The suspect in last weekend’s Colorado Springs mass shooting at a gay nightclub isn’t exactly the right-wing Christian boogeyman legacy media immediately painted him as.
According to The New York Times on Tuesday, 22-year-old Anderson Aldrich claims to be “non-binary” and wants other people to refer to him with the plural pronouns “they” and “them.”
“The lawyers refer to their client as Mx. Anderson Aldrich,” reported the paper’s Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs.
Aldrich has been charged with five counts of first-degree murder and five counts of a bias-motivated crime causing bodily injury related to the shooting that left five people dead and at least another 25 injured on Saturday night.
Despite few details about the suspect emerging immediately after the shooting, left-wing talking heads placed blame on conservative media in a knee-jerk fashion. Fox News’s Tucker Carlson, whose Monday night monologue included a condemnation of political violence paired with a reminder of the dangers surrounding transgender medical interventions for minors, became a primary target — despite the fact that these interventions have been shown to raise suicide risks, contrary to the left’s constant fearmongering.
According to a recent groundbreaking study from the Heritage Foundation, “easing access to cross-sex treatments without parental consent significantly increases suicide rates.”
“There is no scientific justification for sexually mutilating kids,” Carlson said. “Is pointing that out an attack on gay people? Of course it is not an attack on gay people. It has nothing to do with gay people.”
“Violence and cruelty should always horrify us every single time,” Carlson added, provoking critics to call him a hypocrite because, according to the left, opposition to mutilative surgeries and sterilizing drugs for minors is somehow violent.
“‘Hateful’: Critics Rip Tucker Carlson’s Response To LGBTQ Nightclub Shooting,” blared a headline in HuffPost amplified by Yahoo News.
The article ran down a list of media personalities active on Twitter, from Media Matters for America to liberal podcaster Brian Tyler Cohen, who admonished Carlson despite the prime-time host admitting the many unknowns and his commentary later being vindicated.
“So the most obvious question is why did Anderson Aldrich shoot 30 people?” Carlson asked on air. “The truth is we don’t know.”
The leftist pundits on MSNBC, however, seemed to have an answer without actually knowing any of the facts. On Tuesday, NBC’s Twitter hall monitor Ben Collins, on the verge of tears, called on reporters to “have a come-to-Jesus moment” and confront the supposedly violent rhetoric from conservative outlets.
“Are we more afraid of being on Breitbart for saying that trans people deserve to be alive, or are we more afraid of the dead people?” Collins asked after he highlighted a series of headlines that warned of right-wing violence targeting transgender-identified people.
“I’m more afraid of the dead people,” Collins finished. “I don’t want to wake up on a Sunday and see all of these headlines come to fruition.”
Now would be a good time for Collins and the rest of the left-wing media establishment to have an actual “come to Jesus moment” over their hysterical coverage that immediately fomented outrage, fear, and division by blaming their political opponents. Now that we actually have a few facts, their narrative appears to be falling apart.
