July 17, 2024 • 60 mins
On 13 July, 2024, a person later identified as Thomas Matthew Crooks attempted to assassinate former US President and current Republican Presidential candidate Donald J Trump at a rally held on the Butler Farm Show Grounds near Butler, Pennsylvania. Two civilians were greviously injured, and another civilian was fatally shot. In tonight's breaking episode, Ben and the guys explore what we know so far, what questions remain unanswered, and more.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of Iheartrading.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Hello, and welcome back to the show. My name is NOL.
Speaker 3 (00:27):
Our colleague Matt is away but will be returning soon.
They called me Ben. We're joined as always with our
super producer Paul Mission Control Deckant. Most importantly, you are you.
You are here. That makes this the stuff they don't
want you to know. This is breaking news. We have
moved our regularly scheduled programming as we record this evening NOL.
(00:49):
It is the evening of July fifteenth, twenty twenty four.
The news continues to rock the United States and the
world at large. An assassination attempt on Donald J. Trump,
a former US president and current Republican candidate for the
next presidential election.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (01:08):
I think we all probably experienced it very similarly, likely
in the form of a text from a friend or
a casual you know viewing of of some coverage that
then was interrupted. Whatever network is is your you know
network of choice for news.
Speaker 2 (01:25):
We all found out about.
Speaker 4 (01:26):
It pretty quickly, and it's historic events, no matter how
you crack it, whichever side you fall on. I mean like,
this is a big deal, and the question now becomes
what happens next?
Speaker 2 (01:38):
And also what happened?
Speaker 3 (01:42):
Yeah, well said, Let's begin with a disclaimer. At this moment,
the public has relatively little factual information, and in the
absence of transparency and factual information, speculation thrives. So in
tonight's episode, we're exploring what happened, what we know for
sure right now, and why so many people already seem
(02:02):
to disagree on the big picture. We don't have all
the answers. Our understanding of the situation will continue to
evolve as new details emerge. When you're hearing this now,
it is published on July seventeenth, Wednesday, which means that
Donald Trump has already made an appearance at the Republican
National Convention. But no matter what happens, no matter how
(02:25):
our understanding of this situation evolves, the most important thing
is that we are here with you, and we are
immensely grateful that you, fellow conspiracy realist, have joined us
this evening.
Speaker 4 (02:38):
And you know we're all in the same boat here.
I mean, Ben, I know you immediately as you do
went deep as much as humanly possible. You have contacts
and folks that have skin in the game, that have
experience in this world, and you know I do too,
to a much lesser degree. But we don't have much
more information than you, and we're not here to speculate
(02:59):
per se. We're here to talk about what is being
speculated about and to give you the facts as we
know them. So we're not here to freak anybody out
or anything along those lines. We're here to kind of
like experience this together and learn about this together and
just try to cool it a little bit.
Speaker 3 (03:15):
And we're grateful that you're here. And with that, let's
dive in. Here are the facts. On July thirteenth, twenty
twenty four, former US president current Republican presidential candidate Donald J. Trump,
(03:36):
whom you may have heard of, previously spoke at a
rally held at a place called the Butler Farm Showgrounds
near the town of Butler, Pennsylvania. And at first this
was like a regular rally, and this is Philadelphia adjacent.
Speaker 4 (03:52):
It's sort of like a I guess what you might
call a bedroom community or like a outer suburb.
Speaker 2 (03:57):
Because if you've been to the state of Pennsylvania.
Speaker 4 (03:59):
You know, you go from urban to farmland pretty quickly,
and this is somewhere between those two worlds, right.
Speaker 2 (04:07):
Yeah, Yeah.
Speaker 3 (04:08):
People gathered from across the area and from across all
corners of the United States candidly to hear Donald Trump speak.
This is totally in line and with previous rallies and
not unusual. The next election here in the US war
president is just a few months away, so it's quite
(04:29):
common for candidates from any party to make the rounds.
And what they're usually doing is they're attempting to garner support.
They're also attempting to get more funding as ever, and
they're hopefully hearing on the ground concerns from prospective voters.
This is not unusual at this point. It's also not
(04:49):
unusual for these folks to be protected by multiple law
enforcement agencies, federal and local.
