My friends, it is impossible to talk about the wake of Charlie Kirk’s assassination without talking about the weaponization of words. Not bullets, words.

Because long before the trigger was pulled, the mainstream media and their social media allies had already loaded the chamber. They spent years painting Kirk as a “racist,” a “fascist,” a “transphobe.” Labels that were not true.

Labels designed not to inform, but to delegitimize and dehumanize. And when you dehumanize someone enough in the eyes of the public, you make violence against them seem not only excusable, but inevitable.

Here in northwest Louisiana, we didn’t have to look far to see this same machinery at work. Even after Kirk’s death, the local media did what the national press has been doing for decades: twisting, distorting, and sensationalizing.

Two headlines tell you everything you need to know. The first was about Speaker Mike Johnson. The headline for the The Shreveport-Bossier City Advocate blared that Johnson said “we need migrant workers”—as if he was calling for more illegal immigrant labor. That’s what the wording of the headline suggested, and you know exactly how most readers processed it.

But what did Johnson actually say? He was crystal clear:

“People who are law abiding, we’re talking about the people who come from another country, they work as a seasonal worker, and then they go back home. That system has worked well, but many believe that we don’t have enough of those visas available to supply the workforce and the talent that we need.”

That’s not a call for open borders. That’s not a call for caravans marching through Texas. That’s an acknowledgment of a legal visa system that has existed for decades, one that fills labor gaps in agriculture and hospitality. But nuance doesn’t sell subscriptions or drive clicks, so what do they do? They mislead, and let readers think Johnson is suddenly Joe Biden with a southern accent.

The second example was just as bad. The Shreveport Times ran a headline: “No place in this nation for government censorship; Shreveport Councilman on Kimmel suspension.” Now what does that sound like to the average reader? It sounds like Grayson S. Boucher, Shreveport City Councilman, District D is blaming the Trump administration or the FCC for censoring Jimmy Kimmel, doesn’t it?

Like he’s standing up for the poor late-night host who, by the way, joked horrifically about Charlie Kirk’s death.

But what did Boucher actually say? He said he thought what Kimmel said was horrible. He said he’d never watch him. Boucher’s comment about censorship was more general—because, yes, government censorship of speech is always wrong.

So did he say Trump censored Kimmel? Did he say the FCC pulled him off the air? Not even close. And yet that’s what the headline implied. Again, the misrepresentation wasn’t an accident. It was a choice.

You see the pattern here. The headlines about Johnson and Boucher, respectively, are just two local examples of a much larger, nationwide disease and we cannot seem to have an honest discussion about any issue anymore because the media purposely, willfully misrepresents what people say.

It isn’t about clarifying, it isn’t about explaining. It’s about advancing a narrative. It’s about pushing an agenda.

And look, this isn’t paranoia. We already know now that the Biden administration colluded with social media platforms to censor conservative voices. That’s not speculation—it’s documented fact. The “Twitter Files” showed how government officials pressured Twitter to silence stories about Hunter Biden’s laptop in the weeks before the 2020 election.

Facebook admitted they throttled reach on conservative content at the request of Biden’s White House staffers, who flagged so-called “misinformation.” YouTube, under pressure, yanked videos questioning COVID policy, even when the so-called “misinformation” turned out later to be true.

So when a reporter puts a spin on Mike Johnson or Grayson Boucher or any elected official, you have to understand: they’re not just writing in a vacuum. They’re most likely writing in an environment where the entire machinery of government and media has been greased to work in one direction—against conservatives, against free speech, against honest debate.

This matters because when the press can distort Johnson’s words about legal migrant visas, or twist Boucher’s comments into a defense of Kimmel, what else do they do? They rob us of the ability to honestly discuss policy.

If you can’t criticize Jimmy Kimmel’s indecent comments without being framed as an opponent of free speech, how do we ever have a real conversation about decency in public discourse?

And to those who think this is just politics as usual, remember Charlie Kirk. Remember that words matter, that lies repeated enough become accepted truths, and that those “truths” can have deadly consequences. If we want to preserve America’s ability to reason together as free citizens, then we must demand honesty from our press—not perfection, but honesty.

>Because the moment we allow misrepresentation to become the norm, we lose the ability to self-govern. We become a people not ruled by truth, but by spin. And that, my friends, is the pathway not to freedom, but to tyranny.