That's good news for the coming election. But I still fear he won't ever be punished for his numerous crimes, the biggest yet to come, the pedo rape connections from the Epstein papers.
My father, a lifetime Republican before Trump, and still a rather fiscally conservative man, was actually conflicted on whether or it would have been better or worse if Trump had died on that stage. He openly calls the man a Fascist these days.
Trump may be a Republican, but it's actually rather generous to call him a Conservative.
It wouldn't surprise me if someone would think Trump's death might return us to the Conservatism of the past, but I think that's flawed. The Republican party has always been on the wrong side of social politics, and there's no turning back from the stain of fascism on the party.
The shooter was supposedly a fan of history, a history buff. Let's assume the meme about men thinking about the Roman empire was true. The guy might've been a fan of democracy, looked at the fate of the Roman republic, saw the writing on the wall, and decided that he wanted to prevent that, and also make history in some way too.
I'm not even kidding. He tried out for the school shooting club and they asked him not to come back because they considered his poor shooting and gun handling dangerous.
LMFAO! I had a feeling he was conservative. It don't know about a terrible shot, he got damn close but if his school had a shooting club he was probably still better than someone untrained but could still be bad enough not to make the team. Like when I got cut from golf, a no cut sport, half way through the first day
He's a bad shot because anyone with any bit of training or even youtube experience knows to aim center mass. More chance of hitting. I picked up shooting for sport in 2017 and can hit center mass with iron sites at the distance this kid was. With my cheapo scope, I can hit out to 300 yards.
He tried lolz x-gamer headshot and failed miserably.
Imagine if his motivation was to prove he had great aim and that they did him wrong. Maybe he just wanted to become the most well known sniper-assassin in the modern world. Maybe that's the reason he didn't use scope, he wanted his memory to be that of the rifle maverick. I wonder what went through his head after he realised he missed. I mean, other than a bullet.
The first shot was pretty good, almost headshot at 100m+ is not bad at all with an iron sight, moving target and in "not firing range" condition. If he tried a headshot on purpose thats pretty good, not the smartest decision but still good accuracy.
“It makes me wonder why he would carry out an assassination attempt on the conservative candidate.”
Trump is the Republican candidate, but anyone young enough to actually believes in conservative talking points would not see him as a conservative candidate and would see him as a threat to the party.
If you believe the covid shot was deadly trump signed off on killing millions of people and even if he was tricked that means he's too dumb to be trusted
Who's to say he didn't just want to die and take someone important out with him. In the mental state he was in at the time, he may not have even cared about politics.
He did it... for Johnny. This is like that movie Citizen Kane where you later find out Rosemary was a sled, but we'll never find out who Johnny is, cause, like, he's dead.
Context It's quite prescient because he did indeed catch the bullet right in the ear.
Hopefully he wrote something down somewhere that gives us an idea to his motivation, but you're absolutely right. We may never know. From the little bit that has come out about the shooter, it sure seems likely to be a typical case of a young man feeling isolated and angry at society. I'm certainly not convinced that politics had anything to do with it at this point.
It was a horrible incident and there is no room for violence in politics…
That said, I am relieved to know that the shooter is neither an immigrant nor a person of color, or a trans person. And not someone on the left. The violent backlash from the right would be unbearable/unthinkable otherwise.
But, rifles are an old way of doing things, and predict that there will be more political violence through the next years.
And not one Republican or prominent journalist will point out that this is mostly due to the decade of rhetoric from the conservatives that political violence is the answer.
There is a growing movement within conservative groups that want Trump out of the way so a more competent politician can enact their crazy goals more effectively. Nick Fuentes is one example.
That would be a big chuck of them. It seems many support him only because they fear retaliation from the anti-democratic red hats.
If he passed, how long before the red hat movement collapsed without him as its figurehead? How long before many conservatives started shifting/distancing themselves from his memory? I would guess not long at all.
Problem with American politics is there tens of millions of people on both sides of the party split who abhor the candidate they've voted for but that's the candidate that won the primaries. So their options are vote their party, or waste their vote not voting, voting third party or voting the opposition party.
I think, looking at what has been published on him, it's pretty clear as to why he shot Trump. For one, his personality lended itself to a
hero complex. He was really nice, shy, intelligent, informed, and helpful. He clearly had respect for the Republican party, but given the info on his friend group, it was likely due to peer pressure. This is mostly made obvious by his political donation to the Progressive Turnout Project he made. A project that no conservative really should want to encourage.
