Thread by @MatthewBoedy

Up now and prominently displayed is a new Charlie Kirk ⁦@HumanEvents⁩ piece dripping with conspiracy hints. But as usual Kirk only asks (loaded) questions about Covid death rates 1/x humanevents.com/2022/01/21/why…

Kirk’s long used rhetorical strategy appears here: find some news boy and turn it into right-wing talking point. The news here: Indiana insurance giant talking deaths during Covid, originally appeared in @thecentersquare 3 weeks ago: 2/x thecentersquare.com/indiana/indian…

*news bit not boy. @dailykos picked it up a few days later and offered a left wing opinion: There are large areas of the United States under Republican control where COVID-19 deaths and COVID-19-related deaths are openly undercounted. 3/x dailykos.com/story/2022/1/5…

But to Kirk that can’t possibly be true.. because.. he doesn’t like it: “It seems a stretch to think that people age 18-64 are dying at extraordinary rates and we are somehow missing that the deaths are from the CCV.” 4/x

Kirk’s “reasonable” inference: “If these deaths were from” Covid, government and healthcare industry “would be eager to report them as such.” This is why we can’t have nice things like “reasonable” or “common sense.” Consider the “reasoning” that got Kirk to his claim 5/x

A government and industry “eager” to report more deaths of its citizens/customers. Cynical and sad but conspiracy makes Kirk and his followers exactly that. Also both eager to have more death to get more $. Kirk the grifter peddling fear has no mirrors in his house 6/x

And so we come to Kirk’s loaded question: “Not to sound like a conspiracy theorist, but perhaps there might be something else at work in killing the great workers of America?” Lots going in here. 7/x

Kirk doesn’t “want” to be a conspiracy theorist but he just implied a massive one in govt and industry eager for death and $. And why doesn’t he embrace conspiracy label directly? Because he is “reasonable” and the left/rest of us are intolerant, stupid, tyrannical, etc. 8/x

I can’t tell how well this plays in Peoria for those who follow him. To be called reasonable by a thought leader, to be given thoughts of conspiracy while saying the other side is “clearly” conspiratorial - this is how cults work. 9/x

And a conspiracy has some facts. Let us fact check Kirk on New Hampshire and Tennessee… give me a few minutes to track down the claim 10/x

It seems Kirk may be referring to a CDC website about excess death by state linked to the Guardian story he linked to: 11/x cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr…

The "percent of expected deaths" was 98% (close to 100) in New Hampshire for Jan 15, 2022. 12/x

Tennessee has 61 though not an increase 13/x

Kirk may be referring to the dashboard that shows 60%+ in September 14/x

All this to say, Kirk doesn't provide links and the geographical difference can be explained by vaccine rates. Tennessee fully vaxxed 52.5, NH 68.5. Also population, demos, etc. Kirk elides all this: "I don’t know what explains the variations.. neither does anybody else..." 15/x

Finally, Kirk creates a conspiracy and offers some "insider knowledge" to his readers - cult tactics: "What frightens me and should frighten every American is that nobody in media, government, or healthcare seems to care enough to figure out why this anomaly is occurring."

There is no anomaly. There is no ignoring it by media/etc. Kirk creates an issue, angers his readers by saying it's being ignored, and then suggests he understands it all. He is learning to be Rush. /end

PS I added this to my collection of threads on Charlie Kirk medium.com/@mboedy/twitte…

Hey @threadreaderapp please unroll