Treating An Assassination As An Accident

The mainstream media made sure to minimize Charlie Kirk’s murder and fearmonger against the Right

Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk was murdered Wednesday. The assassination shocked conservatives, revealing the danger of left-wing violence to the nation. Many leftists openly celebrated Kirk’s death, treating it as if their favorite team had just won the Super Bowl.

Mainstream media outlets couldn’t openly revel in it. That would be a bridge too far for “respectable” journalists. They instead treated the political murder as a strange accident, heaped scorn on Kirk’s lifeless body, and tried to blame the Right for all political violence in America.

MSNBC was likely the worst offender. One guest speculated a Kirk supporter may have accidentally shot him in celebration. Host Katy Tur was deeply concerned about the shooting–because it may lead to the Trump “administration using this as a justification for something." Contributor Matthew Dowd blamed Kirk for his own death, arguing he spread “hate.” Host Jen Psaki blamed President Trump’s rhetoric for the assassination, claiming it was “directly responsible for the terrorism we’re seeing in our country today, and it must stop right now.”

Prestigious outlets such as the Associated Press and the New York Times made sure you knew Kirk was a bad person due to his racist, anti-vax, MAGA views. Of course, these reporters would at least throw in a “this is horrible” or “what a tragedy” before bashing Kirk, fretting over the Right politicizing a political assassination, or minimizing its importance.

The media wants its audience to think of this as a random accident. There’s no one to blame for it, except for Trump supporters and the victim himself. We’re only supposed to deplore political violence in general, without pointing a finger in the Left’s direction. America just needs to come together and be civil–unless you support Trump. This is just something that happens and we can’t do anything about it. When a random black criminal dies during a police encounter, the media portrays it as part of a systemic racist genocide. When a conservative dies in a politically-motivated murder, it’s akin to dying at the hands of a thunder storm. There’s nothing you can do. Just be more careful about the words you use.

There was a similar reaction to the 2017 Congressional Baseball shooting and the assassination attempt against Trump last year. We weren’t supposed to point fingers or politicize these politically-motivated crimes. The media told us to move on. This worked in 2017 when the older media environment prevailed and social media was more dominated by liberals and censorship. That’s harder to do when traditional media outlets are much weaker and right-wing views prevail on social media. Stories and reactions that go against the preset media narrative gain wider credence while outraging journalists.

We also witnessed that in the days prior to Kirk’s murder. Conservative media was drawn to the horrific murder of Iryna Zarutska, a Ukrainian immigrant slaughtered by a deranged black man in Charlotte. This story had many newsworthy elements. A pretty young woman fleeing a warzone met her end heading home from work in a bustling American city. The murderer was a repeat offender with multiple felonies who the justice system kept releasing into the public. Decarlos Brown Jr., the killer, stabbed his victim unprovoked as he sat behind her. His fellow black passengers barely noticed the stabbing and did little to aid the dying Zarutska. The whole grisly murder was also captured on video, making it more likely to become a national news story about the danger of soft-on-crime policies.

But when mainstream outlets began to cover it, they focused on how “problematic” it was that the Right focused on the murder. It’s apparently something we’re not supposed to do when the victim is white and the murderer is black. It’s only supposed to be news when it’s the reverse. Axios denounced MAGA for exploiting the murder to fuel its anti-crime message. The New York Times went a step further, bringing up the 1898 Wilmington race riot to imply news media shouldn’t cover black-on-white crime to prevent white-on-black violence. CNN ran a segment expressing more outrage at the “racism” on social media than at the murder itself.

Like with the Kirk assassination, we’re told to just see black-on-white murders as accidents. The justice system will take care of it by giving a light sentence to the perp and we’re all expected to move on. To politicize it is worse than the crime itself. The establishment press will lump you in with lynchers and fascists if you think there may be a political response to a black-on-white murder or an assassination.

It was once easy to uphold this dubious standard. But no more. The new media environment doesn’t control forbidden truths like the old one did. People can see stories that would’ve been buried a decade ago when they log on to X, Reels, or TikTok. Millions of Americans witnessed the horrifying executions of Charlie Kirk and Iryna Zarutska with their own eyes. There’s nothing an MSNBC or CNN anchor can say that can make them decide their eyes are lying. They made up their minds on their own without the curation of the mainstream media–and these brutal murders make them angry. They want something done to prevent them from happening in the future. And they want people responsible for making them happen to pay a heavy price.

The Kirk assassination and the Zarutska murder were the deliberate result of rhetoric and policies championed by the Left. That’s why the mainstream media wants you to think these are more like natural disasters than preventable tragedies. Journalists don’t want their side exposed for the wrongs they’ve imposed on our country.