Right-Wing Media Responds to Colorado Springs Shooting by Doubling Down on Anti-LGBTQ Hate

In the aftermath of the hate-fueled shooting at a Colorado Springs gay nightclub that left five people dead and at least 25 injured, many right-wing pundits are grotesquely doubling down on the kind of rhetoric that helped lead to such violence in the first place.

Figures like Matt Walsh, Candace Owens, and Ben Shapiro apparently didn’t have time to denounce the shooter or the hate crime. Instead, they focused on what they see as the real violence: some imagined progressive agenda to violate children. That actual people died, and why they did, was of less interest to them.

These posts not only show little actual concern for those harmed in the shooting, but they also come from individuals who have been on the forefront of fomenting brain-melting, blood-pressure-rising conspiracy about LGBTQ people.

Just last week, Shapiro warned that any Republican who voted to codify same-sex marriage “should not be in the Republican party.”

Walsh, alongside reactionary Twitter account ‘Libs of Tiktok’ (run by Chaya Raichik), was a leading voice claiming that bomb threats against Boston Children’s Hospital were hoaxes—until a woman was arrested and charged in September for making one of these threats. Walsh and Raichik have spread conspiracies about, and incited harassment towards, hospitals like Boston Children’s Hospital that provide gender-affirming care. Boston’s Children Hospital has faced numerous threats since then.

Even after the shooting, Libs of TikTok posted a tweet Sunday singling out a Colorado drag organization.

Walsh, Owens, Shapiro, and company dismiss those who rightly identify them as contributors to violent discontent, calling them pawns of the Democratic agenda, or the liberal media, or leftists, or some other amorphous bucket to slander. The shtick works to a point, but there are more than enough people—politically-engaged or not, LGBTQ or not—who plainly see how monstrous it is to demonize people for simply wanting to be who they are and love who they love.

All three of Colorado’s Republican representatives neglected to mention that LGBTQ people were targeted in the Colorado Springs mass shooting over the weekend when making statements about the tragedy.

Five people were killed and at least 25 wounded when a gunman entered the queer Club Q and opened fire Saturday night. The shooter has since been charged with murder and hate crimes.

On Sunday, Lauren Boebert, Ken Buck, and Doug Lamborn shared bland, anodyne statements expressing their condolences and, of course, their prayers. Not a single one of them mentioned that the LGBTQ community was specifically attacked.

Their comments were quickly flooded with people calling out their complicity in creating an atmosphere that led to the attack. All three have a history of homophobia and opposition to gun control.

Conspiracy theorist and election denier Boebert, in particular, has a long track record of horrific bigotry towards the LGBTQ community. She has repeatedly accused queer people of grooming children and spewed vitriol at drag shows.

Coincidentally, the last event advertised on Club Q’s Facebook page before the shooting was a drag brunch.

Boebert also appeared on a livestream hosted by a far-right activist who has supported the death penalty for gay people.

And she is staunchly pro-gun. She appeared in a Zoom congressional hearing with a bookshelf full of guns in the background; she and her three children posed with automatic rifles in front of their Christmas tree; and prior to being in Congress, she owned a gun-themed restaurant called Shooters Grill.

Since the Club Q shooting, her website continues to sell a mug, a hat, and stickers mocking trans and non-binary people that say, “Non-Bidenary,” and a baseball cap that says her name, with the L replaced by the outline of a handgun.

Elon Musk says he won’t let conspiracy theorist Alex Jones back on Twitter, but there’s no guarantee he’ll stick to that.

His announcement came less than a day after he reinstated former President Donald Trump’s account on the platform, despite earlier assurances that he would not make such unilateral decisions.

When asked Sunday night if he would let the InfoWars host back on Twitter, Musk paraphrased a Bible quote to explain why he won’t.

He then said he has “no mercy for anyone who would use the deaths of children for gain, politics or fame.”

Jones has been court-ordered to pay nearly $1.5 billion in damages to the families of victims of the Sandy Hook massacre, who sued him for saying the shooting was staged. He admitted he understands the attack was real.

