My opinion (and only an opinion from what I've read or heard from reports) is the shooter was a troubled youth. Why he decided to pick Trump as his target, I have no clue.

What does bother me is officials were given the heads up that some person was crawling up on a roof with a rifle yet the officials (local police, state police, secret service) didn't respond to the reports or delay the rally so they could check it out. As a result, a former President and possible future President almost got his head blown off, an innocent spectator lost his life and two more are critically injured.

I would place blame on the security (or lack of) on the local authorities and the secret service. Folks pointed out the shooter when they saw him setting up his position and notified the security folks but the security detail didn't act accordingly.

(Seven NINE!er)

BuckyB93 wrote:

8 I don’t hang it on Biden but you being so quick to dismiss it is flippantly irresponsible. And it wasn’t just him, had to run an errand and listened to Clyde Lewis play a 2 minute long loop of different people basically saying the same thing.

Remember Sarah Palin? Her target comment ?
I’m sick of the double standards, you want war in this country with this behavior you are going to get it behaving like this.

ZRX1200 wrote:

Here's A REAL GAME CHANGER!!!

WHERE OH WHERE WAS BIDEN DURING THIS ENTIRE TIME?

WAS HE IN PUBLIC?

OR DOWN UNDER THE WHITE HOUSE WATCHING THE ENTIRE
APPEARANCE?
ON A SPY SATELLITE FEED?
LIKE "ZERO DARK THIRTY"???

OR WAS JOE STRANOSA ALL IN PUBLIC WITH KAMALA IN THE UNDERGROUND WHITEHUT BUNKER ROOM WITH THE SATELLITE FEED?

THAT SPY SATELLITE CAN READ A NEWSPAPER FROM OUTTERSPACE...
IT could see a 20 yr old patsy loser on a rooftop sure as day...

Mr. Jones wrote:

My point is, Trump has said so many incendiary things over the years, and polling suggests 10% of Americans believe Trump should be stopped at all costs because he's a threat to Democracy, and 3% of those people have guns, the thought of some people wanting to shoot him isn't a new proposition.

It isn't like Biden said Put Him in the Bullseye and that activated a 20 year old robot to kill the ex president.

I could use the usual Trump Supporter Trope of ... That's not what he meant. What he meant was....... But I won't.

8trackdisco wrote:

DrMaddVibe wrote:

So are you saying it’s Trump’s fault someone tried to assassinate him or is it the fault of the Democrats and the mainstream media that have been telling us Trump is literally Hitler since 2016?

HockeyDad wrote:

There are a lot of people out there who have mental illnesses. 13 veterans die every day from suicide. Who knows how many of them have levels of PTSD. For those who served in war zone, receiving physical and mental wounds. They paid their price while some of their brothers in arms paid the ultimate price.

If you know anybody personally that was wounded in war, ask this how they feel about the "losers and suckers."

And you wonder who might be angry or unstable enough to take a shot? It's wrong. But not overly surprising.

8trackdisco wrote:

If you know anybody personally that was wounded in war, ask this how they feel about the "losers and suckers."

8trackdisco wrote:

Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity,news,

In the wake of the assassination attempt on Donald Trump, GOP Senator Rand Paul has called for Joe Biden to “tone down” his language.

“People say ‘oh, we need to have unity and the rhetoric needs to be toned down.’ Of course it does,” Paul said Monday, adding “But I think we could be more specific.”

“I think it would be helpful if President Biden would tone his rhetoric down, frankly,” Paul emphasised, specifically singling out “The fact that he’s saying all of the time that somehow President Trump is a threat to democracy.”

“The Soviet Union was a threat to democracy. Hitler was a threat to democracy. But comparing Trump to the Soviet Union, and to Hitler, isn’t helpful,” Paul urged.

“And it’s instigating people to think ‘oh my goodness, if President Trump wins, democracy will end.’ When you say such hyperbolic things, I think crazy people somehow can be incited by it. So, I hope President Biden will tone down his rhetoric,” the Senator reiterated.

Asked if both parties should tone it down, Paul responded “Well, really, the violence was directed toward President Trump, so I think it’s mostly incumbent on President Biden to tone down the rhetoric.”

“Are there people on the right who probably have over the top rhetoric? They need to tone it down too,” he added, clarifying “But I’m very much aware of the rhetoric coming from the left now, and from President Biden, because this turned out to be an anti-Trump assassination attempt.”

An example of Biden’s over the top rhetoric from just last week was flagged by, of all people, NBC’s Lester Holt during an interview aired Monday.

“You called President Trump ‘an existential threat’ and said it’s time to put him ‘in the bullseye,’ Holt told Biden.

“I didn’t say ‘crosshairs,’” Biden oddly responded, forcing Holt to repeat the phrase ‘bullseye’.

Biden attempted to pass it off as meaning ‘in focus’.

“Have you taken a step back and done a little soul-searching on things that you may have said that could incite people who are not balanced?” Holt further asked Biden.

“I have not engaged in that rhetoric,” Biden falsely claimed.

HockeyDad wrote:

The Secret Service was warned about Thomas Michael Crooks and designated him as a “threat” 10 minutes before former President Donald Trump took the stage, but allowed him to go on anyway, law enforcement sources told The Post.

The agency was also warned that there was a “character of suspicion” on the grounds more than an hour before Saturday’s deadly shooting at Trump’s campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, sources said.

Fox News first reported the new details, which emerged during a stunning Senate briefing by the Secret Service on Wednesday.

