On the left side of the screen: Bethany MaGee running down a Chicago subway car in flames, her hair a torch, her screams swallowed by the roar of fire. On the right side: Iryna Zarutska slumped against a Charlotte light-rail window, three stab wounds in her neck, blood pooling like spilled paint while the train keeps rolling.

Same month, same year. Same type of public transit. Same profile of attacker: Black male, mid-30s to 50, decades-long rap sheet, recently released on low/no bond. Same result: young white woman with her whole life ahead of her, turned into a statistic in under sixty seconds.

Yet the national reaction couldn’t be more different, and the split-screen is now the most shared image on X in December 2025.

Bethany, 26, Purdue grad, church-camp counselor, future urban farmer. Iryna, 23, Ukrainian refugee, pizza-slinging art student, learning to drive so she could finally feel American.

One was doused with gasoline and set alight like a human bonfire. The other was stabbed from behind because the killer “felt like it,” according to his own confession.

Both attacks were caught on crystal-clear surveillance video. Both videos leaked within 48 hours. Both went viral.

But only one is being called “the crime that proves the media is broken.”

A viral thread posted late last night by @RealCrimeDaily (now at 47 million views) lays it out in brutal bullet points:

George Floyd coverage, May–June 2020: 150,000+ news stories
Iryna Zarutska coverage, Aug–Dec 2025: 2,800 stories
Bethany MaGee coverage, Nov–Dec 2025: 1,900 stories
Combined: less than 3 % of Floyd’s total, despite both women being murdered in living color.

The thread ends with a single sentence that has been quote-tweeted 1.2 million times:

“If Bethany MaGee and Iryna Zarutska were Black, and their killers were white, the country would be on fire right now. Literally.”

The numbers don’t lie.

When Floyd died, CNN ran a chyron for 21 straight days. When Iryna died, CNN mentioned her once, in a 17-second anchor read. When Bethany was burned alive, CNN’s top story that hour was Taylor Swift’s new fragrance.

Celebrities who posted black squares in 2020 and pledged millions to Floyd’s family have been completely silent about both women. No GoFundMe from Beyoncé. No Instagram tribute from LeBron. No “Say Her Name” from Kamala Harris.

Instead, the loudest voices have come from the other side of the aisle.

Donald Trump held up printed stills of Bethany’s burning silhouette at a rally in Rockford last week and roared: “This is what your Democrat judges have done to our daughters!” Elon Musk quote-tweeted the split-screen with one word: “Disgusting.” Joe Rogan devoted an entire three-hour episode to playing both videos side-by-side, ending with: “If this doesn’t prove the media picks its victims by skin color, nothing will.”

Even some liberal commentators are starting to crack.

Joy Reid, on a late-night panel, admitted live on air: “We have to ask ourselves why these two stories didn’t break our hearts the same way. And the honest answer is uncomfortable.”

Meanwhile, the victims’ families watch from opposite ends of the burn unit and the cemetery.

Bethany’s father Gregory, a soft-spoken theology professor, posted a photo of his daughter’s bandaged hand reaching for a stuffed cat and wrote: “She asks me every day why no one is angry for her.”

Iryna’s mother Olena, speaking through a translator at a Charlotte press conference, held up her daughter’s blood-stained work visor from the pizzeria and said in broken English: “In Ukraine we ran from bombs. In America she died for earbuds. Where is America’s anger for my child?”

The silence is deafening.

Lawrence Reed, Bethany’s attacker, now faces federal terrorism charges after prosecutors proved he bought the gasoline with intent. Decarlos Brown, Iryna’s killer, took a plea for life without parole last week, smirking in court as the judge read the victim-impact statements.

Neither courtroom was packed with protesters. Neither funeral drew network news anchors. Neither name trends for more than 48 hours.

But the split-screen keeps spreading.

It’s on trucker mudflaps in Indiana. It’s projected on the side of the Chicago Board of Trade building by anonymous activists. It’s the lock-screen on half the phones in certain frat houses and fire stations across the Midwest.

Because sometimes the truth doesn’t need a hashtag.

It just needs two videos, side by side, and the courage to admit what everyone already knows:

Some victims are allowed to burn the world down with their story. Others are expected to burn in silence.

Bethany MaGee and Iryna Zarutska did not get to choose which one they would be.

But maybe, just maybe, the rest of us finally will.