Person Of Interest In Cust -- Never Mind!

I linked to several stories yesterday that gave breathless details on the "person of interest" that somehow dissipated almost as soon as they were released. The POI drove 17 hours from Wisconsin to Providence -- well, no, he lived in a DC apartment. He was in custody -- well, no, he was being detained. He may have had an extensive mental health history -- well, who knows, he's been released!

The person of interest detained earlier today in connection with the deadly shooting will be released shortly, Providence's mayor said at a news conference late tonight.

. . . Mayor Brett Smiley said, "The status of safety in our community remains unchanged, and we believe that you remain safe in our community."

Police initially said they were confident the person of interest was the person who opened fire in a first-floor classroom at Brown’s Barus & Holley building yesterday before fleeing.

In fact,

Charges could be filed against a person of interest in the shooting as early as the next few hours, Providence’s police chief, Col. Oscar Perez, told NBC News following a press conference this afternoon.

Perez said the investigation remains ongoing but that police are confident that the man in custody is the suspected gunman. He added he wanted to ensure that all legal requirements are met before charges are brought.

"We're going to work with the attorney general's office to make sure that we have the right legal requirements for the charges," Perez said. "And this is, it's just complex. There's a lot of evidence, there's a lot of witnesses, and so we have to make sure that we have it all tight. And to make sure we have a good case."

Pereze said police cannot hold the person of interest beyond tomorrow if charges are not filed. He said he is hoping an arraignment will take place "sooner rather than later."

The POI was rousted out of bed at the Hampton Inn around 3:45 AM Sunday morning.

Authorities traced Erickson to a hotel in Coventry, Rhode Island. According to the sources, law enforcement banged on the door, ordering him to open the door. Once inside, they asked where Erickson had been that day and evening. He responded he was there in the hotel the whole time.

Here's where things get puzzling for me, a true crime amateur. Even a mid-range hotel like Hampton Inn is going to have security features like cameras in the parking lot, hallways, and lobby and card-key room entry. This means that the law enforcement who rousted poor Erickson out of bed should have been able to confirm or disprove Erickson's alibi that he'd been there all Saturday within about 20 minutes by looking at the securiy footage and the card key activity. If he was in the hotel all day, it would be shown on the video and the card key record. Instead, it looks like they took him down to the station and held him until they had no choice but to release him. Via the first link,

Authorities will shortly release a person of interest who was detained earlier today because the evidence “now points in a different direction,” Rhode Island's attorney general said tonight.

Authorities did not originally specify what evidence they had to justify taking the person of interest into custody. Providence’s police chief, Col. Oscar Perez, had earlier told NBC News that police were confident the person was the shooter.

But Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha said at a news conference tonight, at which Perez was also preset, that there is no justification to keep the man detained.

"I think it's fair to say that there is no basis to consider him a person of interest, so that's why he's being released," Neronha told reporters.

So now they're back to square one:

Mayor Smiley is asking area residents and business owners to reach out to police with any footage that might have captured the subject in the Waterman Street video.

“If you have a camera and you are nearby, the video that was released was the corner of Hope and Waterman Streets, and if you are in that area and you have video, you have home video, Ring camera, security camera, you’re a small business owner, please reach out to us,” said Smiley.

Apparently, and incredibly, that one clip at the corner of Hope and Waterman Streets is all Prividence police, or Brown University, have:

Providence Police Chief Col. Oscar Perez carefully worded his answer while responding to a question from a reporter about whether there is additional video and why it hasn’t been released. “What we shared with you the other day is what we have that we could share,” he said. He then went on to say that he didn’t want to answer that there is “no more video” because detectives in the field might find more video, but then finished by saying, “What we gave you is what we have.”

In the 21st century, cameras are everywhere, except in Providence and at Brown. But I linked to a post just yesterday that said Brown had over 800 cameras on campus. Just none of the 800 pointed where they needed it. This is in sharp contrast to the video footage that was quickly available at Utah Valley College and nearby after the shooting of Charlie Kirk.

And this comes as college applicants for fall 2026 are finalizing their choices; application deadlines are next month. Clearly the issue of campus safety will be a factor if they choose to apply to Brown. If it were me, I'd apply to Penn or Cornell instead, or maybe lesser-ranked but still prestigious schools like Williams. Anyplace but Brown.

And this leaves aside the settlements that will inevitably be paid out to the shooting victims, both killed and wounded, and their families. I suspect poor Erickson may have cause for legal action himself. And that even leaves aside the potential damage to Brown's image when the real culprit is identified and he (almost certainly) doesn't turn out to be a white MAGA type from Wisconsin.

You casn see how badly they wanted to track the perp down right away, and how badly they wanted a white MAGA type. In fact, this is going to compound whatever embarrassment they would have had if the shooter had been caught right away but turned out to have been a jihadist. I think I see Brown President Christina Hull Paxson's retirement on the horizon.

