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Deadline: White House 9/10/25 | ️ Breaking News September 10, 2025
Deadline: White House 9/10/25 | ️ Breaking News September 10, 2025
Deadline: White House 9/10/25 | ️ Breaking News September 10, 2025
Deadline: White House 9/10/25 | ️ Breaking News September 10, 2025
Deadline: White House 9/10/25 | ️ Breaking News September 10, 2025
Deadline: White House 9/10/25 | ️ Breaking News September 10, 2025
Deadline: White House 9/10/25 | ️ Breaking News September 10, 2025
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NewsTranscript
00:00Hi there, everyone. It's four o'clock in New York. We come on the air with the worst kind of breaking news we ever cover around here. Today it comes out of the state of Utah. The founder of the highly influential conservative group Turning Point USA, Charlie Kirk, has been shot. He was shot while he was hosting an event on the campus of Utah Valley University. This video shows the moments before he was shot a huge crowd gathered around him. He'd been speaking for about 20 minutes before he
00:29was struck, according to a spokesperson for the university. The suspect has been taken into custody. The university says that the suspect fired at Kirk from a building about 200 yards away. The FBI says in a statement that agents will be responding on the scene. The shooting drawing reaction from across the political spectrum this hour. Donald Trump posted this, quote, we must all pray for Charlie Kirk, who has been shot, end quote. California's Governor Gavin Newsom says, quote,
00:59The attack on Charlie Kirk is disgusting, vile and reprehensible. In the United States of America, we must reject political violence in every form. Joining our live coverage right now, my colleague Ken Delanian. He's the justice and intelligence correspondent for MSNBC. With me on set, retired FBI agent, MSNBC national security and intelligence analyst. Chris O'Leary is here.
01:24Ken Delanian, we start with you. What is your understanding of the facts as we know them right now?
01:32Yeah, Nicole, as you said, a university spokeswoman is saying this happened just under two hours ago, about 20 minutes after Charlie Kirk began speaking before a fairly large crowd.
01:43And according to witness accounts, there really was no security there in terms of metal detectors or fencing or any kind of perimeter security.
01:51And as you said, the spokeswoman is saying that the shots were fired from a building about 200 yards away.
01:59Apparently, only one shot fired. And of course, there's horrific video that's circulating online that shows Charlie Kirk being shot.
02:06It appears he was shot in the neck. He falls backwards.
02:09And then the spokeswoman is saying he was taken away by his security team and his condition at the moment is unknown.
02:18And the university spokeswoman also saying that one suspect was taken into custody.
02:22There's a video circulating that suggests that it was that it depicts a suspect being detained who is an older man with white hair.
02:32It's not clear if that's been fully vetted and verified and connected to this incident.
02:38But again, one shot fired, one suspect taken into custody.
02:42As you said, the FBI has responded and dispatched agents from the closest field office in Salt Lake City.
02:49And of course, now they will begin taking steps to try to learn everything they can about the suspect, about the weapon that was used, about how this unfolded, whether there is a network here, whether there was a political motive, a terrorism motive, and going through whatever digital trail the suspect may have left.
03:13Sadly, we're all too familiar with the things that unfold after a horrific shooting like this.
03:19But as you said, Nicole, the reaction is pouring in from all sides of the political spectrum.
03:24It's just an awful day.
03:27Chris, tell me what is happening that we can't see on the part of law enforcement.
03:31So the Salt Lake City Field Office has a Joint Terrorism Task Force.
03:36This, on its surface, appears to be political in nature, at least some component of it.
03:40We'll understand the ideology and the driver towards violence soon.
03:45But until then, the FBI will do it in partnership with local and state police and other federal agencies.
03:51But the FBI, I would say, would definitely be looking at this as some form of terrorism or political violence just based on who this individual was, the venue, and frankly, the conditions in U.S. society right now and the extreme polarization.
04:06I mean, I rushed up here from a conference on terrorism and political violence addressing exactly this.
04:14And we're frankly shocked we haven't seen more because both on the right and the left, people have gotten so frustrated and have grievances and feel hopeless and want to act out.
04:27I mean, as you say that and as you're speaking, I'm thinking of the attempt on President Trump's life in Butler.
04:33I'm thinking of the brutal attack on Paul Pelosi in his home from an assailant that was targeting then-speaker Nancy Pelosi.
