Weekend Report: What's going on?

Kirk killer turns out to be white male from GOP family. Threats against speech and those on the left nonetheless surge. Media whitewashes Kirk's views.

It was a week of horror in which millions watched the grotesque political killing of MAGA podcaster Charlie Kirk. We saw reckless claims from Donald Trump, GOP members of Congress and ghouls on the right that Democrats and “the left” were to blame for the shooting, including false claims that connected the shooter to “transgender ideology.” But he turned out to be a very online gamer from a MAGA Republican family that raised him within gun culture.

That didn’t stop the threats from the right. Many changed their tone once they saw the killer was one of their own—a white male who was not a Democrat—but they had already put in motion actions that inspired fear and threatened retribution against those on the left.

And too much of the media, in what seemed like an effort to underscore that we cannot condone political violence as a culture, soft-pedaled what Kirk was about, including his vicious, dangerous views that promoted hate and discrimination. That does a disservice to all of us, and even to Kirk, who was proud of his ugy beliefs. We all condemn political violence, but you can be respectful about a person who died by violence, whatever the person’s views, while still forcefully both condemning his ideology and pointing to how he was actually part of the problem that has ratcheted up political violence in America.