But Musk’s promise about Jones came a day after the Tesla founder reinstated Trump’s Twitter account. Musk has previously said he planned to form a “content moderation council” to review major decisions such as reinstating banned accounts. Instead, it seems that content moderation council has been reduced to a Twitter poll, influenced by the voting of bots. 

It should come as no surprise that Musk seems to be doing just whatever he wants with Twitter. Since acquiring the platform in a $44-billion court-ordered deal, he has fired the top executives, the board of directors, and about half of the employees. The rest are leaving in droves.

Advertisers have similarly dropped Twitter like a hot potato over concerns about Musk’s content moderation policies, or lack thereof.

Members of Iran’s national soccer team made a statement to millions across the globe on Monday, as they refused to sing the national anthem during their match against England in Qatar’s World Cup.

The players’ dissent is the latest act of resistance against the government, amid monthslong nationwide  protests following the mid-September killing of 22-year-old Kurdish woman Jina Mahsa Amini. Amini was arrested by the country’s morality police for allegedly not wearing a hijab in accordance with government standards, and was killed in police custody.

While Iran’s players remained silent during the anthem, fans could be heard throughout the stadium booing and whistling to drown out the song. Spectators were seen sporting banners and clothes styled in the Iranian flag’s colors, reading “women, life, freedom,” which has become the main rallying cry for these protests.

During a press conference Sunday, Iranian team captain Ehsan Hajsafi expressed support for the anti-government protests, sharing condolences to families mourning lost loved ones.

Hajsafi began his comments saying “In the name of the God of rainbows,” in reference to a sentence said by nine-year-old Kian Pirfalak, who was killed last week amid protests in Izeh, Khuzestan, Iran.

Since the protests began, more than 380 people have been killed, including at least 58 children, according to Human Rights Activists in Iran.

The Iranian team’s statement comes against a government that has not only violently suppressed public protest, but also stifled dissent from public figures. Actresses, athletes, musicians, and others have all been targeted and even arrested for acts of solidarity with the protestors. Such pressure had forestalled the Iranian team from speaking out until now, fostering discontent from many Iranians.

Nevertheless, as they took to perhaps the world’s largest stage—where the risks of disobedience couldn’t be higher—the players of Iran’s national team spoke out anyway.

The gunman who opened fire in a queer club in Colorado Springs over the weekend is the grandson of a California MAGA Republican lawmaker, multiple media outlets reported Monday.

Anderson Lee Aldrich has been arrested for entering Club Q and shooting at clubgoers Saturday night, killing five people and wounding at least 25 others. Two patrons managed to stop him, taking his gun and hitting him with it to subdue him.

“It has the trappings of a hate crime, but we are going to have to see what the investigation shows…to make a clear determination exactly what the motive was,” Colorado Springs mayor John Suthers said Monday.

Early reports indicate that Aldrich is the grandson of outgoing MAGA Republican California Assemblyman Randy Voepel.

Voepel drew serious condemnation last year, including calls for his removal from office, over his support for the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. “This is Lexington and Concord. First shots fired against tyranny,” Voepel told The San Diego Union-Tribune three days after the riot. “Tyranny will follow in the aftermath of the Biden swear-in on January 20th.”

This is not Aldrich’s first instance of violence. A year and a half prior to the shooting, he allegedly threatened his mother, Voepel’s daughter, with a homemade bomb. Neighbors had to evacuate while the bomb squad and crisis negotiators talked him down.

But there is no public record that he was charged with anything, nor that police or relatives tried to trigger Colorado’s “red flag” law that would have allowed authorities to seize any weapons or ammunition he had.

Had that law been triggered, it might have helped prevent Saturday night’s tragedy.

Aldrich is reportedly also a Mormon, a community with a long and fraught history of prejudice against LGBTQ people. Although the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints recently backed the marriage equality bill—which is headed to a final vote in the Senate—that support may be too little, too late.

It comes only a year after senior apostle Jeffrey R. Holland gave an inflammatory speech urging the Brigham Young University faculty and staff to take up metaphorical muskets in defense of their faith—including against same-sex relationships and marriage.

