Thomas Matthew Crooks

And the fucker couldn't shoot for shit!

He has quite a severe underbite but other than that he looks relatively normal

Slightly OT, but I’m disgusted - though not surprised - that one Republican leader after another is trying to tie this shooting to Democrats and even Biden, specifically.

And btw, the shooter is a registered Republican.

We know two things about him so far: 1) he was a registered Republican; and 2) he made one donation to Progressive Turnout Project PAC for $15 on January 20, 2021 (the day Joe Biden was inaugurated). The donation was an illegal donation as Crooks was under the age of 18 at the time. The PAC is described as one of those sleazy PACs that floods your inbox with flashy trash begging for donations. A spokesperson from the PAC said that their records show it was a singular donation from that email address, no further donations or interactions, and the name and address was removed from their list more than 2 years ago. The T-shirt he was wearing when the body was found was one of a YouTube channel devoted to guns, the Second Amendment, and killing as sport.

Thus far, it looks like this kid was 20 years old, living with his parents, his father was the purchaser of the AR-15 used in the attempt, and he was described as "a loner", and he was wearing insignia indicating he was interested in using guns The profiler in me says he was likely an incel, angry, and latched on to one of the angry white men's groups. That he donated to a progressive organization is further suspect when you examine the circumstances of a single donation to a PAC geared to getting the vote out, with the donation transacted on the day Biden was being sworn in. It does not read like a progressive donating to get the vote out on the day we celebrated Biden's victory and inauguration; it reads more like a stupid young man conned into giving money to a group he screeching about voting well past election day, and there was only one political party that was focused on votes [italic]after[/italic] the election.

He was one of the millions of stupid young white men who have been wrongly convinced that their problems are because of someone or something else, not himself, not his lack of motivation to make himself better, not his lack of education, and not his lack of self esteem (we can all see that in the pictures released so far).

I blame the parents.

R3, the Republicans have been laying in wait since the day that Sarah Palin was critisized for putting a bullseye over an image of Gabbu Giffords' district.

Expect no less.

I have a question about how the Secret Service handled this. I understand they shot and killed Crooks. (No pun!)

Is that standard operating procedure in these circumstances? Shoot to kill? Or might they try to shoot just to disable someone, to prevent him from acting further? I don’t know much about this but I’m curious.

You are trained to shoot and kill, r7. This isn't a TV show.

The United States of Incels

Can we make a law that says if your son looks like this, maybe don’t buy an AR.

Alex Jones was not wrong when he said that this goofball had a very MK Ultra look

According to The Independent, citing Pennsylvania licensing records, both of Crooks' parents, Matthew and Mary Crooks, are certified behavioral health counselors.

My Husband grew up and escaped Butler, PA. We are an interracial couple. I'm from Ohio and he's from PA, so on driving trips home from NYC, I would drop him off at home and continue on. That place gave me the fucking creeps. The kind of place I told him I am not getting out of the car to pump gas, just so I can be followed by some pickup after I drop you off at your place. It was the kind of place with hills with a family compound of three trailer homes on said hill, with a dog chained to the yard somewhere and just random smoke rising from places. It is about as backwoods as you can get, East Butler, which is slightly, mildly worse than regular Butler, where he grew up. My husband remembers going to state fairs at that exact same fairground where they have a Demolition School Bus derby every 4th of July. He couldn't get out of there fast enough. He went on to get a PhD at and Ivy and never looked back, except when he has to go home for holidays.

[quote]The profiler in me

Is that profiler still in you?

Pretty good shot for a 20 year old with no apparent hunting or combat experience.

R13, this kid is not from Butler. He grew up in Bethel Park, which is an entirely different socio-economic and political area.

[quote]Can we make a law that says if your son looks like this, maybe don’t buy an AR.

The Republicans work every day to make it easier for obviously crazy people to legally possess assault weapons. Reap what you sow.

I wonder if the orange pig will sue the parents for damage,

Did he die a virgin?

[quote] Alex Jones was not wrong when he said

Alex Jones is always wrong.

The kid did not make a donation to Act Blue. That was some other Thomas Crooks from another town with a different DOB.

He was a member of a far right owned shooting range and was wearing a shirt of the range. This is nothing to do with deomcrats

Why are young straight white men so fucking fragile!

Christ, I managed to grow up as a gay kid in the 70s and I had a lot more fucking challenges at school and on the playground and all I ever did to blow off steam was community theater!

When I look at these delicate little bitches who are young today I think maybe those countries who make everyone serve in the military have it right.

Parents: If your son can be described as "a loner" please lock up your guns.

Sounds like he graduated high school without any direction. Ended-up in a menial, dead-end job in a kitchen of a nursing home.

I don't think he'll be the last to try this, as the Deplorables realize they've been tricked by Don The Con. I always knew he would be shot by a MAGA.

He made a donation to a progressive group. In penn anyone can change their registration to vote to try to sway the outcome. I believe it was bernie sanders who endorsed the idea several years ago.

Yeah, if it was some other Thomas Crooks who made that donation I think we might have heard from him by now.

No 18 year old in a rural red district would register as a Republican only to vote against Trump in a primary. And most such districts are 65-85% Republican in general elections. Their vote won't amount to shit.

Yet, R29, 20%+ continued to vote for Haley even after Trump became the presumptive nominee.

He looks very Fetal Alcohol Syndrome-y

OMG he was a Datalounger.

[quote]No 18 year old in a rural red district would register as a Republican only to vote against Trump in a primary.

He didn't live in a rural red district. Butler, where the Trump rally was held, is rural red. But that's not where this kid lived and grew up.

[quote]Why are young straight white men so fucking fragile!

Their entire generation is like this. Fragile.