FOOTNOTE: I asked Chrome AI mode, "Does Benjamin Erickson, the "person of interest" in the Brown shooting, have cause for legal action against Providence now that he's been released?" It answered,

Benjamin Erickson likely has grounds for legal action against authorities or specific news outlets for defamation or false light. Although he was detained as a "person of interest" following the December 13, 2025, shooting at Brown University, he was released after investigators determined he was not involved.

His name was leaked and widely publicized as a "suspect" or "person of interest" despite never being charged. Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha called the premature release of his name "really unfortunate" and noted the difficulty of reversing such public damage.

. . . If law enforcement lacked probable cause for his initial detention at a hotel in Coventry, RI, he could pursue a claim for false arrest or wrongful detention, though "person of interest" status often provides police with broader investigative leeway.

I suspect that failure of police to review security footage at the hotel that would have been exonerating could be a major issue.

There's Got To Be Something Deeply Embarrassing About The Brown University Shooting

Multiple shot in the area of Brown University. This is an active investigation. Please shelter in place or avoid the area until further notice.

— Providence Police (@ProvidenceRIPD) December 13, 2025

As I post this, it's about 10:30 AM on the East Coast. According to USA Today,

The shooting at the Ivy League University happened shortly before 4:05 p.m. on Saturday in an engineering building with unlocked doors as final exams were underway.

The 4:05 PM time is apparently an error; the Providence Police notification was at 2:33 PM. The teaching assistant who was in the lecture hall and survived the shooting provided more detail:

A Brown University instructor who was leading a final exam review has described the moment of horror that a masked gunman burst into his lecture hall and started shooting.

Joseph Oduro, a 21-year-old teaching assistant, told the New York Times that the gunman shouted “something” before opening fire, but he could not tell what.

Oduro was wrapping up a review session for Principles of Economics when they heard the shooter outside in the hall.

Within moments, a masked man with a rifle appeared in the doorway and opened fire.

Oduro said he and police are still trying to figure out what the attacker said during the shooting.

“That’s what the students and I — and the detectives — have been trying to piece together,” he said.

The poor TA could be in hot water; as a university employee, it sounds like he spoke to the media without going through Brown's press office, and they probably wouldn't have approved this. I hope things work out for him. However, as of yesterday evening, there wasn't even this much available.

🚨 BREAKING: Providence Police says they have NO VIDEO of the Brown University shooter inside the building

Nor do they know how he ENTERED the building, or where he went

HOW? pic.twitter.com/t6s5DRtVZ1

— Nick Sortor (@nicksortor) December 14, 2025

A post at Instapundit embeds an X post that I haven't been able to link, in which Brown's president isn't even able to tell what the program was in that classroom. We may infer that this posture is satisfactory to Brown's press office, At least a survivor was able to fill us in on that, though he may pay a price. TAs are expendable.

As of 7:00 AM East Coaat time, a "person of interest" was taken into custody:

Law enforcement says a person of interest connected to the deadly shooting at Brown University was captured at a hotel in Coventry on Sunday morning.

The Providence Police Department confirmed to NBC 10’s Mario Hilario that the person was apprehended at the Hampton Inn in Coventry.

. . . Authorities held a news conference around 7:00 a.m. to confirm that a person of interest was in custody.

The Ivies are major centers of influence for the plutocracy, and they are extremely protective of their image. The fact that so little has been released about the shootings despite the widespread use of surveillance and security technology on university campuses suggests information is being withheld that doesn't fit the received narrative -- a similar thing happened with Brian Cole Jr. I'll continue to follow the story and update this if more information becomes available.

UPDATE: Accoding to an X post that I can't embed, what the shooter yelled before he shot was, "Allahu Akbar!" Was he enrolled at Brown? Was he on a visa?

UPDATE:

Brown University. https://t.co/FfRl2zvJvK

— Stephen L. Miller (@redsteeze) December 14, 2025

UPDATE: Via the UK Daily Mail:

The man arrested in connection to the deadly shooting at Brown University drove from Wisconsin to Rhode Island with a laser-equipped firearm, according to law enforcement.

Aged in his 20s, the unidentified gunman killed two Ivy League students and injured several more before FBI agents snared him at the Hampton Inn hotel in Coventry.

Sources told CNN he drove from Wisconsin to Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island - a journey which would have taken around 17 hours.

. . . Police have yet to name the suspected shooter and his motive is unclear.

So they know where he lived, what car he drove, and what name he registered under at the motel, but they can't release any of this.

UPDATE: Via NBC News:

The man detained as a person of interest in the shooting is 24-year-old Benjamin Erickson, three senior law enforcement officials briefed on the investigation told NBC News.

Authorities are looking into what might be an extensive mental health history for Erickson, the sources said. A connection between Erickson and Brown University is also being investigated, they added.

Why would someone from Wisconsin want to drive 17 hours to a particular lecture hall at Brown University to do his shooting?

Trump Redirects Amtrak Executuve Bonuses To Union Workers

🚨 BREAKING: In an incredible Christmas surprise, the Trump administration is sending $900 BONUSES to 18,000 THOUSAND Amtrak workers...

...and the money is coming from CUTTING top executives' perks.

"It's budget neutral. We aren't spending more federal money or Amtrak money.… pic.twitter.com/tqsyYRPqKG

— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) December 12, 2025

Yesterday I said that both William F Buckley Jr and Edmund Burke are irrelevant with Trump as president. I was commenting on a piece by David Strom, a writer for Salem Media, who seems to be a nice enougfh kid who went to college and learned a little bit about Edmund Burke, although college doesn't seem to have taught him how to write. (Actually, I looked him up, and he has a master's from Duke in Poli Sci. He really ought to have had more intelligent things to say about Burke, and he should definitely be able to write better.)

Let's take a look at Edmund Burke (1729-1797). He's noted now primarily for Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790), which according to Wikipedia "asserted that the revolution was destroying the fabric of good society and traditional institutions of state and society". According to this piece in The American Conservative,

Though it may surprise people who have been taught that Edmund Burke is the father of modern conservatism, the Burkeans were, in fact, defeated by a rival group with a nearly diametrically opposed view. The leader of that group was William F. Buckley Jr., founder of National Review. When, in 1952, Buckley first articulated his philosophy in God and Man at Yale, he called it “individualism,” though the nearly absolute laissez-faire philosophy he advocated became better known as libertarianism.

How did Buckley prevail? He deftly co-opted [Russell] Kirk[, who had introduced Burke to a modern audience in The Conservative Mind,] by inviting him to write a regular column for National Review, something Kirk could not afford not to do after imprudently giving up his faculty position. Kirk abhorred the libertarian direction in which Buckley and colleagues were taking conservatism. Kirk later denounced libertarianism for revering “self-interest, closely joined to the nexus of cash payment” rather than Burke’s “community of souls.” He complained that libertarians take “the state for the great oppressor” although Burke taught that government “is a contrivance of human wisdom to provide for human wants.” Yet for the quarter-century that he wrote for the magazine, Kirk held his tongue.

Let's get a few things straight about Burke and the French Revolution. I asked Chrome AI mode, "Was the French Revolution a working-class revolution?" It answered,

The French Revolution was a bourgeois (middle-class) revolution, not a working-class one in the modern sense. The revolution was led by wealthy merchants, lawyers, and bankers who sought to dismantle the feudal system and its restrictions to advance their own economic and political interests.

The link at The American Conservative continues,

At the most fundamental level, Burke was a communitarian. It is institutions—governmental, professional, religious, educational, and otherwise—that compose the fabric of society. Each of these institutions has classes of people who devote their careers to preserving and improving them: jurists serve the law, scholars their disciplines and universities, clerics their church, and so on.

. . . Maybe Buckley’s was the necessary path in the 1950s. Conservatism then needed to differentiate itself starkly from the prevailing liberalism. Burkeanism would have made that difficult because, as Kirk often observed, Burke was both a conservative and a liberal.

This is the big problem with Burke: David Brooks was able to call Barack Obama a Burkean because, after all, the governmental consensus by 2008 had been liberal for generations. We had a tradition of things like abortion and DEI. Obama was the true conservative! And if you think about it, the French Revolution that Burke opposed nevertheless installed institutions and outlooks that have dominated Western thinking for two and a half centuries: the constitutional abolition of nobility, the disestablishment of religion, the rule of the upper bourgeoisie in the form of lawyers and industrialists.

Burke wouid now either have to agree that these dislocations are permanent and traditional, or he would have to revise his program completely. But this also points to the failure of the main project of bourgeois democracy, the attempt to temporize with the working class via Fabian socialism. The idea was to implement various forms of labor reform and social insurance, but paying for it via a tax stucture based on working income that left the fortunes of the wealthiest intact. Again, Burke would have to support this or revert to some form of romantic medievalism.

On the other hand, Buckley himself was hardly a consisent libertarian. He himself was a rentier and a product of Yale, an institution designed to educate successive generations nf the wealthy and, following the introduction of the income tax, to shelter the interests of the wealthy from that tax, as I've discussed here. This is not Howard Roark in The Fountainhead, a libertarian Bible. Buckley wanted to try smoking pot, a subversive innovation Burke would oppose, but he had a solution: he would sail his yacht outside the three-mile limit and smoke it in international waters:

Asked whether he had ever smoked marijuana himself, Mr. Buckley laughed and said: “Yes. It was on my boat, outside the three‐mile limit—I'm a law‐and‐ order advocate, you know. To tell the truth, marijuana didn't do a thing for me.”

I suppose we could call Buckley a limousine libertarian. He deftly avoided any question of how he obtained the marijuana, which must have been while he was ashore and subject to federal and state law regarding its sale and possession.