04:41I'm thinking of January 6th.
04:43How does law enforcement reorient itself to protect people in that climate?
04:51Well, from the law enforcement and intelligence perspective, you need the resources and you need the support of leadership.
04:57And that's certainly in question with investigating domestic terrorism in the United States right now.
05:02Certainly within the FBI with all the chaos and drama going on there right now and the pardoning of January 6th, the people that we investigated and arrested.
05:15I think more broadly, it's the responsibility for political leaders to address this and stop with the extremist rhetoric.
05:26This is a condition of distrust in institutions.
05:31And so if you look at the wave of violence that came out in the late 60s into the 70s, and just for a reference point, in 1970, there were 1,800 bombings in the United States.
05:41Wow.
05:42Really, you know, tumultuous time.
05:45That continued through the 70s.
05:48The really only thing that made it go away was Nixon leaving the White House and the Vietnam War ending.
05:53And they couldn't find, the different groups couldn't find a cause to continue to follow.
05:58We have extremism on both sides of the aisle right now.
06:03And we have people who will look for ways to legitimately address that.
06:07But if they can't find it or if they feel ignored, that's when political violence happens.
06:11And I think we're seeing it play out in front of us.
06:14And there's one more category I will highlight.
06:17Because some of the political violence we've seen over the last year, some of it is what we would consider nihilistic.
06:23People just feel hopeless.
06:25And they prefer death as their final curtain.
06:29And they just want to act out.
06:31They don't necessarily believe in one ideology or the next.
06:34They just feel hopeless.
06:36And they want to conduct some kind of act so it's meaningful.
06:41I think the last time you and I talked was over the summer, the afternoon of the political assassination of the Democratic lawmaker and her spouse in the state of Minnesota.
06:52Does any after-action analysis by law enforcement or political leaders of both parties suggest that that could have been prevented?
06:59So it's really hard in today's day and age.
07:04If we look at, again, I came from this conference.
07:07We're talking to Deputy Commissioner Rebecca Weiner from the NYPD counterterrorism, career counterterrorism professional.
07:15We're reflecting back to just after 9-11 where the problem set was pretty singular.
07:20It was al-Qaeda.
07:21They were global jihadists.
07:22We knew where they were overseas.
07:24It got more complex over time.
07:25But when people wanted to join a terrorist group, even ethno-nationalists or ideological groups in the decades prior, you had to join a group.
07:38You had to be vetted.
07:39It took time.
07:41And there was an on-ramp to join the group and engaging in some kind of act.
07:46Now, social media, the internet has completely changed that.
07:52You have people who are just self-radicalized.
07:54They might be following rhetoric online.
07:57They might join a chat group.
07:58They might get radicalized.
07:59Having never met anybody else, they might get the tools themselves.
08:03We've seen all of that happen.
08:04Or what we're also seeing, people taking different pieces of ideologies and creating their own because then there's no barrier to entry.
08:13I can just create my own.
08:14And there's some very odd groups out there right now which would be hard to categorize.
08:18If you look at QAnon, I've been interviewed and interrogated plenty of ISIS and al-Qaeda and other groups.
08:25There's, you know, not that I agree with any of them, but logical ideologies that you could discuss with them and follow.
08:33When you look at something like QAnon or 764, which is a group now which has got a lot of minors in it, 09A, order of nine angles.
08:42These are very strange mixed ideologies that, so 764 has accelerationism.
08:49It has some satanic cult-like stuff.
08:5209A has kind of far-right and jihadi stuff mixed in together.
09:00So it's really hard to categorize them.
09:02So how do you get ahead of that?
09:04It's, you know, you can't turn things into a police state.
09:08We can't monitor everybody's social media or get authority to, you know, listen to every phone call or do search warrants whenever we want.
09:16So you have to change the conditions that drive people towards violence.
09:20It's this societal distrust and upheaval.
09:25Kendaline, I want to come back to you.
09:27I know that the organization Charlie Kirk leads, Turning Point USA, has confirmed that Charlie Kirk is in the hospital.
09:35Do you have any reporting or updates on his condition or any sense when we might receive an update?
09:40Nothing official, Nicole, but Marjorie Taylor Greene has tweeted pretty recently that she's been told Charlie Kirk is alive.
09:47The congresswoman, Marjorie Taylor Greene, is saying that she's been told that Charlie Kirk is alive.
