tibicen

Sept. 10: Charlie Kirk was shot to death while speaking on a college campus.
(The same day, several high school students were shot in their school in Colorado.)

Within hours, the FBI announced that it had a suspect in custody, but then released that suspect.

Also within hours, with no suspect in custody, much less any evidence about motives, President Trump addressed the American people:

It's long past time for all Americans and the media to confront the fact that violence and murder are the tragic consequence of demonizing those with whom you disagree, day after day year after year, in the most hateful and despicable way possible. For years those on the radical left have compared wonderful Americans like Charlie to Nazis and the world's worst mass murderers and criminals. This kind of rhetoric is directly responsible for the terrorism that we're seeing in our country today, and it must stop right now. My administration will find each and every one of those who contributed to this atrocity and to other political violence, including the organizations that fund it and support it, as well as those who go after our judges, law enforcement officials, and everyone else who brings order to our country. From the attack on my life in Butler, Pennsylvania last year which killed a husband and father to the attacks on ICE agents to the vicious murder of a health care executive in the streets of New York to the shooting of House majority leader Steve Scalise and three others, radical left political violence has hurt too many innocent people and taken too many lives.

He did not, of course, mention his own history of demonizing those with whom he disagrees, encouraging violence against protesters, describing liberals and Democrats as fascists, criminals, and sub-human animals, attacking judges who rule against him, instigating a riot that attacked law enforcement officials and terrorized members of Congress, and pardoning the rioters. Nor did he mention any liberal or Democratic victims of political violence, such as Paul Pelosi, Jason Shapiro, Melissa and Mark Hortmann, John and Yvette Hoffman, nor the FBI reports stating that a solid majority of political violence in the US is right-wing-inspired.

Sept. 11: Tyler Robinson was taken into custody, after his parents and girlfriend contacted the FBI.

Sept. 12: Mainstream news media (like this in the Times) reported that 22-year-old Tyler Robinson was raised in a solidly Republican family, going hunting in the mountains with his parents, he had a 4.0 average in high school, took several AP and college-level classes, and got a prestigious scholarship to Utah State University, which he left after one semester. He was registered to vote, but not registered to any political party, and had never actually voted. Utah officials said they had found "unfired ammunition that had been engraved with jokes and slang from internet memes as well as the words, “hey fascist! CATCH!”"

Also on Sept. 12, President Trump announced that "we're going to look into Soros", who "should be put in jail ... he's a bad guy" and that George Soros and his son Alex should be charged under RICO “because of their support for Violent Protest, and much more, all throughout the United States of America.”

Sept. 13: More details on cryptic messages Robinson had left, from the Times:

One read, “hey fascist! CATCH! (up arrow symbol, right arrow symbol, and three down arrow symbols),” according to an affidavit filed on Friday in a Utah court.

If the reference to fascism appeared to be straightforward, the arrows were most likely understandable only to certain subsets of gamers. They seem to refer to the popular video game Helldivers 2 and its sequence of controller moves to unleash a powerful bomb.

“It’s a joke in the Helldivers community that you can shut down any argument you disagree with by entering ^ > vvv and blowing the whole thing up,”
...
The messages found on the casings — including puerile jokes and a reference to a popular Italian song — are rooted in that coded communication style of the habitually online.
...
But these messages are difficult to parse. Internet in-jokes and references are slippery things, often deployed with multiple layers of irony. That left many Americans trying to crack the enigmatic messages: Was Mr. Robinson a man of the left or of the right, or something else entirely?
...
“It’s very hard to map a political ideology on this mishmash of video game references and hints of different internet subcultures,” said Emerson Brooking, a fellow at the Atlantic Council, an international-affairs think tank, and a former cyberpolicy adviser at the Defense Department.

One of the messages, “Notices bulges OwO what’s this?,” is often used to mock participants in online role-play communities. Another message said, “If you read This, you are GAY Lmao,” its tone suggesting a kind of sophomoric insult humor common on internet message boards.

Then there was the message that read, “O Bella ciao, Bella ciao, Bella ciao, Ciao, ciao!,” likely a reference to the popular Italian folk song “Bella Ciao.” Popularized as an antifascist anthem in Italy after World War II, it resurfaced globally in recent years because of its inclusion in the hit Netflix series “Money Heist” and in video games, including the first-person shooter game Far Cry 6.