Which brings me to the issue of Trump diverting money for Amtrak executive bonuses -- let's recall that Amtrak is a perennial money loser that suffers from frequent episodes where passengers are left for hours on stalled trains without heat or air conditioning, and trains are consistently eight to ten hours late -- to unionized workers.

This is a fascinating turnaround, a Republican president diverting money from Amtrak executives, who are in fact amoung the corporate elite; in 2023, its CEO earned a total of $1.1 million, with a base of $400,000, having done essentially nothing to make the trains worth riding -- and instead awarding a $900 Christmas bonus to 18,000 unionized workers. Not even the French Revolution did this sort of thing.

This isn't really new; Nixon began the process of courting organized labor in the 1972 election. But by 2024, Trump was campaigning as an old-fashioned Democrat, serving fries at a McDonald's and riding in a garbage truck. But those were just visuals; this is a concrete instance of reducing payments to the upper bourgeoisie and redirecting them to the working class:

The U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) announced Thursday it has helped redirect "exorbitant" executive payouts at Amtrak — put in place under the Biden administration — into $900 bonuses for more than 18,000 frontline workers.

. . . "Due to the urging of the Trump administration, end-of-year bonuses will now go to 18,000 frontline workers rather than being limited to the executive ranks," Mark Wallace, president of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen, said in a statement.

"This long-overdue recognition of the employees who keep the railroad moving is a step in the right direction."

. . . The move follows the Trump administration’s push for Amtrak’s executive leadership team to forfeit half of the bonuses they would have received under what the DOT described as "misplaced priorities."

Trump's innovation is something I don't think either Buckley or Burke could conceive: an alliance of the traditional working class with the traditional lower bourgeoisie. The basis of the alliance is to preserve the prosperity they had gained via the industrial revolution that's currently threatened by elite policies intended to expand the privileges and numbers of the underclass.

Salem Media -- Why Bother?

For a couple of days, I've been vaguely wondering what all the feuding between Candace Owens and Erika Kirk, or Tucker Carlson's transformation into a Qatar apologist, are all about, and I haven't found much on alt media. Then I ran into David Strom's piece yesterday, The Bizarro World of MTG, Tucker, Candace, and the Woke Right, and I came off more confused then ever.

Strom writes for Hot Air, one of more than half a dozen opinion sites, commentator channels, and aggregators owned by Salem Media, which is a puzzling phenomenon itself. These include Red State, Instapundit, Townhall, PJ Media, Twitchy, Bearing Arms, Hugh Hewitt, Dennis Prager, and others. The feature they have in common is a certain level of unseriousness: the Instapundit regulars will link to policy think pieces on occasion, but then they'll go back to pitching the latest alternate history and science fiction fluff written by their cronies or reminiscing on the greatness of Robert A Heinlein.

They also link primarily to other Salem sites and writers; if you scroll through a few dozen Instapundit posts, you don't need to visit PJ Media, Hot Air, or Red State separately. This makes me wonder why they have all these different outlets -- what's the overhead of having all these separate servers, webmasters, editors, and such? And it's all so mediocre.

Take the David Strom link. It follows the Salem formula; you start any essay on any subject talking about yourself:

It took me months to understand the whole concept of "woke right," and, to be honest, I still dislike the description because it takes so long to grasp.

While I basically agree with James Lindsey's arguments, it's a branding fail. Memes should be intuitive, IMHO.

Wait a moment. Who the heck is James Lindsey, and what are his arguments? He doesn't say; he doesn't give a link. And then he goes to what must be at the top of the Salem Media style sheet: use lots of acronyms, IMHO, LMAO, ICYMI, OMG, whetever you can throw in. It gives your writing punch and pizazz! But then he gets down to the nitty-gritty, the furrowing of the brow:

So what IS the woke right, and why would I put Tucker Carlson, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Candace Owens, Nick Fuentes, and Andrew Tate in that category, along with others?

"Woke" is not so much an ideology in itself, although it is easy to think so since it has been so long associated with leftism and Cultural Marxism. Woke is, instead, a type of thinking that draws on Critical Theory, using the redefinition of words and concepts that appeal to people (compassion, science, patriotism, kindness, or whatever floats your boat) and redefining them in ways that weaponize them against the prevailing culture, or the cultural group at which your assault is aimed.

Woke, in other words, is weaponized memes. (A meme is a spreadable idea, not just a funny photo with an edge.)

I see. Woke people use memes, or something like that. So I went looking for conservative memes on the web, and I came up with a few like Pepe the Frog -- but that's not what Strom means by a meme, that's just a funny image with an edge. What are some conservative spreadable ideas? My search came up with a list of seven from Speaker Mike Johnson: Individual Freedom, Limited Government, The Rule of Law, Peace through Strength, Fiscal Responsibility, Free Markets, and Human Dignity. Aren't those spreadable ideas?