In all likelihood, this guy saw the direction the States was headed in and realized there was no way to stop it from imploding without resorting to extreme political violence. I imagined he was upset with the fact that he wouldn't be able to do much through official channels in his life, so he made the ultimate sacrifice to will the change himself. That's why this guy's a hero in my books, not because he took a shot at Trump, but because he realized there's nothing any of us normies can do about the States' political situation through normal means, so he went above and beyond. He probably spent some time weighing the options as to whom to shoot, and realized Trump was the better pick.
Cynicism will definitely lead you to civil war. Go read up on the Spanish civil war. Their experience might come in handy. Political violence won't help you get out of this polarized mess, it will drag you in deeper.
Side note, he didn't make that donation. It would have been illegal as he was 17 at the time, and the donation came from a 60+ year old in Philadelphia with the name Thomas Crooks, not his town of Bethel Park.
Apparently that little bit of trivia doesn't actually apply to the story, and the shooter did make the donation.
That’s why this guy’s a hero in my books, not because he took a shot at Trump, but because he realized there’s nothing any of us normies can do about the States’ political situation through normal means, so he went above and beyond. He probably spent some time weighing the options as to whom to shoot, and realized Trump was the better pick.
I do wonder how much improvement there would be in the political situation in the US if Fox and the other channels spewing right-wing lies and fearmongering garbage went off the air?
Your opinion isn't based on anything... The conversation around that single, small donation to a "Progressive" cause is developing. Last I heard, speculation was that it was a known very spammy PAC and it was asking some ambiguous, more centrist survey question and then you could donate. People will turn their backs to a mountain of evidence to focus on a Pebble on the ground behind them.
Now reasonable assumption is A) he was tricked into donating to a cause he would never knowingly support B) He meant to graze and wound, but not kill to try to make trump a martyr C) He actually wanted to kill trump to incite a civil war or race war and figured trump would be down to be the pin on the grenade because he was delusional D) he was straight up mentally ill and he wanted trump to go meet Jesus quickly to get a medal or some shit.
First: As conservatives love bible quotes: Hosea 8,7: "They sow the wind and reap the whirlwind." Boy, did Trump sow wind everywhere. And Thomas Crooks simply was the whirlwind this time.
Second: Each and every year, about 50,000 people in the US die from guns, and politics f-ing does not care. Because they love the money from arms manufaturers and votes from the gun nuts more than the mostly innocent people who die. But once the wrong asshole gets his ear nicked by a bullet, they suddenly fall over themselves condemning violence.
You're intentionally conflating suicides--which account for about 2/3 of gunshot deaths annually--and the violence that Trump has repeatedly called for. Both are concerning, but they're not the same, and should not be considered as such. "Simply" banning the tools of suicide does nothing to reduce the misery.
But gun prevalence increases suicide rates. People who would otherwise not commit suicide end up doing so because a quick and relatively easy way out is available. Should those guns not be so easily accessible, some percentage of those suicides wouldn't happen.
Those gun deaths are a problem regardless of whether they're suicide or homicide. And the gun lobby/Trump is perfectly happy with all that death as long as they get their sales/status quo/money. The deaths don't need to be the same for it to be relevant.
If Trump were to trip down the stairs and break his neck, that would be one thing. Becoming a martyr is another. And becoming a martyr while still alive is even worse.
My money is the kid saw the 2025 agenda and despite being a conservative leaning person was still appalled at the idea people would vote for a fascist again.
I changed a ton just the first 2 years of college. I had a real shitty time in high school and didn't come out of my shell until I got into an environment where I wasn't getting fucked with every time attention was focused on me. I didn't stay in touch with anyone from high school but the times I ran into people from then they often commented on how different I was. I definitely became a lot less conservative after I got out of that environment where I felt like almost everyone was my enemy.
I don't know anything about this dude but that's what happened with me.
When the years start coming, they don't stop coming. Kid may not have been the sharpest tool in the shed but he tried to be an all star. He got his game on and went and played.
At 20, were you completely different than you were when you were in High School, or are you being generous to yourself because a lot more time has passed?
Yeah. That's why he tried to assassinate the conservative candidate, right? Trying to associate someone who was mentally broken enough to attempt murder to an entire political bloc is missing the entire point.
You do know that he could have been a conservative that didn't like trump, right? They do exist. I mean from the 34 felony charges, his links to Epstein, his talking about being a dictator for a day, calling to terminate the constitution a few years back on a truth social post, and his violent rhetoric, there's a lot of reason for people who identify as conservative (The shooter's father is libertarian and he very well may have also been libertarian but registered as a Republican in order to vote in the primary) to not like trump.