PRETENDERS: Over the weekend, the powers that be...

MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 15, 2025

...said the murder of Charlie Kirk tracks straight back to Obama: Yesterday morning, the comment was made at 6:04 a.m. It came at the start of yesterday morning's Fox & Friends Weekend program.

Almost surely, the person who made the comment was completely sincere. Despite that, we'd be inclined to describe her as a "pretender" of a certain type.

The comment was made at 6:04 a.m. To our ear, it seemed like a rather odd comment. It went exactly like this:

"We were talking yesterday on the couch, Lawrence, about how much Christian blood has been spilled this month."

The comment was made at 6:04 yesterday (Sunday) morning. On Fox & Friends Weekend, the friends were starting the second day in which they would discuss the murder of Charlie Kirk—a murder which had occurred in Utah four days before.

The comment was made by Rachel Campos-Duffy, an extremely genial person who is a regular co-host of the four-hour weekend program on the Fox News Channel. For the record, it was the reference to Christian blood which struck us as slightly odd, though others might score it differently.

The person to whom Campos-Duffy was speaking was Lawrence Jones, one of the regular co-hosts on the weekday Fox & Friends program. On Sunday, Jones was serving as a substitute co-host. 

(Kevin Corke, a Fox News contributor, served as the day's third friend.)

After Campos-Duffy made her remark, Jones launched a presentation about the murder of Kirk which struck us as almost completely incoherent. 

In fairness, other pretenders have been out in force, in various venues, as this disastrous event has been discussed in the past few days. but few presentations have seemed as peculiar as the presentation which followed.

Lawrence Jones started like this:

JONES (9/14/25): Well, I just want to go deep into the investigation a little bit—

CAMPOS-DUFFY: Sure.

JONES: —because I think it's important to set the record straight on some things. 

 Yesterday—actually during your show, Rachel—if you were following the traffic through the day online, they were trying to make it seem that this shooter was MAGA

CAMPOS-DUFFY: Yeah, that's right. Because his family was conservative.

JONES: Because his family was conservative. Because as we know, your family member can be one thing, and you can have a totally different ideology.

According to Jones, that's what "they" had been trying to do all through the previous day. Needless to say, Jones never said who "they" were, and Campos-Duffy and Corke never asked.

In fact, all kinds of people were saying all kinds of things over the weekend,  online and everywhere else, about this disastrous event. But as Jones went "deep into the investigation," he seemed to have only one alleged type of claim in mind.

According to Jones and Campos-Duffy, "they" had been trying to say that the shooter was MAGA! For the record, we know of no reason to believe that the shooter was MAGA, nor do we know how many people might have been trying to say that. 

But now, as Jones continued his presentation, it seemed to us that he went completely off the rails. If you can follow what he's saying here, you should probably receive some sort of genius grant:

JONES (continuing directly): And you gotta go back to— You know, I don't want everybody to continue to watch the video of what happened—the assassination of Charlie Kirk. But the line of questioning [at Kirk's event in Utah last Wednesday] got to the transgender issue before the shot was fired—

COKE: Yep.

JONES: —and so all of that is connected to what investigators are going to be looking at—the ideology? 

So it's important to know that his lover, the transgender individual that's transitioning, is cooperating with the investigation. But there's something deeper too, because you've got the chat room that was going on—the video game. 

What did the people know? Could it have been prevented if someone would have reported it? Now, they've been saying a lot of this traffic was after the fact. We don't know that for sure yet. That's incumbent on the investigation. 

So he was radicalized. We know the ideology here, and this guy wasn't a part of MAGA. Now we've got to get to the bottom of, could this have been prevented if someone would have said something?

We assume that Jones was completely sincere in whatever it was he was trying to say. But to our ear, he had now wandered extremely deep into the weeds, producing one of the most incoherent "deep" critiques we had ever heard.  

