971 - The Years of Whatever feat. Will Sommer (9/22/25)
Will Sommer of The Bulwark returns to Chapo to talk about the right’s reaction to the assassination of Charlie Kirk as well as his funeral proceedings in Arizona. We recap the Groyper War that preceded the assassination and the pressure it put on Kirk to move right, as well as the conspiracies surrounding his shooting. Was Israel involved? Why was there no exit wound? Did Charlie have a late-in-life conversion to Catholicism? And which faction of the right will be able to define the man’s legacy?
Follow Will Sommer on Twitter/X: https://x.com/willsommer
Comments (198)
Irritating to hear Will Sommers handwave the total lack of biography of Thomas Crooks as "well that's the thing about these guys." No it isn't. Crooks and the empty void of his life is not typical of mass shooters or would-be political assassins in any way. I'm not saying that means there was a conspiracy, or any particular explanation, but i hate it when liberal commentators act like their lack of suspicion comes from knowledge or sagacity, especially when they're saying something blatantly wrong.
Chapo outro songs always bangers?
Кәм іі
good episode, Felix sounds drunk, didn't mind that at all
Outing myself as ignorant here, Felix’s “the way this bull work” joke is just a reference to being part of an orgy? Or Is there specific post/social media moment it’s referring to that I’m not familiar with
A cuck/cuckold was tradionally a man who UNKNOWINGLY was cheated on, but today is more commonly a fetish where a man is WILLINGLY cheated on by his wife. The othe man is referred to as the "bull," both to imply his power and to dehumanize him. The "third chair in the hotel room" is the chair in the corner from which the cuck watches, or the "cuck chair." This is why right-wingers call opponents "cucks," saying they aren't real men and accept/enjoy being donated by some other force such as immigrants or Israel.
Back for the first time in a long time. Chapo fell off so hard. Respectfully, the show without Matt is mid at best.
He had a stroke wtf do you want them to do 😭
What was that creepy hug between Mrs Butt-Head and the carny handed mango man. It was like one of those hugs he gives his daughter
I’m confused on why they think the groyper frog and Pepe are different. I mean I know they can signify different things but it is the same image I thought? Any meme experts?
I'm sure it was mentioned in this comment section already, but there's a theory that Kirk was wearing a low-profile, metal vest and the bullet ricocheted up and into his neck
Highly unlikely, ricochet only happens with steel plate, which no one uses except for poor countries for their military and the sort because it’s uncomfortable and heavy and less effective than ceramic armor which doesn’t ricochet and is just as effective if you buy the right stuff. So considering he was wearing a t shirt and you couldnt see a massive thick plate, if he was wearing anything it would’ve been a ceramic vest.
What do I do with this feeling? When I learned of the Nazi regime and other dictatorships, I said I would be the resistance, yet Mon-Fri I show up to work on time to be the efficient cog in the wheel. What should I do?
I've been a little late to work but other than that, I haven't been much better
Frog day afternoon
It's weird how you let this guy conflate anti-Zionism with anti-semitism.
So weird to hear this guy continue to conflate anti- Israeli sentiment with anti-Semitism and racism. That's not what is going on (i.e Jewish voices for peace etc) and it just reiterates establishment propaganda that continues the genocide. And no pushback from you guys! Not cool
That's his role. Externalize right-wing online extremism and conflate it with people who are anti-Israel. He's the same schtick as Travis View and the other first Trump-era "disinformation" personalities.
2028 is going to be “$3600 in mint condition coins” as house of the rising sun plays for probably everyone on the planet except the Chinese (Southern, after The Indefinite But Great And Prosperous Nuclear Split)
She lies and says she’s in love with him Can’t find whatever man
i love this spencer guy but who is he and where did he come from
Did he replace chris?
Not gonna lie, Huckabee calling Israel America's wife is giving me strong whore of Babylon vibes. It's incredible he can't see that
I'm not complaining cause I love MGS, but yeah Felix, we get it you've been playing MGS
No one celebrated Charlie Kirk’s death more than MAGA.
