Charlie Kirk’s Murder: Trans Link Revealed Plus The Left’s Lies and the Violence Problem They Deny

Welcome. It is Verdict with Senator Ted Cruz. Ben Ferguson with you. And Senator, as sad as this week has been, at least we do get to start with some news that is good news, and that is that the shooter, the assassin of Charlie Kirk, has been caught. Well, that's right. After a 33-hour manhunt, the law enforcement has apprehended Tyler Robinson. Tyler Robinson is a 22-year-old Utah man. He was apparently raised in a Mormon household, in a conservative household, and apparently radicalized in recent years. He was a bright student. He had a 4.0 GPA. He got a 34 out of 36 on the ACT. He won a scholarship to go to college, although he didn't last even a year at college. And apparently he had become radicalized, had been moving more and more left-wing, and at the end of the day carried out extreme left-wing violence. We're going to break down what we know about this murderer and what the consequences are of this assassination that is so painful to those of us who were friends with Charlie Kirk, those of us who were touched, the millions who were touched by Charlie Kirk. We're going to break down what we know about this murderer, and we're going to talk more broadly about the problem of left-wing violence, of politicized left-wing violence. It is a serious and growing challenge in this country, and there are an awful lot of Democrats and an awful lot of people in the media that are trying to pretend it doesn't exist. We're going to break that down for you as well. Yeah, it's truly just a heartbreaking story, and there's so much that we've learned, and we're going to get all to it in a second. So, Senator, let's talk about the incredible work by law enforcement. I was truly shocked by the fact that when Kash Patel was heading out to where this took place, there were people in the media criticizing him, including former high-level members in the FBI that were throwing shade, saying, well, this is abnormal for him to go out there. This is something we're not used to. Can't believe that he would break protocol, as he described it. I'm glad to know we have an FBI director that's willing to go out there to something like this and make sure that all resources are working, and we caught him. This was a major priority for the FBI. This was a major priority for both state and local law enforcement in Utah, and it took just over a day to catch the shooter. The evidence we had very early on, we had the video of the shooter on the roof of the building from which he fired the shot. We also had the video that the FBI put out publicly of the shooter jumping down off the roof and running into the woods. Very shortly thereafter, the FBI and law enforcement recovered the rifle, recovered bullet casings with the rifle. And if you look at the bullet casings, so each of the casings had different inscriptions on it. So one of the inscriptions said, hey fascist, catch. Another one said, notice bulges, O-W-O, what's this? Which my understanding is that's a reference to an online meme about transgenderism. I'll confess I'm not familiar with that particular meme, but according to the press, that's what it concerns. Another one, an engraving had up arrow, right arrow, three down arrow symbols, which press coverage has said is the sequence of controller moves that unleashes the 500 megaton bomb in Helldivers 2. I play video games, but I don't play that particular video game. And then yet another casing included lyrics from the song Bella Ciao, which was an Italian song adopted by the anti-fascist resistance during World War II. And because I am looking at the New York Times, they're not including the one that says, if you're reading this, you're gay, L-O-L, which I just happen to know from reading other stories, but it says something the New York Times magically omitted that one from their chronicling of it. Of course. Look, one of the things that happened within minutes of this suspect being apprehended is Twitter started going crazy with leftists saying, oh this guy is really a conservative, he's a right winger, which I have to say really defies imagination. Number one, look at the target of who he shot. He shot Charlie Kirk. The natural understanding is it's someone who deeply disagreed with what Charlie was saying and was shooting him to silence him because he didn't want people to hear the words he was saying. His family had told law enforcement that Tyler had become enmeshed and obsessed with hard left ideology, that at a recent family dinner he made reference to the fact that Charlie Kirk was coming to Utah and discussed just how much he hated Charlie Kirk. All of that evidence is coming out. I want you to listen to the governor of Utah just describing the facts as they're rolling out. This is the governor of Utah, Spencer Cox. ...area with trees on the edge of the UVU campus. Investigators discovered a bolt action rifle in a dark colored towel. The rifle was determined to be a Mauser model 98 30-06 caliber bolt action rifle. The rifle had a scope mounted on top of it. Investigators noted inscriptions that had been engraved on casings found with the rifle. Inscriptions on a fired casing read, notices bulges, capital O-W-O, what's this question mark? Inscriptions on the three unfired casings read, hey fascist, exclamation point, catch, exclamation point. Up arrow symbol, right arrow symbol, and three down arrow symbols. A