The way the left-stream media raced to moralize and deflect responsibility in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s assassination was disgusting to watch — and it reached a new low when MSNBC analyst Matthew Dowd suggested that “hateful thoughts” could justify or explain the killing. That comment didn’t land in a vacuum; it prompted outrage from conservatives and ordinary Americans who see a clear double standard in how the press treats conservative voices.
Networks that spend their waking hours accusing conservatives of inciting violence should have been silent, yet some pundits instead used a death to score political points. Dowd’s line that “hateful thoughts lead to hateful words which ultimately lead to hateful actions” was broadcast when facts were still emerging and was widely seen as a moral finger-pointing at a man who’d just been murdered on stage. The network’s response — firing him amid the outrage — only proved how performative newsroom virtue-signaling has become.
Into that toxic stew stepped Bill Maher, and even liberals noticed the contrast: Maher publicly pushed back against the idea of lumping a killer into a partisan box and warned against knee-jerk cancellations, arguing that the shooter’s psychopathology, not a political team, was responsible for the crime. For once, a figure from the coastal media elite called out the very censorship and hasty moralizing that conservative Americans have been warning about for years. That Maher would defend free speech in this moment is telling about where honest debate actually lies.
Dave Rubin did what conservative outlets do best: he called attention to it. Rubin shared a direct-message clip showing Maher’s blunt rebuke of media framings and the studio reaction, forcing the elite narrative machine to confront its own hypocrisy. Conservatives should appreciate when anyone — even a leftie host — calls out the media’s reflex to blame conservative rhetoric while ignoring the pathological impulses that drive actual violence.
Make no mistake: this is not about excusing bad rhetoric anywhere; it’s about insisting that the press behave like responsible adults instead of partisan prosecutors. Charlie Kirk was killed while speaking at a university event, and Americans deserve facts, sober reporting, and basic decency in response — not opportunistic lectures that read like pretexts for silencing dissenting views. The nation is still grieving and the investigation is ongoing; politicizing a murder in real time is disgraceful.
If conservatives are going to be painted as dangerous simply for speaking out, then the only sane response is to fight harder for free speech and accountability. We should demand that networks stop weaponizing tragedies to score political points and start focusing on protecting citizens and preserving the right to speak without fear of being smeared in death. This moment must remind patriots that defending liberty means defending the right to speak even when enemies try to turn pain into politics.
