Looks Like the GOP Didn't Get the Boogeyman It Wanted

It was straight out of the MAGA world’s greatest fantasy—a report that painted the Charlie Kirk assassin as an amalgamation of the right’s biggest boogeymen.  A Wall Street Journal update (which has since been rewritten) originally read: “Investigators found ammunition engraved with expressions of transgender and antifascist ideology inside the rifle that authorities believe was used in the fatal shooting of Charlie Kirk, according to an internal law enforcement bulletin and a person familiar with the investigation.”

It didn’t take long for the inevitable walk-back.   “A senior law enforcement official with direct knowledge of the investigation cautioned that the report had not been verified by ATF analysts, did not match other summaries of the evidence and might turn out to have been misread or misinterpreted,” reported The New York Times.    

That WSJ blurb was quickly rewritten with more caution—but it was too late. The damage was done.

Before investigators had concrete information about the suspect or motive, MAGA accounts blasted out the tale of a transgender Antifa assassin to millions. This wasn’t an innocent mistake; it was an intentional push to embolden calls for censorship and violence.  The story was no longer about Kirk himself—who opposed the very gun reforms that could have made tragedies like his less likely, and who called it “prudent” and “rational” to tolerate “some gun deaths every single year.” 

It was an info-war effort to rally the GOP base against their favorite enemies. And the Trump administration (never shy about exploiting tragedy) was all in. Almost immediately after the shooting, before anything was known about the suspect, Trump and others on the right started blaming “the left.” They literally worked to turn it into the next 9/11, a catalyst to justify whatever further actions they deemed necessary.   Meanwhile, the supposedly bereft Trump (taking a break from pretending to care) was caught on camera yukking it up at a Yankees game.

But with Tyler Robinson (the alleged shooter) now in custody, the right is in a bind. On paper, he’s one of theirs: a young, white, gun-loving man. Not even trans, dangit!  We don’t know much about his politics yet—he wasn’t registered with a party and didn’t vote in the past two elections.  It now seems the actual evidence points instead to someone terminally online, seeped in toxic gamer and meme culture.

One sign that Robinson’s identity has taken the wind out of their sails is Trump himself. The white gun-loving kid isn’t giving Trump the culture-war ammunition he craves, and is pulling attention away from Trump.   In an interview on the White House lawn, where the convicted felon was given a softball opportunity to expound further on the Kirk tragedy, the orange man couldn't pivot away fast enough:

Reporter: Mr. President, my condolences to you, sir. My condolences on the loss of your friend Charlie Kirk.  How are you holding up over the last day and a half, sir?

Trump: I think very good. And by the way, right there, you see all the trucks? They've just started construction of the new ballroom for the White House, which is something they've been trying to get, as you know, for about 150 years.

Oh well. Denied the material for his hate crusade, Trump couldn’t even keep up the charade for 48 hours.  The GOP machine is now repositioning its outrage by claiming Robinson was radicalized by academia.   In the end, the average person still wants fewer guns in the world and fewer victims of gun violence.  But conservatives get to carry on as if nothing happened, creating a martyr out of someone who encouraged this Wild West world that we’re stuck living in—and that ultimately claimed him, too.