The Courage of Erika Kirk. Look: We Gotta Talk about ‘Trans’ Ideology. Comrade Kathy Hochul Endorses. Abrams: Two-State Solution Dead. Plus, More
We’ve been uplifted in our own sadness by the courage of Charlie Kirk’s wife, Erika, who vows that her husband’s movement, which gave a voice to young people who wanted to rebel against woke orthodoxy and had heretofore been isolated, will go on.
Mark Halperin of the popular platform 2Way was genuinely surprised that the Left tries to ignore Erika Kirk’s powerful words:
CNN and MSNBC are not taking the remarks of Erika Kirk live??? It takes a lot to surprise me. This is shocking. The BBC is taking it live!
We weren’t surprised, were we? That’s not the only aspect of Charlie Kirk’s assassination they don’t want us to see. Harvard Law Professor Laurence Tribe tried to spread a rumor that Robinson is MAGA and is trying to ensure that the Left is blamed.
Indeed, the Drudge Report is straining mightily to emphasize the conservative family ties of Charlie Kirk’s alleged assassin. But get real. The New York Post’s more clear-eyed Miranda Devine writes:
It wasn’t until Utah Gov. Spencer Cox spelled out the transgender links to the suspect in Charlie Kirk’s assassination that The New York Times and the rest of the Hate Media and their social media offshoots finally gave up the absurd nudge-nudge wink-wink pretense that the killer was its favorite type of villain, a MAGA gun nut.
Nope, Tyler Robinson, 22, turns out to be a hard-core leftist, Antifa devotee and Kirk-hater who was living with his transgender boyfriend, identified as Lance Twiggs, 22, who claimed, “We are riding with Biden” in a 2022 post on the social media platform Reddit.
The two men also reportedly shared a sexual fetish for “furries,” anthropomorphic animal characters, with Twiggs pictured in photos online wearing animal headdress.
Just to be clear: We aren’t demonizing people who are sexually confused and sold a bill of goods that they can solve their problems by becoming the other sex. In many instances, such young people are more sinned against than sinning (e.g., by docs who make a good living mutilating them). But it’s time to face reality. Former President Biden and the Biden FBI tried to suppress the writings of the child-murdering young woman in Nashville, who identified as a male. The Federalist published excerpts six days ago. The Nashville school shooting took place in March 2023.
The bullets of the alleged Kirk assassin were engraved with “trans” slogans that might not have made sense to the rest of us. The alleged assassin is not cooperating with the investigation, but his “trans partner” is emerging as the investigation’s key source. Robinson was joking about the assassination before his arrest.
Many on the left are rejoicing at Charlie’s death. Roger Severino takes note of the disgusting reaction of the president of the Oxford Union, one of the world’s most famous debating societies. The New Republic begs readers not to “fall into the empathy trap.” That should be an easy assignment for TNR’s current crop of readers. The new hit parade on the left isn’t about popular songs. Can this really be true?
The Wall Street Journal’s Alyssia Finley asks what made Tyler Robinson become violent in a column headlined “America’s Lost Boys.” Finley writes:
Marinating in an internet cesspool can’t be good for the young and malleable male mind. Might killing villains in videogames desensitize the conscience? Studies have found an association between playing violent videogames and aggressive behavior, though most people who assume online avatars and fight monsters don’t become violent.
A broader problem, as Jonathan Haidt explains in his book “The Anxious Generation,” is that videogames cause boys to get lost in cyberspace. They have “put some users into a vicious cycle because they used gaming to distract themselves from feelings of loneliness,” Mr. Haidt notes. “Over time they developed a reliance on the games instead of forming long-term friendships.” They “retreat to their bedrooms rather than doing the hard work of maturing in the real world.”
Psychotherapist Jonathan Alpert writes in the same outlet about a phenomenon known as “splitting” and how it figures into Charlie Kirk’s murder. Heather Mac Donald writes about “An ideology Whose Logic Leads to Murder.” Here is the subhead:
It was grimly fitting that Charlie Kirk was slain on a college campus—source of the “hate speech equals violence” ethic that demonizes opponents and demands that they be silenced.
As usual, The Free Press has a passel of worthy responses. “Demand Nonviolence,” by Coleman Hughes, “Bury the Cliché ‘Words Are Violence,” by Greg Lukianoff, and “Repairing America After the Murder of Charlie Kirk,” by a bunch of good thinkers. One More Thing: Have you been seeing guillotine imagery lately? I know Portland lefties erected a guillotine. Josh Appel at City Journal urges us to consider why our Revolution was different from the French Revolution. Free Beacon Report: The FBI is investigating social media accounts that might have known about the assassination in advance of the act.
Comrade Kathy. New York Governor Kathy Hochul has endorsed antisemitic, radical socialist Zohran Mamdani for Mayor of New York. An editorial in the New York Post calls Hochul’s embrace of Mamdani’s “radical agenda” “spineless.” Hochul penned a New York Times Guest Essay on why she is endorsing Mamdani. Here’s more on Hochul’s stated reasons for endorsing Mamdani.
We’re expecting a Fed interest rate cut this week, but we don’t know how low it will go. Stephen Miran, White House economist and Trump Fed nominee (an editorial in the Wall Street Journal cautions Republican lawmakers that they should not bend to the president’s precedent-setting haste on Miran), will get a vote on the rate cut. Despite President Trump’s firing her, Fed member Lisa Cook will be there, too. National Review’s Andrew McCarthy analyzes where things stand with Cook.
Foreign affairs expert Elliott Abrams published an important piece in Mosaic with the headline “There Never Will Be a Palestinian State. So What’s Next?” Eliana Johnson follows this up with a must-read interview of Abrams at the Free Beacon on the same subject. Eliana’s father has been busy, too. Scott Johnson excerpts a Dartmouth College interview with alum Assistant AG for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon for Powerline.
Two from the American Spectator: Peter van Buren says that on immigration, President Trump is just enforcing the law. John Mac Glionnn argues that George Soros belongs in prison. And at Persuasion, Francis Fukuyama writes that Elon Musk, Larry Ellison, and plutocracy in general threaten Western civilization. Try not to worry. Mr. Fukuyama’s most famous previous pronouncement was that history was ending. We all know how that worked out.
President Trump heads to the U.K. (which sentimentalists such as Ms. Must prefer to call England) for a state visit this week, his second, which has never happened before to an American president. It will have all the fixings.
We can hope that when future presidents welcome royals, they’ll love the new White House ballroom, which will be even bigger than anticipated.
The Emmys took place last night. There was one brilliant innovation:
Emmy Awards host Nate Bargatze shook up Sunday night’s ceremony—and created a cliffhanger comedy bit for the whole ceremony—by putting a financial penalty on long acceptance speeches.
I did not watch, so I have no way to evaluate the Washington Post’s take on the best and worst moments. Here’s the hackneyed Emmys moment that surprised no one:
“Hacks” star Hannah Einbinder is under fire for turning her Emmy acceptance speech into a crude, political soapbox in which she said, “F—k ICE and free Palestine.”
The actress’ controversial remarks went viral after she won Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series for the hit HBO show during Sunday night’s live ceremony.
“Go Birds, f—k ICE and free Palestine,” the 30-year-old actress, who is Jewish and a lifelong Philadelphia Eagles fan, said at the conclusion of her emotional speech to cheers as she exited the stage.
She’ll be really angry when she reads Elliott Abrams’ Mosaic article.
