condemn the assassination?
Do you condemn it?
Do you condemn it?
Do you condemn it?
Do you condemn it?
Well, we just saw with the Hamas.
Do you condemn Hamas?
So do you condemn the assassination attempt on Donald Trump?
Is the do you condemn Hamas?
That's the new it's the new one.
All right.
Yeah, let's just get into political impact.
Listen, technically, we can only speculate, but there is some historical precedent to it.
And at the time when I heard that Biden actually called Trump to see how he's doing, I kind of wondered.
I suppose it was a joke that popped in my head, but I was like, oh, did you call to go in and get your concession speech out of the way?
Because you can't win and he can't.
Joe Biden can't win.
In fact, I'll just say now I was to make this last point.
Joe Biden now has to drop.
He's going to have to wait until after the convention and probably going to have to try to make up something.
In fact, if they could just send him to Walter Reed late at night for a regular checkup and then they just say, like the president went to Walter Reed late at night, we're not going to give out details.
His health is very personal, but, you know, stay tuned for something from the president.
And the president comes out, you know, I've decided, serious, not a joke.
I'm going to be spending the rest of my life with my family.
Make something up.
I don't care.
Actually create a conspiracy where you're lying about why you're leaving.
You're too sick.
Whatever, whatever.
Get out.
Let's have a contested primary and do basically a miniature primary.
And let's get a new ticket.
And unfortunately, I would say that this event also means it can't be Harris.
Before today, I was totally fine with it and was even coming around to it.
Yeah.
Harris and somebody else, Josh Shapiro or something.
Now it probably can't be her, too.
It probably has to be.
It may be that that Trump is undefeatable and that anybody you put up.
So you are going to have to put up a fresh, clean ticket that they can't tie so directly to Joe Biden.
And it's going to have to be somebody who looks better, speaks better and is probably quite a bit younger than I would say either Biden or Harris.
Maybe not quite a bit younger, but younger has to be a face of fresh ideas and energy and power.
Otherwise, again, I don't know that anybody could beat him after this.
But if it can't, Biden can't.
With Biden, he's not going to win.
I genuinely feel that I feel very confident in that belief.
Somebody else might have a chance, but I could be wrong.
They might not also.
So then, by the way, that video of him doing the pumping thing is more chilling than the photo like this.
This photo is going to be all over the place and they're already making merchant stuff with it.
But the actual video of how he's like pushing through and shows like he his face is defiant.
He looks like, no, this is the guy.
Look, let's be real.
He looked badass in that moment.
If you knew nothing about politics and you just saw Trump being or Biden this week being like escorted off stages by his wife and you saw this guy who you would be like that.
That guy, he's funny looking since I've never heard about him before and I've just experienced what Trump looks like the first time.
That's an interesting looking guy.
But I got to say, interesting looking or not.
Pretty badass.
That's what it looks like.
He looks defiant.
He looks victorious.
He looks.
That's a big part of why does it change votes?
Yes, it does.
And it changes a few people's votes.
Please stop thinking.
That swing votes are the only votes that matter.
Remember, what was it, 60 percent of people voted last election.
There's a huge group of people who could vote and there are a huge group of people who probably weren't going to vote.
Trump has just won back a lot of people who weren't going to vote from the Republican side and from the moderate side.
And again.
Elections aren't fair.
Who's telling the truth more?
Doesn't matter.
Not to a lot of people.
Matters to me.
Hopefully it matters to you watching.
I really hope it matters to you watching a lot.
But to a lot of people, it doesn't.
It's vibes for most people, for many, at the very least.
Who feels like more of a leader?
Who looks like more of a leader?
And right now that was already being lost by Joe Biden.
And now it's being gained by Donald Trump way more.
Donald Trump now looks like a national hero to a lot of foolish, foolish people.
And foolish, foolish people pick the president.
Even when we get it right, which president it should be, the majority of the people who voted for that person were doing it for foolish reasons or at least uninformed reasons.
You can be foolish and get the right answer.
Just saying.
That's politics, baby.
People who weren't going to vote will be motivated to vote.
People who were going to pretend to vote but were like, when the day comes, like, I'm not going to make the drive.
I'm not going to vote.
He's got those people.
The I voted sticker for the right this year will be a different level of badge of honor.
One that they'll actually feel pride for earning.
The motivation from people who were close to voting for him has just spiked up.
People who were already going to vote for him, but laziness might have won.
But yes, there are independent voters who will look at this and go, well, I was decided between the two.
And now I think the answer is clear.
