The Trump Assassination Attempt Was Nothing But A Crime Of Opportunity
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
It was also unclear how long in advance Mr. Crooks had prepared. Mr. Trump announced his rally in Butler on July 3 .
But in the aftermath, when the F.B.I. was able to finally access Mr. Crooks’s cellphones and other electronic devices, agents could see that he had searched for images of Mr. Trump as well as President Biden, Attorney General Merrick B. Garland and even F.B.I. Director Christopher A. Wray.
Mr. Crooks also had typed in “major depressive disorder” and searched for dates and places for appearances for both Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump.
One of Mr. Trump’s planned appearances happened to be about 50 miles from Mr. Crooks’s house in Bethel Park, Pa.
On Friday, July 12, the day before the attempted assassination, Mr. Crooks went to a shooting range, according to an investigative summary prepared by the F.B.I. The next morning, he bought a ladder at a Home Depot and then later that day he purchased 50 rounds of ammunition from a gun shop near his home, according to the F.B.I. document and federal law enforcement officials.
A Blind Spot and a Lost Trail: How the Gunman Got So Close to Trump - The New York Times
If this NYT story is accurate, it HIGHLY suggests that the attempted assassination of Trump was not political, but rather a simple crime of opportunity.
I expect the right to deny this, because they want it to be political. But the circumstances described in this story, based on the shooters cellphone, say otherwise.
Tags
Who is online
445 visitors
I hope the authorities can nail this down and put an end to the conspiracy theories and nonsense.
[✘]
I was being a little rhetorical, of course you are correct.
I know.
I thought you were telling us it was some kind of deranged Republican,
What with Mayorkas trying to keep Cheatle from testifying before the investigative committee, things just keep getting worse for all law enforcement agencies involved in this fustercluck.
Another Brutal Development in the Trump Assassination Attempt Just Dropped (townhall.com)
because they want it to be political.
The giffords shooting wasn't political. Didn't stop Democrats from going into hysterics and blaming Palin and the Tea Party.[✘]
According to the NYT story the FBI found evidence that Crooks searched the campaign schedules of both Biden and Trump. Trump was coming into his area, and he went after Trump, most likely for that reason only.
Are people like GOP Rep. Mike Collins, who called for Biden to be arrested for attempted murder, going to apologize now?
So you think he was an anarchist?
First get all the multitudes of progressives left wing news outlets who blamed Palin and called for her to be arrested to apologize., then you can ask for Collins to apologize. You don't want to look like a hypocrite by criticizing Collins and ignoring the Palin hysteria.
I think he was a troubled young man who for some reason wanted to kill a presidential candidate and it didn't matter which one. If Biden had been there in Pittsburgh that day he would be the one sporting a gauze bandage on his ear
I dont think we will ever get the answer to the why question , or the motive so to speak.
I agree he chose a target of opportunity of sufficient importance to him, and easily within reach for his means , that the risk was worth it .
No, no intelligent, rational person expects any such thing.
Republicans... being the party obsessed with limiting women's healthcare choices, banning books and imposing white Christian nationalism.
[✘] eng the party obsessed with limiting women's healthcare choices, banning books and imposing white Christian nationalism.
Yes, yes, we are all familiar with the blueanon play book. Fear mongering and conspiracies,[✘]
His target was a politician at a political rally.
You're missing the point. The evidence appears to be that he wasn't targeting Trump in particular. He would have shot at Trump or Biden or Garland or Wray. Whoever happened to be within his reach.
No, your missing the point. Is Trump the only one in that list that's political?
I think that's what Greg is trying to say. It wouldn't have mattered who was there that day. See my comment here
Ok I accept that. That may be what he was trying to say. My point is that although he shot at a politician, there was not necessarily any political motive, unless his political creed was that all politicians should die or something like that. I just think it is likely that he was crazy and politics didn't matter to him at all.
And I totally agree with you
It was six men of Indostan
To learning much inclined,
Who went to see the Elephant
(Though all of them were blind),
That each by observation
Might satisfy his mind.
