A police mugshot shows Tyler Robinson, the suspect in the fatal shooting of U.S. conservative commentator Charlie Kirk during an event at Utah Valley University, in Orem, Utah, U.S., in this photo released by the Utah Department of Public Safety on September 12, 2025. Utah Department of Public Safety/Handout via REUTERS THIS IMAGE HAS BEEN SUPPLIED BY A THIRD PARTY TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY

After the news broke that a suspect had been arrested in connection with the murder of Turning Point USA's Charlie Kirk, there was a lot of speculation over possible motivations.

Quite a few MAGA pundits are saying that the suspect, 22-year-old Tyler Robinson, was motivated by the leftist Antifa movement. But late-night television host Jimmy Kimmel angered Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Brendan Carr by asserting that the suspect was part of MAGA, not a leftist — and Disney suspended Kimmel's show indefinitely following Carr's threats.

In a New York Times opinion column published on September 19, journalist Lydia Polgreen argues that MAGA responses to Kirk's murder speak volumes about their mentality.

"It didn't take long for the speculation to begin," Polgreen writes. "In the hours after the shocking, livestreamed assassination of Charlie Kirk, the posts on social media came thick and fast. 'ANOTHER TRANSGENDER ANTIFA TERRORIST?' one person posted on X. 'Willing to bet the shooter of Charlie Kirk was trans. Has to be,' another declared. Kirk had been answering a question about transgender people when he was shot, prompting feverish and baseless online speculation that a transgender militant cell had ordered his killing."

Many MAGA Republicans, Polgreen laments, are "obsessed" with using Kirk's murder to demonize transgender Americans.

"This fixation on finding a transgender connection to Kirk's horrific murder is as awful as it is dangerous," Polgreen warns. "But it does reveal two psychological truths about Trumpism. First, for all of MAGA's reverence for masculine self-determination, one of its central tenets is the blamelessness of its adherents. Whatever is going wrong in this country, it is not their fault. If you can't find a job or a house, it is because immigrants took them all and filled your community with crime to boot."

Polgreen continues, "If your business is failing, it is because foreign countries are ripping off America by selling us their goods and not buying enough of ours…. The insistence that something President Trump and his supporters call 'transgender ideology' was behind the killing lays bare another core belief of theirs: They are obsessed with contamination and contagion, seeing it as the site of despicable difference. Again and again they deploy metaphors of disease and disfigurement."

Read Lydia Polgreen's full New York Times column at this link (subscription required).