A stunning new report from The Washington Post sheds new light on Tyler Robinson’s actions on the day Charlie Kirk was assassinated.
The 22 year old accused of fatally shooting Kirk at Utah Valley University on September 10 is currently awaiting trial in Utah, where he faces the death penalty. In the wake of his first in-person court appearance last week, WaPo is out with new reporting on the suspect’s ideology and online footprint.
On Wednesday’s show, Megyn was joined by MK True Crime contributors Arthur Aidala and Matt Murphy to discuss the latest revelations and where the case stands.
The Reporting
The in-depth report from The Washington Post paints a chilling picture of how Robinson calmly went about his business on September 10. The paper had apparently been trying to get in touch with the suspect, repeatedly calling his prison to talk to him since his arrest. According to the report, Robinson would listen but not respond. During one call, he reportedly said he could not answer any questions but told the callers they were welcome to talk.
In four calls spanning about 40 minutes, the Post reported that Robinson listened silently as a reporter described what friends and acquaintances had said about him. He did not audibly react to hearing that Kirk’s wife Erika had publicly forgiven him, nor did he respond to the fact that Kirk had been awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Eventually, Robinson asked for the reporters to move their communications to writing, though he has not responded to messages sent to the jail’s email system. The Post said his attorneys also declined to answer questions for the report.
Speaking Out
Megyn noted that while the report makes mention of Robinson’s mother’s comments about how her son “had become more political and had started to lean more to the left – becoming more pro-gay and trans-rights oriented” – in the year leading up to the assassination, she believes the piece was trying to “prove that he was actually apolitical” and “kind of listlessly going through life.”
“His friends who knew him [told WaPo], ‘Well, we didn’t really see any of that.’ But then they do talk about the fact that he was holding his trans furry lover roommate who was crying about all the hatred towards trans people as Tyler Robinson stroked him and tried to make him feel better… and about how he didn’t like ‘hateful’ people,” Megyn explained. “And we know he said he killed Charlie in those text messages right after he the murder because he was ‘full of too much hate’ and ‘some hate can’t be negotiated out.'”
Megyn said the Post also tried to downplay what Robinson wrote on the bullets. The engravings included left-wing slogans such as “Hey fascist! Catch!” along with an up arrow, a right arrow, and three down arrows; the words “Oh bella ciao, bella ciao, bella ciao ciao ciao”; and “If you read this, you are gay LMAO [laugh my ass off].”
Wordle Chat
But what Megyn found most interesting about the Post report was the new information revealed about Robinson’s actions the day of the murder. The paper reported that at 11:28am – about 55 minutes before prosecutors say Robinson shot Kirk – he casually texted his Wordle score to a friend.
About 80 minutes after the shot was fired at 12:23pm, WaPo found that Robinson was back in that same chat sharing that Kirk was “reported dead” and that the video “looks BAD.”
Friends of Robinson who spoke to the Post said “he loved his guns, he loved his beer, he hated the government,” while others remembered him “nerding out” about weapons. One person recalled that Robinson, while drunk, would occasionally say a right-wing politician was going to “catch a bullet one day or something like that,” but no one took the comments as anything other than a joke. Others remembered him having contempt for both the Democrat and Republican parties, saying things like “f-ck both of them.”
Impact on the Case
This report will likely be the tip of the iceberg, Megyn surmised. “All of this is interesting because clearly the shooter’s friends are starting to speak out to the media in drips and drabs,” she said. “And I do believe there is an attempt by the media to try to divert the narrative away from ‘he was a leftist.’ I don’t know. He may have been a righty, much in the way that [Trump attempted assassin Thomas] Crooks… was a righty for a period of time, but then had shifted left.”
Murphy, a former prosecutor in the homicide unit in Southern California, said information like this can actually benefit the prosecution. “They’ve got to attack mens rea; they’ve got to attack what he was thinking at the time he does it,” he noted.
While a possible defense might be that Robinson was outraged by Kirk and his viewpoints, Murphy said Kirk’s respectful debate style and the fact that the suspect was playing Wordle hours being the murder hurt that case.
“If I’m the prosecutor on that, that is a great fact because that shows that he was cavalier. He was not angry. He was playing Wordle. He was not so outraged at some position or something that Charlie Kirk said,” he explained. “And if they try to go with some mental health defense on this, that is a big roadblock for the same reasons. He is cogent… Wordle is tough… and if he is bragging about his Wordle score, that means his brain is working.”
Aidala agreed. “It takes a lot to kill someone,” he said. “And the fact that you’re playing a game, a word game, moments before you’re about to kill anyone – to a jury, if you’re trying this case – it just shows you how this guy either doesn’t care… [or,] as the defense attorney, you want to talk about how sick he clearly was.”
Additional Evidence
As it relates to other evidence in the case, Murphy said the confession text messages between Robinson and his roommate will be “powerful evidence” despite chatter about the tone and substance of them.
“People really do send stupid text messages like that, and they are going to have a forensic chain of evidence. They are going to have a forensic specialist come in and break down those cell phones, and they can explain the whole thing,” he said. “It is a tough argument to make that somehow they planted it.”
“Conspiracy theories and people on the internet can speculate about all kinds of things,” Murphy added. “But when the rubber hits the road in a courtroom and you dust off that book with the rules of evidence, that is a tough argument to make to a jury that is taking it seriously and following the law.”
You can check out Megyn’s full interview with Aidala and Murphy by tuning in to episode 1,215 on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you like to listen. And don’t forget that you can catch The Megyn Kelly Show live on SiriusXM’s The Megyn Kelly Channel (channel 111) weekdays from 12pm to 2pm ET.