second unfired casing read, oh Bella Ciao, Bella Ciao, Ciao, Ciao. And a third unfired casing read, if you read this, you are gay, L-M-A-O. We are indebted to law enforcement across the state who has worked seamlessly together, local law enforcement. You go back to the last one, you notice that you said it was admitted by the New York Times. That tells you everything about them trying to push a narrative here. I also think it goes back to just the lies that were being told, as you mentioned earlier, that this was somehow a conservative that did this. Clearly it was not. Another way it was described, and I'll read the cover of the New York Post, their headline from, gosh, an hour ago said, quote, Charlie Kirk's alleged assassin, Tyler Robinson's deeply indoctrinated with leftist ideology, the Utah governor continues to explain. Well, it's misinformation and disinformation because activists and leftists and Democrats in the corporate media don't want to acknowledge the obvious ideological agenda here written on the shell casings. You have, number one, that this was about believing Charlie Kirk is a fascist. That's, of course, the language that the Democrats have been saying over and over and over again about Charlie Kirk, about Donald Trump, about Republicans generally. And you have two references to fascist. One, the direct word, hey, fascist catch. But then secondly, you have the Bella Chao song, which again, both of those are directly saying Charlie, in the view of the shooter, is a fascist. And then you have two that are focused on LGBT issues, one being gay and the second being transgender. And again, an awful lot of the media doesn't want to acknowledge that that ideological component. On top of that, we have the fact that has come out just recently, which is apparently Tyler's roommate is a transgender male who is transitioning to become a female. Yeah. And and there are conflicting reports whether Tyler and this transgender individual were engaged in a romantic and sexual relationship or not. But but you had someone who was at a minimum a roommate with someone who's transgender and may, in fact, have been a sexual lover of someone who's transgender. And and yet the media is not acknowledging we are seeing a clear pattern, a clear pattern. And I got to say, you look at there's some videos online of this, this fellow Tyler when he was younger, just a couple of years ago. And he seems like a perfectly normal, happy kid. He doesn't seem like someone suffering from mental illness at college. I mean, if you look at the timeline, it looks like he went to college center and that's when he got radicalized. Well, maybe college. He also apparently spent a lot of time on Reddit and Discord and 4chan and online. It's possible that that's where he was radicalized. It's not clear what the source of it is. But we do know that that he was on Discord talking back and forth about the shooting. He was telling other other people on Discord that that he had left a rifle wrapped in a towel. He mentioned shell casings that were engraved. I mean, that was part of what confirmed this is the right guy. And when law enforcement went and talked with his roommate, they were able to see these messages where he described the rifle, which was, in fact, wrapped in a towel. And so that the ideological hatred and intolerance and I got to say the speed with which this young man was radicalized and filled with homicidal hate is terrifying. Now, there is the tragic personal aspect of it that apparently it was his own family. It was his father who recognized him from the picture that the FBI had released and confronted him. And according to the reports, Tyler essentially confessed and his father urged him to turn himself in. And Tyler said he wanted to kill himself instead. But his father brought in a pastor who knew Tyler and together they they turned him in. Look, I got to say, Ben, you and I are both both fathers. I'm glad the father did that. But I cannot imagine a more hellish experience for a father than than than realizing the monstrosity that your son has just carried out. Yeah, no, I couldn't agree with you more. And that was one of the things that, you know, his father apparently worked in law enforcement. And so I'm sure he thought to himself like, hey, A, it's the right thing to do. B, he's probably saving his son's life at that point or a very good chance of it, in a sense, because he knew that if if he if he was found by law enforcement and fought back, it was going to be game over. And the entire and the entire government, local, state and federal was trying to find him and they were going to find him. So that says thing, I think about father's love. I want to go back to just you look at what the media has admitted from this. You have a guy that, you know, there's a good chance he had a trans boyfriend. He called Charlie a fascist. That is something the left has been using that word fascist, fascist, fascist. You've been called it. I don't even know how many times online I've been called it. I don't even know how many times online. Every time I do TV now, that's the number one thing I see in there. I'm sure you and I have been called it today. Yeah, today. Bingo. And it's like the number one word now of the left. We also know he's been confirmed to be a leftist by friends and family. He's been confirmed a leftist by top officials on record, including the governor. He killed one of the most iconic