Tucker Carlson Guest Blames LGBTQ 'Evil Agenda' for Colorado Shooting

Florida political operative Jaimee Michell, founder of the controversial anti-trans group "Gays Against Groomers," told Fox News host Tucker Carlson that the mass shooting at an LGBTQ nightclub in Colorado Springs "was expected and predictable" and to be blamed on the LGBTQ "evil agenda" of gender-affirming care.

Talking to Carlson about the mass shooting, Michell claimed that what's really hurting the LGBTQ community is labelling "groomers"—a term that falsely equates non-heterosexual sexualities and non-cisgender identities with pedophilia—an anti-LGBTQ slur, and said that tragedies like the one at Club Q will keep happening "until we end this evil agenda."

Anderson Lee Aldrich is accused of opening fire at Club Q just before midnight on Saturday, killing five people and injuring 18 others.

Activists have denounced "Gays Against Groomers" as an anti-trans hate group that stokes anti-LGBTQ hate by regularly calling gay people "groomers" and accusing the LGBTQ community of sexualizing children. A couple of months ago, "Gays Against Groomers'" Twitter account was banned from Google, Venmo and Paypal after the group was accused of anti-trans hate.

Michell, the group's cisgender gay founder, frequently appears on Tucker Carlson's show on Fox News, repeating and amplifying conservatives' moral panic over the alleged "grooming" of children blamed on liberals and queer people.

Many interpreted Michell's comment on Carlson's show as a way to say that those who died at Club Q "deserved it."

"'They got what they deserved'. Yep, Fox went there," commented one Twitter user. "Sounds like a threat," another wrote.

"Jaimee Michell of Gays Against Groomers said the shooting at Club Q was predictable and more will keep happening until gender affirming care is banned. This is the explicit endorsement of terrorism against LGBTQ people and Tucker Carlson just smirked as she said it," wrote Latina trans activist Alejandra Caraballo on Twitter.

After her appearance talking about the Colorado Springs shooting, Michell later posted on her Twitter account a screengrab of herself and Carlson with a caption reading: "Just two besties out here tryna save kids."

"Gays Against Groomers" has also inserted itself in the debate surrounding reports that the 22-year-old suspect of the Club Q shooting is non-binary.

In a Tuesday night court filing obtained by a New York Times' reporter, Aldrich's attorneys say that the suspect—who's facing multiple murder and hate crime charges for the murder of at least five people—is non-binary and that "they use they/them pronouns." In the court filing, Aldrich is called "Mx. Anderson Aldrich."

While many LGBTQ activists have cast doubt over whether Aldrich genuinely identifies as non-binary, calling this "an intentional troll by the shooter to further harm the community," as in the words of Caraballo, right-wingers have taken the news as proof that liberals were trying to politicize the attack.

"How did so called 'anti-LGBTQ' rhetoric radicalize the shooter against himself?," wrote "Gays Against Groomers" on Twitter on Wednesday.

In the wake of the tragedy at Club Q, many—including the Guardian and nonprofit media watchdog group Media Matters for America—have drawn a link between the deadly shooting in Colorado Springs and the anti-LGBTQ rhetoric promoted by conservatives pundits, groups and politicians in the past few years.