On June 12, 2016 Omar Mateen shot and killed 49 people at a nightclub in Orlando, Florida, before being killed by police himself. Those are the simple facts of the case. Press coverage in the aftermath has been predictably overheated but rarely enlightening. The torrent of information makes it difficult to separate fact from fiction or to analyze events in any meaningful way. The most important points about Mateen have been obscured because the truth is inconvenient to the government and to its allies in corporate media.