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Tyler Robinson: Guns, Gaming, and Gay

Contrary to what the Mormon governor of Utah, Spencer Cox, has said, there’s not much in the information filed against Tyler Robinson that substantiates his claim that Tyler Robinson is a lefty.

Unless there’s more evidence of partisanship elsewhere, he seems to have coded Robinson’s sexuality onto political partisanship.

It is true that he is in a romantic relationship with his transitioning roommate. That is stated explicitly in the charging documents, and Robinson calls the roommate, “love.”

I am still ok my love,

[snip]

you are all I worry about love

Here’s what Robinson told the roommate (and his parents) about his motive:

I had enough of his hatred. Some hate can’t be negotiated out.

And here’s what he said about the engravings on the bullets:

remember how I was engraving bullets? The fuckin messages are mostly a big meme, if I see “notices bulge uwu” on fox new I might have a stroke alright im gonna have to leave it, that really fucking sucks. …

And that’s about it.

Utah is basing its death penalty bid on an aggravated murder charge. See Adam Klasfeld for reasons that may not stick (as several of the charges against Luigi Mangione did not, per a judge’s ruling today).

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The White House Bid to Turn the Charlie Kirk Murder into Their Anti-Trans Jihad

In a Discord chatroom including at least one guy he knew from high school who had recognized Tyler Robinson in the pictures released by Charlie Kirk murder investigators, the accused murderer offered up the now-discredited report about trans bullets, but treated it with irony, just like he ironically claimed to be Kirk himself.

“I heard the ammo had somethin about trans stuff on it, but they aren’t releasing photos or exact quotes,” he wrote. He added: “and also the claim wasn’t backed by the official fbi, just some dude in the briefing room.”

A few minutes later, he joked: “I’m actually Charlie Kirk, wanted to get outta politics so I faked my death, now I can live out my dream life in kansas.”

The comment is deliberately non-committal, like all the others described in the NYT story on the Discord chat. But it is far more reliable evidence than a growing story, sourced to the White House, that one of two Robinson roommates cooperating with the FBI is trans and may even be Robinson’s lover.

The story started with one of the White House and Kash/Bongino’s favorite propagandists, Brooke Singman, whose belated story writing up the allegation she first tweeted out included a self-serving claim from the FBI officials who had nothing to do with finding Robinson, claiming they had instead “zero[ed] in on” him as a subject via the cooperation from the roommate.

FBI officials told Fox News Digital that the FBI had text messages and other communications between Robinson and his partner that helped FBI agents zero in on Robinson. Officials said the FBI took evidence from their apartment, including computers, which has been sent to Quantico for review, Fox News Digital has learned.

It went through the Daily Mail (which took a non-denial as confirmation the roommate was trans) and a NewsMax reporter who directly sourced the claim to Trump. Then, Marc Caputo, who is incredibly well-sourced to people like Susie Wiles and Roger Stone, but who has gotten increasingly credulous at Axios, mainstreamed it.

Authorities are investigating whether Tyler Robinson, suspected of killing Charlie Kirk, believed Kirk’s views on gender identity were “hateful” to people like Robinson’s transgender roommate, six sources familiar with the case tell Axios.

  • Why it matters: Investigators believe Robinson’s anger at Kirk’s views could be a key to establishing a motive for the slaying of the controversial activist whose death sent shockwaves through American politics.
  • Each of the six sources familiar with the investigation told Axios that investigators believe Robinson had a romantic relationship with his roommate.

All this is coming in advance of the expected filing of charges by Utah on Tuesday.

Meanwhile, Steve Bannon has been on a tear because Utah Governor Spencer Cox, rather than Kash Patel, led the press conference announcing Robinson’s arrest the other day.

Did the ppl in the White House inform POTUS that one of his greatest haters, this goofball, girly man, weak governor of Utah, was going to sit there and do the entire briefing on the murder of Charlie Kirk and essentially give us almost no facts and just preach unity with the aggressively LGBTQ governor of Colorado?

Kash Patel is not just a colleague, he’s a very dear and close friend. I think the world of Kash. We don’t know what restrictions he’s under or even his ability to fully articulate what’s happening here. But whoever authorized one of the biggest Trump haters in this country, the governor of Utah, Cox, is a disaster. A true Trump hater, one of the worst in the Republican Party. Folks in Utah need to understand this man has embraced and pushed some of the most dangerous ideologies out there.

Bannon is very specifically demanding a story that a trans cabal killed Charlie Kirk.

There’s a very good reason why Cox was leading the presser and not Kash (besides Kash’s manifest incompetence): Because — as Josh Gerstein and Kyle Cheney noted the other day — as of now there’s no federal nexus to this crime.

The criminal case against the man accused of killing Charlie Kirk will likely play out in a Utah county courthouse, under the control of local prosecutors. But a national audience may very well be watching.

That’s because the alleged shooter, whom authorities identified on Friday as Tyler Robinson, is facing state-level criminal charges. And in Utah — unlike in federal court — criminal trials are routinely televised.

Robinson has been charged with three crimes under Utah law: murder, causing bodily injury with a firearm and obstruction of justice.

It might seem surprising that the case is not a federal one, given the national notoriety of the crime and the FBI’s heavy involvement in the investigation. But homicides can be charged as federal crimes in only a few circumstances — such as an assassination of a federal government official, a killing on federal property or a “hate crime” that was motivated by the victim’s race, religion or another protected characteristic.

