Thomas Matthew Crooks, the suspectin Saturday’s shooting, was registered as a Republican voter, according to Pennsylvania records.
Already the republicans are dismissing his voter registration as meaningless. Here comes the “mental illness” angle.
Edit: apparently it’s not uncommon to register with the party you oppose in PA. This is going to be a fun ride.
My biggest hope now is that he legally purchased the gun with no background check from a maga at a gun show.
You really think that any of the cultists are going to care about what actually happened?
Their story will be that he’s a transwoman high on legal weed who listened to woke podcasts about Gaza.
A brave and true republican boy, who got corrupted away from his family by the antifa deep state complex, he would have been such a great person, if only his parents had homeschooled him without interference from the communist atheists, and were allowed to hit him more as a child 😢
I should have saved it but I didn’t. Someone else posted an actual MAGoo fiction about how a good kid goes to college and instantly gets a hot Black girlfriend who corrupts him with sex and Antifa ideology…
a hot Black girlfriend who corrupts him with sex
You son of a bitch! I’m in.
hot black girlfriend who corrupts him
Go on…
They met in a coffee shop and she bought him a drink spiked with an afrodisiac (yes correct spelling). Then while he couldn’t think straight, she tricked him and brought him home where she literally f’d his brains out. During this time she was whispering deep state woke ideology in his ear. After cumming back to earth, he was fully corrupted and became a deep state sleeper agent.
Where do I sign up?
Worth it.
I need to read this. What was the title?
Like I said, I wish I remembered. I vaguely recall the GF’s name was Shondra, but that’s iffy.
I’m usre you could come up with a better version if you put your mind to it.
Was it on AO3?
Someone mentioned the story on Lemme. They gave a description.
Then he got the covid vaxx and the 5g nano microchips got implanted in his brain and made him a deep state sleeper agent.
It’s those damn FEMA reeducation camps
You really think that any of the cultists are going to care about what actually happened?
No, but it might be enough to convince independents not to feel sympathy for him.
Up until 2016 I could pretend to myself that, when the chips were down, most Americans could tell chicken salad from chicken shit.
Too many people assumed Clinton would win.
Ergo, she didn’t. Even so, never should have been close in the states that carried it over the line.
I sadly knew people who attended “Clinton Won!” parties, these same people didn’t vote. Complacency is a killer.
Anyone independent at this point is a moron.
Facts won’t matter. Facebook posts about deep state false flag operations will.
Anyone independent at this point is a moron.
This doesn’t change the fact that Biden still needs those votes in order to be president.
Holy shit AND tried to assassinate a fascist? Why do they keep making up such fucking cool people
The cultists are gonna cultist no matter what. Truth still matters even in a political and media landscape that looks to be ‘post-truth’. Don’t get me wrong, I wish it mattered a whole lot more still.
When it was discovered Rittenhouse beat up a little girl, the story the Right made up was that the “Girl was a transgender who was spying on his sister in the bathroom!” when there’s no evidence for that claim.
I didn’t know Rittenhouse had attacked a child; I’m not in the least surprised.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/kyle-rittenhouse-video-kenosha-shooter-punch-girl-a9702206.html - Video used to be on Youtube
Like I said, I’m not at all amazed.
Trump’s already not pro-gun. He passed some of the most significant “anti” gun legislation during his term. Thing is, he’s a pathological liar, so it doesn’t matter what comes out of his mouth. He’ll stay on the “pro-gun” rhetoric, and when he’s elected will enact more anti-gun legislation, especially now that he’s been on the receiving end.
And it won’t matter, because MAGA’s gonna MAGA. He’ll lose maybe a few truly 2A-focused people, but it won’t matter because after 2024 there will be no more free elections in the US.
Trump’s already not pro-gun.
Point of order: Trump’s not anything except Pro-Trump. THAT’S IT. That is the sum total of his actual identifiable personal beliefs.
He’s a demented narcissist and a sociopath. He’s a rapist, a fraud, a money launderer for human traffickers, he’s a traitor, a colluder, and a piece of shit.