You have to grasp the optics of evangelicalism- Erika Kirk did not publicly ‘forgive’ the killer to suggest that he should not be executed. She will likely still advocate for the death penalty, and will see no contradiction with her metaphysical act of ‘forgiveness.’
I’ve come to terms with the fact I will never understand what a groyper is
Similar to a balk in baseball, I can’t really describe a groyper but when I see one I’m like “yeah - that’s definitely that thing”
I don't think Israel need the excuses Chapo expects they need. Charlie didn't have to "turn over a new leaf" or "feel bad". Israel wants to kill people who just don't think they're great. But why take out Charlie? He wasn't just a podcaster, he was super influential in the conservative crowd and wanted to run for President.
Comrades go check out “part of the problem” by Dave smith, the later content is CR A Z Y
43:55 felix uming and ahing and looking for his words for twenty five seconds is honestly the most cogent analysis you can pull out of anything here
Pretty sure Will's last words will be "oh god I can see the Gaylord Convention Center in National Harbor, Maryland"
Felix still got it
What’s the song at the end
The Fibonaccis - March To Heaven
Maybe now we can finally get the CPAC episode back on Patreon now? 🥰
The death rattle of liberalism
Can’t have fascism without feckless liberals.
Sadly, no rapture today.
describing Nick Fuentes as “Charlie Kirk’s Wario” made me laugh so hard i spit coffee on my dashboard, expect your cleaning bill soon Will Sommer
Putting up statues of Charlie Kirk on every campus is literal rage bait. Right media will be waiting for a few of them to get vandalized so they can reheat their anger towards college kids
many people are calling it "the most pissed on statue, perhaps of all time"
Israel & 'Merica sitting in a tree.. G E N O C I D I N G
Loomer is Trump's true soul mate. She completes him, literally and figuratively!
When she sucks his little dick they combine like a Megazord
Groyper has undergone the same semantic shift as hipster, emo, and yuppie, it just means "guy i don't like"
I'm getting ahead of this. Can't stand these Yurfo pricks.
NOT SABRINA!!
'They're two different frogs'
If I was a barista I would write Sharley Curk and act confused when they get mad
charli kirke
Rapture on rosh hashana?
You guys thought those were genuine emotions displayed by the widow? God damn you are gullible.
If you take an image of the Project Graham guy and overlay Charlie's face on him, it makes perfect sense how his bone structure could have stopped that bullet.
“A time of whatever” is so funny and true tbh
I thought the Israel killing Charlie Kirk theory is that if he was in fact turning on Israel, it would mean the younger/future republican generation is not a reliable source of support for Israel, which is to say they'd have no base whatsoever
Yeah it's perfectly plausible. Motive, means. Just need a single piece of evidence that that's how it went down. "Dumb dickhead turns the knob to 11" still has the most explanatory power for high profile violence in the US of A.
it just sounds to me like the surgeon made an oopsie and is selling that "Charlie Kirk had T-800 neck" to cover his ass. maybe a Killing of a Sacred Deer type situation and Charlie's kid is going to come calling in 15-20
50:00 Descriptions of Felix's of stuff like this -- Laura Loomer and her Loomer-ness -- are just so wonderfully oddball!
Re: stephen Miller, the "Now, people, rise up and let the storm break loose!" line is a direct quote from a goebbels interview/speech. I'm sure it's been used in other context as well, but yeah. Source: https://www.britannica.com/video/Joseph-Goebbels-war-crowd-Berlin-1943/-193726
It’s because gay people disproportionately work at starbucks. They want to make a gay customer service slave debase themselves
Laura Loomer is our Revolver Ocelot
She looks like a Junji Ito character.
It was Mormons
Can't wait for TrueAnon to drop Fourtah
Mr Biederman really is batting a thousand these days
I don't know about a thousand but he is funnier and less annoying recently. There was a while when lots of his jokes didn't land.
