By Karl Quinn
Copyright brisbanetimes
In his opening monologue on Monday night, the four-time Oscar host and long-term Trump critic observed of accused assassin Tyler Robinson that “we hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterise this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them”.
Some took that as an implicit endorsement of a sketchy theory that Robinson was a bad-faith actor who killed the right-wing Kirk for not being right-wing enough. That view not only pre-empts the investigation into the killing and the trial that will follow, it sits uneasily with what little information has begun to emerge about Robinson and his politics.
While he characterised his father as “pretty diehard MAGA” in alleged texts to his transgender lover, Robinson had, according to his mother, “become more political and begun to lean more to the left” over the past year.
At any rate, given the uncertainty around his motivation, it was unwise at the least and arguably inflammatory of Kimmel to lean into that line. Certainly, that is how Nexstar, a regional broadcaster that takes ABC content under licence, interpreted it.
