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.
  • polonius-rex@kbin.run
    2668·
    4 months ago

    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

    👀 👀 👀

    • David_Eight@lemmy.world
      105·
      4 months ago

      If this encourages these psychos to stop shooting children and shoot politicians instead, I’ll take that trade.

      • Grass@sh.itjust.works
        5·
        4 months ago

        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.

    • rustydrd@sh.itjust.works
      14·
      4 months ago

      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.

    • Annoyed_🦀 @monyet.cc
      4·
      4 months ago

      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.

  • ASDraptor@lemmy.autism.placeEnglish
    1442·
    4 months ago

    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.

    • xmunk@sh.itjust.works
      717·
      4 months ago

      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.

      • ASDraptor@lemmy.autism.placeEnglish
        48·
        4 months ago

        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

        • xmunk@sh.itjust.works
          102·
          4 months ago

          I absolutely agree, but I think it’s important to neither glorify nor demonize the attacker. This isn’t a route we should keep open to gain fame/infamy.

          • WamGams@lemmy.ca
            429·
            4 months ago

            We shouldn’t demonize him, but we should be sober about him.

            He was a loser who intended to make our country worse.

                • AA5B@lemmy.world
                  9·
                  4 months ago

                  I’m also skeptical. Just like the candidate, I feel like this sort of behavior tends to be very self-centered. Maybe his action will leave the country worse off but I doubt he thought beyond himself, that he would do something significant and be remembered.

              • WamGams@lemmy.ca
                45·
                4 months ago

                Had he been successful, the far right would likely start engaging in Timothy McVeigh style acts of terror.

                Seeing that he failed, we will probably still get that, except they have Trump to be the general giving orders.

                Look at all these down votes I have gotten for calling this kid a loser incel. Some of these down voters, considering the demographic of people who use Lemmy, are going to be the victims dying in the name of Trump’s revenge.

                • InternetUser2012@lemmy.today
                  72·
                  4 months ago

                  You got downvoted for the make our country worse part. He would have made it better no matter how YOU want to view it. The racist rapist with 34 felonies is not only a terrible human being, he literally wants to be Hitler. Fuck that, and fuck anyone voting for him.

                • samus12345@lemmy.worldEnglish
                  41·
                  4 months ago

                  the far right would likely start engaging in Timothy McVeigh style acts of terror.

                  Sounds like they’re a dangerous bunch and 2nd Amendment people should do something about their leader.

      • Passerby6497@lemmy.worldEnglish
        6·
        4 months ago

        If there’s one guarantee in this world, it’s that shooting someplace up will always get your name in the news.

        • samus12345@lemmy.worldEnglish
          11·
          4 months ago

          Although in the US it’s so common you’ll be forgotten in days unless the target is somebody famous.

          • aStonedSanta@lemm.ee
            4·
            4 months ago

            Good. Let’s keep running that so the famous people are the ones getting shot. Not our nations children in schools 😊

    • NevermindNoMind@lemmy.world
      4121·
      4 months ago

      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!).

      • bamboo@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
        77·
        4 months ago

        really thought you were going to end that with the source of the truma being because in 1998, The Undertaker threw Mankind off Hell In A Cell.

        • Zedstrian@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
          14·
          4 months ago

          We really need users like that on Lemmy to replicate the positive aspects of the Reddit community that are worth bringing over. Something original to here, hopefully.

        • hemmes@lemmy.worldEnglish
          10·
          4 months ago

          I base this on no evidence other than the fact that in nineteen ninety eight the undertaker threw mankind off hеll in a cell, and plummeted sixteen feet through an announcer’s table.

      • TTH4P@lemm.ee
        91·
        4 months ago

        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.

      • dutchkimble@lemy.lol
        51·
        4 months ago

        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.

  • Jessica@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
    13618·
    4 months ago

    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.

    • lennybird@lemmy.worldEnglish
      69·
      4 months ago

      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.

      • Sweetpeaches69@lemmy.world
        18·
        4 months ago

        removedass conservatives are always pushing for political violence. I’m tired of the left always trying to by the better man.

        • dejected_warp_core@lemmy.world
          2·
          4 months ago

          There are some absolutely cunning and insane stories in here. Fascinating.

          In a last-ditch attempt, Fabian von Schlabrendorff gave a time bomb camouflaged as a package of two liqueur bottles to an officer in Hitler’s entourage, as a supposed gift to a friend in Germany. The bomb was supposed to explode on the return flight over Poland. The package was placed in the hold of the aircraft, where it iced up, causing the detonator to fail. Realizing the failure, Schlabrendorff immediately flew to Germany and recovered the package before it was discovered.