Elizabeth Holmes, founder of Theranos, a fraudulent health technology company, was sentenced to 11.25 years in prison on Friday. The sentence will be followed by 3 years of supervised release. Holmes faces the sentence for deceiving investors and endangering patients as she peddled fraudulent blood-testing technology.

Holmes’ sentence comes after being convicted on four counts of investor fraud and conspiracy in January. Holmes’ company, Theranos, purported itself to be creating revolutionary technology that could scan for hundreds of diseases with just a few drops of blood. But it was all a ruse.

Holmes had founded the company in 2003, beginning her quest to raise millions of dollars in funding for the idea. By the end of 2010, Holmes reportedly raised $92 million in venture capital.

After years of selling promises—putting together what was referred to as “the most illustrious board in U.S. corporate history”—Holmes took her product public. Partnering with Walgreens, Holmes began piloting the needles said to be able to test for afflictions including diabetes and HIV.

By 2014, Theranos was valued at $9 billion, having raised more than a whopping $400 million in venture capital. Her board included names such as former Defense Secretary James Mattis, and two former secretaries of state, Henry Kissinger and the late George Shultz.

And then came the bombshells. The Wall Street Journal revealed Theranos’ devices were giving inaccurate testing results, and that the company was using already-available technologies manufactured by other companies for its supposedly revolutionary testing. Thereafter, the dominoes fell.

In 2016, the government found one of Theranos’ labs to have faulty procedures and equipment—banning Holmes from operating a blood-testing service for two years. In 2017, Arizona filed suit against Theranos for selling over one million blood tests to Arizonans while misrepresenting information about them. In 2018, the SEC charged Holmes and the company’s former president Ramesh Balwani with fraud for taking over $700 million from investors while selling their faulty product.

Holmes’ lawyer had tried arguing for leniency, painting her client as a well-meaning entrepreneur and mother. Her efforts were bolstered by 130 letters submitted by family, friends, and colleagues—and even Senator Cory Booker.

Jack Smith, the newly appointed special counsel to investigate Donald Trump, has a long history of investigating criminal cases.

Smith, who was appointed by Attorney General Merrick Garland on Friday to investigate Trump’s role in the January 6 attack and his handling of classified documents, has promised to “exercise independent judgment” in the case.

He started his career in the 1990s, first as a prosecutor in the Manhattan district attorney’s office and then in a similar position at the U.S. attorney’s office in Brooklyn.

After almost two decades there, Smith moved to the Netherlands, where he oversaw war crimes investigations at the International Criminal Court in the Hague.

He has also worked with the U.S. Department of Justice before, from 2010 to 2015, when he served as chief of the Public Integrity Section overseeing public corruption and elections-related investigations.

In 2018, he became the chief prosecutor at the special court in the Hague investigating war crimes committed during the Kosovo War.*

During his previous tenure at the Justice Department, Smith and his team won two notable corruption cases. First, they won a conviction against former Virginia Governor Robert McDonnell, but the Supreme Court overturned it.

They also won a conviction against former Arizona Representative Rick Renzi, who was sentenced to three years in prison. Trump pardoned Renzi in January 2021, part of a slew of eleventh-hour pardons during his last days as president.

* This piece misstated when Smith investigated war crimes committed during the Kosovo War.

On Friday, Attorney General Merrick Garland announced the appointment of a special counsel to oversee investigations into former President Donald Trump’s efforts to stay in power after losing the 2020 election, and his illegal possession of classified documents seized from Mar-a-Lago.

Trump, for his part, says he’s not going to “partake” in the special counsel inquiry—as if it’s up to him.

“I have been going through this for six years—for six years I have been going through this, and I am not going to go through it anymore,” Trump told Fox News.

The twice-impeached, twice-popular-vote-losing former president’s comments come just days after his announcement for a third consecutive presidential run. “It is so unfair. It is so political,” he said about the inquiry.

Garland said he appointed a special counsel knowing that Trump would be seeking another term as president.

Jack Smith, a former assistant U.S. attorney and chief to the DOJ’s public integrity section, will guide the investigation into Trump’s possession of classified documents after leaving the White House, and whether he obstructed the government’s initial investigation into the case. Smith will also look into Trump and his allies’ efforts to interrupt the transfer of power following the 2020 election.

