YOUR RIGHT-WING RELATIVES THINK THE TRANSGENDER COMMUNITY IS LITERALLY AN AL QAEDA-STYLE TERROR NETWORK

It may actually be the case that the man who shot Charlie Kirk did so at least in part because he was romantically involved with a trans person and was angry about Kirk's anti-trans demagoguery. I don't want that to be true, but some credible reporting suggests that it could be true.

But your right-wing relatives don't just believe that Tyler Robinson thought Kirk was worth killing for this reason. They believe he's part of a terror network that's comparable to Al Qaeda or ISIS. And the Trump administration also believes this, or at least believes that this narrative can be used to advance its plan to eliminate the GOP's enemies from public life.

Here's what the New York Post is telling us:

The feds have widened their investigation into the assassination of Charlie Kirk to probe whether pro-trans, online groups and others connected with Tyler Robinson knew in advance about the plan to kill the MAGA influencer, The Post has learned.

Law enforcement sources said that investigators are examining leftist groups both in Utah and online to figure out if they helped him with the shooting — or at least heard it was going to happen.

The Post doesn't have much to go on -- a couple of random social media posts that I assume were intended as sick humor suggesting an upcoming violent incident:

One such post made on Sept. 9, the day before the shooting, said “Charlie kirk is coming to my college tomorrow i rlly hope someone evaporates him literally.”

The user followed it up moments later with the text “Lets just say something big will happen tomorrow” accompanying a meme of a grinning dog, an archive of the since-deleted post shows.

A few hours after the shooting the next day, the account followed up their original posts with “CHARLIE KIRK GOT SHOT BRO I PROMISE I DIDNT HSVE ANYTHING TO DO WITH IT” before apparently changing usernames, archives show.

Another widely-shared archived post from a TikTok user appearing to be made a day before the shooting uses ominous music and a video of a person wearing glasses and what appears to be a medical scrubs cap accompanied by the disturbing text, “charles james kirk. mr. college dropout does NOT know what’s coming tomorrow. be ready... This isn’t a threat it’s a promise.”

These could just be shitposts, written by people who had no idea a real attack on Kirk was about to take place. Similarly there's no reason to believe that a Salt Lake City organization called Armed Queers SLC, which the Post ominously suggests was connected to the shooting and which has now deleted its social media, was anything more than a standard-issue lefty organization that happens to be pro-gun because, well, it's based in red America, where guns have always been accepted. You can read sympathetic pieces about Armed Queers SLC here and here. Does the group have something to hide? Possibly -- or perhaps the group simply feels it has a target on its back now.

Will we find out that Robinson discussed the shooting online with anyone before it took place? We might. He might have discussed it with an ideological ally, or he might have discussed it in gamer forums or at shooter fanboy sites where his readers might not have known whether to take him seriously. Or no messages of this kind might turn up. We don't know.

But in a separate New York Post opinion piece, Miranda Devine sees A Conspiracy So Vast. She cites right-wing "independent journalist" Andy Ngo:

... the more recent deadly marriage of transgender and Antifa ideology is no surprise to anyone who has followed Ngo’s work the past six years.

Ngo has dubbed it “Trantifa,” and has charted the rise of the violent movement that hijacked BLM protests in the summer of 2020 and unleashed hell across the country....

A radical leftist trans militant cult of vegans, for instance, has been accused of the murder of a US Border Patrol agent near the Canadian border in January and other murders across the country.

That's a legitimate story -- you can read about it in this AP report or this report from The New York Times. There was a killing, and trans people were involved -- but the people involved seem like followers of a cult anti-technology philosophy, not pro-trans militants.

But your right-wing relatives think it's a pro-trans terrorist movement with deep pockets, mostly because that's what influencers are telling them:

Transgenderism is a death cult. The largest, most well funded, and deranged death cult that this country has ever seen.

— Matt Walsh (@MattWalshBlog) September 14, 2025

Transgenderism is an inherently violent, revolutionary Marxist ideology.

It was never about tolerance or inclusion.

It was always a plot to exploit vulnerable young people, brainwash them, & weaponize them into kamikazes— a Marxist vanguard.

It must be excised from America.

— Liz Wheeler (@Liz_Wheeler) September 13, 2025

Here's some AI slop a Redditor found at Truth Social:

I think there's a case to be made that this is what has replaced QAnon-style pedophilia conspiratorialism on the right. For years, right-wingers told themselves that the Jeffrey Epstein story was a story of Deep State/liberal/globalist pedophile networks that were vast, but made up exclusively of prominent people the right doesn't like. Donald Trump was seen as the avenger who'd bring this network to justice.

Now that it's clear that he isn't doing that, the right needs a new sexualized conspiracy theory in which all the evil is on the left. And this is it.