FBI Director Kash Patel is hoping to salvage his mishandled manhunt for Charlie Kirk’s killer.

Speaking at a press conference Friday morning, Patel attempted to take a little credit for a job well done.

“This is what happens when you let good cops be cops,” Patel said. “The FBI and our partners are proud to stand here today together to bring justice to the family of Charlie Kirk.”

But Patel’s manhunt didn’t accomplish much—22-year-old Tyler Robinson was “turned in” by a family member, President Donald Trump claimed Friday morning.

Utah Governor Spencer Cox confirmed Trump’s statement, telling the Friday morning press conference that a family friend of Robinson’s had contacted the Washington County Sheriff’s Office, after learning from a family member that he’d confessed. “We got him,” Cox said.

Patel viewed this manhunt as an opportunity to prove himself—but he seemed to stumble through it.

On Wednesday, Patel quickly got out over his skis, when he congratulated state and federal officials for taking “the subject for the horrific shooting today” into custody, only to release that suspect hours later.

Patel completely lost it during a meeting Thursday with 200 agents involved in the manhunt, berating them with expletives and accusing them of slowing down the search.

Former FBI Director Andrew McCabe criticized Patel’s decision to get personally involved in the search, arguing that his presence would impose a “huge burden” on the Salt Lake City field office and that his missteps were either the result of a poor flow of information or Patel’s own utter cluelessness.

Representative Nancy Mace, of all people, is accusing Democrats of derogatory conduct toward Republicans.

In a Friday morning appearance on CNN, Mace, a Republican from South Carolina, attributed the fatal shooting of Charlie Kirk to an increase in political violence and divisiveness—problems that she, absurdly, said were confined to the left.

“It’s very one-sided right now,” Mace said. “I have never called one of my colleagues the kind of names that we’ve been called. I’ve never dehumanized my colleagues.”

The claim echoes those of many prominent Republicans who have baselessly blamed the shooting and the nation’s political temperature entirely on the Democratic Party and left generally.

The sentiment was particularly ludicrous coming from Mace, who has a well-documented history of transphobic attacks.

The South Carolina Republican notoriously responded to the election of the first transgender woman in Congress, Democratic Representative Sarah McBride of Delaware, with an outpouring of hate.

In November 2024, Mace spearheaded an effort to ban transgender people from using Capitol bathrooms, which she said was “absolutely” meant to target McBride. Mace referred to McBride as a “biological man,” saying, “It’s offensive that a man in a skirt thinks that he’s my equal.”

When demonstrators protested the ban, she referred to them using the transphobic slur “tranny.” (When confronted for her use of the term in a congressional hearing, she said tauntingly, “Tranny! Tranny! Tranny!”)

Mace’s hostility toward her colleagues doesn’t stop at transphobia. In January, for example, she responded to criticisms from Democratic Representative Jasmine Crockett with an apparent threat. “If you want to take it outside,” she said, cutting herself off. She later claimed she hadn’t been suggesting “a physical fight.”

President Donald Trump wants to paint right-wing extremists as vigilante heroes, while demonizing “vicious” radicals on the left.

Speaking on Fox & Friends Friday about Charlie Kirk’s death, Trump admitted that he isn’t all that concerned about right-wing radicals.

“Well, I’ll tell you something that’s gonna get me in trouble, but I couldn’t care less. The radicals on the right oftentimes are radical ’cause they don’t want to see crime, they don’t want to see crime,” Trump said. “They’re saying, ‘We don’t want these people coming in, we don’t want you burning our shopping centers, we don’t want you shooting our people in the middle of the street.’

“The radicals on the left are the problem,” he continued, “and they’re vicious and they’re horrible and they’re politically savvy.”

Trump’s blatant effort to defend political violence committed by people he agrees with is not necessarily surprising, given his steadfast support for the rioters at the Capitol on January 6 and accused murderers such as Kyle Rittenhouse and Daniel Penny. He also previously defended attendees of the 2021 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, which was organized by neo-Nazis.

But Trump’s statement is deeply misleading about the trends in politically motivated violence in the United States. Right-wing attacks and plans accounted for the majority of all terrorist incidents between 1994 and 2020, according to the

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