Figures. A day after demanding “civility” from liberals following the death of Charlie Kirk — despite his employer’s record of less-than-civil behavior — Media Research Center executive Tim Graham spent a Sept. 13 post raging at an NPR guest who pointed out Kirk’s right-wing extremism, demonstrating his own incivility by calling him a “JERK” in the headline:
The morning after the murder of Charlie Kirk, NPR’s Morning Edition turned to Kyle Spencer, a leftist author of a 2022 book titled Raising Them Right: The Untold Story About America’s Ultraconservative Youth Movement And Its Plot For Power. NPR host Michel Martin repeated the “ultraconservative” title three times. Spencer’s personal website describes her book as explaining “how radical extremists message anti-democratic ideals via social media, online celebrity culture and false facts.”
[…]Martin asked if Kirk had an “origin story,” asking “what was it that was so formative in these beliefs? You know, for some people, it’s, like, countercultural experiences that turn them off. Like, they feel that — you know, they encounter people who they feel reject them or who just — did he have a story like that?” Spencer elaborated on the notion that Kirk was a racist:
[…]Wow, Spencer knows about spreading “false facts.” Later, Spencer wrapped that into the larger narrative: “eventually, Charlie Kirk wanted to absolutely transform American culture and bring it back to an earlier time that he saw as more ideal.”
Rather than actually bothering to disprove Spencer wrong about Kirk, Graham launched into yet another anti-NPR whataboutism screed:
“Public” broadcasting is deeply suffused with the “DEI ethic” that they must “center the marginalized,” and so anyone who opposes the black left should be marginalized as a far-right white-nationalist fringe. But they aggressively defended Marxist leaders of Black Lives Matter and promoted anti-police rioting as righteous “black rebellion” in 2020.
Alex Christy had his own complaint about public broadcasting:
The cast of Friday’s PBS News Hour expressed serious doubts that President Trump can be the leader the nation needs after the murder of Charlie Kirk. Through a combination of misrepresentations, hypocrisy, and omissions, the assembled trio of anchor Amna Nawaz, New York Times columnist David Brooks, and MSNBC host Jonathan Capehart condemned Trump’s response to the crime.
Nawaz thought she noticed an inconsistency in Trump’s behavior, “In terms of the reaction from the president, David, you have seen the president first say that his supporters should respond with nonviolence. He said that’s what Charlie would have wanted. The next moment, he’s blaming the radical left political violence. There’s people around him now even suggesting that they should be deporting people who are critical of Charlie Kirk after his killing.”
Fact-check: Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau tweeted that foreigners praising or mocking Kirk’s assassination will not be welcomed as visitors in this country. Nobody risks being deported for simply disagreeing with Kirk.
Actually, that doesn’t seem to be the case, given the Trump administration’s crackdown on dissent, and the article he cites does not quote deputy secretary of state Christopher Landau specifically exempting disagreement with Kirk as a cause for revoking a visa.
Shortly thereafter, Christy complained that his fellow right-wingers were being called out for rushing to judgment on the motive of Kirk’s killer:
On Saturday’s Good Morning America, ABC senior White House correspondent Selina Wang made the wild claim that President Trump is “blaming the left” for Charlie Kirk’s murder even though the motive is currently unknown. The previous evening, on World News Tonight, chief Washington correspondent Jonathan Karl tried to drive a wedge between Trump and Utah Gov. Spencer Cox over their responses to the crime, claiming the former was not heeding the latter’s pleas for the country to step back from the brink of political violence.
Wang began her report by claiming, “The president is grieving, but he’s also angry, and he is once again blaming the left for the murder of Charlie Kirk even before authorities know the motive of the alleged shooter.”
Authorities have mentioned that the bullets had anti-fascist slogans on them. A family member said the assassin had claimed Kirk was “full of hate and spreading hate.” That doesn’t sound like a neo-Nazi assassinating Kirk for being supportive of Israel, like some liberals stuck in the crazy segments of the internet are claiming.
When Wang pointed out that the Trump White House made “no mention of violence against Democrats, including the killing of Minnesota state lawmaker Melissa Hortman and her husband,” Christy would only concede that “we can acknowledge Wang’s point about Hortman” without admitting that his employer tried to distract from the assassination and complain that Republican Sen. Mike Lee was called out for his nasty tweets about Hortman’s assassination rather than honestly admit the political violence involved.
Christy then whined about another rush-to-judgment complaint:
The Daily Wire co-founder Ben Shapiro took his book tour to HBO and Real Time with Bill Maher on Friday, where he and the eponymous host battled it out on whether it can be safely asserted that Charlie Kirk’s assassin was a leftist. While Maher insisted that it is simply too soon to say because the internet is always full of crazy rumors, Shapiro countered that what we know about the killer is not just the product of internet gossip.
Shapiro claimed that we know, “That this kid was of the political left. That is according to contemporaneous reporting from The Guardian, as well as Tablet Magazine today and magazines.”
Maher countered, “It is two days out. We don’t know shit, Ben. We don’t know shit. They never do. The internet is undefeated at getting it wrong to begin with.”
Holding firm, Shapiro rebutted, “It’s not about the internet. That’s about the actual reporting by mainstream, accepted – The Guardian is not a right-wing media outlet.”
It should be noted that The Guardian has retracted that story and claimed the shooter’s high school classmate couldn’t actually verify their memory of the shooter being a leftist. However, since Real Time aired, we do know that, according to The New York Post, the FBI is working with a source who claims the assassin had a transgender partner.
Christy had yet another complaint on the subject:
CNN pays former Obama official Juliette Kayyem to be a national security and terrorism analyst, but on Saturday’s Table for Five, she demanded we all “stop looking” for a motive in the assassination of Charlie Kirk because we may never know. Despite the show airing on a different day, at a different time, and having a different name than her daily NewsNight program, host Abby Phillip continued her tradition of not interrupting her liberal guests.
Kayyem was set off by GOP strategist Lance Trover, who made a completely reasonable point when he asked, “Well, will the rhetoric get toned down? I mean, again, I go back to what was on the bullet from this kid was fascism. And that’s only coming from one side currently in this debate. And it’s on every placard and every poster around the country. I mean, I think it’s a valid question, but are they going to live up to what they say they’re going to do with the Nazi and fascism and the like?”
Playing dumb, Kayyem responded, “I don’t think we know. Just to be clear. I mean, just law enforcement people. I don’t think we know the meaning of his message. I—we know his history.”
[…]There is exactly a zero percent chance that if someone assassinated the liberal equivalent to Charlie Kirk, Kayyem would be saying, “Stop looking” for the motive and “Who cares?”
Of course, Christy has a reason to push speculation about the killer’s motive — it benefits partisan right-wing narratives to do so, and his MRC job is all about advancing right-wing narratives.