conservatives in the country. And yet leftists are still claiming right now online that he was right wing. I mean, these people have no shame. They have no integrity. It's misinformation. Yes. It's what the media does so well. It is fundamentally dishonest. And you know, I will say the demonization from the left. We've also seen the people on the left celebrating, openly celebrating this murder. And it has been really striking. It's been disturbing how many schoolteachers have been celebrating and how many employees of the U.S. government have been celebrating. And on the left, not everybody. There are some who have shown restraint. But but this celebration on the left is far too commonplace and it's deeply disturbing. You talk about that aspect of it and I go back. There has been something that's changed this time around. And I am thankful for this. There does seem to be accountability for this hate for people in different jobs. We've seen, I think, now well over a couple dozen administrators, teachers at public universities and private universities that have been fired, lost their jobs for celebrating the death of Charlie Kirk. We saw, for example, another story that went viral of an Office Depot individual who refused to print Charlie Kirk tribute flyers and called them propaganda. Thank goodness they've been fired. I do think now what we are seeing is the people that used to get away with this stuff, there was no accountability. Now there does seem to be a level of accountability as a reaction to the horrific actions. Elon Musk's buying Twitter created a forum where suddenly when people behave like this, they're exposed and there is accountability. And Ben, listen, I'll say there's a component of this, a clear component of this that is political, that is the ultimate form of censorship, which is silencing those you disagree with through murder. And in fact, something I retweeted yesterday was someone online said, they don't kill you because you're a Nazi. They call you a Nazi so they can kill you. And that's the right relationship between this rhetoric, is this rhetoric is about giving a permission structure that if Trump is Hitler, look how many people have had the old, you know, philosophy question, if you could encounter baby Hitler as a toddler, would you kill baby Hitler? And a very substantial percentage of Americans say, yes, I would kill baby Hitler if I had the chance. Well, if Trump is Hitler, it's not much of a leap to see where that comparison is going. And look, this is a political battle, but this is also a spiritual battle, because one of the things about Charlie Kirk is he was one of the most important evangelists in the country and in the world. And in fact, he was also one of the most important Christian apologists in the world. That was a very it was an integral aspect of what he did. And I want to play a couple of things on this. Number one, I want to play Charlie's pastor, Charlie's pastor talking about the work Charlie did preparing to be an evangelist and a Christian apologist. And I found this I don't know this pastor, but I found this really profound what Charlie Kirk is irreplaceable. Charlie Kirk is a once in a generation mind and soul and anointing and heart. Charlie Kirk was a rare combination of evangelist, apologist and political strategist. One of our most recent communications, he said, thank you, I have a ton of questions. I didn't ask for it, but I have become a high profile defender of the faith. I need to be the best I can. I said, I'd be honored to serve for free invisibly as needed. You have an anointing to steward and it's massive, proud of you and pray for you and your family daily. Charlie Kirk and I had been communicating. I was on vacation with my wife and he was asking when we could get together for a half day. He had a bunch of questions about the Christian faith that he wanted to whiteboard out. And I told him it would be a great honor of my life to try and serve him. He told me that he felt like God gave him this platform and opportunity so that he could become an evangelist and apologist to the next generation. He wanted to make it his primary message and life work to proclaim the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ, which is evangelism, and then defend it by answering criticisms, questions, and objections, which is called apologetics, which means to defend the faith. Charlie Kirk stepped into a level of spiritual warfare that I believe moved him to the top of the enemy's hit list and to some degree contributed to his assassination, his murder, and his martyrdom today. And I do not use those words lightly. Those are entirely accurate and fit the Charlie wanted people to meet Jesus Christ and he wanted to do the best job that he could presenting the gospel of Jesus Christ. And as a result, Charlie was going to campuses and he was proclaiming Jesus and he was answering questions and he was a generational master in doing what the Bible says and that is to give an answer to everyone for the hope that you have with gentleness and respect. He was a joyful, happy warrior. He had a great smile. He was kind to his enemies. He tried to have a good time even when they were trying to give him a bad time. His impact on this generation cannot be overstated. I believe it is absolutely non-hyperbolic to say that he is the greatest conservative voice of this generation alive on planet earth. One of the last times I saw him was backstage was