On Charlie Kirk and How the Media Helped Perpetuate a Trans Boogeyman

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“If someone says it’s raining and another person says it’s dry, it’s not your job to quote them both. It’s your job to look out the fucking window.” – attributed to Jonathan Foster

West Hollywood, the historically gay city where I live, lowered the gay and trans pride flags in Matthew Shepherd Square because of the shooting death of right-wing podcaster Charlie Kirk. Kirk was killed while speaking at Utah Valley University last Wednesday. In its official statement, the city claimed that if the President declares the lowering of flags, cities have to do it. I thought maybe the flags were lowered for 9/11, but on the official Weho Instagram account, I found out the gay pride flag and trans pride flag were in fact lowered for Charlie Kirk.

In a speech at a church in September 2023, almost two years to the day before his murder, Kirk called transgender people a “throbbing middle finger to God.” 

“The one issue I think that is so against our senses, so against the natural law, and dare I say, a throbbing middle finger to God, is the transgender thing happening in America right now,” Kirk told the approving audience.

Utah governor Spencer Cox, in his comments after Kirk’s death, said he prayed the person responsible wasn’t “one of us.” If the phrasing was at all unclear, Cox added, “that somebody drove from another state, somebody came from another country.”

The desperation for the alleged killer to be someone foreign was palpable. It wasn’t just a rush to deem the person an outsider geographically, but also one politically or ideologically. Because Kirk was answering a question about the small number of trans mass shooters compared to cis mass shooters when he was shot, the fervor to label transness as the reason for his death was maniacal. (Even though the shooter was allegedly 200 yards away, and there’s no proof he could hear the topic of conversation in the tent.)

Then, the Wall Street Journal not only kicked the hornet’s nest but set it on fire and threw it into a crowd. Based on an unconfirmed police bulletin in the chaos following Kirk’s death, the Journal reported that the ammunition was engraved with “transgender and anti-fascist ideology.” That was later deemed untrue. Instead of issuing a massive apology, the Journal edited its original piece two days later only to say that the sources for the information weren’t solid. Then, just before the piece hits paywall, it admits there was nothing trans on the bullets. It still maintains the headline, “Early Bulletin Said Ammunition in Kirk Shooting Engraved With Transgender, Antifascist Ideology.” The Human Rights Campaign said the irresponsible reporting led to a “wave of threats against the trans community from right-wing influencers.”

When the “trans ideology”-engraved bullets were proven false, the right-wing media spread hypotheticals, like that alleged shooter, 22-year-old Tyler Robinson, had a trans partner, or no, it was a trans roommate, etc etc. Something to do with trans people. He has to be connected to “trans.”

Even when we had nothing to do with it, we had everything to do with it.

The US loves creating a boogeyman for violence that distances itself from that violence. I was in eighth grade during 9/11. The backlash and hatred for Arabs and Muslims was immense and immediate, even though the attack was the work of extremists. In 2006, I started journalism school and wrote for the Boston Globe and The Times Magazine among lots of other places. Back then, it was frowned upon for reporters to be registered with a political party. In college, I was told it would create an air of bias. (How naive.) There’s a common saying in journalism: “We don’t make the news, we just report it.” That hasn’t been true for a long time.

The past writing of the three reporters who have been covering Kirk’s murder for the Journal, including the trans ideology article, can’t exist in a vacuum. One wrote an article labeling NYC mayoral candidate Zohran Mandami’s policing views as a weakness in the wake of the shooting in Midtown Manhattan in July. (Somehow a shooting he had nothing to do with is written about as socialist boogeyman Mandami’s fault.) Another wrote about the random stabbing of Iryna Zatruska in North Carolina as a motive for Trump to call Democrats soft on crime. The headline reads, “After Fatal Stabbing of Ukrainian Refugee, Trump Says U.S. Must Confront Crime Problem.” This framing adds “evidence” linking the heinous but random murder to a need for Trump’s increased militarization — sending the National Guard into our own cities for our own good.

Journalists rarely choose their own headlines, but editors do. Despite the saying about not “making the news,” media outlets choose what to cover, and they choose how to cover it. I don’t personally get the NY Times delivered, but this past February I was staying over in Portland with a girlfriend and got to see the headlines for a few days in a row. Three out of four papers had stories about transgender people. The one from the 28th had three different articles about trans people in one paper.

We’re a clicky headline. Much has been made about the New York Times’ obsession with writing biased garbage about us, and as the paper of record, it has influenced a lot of other news sources’ coverage too. The press is not innocent in how the world moving forward looks for trans people in the United States. It never has been. Out of the 65 articles about trans people that the Times published in 2023, 60 percent of them did not include even one quote from a trans person. Eighteen percent quoted “anti-trans misinformation from conservative sources without additional context.”

In my almost 20-year career as a writer and reporter, I was taught you never just run with what a source tells you. “If your mother tells you she loves you, check on it,” the famous journalistic saying goes.

Just because Trump says it doesn’t make it true or worth running without seeing if it’s true first. Are Democrats soft on crime? You could look it up and do some research before headlining a big article with Trump saying so. Did shooter Tyler Robinson write trans ideology on his bullets? The cops are saying maybe, but you don’t have to report maybe. You can wait for yes or no.

I used to think the way the mainstream press wrote about trans people was based in ignorance, then willful ignorance, and now it’s very obviously malicious. There’s an old Jewish tale about a rabbi who assigns a person who has spread harmful information around their small village to rip open a pillow and let the feathers out. Then, his punishment is to gather back all the feathers. It’s impossible, he complains. The rabbi says that’s the point.

The Wall Street Journal and other mainstream media reports unleashed anti-trans feathers into the world that linked trans people to a story they had nothing to do with. It’s once again going to be impossible to get the feathers back.