No better angels on this bus
Sure enough, they’re Reichstag Firing it already.
[Utah Governor] Cox’s impulse to appeal to what Abraham Lincoln called the “better angels of our nature” was on display this morning in a press conference, where, flanked by FBI Director Kash Patel and local leaders, he announced the arrest of Tyler Robinson, the suspect in Kirk’s killing, on Wednesday.
“This is certainly about the tragic death, political assassination of Charlie Kirk. But it is also much bigger than an attack on an individual,” Cox said. “It is an attack on all of us. It is an attack on the American experiment. It is an attack on our ideals. This cuts to the very foundation of who we are, of who we have been, and who we could be in better times.”
This kind of language was once common among mainstream politicians responding to a tragedy; now Cox is a notable and praiseworthy outlier in his own party. Trump’s response has been mercurial. At times, the president has seemed to call for a calm, measured reaction to the shooting. “He was an advocate of nonviolence,” Trump said of Kirk on Thursday. “That’s the way I’d like to see people respond.” In the next breath, however, he cast blame and demanded forceful reprisal. During Cox’s remarks this morning, the governor seemed almost to be trying to speak to Trump—or at least to those who might be swayed by his rhetoric.
“We have radical-left lunatics out there, and we just have to beat the hell out of them,” Trump said yesterday…“My administration will find each and every one of those who contributed to this atrocity and to other political violence,” Trump said in a brief speech Wednesday night, “including the organizations that fund it and support it, as well as those who go after our judges, law-enforcement officials, and everyone else who brings order to our country.”
In other words his administration will “go after” anyone it feels like, regardless of facts or evidence or the law or any other inhibiting reality.
This morning on Fox & Friends, Trump told the hosts, “I’ll tell you something that’s gonna get me in trouble, but I couldn’t care less. The radicals on the right oftentimes are radical because they don’t want to see crime.” He added: “The radicals on the left are the problem. And they’re vicious, and they’re horrible, and they’re politically savvy.”
That’s the US head of state talking. I know it sounds like a drunk 13-year-old but it’s not, it’s the guy with the nuclear codes.
But if Cox and Trump represent two rival impulses within the Republican coalition, Trump is undoubtedly winning. “Democrats own what happened today,” Representative Nancy Mace of South Carolina said on Wednesday. “Y’all caused this,” Representative Anna Paulina Luna of Florida told Democrats on the House floor. “It’s time for the Trump administration to shut down, defund, & prosecute every single Leftist organization,” the influential Trump adviser Laura Loomer posted on X. “We must shut these lunatic leftists down. Once and for all. The Left is a national security threat.”
So it’s time for a one-party state.
This applies equally to much of what the Trump regime has done to the United States.
Well Trump’s name should be on the top of that list, as he has done all of the above.
It’s apparently heading that way. But then again, see also https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2025/09/charlie-kirk-assassination-civil-war/684181/
Now that we all know that the shooter was not a leftist but a “groyper,” an extremely right-wing, extremely online edgelord, will the Republicans cancel their planned jihad against Democrats? Or just postpone it?
Golly, I don’t know that yet, I’ve been asleep. For real? The shots came from the other direction?
Interestingly enough, on “Threads,” the nutjobs are posting that he was radicalized by the leftist college he went to. Utah Valley Universtiy. The UVU is considered the 4th most conservative university in Utah. They still want their retribution.
Nutjobs gonna nut. Robinson went to Utah State for one semester on a pre-engineering track and then left to study to be an electrician. Yes, he was radicalized, but not in the way the nutjobs say. Robinson shot Kirk for being not right-wing enough, not for being right-wing.
Robinson’s mother has had to take down her Facebook page because it was full of pictures of her teaching her kids to shoot. (My first thought about the shooting was “Hell of a shot, can’t be a leftie.”) They’re a conservative Mormon family, dad is ex-service and a minister; the family is, as Robinson’s grandma says, 100% MAGA.
All the things the creep had written on his bullets were right-wing and/or video game memes, online edglord stuff, nothing to do with being a leftist or transgender (the bullets stamped “TRN” on the bottom were manufactured by Turan). Robinson’s social media is full of pictures of him dressed up as Groyper memes. And the Groypers were waging a kind of online war against Charlie Kirk.
https://www.thecanary.co/trending/2025/09/12/charlie-kirk-suspect-is-a-gun-loving-trump-supporter/
To see and read all of this and still clutch to the thin thread that somehow, despite all that history, MAGA lad Robinson was magically leftified by leftist professors during one semester in a rural university in Utah, and never expressed that to anybody, shows commitment (or deserves it).
But will this stop the Republican party from terrorizing Democrats and liberals? I doubt it. The killer was one of Fuentes’ followers, the guy Trump invited over to Mar-a-Lardo, the guy who waged online war against Charlie Kirk. But Trump is not out there today yelling about Fuentes, he’s yelling about George Soros.