But he is absolutely NOT “not pro-gun”. He does not give a single solitary shit-in-a-vacuum. This has been proven. It Is Known.
Once he has secured power the gun confiscations will begin. Classic power grab move.
Yeah that’s not going to happen.
That was Feb 28, 2018. March 2nd, 2018, Trump met at the white house with the NRA, where
President Trump and Vice President Mike Pence have reassured gun owners that they remain committed to “strong due process” and they “don’t want gun control.”
He’s a chattering, demented, adderall-swilling dipshit who will not shut the fuck up and is literally unable to not lie every few sentences. It meant nothing, and even if they did try anything, that would be the fastest way to destroy the MAGA base.
Not. Happening.
He was a responsible gun owner. They’re all responsible gun owners.
Until they’re not.
Close, got it from his dad.
People in this post thinking that any fact will matter to the MAGA base…
Yup even if it turns out it was the father of one of the children trump raped, they won’t care.
“ReGiSteReD RePuBliCaNs aRe AnTiFa!!!”
MAGA will spin this… He was a plant, he was hired by Biden, he was a sleeper agent meant to sow discord in the GOP…
Whatever fox does with this story, the MAGA people will believe it.
He was hired by Trump to miss, but “make it look good”, and killed for being a “loose end”
Conservatives when a poc is convicted of rape:”if that was my daughter I’d happily be in JAIL now!”
Conservatives when their violent , rapist prez gets shot: “this is the democrats fault since they call him a fascist, let’s pull back the violent rhetoric peeps”
Only that the “let’s” is referring to only Democrats. Republican/alt-right people will continue to use violent rhetoric.
Crooks was supposedly wearing a shirt for a YT channel “Demolition Ranch” being called a pro-gun channel by the news. Quick scan of their content seems to indicate that guns are toys to be played with and how much destruction you can do with them.
That’s one I had to stop my kid from watching because their gun safety is not non existent but is also not safe at all
IIRC, DemoRanch uses (or at least used to) a portion of its income to run his Veterinarian clinic, but that is a few years old and it looks like he stepped back from the business in 2021? I fell off from most of YouTube before the pandemic, so I’m bummed but not surprised that he’s a Trump guy.
Basically every single gun nut youtube is inherently right wing. Any content creator who actually gives a shit about humanity would have made MASSIVE changes following… ANY school shooting.
The best you can hope for is channels like Forgotten Weapons where Ian actively refuses to “be political”. He still lets his biases show any time he talks about legislation but he also has very clearly mocked a lot of the “loophole” devices and mostly comes across as a rich jerk talking about engineering. Or (funny enough) Carl at InRange who is 100% in the “useful idiot” category but seems to have a good heart.
The YT algo also drives the content further right. I keep getting recommended Herrera’s channel, and if that’s the kind of stuff you’ve got to compete against for views, it’s just going to create a runaway phenomenon. If a tech literate, vaguely media literate leftist with a “mechanical porn” fetish can’t stop getting recommended Right-wing political gun garbage, then the average viewer doesn’t stand a chance…
A lot of that is less the algorithm and more the creators.
I Did A Thing/Boy Boy are as (obnoxiously) tankie as it gets and they literally did a “let’s shoot some kids with a drone” video using herrera’s guns*. Which means that basically an entire chunk of maker youtube now has an actual palpable connection to herrera.
Everyone wants to blame the algorithm and… it is fucked. But the reality is that these youtubers (and twitch streamers and so forth) are all businesses first and most have zero problems collaborating with a known evil if it makes them money.
I suspect it is why people like Simone Giertz and Xyla Foxlin have basically stopped all collaborations with people who aren’t part of their “inner circles”.
*: Well worth looking up the “drama” around that. On Boy Boy, Aleks (?) tore into the gun fetishism and basically painted him as a kid with toys who got made if anyone even thought of taking them away while highlighting how fucked it is that some of herrera’s favorite guns are literally what drove Aleks and his family out of his home country. The response was herrera throwing a shitfit and insisting that anyone who enjoys shooting guns can’t be pro gun control and they are liars.