Speaker 4 (04:57):
And given you know, Joe Biden his recent performance in
the presidential debate, which seems to have caused a lot
of folks in the Democratic Party to lose faith in
him significantly in terms of his ability to perform and
carry out you know, all the tasks and pressures and
everything that goes along with being the president. You know,
(05:18):
he did a bad performance and it really kind of
took over the news cycles. So while I wouldn't say
Trump is in victory lap mode exactly, yet it does
feel like the pressure from his side has been lowered
a little bit in terms of, like, you know, the stakes,
and he's not really having to defend himself, even against
his recent felony convictions, not even something he's having to
(05:40):
go out there and make the rounds to defend because
it's not being discussed because of the fact that Joe
Biden really did come off as having some evidence of
cognitive decline.
Speaker 3 (05:53):
Right, evidence of cognitive decline. And you know, the thing
is the United States Secret Service or the USSS as
you would say in acronym land, their job is a
political right. They're technically under the Treasury Department, and they're
tasked with protecting people like this. The ideology or the
(06:17):
political alignment should not matter. And whenever you see a
rally of this magnitude, the Secret Service is the most
visible group running protection, but there are many, many, many
more agencies involved, including local law enforcement, and that may
indeed be a problem. I don't think a lot of
people realize just how much planning goes into these appearances
(06:40):
way before the rallies.
Speaker 4 (06:41):
It would have to even if you're just a candidate,
a popular candidate. This is someone who's a former president.
Correct me if I'm wrong, Ben, If you've been the
president before, aren't you.
Speaker 2 (06:50):
Entitled to Secret Service detail for life?
Speaker 3 (06:53):
Yes? Yeh, have to be.
Speaker 2 (06:54):
It would have to be.
Speaker 3 (06:55):
It's not even like a it's not even like a
cool side benefit. It's a national security issue for the
rest of your life. The idea of establishing security in
this case, without going to into the weeds, this means
the basic stuff establishing a perimeter, which we'll talk about,
(07:17):
scoping out individual duties which we'll talk about, positioning everybody visible.
High ground security like scoping getting your getting your playing
clothes in there amid the crowd, and addressing what we
will call environment or event specific concerns. As the FBI,
for instance, clocked an actionable threat against this candidate, right,
(07:41):
how do we nip this in the butt? Ald to say,
by the time the protectee arrives the person who's being protected,
the area has been massively transformed in ways that the
average civilian, the average member of the public might not
notice well and if.
Speaker 4 (07:57):
I'm not mistaken, then if there is an actionable threat,
isn't it still up to the individual whether or not
to carry out the event? Like can secret service like
supersede that person's own will and say, no, it's too
great a threat, we have to cancel. Because I've certainly seen,
you know, instances where maybe there's a threat but the
(08:18):
person says it's too important, We're gonna I've got to
go through with this. Just be on the lookout. And
maybe I'm just thinking too much about like film world,
but can they You can't really force somebody to not
do what they want to do. Your job is just
to protect them despite what they want to do. Sometimes,
to my understanding, the the way the decision making process
(08:41):
occurs is such that they're these two like these two.
Speaker 3 (08:47):
Sides of an argument. If you wanted potus or a
candidate to do something and security said they could not,
it usually gets resolved before it would ever get to
that level of longer heads, but it is perhaps possible.
The thing is, we have to realize there's an entire
industry built around keeping these people alive. Trump's and it
went wrong. It went wrong this weekend Trump's Trump's rally
(09:14):
for a lot of People's kind of an all day
event right there. You tailgating like a concert. You know,
people are meeting old friends, people are buying merch and
snacks and swagged they're.
Speaker 4 (09:25):
Getting in the parking lot. You know, it's like a
fish show. I'm kidding that part's not true. But there
is a festivally. You know it's happening. It absolutely is well.
