Thomas Matthew Crooks, the 20 year-old would-be assassin of Donald Trump, was a member of the Clairton Sportsmen’s Club, “a premier shooting facility” in the hills south of Pittsburgh. He was a math and science prize-winning 2022 graduate of affluent, suburban Bethel Park High School. Two months ago, he graduated from the Community College of Allegheny County with an associate degree in engineering science.
His parents are reported to be professional counselors of some sort. The father is a libertarian and the mother a Democrat, but Crooks was registered as a Republican. According to the account of a former classmate reported by the Philadelphia Inquirer, Crooks was “definitely a conservative” during his high school years who “no matter what, always stood his ground on the conservative side” during a history class mock debate.
He was employed in the kitchen of a nursing home and had a remarkably light social media footprint that doesn’t indicate any particular ideological fervor. At the time of the shooting, he was wearing a t-shirt from the popular YouTube channel, Demolition Ranch. Newsweek reports, “The channel, hosted by Matt Carriker, boasts millions of subscribers and features videos that explore the capabilities of various firearms and explosive devices.”
As far as I know, he left no note or explanation for his actions. FBI special agent in charge, Kevin Rojek, said there is “no indication of any mental health issues” and that Crooks was not on law enforcement’s radar. If there’s any indication of discontent with Trump, it’s a one-time January 20, 2021 donation Crooks made to the Progressive Turnout Project for fifteen dollars. The date is significant because it was Inauguration Day for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, and came exactly two weeks after Trump’s violent attempted coup.
So, what does that leave us with as Americans?
Some are pointing to the fact that Crooks was a registered Republican with conservative views to absolve the left of any responsibility for the shooting. Others are arguing that the left’s warnings about a potential second term are so overwrought and alarmist that it provides a rationale for murder that must have influenced Crooks. Concern that the assassination attempt will fuel further violence is widespread, as are calls for everyone to tone down the rhetoric. President Biden was explicit on this point in his Sunday night address to the nation from the Oval Office:
“We can’t allow this violence to be normalized,” Mr. Biden said. “The political rhetoric in this country has gotten very heated. It’s time to cool it down. We all have a responsibility to do that.”
He added that “politics must never be a literal battlefield, God forbid, a killing field.”
I very much want to follow President Biden’s advice to cool down the political rhetoric, but there are limits to what I can manage. I don’t consider anything I’ve ever written about Trump to be irresponsible or hyperbole and I have no plan on pulling my punches now.
So, to begin, I have to emphasize that there no evidence that the rhetoric of the left had any influence on Crooks at all. If he was a Republican who was jolted by Trump’s actions on January 6 into abandoning his party, he’s not alone in that. When we look at former Republican Never Trumpers like Rick Wilson, Steve Schmidt and Stuart Stevens, we don’t argue that they were dupes of left-wing propaganda. They oppose Trump for many of the same reasons that Democrats oppose him, but not because Democrats oppose him. And their rhetoric about the threat Trump poses to the nation is just as heated as you’ll find from any partisan Democrat.
Having said that, I won’t lie to you. Behind the scenes on the left, I’ve encountered some disappointment that the assassination was unsuccessful. I know this from my own personal interactions. People might not like me acknowledging this, but it’s one of the most important elements of the situation the country now faces. And to explain why this is the case without endorsing it, I can point you to a piece I wrote on July 2nd, called We Are Absolved From All Allegiance to the Supreme Court.
In that piece, I argued that the Supreme Court’s decision to undermine the timely prosecution of Trump for January 6 and the classified documents case, and then to provide Trump with near-total immunity for all official acts he made in office or might make in a second term, had made Trump’s defeat in November essential to any peaceful resolution to our current divisions.
Why did I say this?
I said it because the left in this country is demanding justice for Trump’s crimes. It amounts to a faith in the system that it can manage something as serious as an attempted coup by a then-sitting president. How would you have expected the left to respond if Trump’s coup had been successful and Biden and Harris had never taken office? In that case, because the system failed, the laws could no longer be said to have the consent of the people and violence would have been inevitable.
But the system held and the transfer of power took place. And then the system went about protecting itself and us by holding the people who tried to carry out the coup responsible. Rioters were arrested, lawyers were disbarred and indicted and convicted, political operatives and fake electors were indicted and convicted. Fox News was held liable for hundreds of millions in damages. And Trump was arrested, not only for January 6 but for mishandling classified documents and committing business fraud. He was also held liable for sexual assault. For all these reasons, the left remained peaceful. The system was working.
On July 11, two days before the assassination attempt, Trump was supposed to be sentenced on 34 felony counts of filing false business records in New York to cover up an affair with Stormy Daniels in the lead-up to the 2020 election. But because the Supreme Court had ruled that evidence stemming from official acts while Trump was in office cannot be used in court against him, the sentencing hearing was put off until September 18, and it’s possible the whole case will be thrown out. It was also announced that the federal January 6 case against Trump will be delayed past the election. As I’m writing this, it has been reported that the federal documents case has been dismissed by Judge Eileen Cannon. This last blow, coming two days after the assassination attempt, could not have been a motive for Crooks, but it’s of a piece with the others. Collectively, they tell the people that the system has failed to protect itself or to protect them.
