Kirk's Sell-By Date Has Passed

Once it was revealed that Charlie Kirk’s murderer was a white Mormon whose parents were Republicans in a deep red Utah county, the utility of Charlie Kirk’s death to MAGA was over. As mentioned in the comments yesterday, his wife made some comments about his legacy, but let’s face it — she hurried to say her piece soon after the murderer’s identity was public because she, too, knew her husband’s fifteen minutes were up.

Even worse for MAGA, the possibility that this murder was the product of an intra-MAGA rivalry between Nick Fuentes’ followers and Charlie Kirk puts it in danger territory for MAGA. This is why some of them are pushing the nonsensical view that he was radicalized by attending the Utah State University for a semester. My brother tells me that the latest MAGA excuse is that he had a trans roommate, which would be difficult since he apparently lived at home.

This is not to say that MAGA is getting nothing from Kirk’s death — a lot of people have been fired for exercising their First Amendment right to say what they want to say about Kirk on social media. In general, the disgusting response of the media to Kirk’s killing, most of which totally papered over the ugliness of his beliefs, made them look even worse to any discerning observer. (Having thought about it, I think that, net-net, Ezra Klein is probably unfazed by the response to his terrible, no good column. Ever since the Iraq War, the Times has thrived on being the center of negative attention by liberals. Klein was the center of attention, which he probably finds satisfying.)

Another factor is that there’s no heroic story of the capture of this young man. Kash Patel clearly fucked up a couple of times, and the killer basically turned himself in.

All this means, to me at least, that MAGA will just decide to move on without further comment next week. The worst thing to ever happen to a human being, the awful, unjust assassination of a true conservative hero, didn’t turn out the way they wanted it to. So, sorry Charlie, your death was mostly in vain.