actually some months ago, I believe when JD Vance was in town and Charlie invited me to come meet JD in the green room and hang out with them. And I walked in with a big smile. He gave me a big hug and he said, he said, I need you to be praying for me, pastor. I said, absolutely. I pray for Charlie every day, my wife and I have and for his beautiful family. He said, he said, I think they're going to try and kill me. And he said, if we lose, I think they're going to incarcerate me. Here's a young man with a family who's willing to sacrifice his own life and wellbeing and the joy he had with a wife whom he very much loved and children that he completely adored for the sake of selfless service and sacrifice out of love for others. Charlie is, was, and will forever be one of the most significant men who walked on planet earth in his generation. You listened to his pastor and, and there's one aspect TC that I think is so important for people to understand about Charlie. Charlie studied really, really, really hard because he felt like it was a obligation, a duty to what he believed in to God, um, to the, to faith, to understand the Bible and stay the way that he did that. It wasn't just on this issue. There was a story that came out hours before this speech that he was giving this, you know, grand debate at this college campus in Utah. He was on the phone for hours in a prep call to defend Israel as well with two people that I know one, I know very well. And he said, he didn't feel like he was ready for some of the new things and new attacks on Israel. And he wanted to whiteboard it out the same way that he was just mentioned there with that pastor. He put in the work. He didn't just show up. Yeah. The preparation was incredibly important. I mentioned, uh, that he was an apologist and the pastor there explain apologetics is, is, is the practice of defending the Christian faith. And it doesn't mean apology in the sense of saying, I'm sorry, but it means it means confronting the arguments from the skeptics, from those who doubt Christianity and confronting them and addressing them directly. And, and there've been great, uh, apologists in the past, people like CS Lewis, maybe the greatest who ever lived. And, and, and I think Charlie very much followed in the tradition of CS Lewis. Yeah. I want you to listen to another exchange. And this is between Charlie and Tucker Carlson talking again about the spiritual aspect of the battle. That's been playing out. Give a listen. I wonder if by continuing to lie, they aren't about everything. They're driving all of us a little crazy. Well, this is why your faith is the most important thing, because for those of us that are Christians, it doesn't drive you crazy. You actually see what's going on, which is that we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities and darkness and spirits that there is a spiritual war here. And you're right, Tucker. I find people in this space that are not anchored to faith, anchored to Jesus. They do lose their mind because there is no rational or reasonable explanation for what the country is doing to itself or what we are experiencing. But if you then see, and you know that there is a God and we are not him, that there is an entire dimension of angels and demons and spirits that are constantly struggling around us, and that there is a supernatural dimension, as you mentioned, all of a sudden, that doesn't make sense. It does not make any rational sense to shut down your schools so you can sacrifice the kids so the elderly can live. That makes no sense whatsoever. It makes no sense whatsoever to keep your marijuana dispensaries open and your alcohol shops open, but the church non-essential. Only a demonic enterprise would do such a thing. Only a demonic enterprise would say that Easter and Pentecost are non-essential, but race rioting and burning down a Wendy's is essential activity. And, Tucker, you talk about this a lot. For those of us that know the truth, we know that our God is a God of order and distinction. What is the first thing that God did? In the Hebrew scriptures it says, well, and also our scripture in the original Genesis, which is, in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth, and then he separated and he made sense, he made order out of chaos. Our God is a God of order, and order only comes with distinctions, and distinctions are necessary. Think about all the distinctions that God set up in the first six books of Genesis that are currently under attack. The distinction between male and female. The distinction between man and nature. The distinction between the holy and the profane. The distinction between good and evil. The distinction between infant and adult. These distinctions have always been what Western civilization were built upon, but it is Satan's goal to blur and eventually destroy those distinctions, because those distinctions of which we get order, and if you do not have that order, then you have the closest thing to satanic chaos here. Spot on, and this is where I do believe we are turning the tide in this country, where people are listening to conservatives like they never have before in my lifetime, certainly. Well, and this is a spiritual battle, and part of why I think Charlie was silenced is because he was such an unapologetic voice for Christ. You know, Nicole Shanahan, who ran as the vice presidential nominee with RFK Jr., she posted something this week where she said, you