Fact Check: Yes, the Trans Hockey Murderer Suggested Trump Should Die, Loved 2 of Trump's Biggest Enemies, Defended Abortion, and Despised Jews
Robert Dorgan — or “Roberta Dorgano,” or “Roberta Esposito,” depending on how you want to refer to him — was a crazy man. This is beyond question.
He was also a transgender-identifying man whose gender issues broke up his marriage and ruined his family, several members of whom he targeted in a shooting spree Monday at a Pawtucket, Rhode Island, hockey game before turning the gun on himself. This, too, is a matter of public knowledge.
What we are now wrestling over isn’t whether Dugan was crazy or trans, but rather whether he was a pro-Donald Trump crazy trans person. This is somehow, shockingly, a matter of debate, because the social media footprint that Dorgan leaves behind paints a picture of an extremist, but not an extremist of the usual variety.
Take this commenter, for instance, who looked at Dorgan’s purported X profile and called him a “die-hard Alex Jones loving Trumper.”
Robert Dorgano ( Roberta ) was a
die-hard Alex Jones loving Trumper. pic.twitter.com/bMpsEGmVIk— Michelle Theresa🇺🇸🟩🟧🌻☮️🐾 (@michelle_cub) February 17, 2026
In terms of more well-known voices on the matter, Richard Hanania — the one-time conservative writer and academic who has turned against Trump during his second administration — called Dorgan the “first trans rightoid conspiracy theorist murderer.”
We’ve got our first trans rightoid conspiracy theorist murderer. Makes sense he blocked me. pic.twitter.com/YrAqc2NpVL
— Richard Hanania (@RichardHanania) February 17, 2026
Firstly, to the extent that Dorgan’s political beliefs were heterodox for a transgender public shooter, they don’t seem to have played any role in his murders, at least as currently known. To the extent people are willing to discuss them, it’s as a matter of confirmation bias. (Hanania, for instance — once a no-really actual white nationalist who published articles in extremist publications in his youth under a pseudonym, who has spent the past few years trying to prove that was an aberration once those writings were traced to him — has spent much of Trump’s second term sounding the alarm about the so-called “Groyper” movement around Nick Fuentes, a radical polybigot whose work Dorgan apparently admired. While one tends to agree with the general consensus that the Fuentes/Groyper contingent is loathsome, one also questions both Hanania’s motives and conflation of Fuentes-ism with MAGA populism.)
Secondly, though, let’s be clear what Dorgan’s identification was, first and foremost: He was insane. And, to the extent that he had any political beliefs, they mirrored this insanity.
He believed the 2020 election was “stolen” but also said that Donald Trump was covering up for Jeffrey Epstein and secretive Jewish forces. He seemed almost obsessed with Israel, Mossad, and Jewish people in general, as insane people tend to be. He suggested Trump should die, loved two of his biggest enemies within the Republican Party as of late — Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky and former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia — and defended abortion.
And finally, perhaps most importantly, when it came down to being a far-right-winger or being transgender, being transgender won out for Dorgan. That was who he was — and he would vociferously defend it even to normie conservatives like Hollywood actor Kevin Sorbo, who pointed out that Democratic Rep. Sarah McBride, the first transgender U.S. representative, was in fact a man born with the name Tim.
“keep bashing us, but do not wonder why we Go BERSERK,” he said in a response.
He said a similar thing to Alex Jones when he called transgenderism “creepy.”
“stfu Alex. don’t be so butt hurtt [sic] over somebody different. then wonder why trans ppl go fkn BERSER,” he wrote.
Keep in mind, both of these responses came just days after the latest transgender-identifying school shooter did indeed “go BERSERK,” killing eight innocent people in Tumbler Ridge, British Columbia, Canada, before turning the gun on himself.
Here he is defending abortion:
As for Trump, whatever affection he had for the man was clearly gone by the time he committed the murders, with numerous posts contending that White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, Attorney General Pam Bondi, and border czar Tom Homan were problematic:
Most importantly, of course, he seemed to have some sort of bizarre obsession with Jewish people, particularly in positions of power. In one post, he called the United States a “ZOG,” anti-Semitic slang for “Zionist Occupied Government.”
And, of course, he seemed to have a love of Massie and Greene, particularly as it related to Epstein.
🚨INSANE: Transgender ICE Hockey shooter, Roberta Dorgano, was a HUGE Thomas Massie & MTG supporter. His last X post was “♥️♥️♥️” to Massie.. 🤢
Thomas Massie literally has the worst of the worst supporters.
Prayers go out to the victims & all who loved them. 🙏
Credit:… pic.twitter.com/pjwJ0pdKVi
— 𝙏𝙝𝙚 𝙂𝙤𝙡𝙙𝙚𝙣 𝘼𝙜𝙚 𝙏𝙞𝙢𝙚𝙨 🇺🇸 (@GoldenAgeTimes2) February 17, 2026
And, in a Feb. 10 post, he responded to Greene with this ominous warning to Trump: “take every last MF down.”
When someone ends up being a murderer, that becomes a prima facie threat; after all, the only people he seemed to hate more than his family were (in order) Jews, Trump and his administration, and everyone plausibly connected to the Epstein scandal.
Whether or not Dorgan had the presence of mind or the animus to go after him is another question entirely, of course. What we know about the man is that he had issues with his family over his embrace of transgender ideology. This has been pretty well documented in the days since the shooting and is the crux of the case for why Dorgan killed. Any self-professed conservative who allows someone to continue in his delusions, particularly when those delusions have led to the dissolution of his family, is no such thing.
To the extent he had any sort of discernible worldview, it’s one where the contradictions of the extreme left and extreme right lived uncomfortably together — the same way that the contradictions of his existence lived uncomfortably together, until he, to use his own words, went berserk.
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