New Evidence Suggests Political Motive in Charlie Kirk Assassination as Debate Erupts Over Blame and Rhetoric
A newly released set of charging documents is intensifying scrutiny around the killing of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, pointing to a clear political motive.
Utah County Attorney Jeff Gray revealed that the accused gunman, 22-year-old Tyler Robinson, left behind a chilling note for his transgender roommate before the attack. In a series of text messages, Robinson urged his roommate to “drop everything” and check under his keyboard. There, prosecutors say, investigators found a handwritten message: “I had the opportunity to take out Charlie Kirk and I’m going to take it.”
Robinson allegedly continued in his texts, citing Kirk directly: “I had enough of his hatred. Some hate can’t be negotiated out.”
The disclosure has inflamed an already volatile political climate. Republicans, furious at what they view as an effort by Democrats and the media to shift responsibility, have rejected claims that Robinson was in any way aligned with Donald Trump’s “Make America Great Again” movement. Instead, GOP leaders have accused Democrats of fostering a toxic environment through years of rhetoric that branded Trump supporters as “Nazis,” “fascists,” “homophobes,” and “threats to democracy.”
That anger spilled into mainstream media on Monday during a heated exchange on Fox News’ The Five. Co-host Greg Gutfeld clashed with liberal panelist Jessica Tarlov after she argued that political violence is not limited to one side.
“What is interesting here is, why is only this happening on the left and not the right? That’s all we need to know,” Gutfeld said pointedly.
Tarlov countered, pointing to recent violence targeting Democrats, including the murder of Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman. But Gutfeld cut her off, raising his voice and dismissing the comparison outright.
“None of us were spending every single day talking about Mrs. Hortman,” he shot back. “I never heard of her until after she died. Don’t play that bulls—t with me. There was no demonization, amplification about that woman before she died. It was a specific crime against her by somebody who knew her.”
The exchange grew more combative as Gutfeld flatly rejected the notion of equivalence. “The both sides argument not only doesn’t fly — we don’t care. We don’t care about your both sides argument. That s—t is dead,” he declared.
He framed the disagreement as a struggle between fact and deflection. “On your side, your beliefs do not match reality, so you’re coming up with rationalizations. We’re not doing that. We saw a young, bright man assassinated and we know who did it. We are calm, we are honest, and we are resolute. We’re not defensive.”
Gutfeld went further, charging that left-wing rhetoric and ideology helped create the climate for violence. “If you sat around and you defended the mutilation of children, you’re not the good guys. If you sat [through] 600, 700 cases of harassment against Republicans and said, ‘But what about this?’ And then you see this murderer after calling somebody a fascist, you realize, ‘Maybe I’m not the good guy.’”
Robinson, he argued, had been manipulated by “direct-to-consumer nihilism” and radical ideology. “He was a patsy. He was under the hypnotic spell of a direct-to-consumer nihilism — the trans cult,” Gutfeld said. “If you can decide that biology is false, you can agree that murder is okay and that humanity’s expendable.”
While Tarlov sought to clarify she was not minimizing Kirk’s death, Gutfeld continued pressing his point, declaring that the time for equivocation had ended.
“The two sides argument… it’s like pig Latin to a duck,” he said. “Charlie had a conversation and he got shot. This thing is with us for good. The media’s dead to us on this story. They built this thing up. We’re dealing with it. We’re gonna act. We don’t care what the what-about-ism is anymore. That s—t’s dead.”
The clash underscored a growing divide over how the country interprets the Kirk assassination — as either another tragic episode of political violence, or evidence of a deeper ideological campaign that Republicans say has been years in the making.