Mookie Betts commented about Charlie Kirk’s fatal shooting?

A rumor that circulated online in September 2025 claimed Major League Baseball player Mookie Betts, a shortstop for the Los Angeles Dodgers, posted on Instagram of conservative activist Charlie Kirk’s fatal shooting: “If you want people to speak kindly about you after you’re gone, then you should speak kindly while you’re alive.” According to posts promoting the claim, Betts doubled down, adding, “And I stand by this. Be kind — now more than ever.”

Kirk, 31, died on Sept. 10 after being shot in the neck during an outdoor speaking function on the campus of Utah Valley University in Orem as part of his “The American Comeback Tour.” U.S. President Donald Trump announced Kirk’s death in a Truth Social post shortly after news broke of the shooting.

As a primary example of the rumor, on Sept. 15, a manager of the Dodgers Faithful Facebook page posted (archived) both quotes as alleged “BREAKING NEWS,” saying Betts made the remarks on his Instagram stories. The post — receiving more than 273,000 reactions, 24,000 comments and 15,000 shares — featured two photos as one image, showing Betts in his Dodgers uniform in one setting, and Kirk wearing a suit at a different function. The post, and its comments, also displayed a link to a “full article” on a website that redirected to an advertisement-filled article hosted on another website.

(Dodgers Faithful/Facebook)

Other users also shared this rumor on Facebook, Threads (archived) and X (archived), including some posts linking out to similar ad-filled articles.

However, searches of Bing, DuckDuckGo and Google around Sept. 15 found no news media outlets reporting about Betts remarking about Kirk’s death on his Instagram page — a story that would widely covered by national outlets.

Rather, whoever authored the story fabricated its contents as one of numerous false claims pairing famous people with the high-profile story of Kirk’s fatal shooting. They aimed to earn advertising revenue on the articles’ websites linked from the aforementioned Facebook posts.

Snopes reached out to the Dodgers front office to ask if they wished to officially confirm the false nature of the rumor and will update this story if we learn more information.

Digging into the rumor

The Dodgers Faithful Facebook page is not an official page affiliated with the MLB team, and its “page transparency” tab reveals most of its operators reside in Vietnam — not the U.S. We did not find any further information confirming whether or not people residing in other countries directed the Vietnamese users to create the false content. While researching this topic, we noted that on Sept. 17, The Associated Press reported about Russia, China and pro-Iran groups spreading disinformation about Kirk’s killing, in an effort to widen political divisions among U.S. residents. The article did not mention Vietnam.

Other made-up rumors also circulating on Vietnam-managed Facebook pages claimed Betts stepped up (archived) “to pay for all of Kirk’s two children’s living and education expenses,” revealed “the heartbreaking final messages he received from Charlie Kirk,” asked (archived) major sports leagues “to observe a minute of silence for Kirk” and discussed (archived) Kirk’s death with “The View” cohost Whoopi Goldberg, including saying to her, “I will not stay silent,” among many other false stories.

For further reading, we previously reported on the owners of the many Vietnam-managed Facebook pages attempting to make money based upon spreading fabricated stories following the July 2025 Texas flash floods. We also investigated other claims involving Kirk’s life, including rumors about his fatal shooting.