JD (Vance) and GW (groyper war)? Holy shit kojima did it again
If autism is cured, all political content creators will be in financial ruin.
The cure to autism is an end to the current world order. All of the beliefs about are true because all of the ailments create the disease. The three mental health diseases of Americanism are schizophrenia, autism, and anti-social personality.
Will Sommer is such a boob.
what if we stood another will sommer next to him...
One idiot soda please
Israel killed Charlie Kirk because they thought they were aiming for a baby's head
It's a riddle wrapped inside a mystery wrapped inside an enigma. Even the fuckin shooters don't know, DON'T YOU GET IT!
The only other piece of 'hmmm' type info I'd point to is the short clip Sean McCarthy posted of Kirk on Bill Maher with them praising the quality of Israeli security details. That along with the rest of the anomalies we've seen in this case are enough for me to raise it from the 'a bit odd' category to 'it's likely we're not getting the real story here' As to the motive for Israel if one of the highest profile evangelicals can effectively snub them that could lead to an implosion in their support on the American right. With Kirk dead that base of support has been completely shored up. Even Nick Fuentes has pivoted toward them
I'd also add that the reason the liberal and left commentator spheres have been so slow on this is they haven't yet adjusted to the reality that under Trump, none of the typically 'trustworthy' institutions whether it's the FBI, dept of health, justice, etc function as anything other than Trump goons. And Trump having fully allied himself with Netanyahu, a much savvier political operator, means on some level they're now all his goons as well. That's the context in which this stuff should be analyzed.
Just started the episode praying that United States of Whatever is the outro song
Danko Jones FTW
The .30-06 of Longinus pierced Christ’s neck
Begun, the groyper wars have
Thank you for clearing up the Helldivers thing, that has been bothering me
I'm confused by that. How is it not a Helldivers meme?
1:04:45 I call that the iPhone 5c era
Erikakurk is my favorite Sumerian god.
Have we ever considered that maybe Israel killed Charlie Kirk for the lulz? Or maybe Kirk said something that annoyed that Netanyahu? Israel has killed people for less.
Nah, I think Putin’s the only guy who really does it just for the lulz. One of the reasons Ukraine felt kind of out of character to me. No lulz to be had with that one for sure.
💯 re dog day afternoon. Also check out the movie mindset ep on that, so good
My theory if israel did actually kill him it was not because charlie was about to turn but more less they knew that charlie was in the trump circle and thought by killing them he would crack down on the left because everyone's going to think a leftist did it and that way he wouldn't have to worry about the left potentially ruining any weapon deal
I think if it was an inside job it would be from the Trump admin manufacturing an event to rally the basé around and crack down on Trumps ennemies. Maybe isreal was in on it by providing logistics or Intel
do catholics read books now? being raised catholic i thought the whole point was that you don't need to read because we have a guy who reads for us and tells us what to think. way easier
No, we have a guy who reads the book for us, so that we have time to read other books. Protestants only read the one book.
Benny Johnson is wielding men’s swords into his mouth.
Bent knee Johnson
The convo about Charlie Kirk and the conspiracy around it makes me feel extremely embarrassed about my previous life as a JFK truther sicko. Mostly the part about that guy having a moral revelation.
If Israel is Americas wife, she is pegging us nightly.
Lots of psychotic right wing folks are still latched onto the trans girlfriend storyline, trust me.
"mother meme" is such a kojima ass term
I’m not conspiracy pilled with the Kirk shooting but as someone who has killed an elk with a 30-06 derived round it’s shocking that it didn’t go through him
Starting the rumor that he was part Nephilim. It explains everything including his unnatural head shape
Here's my Kirk conspiracy: he was shot by an angel Why the fuck not
Mr. Chapo get Garth Ennis on the pod!
"you cannot withstand my storm" "I AM THE STORM" - some guy right before a Cat 4 sweeps him into the ocean
"MAGA loves fireworks" (except when black kids do them)
take my wife please
Fate whispers to the warrior: "You can not withstand the storm The warrior whispers back:"I shidded and farted and camed"
Fate whispers to the warrior: "here's your happy meal sir" The warrior whispers back: "I asked for a boys toy, you gave me the one for girls"
I am Charlie Kirk
Israel
Charlie "Smirkin' Captain" Kirk
"It's a different frog!" Me when RFK Jr tries to inject Methylene Blue into my arm to cure my autism.
Fate whispers to the warrior: "You can not withstand the storm The warrior whispers back: "you have to write Merry Christmas on my cup because told you that was my name"
I’m gonna need a Pixar Sodas reference for all assassinations on the future. Felix needs to become pope of a new soda religion.
I’m gonna need a Pixar so
Serious question: I never saw a gun in the stairwell pics of Tyler Robinson and i didn't make one out when they released the video of him climbing down from the roof. Has anyone said what's up with that? Was the gun some sort of switch barrel?
I think they're saying he assembled and disassembled it on the roof so it would have just been in his bag
51:22 Felix first suicide mention for the dead heads
they're going after tylenol because it's one of the only recommended painkillers pregnant women can take. they think a suffering mother displays virtue or something. idk. they're evil and hate women.
And you have to figure Trump is thinking of Baron and wanting to blame Melania, while it's his advanced paternal age that most likely caused Baron to be an autist. It's mostly genetic or genetic in the sense that older sperm has more mutations that cause it.
Stephen Miller is a zero charisma choke artist. I mean damn. It just fell so flat. 🤣 🤣
Happen more often?! Payne Stewart, Mel Carnahan and Paul Welstone
Bluesky gets an undeserved bad rap. Yeah, there are a bunch of cringe accounts but really it just feels like pre-Elon Twitter. The timeline is overwhelmingly just people posting normal stuff, sharing, liking, quoting. It's just og twitter. It was funny to see Adobe get run off the site though. That was new. It's funny to see Democrat politicians see Blueksky as this shitlib paradise only for them to post and then they have to delete their post because the replies are mainly people just saying "f**k you. Do your job
It feels like an extremely unfunny pre Elon twitter
Charlie’s body super strength theory is amazing. He’s been doing back pain commercials for how long? 5-10 years?
The theory that Israel did it does not depend on him having a sudden moral revelation about Palestine. It only needs that he is skeptical about Israeli narratives and faltering persuasiveness and that it’s untenable for him to hold their dumb line as hard as they want him to while he’s getting pinched by the extremely large and growing discontent with Israel from his base to stop being intentionally stupid buying every line of BS And the motive to kill him as opposed to cut funding doesn’t require Israel to see him as a threat, it only requires that they may have seen him as significantly more useful as a martyr than continuing to be one of their very most significant single interfaces for reaching the conservative youth. Coming from a person who doesn’t think Israel killed him But yes, the characterization yall make does reflect the theories online largely, but there’s much less retarded ways to think about the possibility than those people are posting about
Charlie failed to hold the dam, failed to show the will to double his efforts for all the extra cash, and they lose their last American youth support base more everyday. Maybe a “radical leftist” shooting him and giving maga the ability to generate a martyr to manufacture consent for political crackdowns is more useful than having him get BODIED in the campus tour over Israel. And knowing that he’d be forced to accommodate that Israel-exhausted/skeptical base more and more. There’s the outline, u can run with it in more ways too. Not as dumb as twitter theories but also no evidence for anything other than the strained relationship and his pinched position between his Zionist bank rollers and his Israel-disillusioned base, and the growing precariousness pf israels future
Everyone's talking about the jews but has everyone forgot about the REAL religious zealots at the heart of global finance, political assassination and war profiteering? (The Mormons)
What is the end song?
