Tyler Robinson (left) camping at Gold Butte National Monument, Nevada

“Hey guys, I have bad news for you all … it was me at UVU yesterday.” Thus Tyler Robinson messaged his friends on Discord, seemingly apologizing for murdering Charlie Kirk. “I’m sorry for all of this.”

I obtained this and other Discord chats I’ve decided to publish (the legacy news media, as usual, refuses), along with new information I’ve learned about Robinson from the people who knew him best.

Screenshot of leaked Discord message from Tyler Robinson (username: zealous_monkey_55095; other usernames redacted)

Trump and company portray the alleged Utah shooter as left-wing and liberals portray him as right-wing. The federal conclusion will inevitably be that he was a so-called Nihilist Violent Extremist (NVE); meanwhile, the crackdown has already begun, as I reported yesterday. The country is practically ready to go to war.

“It’s been so terrible and seeing it from an inside perspective is so frustrating,” a friend of Robinson’s since middle school told me. The childhood friend, who asked not to be named for fear of threats, provided me with the above non-public photo of Robinson on a camping trip (a favorite activity of his) to corroborate their relationship.

“I think the main thing that’s caused so much confusion is that he was always generally apolitical for the most part,” the friend told me. “That's the big thing, he just never really talked politics which is why it's so frustrating.”

The picture that emerges bears little resemblance to the media version. Robinson, I am told, though quiet, was a well-liked person with a supportive family. The friend group who he interacted with on Discord, far from some kind of militia camp or Antifa bunker it’s been portrayed as, represented a range of different political views but mostly talked video games.

Yesterday, FBI Director Kash Patel said in an interview that Robinson “subscribed to left-wing ideology,” citing his family’s remarks to investigators. But those close to Robinson say there was a lot his family didn’t know about him.

“Their ideas are based on someone they didn't fully understand,” the childhood friend told me. Though the family was generally supportive of Robinson (a claim corroborated by his mother’s Facebook account, brimming with praise for Tyler) they didn’t seem to know about his relationship with a transgender person named Lance, the friend said.

When I asked if his family would have been accepting, the friend replied: “I don't think even Tyler knew the answer to that question, which is why he kept it so low key between themselves.”

Tyler’s bisexuality, the friend said, was coupled with openness on LGBT issues. But his wasn’t some cookie cutter lefty position on every or even most issues, his friends say.

“Obviously he's okay with gay and trans people having a right to exist, but also believes in the Second Amendment,” the friend said, referring to the right to bear arms.

The friend described Robinson as fairly typical of a young man his age from Utah: someone who loved the outdoors, was a gamer, and into guns.

“To all of us he just seemed like a simple guy who liked playing games like Sea of Thieves, Deep Rock Galactic and Helldivers 2, loved to fish and loved to camp,” the friend said. “It really did seem like that’s all he was about.”

The phrase inscribed on one of the bullet casings from the shooting — “Hey fascist, catch!” — though widely reported to mean he was a man of the left, is in fact a reference to the Helldivers 2 game. Three arrows initially believed by federal agents to be a reference to Antifa are also a reference to Helldivers.

Private Discord messages shared with me by a friend of Robinson’s confirm that Robinson wasn’t some political martyr. A search for posts of Robinson’s containing keywords like “Biden” and “Trump” turned up just one hit each. The Trump post was a passing reference to the 2019 impeachment inquiry. The Biden one came on the day of the 2020 election, where he provided an update to another friend asking about the status of the vote count.

The childhood friend is a member of multiple Discord chats with Robinson. He described the group as trying to grapple with Robinson’s motive just like everyone else.

“Even the goodbye message he sent in one of our servers [where Discord chats are hosted] was so hard to believe, we all just thought, what a weird joke to make … then the news came out and we all were calling each other saying check the news,” he said. “Yeah I don’t know what makes a person like him decide he’s going to drive 260 miles upstate to shoot someone like Charlie Kirk, then come back like nothing happened. It leaves a lot of room for speculation and theories which is why I think they’re so rampant.”

Part of the confusion he attributes to Tyler’s quiet nature.

“He was a really smart guy but super hard to read, stone cold poker face and you could always never be confident assuming anything.”

When I asked if he opened up to anyone, the friend replied: “As far as we knew he was opened up.”

Despite his verbal reticence, Robinson was not a loner, according to his friends. Unlike the stereotypical outcast shooter driven to violence by social rejection, he was apparently amiable and well-liked.

“Everyone who knew him liked him and he was always nice, a little quiet and kept to himself mostly but wasn't a recluse,” the childhood friend said.

“Regardless of the horrible actions that took place we must take this moment to remember that God is a living and loving God who loves all his children,” a Discord post from another friend posted the day after the shooting reads. “While Charlie Kirk's politics were not acceptable to some l ask that we all say a prayer for him and his family during these confusing times.”

“The last message is religious in nature which just goes to show the apolitical nature of the server, we all have pretty differing views on politics,” the friend said of the discord post. “We all just exist as friends and just play stuff.”

Cat memes, weather updates, home improvement and the odd Garfield reference populate Robinson’s posts.

“I’m going to eep pretty soon, very eepy,” he said in one post, an intentionally silly misspelling of the word “sleep” — a common Gen Z convention.

Screenshot of another Discord chat where Robinson went by the username “Bedbuge Inspector”

The federal government, the Washington crowd and corporate media (based in Washington and New York) see the country in wholly partisan terms, Republican versus Democrat, Red versus Blue, old media versus social media, liberal versus conservative, right versus left, straight versus gay, and on and on. Charlie Kirk’s assassination (in Utah!) should remind us of the actual diversity of the nation, and of the cost of polarization that demonizes the other side.

No one in Robinson’s group is cheering or justifying the murder in any of the messages I reviewed. They’re just struggling to understand what their friend did. But Washington has become obsessed with the Discord chat, convinced it’s some kind of headquarters for the murder and cauldron of radicalization and conspiracy. Today FBI Director Patel vowed to investigate “anyone and everyone in that Discord chat.”

What I see is a bunch of young people shocked, horrified and searching for answers, like the rest of the country.

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— Edited by William M. Arkin