Apparwently Strom doesn't think so. He seems to think people like Tucker and Candace are distinguished by using memes. So I asked Chrome AI mode, "What memes are associated with Tucker Carlson?" It answered,

Memes associated with Tucker Carlson often center on his on-air expressions, specific controversial segments, his firing from Fox News, and recent interviews.

It went on to list examples including The "Tucker Frown/Confused Face" and the "Elmo Laugh", but these are visual or auditory images with an edge, not spreadable ideas like the rule of law. So if Strom thinks Tucker Carlson is woke because he uses memes, I'm having a hard time figuring out what spreadable ideas he's come up with. Tucker Carlson is an image, a preppy schtick and little else; he's in his 50s, which is getting on for a preppie, and he reached his sell-by date at Fox.

So I asked Chrome AI mode, "What memes are associated with Candace Owens?" It answered,

Candace Owens is primarily associated with memes related to the "Blexit" movement and her former affiliation with Turning Point USA. The "Blexit" term, a portmanteau of "black" and "exit," was co-opted by her for a campaign urging African Americans to leave the Democratic Party.

However, neither of these is current; she was Communications Director for Turning Point USA from 2017 to 2019; she formed the Blexit movement in 2018. Right now, all she's doing is feuding with Erika Kirk:

Erika Kirk was slammed by Candace Owens over comments she made about privacy and keeping her late husband's burial site secret despite posting footage of his body and casket online.

Owens, who has been critical of the mother of two in recent weeks, claimed that the TPUSA CEO had the "Meghan Markle Syndrome," a remark that appeared to suggest Erika wanted privacy yet also sought publicity whenever she chose.

Is "Meghan Markle Syndrome" a meme? It's probably more an image with an edge, not what Strom would call a "spreadable idea" redefined against the prevailing culture. But Strom plods on:

What makes Tucker Carlson and many others the "woke right" is their weaponization of the very term "conservative."

When Americans speak of "conservatism," we generally mean Classical Liberalism, although some conservatives have added a Burkean element that is in tension with Classical Liberalism but is mostly compatible. Perhaps someday I will write about the Venn Diagram and where they overlap and where they don't, but for the moment, give me this: "conservatives" believe that rights and moral worth inhere in individuals and that liberty is an essential value. Burkeans would add that societies must develop traditions as well as legal structures to realize a society that we would recognize as "Liberal."

Here he wanders into one of my favorite logical fallacies, hypostatization, treating an abstraction as something that has concrete existence. He picks up "conservatism" and links it to "classical liberalism" and even a "Burkean element", none of which he defines, but they're in tension, though mostly compatible. Sounds like a good counselor could help them work things out, huh? He's off in cloud cuckoo land. But he comes to a breakthrough>

I would argue that Tucker, Candace, the current version of MTG that Beege wrote about earlier today, and most certainly Andrew Tate and Nick Fuentes have adopted identities that appeal to the idea of "conservative," but which in fact are not in the least conservative.

How is any of them conservative as of late 2025? Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens are fading celebrities desperate to maintain audiences. Carlson in particular has an expensive lifestyle, and it's hard not to think Qatar is helping to subsidize it. Is there any need to multiply entities by bringing conservatism into it? We can talk about Buckley and Burke, but Trump is president, and he's made both Buckley and Burke irrelevant.

By the way, I asked Chrome AI mode about Salem Media's financial performance. Via a link,

Total third-quarter revenue declined 13% on a year-over-year basis to $51.3 million at Salem, reflecting lower broadcast and publishing income following the sale of the company’s Contemporary Christian music stations. But a deeper review of the results reveals bright spots.

Net broadcast revenue decreased 11.6% to $40.7 million, in part due to a $5.9 million impact from station sales. But on a same-station basis, Salem says net broadcast revenue increased by 1.5% in Q3 to $40.2 million. The company says both local station and Salem Radio Network spot advertising revenue declined, in part since the company saw political revenue decline 12% vs. a year ago. But it was made up in part through a $2.1 million increase in broadcast digital sales.

Seems like they could cut costs by consolidating all those websites publishing worthless material. How much do they pay David Strom? I keep thinking about a long e-mail to Salem's CEO.

Cole's Arrest Doesn't Answer All Tne Pipe Bomb Questions

There are actually two sets of questions that remain about the January 5-6, 2021 pipe bombs that didn't explode outside the Democrat and Republican National Committee headquarters. One set, which I currently discount, is from diehards who variously still think the figure in mask and hoodie on surveillance footage is a woman, or who think that even if Brian Cole Jr made and set the bombs, he's only the visible part of a bigger deep state conspiracy.

The other set of questions comes mostly from Julie Kelly, whom we should credit for being initially skeptical that the figure in mask and hoodie was a former Capitol Police officer. She has raised questions about the whole current narrative that the bombs were set on the evening of January 5 by the figure in mask and hoodie, whoever that may be, Brian Cole Jr or someone else, although any actual evidence in the case released so far points strongly to Cole and January 5.