March to Heaven by The Fibonaccis
dead at the real id comment from Felix 🤣
My wife is not a big chapo head but that was a hit for her 🤣
Hailing back to Rome, like Rome didn't militarize The Rhine and Danube Rivers to keep all of these people's ancestors out of Roman Territory because they saw them as these inferior barbarians
Liz put it well the other night when she noted that Kirk wasn't just some pundit, he was the head of a well-funded national political organising network capable of supplying an entire electoral ground game for candidates of his choosing. So forget about his shooting - it's in the fight for control over TPUSA that you're going to see the real vicious bloodletting.
Liz is regularly on the money
Get yo’ Glimmery White Ass outta here!
“You’d think I was in the third chair in the hotel room the way this bull work” Lmaooooo
A Felix classic. But was it a reference to some post/social media moment I’m not familiar with, or just Felix channeling his OnlyFans girl persona into a funny orgy reference purely of his own creation
Yes it looks very grim. Funny though that they immediately stepped on the opportunity with the Kimmel firing, and now backtrack. If Maga had anything close to a real opposition, you could exploit those opportunities. But then if there was opposition trump would not be president.
lol
I have been having a fantastic time following a series of “rapture influencers” on Instagram for the last six weeks. The sum of their evidence is gathered from tik toks. Seeing typical influencer hype language come with numerology, tik toks, dreams from children, all built into like trend dances for the rapture and a love of Jesus really is peak 2025 American culture.. “like and subscribe guys and be ready for September 23 and 24!!”
Americans will do anything but acknowledge the real crises we face and the real reasons those crises have arisen.
And if young conservatives are convinced isr did CK in and the left knows isr is evil regardless. Maybe something good could come of that. Who knows, I have to hope something will give.
Charlie Kirk had a secret black baby
It’s about being able to gin up war with Iran.
does anyone else feel a sense of lowlevel dread that they could basically very well throw us in the camps for subscribing to the chapo patreon at this point lmao. It's felt like I've been hallucinating for two weeks
We’re all definitely on a list
lol re: Candace wanting to see the other camera view of the shooting — reminds me of Herzog’s Grizzly Man when he tells the ex-gf “you must destroy this tape”
“Charlie, go away! Go away!”
In Mike Huckabee's defense, have you met his wife Janet? She was my state's first lady for ten miserable years. She was by far the biggest abuser of the Governor's Mansion budget, and the Arkansas State Police escorts in our history. Janet was famous for treating regular people like crap, using her office to receive gifts. Her successor, Ginger Beebe, spent the first few months of her time counting the silverware, and making sure gifts to the Mansion hadn't mysteriously disappeared under the Huckabee's watch. So the comparison of Israel as a shitty wife is an apt one.
Obsessed with the idea that Huckabee is a wife guy for the worst woman on earth and thinks that's just what normal marriages are like.
Around 48:00 Love the all-flavors soda assassinators quip but does that ONLY apply to these? Guess Tom O’Neil full of shit then.
🚨 POINT OF FACT ☝️ 🤓 🚨 They call the bugs Fascists in Helldivers. The joke being that they're hivemind insects with no ideology, meanwhile "democratic" super earth is an obvious dogmatic fascist hellscape. I still think that connection is a little tenuous but we need to collectively get our story straight here.
baristas are the sin eaters 😂
"Charlie Kirk assassination" still sounds like part of a riff
Hold on, I thought these guys were anti-wake
The sensational production value of the “funeral” + Netanyahu speech did kind of cement the inside job conspiracies for me. Going full guy-outside-gas-station on this one boys
Yeah the whole thing is super sketchy.
The Stephen Miller speech was so distracting because he was coming on soo strong about Erika. Dude was auditioning to be the new stepdad with that speech. Blood and soil and also awoogah!! Amirite fellas?!
If Matt were on this episode I feel like he'd say something about how walking into a Starbucks and screaming until they write Charlie Kirk on your mocha is the modern, conservative version of anarchist church burnings in the Spanish Civil War.
