Legacy Media Spins The Minneapolis Murder's Bio

FBI Director Kash Patel got it right when he labeled the Minneapolis mass shooting as an act of domestic terrorism and an anti-Catholic hate crime.

Did Robert Westman (who changed his name to Robin after he falsely identified himself as a woman) also hate others, besides Catholics? Yes, there were many demographic groups whom he hated, but he only chose one group to murder—Catholic children praying at Mass. He killed two of them and injured 18 others.

Many reporters and pundits downplayed the anti-Catholic motive behind the shootings. Jake Tapper at CNN said Westman did not have “a specific motive,” noting that his “manifesto” was “kind of rambling.” Had he entered a mosque and killed Muslim children, would Tapper be just as bewildered?

Similarly, the radical left Southern Poverty Law Center said the killer expressed “a mix of ideologies” that “may not fit neatly in a box.” However, if he hated lots of people, but only shot black kids, it’s a sure bet it would be seen as white racism, and nothing else.

When riots broke out after the death of George Floyd, Zohran Mamdani, the would-be mayor of New York City, blamed “white supremacy.” But he could not bring himself to blame anti-Catholicism for the Minneapolis mass shooting. He blamed guns.

In short, it’s hard for some to acknowledge Catholics as victims. The left is so used to treating Catholics as part of the oppressor class that it’s not easy to see them as the oppressed.

One person who was not confused about Westman’s motive was Rosie O’Donnell. She said he was a “Republican, MAGA person, white supremacist.” After she was proven wrong, she apologized.

The New York Times did not apologize for attacking conservative commentators for drawing attention to the transgender status of Westman. They had every right to do so: such persons are generally suffering from severe mental disorders and have a history of violence (well documented by the Catholic League).

Liberal politicians and reporters are ever-so sensitive to trans persons, yet they never treat Catholics that way. Again, in their Manichean dualistic vision of reality, Catholics are the bad guys. If it appears they are actually victims, it throws them into a state of cognitive dissonance.

The mayor of Minneapolis could not bring himself to condemn anti-Catholicism, but he wasted no time condemning anyone who might use this “as an opportunity to villainize our trans community.” The media took a more oblique approach, but it was just as political.

The Associated Press could not refer to Westman as a male so it opted for illiteracy when it said that “the shooter was in their early 20s” (my italics); it had four reporters on this story. NBC apologized for referring to Westman as a male, even though he was.

Westman may not have had a consistent political stance, but if anything he was on the left. An international news agency referred to his “pro-communist ideologies.” The New York Post mentioned his “far-left politics.”

It is not conservatives who are calling for Trump and Musk to be killed, which is what Westman did. Nor is it conservatives at Ivy League universities who are leading the war on Jews. Westman wrote about “Free Palestine” and those “filthy Zionist Jews.” He argued that “Israel must fall” and that “6 million wasn’t enough.” That is the voice of left-wing Jew haters these days.

It is also not conservatives who hate Catholics; it’s those on the left.

Westman did not stumble when he chose to kill Catholic kids. “Maybe I could attack an event at the on-site church,” he wrote. “I think attacking a large group of people of kids coming in from recess is my best plan…Then from there I can go inside and kill, going for as long as I can.”

We know that he scouted the church and he knew the children would be at Mass. According to one of his coworkers, “recent events have been the catalyst for this thing he has been planning for a long time.” In a video, he said about his Catholic victims, “Who’s listening to your prayers now?” “Where’s your [expletive] God?”

Westman also ripped the Eucharist, mocking the words, “take this all of you and eat.” He laughed at an image of Jesus pinned to a shooting target” and drew an inverted pentagram promoting Satanism, scribbling “666.”

He was not all negative. He admired the left-wing killer Luigi Mangione, and he sported a sticker that said, “Defend Equality”; it featured a machine gun overlaid on a gay pride flag. Not exactly what we would expect from a conservative.

For the media and commentators not to acknowledge that Robert Westman was primarily an anti-Catholic, left-wing, transgender bigot is intellectually dishonest. He may have had many demons, but to discount these elements of his biography amounts to a cover-up.

William Donohue is president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights