Trump, who has spent his entire time as a public figure demonizing his detractors, complained that the left has been “demonizing those with whom you disagree day after day, year after year, in the most hateful and despicable way possible.”
Media outlets owned by conservative media mogul Rupert Murdoch have been at the forefront of using the killing to promote the right’s narrative about the left. In particular, they’ve tried to connect transgender people with the shooting, as part of the false narrative that mass shooters are frequently trans.
The Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal has been criticized by groups like the Human Rights Campaign for reporting that the ammunition used by the shooter had expressions of “transgender and anti-fascist ideology,” apparently echoing a storyline created by the Trump administration.
Brooke Singman, a reporter for the Murdoch-owned Fox News, claimed that “sources” told her the alleged shooter “lived with his transgender partner.” The New York Post, which is also owned by Murdoch, claimed that “his trans boyfriend proclaimed support for Biden on social media, and that the shooting was the latest “committed by trans people and advocates.”
Murdoch-owned outlets have spent years—in concert with the Republican Party—demonizing and attacking trans people for the crime of existing. |