Wasnt Herrera part of a sons of the confederacy organization years ago? You really expect someone like that to be smart. Anyways I find it funny when dipshits throw a fit about pro guns folks being in favor of some amount of gun control. Like im in favor of a basic training course at government funded ranges for example. Nothing fancy just a course on firearm safety and cleaning viola heres the card letting you buy.
I genuinely hope this was manufactured drama. Because I can’t imagine ANYONE dumb enough to let a couple of infamously tankie youtubers (whose claim to fame was flying out to North Korea for a day trip and insisting it isn’t that bad…) do a school shooting weeks after Uvalde with actual child cardboard tagets using his guns and his range and then being surprised by the outcome.
Like, even Michael Reeves pulled out of that video. And that is a kid that EVERYONE is amazed hasn’t been cancelled for some stupid joke at this point.
Eh, thats not just bad tastes thats… something else. What is wrong with fucken tankies?
I disagree, though it seems to happen to everyone else. Right-wing content is vary rare for me even though I’m subbed to lots of gun channels.
It’s weird how on Youtube survivors of Sexual Assault are blacklisted for saying the words “Sexual Assault”, but PragerU goes “We should bring back slavery and kill the gays!” every five minutes and get pushed to the front of my feed despite the fact that I mostly look up gaming trivia, not Right Wing shilling, meaning the algo shouldn’t be recommending it to me.
The closest thing I can think of to a non-right-wing gun nut YouTuber is Adam Savage. If course, most of his gun nuttery is centered on movie props, not real firearms.
Or Paul Harrell or,
Massad Ayoub or,
Hickock45 or,
James Reeves or,
Honest Outlaw or,
Black Powder Maniac Shooter or,
MidwayUSA or,
Royal Armouries or,
Garand Thumb.
And those are only ones I’m subscribed to.
I bailed on his channel when he started making comments about the George Floyd protests in his videos. It was always pretty clear what his beliefs are from a religious and political standpoint, but up to then, he never brought it into his videos.
I think the channel is hilarious.
I also think the channel shows off WAY too much reckless, butthole puckering lack of safety. I’m actually surprised no one has gotten injured or killed.
I don’t mean this in a conspiratorial way, but I would not be surprised if this kid was a huge Trump fan. What better way to pump up the MAGA crowd than more bullshit to make it seem like some shadowy force was trying to stop him.
Right now the FBI has all of his friends and family in custody for interviews, the NSA is pulling all the comms info they have on him, his phone company is pulling what they have to provide…his entire life is going to get taken apart in very short order. What we actually get to see of that data probably is very little. I really hope what we need to see is disseminated quickly to not make the situation more murky.
There’s apparently a video of him saying he hates trump and republicans. It’s getting messy.
That was by a lookalike from 4chan I thought, the blue shirt video?
There’s certainly going to be absolutely no end to that bullshit as well.
Corporate News Sewers: “Well there’s only one thing for it. MORE POLLS!!!”
What’s surprising is how unsurprised I am by that shit. I didn’t read it and go, “No way, no one would do that!” Nope. As soon as I stumbled on it, I thought, “Well of course the chuds on 4chan did that.”
Yeah, blue shirt in the car.
That would be really bizarre if a dude that looks so much like the shooter was able to whip out a video so quickly. The only thing I couldn’t quite tell was that images of the shooter looks like he has an underbite almost, and the vid clip guy looks more normal.
Edit: found it. Allegedly someone called Maxwell Yearick?
E2:… ok. So looking up Maxwell Yearick gets things a little confusing. There are nsfw images of the deceased shooter that definitely look like he has the slight underbite/protruding lower jaw. Yearick is a protester who was arrested at a political demonstration and I don’t think he looks like the video guy at all nor do I think he looks like the deceased. Blue shirt guy looks closest, but we’ll have to see what shakes out of that.
