Watching the video of the suspect in Charlie Kirk’s killing sitting in that courtroom was nauseating, and Fox News contributor Miranda Devine put it bluntly: the behavior was repellent and no one should be asked to feel sympathy for a man who allegedly targeted a public figure for his politics. Devine’s reaction wasn’t theater — it was the frank response millions of Americans felt when they saw a man accused of political assassination treated with the courtesy we normally reserve for law-abiding citizens. The American people deserve candor and the truth about what happened, not the polite pretenses of a legal system that sometimes forgets who it serves.
When Tyler Robinson made his first in-person appearance in Provo, the image was chilling: shackled at the waist, wrists and ankles, wearing a dress shirt and tie, but smiling at family members in the front row as the judge scrambled to police a media livestream that momentarily showed his restraints. The judge warned broadcasters and ordered the camera moved, reminding the courtroom that openness must be balanced with legal protections — a technicality the left-leaning press often accuses conservatives of exploiting when the cameras don’t flatter their narrative. This was not about protecting a defendant’s dignity so much as preserving the integrity of a process that is being watched by a nation in pain.
Don’t be fooled by the defense’s bid to ban cameras; that request reads more like a script to hide unflattering facts than a principled stand for a fair trial. Judges are rightly weighing media access, while national outlets and the victim’s widow have pushed for transparency because Americans have a right to see justice being done in a case that is unmistakably a political assassination of a conservative voice. If the system caves to secrecy whenever a suspect dislikes publicity, we will have surrendered public accountability to a whisper network that protects criminals and shames victims.
We already know disturbing things about the suspect’s mindset; authorities have said he held left-leaning beliefs and even left messages that mocked or threatened Kirk, evidence that this was not random violence but targeted political hatred. Those details matter because they expose the poisonous environment some in the culture have helped create — an environment where attacking a speaker’s views is somehow normalized until it escalates to murder. The country must confront that rot honestly instead of reflexively blaming conservative rhetoric for the violence of its enemies.
Prosecutors have leveled aggravated murder charges and are pursuing the harshest penalties available, reflecting the gravity and political motive alleged in this crime. This isn’t a routine courtroom drama; this is a test of whether American justice will treat an assassination of a public conservative the same way it treats other high-profile political crimes. Conservatives have every right to insist that the full, unvarnished facts be aired, not scrubbed to protect a narrative or a class of people the elites prefer to shield.
Make no mistake: the push to limit cameras smells like special pleading from a defense establishment that knows optics matter. We’ve seen the media tilt for years, from selective editing to sympathetic profiles that humanize criminals while demonizing victims; letting cameras into the courtroom is one of the few practical checks left for everyday Americans to see the proceedings for themselves. If transparency is dangerous, then the danger lies in what’s being hidden from view — and our side should never cede the field when accountability is on the line.
Patriots must demand a justice system that is courageous enough to show the public the truth and ruthless enough to punish political violence to the fullest extent of the law. Call it insistence on fairness, call it insistence on transparency, but do not call it anything less than necessary: Charlie Kirk was a husband and father and a leader to millions, and his memory deserves more than procedural hand-wringing. As Miranda Devine urged, watching this defendant’s conduct should harden our resolve rather than soften it; America must not be a place where politics becomes a license for murder.
