Thomas Matthew Crooks had Donald Trump signs in his yard—neighbor
Crooks was registered as a Republican voter but records show he gave $15 to a progressive political action committee on the day Joe Biden was sworn into office.
the media:
we'll stop naming school shooters due to copycat killers
also the media:
his name was thomas matthew and here's a 90 minute special about his preferred breakfast cereal
👀 👀 👀
If this encourages these psychos to stop shooting children and shoot politicians instead, I'll take that trade.
you know what, fuck yeah. People can only afford so many bullets these days, so just like Halloween warnings avout drugs and the reality of who the fuck would waste their hard earned drug money on random kids, why should anyone waste bullet money on them either. shoot a politician, save a child.
Wish.com Lee Harvey Oswald didn't shoot up a school though
I guess they made the call that releasing this information is the lesser of two evils, the other one being to withhold it and to let speculation run wild in a heated political climate, in which one side is not shy about threats of violence.
Who ever kills Trump will get an entire movie about them.
Noticed this too. They just plaster his face and have analysis and stories all over youtube and news. I thought US are already over this yet here we are.
Yeah, wouldn't that be a crying shame, this time.
The more we know, the more this looks to me like a suicide by cop that wanted (and failed) to leave a huge thing done so people remembered him.
Which is definitely why the media is posting his picture and personal details everywhere right? To make sure other people aren't persuaded to seek fame in the same way.
The guy tried (and almost managed) to kill an ex-president and candidate for a second term. Of course the media is going to cover all the shit they can. It gives them clicks and that's all that matter.
On the other handl, apparently, the guy had some mental health issues was bullied and honestly, what other outcome can you expect if not a very fast death when you try to do what he did in the way he did it?
Either he was out of his mind and was completely delusional, or was trying to leave the world with a huge kill in his name to be remembered.
Edit: typo
Here is my irresponsible speculation: kid did it to get back at his dad. Dad was a republican flying trump signs in the yard, mom is registered democratic. Kid grows up wearing hunting outfits to school, trying to get on the shooting team, getting bullied (even after that time he tried to fit in by getting on the antitrump bandwagon following j6), trying to be the version of manliness his conservative father believes in, seaking his father's approval, and paying the price socially with his peers. But as much as he tries, and fails, to get dad's approval, mom is always there for him. Mom is a dem, probably secretly, with dad forcing strict "traditional" family roles (hence the signs in the yard, mom probably didn't agree with but was powerless to stop). Kid seems to fit the stereotype of young man, bullied in school, working a dead end job, few if any friends, no future to speak of, just generally mentally unstable, ripe for suicide by cop alreadt. Then something happens, dad hits mom, dad cheats on mom, dad screams at kid calling him a loser and also yells at mom for rasing a mommas boy, something like that. Kid snaps, betrayed by his father again, but also protective of his mom who was always there for him. Kid decides rather than killing his dad (either because of unshakable childhood fear, or a desire to cause more pain to his father then death would afford), he would kill something his dad loved more than anything, more than his dad loved his mom, and especially more than his dad loved him. He'd kill dad's god king Trump, and go out along with him. His dad would lose his hero, and the world would know his dad was responsible because he failed as a father, and thus his father would be the greatest traitor to the Maga movement ever.
I base this on no evidence other than the couple of facts we know about voter registrations and the yard signs and the like. Again this is just my speculation, which it is completely irresponsible to engage in right now (fun though!).
You are right, this post was incredibly irresponsible.
Like you already said, you're obviously speculating, but I think you might be onto something re: the dad. Dad trauma combined with suicidal ideation...it's plausible and way more reasonable a motive than a lot of the stuff out there.
Your chair must have massive armrests
Seems as reasonable as most other theories
You should write.. because you basically nailed a believable story here.
It very well could be that. It could also be a girl told him she'd let him touch her boobies for 10 seconds if he shot Trump.
ITT: Look at the parents, this kid was just rebelling!
Press X to doubt
Or… He was a conservative that saw MAGA as the existential crisis that it is. He decided that he had nothing left to lose. He went for it.
Let’s be real here. The only shame was that he missed.
I think he died for a cause. But that could just be my bias showing.
I just want to go back in history and ask at what point people would've considered it appropriate to use political violence against someone like Hitler, or was it never okay? Like was it post first coup? Post second coup? After invading Poland? Did they need to wait for gas chambers? I'm curious when public sentiment shifted.
