The Media Research Center decided that anyone who criticized Charlie Kirk after his death is a “ghoul,” as stated in the headline of a Sept. 14 post by Clay Waters:
National Public Radio was very concerned Saturday about angry leftists losing their jobs for gleeful posts about the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk on a college campus in Utah, even citing McCarthyism, in “Charlie Kirk critics are being targeted online and losing jobs” by Huo Jingnan, Jude Joffe-Block, and Audrey Nguyen.
[…]After bringing up the firing of MSNBC analyst Matthew Dowd for his loathsome suggestion that Kirk may have brought about his own killing, NPR agreed about Kirk’s “incendiary” rhetoric, including “that some gun deaths were worth it to have the Second Amendment.”
NPR let law professor David Kaye whine that people who want to criticize Kirk upon his death “are essentially being silenced.”
[…]Did NPR cry McCarthyism over the many people condemned or fired for mildly criticizing Black Lives Matter online during the hysteria of 2020?
Waters’ example of “mildly criticizing Black Lives Matter” is of data analyst David Shor, who tweeted after George Floyd’s death that rioting after the assassination of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. depressed Democratic election turnout, which got him fired from a data firm. But if Waters is now defending Shor, he should also defend those fired over their Kirk posts, should he not?
Jorge Bonilla whined that non-right-wing media were interfering in efforts to blame transgender people for the killing:
The left have been furiously spinning narrative in the wake of the horrific assassination of Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk. Much of this spin is dedicated to the negation of a transgender motive behind the shooting. In service of that narrative, CBS’s Scott MacFarlane completely misrepresented statements by Utah Governor Spencer Cox.
Watch as MacFarlane tried to establish, without evidence, that Gov. Cox ruled transgender issues out as a motive in the shooting:
[…]The most extensive exchange was on CNN, where State of the Union host Dana Bash grilled Cox as if he were an unindicted coconspirator in the shooting:
[…]There is nothing in Cox’s responses to Bash’s badgering that is consistent with an admission that transgenderism is not relevant to motive, as reported by MacFarlane. If anything, Cox was intent in protecting the integrity of the investigation, ahead of Tuesday’s filing of formal charging documents.
Tim Graham tried to spin away Kirk’s more racist statements:
No one should think PBS is an oasis of civility. On Friday’s Washington Week with The Atlantic, the liberal gang typically rained fire on conservatives in general and the late Charlie Kirk in particular. No one had a critical word for rhetorical extremism on the left, and there was really no focus on the killer.
Moderator Jeffrey Goldberg briefly mentioned the alleged shooter in custody, Tyler Robinson, but claimed “We will try to be responsible here about not overspeculating” about his motives. That was not worth discussing.
[…]Laura Barron-Lopez, who just switched teams from PBS to MSNBC (they’re awfully similar), trashed and distorted Kirk’s views:
The reason that he is seen as a divisive figure, and why the left has had a reaction as well in this is because he has been known to make racist statements, to say that, you know, if he were to see a black pilot, he wouldn’t necessarily trust their ability to fly a plane. He has also said that it was a mistake to pass the Civil Rights Act, and has definitely lobbed a number of attacks on transgender individuals. And so there’s a lot across the LGBTQ advocacy space who are opposed to him.
Barron-Lopez mangled what Kirk actually said about “affirmative action” and black pilots, that picking pilots based on racial quotas causes. He said “If I see a Black pilot, I’m going to be like, ‘Boy, I hope he’s qualified.'” But he also said: “That’s not who I am. That’s not what I believe…I’m connecting two dots. Wait a second, this CEO just said that he’s forcing that a white qualified guy is not gonna get the job. So I see this guy, he might be a nice person and I say, “Boy, I hope he’s not a Harvard-style affirmative-action student that … landed half of his flight-simulator trials…It also… creates unhealthy thinking patterns. I don’t wanna think that way. And no one should, right?”
Not sure how that makes Kirk’s obvious racism any better. If he is assuming that any black pilot is by definition unqualified, he really is that person, and his backpedaling doesn’t change that — and there would be no reason for that though to pop into his head at all other than racism.
Bonilla returned to be angry at a Sunday-show host for expecting others to call out President Trump’s inflammatory remarks:
ABC’s Martha Raddatz had a weird Sunday while sitting in the host chair on ABC’s This Week. She spent most of it attempting to elicit her mostly conservative guests to condemn in some way, shape, or form President Donald Trump’s remarks wherein he accused the “Radical Left” of the assassination of TPUSA founder Charlie Kirk. And she whiffed.
[…]That’s four different guests, four different times, four different perspectives on the ramifications of the assassination of Charlie Kirk- a watershed moment in American history the ramifications of which are yet to be determined. Raddatz instead chooses to focus on self-serving narrative.
As if Trump was not being self-serving in framing Kirk’s death as a “radical Left” conspiracy.