In their scramble to distract from the increasingly clear left-wing motive that spurred the alleged assassin to murder Turning Point USA Founder Charlie Kirk, corporate media have turned to romanticizing the shooter and fantasizing about his alleged relationship with a transgender roommate.
The most egregious example of this behavior occurred live on ABC News on Tuesday when Chief National Correspondent Matt Gutman dubbed the suspect’s self-incriminating conversation with his reported lover and roommate as “touching.” He even made up a quote to pretend the shooter was trying to “protect” his roommate.
The texts, read by Utah County District Attorney in a press conference on Tuesday, appeared to confirm that the assassin targeted Kirk because he “had enough of his hatred” and “some hate can’t be negotiated out.” Outlets such as The New York Times predictably pretended that the bullet engravings such as “Hey fascist! Catch!” were “coded messages” that “meant nothing” and were merely “inside jokes meant for himself and his roommate.”
Gutman, however, took it further by asserting the texts were “very touching, in a way, that I think many of us didn’t expect.”
According to the ABC News correspondent, the alleged assassin’s confession to his gender-deluded roommate and suspected boyfriend painted “a very intimate portrait into this relationship.”
As if Gutman’s attempt to downplay and even glamorize the harrowing account of how Kirk’s alleged shooter committed the crime wasn’t enough, the correspondent even attributed a fabricated quote, “‘I want to protect you, my love’,” to soften the case against the reported assassin. While the texts show the shooter did call his roommate “my love” at least once over the course of the conversation, they do not indicate that he expressed a desire to “protect” him.
Using the euphemism “jeopardized the life of Charlie Kirk and the crowd,” Gutman lightly touched on the fact that the shooter committed a grave act of violence that took the life of an innocent man “in front of children.” Yet, he stayed fixated on how the alleged assassin was “speaking so lovingly about his partner” and was a “very human person” who “got a 34 out of 36 on the ACT” and good grades.
“I don’t think I’ve ever experienced a press conference in which we’ve read text messages that are A, so fulsome, so robust, so apparently, allegedly self-incriminating and yet, on the other hand, so touching — right — with the suspect reaching out to his roommate, who was allegedly his boyfriend, who we understand, you know, identified as male at birth, now identifies as female,” Gutman continued.
He then repeated the blatant lie that the suspected shooter was “trying to protect” his roommate.
“He kept calling him ‘my love.’ ‘My reason for doing this is to protect you,’ you know, but also asking him to delete the messages and not speak to law enforcement. So there’s this, this heartbreaking duality that we’re seeing very tragically playing out here,” Gutman concluded.
Gutman faced so much pushback for his lie and attempts to whitewash the shooter’s account of his alleged crime that he was forced to respond with a statement claiming to clarify his comments.
Gutman did not correct the record on the air where he first made the sweeping assertions. Instead, in a post on X, the correspondent claimed he “tried to underscore the jarring contrast between this cold blooded assassination of Charlie Kirk – a man who dedicated his life to public dialogue – and the personal, disturbing texts read aloud by the Utah County Attorney at the press conference.”
“I deeply regret that my words did not make that clear. But let there be zero doubt here: I unequivocally condemn this horrific crime and the pain it caused Charlie Kirk’s family, those who were forced to witness it at UVU, and the millions of people he inspired,” Gutman continued.
The same day that investigators confirmed they had enough evidence to formulate a motive, CNN Contributor Montel Williams also suggested on a panel that the assassination was merely a crime of passion.
“I don’t think he was motivated politically. I think he was motivated emotionally. I think this was an emotionally stunted person who literally … tried to defend his significant other. Not trying to defend some ideology,” Williams said.
Williams went on to call the 22-year-old shooter a “love-torn child” and attempted to excuse his behavior because “this was probably his first real relationship, and somebody was disparaging the person that he loved.”
Jordan Boyd is a staff writer at The Federalist and producer of The Federalist Radio Hour. Her work has also been featured in The Daily Wire, Fox News, and RealClearPolitics. Jordan graduated from Baylor University where she majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow her on X @jordanboydtx.
