PRETENDERS: The killer was motivated by Obama!

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 17, 2025

So a pretender now said: We're losing the soul of the culture, he said. The writer was Bret Stephens.

In this morning's New York Times, Stephens recalls the culture to which he was exposed as a student at the University of Chicago. It was built upon a respect for reasoned argument—upon respect for traditional notions of reason itself:

Our Vanishing Culture of Argument

[...]

What is the soul of the Western tradition? Argument. Socrates goes around Athens investigating the claims of the supposedly wise and finds that the people who claim to know things don’t. The Lord threatens to destroy Sodom for its alleged wickedness, but Abraham reproaches and bargains with Him—that for the sake of 10 righteous people He must not destroy the city.

In both traditions, Athens’s and Jerusalem’s, the lone dissenting voice is often the heroic one.

To read Western philosophy and literature was our chance to understand these dissents...The curriculum made us appreciate that the best way to contend with an argument was to engage with it rather than denounce it, and that the prerequisite to engagement was close and sympathetic reading. Reading Marx didn’t turn me into a Marxist. But it did give me an appreciation of the power of his prose.

I came to Chicago when Western civilization courses were falling out of fashion at other universities, as was the idea of a core curriculum, as was the idea that underlay the core: that there was a coherent philosophical tradition based in reasoned argument and critical engagement that explained not only how we had arrived at our governing principles but also gave us the tools to debate, preserve or change them.

That's how it was for those in the class of 1995, or so Stephens says. We know of no reason to doubt him. 

As he continues, he says this culture has changed. In this passage, he pokes at the chaos which has resulted from the transformation we've described as the "democratization of media:"

All this has happened in tandem with the digital transformations of this century, which have further pushed us into personalized bubbles of ideology and information. The effect of the new technologies has generally been terrible for our health, psychological as well as political. But I don’t think it would have been as bad if we hadn’t first given up on the idea of a culture of argument rooted in a common set of ideas.

Which brings me to Charlie Kirk.

Stephens, a man of the center right, goes on to offer an unflattering portrait of Kirk's manner of dialogue. For us, this still isn't the time to criticize Kirk, who was murdered last Wednesday while engaged in the type of dialogue Stephens seems to view as a large step back.

We'll quote Stephens' portrait before we're done. We've seen a few others paint a similar portrait of Kirk's approach in the past few days. 

For today, we'll return to the Fox News Channel, and to a younger graduate of the University of Chicago.

This younger graduate hails from the class of 2021. As we noted yesterday, she appeared on last Saturday's broadcast of the four-hour morning "cable news" program, Fox & Friends Weekend.

We thought she made an astonishing claim during her appearance. As we noted yesterday, Kevin Corke introduced her at 6:52 a.m., as the program emerged from a commercial break:

CORKE (9/13/25): As we continue to celebrate Charlie's life and memory, shocking and sickening celebrations of his death have occurred on social media, and those who are mourning him have actually faced heated backlash. Independent journalist Evita Duffy-Alonso joining us now with reaction.

So great to have you with us, my friend! I just want to set the table here by asking you about your experience as you watch some of the reaction. How has it struck you?

References to "Charlie" require no last name on this tribal "cable news" program. Corke introduced the young independent journalist as "my friend."

Remarkably (in our view), this is what the young journalist said:

DUFFY-ALONSO (continuing directly): I mean, it's been unconscionable. I mean, this is—the reaction itself is such a good example of how there is no intellectual diversity on the left.

Not only is there no intellectual diversity on the left towards the right, they're not even tolerant of diversity on their own side. And there are deadly consequences, clearly, to not agreeing with them.

Obama said, right after Charlie was killed, "We don't know what motivated this." I think Obama should know what motivated this. It was his entire political career, sprung out of his close relationship with left-wing terrorist Bill Ayers.

Between 1971 and 1972, an 18-month period, left-wing terrorists set off nearly five bombs a day in American cities. So it went from the Weather Underground to our institutions, and what Charlie Kirk did is he went to our institutions, the heart of the indoctrination machine of the left, and he evangelized young people.

