Heather Cox Richardson is probably Substack’s most successful author. Her daily briefing, “Letters from an American,” has over 2 million subscribers and makes millions (some estimates have her making over $5 million a year).
Every evening she puts together another window on America. Richardson, a historian, often delves into the past, but her focus, and her appeal, is offering a daily rundown of what’s happening, which mostly means, going over the terrible things Trump and the Republican Party had done that day.
Her calm, authoritative, scholarly voice lays out in smooth prose a highlight reel of right-wing horrors. Her cool tone makes her words seem especially trustworthy. She’s no rabble-rousing screamer. She’s just laying out the facts, a neutral voice of reason. I will often see acquaintances post one of her letters to a flurry of “angry” and “shocked” emojis. Richardson is the play-by-play announcer for Resistance Libs.
Putting my cards on the table, I’ve never liked her. Every article I’ve glanced at has seemed slanted in some subtle or not-so-subtle way. She’s usually not lying, but framing the case for the prosecution in a way that her audience will eat up. Even when her sentences are technically accurate, the overall approach feels dishonest.
A few days ago, however, she stepped well over the line of journalistic integrity.
In her Sept 13, 2025 letter, she wrote about the Charlie Kirk murder, and the right-wing’s attempt to brand the alleged shooter, Tyler Robinson, as a leftist.
By telling her millions of readers that Robinson was “not someone on the left,” but was actually “far right,” she was reinforcing a bizarre theater that had been spreading among left-wing accounts on Bluesky and Facebook.
When Richardson sent this letter, very little was known about Robinson except that his family was Republican and some of the bullets he had used had words carved on them, including “Hey Fascist, catch!” and “O Bella ciao,” the lyrics to an old Italian anti-fascist song.
The fact that he shot a right-wing influencer and used bullets etched with anti-fascist words, made most reasonable people think his motivation was left-wing. Of course, it was (and is) quite possible that he did not have any coherent motivation. After all, another bullet casing read “If you can read this, you’re GAY, lmao,” suggesting he might have simply been a murderous Internet troll.
So what evidence led Richardson to describe Robinson as “far right”?
Richardson seemed to have glommed onto an internet theory that Robinson was actually a groyper.
Groypers, for those of you lucky enough not to know, are far-right, antisemitic, racist trolls whose symbol is a green frog, similar to, but not the same as Pepe the Frog (don’t ask), who they nicknamed “the Groyper.” They use memes and trolling tactics to try and get young people to leave traditional conservative movements. They’re constantly borrowing memes from other online movements to try and confuse people or just because they’re assholes.
The “Tyler Robinson was a groyper” theory is based on the idea that he was using his anti-fascist memes in the way a groyper would, trolling with layers of irony. (These Internet sub-cultures love irony. Often, they layer in so much irony, they themselves seem unsure of what they really mean.)
Given what we knew when Richardson published her September 13 piece, this theory was not impossible. Groypers are trolls, do steal memes, and did hate Charlie Kirk for being too moderate. But there was no real evidence, beyond the memes (which are used by many Internet sub-cultures), to link groypers to Robinson. It’s fine that Richardson felt the need to mention the theory, but it should have been hedged with cautions and caveats. For her to write about this fringe theory as if it was the most likely reason for the assassination was grossly irresponsible (as many people on social media said at the time).
The most likely story was always that Robinson, like most shooters, was simply insane. If he was that rare shooter who had a coherent political philosophy, it was probable that he’d shot a right-wing figure because he was a right-wing figure, not because he was insufficiently right-wing. The groyper theory was fringe near-nonsense.
But I still saw the theory repeated again and again on Facebook as if was the most likely reason Kirk was shot. Understandably, people on the left didn’t want Robinson to be “one of us.”
Then the bottom fell out of the groyper theory.
On Tuesday, Jeff Gray, the Utah County Attorney, issued the charge sheet for Robinson. Among the bits of information offered, Gray shared parts of a text message string between Robinson and someone who was, it was claimed, his roommate and lover (a trans woman).
The text string shows someone who seems more sane than I expected (although this does not mean actually sane, I’ll leave the experts to decide that one), and provided a perfectly understandable motive. “I had enough of his hatred.” The fact that Robinson’s lover was trans, seems to suggest that what motivated Robinson (again, assuming he was the shooter) was Kirk’s well known hostility to pro-trans policies in America.
Is anything else possible? Of course. This is early on and we have weeks and months ahead to find out what the prosecution can dig up to make a case against Robinson. But the groyper theory, already hanging by a thread, was out.
So would Richardson use her newsletter to confess to her millions of fans that she’d jumped the gun and wrongly offered a fringe theory as fact?
No, of course not. Here is her September 16 letter, written after the charges were revealed.
Shockingly, all we get is one bland sub-clause, “although the motive of the alleged shooter, Tyler Robinson, remains unclear.” She adds a reminder that “far-right extremists have committed far more ideologically motivated homicides,” as if to hint, “but he still might be far-right.”
No mention of her previous irresponsible claim that Robinson was “far right.” No mention of the evidence that he targeted Kirk because of “his hatred.” Just a quick aside, and then we’re moving on, folks, nothing to see here.
The damage was done. Millions of Americans had been informed by their trusted scribe that Robinson was part of the far right. And they believed her! (It’s that calm, confident historian’s voice!)
Even Jimmy Kimmel got burned, saying on his show “the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them.” Immediately the Trump administration put pressure on ABC and others to pull the plug and Kimmel’s show was suspended “indefinitely” on Wednesday evening.
And the groyper theories are still out there, poisoning rational discourse. The Utah charge sheet has discouraged some, but in recent days I’ve seen many on Facebook and Twitter claim that you can’t trust the charge sheet, the text messages might have been faked, anything but believe that Richardson and others had simply been terribly, embarrassingly wrong.