Did you ever wonder just how the Left and the media – but I repeat myself – always seem to be speaking from the same script? We all know they collude on their daily messaging and that none of it is organic. Rush Limbaugh was one of the first to bust up the Left’s astroturfing when he played the “gravitas” montage on his show.
This was when George W. Bush chose Dick Cheney to be his vice presidential running mate back in 2000. All of the major news outlets “coincidentally” reported that Cheney brought “gravitas” to the ticket. Rush Limbaugh used to do audio clips of the media using the same words. It's now known as the “gravitas” montage.
Over the years, the conservative world has been completely aware of the orchestrated way that the Leftist machine programs the daily media narrative. To counter it requires vigilance and constant work to expose the contrived nature of nearly all news media narratives.
Victor Davis Hanson, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institute, a historian, an author, an occasional PJ Media columnist, and one of the more brilliant conservative minds today, took to the X platform this morning to blow up the latest Leftist narrative.
In his post, which is well worth reading in its entirety, Hanson starts with a reminder that the morning routine across network news, social media influencers, Hollywood, and academia is to review the morning’s talking points.
From One Leftist False Kirk Narrative To the Next
— Victor Davis Hanson (@VDHanson) September 19, 2025
Somewhere in the leftwing command bunker, false narratives about Kirk’s murder, replete with talking points, are issued and disseminated through the network news, social media, Hollywood, and academia—at least until their…
What Hanson doesn’t say is how the Left does this. One way is to literally distribute a talking points sheet via email or some digital means to their designated mouthpieces. Another very common way, which is well understood, is for everyone on the Left to make sure they read the New York Times or perhaps the Washington Post each morning. If all they do is read that content, they’ll have a very clear idea of what they need to say, how they need to frame it, and what not to say.
If you don’t think the editors at these newspapers know that this is done and how it’s done, as George Strait might say, I have some “oceanfront property in Arizona” to sell you.
The narrative that Hanson has blown up is the way in which the alleged Charlie Kirk assassin has been described, and how it’s devolved in seven stages, which are:
- "No motive"
- "The gun did it"
- "The assassin was MAGA"
- "Both sides"
- "Trump did it"
- "A love story"
- He kinda, sorta deserved it"
In the hours immediately after the shooter’s arrest, Hanson says, “we were told the shooter was deranged. There was supposedly no apparent motive.” That was Stage One.
The sands shifted quickly, and so in Stage Two, Hanson notes that the gun was to blame. “Calls for new gun control legislation mounted. And the sicker Left talked of ‘irony’ at best and at worst ‘karma’ that the 2nd-Amendment defender Kirk was killed by a gun,” Hanson says.
This is one of the Left’s default narratives after any shooting. It’s never the shooter’s fault. It’s always the gun’s fault.
When that narrative didn’t gain traction, the talking points went out attempting to frame the assassin as part of MAGA, even though everyone knew this would be one of the most transparent lies you could conjure up in this story. Hanson says the shooter’s “engraved messaged bullets, his texts, his friends, his family, the nature of his boy-girlfriend relationship, and his chat group all proved beyond a doubt he hated Kirk for his influence and politics, and thus committed a leftwing political shooting of a conservative in the fashion of a Luigi Mangione or James Hodkinson.”
“Narrative four was quickly substituted,” says Hanson....“‘both sides’ were now responsible for the assassination. That lie lasted about a day, once lists appeared of the political motivations of recent ideological killings. They showed overwhelmingly right-wing targets and left-wing shooters/killers,” he writes on X, adding that this narrative fizzled because no one on the left could effectively hide their glee that a conservative was the one who was murdered.
The next three narratives followed quickly, according to Hanson, starting with, “Trump did it.” No one realistically believed that Trump’s rhetoric killed his friend Charlie Kirk, primarily due to the fact that Trump himself had been the target of so much hate, assassination attempts, impeachments, election hijinks, and lawfare.
Next and perhaps the most bizarre narrative to emerge so far was the love story angle, where Hanson says, former talk show host Montel Williams and ABC News’ Matt Gutman “did their best to redefine the political assassination as a gay/trans love story, a sort of updated Ryan O’Neal-Ali McGraw beautiful but tragic romance. Emotion and love killed Kirk, not evil.”
And that all brought us to the current narrative from the left – “He Kinda, Sorta Deserved It.”
“An exasperated Left, after seeing all of their narratives implode, finally shrugged and defiantly has sent out the last version that best reflected its own. The new narrative? Why should the Left be apologetic or deferential at all? It will damn Kirk and see what conservatives are going to do about it. So after the de rigueur acknowledgment about the abhorrence of murdering anyone—the Left now cuts to the quick and pontificate, euphemistically, about Kirk bringing it on himself,” Hanson contends.
Hanson perfectly captures the evolution of a narrative, while at the same time exposing its deeply rooted motivations. Kirk said things no one on the Left could delineate, but somehow the Leftists know it was bad and that’s divisive enough to warrant the consequences, we’re told.
So, as Hanson says, “it was sorta, kinda true—and by implication the leftwing world is better off for his passing. That final sick narrative, distilled from all the other failed ones, will more or less now be institutionalized as the authentic Left party-line as the months wear on.”
One more thing: The culture war is real! If you want to see the Democrats go down to defeat in next year’s midterms and beyond, now is the time to join the battle to Make America Great Again. Without you, America can lose. We need your help to succeed!
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