Read: Kirk’s Assassin Leaked Discord Messages

Kenklippenstein obtained this and other Discord chats.

“Hey guys, I have bad news for you all … it was me at UVU yesterday.” Thus Tyler Robinson messaged his friends on Discord, seemingly apologizing for murdering Charlie Kirk. “I’m sorry for all of this.”

“It’s been so terrible and seeing it from an inside perspective is so frustrating,” a friend of Robinson’s since middle school told me. The childhood friend, who asked not to be named for fear of threats.

“I think the main thing that’s caused so much confusion is that he was always generally apolitical for the most part,” the friend told me. “That's the big thing, he just never really talked politics which is why it's so frustrating.”

Yesterday, FBI Director Kash Patel said in an interview that Robinson “subscribed to left-wing ideology,” citing his family’s remarks to investigators.

According to a friend his family didn’t seem to know about his relationship with a transgender person named Lance.

The friend described Robinson as fairly typical of a young man his age from Utah: someone who loved the outdoors, was a gamer, and into guns.

“To all of us he just seemed like a simple guy who liked playing games like Sea of Thieves, Deep Rock Galactic and Helldivers 2, loved to fish and loved to camp,” the friend said. “It really did seem like that’s all he was about.”

The childhood friend is a member of multiple Discord chats with Robinson. He described the group as trying to grapple with Robinson’s motive just like everyone else.

“Even the goodbye message he sent in one of our servers [where Discord chats are hosted] was so hard to believe, we all just thought, what a weird joke to make … then the news came out and we all were calling each other saying check the news,” he said. “Yeah I don’t know what makes a person like him decide he’s going to drive 260 miles upstate to shoot someone like Charlie Kirk, then come back like nothing happened. It leaves a lot of room for speculation and theories which is why I think they’re so rampant.”

Part of the confusion he attributes to Tyler’s quiet nature.

“He was a really smart guy but super hard to read, stone cold poker face and you could always never be confident assuming anything.”

When I asked if he opened up to anyone, the friend replied: “As far as we knew he was opened up.”

Despite his verbal reticence, Robinson was not a loner, according to his friends. Unlike the stereotypical outcast shooter driven to violence by social rejection, he was apparently amiable and well-liked.

“Everyone who knew him liked him and he was always nice, a little quiet and kept to himself mostly but wasn't a recluse,” the childhood friend said.

“Regardless of the horrible actions that took place we must take this moment to remember that God is a living and loving God who loves all his children,” a Discord post from another friend posted the day after the shooting reads. “While Charlie Kirk's politics were not acceptable to some l ask that we all say a prayer for him and his family during these confusing times.”

“The last message is religious in nature which just goes to show the apolitical nature of the server, we all have pretty differing views on politics,” the friend said of the discord post. “We all just exist as friends and just play stuff.”

Cat memes, weather updates, home improvement and the odd Garfield reference populate Robinson’s posts.

“I’m going to eep pretty soon, very eepy,” he said in one post, an intentionally silly misspelling of the word “sleep” — a common Gen Z convention.

“Hey guys, I have bad news for you all … it was me at UVU yesterday.” Thus Tyler Robinson messaged his friends on Discord, seemingly apologizing for murdering Charlie Kirk. “I’m sorry for all of this.”