The Trap Needs No Trapper

Charlie Kirk is gone. The work of keeping a coalition from devouring itself is now ours, myself included.

I would like to begin by thanking one person who provided support above all, and it might be a surprising name: James Lindsay.

James and I had a rocky start online. Gradually, over the period of over a year and slowly growing trust that we only wanted to fight Communists, we built up a friendship.

We chatted all day yesterday. He offered me support. He warned me that there was a growing plot that I was part of a Flynn network. Many others lent their support, but more than anyone, James acted like a friend. Not a cheerleader. He did not give unconditional support or endorsement. He was simply there.

Now, James has made many antagonists and that is no secret. Some of those antagonists also happen to be my friends, people who are otherwise aligned on fighting Communists and NGOs. But as I’ve learned about him: his heart is in the right place, and he’d much rather be fighting Communists than anything else.

To get some accusations out of the way:

• The podcast with Lara Logan was over my book, scheduled and filmed well in advance of this week’s events. I have others coming up, but she was the first major one.

• My official affiliations are with Oversight Project and DOGE. Oversight Project is a big-tent thinktank currently focused on mass deportations, but is swinging towards the emerging DSA threat.

• In the less-official front, Joel Finkelstein of NCRI and I have exchanged research and promoted each other. But this is driven by friendship and research overlap (he does a lot of DSA / foreign influence work), and no money relationship exists.

• The vast majority of my income comes from subscribers paying $3 a month.

Here is what happened, without embellishment. I was handed a bunch of documents marked sensitive. I had a responsibility to handle them correctly and no institutional cover while I did it. I consulted with others - for instance, Tulsi’s staffer said that such documents typically carried markings like “Authorized for Release by Order of ___.” I also confirmed with two State Department executives that what happened to me was deeply nonstandard practice for sanctioned journalist leaks. The documents were hardcopy, given to me without commentary or context, along with repeated requests to “leak” them.

My first public read was that I had been set up, that the markings were a trap. I said that with more certainty than I earned, without ruling out the explanation of an oversight.

I corrected my own record before anyone could extract the correction out of me. That being said: that is the only disavowal I am willing to perform. I will say when I got something wrong. I will not restore my standing by spending someone else’s.

To see what I mean, first look at the structure of what I walked into: Hand a person sensitive documents and every move they can make reads as guilt.

• Keep the documents and it is possession.

• Publish them and it is leaking.

• Act on them and it is undermining the government.

• Say nothing and it is complicity.

That was what instigated the panic in me. There was no non-liable move I could make with those documents. That is exactly the kind of procedural trap that has ensnared many good conservatives like Jeff Clark. I had no reason to trust the actual person giving me documents. Every action becomes evidence.

Then, the same structure appeared again, aimed at who I am rather than what I did. I have been described by a very vocal segment as someone who is somehow simultaneously a Zionist and being part of the Flynn network.

Dwell on that for a moment.

Michael Flynn endorsed my work in early 2025. His more recent public identity is as someone who seeks Quincy Institute style restraint. He asked whether every member of Congress has an “an AIPAC handler” and called out foreign influence in the lobbying system.

In other words, the charge assigns me on both poles of a single issue at once.

At first I labeled this development as “incoherent.” But that was the wrong word. Conspiracy framing eats those kinds of contradictions for a living - as they do, and continue to do. The deeper accusation is that I work all sides, and the contradiction proves how deep it runs. You see this with Tyler Robinson.

Candace Owens’ has explained Charlie Kirk’s death multiple separate ways: a rooftop rifle, a second gunman, a bomb in his microphone. New pieces of evidence do not rearrange the theory; contradictions just drive the conspiracy framing deeper and harder.

The accurate word to describe this trap is unfalsifiable.

That is the pattern happening here.

• Show me that I criticize the lobby, and I am hiding my Zionism.

• Show me that I cite peer research from a pro-Israeli outlet, and I am hiding my Flynn alliance.

• Hold both together, and I am a deep rogue operative (Mossad, probably) and this has “exposed” me somehow.

The only way I can answer this charge is a performance. Disavow Flynn altogether. Disavow pro-Jewish lobbyists altogether. Disavow. Disavow. Disavow. And each disavowal serves as guardrails to box oneself in more, until the only move that earns approval is obedience.

Does this start sounding a lot like … oh, the DEI guilt rituals to disavow whiteness and maleness?

Let me be exact on one point, because it’s something critics will deliberately obscure. Refusing to denounce Flynn on command is not an endorsement of Flynn. I am not Catholic and I do not identify with Catholic nationalism at all. But I do not need to hold any opinion of the man to refuse the guilt woke ritual. It is the DEI–like ceremony I am refusing.

Now, here is the thing I want the most to say, and my own mistake is what taught it to me. The trap needs no trapper. I have been telling people for a year to stop hunting the villain and look for shared epistemology. I forgot my own instructions for about a day, reached for the narrative, and then walked back. Candace Owens has never practiced this.

Which brings me back to James.

James has been spending two years describing what he calls the Woke Right. In his words it “isn’t limited to one race, one sex, one nationality, or one religion,” and “Woke isn’t actually about identity, it’s about radical politics.” It is “a drift we can correct.” It is “when passion turns to dogma, when disagreement becomes treason.” It is the habit of people who “shame, tribalize, and cancel their own.”

Where I part from him is the extent to which the label is allowed to stick. I do not like seeing it applied to people. I think unnecessary bridges were burned that way. I see it as a set of behaviors that can be corrected with enough communication and understanding, and not giving up on reconcilation.

Woke Right behavior has absolutely exploded post Charlie Kirk, and that leads me to believe that Charlie served as critical connective tissue aligning everyone on the same page and smoothing frustrations. You see the seams in a thousand squabbles online - one person uses “post-liberal” to mean that they’re moving past globalism, another person panics because they read it as discarding liberal values altogether. Soon it becomes a war over what “post-liberalism” means and how to purge each other out of the party.

We will not get Charlie Kirk back.

But we can become the connective tissue ourselves. One at a time. I will start by remembering that.

That’s what James did for me yesterday. He talked to me as a friend. He told the truth to me, not all of it was what I wanted to hear. He stood up for me, without endorsing what I did. He acted more like Charlie Kirk than anyone.

Thank you, James.