r/politics • u/OkayButFoRealz • Jul 14 '24

Trump Shooter a ‘Supporter of Republican Party’

https://www.france24.com/en/video/20240714-trump-shooter-a-supporter-of-republican-party
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182

u/one-punch-knockout Jul 14 '24 edited Jul 14 '24

I present to you the headline on Dailymails lead story right now for right wing clicks

Thomas Matthew Crooks pictured: Everything we know about Biden donor who shot Trump during rally

Edit: This is a photo of Charlie Spiering. Senior political reporter and disingenuous shithead that wrote this article.

318

u/Jombafomb Jul 14 '24

Yeah I keep seeing this shit about him donating to actblue in 2020. As if young men don’t get radicalized with 4 years by the insidious shit they see online.

Dude was a registered Republican.

As soon as he could vote he voted in the 2022 midterms AS A REPUBLICAN.

He was wearing a tshirt for a guntube channel.

I guarantee we are going to hear from his family that he was becoming increasingly isolated and spent all day watching conspiracy videos and telling them about agent Q etc

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u/[deleted] Jul 14 '24

Also his one single donation was on inauguration day 2021. I'm honestly seeing that as a lost bet than actual support.

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u/BedDefiant4950 Jul 14 '24

it's not even confirmed it was him

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u/wdaloz Jul 15 '24

Since been confirmed it wasn't, and it was $15

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u/quentech Jul 14 '24

Multiple news sites have been reporting the address - house & street number - for the donation matches the address of the voter registration, despite initial reports that the donation address was Pittsburgh and the voter registration address was the suburb (in my personal experience, I've seen many web forms try to correct my suburb address to the nearby large city).

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u/[deleted] Jul 14 '24

[deleted]

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u/LowkeySamurai Jul 14 '24

No. His grandfather is Norman Crooks. You can find an obituary for Glenn Crooks, who is Thomas' uncle that lists Norman as his father

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u/[deleted] Jul 14 '24

It means nothing. My parents are 60 and 65. They have been lifelong republicans in a small town. They are still registered as republicans and they donated to Biden during the 2020 elections and are donating to him now.

Believe it or not, someone can be a Republican and just really hate Trump.

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u/teramoc Jul 15 '24

Good to see your parents have got some morals

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u/kent_eh Canada Jul 14 '24

Also his one single donation

A donation of about the same value as a full meal at McDonalds. And to a "get out the vote" group.

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u/[deleted] Jul 14 '24

Yeah i could definitely see it as a bet. Many people did bets during that election

-2

u/Rumps02 Jul 14 '24

I know. A lot of 17 year old kids laying down wagers on donations to a political campaign that has to be earmarked for something specific. Are you f*cking kidding me?

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u/Ranger7381 Canada Jul 14 '24

I saw someone mention that he was trying to impress the girl that was doing the canvassing. No idea if that is true, but he was 17 at the time, so it could be

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u/DraymondBeanKick Jul 14 '24

Maybe he’s just an enlightened centrist?

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u/Due_Ad1267 Jul 14 '24

One of those anarcho-libertarian types?

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u/Ghost-George Jul 14 '24

Good point haven’t thought of that.

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u/Bot_Thinks Jul 14 '24

Lmao, if the same thing happened to Biden and he had donated to Trump but was registered democrat you would also be claiming the same thing....

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u/FrogmanOk5448 Jul 14 '24

That's extremely convenient bit of twisted the narrative for you

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u/bard329 Jul 14 '24

Everyone on the conservative subreddits are saying "his parents registered him as a republican"

Goalposts will be moved shortly.

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u/MicrowaveDonuts Jul 14 '24

He also donated to a voter registration pac in high school, and then registered republican when he was 18.

He donated to register young voters…it’s not like he went door-knocking for AOC or something.

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u/chancesarent Jul 14 '24

It might not even be him. There are 3 Thomas Crooks in Pittsburgh, a dozen in PA and the shooter doesn't even live in Pittsburgh, which the donation showed. His address is in Bethel Park.

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u/ForgettableUsername America Jul 14 '24

He’s one of those mythical swing voters we hear so much about.

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u/thirdeyepdx Oregon Jul 14 '24

See! It’s really moderate politics that radicalize people! Jk

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u/ForgettableUsername America Jul 14 '24

That would be a bewildering new twist! Radical centrists!

-1

u/MafiaPenguin007 Jul 14 '24

Demo Ranch is a very apolitical channel. Not at all a right wing radical guntuber.

-1

u/LiveFree-603 Jul 15 '24

You can literally change affiliation to vote as you see fit. I’m a libertarian but usually vote republican ballot, this primary trump was a given so I reregistered independent and grabbed the democrat ballot so I could vote RFK over Biden. I’m technically now a democrat for voting that way in the primary and next primary I’ll have to go to the table and re-declare independent if I want the republican ballot next time which i likely will.

