After a two-day manhunt last week, authorities arrested a suspect on Friday in the fatal shooting of Charlie Kirk, the CEO and founder of Turning Point USA, a youth-focused right-wing organization.
There is no clear motive connected to the suspect, 22-year-old Tyler Robinson. But that hasn’t stopped certain conservative leaders from identifying a villain in the attack: colleges.
“You heard the family members say that this man became more political in recent years. What did he do in recent years? He went to college,” Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy said Friday during an interview on Fox News. “That is where kids are getting radicalized. Not just online. Our campuses are where a lot of radicalization, hate and intolerance starts from.”
Robinson attended Utah State University for one semester in 2021 before dropping out, the school said in a statement. He then enrolled in a technical college. Utah Valley University, where the shooting occurred, is about two hours away from Utah State.
But conservatives have coalesced around the idea that Robinson was radicalized while attending college, and are using the shooting to speak out broadly against higher education. (Although some Republicans, including Utah Gov. Spencer Cox, have said Robinson embraced “leftist ideology,” the suspect’s political beliefs are not clear.)
