MSNBC reporter Brandy Zadrozny suggested Friday that Tyler Robinson, the suspect in Charlie Kirk’s assassination, could have been “trying to set up another ideological enemy for the shooting” by leaving anti-fascist references on the ammunition he used in Wednesday’s shooting.
Authorities revealed at a press conference Friday morning that a shell casing found with the rifle used to assassinate Kirk was engraved with a message that read, “Hey fascist! Catch!” Scrawled on another shell casing were the lyrics from a prominent Italian anti-fascist folk song. The suspected executioner, Robinson, became more political in recent years, members of his family told investigators. At a recent dinner, Robinson and family members discussed Kirk’s upcoming visit to Utah and their disdain for Kirk’s political views. “The family member also stated Kirk was full of hate and spreading hate,” Utah Gov. Spencer Cox (R.) recounted at the press conference.
As for Robinson’s motive, the “Hey fascist!” engraving “speaks for itself,” Cox said.
Still, Zadrozny, an award-winning misinformation and internet extremism reporter, said it’s “impossible” to decipher why the alleged assassin decided to end Kirk’s life before offering up a number of theories.
“It’s really hard to tell when you look at what he put on these shell casings, allegedly,” Zadrozny said on MSNBC shortly after Cox announced Robinson’s arrest at a press conference Friday morning. “It’s hard to decipher if he really means them, if he’s trolling, if he’s making fun, if he is trying to set up another ideological enemy for the shooting.”
“It’s just impossible to say,” Zadrozny said.
It turns out, Robinson is in fact a leftist, according to one of his high school friends. Robinson’s friend told the Guardian that Robinson was “pretty left on everything” and was “the only member of his family that was really leftist.”
Zadrozny wasn’t the only MSNBC contributor to deem Robinson’s motives indiscernible following news of the alleged assassin’s arrest. Criminologist Casey Jordan praised Zadrozny for “nailing it” with her analysis and added there was “no chronic theme” to the political messages scrawled on Robinson’s bullets.
The anti-fascist messaging found with the murder weapon echoes the type of rhetoric leading Democrats and their allies in the media have aimed at Kirk and President Donald Trump for the past decade.
The New Republic described Kirk as “Donald Trump’s weird, fascist little sidekick” in an October 2024 story accusing the conservative commentator of delivering a “Terrifying, Fascist Speech.” Former president Joe Biden called Trump’s philosophy “semi-fascism” in August 2022. Former vice president Kamala Harris minced no words and called Trump a “fascist” just weeks before the November 2024 elections. And more recently, in August, Democratic National Committee chairman Ken Martin said Trump is a “dictator-in-chief” who has placed the United States on the march “toward full-on fascism.”
Another shell casing found with the murder weapon was engraved with a message that read “Notices Bulges OwO,” a term closely associated with the furry and anime communities, typically having a sexual connotation. Another was engraved with the message: “If you read this, ur gay, lmao.”
Zadrozny said the messages “suggest that he’s very online” and “that he’s very of the internet.” Jordan, during her segment, called the engravings “the rantings of a really immature child.”
As Zadrozny declared Robinson’s motives to be “impossible” to decipher on MSNBC, other prominent liberal commentators took to social media to falsely accuse the alleged assassin of being a registered Republican. Robinson is registered as a nonpartisan voter in Utah, according to the Wall Street Journal.
That includes former MSNBC host Keith Olbermann, who posted on X the “actual evidence” points to Kirk’s alleged assassin “being a registered Republican/ UltraRight/ Homophobe/ Gun Nut/ Groyper.”
At least 47 individuals have been fired from their jobs for publicly celebrating or justifying Kirk’s assassination on television and social media, according to a running tally compiled by Capital Research Center’s Parker Thayer. That includes MSNBC contributor Matthew Dowd, who was fired from the network Wednesday evening after insinuating Kirk had it coming.
“Hateful thoughts lead to hateful words, which then lead to hateful actions,” Dowd told MSNBC anchor Katy Tur on Wednesday. “You can’t stop with these sort of awful thoughts you have and then saying these awful words and not expect awful actions to take place.”
Robinson confessed he assassinated Kirk to his father on Thursday, who then called authorities and held him until they arrived, Cox said Friday. The suspected assassin was arrested in St. George, Utah, more than three hours from Orem, where Kirk was shot, the Washington Free Beacon reported.
Utah will pursue the death penalty against Kirk’s assassin, Cox said Thursday night.
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