Not the Headlines Extra Minneapolis Shooter August 30, 2025

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The Listening To presents Not the Headlines Extra.

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A very tragic thing happened at a Catholic school in Minneapolis recently. Someone killed two kids while in church getting ready to start the new school year. Some might say it's common now, just another in a long line of school shootings. But this wasn't a school. It was a church filled with school children. It was also different in another way. There was no intrusion into the building, no walking abandoned hallways looking for unlocked doors behind which might be more victims of senseless and selfish violence. The person who shot and killed or wounded almost twenty people never entered the building until the shooting ended, and then shot himself. There's a certain kind of damage you must have to become a school or church shooter, a murderer of innocent people gathered to learn or worship, unarmed and vulnerable. It takes an advanced degree of cowardice to shoot innocent children through stained glass windows. Society endeavors to find out what kind of person would stoop so low. Who was this shooter and what was the motivation? Apparently the perpetrator in this situation left a video recording of a manifesto. Included was apologies to his parents, assuring them that it wasn't their fault that their baby became the most cowardly murderer in American history. He showed no sympathy for the children he was about to kill. He made it clear he had no sympathy for the innocent children he would target. He knew they were children. He made it clear that this was all his fault, that he'd been fantasizing about it for a long time. That he was unhappy and hated the world. He wasn't going to go out with a whimper, but a bang. Many bangs. But why? Truly unhappy people don't blame others for their misery, at least not enough to kill them. I've known some of them. They commit suicide without much fanfare. They don't know why they're unhappy and don't take it out on anybody else. It's still sad, but not the level of tragic we get when some deranged person blames the world for their misery and takes innocent souls with them. I heard the phrase soul shooter in reference to the church shooting, and I thought yeah, he's a soul shooter, all right. Meaning not just the only shooter, but a shooter of souls, as they prayed. So who was this ultimate coward and soul shooter? His name was originally Bob Westman. Oh great, not another Bob. No, wait. W we're mostly good guys. Well, he didn't want to be Bob anyway, and changed his name from Robert to Robin. Why would Robert want to change his name to Robin? Well, to be honest, my last name was changed when I was ten years old. On the way to make it official, I realized that I also had the option of changing my first name. So I told my mom I wanted to change my first name to Dave. I don't know why I picked Dave, but my mom said no. Probably because she already figured out how to strike fear in my heart by saying my name in a certain way, and she didn't want to have to start over. But changing from Robert to Robin could be considered an equally lateral move. But Bob had also decided he was going to identify as a woman. You don't change your name to Dave if you're gonna do that. Since the killing and injuring, we've learned that Robin's mom worked at the church slash school. He knew this was a soft target. Like a spring of toxic ooze, he looked for the path of least resistance. It wasn't hard to find. But what was the motivation? Well, on one of his weapons was written, Kill Donald Trump. That could be a clue. Are Trump policies responsible for what happened in Minneapolis? Well, Robin isn't trying to compete against women in scholastic sports, nor is he being discharged from the Air Force for being transgender. So there doesn't seem to be any direct connection to Trump policies that have had any direct effect on Robin. Maybe it was how Robin felt when other people like Robin were being treated in a certain way. Hmm. Maybe, but I think this goes way deeper. Robin also had it in for religion, and it was demonstrated in the manifesto. So according to federal law, Robin committed a hate crime. But we already knew that, didn't we? What caused the hate? This killer went to school there as a kid. His mom worked there for several years. He was raised a Roman Catholic and still chose to target his church and the children in it. There seems to be a lot of blame to go around. It riles up the base of both extremes, one side calling for more gun control and the other side against it because of the Second Amendment to the Constitution. Everybody knows where the other side stands on the issue of gun control and whether or not it makes a difference. Many people think it's a mental health issue, and this Minnesota shooter is a stellar example of that. But the focus of many is the shooter's status as a transgender. Minneapolis's mayor, Jacob Fry, made it a point to not blame an entire community of transgender people for the act of one.

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Kids died today.

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He said that while the governor of Minnesota stood behind him in the camera shot. But just a few days earlier, Governor Wolves gave a speech at a DNC convention and made it a point to single out the largest voting block of people in the history of the nation when he said this.

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Think of how easy it would be to be a damn Republican. Oh, what should I wear today? This stupid freaking red hat. What should I say today? I don't know. Just make sure it's cruel. Who do we listen to? That guy. Oh, the felon in the White House? Yeah, listen to him and that will be fine. Now he's talking about burning flags. He's gonna have flag burning or whatever. Because he knows there's a hell of a lot of flags with his picture on it that are gonna get burned.

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Joe Biden's FBI targeted Roman Catholics as a threat of domestic terrorism. This lunatic in Minneapolis was brainwashed by media, more specifically social media. He fell down a rabbit hole somewhere. But if I remember anything about him, it'll be that he was the weakest, least committed transgender slash mass shooter ever to disgrace the halls of whatever macabre museum keeps track of this kind of thing. Changing your name from Bob to Rob isn't the definition of commitment. Killing kids through windows is beyond cowardly. I'm not even sure the trans community will want to claim him. The tragedy did result in a bit of détente, as described by Nancy Cortes on the Network News.

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And Nancy, we know that President's tr President Trump spoke with Governor Waltz uh earlier today. These two are former political rivals, but in the face of tragedy, that tends to go by the wayside. Um can you tell us a little bit more about that call?

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Sure, it does seem like they uh set that rivalry aside today. Um, Caitlin, the president offered Governor Waltz his condolences. He pledged to give Minnesotans whatever kind of support they need in the midst of this tragedy. And Waltz uh told reporters that he thanked the president for that. Uh, and then he had also heard from the attorney general and from the vice president. So the lines of communication between the governor's office in Minnesota and the White House appear to be open right now.

SPEAKER_03 9:44

All right, Nancy Cortes. Thank you so much for that update. We appreciate it. Get a lot more content from the listening tube with Bob Woodley Podcast.