Letters from an American – September 12, 2025 – Heather Cox Richardson

Letters from an American

September 12, 2025

By Heather Cox Richardson, Sep 12, 2025

Since a gunman murdered right-wing activist Charlie Kirk at an outdoor event at Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah, both social media circles and the political sphere have been alight with accusations that “the Left” was responsible for the shooting. Prominent right-wing social media accounts called the Democratic Party “a domestic terror organization” and declared “WAR.” Billionaire Elon Musk posted: “The Left is the party of murder.”

From the Oval Office, President Donald J. Trump blamed the shooting on “the radical left” and vowed to “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.”

Without any information about the shooter, the media got in on the game, with the Wall Street Journal reporting yesterday that “[a]mmunition engraved with transgender and antifascist ideology was found inside the rifle authorities believe was used in Kirk’s shooting.” Bomb threats targeted Democratic politicians—primarily Black politicians—and historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs).

Condemnation of the shooting was widespread. Perhaps eager to distance themselves from accusations that anyone who does not support MAGA endorses political violence, commenters portrayed Kirk as someone embracing the reasoned debate central to democracy, although he became famous by establishing a database designed to dox professors who expressed opinions he disliked so they would be silenced (I am included on this list).

Meanwhile, it was not clear the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) was up to the task of finding the killer. FBI director Kash Patel and deputy director Dan Bongino were both MAGA influencers without law enforcement experience when Trump put them in charge of the agency. Once there, they focused on purging the agency of those they considered insufficiently loyal to Trump or “DEI hires.” In early August, they forced out the leader of the Salt Lake City, Utah, field office, Mehtab Syed, a decorated female Pakistani American counterterrorism agent.

Meanwhile, David J. Bier of the Cato Institute reported that one in five FBI agents have been diverted from their jobs to conduct immigration raids with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and just hours before the shooting, three former top officials at the FBI filed a lawsuit against Patel, the FBI, Attorney General Pam Bondi, the Department of Justice, and the president accusing them of unlawfully politicizing the FBI, purging it of anyone who had ever worked on a criminal investigation of Trump. The lawsuit suggests Bongino had an “intense focus on [using] his social media profiles to change his followers’ perceptions of the FBI.”

As Quinta Jurecic reported today in The Atlantic, hours after the shooting, Patel’s personal social media account posted a picture of himself and Kirk; minutes later, Patel’s official FBI account posted that the shooter was already in custody and then, an hour and a half later, said the suspect had been released. Both Patel and Bongino appeared to be focused more on posting than on doing the work to find the shooter.

This morning, Trump announced on the Fox News Channel’s Fox & Friends that he had just heard “they have the person that they wanted.” That person turned out to be 22-year-old Utah native Tyler Robinson, who turned himself in to authorities after his father urged him to. Robinson’s parents are registered Republicans; he was not affiliated with a political party and was an inactive voter. Over the past years, Robinson’s mother posted a number of pictures of him and his brothers posing with guns.

Editor’s Note: Read the rest of the story, at the below link.

Continue/Read Original Article Here: September 12, 2025 – by Heather Cox Richardson