The Fox & Friends Grief Circus
Charlie Kirk was assassinated on September 10 while speaking at Utah Valley University. A 22-year-old, Tyler James Robinson, is charged with aggravated murder, reportedly firing a bolt-action rifle from 200 yards away. Police say his own family identified him. The shell casings were allegedly etched with inflammatory messages, because apparently in 2025 even bullets are on social media.
It was a tragedy. A violent crime. A family lost their son, a movement lost a leader, a campus lost its sense of safety. In a decent society, the response would be grief, empathy, and a rare pause from weaponized rhetoric.
Instead, we got Donald Trump on Fox & Friends refusing calls for unity. He blamed “vicious and horrible” leftists, threatened a RICO probe of George Soros, and implied this was less about one man’s crime and more about proving every MAGA fever dream true. Imagine taking a national wound and turning it into an ad spot. Imagine a funeral where the eulogy is also a campaign rally.
This is what passes for leadership in 2025.
The Killer They Didn’t Want
Here’s the problem for Trump’s narrative: the suspect wasn’t a leftist radical. He wasn’t a trans activist. He wasn’t a drag queen with a gun tucked into sequins. He was a white Mormon groyper—a 4chan creature raised on the exact diet of paranoia and resentment that the right has been spoon-feeding for a decade.
This ruins the storyline. They wanted an enemy that fit neatly into their civil-war cosplay. Instead, they got one of their own. Which means they’ll pivot. They’ll say he wasn’t a “real” conservative. They’ll call him mentally ill. They’ll scrub his online posts while leaving everyone else’s intact.
The problem isn’t one shooter. The problem is a culture where paranoia is political oxygen.
Trump’s Firebug Presidency
If you want to understand how we got here, look at the firebugs holding the matches.
Trump’s record is a bonfire of encouragements:
- January 6, 2021: The Capitol attack, where he told rioters to march and “fight like hell.”
- January 20–21, 2025: His first act back in power was mass-pardoning roughly 1,500 January 6 participants. Armed insurrectionists treated not as criminals, but as patriots given medals in the form of legal absolution.
- The 2020 Michigan governor kidnapping plot: Trump flirted with excuses, mocked Gretchen Whitmer, and poured gas on the flames. Convictions were affirmed as recently as April 1, 2025, and yet the mythology persists: extremists framed as misunderstood heroes.
This isn’t subtle. When you celebrate people who attempt violence, more violence follows. If you tell people the system is rigged, they will eventually take a shot at the system. And if you shrug when someone does, you are not a bystander—you are a spark.
The Ritual of Victim-Blaming
Let’s pause here: victim-blaming is unacceptable. Kirk didn’t deserve this. His family didn’t deserve this. Political disagreements should not end in blood. Period.
But context matters. You don’t get to build a carnival of menace, cheer on lawlessness, wink at conspiracies, and then act shocked when the rides go off the rails. You don’t get to inflame every grievance, teach your base to see enemies everywhere, and then gasp when one of them follows through.
What happened in Utah wasn’t inevitable, but it was predictable. And predictability is what makes it all the more damning.
The Bullet as Meme
The reports about etched shell casings sound like parody. As if the shooter wanted his ammunition to be legible for the clout economy. What used to be manifestos left in grimy basements are now tweets carved into brass. Violence is now commentary. Murder weapon as meme.
That’s where we are: even assassination is performance art. And Trump’s refusal to unify? It’s the encore.
Fox & Friends as Mourning Ritual
Trump chose Fox & Friends for his response because that’s where mourning now happens in America’s right wing: on a morning talk show with a couch that looks like it was stolen from a Marriott lobby. He didn’t call for calm. He didn’t acknowledge the climate of menace. He called out Soros. He implied the left is to blame. He made a murder into an audition tape for his second term.
Because unity doesn’t raise money. Division does.
The Soros Conspiracy as Comfort Food
When in doubt, blame George Soros. Trump knows his audience. Soros is the Swiss Army knife of right-wing conspiracy: globalist puppet master, financier of chaos, boogeyman who explains everything from student protests to poor weather.
So even in a tragedy clearly rooted in their own radical ecosystem, they pivot to Soros. It’s comfort food for people who can’t imagine the problem is themselves.
The Violence Pipeline
The violence pipeline is well-documented by now. January 6 wasn’t a freak accident. The Whitmer plot wasn’t isolated. Trump’s mass pardons weren’t just symbolic—they were permission slips. And every wink, every nod, every “they’re patriots” adds fuel.
This is what escalation looks like. You start with chants, move to riots, then plots, then bullets. Each time, leaders have a choice: condemn, or capitalize. Trump always chooses capitalize.
And every time he does, it moves us one step closer to the next tragedy.
The Absence of Shame
What’s striking isn’t just the violence itself, but the absence of shame. Trump didn’t hesitate before blaming the left. He didn’t pause before threatening RICO against Soros. He didn’t acknowledge the killer’s actual profile.
Shame would require reflection. Reflection would require accountability. Accountability would require admitting that years of demonizing opponents has consequences. And that will never happen.
Instead, we get the same tired script: blame outsiders, distract with conspiracies, and pretend this is all a coincidence.
America’s New Normal
This is the new normal: tragedy as content, violence as campaign fuel, grief as a backdrop for slogans. The assassin’s bullets were carved with messages, but Trump’s words on Fox & Friends were the louder etchings—“vicious and horrible leftists.” It’s a script designed not to heal but to inflame.
And if you think this is the last time, you’re not paying attention.
Summary: Gasoline and Matches
Charlie Kirk’s assassination was a tragedy, and victim-blaming is wrong. But when Donald Trump went on Fox & Friends afterward, he refused unity, blamed “vicious leftists,” and threatened RICO against George Soros—all while ignoring that the accused killer, Tyler James Robinson, was a white Mormon groyper radicalized in the same extremist ecosystem Trump has spent years cultivating. From January 6 and his mass pardons of insurrectionists to the Whitmer kidnapping plot and the endless conspiratorial rhetoric, Trump and his allies have poured gasoline on our politics. Now, when tragedy strikes, they light the matches of division rather than confront their complicity. That isn’t leadership. It’s arson dressed up as mourning.