We Must Question the Attempted Assassination of Trump

Originally Published at The Last American Vagabond

Regardless of who is behind the attempted assassination of Donald Trump, the incident will be used to further bolster support for the corrupted political system and to stoke more division in the American people.

On Saturday July 13, around 6:10 p.m. shots were fired at former President Donald Trump while campaigning in Butler, Pennsylvania. Trump was discussing a chart of border crossing numbers when loud pops were heard and chaos ensued.

Trump grabbed for his right ear before crouching to the ground. Screams could be heard from the audience behind Trump. Secret Service agents then rushed to the stage to block the line of sight of the former president.

Once the agents received word that the shooter was down they brought Trump to his feet and began escorting him to a vehicle. Trump told the agents to wait several times while he grabbed his shoes, pumped his first in the air, and mouthed the word “fight”. Blood appeared to be coming from Trump’s right ear and streaked across his face.

Early reports from the Pennsylvania State Police stated that Trump was hit by a piece of glass from the teleprompter screens on either side of him. However, Trump stated on Truth Social that he was grazed by a bullet and videos of the stage appear to show both teleprompters intact.

A man named Corey Comperatore was killed and two others were critically wounded in the shooting.

The Shooter: Thomas Matthew Crooks

While initial reports and social media posts named several people as the potential shooter, the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) has officially named Thomas Matthew Crooks as the shooter.

Crooks was 20 years old and had graduated from Bethel Park High School in 2022. Records indicate Crooks was registered as a Republican voter in Pennsylvania. Federal campaign finance reports reportedly show he also donated $15 to a progressive political action committee (PAC) on President Joe Biden’s inauguration day in January 2021.

In a strange twist of events, Crooks appeared in a 30-second ad by BlackRock in 2022. The ad features a teacher at Bethel Park High School. Crooks can be seen in a classroom speaking to the teacher.

“In 2022, we ran an ad featuring a teacher from Bethel Park High School, in which several unpaid students briefly appeared in the background, including Thomas Matthew Crooks,” the company said in a statement to Reuters.

Olivia Rubin with ABC News reported that Crooks was once rejected from high school rifle club, according to two former team members. One team member stated that Crooks, “was asked not to come back because how bad of a shot he was, it was considered like, dangerous.”

However, Business Insider spoke with a former Secret Service agent who said Crooks displayed a certain level of skill even with his shots likely being rushed. Bill Pickle, the former special agent in charge of Al Gore’s vice-presidential Secret Service detail, said Crooks had to be “a guy who actually shot before.”

“This kid, at 150 yards, made a great shot,” Pickle told Business Insider. “I don’t know the specifics of whether he used optics, meaning a scope on his rifle. But even with optics, it takes somebody with training to aim at somebody’s head from 150 yards away, and you actually hit the edge of the head.”

Questions have begun to swirl regarding how Crooks was able to climb on top of the roof of the building without being seen by law enforcement or Secret Service. Video released from TMZ shows Crooks on the rooftop right before he takes the shot at Trump.

President Biden and some Republican leaders are calling for an investigation into the security failures to determine how Crooks was able to get his shot off without intervention by Secret Service. Biden has also urged “unity” and cautioned Americans about rushing to judgement about Crooks affiliations or motives.

Local Police Officer Attempted to Intervene

Butler County Sheriff Michael T. Slupe told CNN on Sunday that Butler Township officers received several calls about a suspicious person near the outside of the rally. Police went looking for the person and eventually found him on the roof.

The Associated Press reported that a local police officer climbed to the roof and found Crooks preparing to shoot. Slupe told the AP that Crooks saw the officer looking over the ledge and pointed the rifle at him before he quickly retreated below. Seconds later Crooks reportedly fired at Trump and was quickly shot by Counter Snipers with the Secret Service.

Slupe told CNN that it was “obviously” a security lapse that allowed Crooks to have a line of sight on Trump. He said the Trump campaign did not make his agency aware of any intelligence indicating an attack was possible at the rally.

“This is being investigated and obviously at the end of the day, we’re going to learn something from it,” Slupe stated.

Two Witnesses Warned the Police About the Shooter

Only minutes before the shots went off, the BBC interviewed a man outside of the security perimeter who claimed he saw the shooter before the shots were fired. The man said he saw Crooks crawling on the roof and witnessed the Secret Service “blow his head off”.

“We noticed the guy crawling, bear-crawling, up the roof of the building beside us, 50ft away from us,” Greg Smith told the BBC. “You can clearly see him with a rifle.”

Smith claimed he pointed the shooter out to police but officers appeared to not “know what was going on”. The man said he wondered why Trump was still speaking when Crooks was obviously up to something. He said the agents were “just standing there”.

“I’m standing there pointing at [the gunman] for, you know, two or three minutes. The Secret Service is looking at us,” he said.

KDKA, CBS’ local affiliate in Pittsburgh, also reported that an attendee of the rally named Ben Macer said he “saw the guy move from roof to roof. [I] told an officer [the alleged shooter] was on the roof.”

“When I turned around to go back to where I was, it was when the gunshots started, and then it was just chaos, and we all came running away, and that was that,” he said.

Another man named Ryan Knight told KDKA that he also saw the suspected shooter atop the American Glass Research building.

“[I] walked over about 20 minutes before the shooting happened to stand along the fence line where Trump was. As I was doing that, I was right beside the AGR building, which had the shooter on it. When I was sitting there, a guy said, ‘Oh God, he had a gun.’ When I looked up, there was a guy on top of the building with an M16 with a blanket, pointing at the president. He starts shooting. Four to five shots rang out. I throw the guy I’m with to the ground. I jump to the ground, I look up, and I see his head get split up from the shot from the Secret Service.”