I won’t be surprised if they will use generative AI to spread disinformation as well
They can make the shooter say and do more or less anything, even if it’s not true
So we should all watch Rogan and infowars because those guys will figure it all out just by “asking questions” /s
He definitely could be Republican and I would not dismiss it at all. However, in the state of Pennsylvania it’s common to register for the party primaries of the opposing party whose candidate is someone you’re not in favor of and vote for someone else. It should be clear this does not mean he’s not a Republican or imply that he might be a Democrat. It’s only to add some context.
Source: https://ballotpedia.org/Primary_elections_in_Pennsylvania
I wouldn’t say it’s common, that’s misleading. some people do it, probably, but I’ve lived in PA for 2 decades and have never met anyone who has claimed to do so nor have I seen any actual statistics on the matter
My older sister has been doing it since the 80s. I don’t think there’s very many of them because assholes keep winning the Republican primaries
That’s fair, you’re right as I haven’t seen statistics either. While I don’t do it myself, I’ve seen many speak about doing this over the years though I’ve only lived in PA for a little over a decade.
Edit: autocorrect
Republican voter and somehow this will be blamed on everyone else.
“Missed to the left, therefore a leftie”
~ Maga probably
Used to vote for Republicans and then donated for Democrats
He was 20. He could have voted only in a single election. Someone said he donated to democrats 3 years ago. This math is confusing the fuck out of me.
Unfortunately I think what we’re going to learn is that he’s one of those people that register Republican to vote in their primaries to choose the weakest candidate giving Democrats a better chance.
Either way I unfortunately think this is going to give Trump yet another boost… God knows that’s what we needed…
That’s possible. Because we damn sure aren’t going to learn that people are more complicated than a simple black & white label.
If this comes across as argumentative, I don’t mean it that way. It’s just pure cynicism.
I read a snippit that in PA, it’s not uncommon to register for the other party. More than likely, he really was a dem/non repub.
He’s pro-gun and we can point out the dangers of that alone.
A person with his name donated $15 on the day Biden was inaugurated, when he was 17.
Fox News: “Biden campaign received illegal campaign donation from shooter.”
20 year olds don’t have wealth to reasonably donate to an election.
17 year olds, supposedly. (I can’t verify the three years ago, so grain of salt.)
This doesn’t really make sense and we might just have to wait for actual details from the investigation.
Some people are saying $10, which is a lot more to a kid than to an adult. But kids can afford $10.
EDIT: $15 to more reliable sources. Still in the rough ballpark tho
Apprently that was a differnet person in Philly that shares his first and last name.
The donation? Source on that? Not doubting you
Edit: I am now doubting you. Found the FEC filing and it lists a Bethel Park, PA zip code.
Edit 2: I was asked for my source: https://static01.nyt.com/newsgraphics/documenttools/fe91e6ba36695009/ac182c3a-full.pdf
Can you share that source?
NYTimes, so there’s a paywall. It links to the FEC (wouldn’t load on mobile for me but the FEC page did fully load on my desktop).
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/14/us/politics/trump-gunman-thomas-crooks.html
Edit: actually, the article has been updated since I read it. It no longer links to the FEC, just a NYT screenshot:
https://static01.nyt.com/newsgraphics/documenttools/fe91e6ba36695009/ac182c3a-full.pdf
Though it says Pitt, the zip is a Bethel Park zip
A voter-registration record showed Mr. Crooks’s Republican registration, though federal campaign-finance records show he donated $15 to the Progressive Turnout Project, a liberal voter turnout group, through the Democratic donation platform ActBlue in January 2021.
Removed by mod
The street address is registered to his father.
He lives there too. Without doxing anyone or putting their info on here, you can read in the news that they all live together (dad, mom, son. Sister moved out a couple years ago)
Lots of noise right now. Dont have a source past a random comment, so doubt is warranted.
just another case of Republican on Republican violence
How is voter registration even a thing. wtf
Can’t have homeless people or people with limited means actually voting. A republican would never win again.
