Steve Bannon, former adviser to President Donald Trump, has cast doubt on text messages that federal investigators say were sent by the man accused of killing conservative activist Charlie Kirk. Speaking on his War Room podcast Tuesday, Bannon told his audience he was “not buying the script.”
The FBI alleges that 22-year-old Tyler Robinson shot and killed 31-year-old Kirk and later messaged his roommate about the attack. The texts reportedly included Robinson’s claim that he had “had enough” of Kirk’s hatred, along with concerns about retrieving the rifle used in the shooting.
Bannon dismissed those messages as contrived. “I’m particularly not buying those text messages, it just seems too stilted, too much like a script—actually, like a bad script. So we gotta get to the bottom of it,” he said. He suggested possible links to far-left groups and said investigators should examine broader connections.
“You’ve gotta get to the bottom of these groups, you’ve gotta get to the bottom of antifa, you’ve gotta see if there’s any connections to Butler,” Bannon argued. “We’ve got a whole lot of work to do, and no, I’m not buying the script that was in the text messages.”
Bannon also ridiculed the idea that Robinson’s first concern after the shooting was losing his grandfather’s firearm. “You just murdered the most important young person in the conservative movement, you shot him down like a dog, and you’re telling me you’re texting, ‘Dad’s going to be very upset I lost grandpa’s rifle.’ Are you kidding me? You expect me to believe that?”
“How did the guy have time to write a sonnet? How did he worry about ‘Dad’s really going to be upset about grandpa’s rifle’? Dude, I think your father may be upset that you shot a man in cold blood in front of the world,” he added. “I am absolutely not buying this.”
The former strategist also took aim at Republican Utah Governor Spencer Cox, alleging that he bears some responsibility for the environment that led to Kirk’s killing. “He needs to be investigated. His administration needs to be investigated… he’s not a truthful narrator. He’s part of the problem that needs to be investigated.
That’s why it’s a mass investigation. When is the FBI going to go talk to him?” Bannon asked. In earlier remarks after Kirk’s death, Bannon described the activist as a “casualty of war.” He told listeners, “We have to have a steely resolve. Charlie Kirk is a casualty of war. We are at war in this country. We are.”
That framing echoed other right-wing figures. Alex Jones claimed the left had “put a bullseye on Trump” and his supporters, while Fox News host Jesse Watters said on The Five, “Whether we want to accept it or not, they are at war with us.”
Bannon closed by pressing his audience to consider, “What are we going to do about it? How much political violence are we going to tolerate? And that’s the question we are going to have to ask ourselves.”