The first blind man finds the elephant’s tusk and declares, “The elephant is hard and smooth, like a warrior’s spear.” The next finds the trunk and declares, "This elephant is much like a thick snake." The third reaches its ear and declares it like a broad fan. The man whose hand found a leg says, “It’s like a sturdy tree trunk.” The blind man in the group's center reaches the elephant’s broad flank and declares, “Why, the elephant is like a high and strong wall!” The last man feels its tail and reports to his colleague that the elephant is like a rope.
And so, the shooting of Donald Trump this Saturday has become America’s parable of the elephant and the blind men, a Rashomon moment of imposed definitions to fit political ends.
My assertion will likely get me in trouble, even though MAGA already spent the weekend blaming me for the attempt on Trump’s life because I’m mean to him in the media. (I kid you not.)
I don’t think this counts as political violence like most do.
The target was definitionally political, but the motivation was the same that leads dozens of lost, broken, sad boys raised in the era of video games, shit-talking 4Chan boards, and profound alienation into wander into churches, synagogues, mosques, and schools, armed to the teeth and desperate to have their cruel, vicious final acts remembered.
I think this tragic story is as much about the lost boy on that rooftop as Donald Trump as a target.
It’s about Thomas Matthew Crooks.
I think it’s about growing up small and goofy and being relentlessly bullied. He was a lonely young man registered to vote as a Republican but had no meaningful footprint in the world. He is reported to have had “no friend group.” He wasn’t brilliant, and he wasn’t stupid. He wasn’t clever, athletic, or social.
He was lonely and lost, living in a society that treats young men with mild disregard on its best days. He was not a member of Antifa, a left-wing radical, politically active, or, to our current knowledge, very politically aware.
One classmate said, “He was just an outcast, and you know how kids are nowadays.”
Sadly, we do.
They take a rifle to shoot a President, a celebrity, or a grade school student.
They increasingly feel little hope of achievement, love, partnership, or meaning. Their one moment of imagined glory is in the deaths of others, hoping for a “high score.” They seek meaning, even when meaning takes them in the darkest direction.
Scott Galloway has written and spoken extensively about this heartbreaking pathology.
The elephant of this shooting has many facets:
The MAGA Cult
For MAGA, this is the moment of martyrdom, the ascent of Trump to “God’s chosen” status, a man whom even an assassin’s bullet won’t stop. The cult had already hardened in the belief that Trump is their divine instrument of social retribution, and this cements it in a Kim-style North Korean juche.
The MAGA cult describes the shooting as a product of the left, center, and center-right criticism of Trump, with no memory of his various incidents of violence, his role in the January 6th attack, his us-or-them I-am-your-retribution Waco-launched campaign. He wanted permission to act like an authoritarian leader with none of the rebukes that role should naturally earn in a civilized nation.
The MAGA cult and culture see this moment as utter vindication of the God Emperor Trump, a remedy for all his moral and personal sins. The nick on his ear from either the bullet or shattered glass from the bullet striking the teleprompter is Trump’s Wounds of Christ. For them, it’s religious .
The Media
The media — fueled by a guilt trip engineered by the more clever of Trump’s minions — are bullying themselves even deeper into bothsiderism. It wasn’t hard to convince the New York Times , Washington Post , CNN, and other outlets that Trump was shot by a leftist filled with anti-Trump hatred because they’ve been too harsh on the man who would gleefully imprison every one of them. Of course, none of that is true, but the right knows how to play the refs.
By the way, this will work. They’re already scoring Trump as the 2024 winner and are eager to “preserve their relationships” with the man who will be King.
The Democrats
Joe Biden’s remarks have been spot-on, but the muttering in the Democratic circles that maybe it’s time to tone down and fight Trump on policy is their usual suicide pill campaign strategy.
Conspiracy World
The conspiracy world defies ideology, and for them, the shooting was fungible in its meaning. One Never Trumper, desperate for relevance, got too deeply into her Chardonnay trough and spent the weekend promoting the theory that this was a Bob Roberts-style set-up by Trump and his team, betraying a lack of understanding of firearms, planning, or conspiracies.
On the MAGA right, the storyline was that the Secret Service was in on it, allowing the shooter to approach so closely because of…I kid you not…DEI. The alternate reality industry is in overdrive and will be so for generations.