Not surprisingly, the 20-year-old white male who tried to assassinate Donald Trump on July 13, 2024, was known as an odd duck.
High school classmates remember him as a friendly but quiet loner who kept to himself, dressed oddly in hunting clothes, and was mercilessly bullied.
He was intelligent and did well on tests, but didn’t attend college. He was working in the kitchen of a nursing home. His Republican parents are behavioral therapists, and appear shocked by their son’s actions.
His father collected guns, had 20 of them in the house, belonged to a gun club, and took his son to the shooting range with him. The front yard with plastered with Trump yard signs.
Crooks (photo above) shot at Trump with an AR-15 style rifle he purchased from his father in 2023. Trump suffered an ear scratch that bled, either from a bullet or flying teleprompter glass. Trump reacted by raising a clenched fist, mimicking GOP Sen. Josh Hawley’s salute to Capitol rioters on Jan. 6, 2021 (see photo of that here). A week later, he appeared at the Republican nominating convention with a white bandage prominently tape to his ear.
When Reagan was shot, and wounded much more seriously, he joked modestly to his wife, “Honey, I forgot to duck.” Reagan, like Trump, was a pugnacious politician, but Reagan knew how to do it with style. Trump doesn’t.
Crooks, prior to the shooting, researched the JFK assassination on the internet, practiced shooting, scouted the rally site, registered to attend the rally, arranged to take the day off work, bought a ladder and ammunition that morning, and flew a drone over the rally (see stories here and here). He also had an escape plan, which involved creating a diversion by blowing up his car, the FBI says (see story here).
How did he get within range of Trump? Rally attendees had to go through metal detectors, but Crooks climbed to a rooftop outside the Secret Service perimeter, in an area where state police and local cops were responsible for security. A cop climbed a ladder to investigate after bystanders pointed Crooks out, but backed away when Crooks pointed the rifle at him.
Moments later, Crooks shot at Trump from a distance of 164 yards, not a difficult range for a capable marksman. From diagrams of the shooting you can find on the internet, it appears he aimed on target, but missed because Trump turned his head away at the last moment. There’s controversy over whether Trump was grazed by a bullet or flying glass.
Investigators still haven’t identified a specific motive, but the FBI found social media postings by Crooks from 2019 and 2020 that were “antisemitic, anti-immigration, extreme in nature,” and espoused political violence (see story here). The FBI director told Congress he “had shown interest in political figures from both parties” and seemed to zero in on Trump about a week before the rally.
Despite targeting Trump, there’s no reason to believe Crooks was anything other than a diehard conservative. He identified as a Republican on his voter registration (see it here), and a former classmate says he “definitely was conservative” and “no matter what, always stood his ground on the conservative side,” according to Wikipedia (see article here).
He also had a fascination with by guns and explosives not typical of liberals, and the t-shirt he was wearing when shot by the Secret Service is merch from a popular YouTube channel that features shooting guns (see story here). Police found bomb-making materials in his car.
The picture that’s emerging is Crooks simply wanted to commit a high-profile shooting, and the Trump rally was near his home. His online searches included mass shootings, President Biden, “other prominent figures from both parties,” and the locations of Trump rallies and the Democratic convention (see story here).
Conspiracy theories sprang up almost instantly (see story here); and rightwing media and politicians went hysterical, blaming the shooting on Biden and liberal media (see, e.g., story here). One GOP congressman even accused Biden of ordering Trump’s assassination (see story here). It doesn’t take a genius to see this could incite an attack on the president.
With falsehoods and conspiracy theories flying fast and thick (see article here), a purported Instagram post (see it here) identifying Crooks as “anti-fascist” undoubtedly is a hoax (see story here).
Politico and other fact-checkers debunked the photo at right with an accompanying quote saying he hated Trump and Republicans; this man is not Crooks and the quote is fake (see fact-checks here and here).
Arie Perliger is a professor who studies political violence and extremism (profile here). He points out that assassination is highly undemocratic. But given America’s polarized politics, he’s not surprised “that eventually people engage in violence” (see story here). He thinks Trump supporters will see Crooks’ act as an attempt to “prevent them from a competing in the political process.”
But political assassins aren’t always motivated by politics. The man who shot President Reagan did it for attention. He was mentally ill, but aren’t they all? Thomas Crooks fits the profile of many shooters: A bullied loner obsessed with guns and violence. The evidence to date suggests he sought notoriety, or maybe wanted to get even with a society he felt had mistreated him.
That remains to be determined. Meanwhile, exploiting this incident to incite more political hatred and division is dangerous and irresponsible — but predictable, given the track record of rightwing extremism in recent years.
Photo below: Police at the house in Bethel Park, Pennsylvania, where Crooks lived