      • shastaxc@lemm.ee
        12·
        4 months ago

        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.

        • lennybird@lemmy.worldEnglish
          4·
          4 months ago

          Thanks for the response.

          I think the internet is now a double-edged sword, and I can speak to this coming from a former Republican household in the 2000s.

          Back then, pre-Facebook (and to at least the very early stages when it was a College-oriented platform), the internet was far less segregated into marketing platforms. You really would be exposed to anything and everything and that, combined with my parents’ upbringing in the 60s really had an impact on our family’s perception of events, including the Iraq War.

          Nowadays, marketing algorithms are fine-tuned to preach to the choir and simply create massive echo-chambers. You can see this if you just create a new YouTube account and see the default content that shows up, like Joe Rogan… Just watch let alone like one of his videos, and next you’ll have Jordan Peterson clips filling your feed and as this happens any contrarian viewpoint gets marginalized.

          If we had the internet of today back then, I’m not sure my family would break our rural right-wing religious pro-life bubble. It is VERY hard today unless you’re already well-versed in critical-thinking, have a major dose of introspection and humility, and are internet-savvy.

      • Machinist@lemmy.worldEnglish
        111·
        4 months ago

        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?

        • lennybird@lemmy.worldEnglish
          3·
          4 months ago

          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?

          Yeah I agree, which is why I’m actually in the camp that I’m glad the_dumbass lived. If we can’t defeat this buffoon, then shit, we couldn’t defeat anyone.

          Moreover I’d rather see him rot in prison. In order to set this country straight again, he has to be brought down by the Justice system.

      • Random_German_Name@feddit.org
        8·
        4 months ago

        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)

      • captainlezbian@lemmy.world
        1·
        4 months ago

        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.

    • EleventhHour@lemmy.world
      631·
      4 months ago

      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.

    • Ensign_Crab@lemmy.worldEnglish
      162·
      4 months ago

      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.

      • ZILtoid1991@lemmy.world
        17·
        4 months ago

        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.

      • Jiggle_Physics@lemmy.world
        6·
        4 months ago

        A few things, like the shirt he was wearing, makes me wonder if it was Trump’s stance on gun control that triggered this.

      • RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world
        2·
        4 months ago

        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?

  • Suavevillain@lemmy.world
    58·
    4 months ago

    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.

  • workerONE@lemmy.world
    421·
    4 months ago

    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

    • Milk_Sheikh@lemm.ee
      461·
      4 months ago

      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

        • BrokenGlepnir@lemmy.world
          2·
          4 months ago

          I mean it doesn’t sound like he has friends, but it is weird that a 16-17 year old would donate on his own. It feels like it would go through his parents. Did they give him a credit card or something? Was it cash?

          • vaultdweller013@sh.itjust.works
            1·
            4 months ago

            Coudl have friends online, back when I was 16-17 thats how I was. Mind you im only friends with the ones Ive met IRL at this point but thats because my other groups imploded or went nuts for no reason.

            Arma ops group imploded because of a shit Zeus.

            And the EU4 group devolved into femcatboy roleplay server, which made me uncomfortable because most of them were like 30.

      • Evilcoleslaw@lemmy.world
        4·
        4 months ago

        Yeah that kind of struck me as a potential possibility. Maybe he bet someone that small amount that Biden wouldn’t actually be seated.

    • kromem@lemmy.worldEnglish
      17·
      4 months ago

      The address on the filing has his street address and zip but the wrong city.

      • brbposting@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        12·
        4 months ago

        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)

    • ThiccSemperTyrannis@lemmy.worldEnglish
      3·
      4 months ago

      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.

    • Natanael@slrpnk.net
      13·
      4 months ago

      With the timing, I think it’s stuff like the epstein news that broke something for him

    • Pyr_Pressure@lemmy.ca
      1·
      4 months ago

      Maybe he missed on purpose and it was all a ruse to give trump a bump in the polls or demonize the Democrats?

      • Sorgan71@lemmy.world
        2·
        4 months ago

        You cant miss like that on purpose. If trump had moved slightly differently the shot would have hit. It was within inches

    • rottingleaf@lemmy.world
      47·
      4 months ago

      You know how some hunters want to hunt a particular majestic animal? Except for “majestic”, of course.

  • AutoTL;DR@lemmings.worldBEnglish
    8·
    4 months ago

    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!