Posobiec began the conversation by addressing the personal nature of the tragedy.
“You know, here I am, I find myself in this situation where one of my close personal friends, someone who up until one month ago was an incredibly well-known public figure, Charlie Kirk, was assassinated,” Posobiec said. “He was killed by someone who now, as far as we know, was not a transgender individual himself, but apparently was in a relationship with a transgender boyfriend.”
He described the alleged shooter, Tyler Robinson, as a “very exceptional student” who dropped out of a full scholarship at Utah State before becoming entangled in what Posobiec called “a very strange, odd relationship.” Robinson, he noted, was later found atop a school building “hours away from where he lived,” with evidence now linking him to Kirk’s murder.
“How do you begin to unpack the mind of someone who would do such a thing for seemingly such a strange motive?” Posobiec asked.
Dr. Witt-Doerring said text messages revealed that the act appeared to have a romantic motivation.
“I believe that Tyler felt that his partner was being threatened by the things that Charlie Kirk was saying,” he explained. “In today’s world, we can very easily fall into echo chambers, which really radicalize us. The main messaging in a lot of these echo chambers is that Charlie Kirk is a fascist, that his words aren’t just words—they’re dangerous, and they’re leading to people dying.”
Witt-Doerring added that the decline in public support for transgender activism following the release of the WPATH files has left some activists feeling “isolated and out of place.”
“If you feel like your partner is threatened, and you’ve bought into the idea that words are violence,” he continued, “you might go and do something very drastic, such as assassinate someone who did not deserve it—because in your mind, you think this makes you a hero.”
Posobiec followed up by the killer may have seen the attack as an act of defense.
“So in his mind, it’s not necessarily just anger at Charlie Kirk,” he said. “It’s also the sense of defense—defense of others, defense of his lover—that in order to protect them, I must target this person who is somehow threatening to him. There’s a dissociation here, isn’t that right?”
“Yes,” Witt-Doerring replied. “That’s what I think has happened.”
He then reflected on Kirk’s own interactions with transgender individuals.
“After Charlie’s death, I went and watched some of the videos where he would actually talk to transgender individuals on college campuses,” Witt-Doerring said. “He said some of the kindest things ever. He stuck to his guns, but he was gentle. I remember one thing he said: ‘I just hope that one day you can love the body that you were given.’ It was very well received.”
“Charlie didn’t hate the transgender community,” he added. “He was kind. And that’s what makes this such a huge tragedy—because the other side doesn’t see that. They see only a very radicalized, one-sided perspective.”