I think he actually did say something about Starbucks being an accessible fantasy of social control. Like you pay for a coffe and you can make the barista say anything you tell them to.
we regret to inform you that ‘PEPE’S A DIFFERENT FROG!!!’ is the funniest thing anyone on this podcast has ever screamed into a microphone.
idk i remember a particular election night special where something very funny was screamed into the mic
A Time of Whatever, where the Strategy of Hypertension reigns.
The better explanation is not that Charlie cared about the dead babies, but rather he wanted benefactors with easier to sell causes to his audience of online college kids. If they already lost most normal liberals, AIPAC wants someone at TPUSA who’s really gonna lock in the GOP base of the future and keep em in the tent even after they notice the horrors & lies etc.
How many other parents recognising all of this but staying quiet? How many bizarre fights over why your kid is texting like their grandparents, playing that game… that way, and using memes wrong?
is spencer just their intern now?? is he always in studio?? it's not a problem, i like him, but this is two episodes where he just suddenly pops into the conversation
chris is on paternity leave so there's an open small speaking part
The seats have the actual power now, not so much the people on them. They are the demented flesh nodes inside capital circuitry and I think their sense of autonomy is mostly found in cultural rituals of extra violence and predation
💯
This is not conservative George Floyd or MLK This is conservative January 6th
Only this time we're all the shamans. Sitting cross-legged around a volcanoe holding hands as we watch Charlie die in the worst way possible. Was it the Gods? Is there an after place? Is everyone lying to me? O well sorry Charlie
Blowback ep better be this thursday or you'll have to bear with hurting a day laborer's heart
Pyrotechnics at a funeral is hilarious.
Cooler than anything he did while alive
Woke Gluten Free Cracker Barrel
I think Felix actually makes a good point about how Trump has been really weak and putting on a bad show lately. It makes me think maybe his theory that the human body is a battery is true, for him specifically. Since winning his second term, the white house has had a real "redneck who won the lottery" mindset running around doing all this heinous shit spending all their energy and political capital at once. I just really get this feeling that instead of it being four years of this, it's going to burn itself out in a matter of months and then we just get three years of Trump brandonization mumbling onstage about how his administration can't do anything without people yelling at them-- all while the American empire runs on autopilot. Even a fascist psychopath like Steven Miller will just become a reskinned Blinken who's whole job is to go up on stage and be the glassy eyed sin eater for the executive being asleep at the wheel.
As much as this shit is essentially on rails I am currently hoping he becomes too physically/mentally diminished to effectively install himself as emperor in 2027
Happy Blowback Week.
Felix begins speaking at 1 minute folks!
How is Erikkka only 36
Can't wait to listen to this one, I Will S on Chapo is always a treat (I also have to include an obligatory recommendation of his excellent QAnon book)
Okay, I live abroad and I'm out of touch. What is Felix referencing at the beginning with the "third chair" and "way this bull work" joke?
This is some kind of a cuckold lifestyle reference. The “bull” is who the “cuck” will watch banging his wife from the chair.
Will sommer back on the pod!
Fantastic ep title chris
our rightly-guided, blessed shahid charlie kirk
I cant wait to rap Lil Durk songs to CK's tombstone
Head down, x, pill, Percocet, off it
I'll be honest, the extremity of the mourning spectacle did briefly make me think "INSIDE JOB" Stranger things have happened, but I think the right was just ready to go with any public display they could spin
It’s gay sex time!!!
a 30-06 will reliably punch through a 1/2” steel plate at 100 yards
deflection by contoured "stealth" rifle plates explain everything, except why they won't just say so. whether it's true or not.
I’m not going to wish my opponents well. I want to see them suffer.
Eventually I wanna stop reading this fucker's name.
I was sucking up cope, day of, that we'd stop hearing about it within a week. Now I don't even know. A month? Trump's clearly not interested in playing out whatever tape the party is trying to.
Swag!
Some hot Will on Will action
triumph of the wills