The Ben Shapiro Show
Ep. 2269 - The Trans, Catholic-Hating, Trump-Hating OMNICAUSE Killer
28 Aug 2025
Chapter 1: What happened during the recent school shooting in Minneapolis?
Well, folks, there's a rule when it comes to horrific school shootings, mass shootings in the United States, a media rule. And the rule goes like this. If the shooter is a suspected right winger, then the issue is obviously conservatism, conservative rhetoric and everything to do with the right wing. If the shooter is somebody who is of the left, then the issue is guns always and forever.
That is the way the formula works. And yesterday was no exception. Horrific, horrific school shooting against a Catholic Catholic There's a Catholic school, but the actual shooting happened at the Annunciation Catholic Church in Minneapolis.
A gunman, we'll learn more about the gunman in just a moment, killed two young students, elementary school students aged eight and 10, murdered as they sat in their pews during the Wednesday service. It happened during mass. The shooter, according to the UK Daily Mail, dressed in all black, armed with a rifle, a shotgun and a pistol.
Pepper sprayed bullets through the church's stained glass windows as the helpless children, staff and parents inside rushed for cover. All the guns were used in the attack and purchased legally. Police said 17 people, including 14 children, were injured during the deliberate act of violence, according to Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O'Hara.
Here is the police chief of Minneapolis describing the situation.
During the mass protest, A gunman approached on the outside on the side of the building and began firing a rifle through the church windows towards the children sitting in the pews at the Mass. Shooting through the windows, he struck children and worshipers that were inside the building. The shooter was armed with a rifle, a shotgun, and a pistol. This was a deliberate act of violence.
against innocent children and other people worshiping. The sheer cruelty and cowardice of firing into a church full of children is absolutely incomprehensible. Police officers from the Minneapolis Police Department immediately responded, entered the church and attempted to provide first aid and rescue some of the children that were hiding throughout the building.
while other first responders came and EMS responded to rush victims to nearby hospitals. Two young children ages eight and 10 were killed where they sat in the pews. Their parents have been notified. 17 other people were injured, 14 of them being children. Two of those children are in critical condition. The coward who fired these shots ultimately took his own life in the rear of the church.
Apparently, the police chief pointed out that all of the guns here were purchased legally. Minneapolis, Minnesota is a very, very gun-controlled area. Minneapolis has gun control laws. Minnesota has gun control laws.
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Chapter 2: What are the details about the shooter and their background?
They were lawfully purchased. He had a permit to purchase that was issued in Minnesota recently. I don't have information about where specifically those weapons were purchased, but they were purchased lawfully.
A 10-year-old student who was present at the shooting described the situation. Again, horrific, absolutely textbook definition of a hate crime. If you believe in the concept of hate crimes, this certainly fits the bill. This is the purposeful targeting of Catholic school children. That is horrific as it gets. Vile and evil, of course.
For those who believe evil doesn't exist, this is what evil looks like. Here's a 10-year-old child explaining what he went through.
My friend like ran kind of someone helped him like run out. He saw him. He was wearing all all black and he had a ski mask on. I was down so I didn't really look up. I mean he's got shot through the stained glass windows, so they're probably ruined. And then my friend Victor, he was like laying on top of me like making sure I was safe and he got hit. So that was really brave of him.
And you have a neck on your neck?
Yeah, that was, I don't even know what it's from. Kind of looks like debris or something.
And obviously, kids should not have to go through anything like this. And the shooter, tremendous agent of evil, Kash Patel, head of the FBI. put out a statement that this will be investigated as a hate crime as well. It should be. He said the FBI is investigating the shooting as an act of domestic terrorism and hate crime targeting Catholics.
There were two fatalities, an eight-year-old and a 10-year-old. In addition, 14 children and three adults were injured. Now we have a policy on the show. I don't mention the names of mass shooters. One of the reasons I don't mention the names of mass shooters on the show is because as we'll see with regard to this mass shooter, mass shooters take inspiration from one another.
They look for publicity. And my idea anyway, and the social science tends to support this, is if you deprive mass shooters of notoriety, if you deprive them of name recognition, then it doesn't spawn as many mass shooters in the future. That at least is the hope. It's a small thing that we can do on the show.
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Chapter 3: How do societal narratives influence perceptions of mass shootings?
I mean, this is all just the Norm MacDonald joke over and over. You know, the old joke that he said on Twitter, what terrifies me is if ISIS were to detonate a nuclear device and kill 50 million Americans, imagine the backlash against peaceful Muslims. That's where we are each and every day.
If you're a member of what Democrats deem to be a victim group, it doesn't matter if a member of your group or even the ideology that drives that group is radical. You must be protected.
I have heard about a whole lot of hate that's being directed at our trans community. Anybody who is using this as an using this as as an opportunity to villainize our trans community or any other community out there has lost their sense of common humanity. We should not be operating out of a place of hate for anyone. We should be operating from a place of love for our kids. Kids died today.
This needs to be about them.
Well, again, you might want to discuss that those were Catholic kids who were murdered for being Catholic by a trans radical. Why is that important? Well, the reason that that's important is because the ideology that lies behind trans, again, is an inherently violent ideology.