have to actually be willfully full of demonic hate to cheer for that. And I think that's exactly right, that it is demonic hate. The people who are filled with jubilation that Charlie Kirk was murdered, that is a demonic level of hatred, and it is frightening just how normalized that has become on the left. And another example of that is a back-and-forth exchange that I had with Stephen King, the horror author, and it started with Stephen King tweeting about Charlie Kirk. He advocated stoning gays to death, just saying. So that's what he put out there, and he had millions and millions of views. I have to admit, that really pissed me off, and so I responded to him, and I tweeted back at him. I said, you are a horrible, evil, twisted liar. No, he did not. Your party, which you shamelessly shilled for, sent $100 billion to the Ayatollah, who does routinely murder homosexuals. Why are you so dishonest and filled with hate? Now, my response there got over 13 million views, and Stephen King suddenly found his rabid, hateful partisanship under real scrutiny and criticism. And within hours, Stephen King deleted the tweet and apologized, and he apologized over and over and over again. So in response to me, Stephen King said, the horrible, evil, twisted liar apologizes. This is what I get for reading something on Twitter without fact-checking. Won't happen again. Now, I responded to that, and I said, I appreciate that Stephen King deleted the false tweet about Charlie Kirk and apologized. All of us, on both sides of the aisle, should treat each other with respect and decency, even if we disagree on politics. Charlie did that every day, and I admired him for it. Now, I want to address something here, Ben, because back and forth in the debates on this, there is a question, particularly among conservatives, how should we respond to this left-wing hate? And it is broken into two categories. There are some that are saying, we've got to respond and fight them full force and go after them. And there are others who are saying, well, both sides are too overheated, and it is pejoratively characterized as both-sides-ism in the debate. And I think the truth is somewhere in the middle. And let me explain what it means, and maybe this will tick off both sides when I say this. But look, there are clearly standards that should apply to everyone. Number one, political violence is always, always wrong. Whether you agree with a person or disagree with their politics, someone being murdered for what they are saying, for their speech, for their political views, is wrong. That should be accepted on both and every side. Number two, as a matter of decency, all of us should endeavor to treat each other with respect and human dignity. That's a standard I try to hold myself to, and it's a standard everyone should. So when you say that, when Stephen King, I didn't like his vile comment, but when he deleted it and apologized, I wanted to say, okay, I appreciate that you deleted it and apologized. I wanted to give some modicum of grace. You know, in part, I think Charlie would have accepted that apology. He wouldn't necessarily have believed that Stephen King has suddenly reformed and has turned from his wicked ways, but allowing someone to say, okay, I'm sorry I was wrong, that has value. But here's where the both-sides-ism is flat out wrong. There's some, and you see this, like your old employer CNN loves to do this. Well, there's bad rhetoric on both sides and there's violence on both sides. This is just a problem in the world. Well, no, this is a problem that is particularly acute and prevalent on the left. I go back to this. How many, I mean, we watched one of our own be assassinated. Did any cities get burned down? No. None. Were there any police officers that were attacked? No. Was there any assaults on people because they were angry? No. And yet, they're mad. I love this headline from the Daily Beast, which if you don't know what that is, it's a hardcore liberal propaganda machine that has an incredible amount of influence on the left. Their headline yesterday, 10.05 a.m., keyboard warriors grieving this week's assassination of self-annointed champion of quote-unquote free speech, Charlie Kirk, have launched an online campaign to get anyone who criticizes him fired from their jobs. Their sub headline is free speech crazed. MAGA Karens go full cancel culture on Kirk critics. No, let's be clear about the people we are exposing. It's people, they weren't criticizing Charlie Kirk. They were celebrating the assassination of Charlie Kirk and our major positions of power at universities and at other jobs or things like we mentioned earlier where they refused to print out a piece of paper for goodness sakes. Yeah, but Ben, let me make two distinctions that are important because it's easy to get these confused. Number one, let's talk free speech. Yes, in the United States, the First Amendment gives you the right to speak and not to be criminally prosecuted for it. So you can say the most horrible, hateful things. You do have a First Amendment right to say unbelievably horrible, hateful things. You can say that you are celebrating the murder of Charlie Kirk or anyone else and the First Amendment will protect your ability to do so, which means the government cannot come prosecute you and put you in jail for saying that. The First Amendment does not mean that you are immune from the consequences of your speech. And if you say