The song is still well-known as antifascist. It was sung as a protest last year by progressive members of the European Parliament during a visit by Viktor Orban, Hungary’s far-right prime minister.

But a number of people noted online on Friday that a version appears on a Spotify playlist meant for Groypers, the followers of Nick Fuentes, the white nationalist who occupies a political space to the right of, and in opposition to, Mr. Kirk.

As people online debated what the references meant, Mr. Brooking mused that the discussion might amount to a mission accomplished for a troll.

“The spectacle,” he said, “has to be the entire point.”

Sept. 15: Attorney General Pam Bondi said, in an ABC News interview,

"Who killed Charlie? Left-wing radicals, and they will be held accountable. So will anyone in this country who commits a violent crime against anyone. And the death penalty, thanks to Donald Trump, is on the table again."

The attorney general, however, did not offer a motive as to why the alleged suspect, 22-year-old Tyler Robinson, killed Kirk last Wednesday while he was speaking at an event on a university campus in Utah.

Pressed on whether Robinson acted alone, she said it is an ongoing investigation.

As of Sept. 15, there was no clear evidence about the alleged assassin's motives, just a mishmash of tidbits that could be read as left-wing, right-wing, or just plain attention-seeking, depending largely on your priors. If you were politically left-wing, you saw him as a Republican gun-lover with a video-game habit; if you were politically right-wing, you saw him as a "left-wing radical", pro-trans and anti-fascist. There was also no evidence whatsoever of him conspiring with or being supported by anyone else, despite Bondi's consistent use of the plural.

Later on Sept. 15, Jimmy Kimmel said, in his opening monologue,

We hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them, and doing everything they can to score political points from it, and in between the finger-pointing, there was grieving...

Not one word critical of Charlie Kirk, only the assertion that his murderer was "one of" the MAGA gang, which contradicted Trump-and-Bondi's story that Kirk was killed by a vast "radical left" conspiracy.

Sept. 17: FCC Chair Brendan Carr described Kimmel's statement in an interview as "the sickest conduct possible" and added

I think that it's really sort of past time that a lot of these licensed broadcasters themselves push back on Comcast and Disney and say 'listen, we are going to preempt -- we are not going to run Kimmel any more until you straighten this out' ... I mean look, we can do this the easy way or the hard way.

Stephen Colbert juxtaposes this with quotes from Brendan Carr in 2020:

From Internet memes to late-night comedians ... Political Satire ... helps hold those in power accountable... Shutting down this type of political speech -- especially at the urging of those targeted or threatened by its message -- would represent a serious threat to our freedoms.

Within hours, Nexstar and Sinclair, two companies that each own dozens of ABC affiliate stations and are both seeking FCC approval for mergers and acquisitions, obediently announced that they would refuse to run Jimmy Kimmel's show.

Carr responded on X:

I want to thank Nexstar for doing the right thing.

Local broadcasters have an obligation to serve the public interest. While this may be an unprecedented decision, it is important for broadcasters to push back on Disney programming that they determine falls short of community values.

I hope that other broadcasters follow Nexstar’s lead.

A few hours later, Disney/ABC (which is also seeking FCC approval for a sale) announced that it would cancel Jimmy Kimmel's show "indefinitely".

[Stephen Colbert points out that when his show was cancelled two months ago, while his employer was seeking FCC approval for a merger, Trump had celebrated and added "Kimmel is NEXT to go"]

Sept. 18: President Trump said "Jimmy Kimmel was fired because he had bad ratings more than anything else and he said a horrible thing about a great gentleman known as Charlie Kirk." He did not identify what "horrible thing" Kimmel had said.

Later on the 18th, he posted on Truth Social

Great News for America: The ratings challenged Jimmy Kimmel Show is CANCELLED. Congratulations to ABC for finally having the courage to do what had to be done. Kimmel has ZERO talent, and worse ratings than even Colbert, if that’s possible. That leaves Jimmy and Seth, two total losers, on Fake News NBC. Their ratings are also horrible. Do it NBC!!! President DJT