The only way it could become a federal charge — the only way that Kash’s FBI would gain primary control over the facts and narrative told — would be if DOJ charged it as a hate crime, as Kash described trying to do in the case of the Robin Westman, the trans woman charged in the Annunciation Catholic School shooting last month, even while deadnaming her throughout.

As we continue to investigate yesterday’s barbaric attack from Robert [sic] Westman, the male subject, our teams have gathered information and evidence demonstrating this was an act of domestic terrorism motivated by a hate-filled ideology.

Some updates:

-Subject left multiple anti-Catholic, anti-religious references both in his manifesto and written on his firearms

-Subject expressed hatred and violence toward Jewish people, writing “Israel must fall,” “Free Palestine,” and using explicit language related to the Holocaust

-He wrote a an explicit call for violence against President Trump on a firearm magazine

The @fbi investigation is still ongoing. We will employ all of our counter-terror tools to ensure this is fully investigated and deterred.

And as promised, we will continue to update when able.

Of course, even if Robinson’s roommate were trans, even if they were in a relationship, the current story would be that because a person who willingly implicated their friend in a death penalty eligible crime, doing the work Kash’s FBI was too incompetent to do, it gives Stephen Miller license to arrest all trans people (or at least Pam Bondi to disarm them), just like he used fraudulent claims about Tren de Aragua to detain hundreds of men with innocent tattoos and send them to a concentration camp in El Salvador.

The alleged trans person here is the only one whose actions are above reproach.

And all that’s before you consider how Kash Patel has done much to make any bid for the death penalty  unsustainable (to say nothing about Federal charges against Westman), given his repeated evocations of love for Kirk, down to promising he would see him in Valhalla (wittingly or unwittingly repeating the words of the far right Christchurch killer).

Unless Robinson were to plead guilty (which would mostly likely only happen if law enforcement promised not to execute him), any such death penalty phase would be riddled with questions about the bias of Kash, Trump, and everyone else leading this case from the federal side. Frankly, the discovery would be epic — and badly discrediting to the FBI and the White House.

We don’t know what motivated Robinson, what turned him from the pro-Trump politics of his family or what appears to have distanced him from the Mormon Church (there has been little conversation about the significance of the fact that Robinson did not do a Mormon mission, but it may be the most important sign of rupture out there).

What we do know is that Stephen Miller wasted no time grieving his beloved friend, but turned immediately to politicizing his death. And Miller has never bothered to let truth drive his political jihads.

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Gamer Culture and Guns

The other thread on the Charlie Kirk killing has gotten really long, so I thought I’d post another.

The investigation into Tyler Robinson’s ideology is still quite early. What’s clear is he was raised in conservative Republican culture, around guns.

What’s unclear is whether the cultural references that AFT initially misrepresented as “trans ideology” is sincerely, or only ironically, tied to further right culture than Kirk himself.

Here’s a good explanation of the known gamer references in the things he scratched onto bullet casings (though the song Bella Ciao has been appropriated by Groypers).

But the full arrow sequence was quickly recognized as something else: a combo from Helldivers 2 for calling the Eagle 500kg Bomb stratagem. The world of Helldivers — which evokes Robert Heinlein’s book Starship Troopers and the subsequent movie — concerns fascism thematically; developer Arrowhead has characterized it as a satire where players fight for a fascist state.

[snip]

Fans of the game immediately noticed. Shortly after the press conference on Friday morning, the Helldivers subreddit was flooded with players who had picked up on what may be references to the game. A thread, now deleted, was titled: “Hey Facist Catch!” with the poster asking, “Did anyone else hear/notice?!” A commenter, responding to the thread, said, “The moment I heard [the arrows] my eyes widened.”

Another thread, also apparently deleted by moderators, referenced the arrows that authorities say were on one of the unfired bullet casings recovered at the scene. “It sickens me having people like this playing this game and using it to real violence to tarnish this awesome game and community,” the poster wrote. Other posts implored the subreddit moderators to lock down the forum. Moderators for the subreddit didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. A thread in the separate r/Helldivers2 subreddit remains active, with people discussing the apparent parallels.

And this is a worthwhile reflection — originally written about the suspect in the Annunciation Catholic Church shooting — about how muddled this online ideology can be.

As incoherent, unhinged, or even cringey as the Minneapolis shooter’s videos might seem, they are part of a familiar template of terroristic behavior—one that continues to spread in online communities dedicated to mass shootings and other forms of brutality. In these morbid spaces, killers are viewed as martyrs, and they’re dubbed “saints.” Really, they’re influencers.

These disaffected communities live on social networks, message boards, and private Discords. They are populated by trolls, gore addicts, and, of course, aspiring shooters, who study, debate, and praise mass-shooting tactics and manifestos. Frequently, these groups adopt the aesthetics of neo-Nazis and white supremacists—sometimes because they are earnestly neo-Nazis and white supremacists, and sometimes because it’s the look and language that they’re cribbing from elsewhere. It’s always blurry, but it usually amounts to the same thing. In an article published by this magazine last year, Dave Cullen, author of the book Columbinesummed it all up: “As you read this, a distraught, lonely kid somewhere is contemplating an attack—and the one community they trust is screaming, Do it!

There’s no reason to rush to pin this down. What matters is the right wing launched a cultural war against the left…

… Only to discover that the culprit was one of theirs.

H/T Alejandra Caraballo for the Nancy Mace screengrabs.

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