Setting some odd stuff aside, like how the shooter was able to get onto such a close roof, despite people seeing him get up there. What really makes me curious is why the guy was such a bad shot.
Was it nerves, inexperience, or was the intent to make Trump into a martyr? I have to assume he probably was hoping for “suicide by cop”, and if your going to end things what do you have to lose but make everyone forget that he was just convicted and everyone now knows about his rapey, pedo past. Just makes you think… ya know?
20 year old kid with no military training shooting at a 6 inch wide target at 400 feet with no scope and only iron sights. Honestly the fact the he grazed the ear says to me it wasn’t that bad of a shot.
I agree, Incompetence is very likely the reason. Just a lot of odd details in this whole thing…
Is the ear graze even confirmed? TMZ was reporting it was fragment of teleprompter that shattered, cutting his ear.
Interesting, that’s the first I’ve heard this. I’ll be interested to see if that gets confirmed. Though I just saw a photo of the secret service piling on top of him and there’s two intact teleprompters astride the podium.
Yeah that’s why I can’t say it with confidence, only that I had heard it alleged
inexperienced. head shots are not what professionals go for… that’s only if you want to show off. also there are reports Trump moved his head right before it happened and that could have saved his life. Yet another reason you don’t go for the head.
Always aim for the crotch, it would have been way funnier to clip it.
But then you’re shooting a probably full diaper depending on how long it had been since he’d been changed.
Imagine having like 10 secret service guys shove his face into the spilled diaper remnants.
According to Stormy Daniels, that’s a much smaller target
Thought the same, but maybe he was aiming center mass? Doesn’t take much of to be off at 300" with iron.
In any case, you’re right, he was certainly inexperienced.
At 300 inches I could hit him with a putting wedge.
I think there was a photo showing a hit center mass, but people under the protection of secret service usually wear vests during campaign stops and rallys
I know the photo you are talking about and I had that same impression at first. That was a red hat that looked like blood on his torso, though.
He wears body armor now though
We’ll need to wait on a full report to know on his accuracy. If only one shot was him hitting an ear going for the head at 100-150 yards is absolutely respectable accuracy. If 9 were him that’s quite poor accuracy.
Guess he didn’t hit Trump at all. It was shrapnel from a teleprompter reflector.
That hasn’t been confirmed I believe
I don’t understand how that’s possible? The teleprompter would presumably be in front of Trump but, his ear facing back was injured. Or am I missing something?
As someone else mentioned, this isn’t confirmed, it’s just what some law enforcement have claimed. However the teleprompter system has multiple reflectors off to each side so that the speaker can look side to side while tallking and still have their prompts. So it’s possible to have the glass blow back to one side of Trump. I am sure we will find out more in the coming days and weeks…
I see, thanks for the explanation.
I read someone on here say he didn’t have a scope on his AR. From that range with no scope, it’s surprising he actually did hit Trump at all.
News article claimed he was turned away from his high school rifle club for being a shit shot. Nerves probably played a role as well, seeing his he got domed seconds after opening fire.
I saw the posts yesterday about how he was not accepted at his high school club for being a “comically” bad shot, which explains why this was so bad, but doesn’t explain how it was so good as the latest reports are saying he only missed Trump because he turned his head the moment he pulled the trigger.
What’s also odd is why he chose to use a gun to begin with, especially one without a scope. I’ve also read he has some kind of explosive devices in his car.
At the end of the day he seems to be painted as just another young white outcast male who dealt with bullying and social rejection, like most of the other mass shooters.
The only missing piece now seems to be motive. Guess the dude has been confirmed by multiple sources to be far right conservative. Why would he try to assassinate Trump?
Off by 2 inches, at a 150 yards, with iron sights, from a semi auto rifle, is not a bad shot. That would actually be an impressive shot at the shooting range. But you know what they say, “close only counts with horseshoes and hand grenades”.
In that type of situation, he would have known he wasn’t getting out alive. Did he fire only 1 shot? Also Crooks shooting a crook is just too good. Wtf timeline are we actually in?
The best explanation for how he got there I’ve heard comes from Robert Evans in the podcast It Could Happen Here, and it’s the fact that there were a lot of different snipers on roofs from various organisations and normalcy bias ensured that everyone thought he was somebody else’s and just figured everything was fine.
Was waiting on this, someone from the right who realized what the rest of the world knew already. That letting a self declared ‘day one dictator’ back at the reigns is bad for everyone.
We’ll see as the investigation progresses, but I suspect it’s unfortunately far more likely to be the more common reason for political assassinations in the US, which is to say that it’s far easier for most people to access guns than afford mental health services and medications, than any actually coherent understanding of what Trump is.
Outside of Lincoln, to my knowledge nearly all presidential and presidential candidate assassinations or near assassinations have been motivated more by deep seated mental health issues than the target’s actual politics. It’s possible this was an exception, but i’m not holding my breath.