Young men have swung, between 2023 and 2025, 44 points to the right. That is why they hated him so much. 

What motivated the young man who murdered Kirk last week? It all goes back to Barack Obama, this young Chicago grad confidently alleged.

Let several things be said:

It seemed to us that this young independent journalist was completely sincere. (Sometimes, people on the Fox News Channel may simply seem to be reciting the memorized dogmas which are central to that "cable news" channel's mission.)

Also, the young journalist said at least one thing which seems to be fully accurate!

The statistic about those bombings in the early 1970s is taken from Bryan Burrough's 2015 book, Days of Rage. America's Radical Underground, the FBI, and the Forgotten Age of Revolutionary Violence.

Fifty years later, it's hard to remember the vast sweep of those "days of rage," but that statistic about all those bombings has long been assumed to be accurate. Just yesterday, in this New York Times column, Ross Douthat cited Burrough's book as the go-to text concerning the tumult of that era.

Those bombings actually happened—but Barack Obama was ten years old at that particular time! His association with Bill Ayers started in 1995, but Ayers was no longer a "left-wing terrorist." Nor was the relationship known to have been especially "close."

Ayers was no longer a "left-wing terrorist!" His remarkable transformation still seems puzzling to us, but here's part of the leading authority's description of his academic career:

Civic and political life

Ayers worked with Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley in shaping the city's school reform program and was one of three co-authors of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge grant proposal that in 1995 won $49.2 million over five years for public school reform. In 1997, Chicago awarded him its Citizen of the Year award for his work on the project. Since 1999, he has served on the board of directors of the Woods Fund of Chicago, an anti-poverty, philanthropic foundation established as the Woods Charitable Fund in 1941. The Wall Street Journal columnist Thomas Frank praised Ayers as a "model citizen" and a scholar whose "work is esteemed by colleagues of different political viewpoints."

Go figure! By 1995, Ayers had long been established as one of Chicago's civic leaders. Two years later, he was named that city's Citizen of the Year!

In various ways, the presentation by the young independent journalist struck us as perhaps a bit misleading. That said, it seemed to us that she was engaged in a familiar type of undertaking on the "cable news" channel in question:

She was adding 2 plus 2 and coming up with three million and one! Or at least, so it almost seemed to us as she made her phantasmagoric overall claim, with the smiling Corke urging her on.

Last week's murder of Charlie Kirk? According to Corke's friend, the motivation was obvious! It was President Obama's entire career, "sprung out of his close relationship with a left-wing terrorist"—a close relationship which doesn't seem to have been especially close, with a person who would soon be hailed as Chicago's "man of the year."

As of today, the evidence clearly suggests that Tyler Richardson, age 22, murdered Charlie Kirk. According to Evita Duffy-Alphonso, age 25, the motivation for this act tracks straight back to Barack Obama—to his entire career!

Kevin Corke, age 60, warmly thanked her for her participation when the segment came to an end. For what it's worth, the genial Corke seems like the nicest guy in the world.

Tomorrow, we'll take you further down this particular road. But this is the sort of thing which now happens, all day and all night, on this ersatz "cable news" channel.

According to Stephens, "the digital transformations of this century" have "pushed us into personalized bubbles of ideology and information."

We've described those transformations, and those which preceded them in the past century, as the "democratization of media." We've suggested the possibility that this type of "democratization" simply can't be survived.

The bizarre remarks of that young journalist may help you see why we've persistently said that. For today, we'll end with this:

In our view, the very genial Kevin Corke was a bit of a "pretender" this day. The young independent journalist seemed to be completely sincere, but was she a "pretender" too?

Another group of high-end pretenders were sleeping soundly in their lairs in Blue America as this interview took placed. That second major group of pretenders have long agreed on a basic rule:

Wat happens on the Fox News Channel must never be discussed.

Tomorrow: What the other journalist said. (She was 42 at the time.)