Kirk’s shooter, Tyler Robinson, has apparently turned himself in, apparently after confessing to his own father (?)
I’ve tried to capture the relevant bits of this extremely rapidly updating and currently in progress series of events.
9 a.m. EDT
While appearing on Fox and Friends, Trump said “I think, with a high degree of certainty, we have him in custody.”
Trump said authorities acted after receiving a tip from a minister who recognized the suspect from the images released by law enforcement.
The president said he believed the suspect’s father was also involved in arrest, but added that this information was still preliminary and the details could change.
9:15 a.m. EDT
Trump said he would attend a funeral next week for Kirk, “who should not be having a funeral right now,” when asked about his scheduled trip to the U.K. from Sept. 16-18.
9:30 a.m. EDT
The suspect was identified as Tyler Robinson, 22, from Utah, according to multiple reports citing people with knowledge of the investigation.
10:10 a.m. EDT
Utah Gov. Spencer Cox confirmed in a press conference Friday morning that a suspect named Tyler Robinson has been detained.
Apologies for this being a paywalled Forbes article.
Seeing it elsewhere online, but let’s highlight it here. The Right has been trying to paint this shooting as a politically-motivated assassination caused by “transgender ideology” or whatever. Now that we have a clear and believable suspect, we know the truth: this was a young, white, cis male who was likely conservative, at least at some point in the recent past (there’s photos of him wearing a Donald Trump costume for a past Halloween). We should be shouting from the rooftops that the Right lied about this, because, more than anything else, we want to tamp down political violence. These specific lies being peddled by the Right are with the aim of escalating political violence.
The right as a political machine didn’t bat an eye when democratic government officials were assassinated. They also have completely ignored the facts of just about everything and inserted their own ideology or fantasy about what’s true and what’s not. What do you think “shouting from the rooftops” is going to accomplish here? This same nonsense has repeated itself multiple times with the attempted Trump assassinations and with other figures on the right. 99 times out of 100 it’s a young straight white conservative male behind shootings, yet there is never introspection on this issue. I cannot imagine this will change the minds of any significant number of those on the right. As Kirk himself said, this is the price of business.
I think it’s more about knowing what to say when this topic inevitably comes up in interpersonal conversation. It’s not about convincing the conservatives, it’s about convincing the centrists on the sidelines saying nothing. I think they are particularly sensitive to the argument that this was a politically-motivated assassination, and so it’s important to remind those people that the right has blatantly lied about this. To remind them about the stats that you mentioned, that most of these shooters are conservative white males.
I can’t find anything saying he was a republican. Every news outlets seems to be reporting that he was unregistered and hadn’t voted in past elections.
His parents are listed as Republicans.
His parents mentioned they had a discussion with him days prior talking about kirk and how he spreads hate. He had expressed that he didn’t like kirk.
Again these are from major news outlets that were spinning kirk as not as bad in recent days so take it with a grain of salt until we hear more. It’s possible that he had no political affiliation and just decided to act based on his personal beliefs