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.