Maybe so maybe not, but you can bet that where they a registered D it would be shouted at the top of the hour from every conservative news outlet to feed the persecution complex. Case as it is though I would expect a lot of ‘not a real Republican’ spin on it.
2FA in action
Trying to figure out whether he was genuinely Republican, using some kind of logic.
It seems fairly certain basing on this photo that he did not use an optical sight, at least not anything sizable. Attempting to assassinate a presidential candidate under Secret Service protection with iron sights on your gun…
…no, this guy wasn’t a planner. So his registration as a Republican likely wasn’t an elaborate plan either.
Famously Simo Häyhä, one of the most successful snipers in history, used only an iron sight. This was an intentional choice along with other clever innovations like putting snow in his mouth to mask his breath and reduce his visibility to counter-snipers. An optical sight increases your profile and the glass will glint in the sun. I don’t know if it was intentional, but when hunting a target in an area with heavy counter-sniper presence, using an iron sight is not a poorly-planned choice.
Given his voter registration, his membership in the Demolitia, his rural Pennsylvanian political meleiu, and his bullied incel backstory [YT], signs point to him being a genuine republican. The Republican voter records have not only his name but address, while the reported small Democrat political donation
only seems to have his namehas his name and address, but not any other secondary confirmation like a credit card that coincides with the deceased’s social security.
Ironically while Crooks was taking aim, Demolition Tactical was bragging about how their followers were respectable, unlike a specific youtube influencer’s who just happens to be black:
One flattering narrative is that he felt betrayed by the revelations about Project 2025, or confirmation of Katie Johnson’s [YT] testimony about Trump’s pedophilia in the recently released Epstein logs, or was just part of one of the many blue-collar conservative working families that Trump’s organization has swindled out of their labor.
Alternatively, a week before the assassination, Nick Fuentes was on stream putting Trump on blast for backing away from Project 2025, along with Alex Jones. The simplest explanation is this is another case of stochastic terrorism from the alt-right.
EDIT: ActBlue also has his home address in the $15 donation tax filing.
Doesn’t surprise me.
He might have potentially had someone who couldn’t access an abortion or died during covid
Trump is neither right wing or left wing at this point. He’ll do whatever works to consolidate power. And that will likely involve firing the supreme Court judges, as they’re the only ones still with sufficient power to control him
Which is PROOF he was a Democrat!
Lolololol
I don’t particularly care about the politics of a madman, but this is not insight. He was 20 and lived in rural PA. Everybody registers as Republican so they can vote in primaries in local elections, because Democrats never win in those areas. Pennsylvania has closed primaries, so the same thint happens in Philadelphia with the Democrats.
But somehow if he had been registered a democrat then suddenly republicans would’ve cared. I can already hear it “this was a false flag operation”.
True.
You may not care, but an unfortunate number of people think everyone is in box A or box B and only want to see this through the lens of identity politics.
If Trump’s history serves any precedent, it also kind of shits on his ceaseless narrative of blaming liberals / migrants / LGBT people for all the world’s problems if it was a republican who perpetrated the attack. Leopards would never eat his face, right?
You’re completely right, and I won’t be at all surprised if the violent nutjob is as much a bigot and xenophobe who thought Trump wasn’t Nazi enough to be trusted.
I’m just pointing out that his party registration isn’t necessarily an indication of his personal beliefs. Maybe he’s a psychotic centrist who wants a more moderate Republican candidate, or he’s a delusional progressive who thought the world would be better without Trump in it. Maybe he was a rape victim seeking vengeance, or a failed applicant from The Apprentice.
We don’t know why he tried to kill former President Trump. There are a lot of possibilities, and his party affiliation may or may not be relevant.
This isn’t even necessarily true. I lived in PA for a while and during primaries they can “temporarily” enroll independant voters into a party. They then unenroll you once voting is over, it’s to prevent you from being able to vote in both primaries. You do not “have” to be registered with a party year round to vote in a primary in PA. They’ll switch you over day of and switch you back after.
Independent voters can register for one party and then denounce their party after, but there’s no automated process I’m aware of. I’ve lived in PA my whole life, and voted since the 90s.
The shirt says otherwise.
Whether you care or not is not relevant. The fact is that everything is political now.
Not only that, he chose that shirt for today, he could have chose any other shirt.
OMG the meat bridge has spoken
Bullshit. That county has 2x as many registered Democrats as Republicans.
Bethel Park is in House District 40, which is a +30 R district. They have voted R for congress ever since 1969, the first election listed.
Because the county includes Pittsburgh. Bethel Park is a bumfuck suburb in the land of churches and meth affectionately known as Pennsyltucky.
Ok. 60% still isn’t ‘everybody’.
Fair enough. What I should have said was “Frequently, voters register in the dominant party to vote in the primary for the party that is presumed to win.” Everybody is an exaggeration.
Thank you. I don’t like the hand waving that they are using to somehow blame this on their ‘enemies’ and that kind of exaggeration feeds into it.