As the three friends continued to talk, the incoherence grew. By 6:07, it was time for Campos-Duffy again. Perhaps weirdly, here's what she now said:

CORKE: Here's the problem I have. There are a lot of people out there indoctrinated with leftist ideology. but that's where I wonder if there is a nexus between, not just this individual, but also his community. And maybe we'll find out more, as you point out, Lawrence, as the investigation continues.

CAMPOS-DUFFY: Or maybe even some of the drugs that they take in order to trans [sic]. What do those drugs do to their bodies, their minds? We had Dr. Amen on yesterday as well, talking about the impact of that.

At this point, can it be said, in some defensible way, that the alleged assailant, Tyler Robinson, had been "indoctrinated with leftist ideology" of some definable type?

We don't have the slightest idea; neither do Corke or Campos-Duffy. Almost surely, neither does Governor Cox, who had made the original statement to that effect.

That said, it isn't Robinson who is transitioning; it's been reported that his roommate is.  To our ear, Campos-Duffy made it sound like it was Robinson had been taking the drugs in question—that Robinson might have been pushed over the edge by the effect these drugs might have on a person's body or mind.

We'll assume that can't be what she meant. To our ear, that was the peculiar way it sounded.

Did Campos-Duffy mean that the roommate had possibly been taking the drugs in question and—possibly having been badly affected—had possibly become the vehicle for Robinson's alleged "indoctrination?" We don't have the slightest idea, but we can tell you this:

The first ten minutes of yesterday's show produced a conversation which was about as incoherent as any we've ever heard. In our view, this can be seen as the work of three pretenders—as was the astonishing presentation which had occurred at the end of this program's 6 a.m. hour the day before.

A quick thought experiment:

Would the New York Yankees hire these three to be the team's starting outfield? Would American Airlines hire these three stumblebums to pilot a commercial flight today?

We'll guess that the answer is no! The friends aren't equipped for such tasks. They don't belong in those roles, and it seems to us that they're also rank pretenders when cast in their current roles on the Fox News Channel's imitation of a "cable news" program.

The same could be said of the 25-year-old daughter of Campos-Duffy, who had performed the astonishing segment on this program the day before. 

The young woman in question seemed to be completely sincere as she traced the murder of Charlie Kirk straight back to Barack Obama. But her inclusion on Saturday morning's "cable news" show was an undisguised insult to the American interest—an arrow aimed at the heart of the very possibility of maintaining an American nation.

The murder of Charlie Kirk tracks straight back to Barack Obama, Campos-Duffy's daughter said. "Thank you, my friend," Corke said as her segment ended. We'll show you the transcript tomorrow.

Pretenders (or The Pretenders) was and is the name of a major rock group—"a British rock band formed in March 1978." The group was founded by Chrissie Hynde. For our money, "Back on the Chain Gang" (1982) was their most arresting hit. 

The song's lyrics continue to speak today. At one point, the lyrics say this:

The powers that be
That force us to live like we do
Bring me to my knees
When I see what they've done to you.

Chrissie Hynde wrote and sang it; we still believe it. As it turns out, she was referring to the death of a very close friend. Today, a similar sentiment could be extended to the denatured state of the dying American experiment, imperfect as it always was.

Various pretenders have swarmed the American discourse over the past many years. Some of these pretenders—the ones who appear on the Fox News Channel—belong to Red America

A separate group of pretenders belong to us in Blue America. We refer to the pretenders who refuse to report or discuss the deranged assault on American discourse performed all day, and then all night, by the kinds of pretenders we see on the Fox News Channel.

The vicious murder of Charlie Kirk tracks straight back to Barack Obama! Campos-Duffy's daughter said it, and she clearly seemed to believe it. Some viewers believe it now too.

Their journalistic pretenders make statements like that. Our journalistic pretenders refuse to report or discuss this.

Which group of pretenders is worse? Tomorrow, we'll show you the text—and we'll link to the tape—of what this youngest pretender said.

Tomorrow: The daughter was plainly sincere