Shooting of Donald Trump: JKF without the glamour and the thrills

The attempted assassination of US presidential contender Donald Trump keeps taking bizarre turns day by day. More than two weeks after the shooting, the media is bursting with speculation, with everyone from snipers to former secret service agents, forensic experts,  mushrooming analysts, and even body language experts falling over each other (this is really the case on social media), telling us what they think happened in Philadelphia that day, and why.

The number of voices convinced this is a conspiracy is growing day by day. People love conspiracies and this looks like the plot of a Robert Ludlum thriller. Most of the conspiracy theory pushers are former FBI  or secret service people, out to make a buck while the sun shines.

Everyone is unanimous that this was a colossal failure on the part of US secret service. Everyone is agreed, more or less, about the details of the shooter’s life, his movements that day and how he arrived at the venue and set himself up to shoot Trump.

Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, was a high school graduate planning to attend college for an engineering degree. He was good at science and math, and had a keen interest in history. Schoolmates say he was a loner, but not anti-social and with no history of violence. Teachers say he was nice and helpful. He was a registered Republican but made a small contribution to a leftwing cause, and he loved guns. In short, he’s a puzzle, but only because he shot Donald Trump.

Studious student 

Some say he was bullied at school. But that’s not unusual for a studious student wearing glasses. If he was looking to avenge that, he would have aimed at his bullies, or even people in a crowd resembling his bullies (he may have thought of Donald Trump as a big bully – which he can be – but we’ll never know now that Crooks is dead).

One commentator said Crooks had surfed porn sites earlier that day, and she interviewed a psychiatrist asking if this is standard behaviour for pathological killers. One can say with some certainty that surfing porn is standard behaviour for teenage high school students, and even people who are older. Several years ago, an American admiral committed suicide when it was found he had used his official computer to surf porn sites and an official investigation was about to be launched.

Crooks walked a mile carrying a ladder and an assault rifle, wearing a camouflage kit, and climbed to the top of a two-storey building just 150 metres in front of Trump’s podium. That building was full of local police personnel, but they say they lost track of him after he climbed up. Someone in uniform (either police or secret service) actually challenged him on the roof, but jumped down when Brooks pointed his AR-15 semi-automatic rifle at him. 

He was spotted by law enforcement officials three hours before he fired the first of five rounds at Trump. He was classified as a threat by the secret service one hour before that. But no one moved in to stop him.

Conspiracy theory 

This is where I rule out the conspiracy theory. Any serious plotter would have made sure the shooter wasn’t spotted before the event. He would have checked out the shooter’s record. Crooks was apparently such a bad shot he couldn’t find a place in the school’s rifle team.

There are two taller buildings on either side of where Crooks settled down to fire at Trump. Both the police and the secret service should have posted their officers there, but claim they could not do so because both buildings had sloping roofs. A member of a secret service counter sniper team posted further away managed to kill Crooks after he fired his fifth round, slightly injuring Trump and killing a bystander.

A drone was found in Crooks’ car and it’s been established that he flew that drone over the podium three hours before the event. Again, the security apparatus failed to take notice.

Brooks had a second phone with just 27 numbers, and investigators are now checking who those numbers belonged to and who he talked to during his final hours.

He used his father’s rifle for the shooting (part of a collection of 20 weapons). But gun collections are not unusual in the US and no one is holding that against Brooks’ father. His parents are registered counsellors and co-operating with the investigation. They had called local police three hours before the firing, saying their son had gone missing.

The latest news is that Crooks’ father has been sentenced for failing to prevent his son from using a lethal weapon to shoot Trump. Earlier, they were saying the owner of the weapon was not liable under the state’s laws as Crooks wasn’t a minor. 

Secret service head Kimberly A. Cheatle resigned after two weeks of intense media hostility and official pressure. An American body language expert claims her body language during hearings shows she is complicit and proof of a plot to kill Trump. A Joe Biden appointee, she had made many enemies in the secret service because of her 30/30 goal, meaning thirty per cent of all secret service agents should be women during her tenure.

But so many questions remain unanswered.

Field day 

Social media is having a field day making comparisons with the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy by Lee Harvey Oswald. Just as in that case, there are many claims this is a conspiracy and there were two shooters, not just one.

It’s the so-called Magic Bullet which penetrated Kennedy’s forehead which is held as proof of a second shooter. It’s called the Magic Bullet because Oswald could not have fired it from his sixth floor perch.

Oswald was a former Marine and a much better shot than Crooks. Oswald had a sniper rifle with telescopic sight. A few hours after shooting the president, he shot and killed a policeman who stopped him in the street, and went to see a movie where he was arrested. Two days later, he was killed by Jack Ruby, a night club owner as Oswald was being escorted out of a police garage.

It’s hard to understand why, if indeed Brooks was hired to be one of two shooters, he undertook a suicide mission. He was intelligent enough to know there would be no way out for him. Illusions of grandeur can outweigh realistic assessments, but a paid assassin’s job is different. They would want to get out alive.

All one can say with certainty now is that the US has a record of inept assassins. John Hinckley fired six rounds with a revolver from 15 feet away at President Ronald Reagan – and missed. That too, was called a colossal secret service failure, as Hinkley was among a group of Reagan admirers and he wasn’t vetted. The press were kept 20 feet away while Hinkley was closer to Reagan.

There have been several attempts against Barack Obama, too, from far right white supremacists as well as just plain nutcases. Weapons included knives, shotguns and a homemade radiation gun. In this case at least, the would be assassins were always more inept than the secret service.

Just as Ronald Reagan profited from a windfall of sympathy after surviving Hinkley’s assassination attempt, Trump is surging ahead in the polls, playing Mr. Cool brilliantly. But November is still far away, and anything could happen now that President Joe Biden has stepped out of the presidential race.