09:53We're not sure of her source on that, but just worth throwing that out.
09:59So obviously we don't know the answer.
10:02But I wanted to go back to something you were talking to Chris about, which is that, look, there's something happening at the FBI right now,
10:09which you can't draw a line between that and this because lone extremists who carry out violence based on political motive,
10:17and we don't know what the motive was here, are extremely difficult to track down.
10:23And if they're not communicating with people, as Chris well knows, that makes it doubly difficult.
10:27But it is absolutely the case, and I've got reporting on this from around the country,
10:31that FBI agents who have been working on domestic terrorism issues over the past several years,
10:37many of them have been reassigned to go on immigration roundups, to do immigration enforcement activities.
10:45Some full-time and some part-time, but in both cases it takes time away from the cases that they have been working
10:51against those extremist groups that Chris was talking about.
10:55And these are cases that take time, years sometimes.
10:58FBI agents spend time in chat rooms and infiltrating Internet groups and developing sources
11:04and trying to determine what these extremists are up to to try to stop violence before it occurs.
11:11And, again, we can't say whether there was any chance to have stopped this attack today,
11:18but it comes in a context where the FBI, which is the agency we rely on to stop extremist violence
11:25and domestic terror attacks, is being asked to do things it's never been asked to do before,
11:30including go help ICE roundup nannies and gardeners who are in the country illegally,
11:37and also in places like Washington, D.C., go on violent crime patrols that is normally the purview of the local police.
11:45And it's something we should all keep in mind, and we should be asking our leaders hard questions
11:49about those priorities and what the FBI is doing when it comes to domestic terrorism.
11:54Well, I mean, it's a layered point where you're making, right, Kendall, Indian?
11:58I mean, that even if resources hadn't been diverted, what Chris is describing is a complete reorientation
12:05from the post-9-11 threat environment, which was largely foreign and largely adhered to an ideology of al-Qaeda
12:11followed by ISIS.
12:13There were means to track online.
12:15There was an ideology people adhered to.
12:17The laws and the tools are so much less for tracking domestic threats as a result of the fact that we live in a democracy.
12:27So we're talking about two layers of things that I think you're pointing at, Kendall, Indian,
12:33both fewer resources to deal with threats and a threat that is inherently more difficult to track and protect ourselves from.
12:41Yeah, that's spot on.
12:43And as Chris said, we don't want to live in a police state where the FBI is monitoring everyone's social media posts.
12:49And if it turns out that this person who carried out this attack had been posting angry and deranged things on social media,
12:55that doesn't necessarily mean that the FBI or some other law enforcement organization should have stopped it,
13:02should have known that he was tending towards violence.
13:05But there are examples around the country.
13:07There have been many cases where the FBI has stopped attacks from violent extremists before they happen,
13:14has caught people planning and scheming to carry out politically motivated violence or nihilist motivated violence.
13:22And domestic terrorism squads are in many field offices, FBI field offices across the country, working these cases.
13:29And to the extent that they're doing less of that in a climate where the threat is more complex and more dangerous than ever,
13:36we all need to ask whether that's a smart idea, whether that's a smart allocation of resources,
13:41whether we want FBI agents who are expert in counterterrorism to be going on immigration roundups.
13:47Let me bring everyone's attention back to the shooting today with some sound from an eyewitness to today's events.
13:59Let's listen.
14:01I was about 20 yards away on Charlie's left.
14:06I had gotten there probably just a few minutes before noon.
14:09There were thousands of people there.
14:12Unfortunately, there was no metal detectors.
14:15There was no, I mean, there was security by Charlie, but, you know, anybody could have shown up with whatever, unfortunately.
14:22And I happened to kind of maneuver my way down close on the side.
14:27And the first interaction probably took about 10 minutes.
14:30It was a religious-related exchange.
14:34And then there was someone who stepped up, ironically, coincidentally, who asked a question about mass shootings.
14:41And about 60 to 90 seconds in, we just saw, we heard a big, loud shot.
14:46I saw a bunch of blood come out of Charlie.
14:49I saw his body kind of kick back and go limp.
14:52And everybody dropped to the ground.
14:55And luckily, there were no other bullets sprayed into the crowd because nobody was really able to go anywhere.
15:01It was just like a big, you know, open pavilion, amphitheater, outdoor venue.
