Dem
51
GOP
49
The man who tried to assassinate Donald Trump on Saturday has been identified as Thomas Matthew Crooks. A lot depends on his background and motive. If he was a flaming leftist who thought that Christofascists like Trump need to be wiped out before they can do more damage, that has one type of impact. If he was an abortion hardliner who thought that because Trump agreed that innocent babies could be wantonly slaughtered in blue states, he needed to die, the impact will be different. If he was nonpolitical and just angry at the world, that leads to a different conclusion. So far, we don't know his motive. We might learn more in the coming days as reporters and FBI agents descend on his town like a swarm of cicadas.
What we do know is that he was 20 years old and living in Bethel Park, a suburb 8 miles south of Pittsburgh. Various sources describe it as anything from blue-collar to upper-middle-class. It is about an hour's drive from the rally.
He graduated from high school in 2022. Here is his year book photo and also an AI-enhanced version we made since the original wasn't very sharp:
Crooks was a registered Republican although years ago he donated $15 to the Progressive Turnout Project. His mother is a Democrat. His father is a Libertarian. Crooks worked as a dietary aide in the kitchen of a local nursing home. Two former classmates who were interviewed said they had never seen any warning signs. One of them said that he was intelligent and seemed slightly right-leaning. Another classmate said he tried out for the varsity rifle team and didn't make it. In fact, he didn't even make the junior varsity team, possibly due to poor marksmanship. No doubt there will be some investigation of this shortly.
The weapon he used to shoot at Trump was an AR-15-type semiautomatic. The owner of the local gun store said that he did not sell the weapon to Crooks. But when a reporter asked if it was sold to a family member, such as his father, the store owner refused to answer. He said it was between him and God. Wrong. By later today, it will be between him, God, and the FBI. Unofficial reports say Crooks' father bought the gun 6 months ago. Crooks did not have a criminal record. He was wearing a T-shirt from Demolition Ranch, a YouTube channel known for guns and explosives. Some explosives were found in Crooks' car. The FBI believes that Crooks acted alone, with no accomplices.
Crooks' parents refused to talk to the media. Reuters has a video interview of a classmate of Crooks. The classmate said that Crooks was a loner and was bullied every day. He was an outcast who sat alone at lunch. Other classmates said that Crooks was not especially interested in politics, but more interested in building computers and playing games.
Reporters asked social media companies if he had accounts and if any accounts of his had been removed. They refused to answer, no doubt on the advice of counsel.
Some Republicans are already talking about "divine intervention" having saved Trump. One said: "Yesterday there were miracles, and I think the hand of God was there too." Occam's Razor says that considering Crooks was rejected by both the varsity rifle team and the junior varsity rifle team, he missed his target by 3 inches at a distance of 400 feet because he wasn't a good shooter, not because God nudged his hand just as he pulled the trigger.
The picture so far seems to be of an outcast who was bullied and turned down by the clubs he tried to join. Maybe he wanted to show the world he was somebody and a pretty good shot after all. Trump just happened to show up near his house. If Biden had been the one to show up nearby, Crooks might have tried to assassinate Biden. Barring new information, the shooting doesn't appear to have been politically motivated. The outcome of the investigation might be something like: "Well, when anyone who wants to buy a military assault weapon can do so and their kids have access to them, this kind of stuff happens. Get used to it." But remember, all this is fragmentary and preliminary.
In the end, if it turns out that there was a lone gunman who was just trying to impress a high school rifle team with his marksmanship and Trump just happened to be the first politician to show up locally, the political impact might be minimal. The argument that the left was after Trump won't convince many independents if it was just one mentally disturbed kid who wanted attention. In fact, the takeaway might end up working for the Democrats: Civilians shouldn't be buying AR-15s. If you want to shoot an AR-15, join the Army and they will give you one and train you to use it so you can kill America's enemies if need be. The bottom line might end up making gun control a campaign issue and some Republicans might be willing to accept it if they thought their guy was a possible target.
Yesterday afternoon, Joe Biden gave a speech about the shooting. He no doubt had two motives: to try to pull the country together and to show he was a true leader who could handle a national crisis. Here is his speech:
On a scale of 1 to 10, we'd give the speech a 3. Biden was reading it from a teleprompter and still mashed his words and mangled his sentences. This was a moment to seem presidential. He seemed like a concerned but clearly elderly man. This was the perfect moment to rally the country and show that he was in charge. He didn't pull it off. The speech is only going to increase the number of people calling for him to step down.
If you want to see how Biden SHOULD have responded, watch the response of Gov. Josh Shapiro (D-PA):
If we had to rate Shapiro's speech, it would be at least an 8, maybe a 9. He knew what he had to say and he said it extremely well.
If Biden is ultimately replaced by Kamala Harris, expect a lot of people to be calling for a Harris/Shapiro ticket. For one thing, Shapiro is a good speaker and can handle a crisis well. For another, he has both legislative and executive experience. Before being elected governor in 2022, he served four terms in the Pennsylvania House, two on the Montgomery County Board of Commissioners, and two as state AG. He won the 2022 gubernatorial election by 14.8 points against a Trumpy opponent. And finally, he knows the state very well and could almost certainly bring in its precious 19 electoral votes, the most of any swing state. (V)