Soon after authorities identified Charlie Kirk’s alleged assassin, Tyler Robinson, a conspiracy theory began to rocket around liberal corners of the internet. Robinson, the theory went, may have appeared to be on the left side of the political aisle but was actually a supporter of President Donald Trump trying to make liberals look bad.
The evidence that Robinson is a staunch leftist is compelling. He left anti-fascist calling cards on the ammunition found at the scene. He told family members about his disdain for Kirk’s political views. He was living with a male romantic partner who identifies as transgender. Investigators who interviewed those close to Robinson came away with the clear impression that he “was a person who was deeply indoctrinated with leftist ideology,” according to Utah governor Spencer Cox (R.).
Aside from the fact that Robinson’s parents were registered Republicans—itself no clear indicator of an adult son’s political views—the conspiracy theory that Robinson was an undercover Trump supporter was almost entirely based on easily debunked misinformation. There was the claim that he was a registered Republican (Robinson listed himself as unaffiliated). There was the claim that Robinson donated to a Trump super PAC (the donor was a different Tyler Robinson who made the donation when the suspect was still in high school). There was the false claim that Robinson’s 2018 high school costume of a popular meme at the time—the “slav squat”—was actually an homage to far-right anti-Semitic influencer Nick Fuentes and his niche online following known as “groypers.” And then there was the amateurishly photoshopped picture of Robinson in a Trump t-shirt.
The conspiracy theory’s grip on liberal communities nonetheless tightened in the days after Robinson’s arrest. That’s in large part due to a cadre of prominent liberals—spanning academia, media, and Congress—who lent their credibility to the conspiracy theory, suggesting or outright asserting that the shooter was on the far right.
The Washington Free Beacon gathered notable examples below.
Rep. Dave Min (D., Calif.)
“Now that the Charlie Kirk assassin has been identified as MAGA. I’m sure Donald Trump, Elon Musk and all the insane GOP politicians who called for retribution against the ‘RADICAL LEFT’ will now shift their focus to stopping the toxic violence of the RADICAL RIGHT,” Min, considered one of the more vulnerable House Democrats running for reelection in 2026, wrote in a Friday night X post.
Kevin Kruse, Princeton University
“It was an all-out call for war against ‘them’ when the right didn’t know who ‘they’ were, but now that it’s clear that Kirk’s assassin came from their world they’ve shifted back to meaningless ‘thoughts and prayers,'” Princeton professor Kruse, known for his alleged serial plagiarism, wrote on Bluesky Friday afternoon. In another post that day, Kruse wrote: “When they thought he was on the left they blamed the entire left, but now that they know he is on the right they’re … blaming the entire left.”
Randi Weingarten, American Federation of Teachers
Weingarten, president of the AFT, similarly bought into the idea that the shooter was a secret Republican. “This seems important to state,” she wrote on X, sharing a screenshot that read: “The leftist students in Utah who didn’t want Charlie Kirk to speak did what leftists do: they signed petitions, staged a protest, and lined up to challenge him. The right winger who didn’t want Charlie Kirk to speak did what right wingers do and shot him.” She later deleted the tweet.
Norm Ornstein, Atlantic
Ornstein, a contributing writer at the Atlantic, also promoted the idea that the shooter was actually an adherent of the far right. “Wow, who knew Nick Fuentes was a sly, scheming leftist professor? He has disguised it so well!” Ornstein wrote on X. Ornstein was indirectly responding to conservative filmmaker Dinesh D’Souza, who had blamed academia’s echo chambers for radicalizing the shooter.
Laurence Tribe, Harvard Law School
Harvard Law School professor Tribe also lent his credibility to the false flag conspiracy theory. “Kirk’s apparent assassin seems to have been ultra-MAGA, exploding the GOP/MAGA attempt to blame this tragedy on liberals,” wrote Tribe. He later deleted the tweet, saying it was “premature,” but insisted that people calling the shooter “a radical leftist” are “making stuff up.”
Brandy Zadrozny, MSNBC
Zadrozny, MSNBC’s “misinformation reporter,” didn’t outright assert that the shooting was an ideological false flag–but she went out of her way to say the conspiracy theory was credible. Zadrozny said Robinson could have been “trying to set up another ideological enemy for the shooting” by leaving anti-fascist references on the ammunition he used in the shooting. “It’s just impossible to say,” she concluded.
Jemele Hill, Atlantic/Joan Donovan, Boston University
Hill, an Atlantic contributing writer, claimed that Kirk “likely was the victim of a white supremacist gang hit.” She cited a Los Angeles Times interview with left-wing misinformation researcher Joan Donovan. Donovan said the messages left on the bullet casings reminded her of white supremacist manifestos. One message that read “If you read this, you are gay lmao”—a version of a recurring joke among gay Reddit users—”is the typical kind of joking that comes from even more right-wing movements. Particularly a group that has dogged Charlie Kirk for years now that are led by Nick Fuentes.” Donovan was fired by Harvard in 2023. While she blamed Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg for her ouster, a 2024 investigation by the Chronicle of Higher Education found that the claim was unsupported and that Donovan is no longer viewed as credible by her peers. “Several of Donovan’s other claims [in addition to the Meta accusation] about her time there are misleading, untrue, or contradicted by people directly involved. Some former colleagues say they no longer trust the scholar they once admired,” the Chronicle reported.
Jamelle Bouie, New York Times
As the conspiracy took over Bluesky on Friday, New York Times columnist Bouie alluded to it while claiming: “man they really didn’t give a shit about that guy [Kirk]. [A]s soon as it was clear they couldn’t use his death to launch a purge they started to treat it like a nothingburger.” His post was reshared more than 4,000 times on the platform.
Clara Jeffery, Mother Jones
“If you want to understand the ‘groyper wars’ and the rivalry between Charlie Kirk and Nick Fuentes this is a pretty good backgrounder,” Mother Jones editor in chief Jeffery wrote on Saturday, linking to a TikTok video that falsely described the assassination as “right-on-right crime.” She added later that day: “The really fucked up thing is that if the guy who killed Kirk really is a groyper, or of some other far-right brain rot cluster, we just cannot rely on Trump’s Justice Department to be honest about it.”
Peter Hamby, Puck News
Hamby, a Puck founding partner, cited three posts from 4chan—the anonymous online message board universally acknowledged as a constant stream of misinformation—to feed the narrative that Robinson was a member of the far-right. “The groyper attenaes are vibrating on 4chan,” Hamby wrote on X. One of the screenshots he posted said it was “confirmed” that Robinson was a “groyper.”
Julia Ioffe, Puck News
Ioffe, another Puck founding partner and the outlet’s Washington correspondent, was similarly convinced by the 4chan posts. Quoting Hamby’s tweet, she wrote: “So I’m sure that Fox and the rest of the American right, including in the WH and Congress, will quickly correct the narrative and walk back the calls for political purges.”
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