We’ve been going back and forth quite a lot about what and what not to share with our readers about Thomas Crooks as far as his politics goes, but let’s start with the easier stuff.
💥 You may see some dispute over whether the FEC record for the $15 donation Crooks supposedly made to “Progressive Turnout Project” on January 20, 2021 is accurate since the record itself says the address is in Pittsburgh and but Crooks lived in Bethel Park, Pennsylvania. Problem is that the street address and ZIP code are the same but the city/town can be used interchangeably for whatever reason. Which means that, until we hear otherwise, the record is accurate.
💥 And so is the record showing that Crooks registered to vote as a Republican later that year in September, after he turned 18. He then voted in the next year’s midterms.
💥 Chat platform Discord, popular among gamers and far-right incel types issued a statement Sunday saying they had “identified an account that appears to be linked to the suspect; it was rarely utilized and we have found no evidence that it was used to plan this incident, promote violence, or discuss his political views. Discord strongly condemns violence of any kind, including political violence, and we will continue to coordinate closely with law enforcement.”
💥 The t-shirt Crooks was wearing during the failed assassination attempt was of a gun YouTube channel called Demolition Ranch, whose founder Matt Carriker has some particular cosplay habits…
Someone found old WWII pics of 2 dudes that look just like @DonutOperator and me. pic.twitter.com/iptA1bWTmO
— DrMattCarriker (@DemolitionRanch) May 18, 2024
Now for the speculation part: This might be going in a direction where it turns out Crooks was a fan of white nationalist shitbag Nick Fuentes who in turn has been critical of Trump recently for trying to disown Project 2025 and for being “controlled by the Jews.” Following the shooting, Fuentes was furious, ranting that he hopes it’s a “wake up call” to Trump and that his allies and advisors “don’t give a fuck” about him, just the “Groypers,” as in Fuentes’s hardcore incel Neo-Nazi fans, “not fatboy JD Vance – who voted for Evan McMullin – or any of these other Jews who just want to get him in so he can bulldoze the West Bank for Netanyahu and keep that fucking rat in power!”
We gonna talk about this? 👇 pic.twitter.com/aipHMWTnBt
— Tony Michaels 🎙 (@thetonymichaels) July 14, 2024
You might see some tweets claiming that Groypers and Demolition Ranch’s fanbase overlap but we don’t have any common thread yet between them besides the founder’s Nazi cosplay – and the obvious fact that they’re both far right extremist circlejerk communities. Just different ones.
We also don’t know what Discord servers Crooks had joined. Notice how the company was vague about the “no evidence” that he had ever used the platform to “discuss his political views” though, like they don’t want to call attention that they host an absolute shit ton of extremist groups. And that statement would technically still be true if Crooks was merely a lurker on Groyper or Boogaloo or whatever other kind of alt-right circlejerk servers. Just seems like they might’ve been a little more definitive about it if Crooks was just a gamer talking about Overwatch and Elden Ring, that none of his history on the platform had any value to those of us trying to determine what his motive was.
Like if he ever joined a server for InfoWars fans:
5 months ago, Alex Jones and InfoWars guest Ivan Raiklin discussed how assassinating Trump would be beneficial, according to them, because it would lead to retaliatory “in kind” assassinations of a “deep state” list which includes President Joe Biden.
Ivan Raiklin: “If they… pic.twitter.com/yzc1x1QJxh
— PatriotTakes 🇺🇸 (@patriottakes) July 14, 2024
Earlier this year deranged Mike Flynn acolyte Ivan Raiklin told Alex Jones that a Trump assassination would be “so much better for us and so much worse” for Democrats and that somehow would lead to Flynn taking over as the Republican presidential nominee, to which Jones agreed enthusiastically, saying “I was about as to say, If they kill him, that’s best case scenario from a sick level. From a sick level medium, ‘Oh, please kill him.’ I mean, it’s so good after that.” So yeah, it might be useful to know whether Crooks ever watched something like that any maybe got the idea in his head.
The point of all this being that there are a few ways it gets nailed down that this fucker was not a liberal Democrat (of course that stupid donation muddies the picture) but that the whole far right propaganda ecosystem in which Crooks very likely lived is responsible for radicalizing him, closing off all ambiguity as to whether the left’s “rhetoric” had anything to do with it. That will be more important in the long run than you might think now while the “sympathy” pours in for fat Donald.