Well people tried to kill Hitler loads of times. 42 times according to Wikipedia. First was in 1932, before he became dictator.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_attempts_on_Adolf_Hitler?wprov=sfla1
removedass conservatives are always pushing for political violence. I'm tired of the left always trying to by the better man.
For much of the populace, sentiment only began to shift when life got harder for them personally. For some, that was when their children were killed in the war, for others it was when food shortages started to hurt, and still others would fully support the reich until it inevitably turned against them. Most personal impact that people felt was brushed off as "patriotic sacrifice" for the greater good. It was a bunch of small things that just piled up over time. Different people had different breaking points. But some people went through the whole war remaining fully supportive of the government.
You have to remember that propaganda was also much more effective then, when the government could fully control all media. Many Nazi supporters at the time had no idea what Hitler was really like or what was going on at concentration camps. The guards for those camps and other SS soldiers were chosen because they met certain loyalty criteria and would not go against orders. But everyone else was either oblivious to the cruelty, fearful of what would happen to their families if they went against the government, or just blissfully unaware and brainwashed by propaganda.
With the Internet today, it should be harder for people to fall for propaganda. The Internet really changes things now. You can see the disinformation influence everywhere but it's much harder to silence all the dissenters now. There will always be people who refuse to seek answers or listen to opposing viewpoints and there's not much to be done about that except teach open mindedness to children when they're young. It's why the fascists try to hard to simultaneously control and hamstring the education system. Unfortunately, they've been at it so long that there's now a large portion of the population that grew up with poor education and are now easily influenced by the media sources that the fascists control. The propaganda today must focus more on convincing people that there is an existential threat in the form of a group, person, or ideology that only they can stop. They just need to convince enough people that doing evil things for "good" reasons is justified. They're beginning to reach critical mass of supporters to where they can brazenly try to seize control of the government now, laws be damned. You see them pushing on those legal boundaries much more frequently these days. If they succeed, things will get worse for everyone (including their supporters) when they decide to fully drop their facades and begin doing evil things without any justification besides "because I felt like it". Leopards will always eat faces, but for some reason people never learn that lesson.
That is a fantastic question. Pretty much everyone agrees that Hitler should have killed in the cradle given hindsight.
When is it moral to kill the motherfucker without having a crystal ball?
Earlier than most people will openly condone given the nature of their State and society.
However, what if that creates a big dumb Hitler martyr that a more effective fascist can wave as a bloody flag and things get worse due to better managed evil?
I just want to go back in history and ask at what point people would’ve considered it appropriate to use political violence against someone like Hitler, or was it never okay?
Depends on the country
In Germany:
Communists and Anarchists: Around 1920, when the SA was founded
Social democrats: Depends on the „type“ of social democrat. The Reichsbanner Schwarz-Rot-Gold, the social democratic militia, expected their leaders to start a coup in 1933
Conservatives: 1939, when the war started (at least those, that still were conservatives and didn‘t join the Nazis)
Monarchists: 1942, when it became visible, that Hitler couldn‘t win the war (at least those, that still were monarchists and didn‘t join the Nazis)
People famously tried to kill Hitler many times. Dude was like a cockroach and kept getting away.
Oh sometime between liberating the first camp and he shot himself too soon probably.
I say Wannsee at the latest. WWI would’ve been fair.
I feel that everyone should resist the urge to act like psychics or psychologists right now. We know far too little at this point to speculate on this kids state of mind before or during the shooting.
As we learn more, perhaps that will change, but - and this is the terrible truth - we may never know. and we’re ALL going to have to learn to process and move on from this either way.
Seriously. It might not have been political at all.
When John Hinckley Jr took a shot at Reagan, he was trying to impress Jodie Foster......
Or… He was a conservative that saw MAGA as the existential crisis that it is.
Or he was a conservative and thought that Trump wasn't racist enough.
Or seen the Epstein stuff, and felt incredibly betrayed.
