MAGA invents "trans" killer and "left-wing" radicals

State power, law enforcement, and media blur together

The Vice President of the United States just hosted a podcast, eagerly jumping into Charlie Kirk’s chair for a day. Broadcast from the White House, Vance had Stephen Miller on, the perfect man to help him eulogize a fascist propagandist. Senior members of the Trump administration, including Miller, praised Kirk “while also detailing their plans to crack down on what they called leftist nongovernmental organizations.”

It was the perfect eulogy. Using Charlie Kirk’s death to promote a fascist crackdown on non-profits that had no ties whatever to his killing, and doing it all from the White House. This is the ugly path that MAGA has been on for a long time, and which they were always going to use this shooting to further.

It’s neither the first nor the last time we’ll see disturbingly blurred lines with this administration. In fact, the blurring of the lines between the White House, the media, the fascist propaganda sphere, law enforcement and more is the most important story of the last week. Kirk’s killing has shown a spotlight on the multiple ways that these spheres, which ought to be separate, have been melded into one another. In some cases the blurring of these lines has been blatant and overt, like the VP filling a fascist propagandist's chair and using the seat to threaten an authoritarian crackdown, but in other ways the creep has been subtle and insidious.

The most damaging example of the blurred lines between the fascist propaganda wing, the White House, and the media comes from Kash Patel and Dan Bongino. Patel, now the Director of the FBI, had no senior law enforcement before this administration. He was public defender, federal prosecutor and congressional aide before serving as a national security official in President Trump's first term. But during the Biden years he emerged as “a fixture in MAGA world, a right-wing podcast regular and a Trump loyalist,” as NPR describes. In short, he became a personality in the fascist movement and was installed as the head of the FBI because of his rabid Trump loyalty rather than any real qualifications.

His deputy, Dan Bongino, is perhaps even more egregious. He worked for the Secret Service long ago, but from 2011-2025 he was just a right-wing media personality. He’s been banned from Twitter and YouTube before, and is now the deputy head of the FBI. Having fascist propagandists, radio hosts, and podcasters in these positions is bad enough in itself, but then there’s the behavior of Bongino and Patel over the course of the last week.

First these guys made mess of the investigation, which is bad enough, but then they immediately politicized the entire event — before anything was even known. Bongino, Patel, and other fascist minions in the Trump administration have deliberately used the killing of Charlie Kirk to put trans people and leftists in danger, and the media is totally unprepared for this development.

The clearest example thus far is the initial, widespread claim that Kirk’s shooter had engraved “transgender ideology” on his bullets. Outlets that are deeply flawed, but which generally practice basic journalistic fact-checking ran with these claims, citing law enforcement sources. The Wall Street Journal was the first major source to publish, referencing a “bulletin circulated widely among law enforcement officials.” A day later they issued a major correction:

As it turns out, none of the bullets featured trans ideology. It’s not possible to know for a fact why law enforcement sources ran this bulletin, but we do have a few hints as to why high-up sources in the FBI, for example, might run with a politically motivated narrative rather than prioritizing the truth:

Instead of giving us an actual report here, the Director of the FBI is just sending out a screenshot of a Fox News headline. When Patel couldn’t call the bullets trans, or the shooter trans, he resorted to the unverified claim that the shooter’s roommate is trans, as though that has any direct impact on the shooter’s motives whatsoever. And he appears to have coordinated with friendly media to spread the claim, as he’s done multiple times over the past week.

Then, when Patel gave a recent update about the case it was so ludicrous that it would be laughable if his words didn’t carry significant power because of his law enforcement position and his position in the MAGA movement. As Reuters relays: “In an appearance on Fox News' ‘Fox & Friends,’ Patel said investigators believe Tyler Robinson also wrote a physical note saying he had the ‘opportunity to take out Charlie Kirk’ and would do so. The note was destroyed, Patel said, but investigators have collected forensic evidence that it had existed and confirmed its contents through interviews.”

So there was a note, but it was destroyed. But they know it existed and know what it said. That is the FBI Director’s latest investigative breakthrough. These guys aren’t being subtle, or clever. They never have been, but now their slavish devotion to Trump is manifesting in ever more transparent bullshit. Patel, Bongino, and the whole MAGA movement are uninterested in the truth, and uninterested in appealing to a wide audience. They are performing for an audience of one. What Trump thinks is what matters, and if he approves of their campaign of misinformation, trans hatred, and targeting leftists that’s good enough for them.

The media is unprepared for this moment. CNN, the Wall Street Journal, the BBC — countless outlets ran with misinformation in the wake of Kirk’s killing. The work of media literacy is already hard. It’s a pain to be unable to trust information sources, and it takes work to filter out the lies and noise. One answer is being more deliberate about tuning into non-profit sources like Democracy Now and Truthout and Prism and others. The members of the Movement Media Alliance form a very helpful list in these times. But identifying more reliable sources is just the beginning of what this moment calls for.

What we need right now is to see the full form of the fascist movement, to identify the many tentacles of the fascist octopus so that we can fight back. We have to understand how the massive far-right propaganda movement works. We see it seeping into the FBI, cross-pollinating with the White House, and dominating social media thanks to Elon Musk, hundreds of millions in funding, and state support. This multi-pronged movement is more dangerous than it’s ever been, and it’s flexing its muscles in new ways, trying to seize on this moment and to expand its power.

The campaign to get people fired for failing to mourn one of their leaders is a new phase, and this push is being backed by state power. Texas Governor Greg Abbott shows exactly how this fascist martyrdom enforcement is proceeding:

Abbott isn’t alone. Vance used the Charlie Kirk podcast to encourage people to report those who aren't properly remembering the deceased fascist. Attorney General Pam Bondi has also joined the chorus, saying "left-wing radicals" killed Kirk, and that "they will be held accountable.” There is, of course, no evidence of any left-wing involvement of any kind. And, of course, the truth doesn’t matter to fascists.

Another threshold has been crossed. State power is being used to turn the death of one of their own into an excuse to further their aims. The martyrdom of Kirk is now state-backed. His body was flown on Air Force Two, the Vice President’s plane. The Governor of the second biggest state is violating the First Amendment to crack down on those who detail the reality of the deceased, in particular his bigoted and hateful views. And the Attorney General is poised to do the same.

We have to adapt to this new period. On the one hand, it’s been a decade in coming, and on the other the recent acceleration feels incredibly rapid. The lines are now blurred. This is how fascism operates. We have to be honest about this phase of the onslaught and be prepared for it. We’re up against a MAGA movement that blends the power of the state and its law enforcement arm with social media and its own right-wing media operation so thoroughly that they dictate narratives into the mainstream with alarming ability.

So we have to inoculate ourselves, we have to look at news related to Trump and MAGA with a more critical eye. We can’t afford to let them dictate the narrative, we can’t afford to let them shape stories uncontested. We have to spread the truth and push it into the consciousness of millions, we have to organize and fight to break the fascist grip, and we have to do it now. - JP