Charlie Kirk shooting suspect held ‘leftist ideology,’ Utah governor says

COURTESY PHOTO via REUTERS

Tyler Robinson

ST. GEORGE, Utah >> Utah Gov. Spencer Cox on Sunday provided new information about the background and political leanings of the 22-year-old accused of killing Charlie Kirk, saying that the suspect had a “leftist ideology” and had also been in a romantic relationship with a partner who was transitioning from male to female.

Cox, speaking on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” described the suspect, Tyler Robinson, as a “very normal young man” who appeared to have been “radicalized” some time after he dropped out of college and moved back to his hometown in southern Utah, where he had spent the past few years.

Cox did not go into specifics about Robinson’s ideological views or offer details to substantiate his assessment of the suspect’s views.

Cox said Robinson had spent much of his time immersed in online gaming, message boards and parts of what the governor called the “deep, dark internet.”

Cox, a Republican, did not detail a motive for the shooting of Kirk, a prominent conservative activist. The suspect’s motive has become the subject of fevered debate as President Donald Trump and some Republicans have blamed Democrats and the “radical left.”

“The why behind this, again, we’re all drawing lots of conclusions on how someone like this could be radicalized,” Cox said. “And I think that those are important questions for us to ask and important questions for us to answer.”

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The governor said that Robinson had not been cooperating with the investigation and that investigators were gathering information from the suspect’s friends and family.

Cox said the suspect’s romantic partner did not have any advance knowledge about the shooting and was “shocked” by what happened.

Authorities have indicated that the partner, whom they have identified as Robinson’s roommate, has cooperated with the investigation and provided private messages that incriminated Robinson.

The New York Times is not identifying the suspect’s partner in this article because authorities have said the partner was not involved in the crime and is cooperating.

The new information about the suspect’s romantic relationship is likely to raise further questions about the suspect’s motive and ideology, which are a focus of the official investigation but also the subject of intense speculation on social media and even among public officials.

Cox said more information would be available Tuesday, when Robinson is expected to be formally charged by local prosecutors. It was not yet clear if he had a lawyer. In another interview Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union,” Cox said that investigators were also examining a potential note left by the suspect, and that charging documents would provide additional details.

Kirk was outspoken on a variety of hotly contested topics — race, gun control, abortion — in ways that often stoked controversy. A conservative Christian, he was also an outspoken critic of LGBTQ+ rights.

Ideological opponents often challenged Kirk on his anti-transgender views when he visited college campuses to engage students and others in open-air debates through his conservative youth organization, Turning Point USA. Kirk was answering a question about transgender people and mass shootings at Utah Valley University on Wednesday when he was fatally shot.

Some LGBTQ+ activists in Utah said they were troubled that Cox had publicly discussed the partner’s gender identity so early in the investigation, and at a moment when the country is already on edge and facing a rising tide of political violence.

“It sounds like we’re really stretching to find a way to tie this in to the trans community,” said Jacey Thornton, executive director of Project Rainbow Utah, an LGBTQ+ advocacy group. “It’s very harmful to this ongoing dialogue that’s happening, especially on social media.”

On Sunday, Cox said that Robinson’s political ideology was “very different” from that of his conservative family.

“There clearly was a leftist ideology with this — with this assassin,” he said, citing the suspect’s family and romantic partner as sources of that information.

The suspect’s parents are registered Republicans, and Robinson was raised around St. George, Utah, a fast-growing conservative city whose landscape is defined by red-rock formations and slender white spires of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Photos from his childhood show his family taking him and his brothers on trips to shoot guns and check out weapons displays.

Voter records show that Robinson was unaffiliated with any political party.

The only hints about his ideology or beliefs released publicly in the investigation are engravings on bullet casings found with the rifle used to kill Kirk that contained a hash of online memes and video game references. One engraving said, “hey fascist! CATCH!”

Robinson and his partner had been living in a sunbaked complex of stucco apartments on the south side of St. George that is home to mostly college students, 20-somethings and young families.

Neighbors said the two kept a low profile and were rarely seen outdoors. A neighbor who lived next to the pair said he could sometimes hear them through the wall, playing what sounded like video games.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

© 2025 The New York Times Company

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