Kelly has paid a great deal of attention to Karlin Younger, a Capitol Hill resident who by Younger's account discovered one of the pipe bombs while walking through an alley near the Republican National Committee about 12:40 PM on January 6. However, she's found many inconsistencies in Younger's story. Her claim as of early 2021 waas that on January 6, she was working from her apartment and took a break at noon to do her laundry, taking a route through the alley. She made a first trip to the laundromat at that time but apparently didn't see a bomb. (This is shown in the photo above.)

However, on a second trip to put the laundry load into the dryer at about 12:40, she did discover the bomb. Surveillance footage confirms that she ran to the entry of the Capitol Hill Club to report what she'd found. However, although she reported the bomb at the time, she apparently wasn't asked to identify herself, and it wasn't until January 8 that she contacted the FBI tip line to say she was the one who found the bomb. In this online tip, according to Julie Kelly at the link,

Younger claimed she was “passed by a woman in front of the Capitol Hill Club who stared at me suspiciously, in such a way that now makes me think maybe she had some knowledge of what was in the alleyway.” She then described the woman in detail: “From what I remember, she was Caucasian, middle-aged (45-55?), of shorter stature (5’4”-5’6”?), heavier set (180-220lbs?), with long dark hair and without a mask. She was wearing a dark or black jacket and jeans.”

She repeated this story, with some differences, in an in-person interview with the FBI on January 11. However, at the link,

Surveillance video, however, contradicts her allegations about a “suspicious” woman. At no point—whether walking to or from the alley—did Younger pass anyone matching either description she provided in her written tip on Jan. 8 or her interview on Jan. 11.

The version Younger gave the FBI slso contradicts the timeline established by the January 5 surveillance video of the figure in the mask and hoodie that's been repeated by the FBI for the past five years:

Younger also appears to be the only individual with direct knowledge of events who disputes the FBI’s timeline as to when the RNC device was planted. “I can confirm that the device must have been placed between 12 p.m. and 12:40 p.m. It was not present when I went down to the area to start laundry (~12 p.m.),” she wrote in her online tip.

. . . After all, the only person known to have been in that specific area between noon and 12:40 p.m. was—Karlin Younger.

In fact, it's remarkable that the FBI seems to have done so little followup on the information Younger provided. Despite several inconsistencies in her account, there are still questions that lend Younger's version some weight, which Julie Kelly raised in a Substack this past Tuesday, taken from a longer list:

(6) How did multiple police officers from the Capitol Police, D.C. Metropolitan Police, and U.S. Secret Service miss the device sitting in (almost) plain sight next to the driveway of the DNC?

(7) How did two bomb-sniffing canine units miss the device?

(8) Why did Kamala Harris travel to the DNC in the late morning on Jan. 6? Why has she rarely addressed her near-death experience on Jan. 6 at the hands of an alleged MAGA bomber?

(9) Why was a security camera apparently intentionally diverted away from the location where the device was eventually discovered?

(10) Why did a representative of FirstNet, which employed Karlin Younger on Jan. 6, tell the FBI in a Jan. 20, 2021 email that cell phone data for Jan. 5 “was corrupted and cannot be restored,” which appears to be false [since the FBI was in fact able to obtain it in investigating Cole]?

Julie Kelly also doesn't go into how or when the bomb outside the DNC headquarters was discovered, since Younger discovered only the one outside the RNC. This episode is discussed in Rep Thomas Massie's questioning of Steven D'Antuono in his June 7, 2023 testimony to the House Judiciary Committee. D'Antuono as of January 6, 2021 was in charge of the FBI's Washington Field Office and led the FBI's January 6 investigation, but had since left the FBI:

Mr. Massie. Because I think it's remarkable it [the DNC bomb] was discovered within minutes of the other bomb being discovered. And my staff and I found video, and I don't know if you're aware of it, that seems to indicate that a passerby in a black hoodie --

Mr. D'Antuono. Oh, okay.

Mr. Massie. -- discovered that. Remarkably coincidental time. Walked up to a Metro police car, told the Metro police, who seems to have directed that individual in the video that I've seen to a detailee of the Vice President's car, another SUV, and within minutes, they get out of their SUV, find -- the officials now see the bomb. And then incoming Vice President Kamala Harris is evacuated. This all happens within minutes.

Mr. D'Antuono. Okay.

Mr. Massie. But the individual in a hoodie going up to two police cars after he's passed by that bench, did your investigation review this video?

Mr. D'Antuono. I'm not aware of the video you're talking about, sir. I'm not.

Mr. Massie. If you had seen that video, would you be interested in speaking to that person -- Mr. D'Antuono. Absolutely.

Mr. Massie. -- who seems to have discovered that second bomb?