Former rightist here, I not only got my face eaten by the Fidesz leopards (gutted health-care, gutted job security, gutted disability benefits that are now also harder to get, etc), and I remember the day when I've read that Fidesz lowered the age of consent to 12 in case both parties are under 18. I thought a "conservative" party would do the opposite, and raise it to 18 with some exceptions. I remember being so angry I couldn't sleep that night at all, seen the sun rising, and my luck was that I didn't have school on that day. And after the whole cHiLd prOteCTion fiasco, one of their politician even married an 18 year old he groomed since she was 14. Many claim the low age of consent of my country is only for close-in-age relationships, but it doesn't stop much greater age differences, which are dangerously popular, because "boys at my age are stupid and don't have cars" as some of those teen girls would say, others are being groomed with "but age differences are natural" if they were skeptical and didn't want to run into such a relationship.
I took the whole "child protection" thing seriously. I knew victims. Many of them were my age. However when I had to realize some was just using it as an issue to get me to vote for them, while they themselves were doing it, often way more publicly than how Trump did it.
Damn...it sucks that I can't call that idea far fetched lol
A few things, like the shirt he was wearing, makes me wonder if it was Trump's stance on gun control that triggered this.
According to reports from classmates he failed to make the school rifle team because he was a poor shot - but also the instructor noted that he made "crass jokes" and FWIW got a poor impression of Crooks. I mention that tangentially it could apply to racism or who knows what or who he made the crass jokes about while shooting. Was he joking about shooting minorities or something?
This guy looks like a dorkier HP Lovecraft
Also
there have been pro-Trump signs on display in the yard of his family's home.
Is a much different message than "signs in his yard." Don't worry though, I'm sure all of the kid's life is being scrubbed by every agency in America and in sixty years we'll know why he really did it.
Because of woke. And Auntie Fa Anne Teepha.
Wasn't she in final fantasy? Ann Elizabeth Tifa - I mean.
Coming into this comment thread relatively late, but I briefly wondered after reading the headline if this was a rebellion against the views his family instilled in him.
Obviously, it’s a heck of a rebellion if that idea holds even an ounce of water, but I could see rebelling against parents, coupled with the existential frustration that most folks feel about the current political situation, paired with the inexperience/poor decision making of youth, or even the beginnings of schizophrenia leading down this path.
Definitely filing that line of thought into the “complete speculation, and almost certainly not what really happened” bin, though.
This guy looks like a dorkier HP Lovecraft
Kinda looks like fetal alcohol syndrome to me.
It is crazy how missing one shot could have changed the course of history. People are really trying to paint this guy as a leftist because of a donation lol.
The donation of a 69 year old man with the same name...
Considering that address match, and the fact that the location on the in-question FEC filing does not exist in Pittsburgh, evidence favors the conclusion that the shooter made the donation — not someone else with the same name.
You can't say this and not provide a source
I'm pretty sure that's not the case, I've seen the donation and registration myself and all details matched. So unless those details were altered by someone managing either of those two registries, it doesn't seem like those were made by 2 different people.
Edit: that being said the donation is inconsequential at best, it could have been something like "donate and get a funny hat" or anything like this.
Can you provide a source?
Snopes already debunked.
Do records show that he donated to a progressive PAC? I thought they show a person with the same name donated but that the age was different
Look at the timing - Jan 20th, 2021. The day Biden was sworn in.
$15 is not much and could very well be him delivering on a bet over the election
The address on the filing has his street address and zip but the wrong city.
Would be common to use the city of Pittsburgh for the suburb of Bethel Park:
(have not looked into the guy nor his possible donations at all myself)
This one has gone back and forth a couple of times, but snopes says it really was him. shrug
It says Pittsburgh, but 15102 is the zip code for Bethel Park
If it's 30 minutes from the city people will call it Pittsburgh.
I fell into that initially as well, but I checked the FEC filing to get the address, then used the address to check property records, then went back and looked at the interviews with his folks to see their names for reference. The residence is that of his parents, so it seems to be him that donated.
Wasn't that $15 from a 69 year old veteran with the same name?
I've tried to find sources for this, but all lead into a circle of people just saying this without providing an actual verifiable link or anything.
Edit: This comment from someone was the closest I got: https://lemmy.world/comment/11189733
Funny how I heard about the $15 on the news but not about how it turned out to be a better person with the same name.
This has been disproven.
Eyup
Wasn't this proven false?
What, you expect journalists to investigate claims?
Or be a human being?
I'm confused.
Maybe he missed on purpose and it was all a ruse to give trump a bump in the polls or demonize the Democrats?
