Charlie Kirk murder suspect radicalized online and ‘not cooperating,’ Utah Gov says as motive still unclear: Live updates

Tyler Robinson, the 22-year-old suspected of killing Charlie Kirk, joked on the Discord messaging platform that his “doppelganger” was trying to “get [him] in trouble” after an acquaintance said the surveillance images looked like him, according to a report.

The day after Kirk was fatally shot in the neck, a former high school classmate of Robinson’s shared the grainy surveillance images released by the FBI and tagged Robinson’s username on the messaging platform, The New York Times reports.

“Wya,” the person wrote at around 1 p.m. Thursday, accompanied by a skull emoji, meaning “where you at?”

Robinson replied within a minute and said his “doppelganger” was trying “to get me in trouble.”

“Tyler killed Charlie!!!!” another user reportedly said as a joke.

Later that night, Robinson’s father also recognized his son in the images and urged him to turn himself in.

The former classmate shared the Discord messages with the Times but said he had not seen Robinson in person for several years. He requested anonymity out of fear of being associated with the suspect.

The Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., will host a memorial service and prayer vigil for Charlie Kirk at 6 p.m. tonight.

Among those set to share remarks and offer prayers are:

Speaker Mike JohnsonWhite House Press Secretary Karoline LeavittHHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.Director of National Intelligence Tulsi GabbardActing CEO of AGM Kari LakeRep. Andy Biggs of ArizonaRep. Eli Crane of ArizonaRep. Jake Hoffamn of ArizonaRep. Anna Laulina Luna of Florida

The service will be broadcast on C-SPAN.

Charlie Kirk had just kicked off Turning Point USA’s fall tour, debating with college students at campuses across the country, when 20 minutes into the Utah event, the right-wing activist was struck in the neck by a single bullet.

Chaos erupted as panicked students fled the courtyard of the Utah Valley University campus as Kirk, with blood pouring from his neck, fell to the ground from his chair.

The FBI was on the scene within 16 minutes and a manhunt was launched.

Confusion set in after a university alert initially claimed the suspect was in custody, only for Utah officials to contradict the report soon after and clarify that the shooter was still at large.

President Donald Trump announced Kirk’s death two hours after the MAGA influencer was shot.

Tyler Robinson, the 22-year-old suspected of assassinating the 31-year-old, was arrested two days later after his own family tipped off law enforcement.

The Independent looks at key moments surrounding the shooting.

Turning Point USA, the organization founded by Charlie Kirk, will host a public memorial service on September 21 at State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Arizona, following the right-wing activist’s fatal shooting in Utah on Wednesday.

“Join us in celebrating the remarkable life and enduring legacy of Charlie Kirk, an American legend,” the organization said in statement.

State Farm Stadium, home of the NFL’s Arizona Cardinals, will be available for the memorial as the team has an away game against the San Francisco 49ers that day.

Erin Keller has the details.

Utah Gov. Spencer Cox said Sunday that investigators are not ready to discuss the motive behind the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk. But he said the 22-year-old suspect had left-leaning political beliefs and disliked the conservative influencer.

Cox said Robinson is “not cooperating” and that friends paint a picture of someone radicalized in the dark corners of the internet.

The governor said more information may come out once the suspect, Tyler Robinson, appears in court Tuesday.

Cox said the suspect’s partner was transgender, which some politicians have pointed to as a sign Robinson was targeting Kirk for his anti-trans views. But authorities have not said whether it is relevant as they investigate Robinson’s motive.

“The roommate was a romantic partner, a male transitioning to female,” Cox said.

“I can say that he has been incredibly cooperative; this partner has been very cooperative, had no idea that this was happening.”

Utah Gov. Spencer Cox told ABC News that the suspect in the shooting of Charlie Kirk is not cooperating with the authorities.

Speaking to Martha Raddatz on This Week, the governor added, “But all the people around him are cooperating. And I think that’s very important.”

Former transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg notes that the only consistent pattern between recent shooters is not that they are on the left or the right of the political spectrum, but that they are “young men, who seem to spend more and more of their time in dark and twisted corners of the internet.”

He told NBC’s Kristen Welker on Meet the Press that social media is part of the problem “in a big way,” saying it’s bigger than political polarization.

Buttigieg continued: “Look, every time there’s one of these killings, in a summer that began with the assassination in June of a Democratic lawmaker by somebody with a kill list of Democrats, and is ending this September with the assassination of a conservative figure. And you go back through so many other cases, political and not of violence, there is not a consistent pattern of left versus right among the shooters. But there is a pattern where we see so many of these people are men, usually young men, who seem to spend more and more of their time in dark and twisted corners of the internet.

He pointed to a broader “societal sickness,” observing: “When we all should have still been praying for the victim and his family, we’re busy online praying for some shred of evidence that the shooter would turn out to be from the other political team. That is not healthy, and that is not a way forward. But that is exactly what the algorithm pushes us to do.”

Buttigieg concluded by saying that people offline are very different from people online: “That’s why we do need to just put down the phone, put down the computer, step out and talk to each other in environments where our humanity comes through.”

President Donald Trump said billionaire George Soros “should be in jail” as he continued to threaten the 95-year-old philanthropist and Democratic mega-donor.

The president has baselessly accused the Hungarian-born Holocaust survivor and founder of the nonprofit Open Society Foundation of funding protesters and demonstrations against his administration.

“We’re going to look into Soros, because I think it’s a RICO case against him and other people,” Trump said Friday on Fox & Friends as he referenced his demand that Soros be prosecuted for racketeering.

He stood by his threats Saturday and unleashed on Soros again.

It follows Trump’s Oval Office address this week after Charlie Kirk’s killing, where he pledged to target “each and every one of those who contributed this atrocity…including the organizations that fund and support it.”

Utah Gov. Spencer Cox called Charlie Kirk’s assassination a “watershed” moment, and asked the question whether this is “the end of a dark chapter in our history or the beginning of a darker chapter>”

On NBC’s Meet the Press this morning, anchor Kristen Welker asked former transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg how he would answer that question.

After acknowledging it was the right question to ask, Buttigieg said that “the answer is up to us.”

He continued: “Look, first and foremost, a man has been murdered. His family is grieving. Charlie Kirk had children, this should not have happened to him. And this should never happen to anyone. And I think Governor Cox and a lot of other people around the country are asking the question, ‘What does it take the make sure this never happens to anyone else?’

“And by the way, it’s not just visible public figures who have reason to fear from this season, this era of political violence, it’s every American because every American is harmed by this. It’s an attack on an individual and an attack on a country whose entire purpose, entire way of being is that we can resolve what we need to resolve through a political process.”

As to what happens next he said: “Right now, the categories that matter in responding to this killing aren’t left and right or MAGA and Democrats. I think the only category that really matters here is helping or hurting. Are we doing things that help America move from this moment to a better place, or divide America and make us worse off?

“And I’m encouraged that there are voices from the questions that Governor Cox has posed, who is a conservative Republican, who I disagree with on most things, but is a good man, to all the way on the other end of the political spectrum, someone like Bernie Sanders, who put out a comparable message reminding Americans about why we always have to reject political violence.”