things that are horrible and hateful, it is not uncommon for someone to be terminated. So, for example, at a university, if a student goes and decides to dress in a white robe as a Klansman and burn a cross and say that we should murder African-American students, I guarantee you that student will be expelled from school. Now, you can't prosecute him. He has a First Amendment right to do that. So that is not a criminal offense to do that. Correct. But the university should absolutely expel him because of just how noxious those views are. The same is true here when you have teachers that are celebrating cold-blooded murder. There are consequences for that. But that's a distinction. I'll point out also the president of the Oxford Union who debated Charlie Kirk and is this vicious leftist. He put out a tweet celebrating, uh, let's effing go, he said, when Charlie Kirk was shot. This is a guy who literally had one-on-one debated against Charlie Kirk. And he is the incoming president of the Oxford Union, which pretentiously describes itself as the world's greatest debating society. Look, in my view, this individual ought to be expelled from Oxford for the same reason you would expel him if he were a Klansman burning a cross and saying, let's murder Black students. Now, the United Kingdom does not have the same First Amendment that applies to it the way the United States does. So, actually, in England, if he said that, he might well be criminally prosecuted. I don't agree with criminally prosecuting speech. But the First Amendment does not give you a get-out-of-jail-free pass. Look, I promise you, any one of you in your jobs, if you go in and tell your boss, go screw yourself. Yeah, you're gonna get fired. You will get fired. You have a First Amendment right to say so. But he also has a right to terminate you. But let me say, secondly, on this both-sides-ism, the media really wants to say, gosh, political violence, it's a problem that just occurs everywhere. No, right now, it is heavily concentrated on the left. And the left has normalized political violence. We saw two separate assassination attempts of Donald Trump. We saw this tragically successful assassination of Charlie Kirk. We saw, for a year, Antifa and Black Lives Matter riots. And I want to read you some polling results that were done last year. And people were asked, would it be justified to murder Elon Musk? And would it be justified to murder Donald Trump? And those who were self-described left of center, 50.2 percent said it would be justified to murder Elon Musk, and 56 percent said it would be justified to murder Donald Trump. That is, and by the way, the right of center numbers were 14.3 percent and 20.3 percent. So I wish all those numbers were zero. But this is a problem on the left. This is a problem when you define your opponent as Hitler, Nazi, evil, fascist. That is a permission structure to then say violence is an appropriate response. And we need to see Democrats having the courage to say, enough is enough. Look, Bill Maher did a great job where he, in his monologue, he said, let's be clear, Donald Trump is not Hitler. Stop saying that. Stop saying it. Exactly. Well, and I think now they're realizing that using the words fascist and Hitler and these types of things has desensitized people and advocated and allowed for this type of violence to become reality, where the big question people are asking is, what's next? I do want to say one thing that I think I found incredibly comforting is seeing how many young people are at colleges this weekend over college football. We're putting up signs saying that they are Charlie Kirk. The number of people that are following him now on Instagram exploded by, I'm not, I don't think I'm wrong. I think it's millions of people now who are. I think it is likely that more people have listened to Charlie Kirk speak in the last week than did in the entirety of his life. Yeah. And that's the silver lining. His Christian testimony has become so powerful. I will say his wife, Erica, the speech she gave this week reduced me to tears. It was beautiful. God's anointing was upon her as she did that. And a lot of people who had never clicked on and watched Charlie Kirk say anything this week did so and said, hey, who is this guy that touched so many people? I think a lot of people chose to open their Bible and start reading their Bible. A lot of people chose to go to church. That is a great thing. That is something I hope and believe we're going to see a lot more of. And let me say, in subsequent podcasts, we're going to talk about what's coming next. And here's one of the most important things that I am urging the President, the Department of Justice, the FBI to do, which is follow the money. Follow the money of everyone that is pushing this leftist hatred, that is pushing this violence. There is real money that is going into these riots on campus, that is going into funding Antifa, that is going into funding Black Lives Matter. And this is not just one isolated lunatic in Utah. We need to follow the money behind the radicalization that is leading to people being so twisted and engaging in these horrific acts of violence. Amen to that. Don't forget, we do this show Monday, Wednesday, Friday. Please make sure you share it wherever you can on social media so other people can hear this. Hit that subscribe or auto-download button as well. And the Senator and I will see you back here on Wednesday morning.