For primaries, parties may close their primaries to only registered members of the party to vote in
republicans need barriers for people of color, poor people and young people traditionally to avoid full participation in democracy. In this modern time, some states actually still require you to print paper applications and mail them to your Secretary of State’s office at the post office with a physical stamp to register to vote… The list of individual barriers to completion within those seemingly small actions can not be overstated, especially to young people who on average don’t own home printers and may have literally never bought a stamp or mailed a physical letter.
Any time you apply for a driver’s license or whatever, you are asked if you want to register with a party. That is the party that you will vote for in the primary elections. Some (many?) states offer same day registration which, in my opinion, is how it should be. It puts you in a database in case voter fraud ACTUALLY happens (insanely rare) where they can check to make sure Ur Quell only voted once and investigate what happened if they see multiple votes.
As for the primaries: This is how the US handles our version of Ranked Choice and… I kind of prefer it (with some major caveats). The general idea is that all right wing politicians should run for the republican seat and all sane people for the Democrat seat. You campaign at the tail end of the previous year and the party members vote on you in the spring. There is definitely some sketchiness with super delegates (although, that is not overly dissimilar from how many parliament systems pick a Prime Minister), but this creates a unified front come November.
Yes, two party systems are bad, but that is what things tend to converge on when push comes to shove. Just look at France where the Left more or less unified to stand a chance against fascism.
Like almost every aspect of the US government: it is a fundamentally good system that needs to be iterated on and better taught to the populace. It is just that republicans know that education hurts them and want to take advantage of all the loopholes that Tommy Jefferson obviously intentionally wrote while he was raping his plantation full of slaves.
Thanks for the lengthy reply :)
deleted by creator
So, can we get celebrate this patriot like they celebrate Kyle bitchenhouse?
Yeah, let’s not elevate idiots to a pedestal - and I’m not calling him an idiot (just Rittenhouse), we don’t know squat about him yet.
Atleast this one had the balls to go after someone more secure than a bunch of random protesters.
True but didn’t him shooting two innocents after Trump make this a bad thing?
I wasn’t aware any journalists of event crew were harmed.
Collateral is an inevitable side effect of said actions within the hands of a non professional.
I feel… Mixed, on that.
That is correct response for folks who arent bloodthirsted or otherwise accepting of the concept of collateral damage. Which puts ya peg over where I am, but I also think that the bombing campaign on Japan during ww2 was too lenient, that includes the nukes.
Considering Trump can now campaign on being an assassination survivor and win with that? Lol no
Yes you’re right but that wasn’t my point.
“False flag” - Fox and co-conspirators
Trump is literally a paid actor, how do we know he was actually shot and not just pretending for attention? /s
How do we know he actually got shot?
Jfc fuck off
Wait, are they really saying that? Do they know what that implies?
Standard procedure for antifa supersoldiers
What do you mean
They made a conspiracy joke.
they had me until the supersoldiers part heheh
The 20-year old suspect involved in yesterday’s shooting at Donald Trump’s rally was reportedly bullied relentlessly, the local Pennsylvania outlet KDKA reports.
That really sucks.
I highly suggest everyone in this thread read Angry White Men by Michael Kimmel. HIGHLY suggest you read it to understand the kind of person in America that does this and why.
Pretty much expected. His precise reasons are what have me curious though
Maybe one of his cultists actually realized he’s been lying to them for the past 8 years. It’s a far fall from where MAGA is back down to reality.
Maybe the creation of a martyr and just accelerationism. Or the shooter was just a patsy
Yeah, hating Trumpism is certainly the expected angle, but a Boogaloo type looking to start a civil war couldn’t ask for a better target. Even if he actually was for all the Trump stuff he might think a civil war is necessary and Trump winning the election would just continue the muddled mess where liberals still get to make some decisions.
Follow the money. Who paid him to do the shooting is what we should be asking.
Of course they are are, and the MAGA cult will buy it saying it was a deep state conspiracy to discredit them or some bullshit like that.
the MAGA cult will buy it saying it was a deep state conspiracy to discredit them
Isn’t it funny how every single time a psycho with a long history of supporting republicans turns out to just be a deep state crisis actor paid by Soros to discredit them?
