It’s been one year since President Donald Trump survived an assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania. The gunman, Thomas Matthew Crooks, missed Trump’s head by an inch—a bullet grazed his ear while he was speaking at a campaign rally.
It could have been much worse.
Though Trump obviously survived, the attack did result in the death of 50-year-old firefighter Corey Comperatore and injured rally attendees.
It’s strange that we still know so little about Crooks, his motives and what exactly happened July 13, 2024. Conspiracies swirled in the immediate aftermath about whether Crooks was somehow involved in an “inside job” or perhaps coordinating with enemies abroad. Those all resulted in dead ends.
Even now, questions about Crooks still abound: Who was he? Why did he attack Trump? Did he really act alone? What about the Secret Service’s role?
We have learned that Crooks has some classic markers of a lone gunman: Crooks was bullied and had few friends, he had little online footprint, which is nusual for a 20 year-old who grew up in a digital era. Crooks definitely seemed to appear troubled at first, and had access to money and firearms, but as more came to light, this became a contradiction.
CBS News reported that Crooks was “a meticulous and motivated student, attending community college after scoring 1530 on the SATs,” according to records. Crooks aimed to transfer from community college to an engineering program. Making future plans, being motivated and optimistic are unusual, if not entirely rare, traits for a would-be lone gunman aspiring to also assassinate a presidential candidate. If he was in fact living a double life, why?
I wondered immediately in the aftermath of the shooting if Crooks embraced a far-right or far-left political extremism that drove him to murder and the spotlight. But that hunch seems debunked too.
Former FBI agent John Nantz said Crooks did not seem to be a politically motivated extremist. “Crooks looked not so much like an ideologue, not so much like an individual who was being directed in some way to conduct an assassination attempt, but more like a person with antisocial issues that may have been seeking notoriety,” Nantz told Fox News Digital.
It’s possible Crooks really was a lonely young man struggling with mental health issues who tried to pursue a health path—college and a career—and succumbed to his own demons, planning and carrying out a nearly-successful assassination attempt. This doesn’t make a lot of sense but right now, it seems to be where the FBI and other experts landed. Unfortunately, this isn't satiating.
The idea that a 20 year-old with no military experience or real grievances planned and almost succeeded in assassinating a presidential candidate and former president, who was surrounded by Secret Service agents, seems genuinely alarming. If Trump is not safe, who is?
It did not seem like the Secret Service agents protecting Trump were in top form that day. Crooks was able to set up his firearm within a close perimeter, nearly a straight shot to Trump. Agents even struggled to remove Trump swiftly from the stage.
Days following the shooting, Secret Service director Kimberly Cheatle did step down and said she took “full responsibility for the security lapse.” There was an investigation and the agency did suspend six agents, ranging from supervisory roles to line-level agents.
“The Secret Service does not perform at the elite levels needed to discharge its critical mission,” the report found, according to ABC News. “The Secret Service has become bureaucratic, complacent, and static even though risks have multiplied and technology has evolved.”
I’m glad an investigation was done, but what took so long? The report’s findings were revealed just days before the anniversary. What else will be done to fix the problems in the agency? A handful of suspensions seem mild compared to what was at stake. I’m not sure a few suspensions convey the seriousness of what happened—and how much worse it could have been.
It doesn’t seem like this information has led to more answers, just more questions. I hate to think we still don’t know what happened because Trump is a Republican. Maybe it’s because there is too much bloated bureaucracy, or simply that too many things went wrong at once. In either case, it’s been one year and Trump and the American people deserve answers.
