On one hand, it’s a testament to scientific progress and modern-day medicine that a 71-year-old man would drop dead, and everyone’s initial reaction is, “Wow, that’s really suspicious.”
But on the other hand, it really is suspicious. We don’t expect men in their early 70s — especially those with access to elite medical care — to drop dead like that.
It’s no longer our cultural norm. Far from it!
Today, there’s a routine to death: You feel lousy and go to the doctor. He diagnoses you with something terrible. (If you’re famous, maybe you make a public statement.) You take your treatment, get all skinny (or bloated), and people comment on your lousy appearance.
But it’s not something that happens immediately!
Only after a long series of ups, downs, recoveries, and remissions do you succumb to the inevitable. That’s today’s cultural expectation.
And whenever our expectations are thwarted, conspiracies are born.
For better or worse, human beings are carbon-based pattern-recognition machines. It’s how our brains work. We’re intellectually hardwired to recognize patterns in the chaos.
Then we exploit these patterns for our own betterment. It’s how we’ve gone from caves to condos, from feudalism to Facebook, from metallurgy to the moon.
Pattern recognition is humanity’s secret sauce. We owe everything to it.
Somewhere along the way, someone figured out that seeds plus dirt plus sun plus water equals food. This was a very specific pattern. And through trial and error (and error and error), we kept standing on the shoulders of generational geniuses until we recognized patterns in every corner of the cosmos — from the subatomic to supermassive stars.
We’re hardwired to recognize patterns because it’s key to our survival. Our civilization literally depends upon it. Humans who couldn’t detect patterns didn’t live long enough to reproduce.
Unfortunately, we also identify a lot of false patterns.
That’s the flip side of the coin — and the root cause of superstitions, goofy medical treatments (leeches, I’m lookin’ at you), bogus religions, and conspiratorial thinking: The patterns may be real, but the theory holding them together is not.
Selling a conspiracy theory is simple. Anyone can do it. All you need is a series of data points that appear totally random — until you connect them with an idea.
Even if the idea is frickin’ goofy.
I’ll give you an example: Donald Trump’s last name has five letters — T-R-U-M-P. The president clearly values branding, visuals, and appearances. So, for branding consistency, obviously Donald Trump would only pick a running mate whose last name is also five letters, because he wants his signs to look nice.
That’s my theory.
And whattaya know: In Trump’s first term he picked Mike Pence — P-E-N-C-E — five letters! And then, in his second term, he picked JD Vance — V-A-N-C-E — five letters yet again!
What are the odds that a guy with a five-letter last name would randomly pick TWO running mates — back-to-back — who ALSO have five-lettered last names? That’s a strange (so-called) “coincidence,” right?
Why, it’s gotta be at least a million to one!
Marco Rubio (five letters) was so close to being picked! Nikki Haley, Joni Ernst, and Tim Scott, too!
But Ted Cruz (four letters) and Ron DeSantis (eight letters) never had a chance.
Two days after Charlie Kirk’s assassination, I wrote an article, “Thank God Charlie Kirk’s Assassin Was Captured ALIVE.” My theory was simple: “Because otherwise, this was gonna be another Jeffrey Epstein conspiracy debacle, only more so…”
As I wrote:
The human mind craves clarity and resolution. Unchecked boxes, unanswered questions, and unknown variables don’t just make us uneasy; they also open the door to wild speculation and bull[expletive] conspiracies.
And Charlie Kirk’s family deserves better than that.
From Lee Harvey Oswald to Thomas Matthew Crooks, whenever the suspect in a high-profile assassination attempt is killed pre-trial, it provides an opening for crazed conspiratorial gobbledygook. Hell, we’re still debating JFK’s assassination — and that was more than 60 years ago…
In hindsight, I was only half-right: Had Kirk’s accused assassin, Tyler Robinson, offed himself in the woods, the conspiracies would’ve skyrocketed. We’d still be debating his motives — and his guilt.
Thank God he’s being tried publicly in a court of law, and the evidence is so overwhelming.
But I (badly) underestimated the appeal of conspiracies, because Robinson’s capture certainly didn’t end them. (I also underestimated who would be the one pushing these conspiracies: I assumed it’d be liberal activists who sought to evade culpability for their over-the-top rhetoric. Turns out the conspiracies were mostly pushed by an ex-MAGA/Turning Point personality with the moral character of a cockroach.)
Lindsey Graham won’t rest in peace either, I’m afraid. He’ll be fantasy fodder for the tin-hat brigade, too.
PRediction: Ben Shapiro might not realize it, but he just solved the Candace Owens problem for the Republican Party.
