#ryan fournier

Daniel Villarreal (he/him) at LGBTQ Nation:

Washington D.C. police arrested Ryan Fournier, co-founder of Students for Trump and Turning Point Action (the PAC for the young conservatives group Turning Point USA), early Tuesday morning for allegedly assaulting and threatening to kill a woman he was dating. The woman told police that, while visiting Fournier, she found him passed out on the floor. When she woke him, he “started swinging his fists at her and struck her in the face with a closed fist two or three times,” according to a police affidavit obtained by Defector. She then said he got on top of her, had a knife at his side (though he didn’t brandish it), and said, “I’ll kill everyone here.” The woman claimed he regularly says things like that.

😂

Listening to this Young man talk about Thugs

https://twitter.com/RyanAFournier/status/1267920829389602818?s=20

Bryan Tyler Cohen (01.19.2025):

If you use TikTok, you’ll know that the app shut down last night. By this afternoon, if curiosity, rage, or nostalgia compelled you to re-open the app, you would have received a pop-up notification that read:

How miraculous. Trump swooped in as the white knight to save TikTok. Of course, this would carry a bit more significance if the whole debacle surrounding whether or not to ban TikTok hadn’t been started by…Donald Trump. Yes, the very same white knight. Seems unlikely? I encourage you to marvel at this montage of Trump repeatedly bragging about banning TikTok. In 2020, Trump signed an executive order effectively banning the app in the US. Any transactions between TikTok's parent company, ByteDance, and U.S. citizens were outlawed for national security reasons. In other words, we’ve landed here because Trump was the pilot. When TikTok posts issuing groveling praise for Trump’s leadership or presenting him as some savior, what’s conspicuously absent is a large disclaimer at the bottom, informing consumers that Trump was indeed the source behind the ban. Of course, no one in the media or at TikTok wants to acknowledge that reality, because part of the whole deal with bending the knee is agreeing to abandon, or at least ignore, your own principles in order to adopt whatever fabricated reality the Godking wants you to endorse. Just as Zuckerberg, Bezos, and Elon did, Shou Zi Chew (TikTok’s CEO) is offering Trump the effusive praise he expects. Make no mistake, he is fully on board the circus train. In fact, Shou will attend tonight’s Make America Great Again Victory Rally. Which is a solid reminder that we need to prepare ourselves for the following transaction, on repeat: Do Trump’s bidding; collect special treatment (until, of course, you become dispensable to him, at which point he won’t care if you go to jail, are sent to the gallows, etc. The entire big tech oligarchy got the memo; Shou and TikTok are just following suit. If you want to play in Trump’s America, you have to make a big show of your fealty, then sign on to perpetuate the gaslighting. That’s what happened today, and it’s what will continue happening, unchecked.

[...] What makes this whole sham sabotage even worse is that President Biden actually came out and said that he wouldn’t enforce the TikTok ban. And yet still, TikTok executed its whole big performative shutdown and went dark, only to bring the app back within 24 hours, branded with some effusive pro-Trump praise. Just another public spectacle of bending the knee. This whole thing—the disruption to service, the notices, the drama—was all just a calculated move executed for an audience of one: Donald Trump. That doesn’t mean that Democrats are off the hook here. Being so oblivious to the consequences of this very predictable play is not necessarily tantamount to being complicit, but we’re not going to get through the next four years without being a bit more savvy and prepared to call out these scams. 170 million Americans are on TikTok. It is monumentally popular, with many relying on it for their livelihoods and their source for news. Dems should have foreseen that voting to ban TikTok would be met with fierce resistance. And yes, they did it with the help of Republicans, and the vote was 50-0, but Biden signed the bill into law. Which meant that they handed Trump a perfect opportunity to swoop in and reverse the damage that HE had caused because as we all should know very well at this point, Trump is only in it for Trump and for receiving credit. How could anybody be surprised that that is precisely what happened here? Democrats need to understand the media environment and understand that it’s not enough to say “trust us,” because frankly, very few people trust the government. If you’re not going to factor this reality into account, then you can’t be surprised when you’re forced to contend with the consequences of it.

Anna Merlan, Julianne McShane, and Kiera Butler at Mother Jones:

Wednesday’s fatal shooting of conservative influencer Charlie Kirk was greeted with widespread grief, horror, and shock by many MAGA and right-wing figures, some of whom counted Kirk as a friend or cited him as an inspiration for their own work. But while many simply expressed their grief for Kirk and his family, and politicians on both sides of the aisle condemned the killing, some public figures used the moment to make incendiary claims.  On Wednesday evening, FBI Director Kash Patel announced on X that “[t]he subject for the horrific shooting today that took the life of Charlie Kirk is now in custody.” (By that point, far-fetched conspiracy theories about Kirk’s death were already emerging, including claims that Kirk was assassinated by the Israeli government.) But Patel subsequently posted that the person in custody had “been released after an interrogation by law enforcement.” This did not stop some figures from stoking outrage, particularly against “the left,” whom—despite lacking any evidence as to the shooter’s identity and motive—they blamed for the killing. Former DOGE head and Tesla CEO Elon Musk posted to his 225 million followers, “The Left is the party of murder.”

Conservative activist and Trump confidant Laura Loomer sent a barrage of posts to her 1.7 million followers. In one, she called for the Trump administration to “shut down, defund, & prosecute every single Leftist organization,” adding, “The Left is a national security threat.” After Kirk’s death was confirmed, she wrote: “They sent a trained sniper to assassinate Charlie Kirk while he was sitting next to a table of hats that said 47.” It is unclear which “they” she was referring to.  “More people will be murdered if the Left isn’t crushed with the power of the state,” Loomer added. Former White House staffer and current podcast host Katie Miller, wife of White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, wrote on X that liberals “have blood on your hands.” And Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) went so far as to blame the killing on the Democrats.

Sean Davis, the CEO and co-founder of the Federalist, an influential conservative publication, posted on X: “I hope that Trump also orders the extermination of the entire anarcho-terrorist network that has been terrorizing Christians in this nation unabated for more than a decade.” In a separate post, Davis wrote, “When Democrats lose elections they couldn’t steal, they murder the people they were unable to defeat.” 

[...] Others blamed Kirk’s killing on an unnamed group of opponents. On Fox News, host Jesse Watters claimed: “Whether we want to accept it or not, they are at war with us. And what are we going to do about it? How much political violence are we going to tolerate?” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) wrote, “They just shot Charlie Kirk.” (It was unclear whom Watters and Greene were referring to.)  [...]

Andrew Tate, the British-American masculinity influencer turned far-right culture warrior, kept his message simple: “Civil war,” he wrote. Anti-abortion activist and president of Students for Life Kristan Hawkins also invoked civil war and seemed to imply that Kirk’s killing was a result of his opposition to abortion. “We all know the work we do to protect Life comes at a cost,” Hawkins said. In another X post, she wrote: “This is a new civil war. One that we must fight with love to restore a Culture of Life.” Chaya Raichik, the creator of the far-right Libs of TikTok Twitter account, quickly began sharing posts that were meant to show left-wing and progressive people, including many who aren’t public figures, celebrating Kirk’s killing. In her own post on X, she wrote: “THIS IS WAR.” 

The right-wing media pundit class is reacting to the killing of far-right TPUSA founder Charlie Kirk as you would expect: retribution and vengeance against the left, even though both the identity and the motive of the shooter hasn’t been released.

See Also: