Trump Shooter Was a Registered Republican

The man who officials say tried to assassinate former President Donald Trump was a registered member of the Republican Party.

Thomas Matthew Crooks shot Trump in the ear while speaking at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania on Saturday. The 20-year-old gunman also fatally shot a rally attendee. Crooks used a rifle while perched on a roof more than 100 yards from where Trump was speaking.

After being grazed amid the sound of gunfire ringing out, the former president was swarmed by Secret Service agents who took him to the floor. The shooter was quickly killed. Slightly bloodied, Trump rose from the stage and held a fist in the air while seemingly telling the crowd, “Fight.”

Well before Crooks was reported as the shooter, some Republicans speculated that the gunman was acting on the orders of Democratic President Joe Biden. Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH), who is reportedly at the top of Trump’s shortlist to be his vice presidential running mate, blamed the president “directly.”

“Today is not just some isolated incident,” he wrote on social media. “The central premise of the Biden campaign is that President Donald Trump is an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs. That rhetoric led directly to President Trump’s attempted assassination.”

Sources told the New York Post that the shooter was Crooks, of Bethel Park, Pennsylvania.

Voter registration records at the Pennsylvania Department of State indicate that Thomas Matthew Crooks of Bethel Park – born in September 2003 – was registered as a Republican.

Meanwhile, Rep. Mike Collins (R-GA) was even more explicit than Vance in blaming Biden.

“Joe Biden sent the orders,” he said.

Collins was referring to remarks Biden made to donors at a private fundraiser on Monday in which the president said that “it’s time to put Trump in a bullseye.”

For her part, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) tweeted, “Democrats wanted this to happen.”

Greene and other Republicans have claimed that the criminal prosecutions of Trump are politically motivated and orchestrated by Biden. In May, she wildly claimed that the FBI’s execution of a search warrant for classified documents at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence was actually an assassination attempt. Trump was not on the property at the time.

Trump, who was convicted on 34 felony counts in a different case in May, was charged with retaining classified documents after the aforementioned FBI raid. The Department of Justice is also prosecuting Trump for his attempt to overturn the 2020 election, which culminated in a deadly riot at the Capitol after he falsely claimed the election was rigged against him.

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