It’s been a tough 2026 for Shapiro. The Daily Wire’s woes have been well-publicized, and his condemnations of Candace Owens, Tucker Carlson, Nick Fuentes, and Megyn Kelly have (mostly) fallen on deaf ears. Vice President JD Vance played a leading role in pooh-poohing Shapiro’s complaints — to the surprise and disappointment of many conservatives.
(And that’s something Vance will have to address in 2028.)
Until now, Shapiro has tried to shame Owens and Company. He shamed them for hijacking Charlie’s agenda. He shamed them for spreading lies. He shamed them for bullying a grieving widow. He shamed the people who listened to their podcasts, and he shamed the organizers who platformed them at conservative events.
It didn’t work. You can’t shame someone who’s shameless.
On Friday, he changed tactics:
Instead of shaming, he’s now ridiculing.And in the process, he revealed the roadmap for counterprograming Owens’ nonsense. Of all the things he’s tried, his Friday podcast was, by a country mile, the most effective.
It’s a simple formula: Ridiculous people aren’t worthy of shame. They’re worthy of ridicule.
PRojection: Lindsey Graham’s family would be making a horrible mistake if they don’t allow an autopsy — and share the results with the American people. Even if the results are embarrassing.
Even if it violates their right to privacy.
It’s not fair, but this isn’t about fairness. In a post-Charlie Kirk world, we can’t pretend that we don’t know what’s coming next.
Because we do.
We’re wiser, sadder people than we were on Sept. 9, 2025, one day before Charlie’s death. Our innocence is gone.
So we already know what tomorrow holds: Shameless conspiracy theorists will take advantage of ANY absence of evidence, filling the void with whatever lies will advance their pet theories, ideologies, and careers.
Speaking the truth won’t shut ‘em up, but not speaking the truth will give ‘em a bullhorn.
PRaise: To the life and career of Lindsey Graham! In the early 2000s, I worked in talk radio in Charleston, S.C. (Shout out to 1250 WTMA.) Yes, certain (ahem) aspects of Graham’s personal life were gossiped about, but he was also respected and admired as a military expert and American patriot.
South Carolina just lost one of its favorite sons.
His Senate seat, which was once filled by Strom Thurmond, has been held by just two people since 1954. That’s remarkable.
But he was less identified with Strom Thurmond than John McCain. And, especially after the Iraq War, John McCain had plenty of Republican enemies. (Some deservedly; others not.) When McCain died in 2018, Graham was considered McCain’s ideological heir.
In other words, Graham was a war hawk and a neocon.
Even before the Iran War, this identity made him deeply suspicious to the woke right:
Why are so many neocons closeted gay Republicans? pic.twitter.com/WBYO6vHClr
— TCN (@TCNetwork) May 2, 2025
But through it all, Graham was a man of deep moral convictions. He believed in freedom, American resolve, and staying loyal to America’s allies.
He wasn’t perfect. He seldom saw a problem that couldn’t be solved via a few million tons of military hardware. It’s fair and legitimate to hold him accountable for his itchy trigger finger.
But y’know, with all the weak-willed, feather-fisted appeasers in the Senate, more often than not, I was happy we had an old-school war hawk as a counterbalance.
He’ll be missed.
PRedator: So what’s the over-under on when Israel will be blamed for Sen. Graham’s death?
A day? A week?
It wouldn’t make logical sense, of course. Lindsey Graham was a great friend to Israel. He defended the country professionally. He defended Israel in millions of TV appearances. He made his opinions crystal clear.
But then again, so did Charlie Kirk — and that sure didn’t stop Israel from being blamed.
Some pro-Israel voices on the MAGA right are pushing conspiracies of their own. Laura Loomer, who (rightly) condemned Candace Owens’ hairbrained Charlie Kirk conspiracies, wasted little time promoting the idea that Putin and/or Iran was behind Graham’s death:
5 days ago, Senator Lindsey Graham posted about how the IRGC threatened to assassinate him. They threatened to assassinate me and President Trump as well with matching posters of our faces held by IRGC operatives at Khameini’s funeral that called for our heads to roll.
— Laura Loomer (@LauraLoomer) July 12, 2026
Now,… https://t.co/nOhswRJG6I
5 days ago, the IRGC publicly called for Senator Lindsey Graham to be assassinated. He was traveling abroad to a war zone the last few days to try to end the war between Ukraine and Russia.
— Laura Loomer (@LauraLoomer) July 12, 2026
He’s been home for less than one day, and tonight, his staff said he passed away from a… pic.twitter.com/VQYxHU37kt
It’s wrong when they do it. It’s wrong when we do it.
But it’s the new normal in American politics, so we better get used to it.
Either way, we won’t win by out-conspiring the conspiracy freaks. Shaming, fighting fire with fire — that’s the exact wrong PR strategy.
Instead, we should follow Shapiro’s lead and embrace the power of ridicule.