You cant miss like that on purpose. If trump had moved slightly differently the shot would have hit. It was within inches
You know how some hunters want to hunt a particular majestic animal? Except for "majestic", of course.
Who’s seen the new season of the boys
This is the best summary I could come up with:
A neighbor of the 20-year-old who tried to assassinate former President Donald Trump said there have been pro-Trump signs on display in the yard of his family's home.
Authorities identified Thomas Matthew Crooks as the gunman who opened fired from a rooftop as the former president spoke at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, on Saturday.
He was registered as a Republican voter in Pennsylvania, but records show he gave $15 to a progressive political action committee on January 20, 2021—the day President Joe Biden was sworn into office.
A neighbor in Bethel Park, the Pittsburgh suburb where Crooks lived, said they saw pro-Trump signs in the family's yard as recently as a few months ago.
Crooks graduated from Bethel Park High School in 2022 and worked as a dietary aide at a nursing home less than a mile from his family's house.
His father Matthew Crooks told CNN late on Saturday that he was trying to figure out "what the hell is going on" and would not speak publicly about his son until after he talked to law enforcement.
The original article contains 416 words, the summary contains 179 words. Saved 57%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
They found themselves a useful idiot
False flag is a possibility but the US has enough crazy for something like this to just happen.
Evidence or stfu
Evidence for what? I didn’t state any fact. My comment was clear speculation
Here you go!
The State Of Mental Health In America
I'll give you a freebie from it: over half of adults with a mental illness don't receive treatment for it. Goooo USA!
He did it as a Tiktok challenge.
I just saw a headline on 1440 that the Secret Service around Trump had been increasing security due to an Iranian security threat and that this shooting may be related to that.
I don't buy it, but do think it is a signal of where our next Middle East War will be.
Middle East III: Ayatollah We'd Be Back.
Maybe he was a Buddhist? “If you meet Buddha on the road, kill him”
OK, so the signs were in his family's yard. This means his parents were supporters and the kid grew up w/ conservative parents. My guess (and this is just a guess) is his actions were in part a rebellious act against his parents.
Except kids classmates and teachers say he was staunchly conservative.
He was a young man still finding his way. Even accepting the fact that he had conservative leanings, that doesn't preclude the possibility of him doing something to lash out at his parents particularly if that something involved causing the death of a prominent "conservative" his parents hold dear. My presumption is that his conservative parents were strict and overbearing, which isn't a stretch based on my own experiences.
We really don't have a lot of facts here. What we have so far:
And that's about it. Not much room to base your guess.
It's just as likely that he bought into the notion that the elites are all a bunch of baby-eating, baby-fucking Satan worshippers, but NOT the notion that that only applied to the Left, and tried to remove a Right-Winger with a history of visiting powerful men and diddling kids on exclusive islands.
Some classmates said he took conservative positions in a history class and that he was definitely conservative.
is the rant against pedos credible? someone above said it was a fake IG post or something
facts arent facts just yet, me thinks
My guess was based on knowing that his parents were likely conservative (owing to the signs in the yard). In my experience conservative parents are often stricter than more liberal leaning parents. If that was the case here then knowing he was bullied and denied being on the rifle team, I can imagine that things weren't exactly chipper for him in the family home either.
My guess was, of course, just speculation. However, I would urge whoever is investigating his actions to look into the family situation to get a better picture of what might have motivated the young man's actions.
If you try to kill anyone, let alone a politician running for president, you're likely a mentally imbalanced human that people usually only feel sorry for. I don't give a fuck if your 20yr old ass had any party alignment. This is such a joke.
My theory.
Kid is queer or weird or something. Parents forced him to register Republican and were generally abusive
Mine is that he wanted to kick start a civil war
My theory is that they are all crisis actors including a Trump body double.
Wow, this really makes debates easy!
my theory is that nobody was even really there, no shooter, no cops, no trump, no supporters. a party city caught fire the next town over and it was just an extremely coincidental arrangement of bits of glitter in a really specific kind of dust storm that happened to highly resemble a trump rally, and some photographers showed up to document it. they snapped some pics and now don't have the heart to tell everyone the winds died down shortly thereafter and they were standing in a glittery yet empty field.
hey, yeah, this is kind of fun
The people are from the future and they were trying to prevent the destruction of world. Idk something like that
Sigh