And, this is vitally important, because Trump has threatened revenge against the system and his political opponents. And, because the Supreme Court has given the office of the president the right to commit almost any crime with impunity so long as it can be tenuously connected to an “official act,” the expectation now is that people will have no legal protection from Trump if he is reelected.
Now I wouldn’t be being straight with you if I didn’t acknowledge a final factor leading to some acceptance of political violence among opponents of Donald Trump. And that’s that the Democrats’ candidate to oppose him, Joe Biden, is broadly thought not to be up to the task of winning. The two weeks leading up to the assassination attempt were dominated with news about efforts to replace him as the nominee. This had the effect of making a second Trump term look not only likely but inevitable.
And that would lead to total system failure. Not only would Trump not be held to account, but he’d have free rein to settle scores and destroy the institutions that ensure equal justice in this country, including free rein to commit and order criminal acts of retribution.
I began my July 2 piece by writing “Today, for the first time in a long time, I read the entire Declaration of Independence. It just felt like something I needed to do. Some people feel like fleeing the country, but I’d be ashamed to give up the fight.” That wasn’t written in some kind of vacuum. It was in response to what I was hearing from people I know on the left in the aftermath of the Supreme Court ruling on presidential immunity. The most common thing I heard was that it was time to leave the country. And the reason was the anticipated election of Trump and subsequent collapse of the system.
Is this hyperbole? Is it irresponsible to openly express what people are feeling? The most important part of the Declaration of Independence is the idea that governments are instituted to secure the people’s rights, and derive “their just powers from the consent of the governed.” The people voted in 2020 for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. They gave their consent for them to govern. Trump tried to ignore this and his actions led to violence, property destruction and death. There was no consent for that.
There was also no consent for a conservative judicial branch to protect Trump from accountability, allowing him to run for president again without first having his days in court to account for his actions. There was no consent for a conservative judicial branch to turn the presidency into a lawless dictatorship. And there will be no consent to the crimes of retribution that Trump carries out if he is reelected, nor will there be any meaningful legal recourse to restrain him.
The opposite of political consent is political violence. I can tell you right now, without endorsing it, that if Trump is reelected and behaves as anticipated in a lawless and spiteful manner, there will be violent resistance, and it will be violent precisely because the Supreme Court has taken away all non-peaceful ways of resisting. I predicted this would happen before the assassination attempt, and I have no idea what motivated Crooks, but I can say with certainty why his effort has some quiet support.
There’s still a way out of this hellhole. Rachel Kleinfeld, an expert on political violence and a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, was recently interviewed by Catherine Kim of Politico, and I think she made some important points. She said she wasn’t surprised that an attempt had been made on Trump’s life because “When polarizing figures (Trump) attempt to normalize political violence and make that a way in which they quiet moderates in their own party and opponents, they can’t stop where that violence will go.” But she also saw a path of hope, and it involves defeating Trump at the ballot box.
What we really need to happen in America has just happened in France and in Poland and even in Brazil — where Bolsonaro faced an assassination attempt — is for that broad swath of center left to center right to stand up and say, “We want a different kind of politician, and we want a different kind of political society.”
…What we need is accountability, not just for this political actor, but for anyone using political violence, such as the January 6 insurrectionists. You stop political violence through accountability, widespread condemnation from your own side and public revulsion.
…We’ve seen political violence reduce in our own country when political parties that tried to spread it, like the Know Nothing Party in the 1800s, fail or fall apart.
And so the best way to stop it is to vote out the political leaders who are trying to use incendiary rhetoric and normalize violence in our system.
Maybe it’s just a coincidence, but with Biden’s struggles and Trump’s sentencing delay, faith that this country will vote against Trump and he will face accountability hit a nadir in the days leading up to the assassination attempt and irrespective of the shooter’s motives, the despair felt as a result is fueling tacit support for desperate measures.
The effort to get Biden to withdraw as a candidate is part and parcel of the same sense of panic. But I think it’s possible that people will respond to the shooting not by rallying around Trump or by supporting more violence against him. Rather, we might say, as Ms. Kleinfeld suggests, “We want a different kind of politician” and vote against “the political leader who uses incendiary rhetoric to normalize violence in our system.”
That’s still my hope, because political violence is a sign of societal collapse, and I can’t see any way we won’t see more of it if Trump is victorious in November. Yes, things have gotten this toxic and it’s difficult to tone down the rhetoric because a lot of the rhetoric is all too on point. The stakes in this election are minor for the right. They lose, they get more of the same which looks pretty good compared to how other countries are faring. But the stakes for everyone else, and anyone who believes in the principles of representative non-monarchial government, could not be higher.
When it comes to our divisions, I do not blame the left’s rhetoric. I blame Donald Trump first, and the Supreme Court second. They want to govern without consent, and that has historically predictable outcomes. The tonic for violence is hope, and hope has almost left the building. That’s why calls to cool down the rhetoric will likely be unavailing, even if they are eminently responsible and appropriate.
It’s unequivocally wrong to commit or support political violence against Trump or anyone else. I condemn what Thomas Matthew Crooks did. That doesn’t mean Trump doesn’t need to be held accountable. And it certainly doesn’t mean he should be elected. This is especially true if you want to see this country bind up its wounds.