15:07And, you know, lots of screaming, lots of yelling, you know, lots of bodies on top of each other.
15:13And after a couple minutes, people got up and started kind of running, you know, getting out of there.
15:19There were some gates, some barriers that had been pushed aside and knocked over, and people were able to move.
15:26And I started to move quickly and then kind of realized that I said, you know, I think we're okay.
15:33And I kind of stopped walking away.
15:37Terrific.
15:38Terrific.
15:39I want to bring to the conversation some new reporting and ask you, Ken and you, Chris, to square it with what we originally heard.
15:48The university is now saying that there is, quote, no suspect in custody.
15:54Kendallanian, I know it's early.
15:58I know it's frantic.
15:59But I thought there were reports that a suspect was in custody initially.
16:04Not only reports.
16:04The university actually conveyed that to reporters, Nicole.
16:08So that's perplexing.
16:10But at the same time, it was curious that no law enforcement agency, we're now two hours plus after the incident, no law enforcement agency had confirmed that a suspect was in custody.
16:21The FBI director has been posting on social media about this.
16:24He hadn't confirmed that.
16:25So I guess that explains the sort of lack of information.
16:30The university may have misspoke because they're saying they were saying that the shot came from a building 200 yards away.
16:39So that now raises the question of did the shooter get away if, in fact, no suspect is in custody?
16:46Being that far from the scene, did the shooter flee?
16:48Obviously, we're all going to make some calls to law enforcement on this, Nicole, and try to get to the bottom of it.
16:55If you need to go do that, Kendallanian, don't let us slow you down from your reporting on this.
17:01I would ask you, Chris, to take us through your understanding of this discrepancy.
17:06The latest information we have from the university is that there is, quote, no suspect in custody.
17:12Yeah, so I think we just need some time to let it play out.
17:15So what generally happens in critical incidents is you get mixed reporting from eyewitnesses, which are traditionally very unreliable
17:25because the stress factor doesn't allow them to gather the information they think they see or they perceive.
17:33In active shooters or mass shooters, shooting events, you often hear reports of multiple shooters
17:39because the violence and the sound, you know, makes people think there's got to be more than one attacker.
17:46And rarely are there multiple gunmen.
17:50So there's also, you know, university police might not be connected properly to the FBI and the, you know, locals,
17:59and just they don't have the communication out just right.
18:01Now, there could be a subject in custody, but maybe not in the university's custody.
18:05So I think they just need to clean up their messaging.
18:07I would be shocked if we didn't get leadership from the FBI or somebody cleaning this up soon,
18:14giving a status report on what's going on, because that's one of the most important things that FBI leadership could do.
18:20I will highlight, and Ken knows about this quite a bit,
18:24the special agent in charge of the Salt Lake City field office was removed from her position just three weeks ago.
18:32Career counterterrorism professional, great with partnerships, great in crisis events.
18:36I've worked personally with her, but she was removed from the post as part of this purge of FBI leadership.
18:43So that's going to have an effect.
18:46And she was removed as part of the other stories that, frankly, we were going to cover today,
18:52and that is a political purge of the top-tier talent at the FBI.
18:55Not quite sure the reasons behind why she, I mean, no good reason was given.
19:00She was told she was a wrong fit for the Salt Lake City field office.
19:04I worked with her for decades.
19:07She was one of my agents on the New York Joint Terrorism Task Force,
19:09worked some of the top counterterrorism cases for the FBI, a proven player.
19:15And she was summarily removed three weeks ago.
19:18She was at the conference with us today.
19:20I want to bring into our coverage former assistant special agent in charge at the FBI, Michael Feinberg.
19:27He's now a fellow at Lawfare.
19:31Michael, you are coming into the conversation at a point that continues the conversation you and I have had on the air,
19:39and that is about the threat to U.S. national security and U.S. domestic security of political removals
19:49of highly experienced agents with institutional knowledge, with law enforcement capabilities.
19:56And I wonder if you can jump in on what should be happening right now
20:01to make sure that whoever fired this shot against conservative activist Charlie Kirk is caught and held to account.
20:12Well, I would like to foot stomp what you two were just talking about in terms of the removal of the recent SAC in Salt Lake City.
20:20I also overlapped with her in a number of roles when she was in counterintelligence division,
20:26and she was a consummate professional who had experience both domestically and overseas running very...
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