The Left’s Appalling Disinformation Campaign Surrounding Charlie Kirk’s Murder

By Jeffrey Blehar

Tuesday, September 16, 2025

 

Greetings and welcome into this 54th and somewhat subdued performance of the Carnival of Fools. You know why. When I filed last week’s Carnival, the world was abuzz with will-he-won’t-he rumors about Donald Trump’s intent to send the National Guard into Chicago — and understand, this was my idea of trying to look on the sunny side of politics. At the same time, however, we were also all watching horrifying videos of a Ukrainian refugee being stabbed to death by a knife-wielding lunatic on a train. A mere week before that, our hearts had been shattered by the Catholic school shooting in Minneapolis.

 

In reaction to that atrocity, I concluded the week’s Carnival with words that now inevitably feel grimly prophetic:

 

I fear we are on the verge of a great societal breakdown — one right out of the late Sixties and early Seventies — and we are not prepared for it. Something wicked this way comes. The atrocity in Minneapolis is but one articulated edge in a far larger fractal pattern of violence and madness creeping across our landscape. Once the progress was imperceptibly slow, but technology has proven to be the accelerant. The threat is pre-political, generational, and perhaps even civilizational. The worst are full of passionate intensity. Things are falling apart, crumbling at both the margins and the center of our societal self-conception.

 

What comes next? I suppose we’ll find out.

 

Readers, we are finding out at warp speed. It’s not really something to joke about; it is terrifying. Last Wednesday our American political fabric was sundered with the assassination of Charlie Kirk in Utah. I have already written about the horror twice, the second time with a certain sense of psychological closure. But in that piece I also said I wasn’t about to move on anytime soon, either — especially not after being prodded to do so by progressives and liberals desperately seeking to talk about anything but the apparent nexus between transgenderism, online self-radicalization, and acts of spectacular public violence.

 

I Will Not Forget the Gaslighting

 

I don’t want to have that conversation right now, either. (And not just because doing so nowadays apparently makes you a fair target to a certain kind of person.) Instead, I want to express my burning contempt for the social media charade that I and every other conservative just had to endure: the experience of watching Charlie Kirk murdered, and then watching vast numbers of propagandists and people who know better tell us that Kirk was actually shot by a far-right “Groyper,” or a Nick Fuentes fan, or a MAGA true believer — anyone but a person associated with a left-coded cause, which Occam’s razor already suggested was the likely reality.

 

As each new detail trickled out, and the killer’s transgender associations became clearer and clearer, the hysterical spin and assertions of blunt unreality mounted. Cynical pros began inserting outright lies into the mix, as partisan myrmidons took up their work and used it in desperate, craven attempts to either spin facts in ridiculous ways (“his parents are Republicans!”) or simply pretend the facts weren’t “facts” at all. All of it was done with the intent of trying to will into existence — through the spread of fear, uncertainty, and doubt — an alternate narrative whose intended moral calculus amounted to, in so many words, Charlie Kirk was killed by his own team, and this is actually your fault.

 

So, no, I’m not about to move on just yet.

 

I could understand a certain amount of denialism at first, because I understand human nature. For those on the left who treat politics like a substitute religion — an increasing number of people in our irreligious age — this moment has been akin to seeing several of the central tenets of your faith publicly refuted. The revelation of the identity of the alleged shooter and the reports about his beliefs were arguably the worst possible scenario for the sorts of loud Democratic types who are deeply invested in the idea of the MAGA right as America’s true fever-swamp of hatred and violence.

 

I can understand ignorance as well, because I depend on documenting it for a job — the Carnival of Fools would have to fold up its tent without it. In the days before the suspect was caught, it was natural that desperate progressives who get their news from left-wing authorities would use that span of time — when the killer was still at large — to conjure their own arcane interpretive theories in defiance of the known evidence. I feel inevitable disgust at these sad attempts at spin — I know who publicly celebrated the attack on Kirk, after all, and it wasn’t anyone on my side — but again, it was expected.

 

But I can’t understand any of this after Tyler Robinson was caught on Friday morning. At that point, mere ignorance and wish-casting turned into an active disinformation campaign, and it was particularly appalling to see from people whose civic responsibility it is to know better. To take one example, how about the repellent Eric Swalwell? On Friday afternoon, in an audaciously sleazy bit of “partial storytelling,” the California congressman tweeted: “It doesn’t matter that Kirk’s killer was a straight white male. Or that he was from a Republican family that voted for Donald Trump. Violence has NEVER been the answer.”

 

If he thought this was a cute joke, he’s a moral reprobate. If he thought it was an effective deceit, he’s also a moral reprobate. I think it is thus fair to conclude that he’s a moral reprobate. The jury’s still out on his fellow California Democratic congressman Dave Min, however, who may simply be stupid. Min said on Saturday: “Now that the Charlie Kirk assassin has been identified as MAGA, I’m sure Donald Trump, Elon Musk and all the insane GOP politicians who called for retribution against the ‘RADICAL LEFT’ will now shift their focus to stopping the toxic violence of the RADICAL RIGHT.” (As it turns out, Dave? No, we won’t!)

 

How about Harvard Law professor — and Joe Biden legal adviser — Laurence Tribe? Tribe announced on Twitter that the killer “seems to have been ultra-MAGA, exploding the GOP/MAGA attempt to pin the blame for this tragedy on liberals.” (How he got that idea is anybody’s guess.) Later, he deleted the tweet and posted a non-apology accusing the right of “making things up” by associating the killer with transgender or left-wing causes. I can only tell you that once upon a time he had a fine legal mind.

 

I certainly can’t say the same for Heather Cox Richardson, the world’s most-followed Substacker. Richardson is a Temu Tribe, an oracle of the complacently progressive academic establishment, and demonstrated it once again by going on a podcast on Friday to claim that the killer was a “right-winger” and all those outraged conservatives online were now retreating “in a real hurry.” (Lest you think that was an error born of speaking off the cuff, Richardson put it in writing as well.)

 

Now that the gaslighting has become impossible to sustain, the left has moved on to its last line of defense: “Let’s not bicker and argue about who killed whom.” It will be a long time before I forget the five days I have just spent being gaslighted both by political operators as well as people who remain transparently in denial. I expected better of them. I held them only to the standards that I hold myself. It was a mistake.

 

Tired Hack Spouts Tired Politics — Film at Eleven

 

I don’t even care about the latest Hollywood disgrace — surprise surprise, most of these people are narcissistic dolts! — but I thought I’d end on it anyway, because one wrinkle made me laugh. For those unaware (what, TV awards shows aren’t appointment viewing for you?), Sunday night at the Emmy Awards ceremony, actress Hannah Einbinder forgot Ricky Gervais’s sage advice, and shouted “F*** ICE! Free Palestine!” at the Emmys as she accepted an award.

 

I don’t care. I’ve never heard of the show she’s on (something called Hacks, about a struggling comedy writer), and I know only what my friend Mary Katharine Ham told me about it: “She plays a grating and charmless character and I think it might be method acting.”

 

No, the reason I enjoyed this is that the Quds News Network (the world’s “largest Independent Palestinian youth news network,” per its own doubtlessly trustworthy self-description) approvingly tweeted out video of Einbinder explaining herself backstage — with her shoulders blurred. Apparently the sight of skin from the neck down provokes lascivious thoughts for these guys. I can almost hear the guy who runs the account in my mind right now, saying “Thanks for the support, you indecent Western strumpet!”