It says that if you refuse to acknowledge, you personally refuse to acknowledge that a man can become a woman, you have engaged in an act of violence. This is the language that is routinely used by the trans radical community and now the Democratic Party entirely. And you know what it leads to? It leads to parents signing off on the transing of their children. As we said,
This particular shooter, he was a minor when he tried to change his name. His parents had to sign off on that. You know why? Because when you spread the propaganda that hormone replacement therapy and surgeries are going to make your depressive, suicidal, ideated kid into a wonderful member of the opposite gender, you are not helping your child.
You are harming your child. Beyond that,
This violent ideology, and again, if you claim that people who oppose your ideology are trying to kill you, that really leaves you very few responses. And on the margins, again, I'm not saying that everyone trans is going to become a murderer, God forbid, or that everybody who is promoting trans ideology is spurring people to murder.
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Chapter 4: What role does mental illness play in the context of the shooting?
The federal government has in some ways seemed to look the other way. That particularly is true when it comes to attacks on pro-life centers, which have become... shockingly common, actually, in the United States. What is the White House saying about the fact that the attack wasn't just by a trans-identifying shooter?
It was obviously a trans-identifying shooter who was attacking a Catholic school for a reason.
Well, Ben, I'm so glad that you brought that up because this is something that no one ever talks about is these hundreds attacks on Catholic churches around the country that started with the overturn of Roe v. Wade, or actually it started with the leak of the draft opinion showing that Roe v. Wade would soon be overturned.
Catholic Vote has a really interesting tracker map that shows that I believe over 200 Catholic churches have been attacked and vandalized since that leak of the draft letter. And this is just, you know, one portion of the attacks on religious institutions around our country. But Catholics and Christians obviously have been attacked for many years, specifically for their faith.
It's something that a lot of people on the left don't seem to be interested in talking about. I mean, there's a long, long history of Catholics especially being attacked for their faith. And so in this instance, Kash Patel said yesterday that they're investigating this as a hate crime against Catholics.
And what I found really interesting, Ben, as we were watching these press conferences yesterday, reporters were asking the chief of police in Minneapolis whether this was being investigated as a hate crime against Catholics. I think there's some funny business going on at the local level because he was very careful about what he had to say.
He suggested that they don't have any kind of motive yet, even though we do have these reports. This journal that the trans-identifying shooter was using to record his manifesto in it, we know that that was his journal and that all of these crazy, sick rantings in it against Jews, against Christians, against people of faith, all of this was included in this journal.
And the chief of police admitted that it was his journal. So there's some interesting dynamics at the local level. But I'm interested in talking to the White House more about this and learning what they think about this atrocity and the way it's being handled at the local level. And we know J.D.
Vance has put out a number of statements this morning talking about the importance of prayer and criticizing people like former White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki, who has been demonizing prayer for some reason in the wake of this atrocity.
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Chapter 5: What evidence suggests the shooting was a hate crime?
I mean, what RFK Jr. is doing with regard to vaccination, some of it is salutary, some of it not so salutary. Many of the comments he makes on vaccination and autism are not grounded in actual data. However, when it comes to this Dr. Dimitri character, we have some other issues, for example. So he suggests, quote, The recent shooting at CDC is not why I'm resigning.
My grandfather, who I'm named after, stood up to fascist forces in Greece and lost his life. Doing so, I'm resigning to make him and his legacy proud. He's standing up to fascism, you see. I'm resigning because of the cowardice of a leader that cannot admit that his and his minions' words over decades created an environment where violence like this can occur.
I reject his and his colleagues' thoughts and prayers and advise they direct those to people they have not actively harmed. For decades, I have been a trusted voice for the LGBTQ plus divided by sign community when it comes to critical health topics.
I must also cite the recklessness of the administration in their efforts to erase transgender populations, cease critical domestic and international HIV programming, and terminate key research to support equity as part of my decision. And if you wonder how we ended up treating mental illness as normality and normality as mental illness in the United States, this would be the reason here.
This sort of take on medicine, that the big problem in medicine and medical institutions is that they are not doing trans propaganda work. Erase transgender populations. In the name of medicine, this person is saying this. Not in the name of politics, in the name of medicine. And then you wonder why people don't trust medicine anymore. Want to know why people are losing trust in the AMA?
By the way, I know so many doctors. I walk in circles with a lot of doctors. And the number of doctors who think that the AMA has basically turned into a left-wing propaganda organization, for all intents and purposes, is very high. Terminate key research to support equity? What is the research to support equity that is medically based?
So this Dr. Dimitri character says, public health is not merely about the health of the individual, but it is about the health of the community, the nation, and the world.
And he signed the letter, Dimitri C. Daskalakis, MD, MPH, he, his, him.
Well, bye. Now, the problem, of course, in American politics is that everything is unbelievably reactionary. This isn't just true in America. It's true literally everywhere. Something will go wrong on one side. The other side will react and the pendulum will swing so far in the other direction that you end up with some not great things happening on the other side.
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