Thomas Matthew Crooks: The registered Republican and gun lover who shot Trump

John Wilkes Booth. Three names. Succeeded.

Lee Harvey Oswald. Three names. Succeeded.

John Hinkley Jr. Only two names. Failed.

Thomas Matthew Crooks. Three names. Failed.

Proof that we are living in a joke of a timeline. Can I go back and get on the right one please?

Crooks appeared to have featured in a TV advert for the BlackRock finance company filmed at Bethel Park High School and broadcast in 2023.

I just found a breadcrumb of what will undoubtedly be my favorite conspiracy theory to come out of this.

Looking at that diagram showing kids position in relation to trump and the sniper that shot the kid, it's bizarre that he could get a shot off before being spotted.

I hope we find something more on why he did it, it will he interesting. He did donate to a democratic candidate though. (https://www.reuters.com/world/us/heres-what-we-know-about-thomas-matthew-crooks-suspected-trump-rally-shooter-2024-07-14/)

The super ugly ones have little to lose.

Just a damn kid. No wonder he missed. Probably expected some kinda aim assist to kick in

Wait, this person shot Trump? How weird, he has the same name as the kid from yesterday who shot a teleprompter.

He could be a dyed-in-the-wool GOP for six generations with no connections to any Left organization whatever.

He'll be branded as a woke Antifa with a Black trans GF who was brain washed with peyote by a Native Shaman at a Liberal college.

I'm actually incredibly excited to hear how the Conspiracy peddlers spin this, we'll study this level of crazy forever.

I knew it would be some red-hat lunatic. I fucking knew it the second I heard about it. But if course the Republican Nazi party are going to hammer out some left wing conspiracy horseshit using their usual tactful strategy. Which is to say scream the lies loudly, consistently, and in lockstep.

Which is, of course, is the best tactic to convince gullible idiots of anything. It's literally the "firebrand preacher" method that has been slaughtering "the other" in times of strife since the dawn of civilization.

Well, when the tone police pipe up with their "but tha both sides [democratic] rhetoric!" - Democrats need to tell them that: yeah, the Republicans need to stop whipping up so much violence.

There is so much that is unknown. Everything about his true motives will, likely, be speculation forever. But it's best to let the FBI be the one that does the information reveal.

This kid was 20 though. He might have had psychosis. Last presidential assassination attempt was Hinkley. This is around the age things like schizophrenia start to present themselves IIRC. This might have been a suicide by cop type situation and he wanted to be famous in the process? Who the hell knows.

What if we had a law that you had to be 21 to buy guns though? That's in line with "common sense" gun control. I've heard Obama say that phrase countless times since Sandy Hook. It could have made this a little different, maybe? It almost certainly would have prevented Uvalde. This is political violence, it's horrible, I think this will help Trump win. Any left leaning person with half a brain can see that imo. This is also gun violence though. Gun control has to part of the answer to this. Remember who the Brady Bill was named after.

Discord servers are restricted ring-fenced sections of the internet. They are often used by gaming groups and communities as secure chat rooms but are also used by fringe organisations to push their ideologies and discuss wild conspiracy theories and plots.

Poor bastard. At 20, mental capacity is nowhere near its peak, and how bad must your life be if you are willing to throw it away for some obese self-tanning cream using orange dipshit? This is what happens when mental illnesses aren't taken serious, and treatment is not easily available.

How did they identify him using DNA? That's a fucking red flag. Is there some database I'm not aware of? Or did he have prior arrests?

Sigh… Heard about this from my partner last night. I had forgot until just a few minutes ago (special thanks to alcohol for making life bearable). Looks like I have to stay off the internet for the rest of the year.

He didn't shoot Trump, he shot towards him.

I mean, there is no evidence of what you are saying so you could just not say it. It really doesn’t have to be that hard to say.

And sadly, this won Trump the election...

(Removed as it’s baseless speculation, more or less)

Archive: https://archive.is/OKkIi

I can only imagine how disenfranchised this young man had to feel to be able to do this

...and donated to a progressive PAC.

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/heres-what-we-know-about-thomas-matthew-crooks-suspected-trump-rally-shooter-2024-07-14/

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c3gw58wv4e9o

Anyone with that cursed of a face has got to be an incel.

registered Republican voter

WTF does that even mean? Voting during elections is anonymous, isn't it?

This isn't as easy as it seems. Apparently it's not uncommon to register to vote in a closed primary like PA for the opposite party you prefer in order to dilute the vote for the candidate you don't like by voting for the person running against them in the party. So he may be a "registered republican voter", but that may be as a minor act of sabotage rather than his real politics.

E: what’s up with the rebuttals? “Yeah it happens but not really”? So it happens, but it couldn’t with this guy? If I’m wrong and he’s actually a Republican, great! But downvoting the possibility he registered the opposite of his beliefs isn’t gonna make it disappear.

Some articles (like this one from USA Today have mentioned that in '21 he made a small donation to the Progressive Turnout Project, and it's interesting that that's missing from this article. Did it turn out to not be true or did they purposefully omit that?

I'm from Yurop so I don't even pretend to understand the election system in the US let alone PA, but I've seen some comments that led me to understand that he could well be a Democrat even though he was a "registered Republican" because there might not even be good D candidates for him to vote for in PA, and many D voters tactically vote for the least bad R candidate.

Not sure him being a "gun lover" really necessarily paints him as a Republican either; Americans regardless of party affiliation can be pretty… uh, enthusiastic about guns, although yeah it does seem to be more common on the right but I'm not sure it's enough to draw any conclusions from it.

And just so there's no misunderstandings, I really don't have a dog in this hunt so I'm not looking to blame Democrats for the shooting, I'm just trying to digest the news I've been reading.

Odd that a Republican would.