Then there's another group of stupid voters.
The ones who vote for the guy who thinks there is going to win.
And you can actually see this study in multiple presidencies.
It's a significant voting block.
And perception is already breaking down for Biden.
Biden is already losing people, as we saw since the debate.
Numbers were getting worse.
Not terribly.
It seemed maybe manageable, though, obviously, I didn't think so, since I thought he should drop after that.
Now I think he has to not just should, has to drop.
He has to.
There's not a it's not just should that be a good idea.
It would be if you don't, you are boning us.
And you could save your legacy now by leaving.
Or you can become the most hated politician from the Democratic side in generations by staying and losing when it's clear you're going to lose.
People will vote for the perceived winner.
It's actually a sizable voting chunk.
And that now goes to Trump.
And then there's the final group of people.
Unfortunately, it has no gender, but it is often more often men than women, I think.
People who just want the alpha leader looking guy.
People who think the bad ass is the guy to vote for.
People who think and after the there were some people who after the State of the Union was like, oh, Joe, actually, like when he's really on brand, he's on brand.
Well, the debate already fucked that.
But now you get the guys who, again, might have not been motivated to vote, but they love them.
Some Jordan Peterson.
They love them.
Some Andrew Tate.
And what looks more manly to them than a guy pushing his way past his Secret Service detail to pump his fist and tell his audience to fight?
If you think that this will not change votes, that it will not motivate votes that weren't otherwise going to be cast, I don't understand you.
I don't understand that level of naivete and that lack of understanding.
People who speak definitively but seem to not study at all voter demographics and motivation.
People who say stupid things like, well, the polls don't matter because that is a stupid thing to say.
Polls actually do matter.
They just don't accurately predict outcomes.
But there's a lot they do get right and that you should pay attention to.
And in fact, everybody who goes, but they've been so inaccurate.
I love when they bring that up and I ask them to give me examples without Googling because there's a lot of them that were more accurate than they realized.
For example, many of the polls that they point to in 2016, they said Hillary was going to win and she did win the popular vote.
And it turns out there were polls in the states that she lost because we don't do it by popular vote that in fact did show Trump was competitive there.
That's why there were people who saw it coming because of some people.
Now that isn't to say there haven't been mistakes in polls.
Obviously there have.
The people who are like, polls don't matter.
You're dumb.
Stop being stupid.
Stop.
Don't be stupid.
You are stupid.
Don't be.
But you can't help it.
You're stupid.
Don't be stupid, Biden.
Don't be stupid.
You have to drop.
You have to go.
Oh, yeah.
Also, we already just know that the votes were already starting to shift based on the two old thing and that Biden seemed too old to a lot of people.
And Trump, while still old, didn't seem as old.
This is the highest contrast that has ever been.
Nothing is more contrasting than shuffle down the ramp while your wife's supporting you and jumping out of your special.
I'll just show the photo again.
That's the contrast.
I'm not talking about who I would vote for.
Talking about who dumb people vote for.
Dumb people vote for the president.
They pick the president.
It sucks.
This is America.
Don't be stupid.
Stop with the conspiratorial thinking.
Stop for the love of all that is science.
Thought I was going to say holy.
Stop with the conspiracies.
Wait for information.
Don't be stupid.
Does it not bother you to even look stupid?
Well, if I look really stupid in the meantime, and I know there's going to be like some detail that I said, like if somebody comes out, if it turns out that it was somehow glass that hit his ear.
See, Jimmy said, don't be stupid.
And yet it was glass.
Nope.
You know what?
It was still stupid for you to accept that before you add the evidence to support it.
Because some information like that may get through and may be heard earlier than is confirmed.
But most of the information is people making shit up from either bad perceptions or bad biases to serve their perceptions or to serve their biases would have been a better way to put it.
Don't be stupid.
I have a new podcast coming out, starting it very soon.
It's called Jimmy Snow Has a Podcast.
I am very much considering, despite the fact that I'm almost done with the cover art for it, and I'd have to redo it, renaming it to don't be fucking stupid.
Maybe it'll be a segment.
That's got to be it.
We're putting it.
Don't be fucking stupid as a segment.
Look out for Jimmy Snow Has a Podcast and whatever.
Subscribe.
I actually don't give a fuck if you do.
And if you disagree and you're like, no, this is great.
Actually, you should leave.
I love that this happened.
Go get the fuck out of here.
This isn't your place.
Why would you be here anyway?
I don't want you here.
You don't want to be here.
Why would you be here?
Go.
Go.
Go.