Unconfirmed Reports of a Second Shooter

There were also at least two unconfirmed reports stating that a second gunman was on the scene. A woman speaking to NBC News following the shooting told a reporter that she heard there was a second shooter involved.

“What I’ve heard coming out is they feel there were two shooters, one on both sides. They got the one on the tower, but the one on the right side they never got. That’s why they wanted us to leave immediately: because they thought there was still a shooter out there,” the woman told NBC News

Podcaster Kyle Matovcik also tweeted that he lives about 45 minutes from Butler and heard a report on a local news station stating that there were 2 shooters on the scene.

“2 shooters were reported by the local radio station,” Matovcik tweeted. “It is possible that that’s incorrect. I’m just reporting onto you guys what I heard from the local radio station, who plays my band all the time.”

The Last American Vagabond has reached out to Matovcik for more information on the local radio report.

Although these reports are still unconfirmed at this time, if confirmed it would match a pattern of previous false flag shootings where multiple shooters are seen by witnesses, but the blame is placed on a lone gunman.

Who Benefits?

As the dust settles on the assassination attempt, the Republican Party is days away from officially crowning Donald Trump as the Republican Presidential Nominee. It is imperative that we ask the necessary questions to understand what took place. It’s also important that we do not blindly trust the narratives being fed to us by the corporate media, the FBI, or our social media feeds.

There are a few possibilities we must consider.

First, let’s assume, for a moment, that the story as we are hearing it is factual. This is, of course, a possibility. Perhaps the assassination attempt was simply the act of a crazed lone gunman who was potentially radicalized by hyperbolic media and divisive social media. His near-miss may simply be the result of a failure on the part of the U.S. Secret Service.

Of course, if that is the case, the question of how Trump’s Secret Service detail could fail so magnificently remains. This opens the door to the idea that his SS had been compromised in some way.

Another option is that the event was scripted to some capacity, although the full cast of actors is yet to be determined. Would the Predator Class stage such a near-miss assassination attempt to send a message to Trump to keep playing ball if allowed back into the White House? Or, perhaps they intended for the lone gunman to succeed so they might use Trump’s death to incite a civil war, but failed?

I believe these questions are worth asking, even if they offend some people. I don’t claim to know for certain about any of this, and I am willing to be wrong if with time evidence shows the “official story” is worth believing. However, if the Secret Service failed here it wouldn’t be the first time (Former President John F. Kennedy would have something to say on the matter).

Personally, I am of the belief — based on facts — that Trump is simply another player for the Predator Class that actually controls the political parties and the government. I have been warning since at least 2018 that Donald Trump is not a friend of liberty. He is not a hero and not a savior. He is an actor playing a role.

Interestingly, when you compare pictures from Trump’s time in the World Wresting Entertainment (WWE) to Saturday’s fist pumping moment, they are eerily similar. Is this all just another act?

Which one is Staged?

I can see why some may wonder. pic.twitter.com/YH46WVCCdu

— Dr.SHIVA Ayyadurai, MIT PhD. Inventor of Email (@va_shiva) July 14, 2024

Trump’s connections to Jeffrey Epstein, his mentorship with Roy Cohn — a known pedophile — and his bailing out by Rothschild bankers in the 1990’s are plenty of reasons to be skeptical of the narrative that Trump is the only thing standing in the way of complete and total tyranny — especially when Trump displays authoritarian leanings himself.

He is useful to the Predator Class as The Great Divider, stoking the flames of division while duping well-intentioned “Patriots” into making excuses for his anti-liberty actions. An attempted assassination on Trump only empowers him further and solidifies the near deification of him by his devout followers.

In fact, I think it’s a very real possibility that Trump plays up the “saved by the hands of God” angle and pushes further towards Evangelical-Christian Zionism and Nationalism post-assassination. Some Christian leaders across the U.S. have already attributed Trump’s survival to protection from God. Trump himself thanked the American people for prayers and said:

“It was God alone who prevented the unthinkable from happening. We will FEAR NOT, but instead remain resilient in our Faith and Defiant in the face of Wickedness.”

Will this assassination attempt be used to convince the remaining skeptical right wing “patriots” to support any actions he may take if elected to the White House? Time will tell, but, again, it’s a question worth asking and considering.

What Come’s Next? Order Out of Chaos

I wish I could say that things in the U.S. are going to calm down, but they don’t appear as if they will. People on both sides of the false left-right paradigm are already buckling down further into their manufactured silos and prescribed narratives which confirm their biases.

In 2020, I warned that a false flag was looming around the election. I have the same feeling regarding the coming months in the lead up to the 2024 election.

The Predator Class wants chaos so they can implement order. They will create chaos anyway they can. If that means killing a Presidential candidate who is supported by millions of Americans (and detested by millions more Americans), they won’t hesitate to do so.

However, if Trump surviving an assassination attempt serves their goals better they will choose that route. They are not omnipotent and they are not invincible but history shows the Predator Class running the shadow government is absolutely capable of pulling off staged events with both real and fake elements.

I encourage readers not to fall for these story lines and believe them as reality. This narrative is all about creating chaos and pulling more people into the charade of politics and engineered elections.

The chaos is only just beginning. The fanatical statists on the left and right will continue to fight for the ring of power, each swearing that Trump is the only way to stop Biden and the communists, or that Biden is the only safe bet to keep Trump from returning to power. Both are correct and also selling a false dichotomy to Americans who have not yet grasped that politics is not the answer to our problems.

Regardless of who is behind the attempted assassination of Donald Trump, the incident will be used to further bolster support for the corrupted political system and to stoke more division in the American people.

We must remain calm, stay balanced, and focus on what we can do for ourselves, our families, and our communities to create more liberty in our lives. We must not fall for the age-old trap of believing that political puppets are the only pathway towards a more just world. The real solution is to Exit from slavery systems and Build alternatives.