In the days since Charlie Kirk’s tragic shooting death, Republican lawmakers, influencers and President Donald Trump have been wildly and irresponsibly predicting and posting online, with great certainty, that the shooter must be a radical leftist.
They all but declared war on “the left” over the death of Kirk, a controversial right-wing activist whom they swiftly elevated to sainthood.
Predictably, the grotesque prejudgment has fallen flat, and the actual suspect in no way fits the right’s cynical political narrative.
On Sept. 12, authorities identified Kirk’s suspected killer as Tyler Robinson, a 22-year-old White guy from Utah registered as an unaffiliated voter. Shell casings recovered by authorities were engraved with references to internet memes and online gaming. Robinson shows up in a family Halloween photo in a Trump-related costume. Neighbors said he grew up in a church-going Mormon family.
Well, that’s awkward. I was told, moments after Kirk’s death, that this was undoubtedly the work of the radical left. I saw social media posts and heard comments saying we need to immediately go to war with the left and demanding that the Democratic Party be labeled a terrorist organization. Trump himself said on Sept. 11: “We have radical left lunatics out there and we just have to beat the hell out of them.”
