After writing about the shooting and death of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk, WorldNetDaily moved quickly toward mythologizing and martyrdom of Kirk, attacking his critics and fearmongering about non-right-wingers:
- ‘A giant of his generation’: Trump confirms Charlie Kirk to be awarded Presidential Medal of Freedom
- WATCH: Some on left don’t join flood of prayers for Charlie Kirk, seem to celebrate his being shot
- ‘Age of rage’: Constitutional expert issues warning: Kirk assassination took U.S. to ‘new and chilling stage’
- ‘Tolerating mayhem’: Charlie Kirk’s words about the ‘assassination culture’
- ‘I never had the slightest doubt that Charlie would be the president of the United States’
- ‘Evil people’: Elon Musk announces verdict: Left is the ‘party of murder’
- Tucker Carlson, Neil Patel launch GiveSendGo for Kirk family
WND also served as stenographer for law enforcement. One article hyped the recovery of the alleged murder weapon, followed by an article that originally parroted FBI director Kash Patel’s declaring that the shooter had been arrested but was later rewritten to admit that wasn’t the case. Bob Unruh cranked out another related article:
“Antifascist” and “transgender” messages were found written on bullets in a gun discovered nearby after conservative activist Charlie Kirk was assassinated on a Utah school campus.
FBI agents said they found an older .30 caliber hunting rifle in the woods near the scene of the shooting at Utah Valley University on Wednesday.
And three unspent rounds were found in the rifle’s magazine.
“All allegedly engraved with transgender and antifascist messages,” according to a report at AOL.
It turns out that really wasn’t true. The Wall Street Journal, which originally pushed the claim, had to walk it back later, and most of the words on the bullet casings were actually references to video games.
When the real suspect was actually caught, Unruh churned out an article on that, followed by another with more details on the suspect:
Authorities have revealed they believe the suspect in the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk this week had been getting more and more political in recent months, and that he had expressed opposition to Kirk even being on the campus of Utah Valley University, where he was killed this week.
The Washington Examiner reported that some of the details in the case that now is developing come from Utah Gov. Spencer Cox, a Republican who on Friday announced, “We got him.”
The suspect was identified as Tyler Robinson, 22.
Unruh went on to repeat dubious claims about the writings on the bullet casings:
Cox also confirmed the political ideology the shooter took time to express – by cutting messages into the casings of the bullets in his gun.
Those included “Hey fascist! Catch!” the report said, as well as “Bella Ciao, Bella Ciao, Bella Ciao,” the lyrics of an antifascist song.
Reports earlier confirmed that various ideological messages were found on bullets still in the apparent assassination rifle, which was found by authorities in a wooded area near the campus hours after the assassination.
The governor confirmed a “three-arrow symbol, an antifascist symbol made famous during street fights in Weimar Germany,” was found on the casing that was fired at Kirk.
Further, the fired casing referenced a nearly decade-old sexual meme, saying, ‘Notices bulge, OWO, what’s this?'” the report confirmed.
In fact, the arrows reference a command in the video game Helldivers 2 for dropping a particular bomb, and “Bella Ciao” may actually be a reference to another video game, Far Cry 6.