Mr. D'Antuono. In any investigation, whoever discovers the device is somebody you need to talk to, right, because they could be the one that planted the device in the first place. You know, so that's just investigation 101.

D'Antuono seems remarkably unaware of basic details in his office's investigation, and in fact, he's remarkably unperturbed at his lack of awareness -- gee, my agents didn't do basic stuff. Think of that! This seems to give just a glimpse into what the FBI missed, either inadvertently due to incompetence, or deliberately,

How all this was missed is just the start of the questions that aren't being asked. Another, for instance, is exactly why did neither bomb detonate? We've heard almost nothing specific about this. Was it deliberate, or just Cole's incompetence?

Is Brian Cole Jr A Patsy?

David Freiheit, who posts as Viva Frei on his YouTube channel, says he thinks Brian Cole Jr is a patsy. He defines "patsy" beginning at 0:18:

Patsies could be absolutely innocent, set up to take the fall for a crime, which I am less inclined to believe right now, or patsies can be the useful tools who either didn't know they were being manipulated for the purpose of commission of a crime, or sort of knew, but sort of got played a little too hard. . . . I believe he's more along the lines of . . . he was used to potentially prepare the bombs, potentially hand them off to somebody for the purposes of placement, and he was always going to be the fall guy if anybody ever got too close to identifying the actual suspect.

He goes on to outline his theory of the FBI: they weren't "incompetent" at leaving the Brian Cole Jr lead on the shelf for nearly five years; this was always going to be the backup plan in case someone got too close to fingering the actual culprit, who in his view continues to be Ms C, the former Capitol Police officer. He talks at length about Cole's on line activity as a "brony", an adult male fan of the My Little Pony animated character. He minimizes the sexual aspect of "bronyism" and stresses that Cole, by his grandmother's account autistic, obsessed with My Litle Pony due only to that, nothing else to see here.

He then goes on to outline a theory that Cole was recruited and groomed by FBI actors via the bronies into building and placing the bombs to create some type of terrorist episode during the congressional cerification of the electoral votes on January 6, which could somehow be blamed on Trump and MAGA, except that on one hand, the bombs didn't detonate, and on the other, there was the Capitol incursion, so they didn't need the bombs anyhow.

He seems to be among those, like Sundance at Conservative Treehouse, who think there are master manipulators within the deep state who control Bondi, Patel, and Bongino, and who've steered them away from the real perp -- apparently Ms C, the former Capitol Police officer -- and gotten them to fixate on Cole, the patsy. No matter there are receipts, cell phone data, and Cole's own apparent confession that tie him to the bombs, Cole is just a patsy, and someone else made him do this for their nefarious get-Trump purposes.

Viva Frei's theory goes so far as to suggest that the FBI recruited him via brony chat sites as early as 2017, and they had him actively building bombs as early as 2019, when nobody could have foreseen the events that led up to January 6, 2021. Apparently the FBI decided to create a patsy just in case they might need a patsy for something one day. It turns out that Megyn Kelly doesn't share Viva Frei's view that My Little Pony is just an innocent autistic thing:

'I'm sorry, this is the thing,' she began. 'So my dear friend took her daughters, when they were young, to a My Little Pony convention - it was coming to town at a hotel… not understanding it's actually for pervy men.

'These conventions are not for little girls,' the former Fox News host then declared.

'They are for pervy men, many of whom are connected to the furry community, who will show up there. It's a very bizarre situation.'

. . . 'There's something very off about those people, I think we can all agree,' Kelly concluded.

'And I think that this guy's interest in the community will come as a surprise to approximately no one.'

I'm inclined to go with Megyn Kelly's view that bronies are a subkink of furries, and we've encountered furries elsewhere in the whole violent "resistance" movement, including the ones who show up at anti-ICE demonstrations, as well as Tyler Robinson's furry partner, Lance Twiggs. As she puts it, there's something very off about these people.

There's another problem with either Brian Cole Jr or Ms C: neither appears to have sufficient motive for building and planting the bombs. Although Viva Frei hints darkly that the FBI secured Coles's confession after a four-hour interrogation, that confession appears to be backed up with cell phone, license plate, and credit card evidence. While other leads from "gait analysis" to Metro cards led to Ms C and her then-next door neighbor, there's no equivalent evidence tying her to building the bombs, and it's hard to imagine that she'd be anything but a patsy herself, so you'd still have to find another big shadowy conspiracy to explain her involvement.

There's another problem: whoever wandered around Capitol Hill for an hour in hoodie and mask before planting the bombs the evening of January 5 was clearly disorganized. He or she would walk a bit, sit on a bench, and walk some more. Whatever the purpose was, it was hard to discern, and it clearly wasn't intended to avoid showing up on surveillance cameras. A serious conspirator, even if a patsy, would dress to blend in, avoid cameras, plant the bombs quickly, and as quickly get out. This is beyond patsy, especially of the sort Viva Frei postulates, someone who was manipulated into building a bomb and placing it as part of a larger, highly professional conspiracy.

