Matt Gutman, the chief national correspondent at ABC News, was doing a live segment from a Utah press conference after authorities presented evidence against Robinson, 22. Part of that evidence includes text messages between Robinson and Lance Twiggs, his roommate and boyfriend, who identifies as transgender.
Prosecutors allege the text messages are evidence Robinson was admitting to Twiggs he had killed Kirk, but Gutman bizarrely shared he saw something much deeper in that text message exchange.
“It was also very touching in a way that I think many of us didn’t expect,” Gutman shared. “It was a very intimate portrait of this relationship between the suspect’s roommate and the suspect himself, with him repeatedly calling his roommate, who was transitioning, ‘my love,’ and saying, ‘I want to protect you, my love.’”
Gutman went on to state matter-of-factly Kirk had been murdered in front of a crowd of thousands and now the alleged killer is facing seven charges for that crime. Apparently not done with some sort of romantic version of the murder, the ABC News correspondent then described the “duality” of a “very human person” and his “very human experience.”
The text messages, Gutman continued, were both “self-incriminating” and also “so touching.”
Curtis Houck, of the Media Research Center, says that observation was way over the top considering the topic was a cold-blooded assassination.
“The idea that you would provide any sort of sympathy,” Houck complains, “or any sort of equivocation to this alleged psychopath, this murderer, is completely ridiculous.”
Gutman, who is being mocked and criticized relentlessly for his romantic angle, has now apologized for his comments at the press conference.
Beyond the shock of Gutman’s romanticized twist on a murder, Houck and many others also noticed something else: The correspondent had fabricated portions of the text message.
According to a Washington Free Beacon story, nowhere in the email thread did Robinson say he wanted to “protect” his boyfriend.
“He claimed and fabricated an entire text message,” Houck tells AFN, “between the suspect and his trans lover."
Pointing to the text messages, some suspect Twiggs knew about the planned assassination, which would make him an accomplice. If that's true, the email exchange Gutman was gushing about was a clever attempt to absolve an accomplice to murder.