Speaker 3 (09:36):
Because you know, if you're winning hearts and minds, you
want people to feel galvanized and energized. So by the
time Trump hits the stage at approximately six h three PM,
the crowd is raucous, the energy is electric. Pennsylvania is
technically what we will call a swing state, but the
area around Butler, Pennsylvania is has long been considered and
(10:00):
self described as a stronghold of support for the Trump
campaign in particular. But his speech, No, his speech is
interrupted just a few minutes in. It's around six to
eleven PM when we hear the gun shots, six to
eight gun shots from a from someone who's later identified
as a twenty year old man named Thomas Matthew Crooks.
(10:24):
These were shots at Trump and into the crowd using
what the News described as an AR fifteen style rifle,
So like a five point five six semi auto.
Speaker 4 (10:37):
Which has range, right, I mean yeah, especially is it
like a proper sniper sniper rifle? Is there like something
that's more high velocity that could hit a target from
farther away than we're talking here that maybe the average
Joe couldn't get it is along those lines, or it's
a little less than that.
Speaker 3 (10:57):
There are other there are other armaments that could shoot
further that would be more specifically designed for this. We
know that Crooks was positioned on the roof of a
building that was about four hundred ish feet north of
the rally stage where Trump was speaking. And you know,
(11:17):
you and I both and Paul and Mat as well
have found different versions of the layout. Have found satellite
imagery you can tell where he was. You can also
see photographs of the guy's body after videos.
Speaker 4 (11:35):
Yesh, maybe the video is after he was I mean
a spoiler alert he was taken out. But you know
there is there are photographs where you can see what
appears to be the top half of a person prone
army crawling I believe it would be the term on
this roof. And then there are there is video of
people that then went to where the shots came from
(11:56):
and got a shot.
Speaker 2 (11:57):
Of his his deceased body.
Speaker 3 (12:01):
And these are still just the we're just in the
factual part. Absolutely, this might be a longer win, but
we think it's worth the time. This structure that Crooks
was a top was considered outside of that security perimeter,
so he himself was not subject to screening, and he
used a ladder to reach the rooftop. Then as he said,
(12:21):
no bear crawled across to achieve position. He got clocked
and observed, but apparently not engaged nor made as he
arrived in position with a firearm and a cell phone.
Speaker 2 (12:33):
I believe he was observed. Yeah, I'm sorry, Yes, observed.
Speaker 4 (12:37):
And and like like flagged as a keep an eye
out even right right, whether by local law. That must
have been by local law enforcement if I'm not mistaken.
Speaker 3 (12:49):
Well, the sieves in the crowd noticed this because again
he's so close that you could see him, you know,
without any kind of binoculars or other optic assistance. And
some people apparently said okay, even though this guy's in
casual dress a neutral colored T shirt sometimes described as
gray camo for a gun tuber brand, They said maybe
(13:11):
he's part of plain clothed security. Other people aired on
the side of caution went to whatever authority they could
find and said, Hey, there's something creepy on the roof
over there.
Speaker 4 (13:21):
But isn't it wouldn't it be standard operating procedure to
have posted snipers looking like posted snipers. There's no point
in having a sniper and plain clothes. Plain clothes is
meant to blend into a crowd if you're alone, you know,
gunman on a roof wearing freaking YouTube gun club t shirt.
What benefit does that serve in terms of like any
(13:44):
form of like covert operation, that makes zero sense, that
would not be done.
Speaker 3 (13:49):
We know that these reports came minutes before Crooks took action.
A local police officer found the ladder and ascended to
the rooftop and encountered Crooks. And when he did, when
he confronted Crooks, Crooks turned and aimed the rifle at
this officer, which caused the officer backed out the ladder,
(14:11):
at which point Crooks returns his attention to the rally
stage and opens.
Speaker 4 (14:16):
Fire immediately because he knows his window is narrowing at
this point, Like this guy, he's not going to take
him out by hand personally, but he is going to
report him and people are coming for him, so he
knows if he's going to do the thing, he's got
to do it now.
Speaker 3 (14:30):
At about twenty seconds after his initial shot, nearby snipers
on another roof fatally executed him via return fire counterfire,
and so we have a window of about twenty seconds
there of active fire. And due to the extensive video
(14:52):
evidence that you mentioned, it's been shared across pretty much
every media outlet. At this point, we know what happens next.