Suicide bomber. Someone convinced him that his life would have meaning if he took a shot at his hero Trump. Maybe he knew he was dead meat, or maybe he thought he’d survive. This was a set up.

Hmm yet he was wearing a gun youtuber t-shirt Demolition Ranch. They said he wore camo to school a lot and that he was good with computers and gaming. Screams incel to me. Are there any left wing incels? Why would an unemployed teen donate money to politicians? When I was a teen $15 was a lot of money. I haven't seen any proof yet that the donation had the same address as his voter registration. Just because they have the same zip code doesn't mean it's the same person.

Did he have a crush on a closeted lesbian actress?

Hmmmmm......this makes sense.

"Are there any left wing incels?"

R24, Jeffrey Dahmer was in the military. Being in the military doesn't make you a good person but you want to FORCE people to serve because....reasons

R27, he's a gun nut and his classmates said he was a conservative. You're reaching

R40: R24 said nothing about the military making anyone a good person--only, presumably, that it toughens up "delicate" types due to the discipline and seriousness involved.

R26., "Crooks graduated from the Community College of Allegheny County in May 2024 with an Associate in Science degree in Engineering Science"

R16, I never said the kid was from Butler. I was just commenting on how horrible the place is that Trump has chosen to hold a rally, TWICE- the base he is courting is white trash. The kid is from an area 30 miles south. But if anyone has driven the six and half hours across the state, you are aware that all these shit hole places are the same.

I like presidential candidates who don’t have assassination attempts on their life.

If someone takes another crack at him at the GOP convention, let’s hope he has better gun skills.

Is it just me, or does anyone else think the CIA has a penchant for radicalizing loners to do their dirty work when it comes to presidents/presidential candidates?

He Looks a bit like Mike Johnson

R12 points out these the parents were behavioral health counselors, they no doubt got their son the job at the nursing home.

From a Reuters report, it sounds as if Crooks flew under the radar. He was a loner, but had a few friends and ne described him as "super smart" But it seems that "super smart[ness]" may have just been just confined to computers and gaming. Who knows? An intel does ring true in some ways. Of course, easy access to weapons that can cause great damage and death...the irony of him using an AK-47 will be lost on MGA world. That band of fascists is reaping what it has sowed.

Whatever problems Crooks had, social media exasperated it.

Our political polarization will only increase. I have a relative who was your typical Country Club Republican who knows that the GOP candidate for POTUS is an imbecile, but he will vote for him still. He's angry for some reason and sees no reason. After Biden's call for unity yesterday, he posted it was "horse shit" until Biden disavows this (a link to a Biden stump speech about the threat to democracy from the GOP). Nowhere did or does Biden call for violence. My relative and any Trump supporter (no matter their ardency) see no reason.

It's going to get worse

It's obviously not just you, R46, but there are just a lot of lone wolves acting out.

He looks so special that shooting him was probably a crime

I have seen no confirmation that the Progressive Turnout Project PAC donation did not come from the gunman but another man with the same name. However, I read confirmation from the PAC's spokesman that the donation matched him by name and physical address (registered to his father), that it was the only donation they had received from him, and his email address was deleted from their database two years ago. The relevance is that the donation was made on January 20, 2021 — the day Joe Biden was inaugurated — and when the only people grifting over voting issues were Republican Trump supporters. My guess is that the gunman got the email on inauguration day, didn't pay attention to who the group was (and PACs like this do not make it easy to suss out their provenance), and donated out of thinking he was taking action against Biden. This kid was not the sharpest knife in the drawer.

As to the suggestion that he changed his voter registration, well, that's a stretch. First, young people do not understand the concept of party switching to vote for the weaker candidate to give their actual preferred choice an advantage (and saying that Bernie Sanders endorsed it as evidence is, well, highly unlikely in this circumstance). Second, what would be the point? The contest was settled before the PA primaries. I can see some motivation for Democratic voters to switch to Republican to vote for Haley, but it takes a concerted effort on the part of organizers to get sufficient numbers of people to change their voter registration. This also predicates that he was registered as a Democrat before or after his registration as a Republican, which would have shown up in the database search that provided the details that he was registered as a Republican — and lord knows the media would have been screaming his party affiliation switch if it were evident. (I have seen no contradiction in this registration status mentioned anywhere, so if there is, please post a link.) And finally, evidence has come out that this kid was a conservative Republican and argued conservative causes in high school despite his classmates liberal arguments.

If anything, the picture slowly forming is that this kid was ripe for exploitation by partisan actors. We assume from the pictures and descriptions coming forward from former classmates that his kid was a game-playing techno geek incel, a loner who was contrary for the sake of being contrary, was not an active user of social media (and hence a cypher to early investigation) with right-leaning but unengaged parents stupid enough to buy an AR-15 and leave it unsecured in the face of the kid's clear interest in guns, warfare, and killing (as shown by the insignia T-shirt he was wearing when he committed this crime).

"Is it just me, or does anyone else think the CIA has a penchant for radicalizing loners to do their dirty work..."

[quote] My guess is that the gunman got the email on inauguration day, didn't pay attention to who the group was (and PACs like this do not make it easy to suss out their provenance), and donated out of thinking he was taking action against Biden.

That’s a stretch.

Maybe the kid's father donated and he hates his father so he became a Conservative. I have read nothing in the mainstream media about Thomas Matthew Crooks hatred for Jeffrey Epstein who he described as evil, and his hatred for pedophiles. but Marjorie Taylor Green accused All Democrats of being Pedophiles. yesterday. Which seems strange even for her. I mean she could accuse Dems of a lot of things but why Pedos and why now? Did she see that kids postings?

The kid said he was hung. Can we get a hiss from Momma?