“He was identified as a character of suspicion because [he had] a rangefinder as well as a backpack. And this was over an hour before the shooting actually occurred,” said Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.).

“So, you would think over the course of that hour, you shouldn’t lose sight of the individual. Somebody ought to be following up on those sorts of things. No evidence of that happening at all.”

It was previously unknown whether local police who spotted Crooks outside the perimeter of the rally had warned Secret Service agents in time. The new details confirm that the agency got the message, but failed to act on it.

Barrasso noted that the top Secret Service agent in charge of securing the rally was speaking to local police on the phone as the shooting took place.

He called on Secret Service chief Kimberly Cheatle to resign, joining a growing chorus of critics calling for her to leave her post.

A fatal combination of systemic and in-the-moment security failures led to the attempt on Trump’s life before Saturday’s rally even began.

This flurry of catastrophic errors enabled Crooks to waltz around the grounds for hours before he opened fire on the Butler, Pa. crowd, killing a hero ex-firefighter, clipping the former president and critically wounding two others.

Alarmingly, the groundwork was laid for disaster well in advance, due to a series of grievous decisions at the highest levels.Cheatle said the agency opted not to station a sniper on the roof of the AGR International building – from which Crooks would later unleash his deadly rifle assault on the crowd – because it was too slanted.

The decision to leave the building’s roof unguarded gave Crooks an ideal sniper’s perch on a silver platter – an elevated position with an unobstructed line of sight just 130 yards away from Trump on the stage.

The reasoning behind the choice to keep agents off the roof is even more bizarre considering the Secret Service was warned ahead of the campaign rally that local cops would be unable to spare a patrol car to park outside the building for the event.

The agency “was informed that the local police department did not have manpower to assist with securing that building,” Butler County District Attorney Richard Goldinger told the Washington Post.

A Secret Service official even confirmed to the outlet that stationing an officer outside the building was considered one of the ways to ensure the building — which was just outside the rally’s established security perimeter – was properly secured.

Officers would ultimately be posted inside the building on the day of the rally, but Crooks had no apparent difficulty scaling the building right under their noses and positioning himself with his father’s AR-style assault rifle.

This means even before the first attendee showed up or the first bunch of Trump 2024 balloons was inflated, an easily accessible, single-story structure that was a known security risk was left without adequate protection both outside and on the roof.

The security personnel on the day of the rally didn’t fare much better.

The lanky, awkward Crooks apparently stuck out in the crowd like a sore thumb from the moment he arrived.

He set off the metal detector at the rally entrance because he was carrying a rangefinder — a type of eyepiece scope often used by hunters or golfers to determine far-off distances on the fly.

Despite the unusual item, Crooks breezed right through the entry gates.

It wasn’t even confiscated, and a rooftop counter-sniper team would later report Crooks was scoping them out with his rangefinder while they watched him with theirs.

Security personnel reportedly kept their eyes on the 20-year-old until he was past the secure area. But it wasn’t long before he drew the suspicion of officials again – not once, but twice – and was even photographed and reported.

Around 5:45 p.m., just 26 minutes before the shots rang out, a member of the Beaver County Emergency Services Unit (ESU) saw Crooks up on the roof and took a photo. At nearly the exact same time, a Beaver County police officer also reported Crooks as a suspicious person, and also took his picture for their report.

But the reports weren’t acted on or received in time to avert the tragedy.

In the final minutes before Crooks pulled the trigger, rallygoers near the AGR building saw him up on the roof with a long gun, and started frantically screaming to alert nearby law enforcement.

As online video showed, even as the screaming continued, Crooks had enough time to repeatedly adjust his position and ready himself to take his shot. Another bystander can be heard screaming “He’s got a gun!” just 12 seconds before the first bullets flew.

But it was already too late.

A disastrous series of close-calls, near-misses and mind boggling decisions by the Secret Service culminated in the first assassination attempt on a former or current US president in 43 years.

A peaceful leftist or Jonsie?

ZRX1200 wrote:

BREAKING: The FBI is now claiming that the Trump shooter Thomas Matthew Crooks had an unspecified "social media account" in 2019/2020 (when he was 14/15 years old) that posted "anti-immigrant and anti-semitic" content.

This is not consistent with Gab's understanding of the shooter's motives based on an Emergency Disclosure Request ("EDR") we received from the FBI last week for the Gab account "EpicMicrowave" which, based on the content of that EDR, the FBI appeared to think belonged to Thomas Crooks.

Many, particularly regime media reporters, have doubted Gab's claims that this request existed. Normally we don't confirm the existence or content of law enforcement communications. In this instance we had to make an exception due to the overwhelming public interest in disclosure and transparency.

As a courtesy to law enforcement, we are not going to post the entire request. This is the first page of that request.

The story is this: the account for which data was requested was, UNEQUIVOCALLY, pro-Biden and in particular pro-Biden's immigration policy.

To the best of Gab's knowledge, as of 2021, Crooks was a pro-lockdown, pro-immigration, left-wing Joe Biden supporter.

Approximately 30 minutes ago, Gab learned that Thomas Crooks, the deranged Joe Biden supporter who attempted to assassinate President Donald Trump, may have had an account on our platform. We are unable to confirm that the account in question actually belonged to him.

The account was last active on the site in 2021. As far as we are aware, the account did not use the site to send any direct messages. He posted on the site nine (9) times total.

While the account made very few posts on the site, the majority of them were in support of President Biden. A number of posts in particular expressed support for President Biden's COVID lockdowns, border policies and executive orders.

We have saved the account data pending receipt of a search warrant.