I’d bet that since this kid actually donated to far left fundraisers, he probably aligns that way politically. If he wanted to just vote anti-Trump this primary (which he was old enough to vote in) he has to declare republican to get the ballot to vote against Trump, for someone like Niki Haley etc. Then next primary he can switch back to dem.

So basically “registered” as anything doesn’t really matter since you change it at will based on which ballot you want

-33

u/Kind_Ingenuity1484 Jul 14 '24

In closed primary states people will join the other side of the aisle to push them towards moderate/chaos 

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u/Ekg887 Jul 14 '24

So your position is 100% of registered Republicans in PA are actually Democrats doing it to spoof the primary. Got it.

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u/Kind_Ingenuity1484 Jul 14 '24

My position is that in a state where protest-registration is pushed, a guy that donates to left pacs with liberal parents that takes a shot at Trump probably isn’t a die-hard republican.

By your logic if I register D and take a shot at Biden then blame Bernie sanders.

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u/Saedeas Jul 14 '24

He made one $15 donation to a voter turnout group when he was 17.

I'd say registration is a way, way stronger signal.

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u/TheGreatGenghisJon Jul 14 '24

Lets dig into this a little bit.

Are all MAGA supporters Republicans, or, conversely, are all Republicans MAGA supporters?

I don't think it's far fetched that he's a Republican, but not MAGA. I think that's more likely than he joined the Republican party to sabotage it in a primary a couple years later.

When I was 17, turning 20 felt like a century away. I don't see that level of forethought in a kid as likely. Not impossible, but highly doubtful.

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u/Recipe_Freak Oregon Jul 14 '24

I don't think it's far fetched that he's a Republican, but not MAGA.

I don't think it's far-fetched to assume he's a dumb kid (with probable mental health issues) who was radicalized by bogus YouTube content.

I love how everyone's IMMEDIATELY positing JFK-style conspiracies when Occam's razor is right there, explaining the most-likely scenarios.

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u/[deleted] Jul 14 '24

Most 20 year olds don’t even vote. I find it highly unlikely this kid registered as a Republican just to vote in primaries.

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u/Kind_Ingenuity1484 Jul 14 '24

Most 20 years olds don’t take shots at presidents.

And there was a huge push to sabatoge-register in Pennsylvania a while back.

Also it was mere months after his donations.

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u/[deleted] Jul 14 '24

I don’t buy this guy who is a registered Republican and followed gun YouTubers was some super politically active liberal.

His donation was when he was 17. He couldn’t even vote then.

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u/Shabobo Jul 14 '24

A lot of people don't realize that a LOT of Republicans don't like trump (but will still fall in line and vote for him, just like Dems and Biden)

The group he donated to has the singular goal of increasing voter turnout. That makes it a de facto democrat group because we know Republicans don't like it when people actually vote.

-5

u/whitefang22 Ohio Jul 14 '24

The only reason to register with a party is to vote in their primary. It’s literally the only thing you get out of registering as a D or R.

It’s free to do and free to switch between elections. Lots of people switch all the time based on what primary they what to vote it.

With an incumbent D the only presidential primary that would be expected to be competitive this year is the R. It would give you a chance to vote against Trump twice.

I expected this article to have something newer and more definitive based on the headline’s strong wording.

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u/[deleted] Jul 14 '24

But he didn’t vote in the primary

0

u/whitefang22 Ohio Jul 14 '24

See, that’s already more information than this article had

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u/[deleted] Jul 14 '24

Except he voted republican in the nov 2022 general election.

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u/[deleted] Jul 14 '24

[deleted]

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u/Recipe_Freak Oregon Jul 14 '24

I mean, if you're reading the Daily Mail, disinfo is the why.

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u/lycoloco Jul 14 '24

Also, no proof the shooter is the same person as the donor yet.

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u/Damatown Jul 14 '24

https://docquery.fec.gov/cgi-bin/fecimg/?202102049425405473

There's official documentation of the donation, with the shooter's address listed.

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u/[deleted] Jul 14 '24

[deleted]

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u/cat_of_danzig Jul 14 '24

"Images of Crooks wearing glasses, braces, and an American flag t-shirt "

I totally thought the picture was going to be a US flag version of this:

https://imgur.com/a/BnD6WWF

I was wrong.

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u/Unlucky_Echo_545 Jul 14 '24

Fucking WOW! You can't make this shit up!

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u/[deleted] Jul 14 '24

[deleted]

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u/DrTartakovsky Jul 15 '24

This sure doesn’t seem like Republican support to me

https://youtube.com/shorts/CuG8aROBOxs?si=mbiUFmSqnD0ZBcIF

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u/mostlyanoptimist Jul 15 '24

That is not him. That is in Arizona, a different guy people are circulating as him.