Smith said in a statement Friday that he intends to “conduct the assigned investigations, and any prosecutions that may result from them, independently,” and that “the pace of the investigations will not pause or flag” under his watch.

The case provides further kindling to the sparks burning within the Republican party.  “I hope the Republicans have the courage to fight this,” Trump warned, giving everyone in his party a chance to prove their loyalty or commit to distancing themselves from the former president. Republicans including Senator Ted Cruz and Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene have already jumped in to defend Trump and attack President Joe Biden and the Justice Department.

As soon as Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed a special counsel to investigate Donald Trump, Republicans entered meltdown mode.

Garland announced Friday that he had appointed Jack Smith, a prosecutor at The Hague, to look into Trump’s role in the January 6 attack and his handling of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate.

“Based on recent developments, including Trump’s announcement that he is a candidate for president in the next election, and the current president’s intention to be a candidate in the next election, I have concluded it is in the public interest to appoint a special counsel,” Garland explained at a press conference.

Trump’s campaign immediately blasted the move, calling it a “totally expected political stunt by a feckless, politicized, weaponized Biden Department of Justice.”

And many far-right Republicans also went nuts.

Senator Ted Cruz accused President Joe Biden of using the Justice Department to “attack his political opponents.”

“This is Trump derangement syndrome but this time with a gun and badge,” he said.

Representative Claudia Tenney said the investigation will move the department’s “focus even further away from the real threat to the rule of law: President Joe Biden’s role in Hunter’s corrupt enterprises.”

She wasn’t alone, as Senator John Cornyn also called for a special counsel to look into Hunter Biden.

Far-right news outlet Newsmax similarly demanded why there was “no special prosecutor for the Hunter Biden laptop?”

Smith, who has investigated war crimes committed during the Kosovo War, promised for his part to “exercise independent judgment.”

The outcry over Smith’s appointment shows that Trump still has loyal allies in politics, even if voters and many former backers seem to be turning on him.

Republicans are doubling down on the strategy that helped the red wave crash.

In a letter released Friday, a total of 101 Republican National Committee members endorsed Chair Ronna McDaniel for reelection. Citing “the extremist consensus among Democrat Party elites,” they credit McDaniel for turning the RNC “into an aggressive and effective advocate for election integrity, including by engaging in over 80 lawsuits,” among other things.

The letter is proof that despite a growing number of Republicans speaking out against Trumpism, large segments of the GOP remain committed to the project.

McDaniel herself has long stoked election denialism. Under her leadership, the RNC spent at least $20 million to oppose Democratic efforts to make voting easier during the pandemic. Just a few months before the election, McDaniel posted an RNC-sponsored video fearmongering about voter fraud due to vote-by-mail expansions.

In November 2018, McDaniel pressed Arizona Senate candidate Martha McSally to be more aggressive in stirring doubt in the vote count of the election she lost to Kyrsten Sinema.

The RNC chair is also no stranger to Trumpian corruption. In 2020, ProPublica reported that the RNC gave six-figure contracts to companies linked to McDaniel’s husband and her political backers. In 2019, it was revealed that McDaniel was involved in a pay-to-play scheme that would net the RNC $500,000 in exchange for an ambassadorship to the Bahamas.

And if Republicans ever complain about “civility,” note that McDaniel spent the final days of the 2022 midterm campaign mocking now-Senator John Fetterman’s and President Joe Biden’s speech patterns. Fetterman had just suffered a stroke, and Biden grew up with a stutter.

Some may find it perplexing that Republicans are embracing the kind of conspiratorial agenda that made them lose before. The choice is not actually a result of the party embracing Trumpism over some reasoned, people-serving platform. Instead, this kind of hollow politics is all Republicans seem to have at their disposal. After all, 60 percent of committee members have endorsed McDaniel—and all she represents.

Trump-endorsed New York gubernatorial candidate Lee Zeldin has also expressed interest in running for RNC chair. A showdown between two Republicans trying to out-Trump each other will surely add to the GOP’s disarray.