“Predictor of the Future” on X sketched out Charlie Kirk’s assassination one month before it happened

“They would,” the X user wrote in mid-August, sketching out a lurid scenario in which Israel itself might have Charlie Kirk shot at an open-air event and pin it on a “fall guy.” Four weeks later, Kirk was dead.

The post is now being passed around as a chilling prediction.

Here are the facts.

Kirk, the conservative activist who led Turning Point USA, was fatally shot on September 10 during a public event at Utah Valley University in Orem. Prosecutors have charged 22-year-old Tyler Robinson with aggravated murder and say they will seek the death penalty. Court filings cite a note and text messages in which Robinson allegedly admitted targeting Kirk.

The August reply, from Tommy Borum, claimed that if Kirk “turned heel on Israel,” unnamed forces aligned with the Jewish state would see to his assassination. In that scenario, a loyal “groyp­er” – slang for young far-right followers – with a “genetically anomalous issue” would be framed as the patsy, he said. The language drew on long-running conspiracy tropes: a shadowy “they,” Israel cast as puppet-master, and the idea of a disposable fall-guy.

As you likely noted – although critical thinking appears to be unpopular in some circles these days – what the viral “prediction” left out was evidence. Investigators have not presented any link to Israel, a larger network, or anyone beyond Robinson. In the chaotic hours after the killing, rumors and fabrications grew online – from invented political affiliations to false claims about shadowy sponsors – and researchers say some of that noise was amplified by foreign state media.

What has Israel said about the Charlie Kirk assassination?

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu pushed back hard against the flood of online speculation. Speaking on Newsmax two days after the killing, he called claims that Israel or Mossad orchestrated the attack “insane,” mocking them by saying, “Israel also changes the orbit of the moon, Israel pushes the sun.” He linked the accusations to centuries-old antisemitic myths – from medieval blood libels to Nazi propaganda – that dehumanized Jews and fueled mass violence.

Netanyahu mourned Kirk as “a great champion of free speech” and recalled a recent phone call in which Kirk had promised to visit Israel. He read aloud from a letter Kirk sent in May, in which the activist described supporting Israel as one of his “greatest joys as a Christian.” For Netanyahu, the conspiracy theories swirling online after the shooting underscored the dangers facing outspoken defenders of Israel and Western democracy.

All that said, it was Tucker Carlson who put forward that Kirk was not a fan of the president.

“He loved the state of Israel, he loved going there,” Carlson stated. “He did not like Bibi Netanyahu, and he said that to me many times and he said to people around him many times. He felt that Bibi Netanyahu was a very destructive force.”

The power, and danger, of conspiracy theories

The August post fits a familiar template of conspiratorial rhetoric: identify a powerful enemy, forecast a spectacular attack, and pre-assign blame. Such claims are elastic enough that many outcomes can be spun as vindication, especially once hindsight bias kicks in. Psychologists note that once an event occurs, the human mind tends to see it as obvious and inevitable, lending undue weight to vague predictions.

That doesn’t make the post harmless, though. Narratives like this thrive on tragedy, reward insinuation over reporting, and blur the line between critique and accusation. They also spread faster than corrections. What’s that well-known phrase? “A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.”

So, was this a prediction? Well, only in the loosest sense. We now await the trial of Robinson.

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