073 - Tragic Weekend Exposes MAGA Hypocrisy

This episode of The Line is a full-on girls-only chaos session with Alyssa and Promise taking over while Jimmy is sick, and it might be the most unhinged, on-topic episode yet. They open with exactly 1% production ability, accidental buttons, Patreon reads, and a plea for viewers to keep them employed, then dive straight into the worst kind of “news day”: mass shootings, hate crimes, Trump’s deranged social posts, and the Christian nationalist circus around Charlie and Erika Kirk.​

The conversation starts with gun culture in the United States, the Brown University shooting, and the horrifying reality that the country has had more mass shootings than days in the year. Alyssa bluntly argues that no one needs a gun ever, while Promise contrasts U.S. gun obsession with heavily regulated gun culture in places like Finland, where gun ownership is high but mass shootings are not. They tackle the hypocrisy of a political right that screams “safety” about immigrants and trans people while ignoring the one demonstrable safety crisis actually killing thousands: guns.​

From there they move to Trump’s reaction to the murder of Rob Reiner and his wife Michelle, and his completely unhinged Truth Social post turning their deaths into a Trump Derangement Syndrome bit and a “golden age of America” promo for himself. Alyssa reads the post in full and both hosts rip into the narcissism, third-person self-worship, and the way Trump weaponizes tragedy to imply that criticizing him puts you at risk of violence. They connect it to his long history of bizarre celebrity commentary, including his old Kristen Stewart/Robert Pattinson tweets, and the cult-like messaging of the current White House website branding the present as “the golden age.”​

The episode then shifts to the anti‑Semitic terrorist attack in Australia at a Hanukkah event, where a Muslim man, Ahmed Al Ahmed, was shot while disarming the gunman and likely saving many lives. Alyssa and Promise praise his courage, tear into attempts to fold this into simplistic Israel/Palestine talking points, and highlight how quickly Australian officials move toward tightening already strict gun laws—versus endless U.S. “thoughts and prayers.” They dig into the idea of shared humanity, criticizing both religious and atheist spaces when “us vs them” rhetoric becomes an excuse to dehumanize and harm.​

They also revisit Adriana Smith’s case in Georgia, where her body was effectively used as an incubator under abortion bans, leaving her baby Chance in the NICU, severely underweight, with major medical issues and a GoFundMe that still hasn’t hit its goal. It’s a brutal example of forced birth, the cost of Christian nationalism, and how quickly stories vanish from the news while families are left with lifelong consequences.​

In the back half of the episode, they deep dive into the right‑wing soap opera: Erica Kirk’s bizarre media tour, her hyper‑intense interviews, the “stop” message to Candace Owens, and Candace’s conspiracies that Turning Point USA is covering up an assassination related to Charlie Kirk’s death. Promise explains the alleged Egyptian flight patterns, texts about Charlie supposedly changing his stance on Israel, and the book Erica is now touring for—Charlie’s Sabbath book “Stop in the Name of God,” which paints him as a restful family man despite his constant online presence. They explore how evangelical culture demands that women commodify their grief, suppress vulnerability, and become public symbols rather than humans, and how that likely shapes Erika’s robotic, haunting media persona.​