During CBS’s brief reaction Tuesday to Utah County officials announcing charges against the suspect in the assassination of Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk, CBS Evening News co-anchor John Dickerson was forced to listen to then recap for viewers which he had denied hours earlier that Kirk was murdered for his political views.
Speaking moments later to correspondent Carter Evans at the press conference, Dickerson reiterated that “[i]n addition to those text messages that were read, we heard about the possible motivation as Robinson’s parents explained he had become more radical, more left leaning.”
It was only Monday night in the 7:00 p.m. Eastern half-hour that Dickerson asserted on CBS Evening News Plus that the “motive remains elusive” and the suspect might not have been “driven by an obvious political ideology” with all that we then had was “vague, second-hand testimony.”
He then partnered with a supposed extremism expert to argue the murder might have been nihilistic terrorism, meaning the suspect did not have a particular motive other than a general hate for the world. Our Jorge Bonilla wrote this was “fighting the motive narrative battle with the intensity of the last Japanese soldier in the Philippine jungles after the end of World War II.”
Even though it was already obvious at the time given the reports about the suspect having become political strained from his family, Dickerson joined the likes of ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel, ABC’s The View, The Atlantic’s Jemele Hill, CNN’s Juliette Kayyem, and MSNBC host/Atlantic writer Jonathan Lemire to name a few.
On the same show, Dickerson decried “conflict entrepreneurs” as having helped foment toxicity in our politics despite, well, his own record (links to those examples referenced here and here):
Our Geoff Dickens also took a look in January at what were then some of Dickerson’s recent humdingers, proving his Scott Pelley and Brian Williams-esque pomposity has done plenty to drive people apart.
