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 wasalso a transgender-identifying manwhose 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 apro-Donald Trumpcrazy 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 adie-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 andconflationof Fuentes-ism with MAGA populism.)

Source: VidNews » Feed