In his first ever extensive interview after his piece of shit client pleaded guilty to slaughtering 23 people at a Walmart on August 5, 2019, Texas MAGA terrorist Patrick Crusius's defense attorney Joe Spencer tells El Paso Matters that Crusius "thought he had to stop the invasion because that's what his president was telling him, which is just not rational" and that Crusius believed that "if he doesn't do it, then nobody's going to do it. He's got to start" a race war against Latinos.

Having secured a deal to avoid the death penalty, Crusius is expected to finally plead guilty to the state-level charges on April 21st, nearly six years after the massacre that wounded 22 others on top of the murdered victims. The Army washout incel in 2023 pleaded guilty to 90 federal hate crime and weapons charges for which he was handed the same number of life sentences.

Even though it was obvious from the denials in asshole's manifesto that Crusius believed he was acting on Trump's command – something Donald and his minions also denied – El Paso Matters points out that this is the first confirmation from the defense team that yeah, he did actually believe that. It was a May 2019 MAGA rally in Panama City, Florida at which Trump said "I mean, you have 15,000 people marching up and you have hundreds and hundreds of people and you have two or three border security people that are brave and great," Trump said, then falsely claiming that Border Patrol isn't allowed to use weapons. "But how do you stop these people?" Trump said. One of Trump's fans then shouted "Shoot them," to which Donald laughed and smiled, saying "That's only in the (Florida) Panhandle you can get away with that statement… Only in the Panhandle."

Spencer says that was Crusius's cue, that he had seen that clip, and why months later he drove hundreds of miles to El Paso to kill innocent people, even though he later continued to deny it in conversations with his lawyer. "He was not comfortable going there. I remember at one point I even suggested, you know, we may have to subpoena Trump, and boy, he did not like that at all. So I left that subject matter alone. I said we'll deal with that at another time if we ever have to," Spencer said.

"I absolutely believe that words matter, and especially someone who's a… president of the United States. When he makes a statement like that, he should be very careful of how it's going to be received, not only by those of us that are rational, but by those of us that are not, that think that this is a message from the president," Spencer said, assigning some of the responsibility correctly.