By Michael Woyton
First it was political analyst Matthew Dowd who got fired from MSNBC for on-air comments about Charlie Kirk’s shocking murder Wednesday in Utah.
Then a reporter in Florida was suspended for asking a congressman a question and a comic book writer lost her job because of social media posts, as did teachers in Tennessee and Mississippi, according to the Associated Press.
A website was created — and registered anonymously — to “Expose Charlie’s Murderers.” It published a running list of posts, identifying the names, locations and employers of people alleged to support online political violence.
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This is chilling stuff — the targeting of those who assume they have the right to free speech because someone disagrees with what they’ve said.
Especially when Kirk “approached much of his work under the banner of free speech and civic engagement.”
What is troubling is that some people are being told they cannot say or write anything about Kirk even using his own words and opinions as examples of the type of public persona he made a living from.
That is the case of Karen Attiah, now a former opinion writer for the Washington Post.
She was fired last week for one reference to Kirk using his own words on the record: “Black women do not have the brain processing power to be taken seriously. You have to go steal a white person’s slot.”
Attiah said in a Substack article that the paper “rushed to fire me without even a conversation — claiming disparagement on race.”
She said the Post declared her posts on Bluesky as being “‘unacceptable’, ‘gross misconduct’ and of endangering the physical safety of colleagues — charges without evidence, which I reject completely as false.”
Speaking of “without evidence,” the felon-in-chief rushed to blame the radical left hours after Kirk’s death, calling them “vicious and horrible”, and vowing to seek revenge against “organizations that fund and support” political violence,” the Guardian reported.
Those sentiments were voiced all over the weekend news programs — well after 22-year-old Tyler Robinson was taken into custody, a result of his family turning him in to authorities.
Robinson, a native of Utah, appears to be far from a “radical leftist.”
And nothing so far points to any involvement by organizations that fund and support political violence. You can be assured that if there were anything that FBI Director Kash Patel could get in front of microphone and accuse the left of doing, he would have done it by now.
According to Utah Gov. Spencer Cox, Robinson is a third-year student in an electrical apprenticeship program and grew up in a small southern Utah community, CNN reported.
His family is staunchly Republican, but he is not affiliated with any political party. While he is registered to vote, he did not participate in the two most recent general elections, Al Jazeera reported.
A motive for the shooting has still not been determined, but family members said Robinson turned political recently and talked about “his dislike for Kirk.”
Cryptic messages etched on shell casings point to the online gaming world and a possible connection to white supremacist Nick Fuentes.
You know who didn’t get fired over the past few days for saying something reprehensible?
Fox & Friends co-host Brian Kilmeade got on the TV machine Wednesday and, while talking about the murder of a woman in Charlotte, North Carolina, allegedly by a homeless person, said that mentally ill homeless people should be euthanized — by “involuntary lethal injection.”
“Just kill ’em,” he said.
Not surprisingly, Kilmeade received no push back from his co-hosts, and he didn’t offer anything like an apology until the weekend.
Remember that in July the adjudicated rapist signed an executive order that allows the Justice Department to roundup and institutionalize unhoused persons and those with addiction and mental health disabilities. It is not that much of a leap from the EO to what Kilmeade suggested — just sayin’.
I guess that Fox News just has different standards for what is allowed to be uttered on the air, in public or via social media.
But it’s what we have come to expect from state television during the second administration of President Taco.
Make no mistake, no one deserves to be gunned down by a person with a gun and a grudge — not pundits, moviegoers, churchgoers, bar patrons or children not old enough to walk to grade school by themselves.
The circumstances surrounding Kirk’s death are horrifying and still a mystery.
Unfortunately, there are those in this administration who are looking for any opportunity to foment fear and make citizens less willing to speak out.
My question is, was the grifter-in-chief floating a trial balloon when he accused the radical left of being complicit in Kirk’s death?
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Lead art: Screen grab from MSNBC
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