We're back to the Lee Harvey Oswald problem, which is a variant of the Groucho Marx problem: "I refuse to join any club that would have me as a member." No real conspiracy would recruit anybody as flaky and disorganized as either Lee Harvey Oswald, Brian Cole Jr or Ms C, but that leaves out the related problem that Brian Cole Jr is alleged to have spent two years or so building the bombs, but neither one worked. What sort of conspiracy would recruit someone so incompetent? Wouldn't a serious conspirator at least test the timing mechanism, even if it didn't activate the bomb?

Marinus van der Lubbe, the Dutch guy who allegedly set the Reichstag fire, was probably a patsy and may or may not have been mentally troubled, but at least he (or his surrogate) was able actually to start the fire. If either Brian Cole Jr or Ms C built the bombs, they didn't get as far as even Marinus van der Lubbe. Whatever mastermind recruited the pipe bomb patsy had to have been pretty imcompetent himself. What does this say about how effective this whole conspiracy could have been?

Trump Approval Jumps 5%

According to Just the News,

President Donald Trump's approval rating is on the upswing, with his net approval rising 5 points over the past month in a recent survey.

Trump's approval rating stood at 47% in the December Harvard/Harris survey, up 3 points from the November figures. His disapproval, meanwhile, dropped 2 points, from 51% to 49%.

Though still underwater, Trump appears to have rebounded from the November low of 44% approval and 51% disapproval in that survey.

On one hand, I've been pointing out that all the polls in recent months have been wildly outside the margin of error, although also counterintuitive, so it's reckless to see any sort of trend here. But let's look at what's intuitive about this result.

The big story in the weeks before this poll was taken was the drug boat "double tap" war crime, the big Nuremberg option. This never quite got traction, and it's out of the headlines. As of yesterday, the Real Clear Politics polling average had Trump's approval at 43.5% vs Obama's 41.3% and Dubya's 41.6% at the same point in their second terms. So Trump is actually doing surprisingly well.

And if in fact his approval has increased over the past month, why would this be? I think it's the same factor we saw on 2023-24, when each new indictment and each new trial simply put Trump's name in the news and drove his popularity upward, irrespective of the allegations against him.

Let's also consider some of Trump's most highly controversial remarks, given apparently just before the Harvard-Harris poll.

President Donald Trump on Tuesday [December 2] ripped Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., as “garbage” and said Somalis should “go back to where they came from,” in disparaging remarks that have been strongly criticized by local leaders in Minnesota.

“I don’t want them in our country. I’ll be honest with you, OK. Somebody will say, ‘Oh, that’s not politically correct.’ I don’t care. I don’t want them in our country. Their country is no good for a reason," said Trump, who has a history of disparaging African people and migrant communities.

This sort of thing simply isn't hurting him, and it may even be helping him, although nobody is going to acknowledge this to a pollster. Let's also note that before she announced her resignation, Rep Marjorie Taylor Greene was being pitched, at least by NPR, as the real leader of the Republican Party:

Since Trump returned to office in January, there have been several moments in the background — and sometimes foreground — where some on the right say the president hasn't delivered on domestic priorities that "Make America Great Again" like he promised on the campaign trail.

For almost every instance, Greene has been there to articulate the disconnect.

When the U.S. bombed Iranian nuclear sites in June, Greene was among those who questioned how that fit with Trump's promise to end wars.

. . . As some Republicans expressed concern over humanitarian conditions caused by Israel's war in Gaza, Greene called Israel's actions "genocide" on social media.

. . . Then there's Republican unease with things like mass deportations and tariffs, restricting tech visas and redistricting, as different pockets of the party's big tent object to key pieces of Trump's second-term agenda.

But somehow, the upshot was that Greene announced her resignation from Congress, while Trump's approval has gone up. Still, the conventional wisdom is that the Republicans are going to lose the House next year. I've never bought into this, and it looks like his chief of staff, Susie Wiles, also has other plans:

During an interview on The Mom View, Wiles spoke about the 2026 celebration of the 250th anniversary of the United States, the 2026 Winter Olympics, and the FIFA World Cup. Wiles also referenced how, instead of focusing on localizing the midterm elections, the Trump administration would turn that approach “on its head.”

. . . Wiles went on to explain that “in the midterms, it’s not about who’s sitting at the White House,” but about localizing the election and keeping “the federal officials out of it.”

“We’re actually going to turn that on its head,” Wiles shared. “And, put him on the ballot because so many of those low propensity voters are Trump voters. And, we saw, a week ago Tuesday, what happens when he’s not on the ballot and not active. So, I haven’t quite broken it to him yet, but he’s going to campaign like it’s 2024 again.”

The fact is that Trump and his cabinet are delivering on their campaign promises, and that includes deporting illegal migrants. It isn't going to hurt him if he keeps reminding voters of that.