(LifeSiteNews) — According to recently revealed social media accounts, Thomas Matthew Crooks — the young man who attempted to assassinate Donald Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania last year — may have identified as “non-binary.”
Crooks fired eight rounds from an AR-15-style rifle at Trump at an open-air rally on July 13, 2024, grazing Trump’s ear, killing rally attendee and firefighter Corey Comperatore, and wounding two others. Crooks was almost immediately shot and killed by a member of the Secret Service.
Questions have long circulated about Crooks and his seeming lack of digital footprint as well as questions about how and why he was able to get into position on the roof near the rally platform where Trump would speak despite being sighted by several onlookers as well as Secret Service well before he opened fire.
Press reports after the attempt emphasized that Crooks was a “registered Republican,” but newly released information reveals a more complicated picture of a young man radicalized online. According to the Telegraph, digital profiles “suggest he used ‘they/them’ pronouns” and “reportedly had two accounts, ‘epicmicrowave’ and ‘theepicmicrowave’ on the website DeviantArt.” According to the report:
The platform, where amateur artists can share and critique work, also has an active “furry” community. A furry is a person with an interest in anthropomorphic animals that is sometimes sexual. Crooks’ activity appears to show he used non-binary pronouns and had an interest in scantily clad cartoon characters with muscular male physiques and female heads, according to the New York Post.
As pundit Benny Johnson pointed out on X, it “has now been confirmed that attempted Trump assassin Thomas Crooks used they/them pronouns, had a deep interest in furries, and was exploring gender identity.” Despite initially being a Trump supporter, the Telegraph noted that “Crooks’ political views seemed to shift dramatically towards radical Left-wing ideology around early 2020,” as evidenced by YouTube comments and other interactions.
Crooks’ obsession with bizarre forms of pornography and gender identity appears to be yet another example of political violence spurred on by LGBT-inspired radicalization. Tyler Robinson, the man arrested and charged with the assassination of Charlie Kirk, had a trans-identifying lover (who was transitioning from male to female) and had a similar obsession with “furry” porn; many mainstream media outlets were forced to explain the grim details of Robinson’s porn use in the wake of the killing.
But as many have already noted, there have been many other examples of terrorism inflicted by LGBT shooters in recent years. In August, 23-year-old Robin Westman, who identified as transgender, opened fire with a shotgun, pistol, and rifle at the children and staff of Annunciation Catholic School in Minneapolis, killing a 10-year-old girl and an 8-year-old boy.
In March 2023, 28-year-old Audrey Hale, who also identified as transgender, killed three children and three staff members at The Covenant School in Nashville, Tennessee. Hale was killed by police. In 2019, Alec McKinney, a female identifying as male, opened fire at the STEM School Highlands Ranch in Denver, Colorado, killing one teenager and injuring eight. She cited student refusal to accept her “gender identity” as motive.
Kash Patel stated on X that these new revelations do not contradict the fundamental conclusions of law enforcement about the attempted assassination of Trump. “The investigation, conducted by over 480 FBI employees, revealed Crooks had limited online and in-person interactions, planned and conducted the attack alone, and did not leak or share his intent to engage in the attack with anyone,” he wrote.
That may be true, but if these latest revelations are accurate, it appears that Thomas Crooks is one of many similar lone actors — and yet another instance of leftist radicalization leading to lethal violence.