After that initial shot. We see the former president of
the United States, mid speech to supporters, raise a hand
to his right ear, and then he pauses and he
(15:13):
drops down behind the lectern for cover. Secret Service agents swarm,
creating the human shield. A couple more gunshots. You can
hear I'm sure you heard this too. You can hear
the audio.
Speaker 2 (15:26):
With my shoes.
Speaker 3 (15:28):
Yeah, let me get my shoes. You can hear the
audio where Secret Service receives confirmation of the kill right
of the Oh.
Speaker 2 (15:35):
I don't know that I've heard that. No, I don't
think I have not heard that, but I don't doubt it.
Speaker 4 (15:40):
This is all being captured on the lectern mic probably right,
like this is where we're getting that whatever audio was
recorded for streaming purposes or for you know, later capture
or whatever.
Speaker 3 (15:51):
And so there's this pause, and I love that you
mentioned this. After about twenty five seconds, agents helped Trump stand.
Blood is visible on his ear in the right side
of space. Yeah. He tells the agents to Paul's just
like you said. He says, let me get my shoes,
and then he raises his fist to the crowd and
he's mouthing out the word fight as they chant Usa, Usa.
(16:14):
He's escorted to a vehicle. He's taken to a nearby hospital.
Source of hours in the area was one of the
first non government employees to reach the hospital before the
news hit the press. Later we would learn that was
the nearby Butler Memorial Hospital.
Speaker 4 (16:30):
Yeah, and Evan Vucci, who believe is an Associated Press photographer,
capture to what again.
Speaker 2 (16:37):
Whatever side of fall you fall in?
Speaker 4 (16:38):
This is an iconic photograph that Trump.
Speaker 2 (16:42):
Knew he was making. He knew he was creating.
Speaker 4 (16:45):
This photograph of trouble, with his fist in the air,
American flag upside down flying in the background, him being
clutched by a secret service in full secret service regalia
looking defiant. I gotta give it to the guy. He's
nothing if not media savvy. He and to my previous
(17:06):
question ben about like, at what point do you defer
to the person you're protecting versus just you know, no, we're.
Speaker 2 (17:14):
Taking He had to say, wait a second, he could.
Speaker 4 (17:18):
Have and I'm not trying to like big up drop
or anything, but like he was in harm's way, and
he did, for a second continue to be in harms
way for the purposes of this pretty incredible photo op.
And that was after, to be fair, that was after
the kill confirmation. It was okay, sorry, okay.
Speaker 3 (17:35):
But at this point in this chaos, in this pandemonium, question, right,
your immediate question is is this alone wolf? Is there
someone else out there? And look, he receives what we
used to call a million dollar wound, and that's not
disparaging this candidate at all. It's just a wound like
(17:58):
that that great is your ear? Are you familiar with
the phrase one?
Speaker 2 (18:03):
I was gonna ask you the origin of it because
I don't. I don't.
Speaker 4 (18:05):
It doesn't quite even make sense to me, and the
least in the way that I'm thinking about it.
Speaker 2 (18:08):
So he help us out.
Speaker 3 (18:10):
Yeah, so million dollar wound. You hear it in Vietnam
or the Vietnam conflict. You hear it in later conflicts
as well. I mean, it dates back to like World
War Two. But the idea is, you get a type
of wound in combat that's serious enough to get you
sent away from fighting, but it's not fatal and it's
(18:32):
not permanently crippling.
Speaker 4 (18:35):
Right because to your point in the outline here that,
by the way, kudos, Bet. I mean, you couldn't have
been sleeping after this event because you cobbled together everything
that we have out there, whether it be the facts,
whether it be all of the stuff the theories we're
going to talk about. But you point out that he
could have had his ear blown off, you know, and
we're going to get into the trajectory of the whole thing,
(18:57):
but it likely was just ripped a little bit and
the blood spattered onto his face. Also, there was blood
on the bleachers. Yeah, there was a spatter of blood
on the bleachers. And I bet you he's probably going
to be deaf in that ear. I don't know what
you think about that, Maybe not, I guess if maybe,
I don't know how that works, he described in his statement,
(19:17):
knowing it was serious when he heard a whizzing sound,
you know, and.
Speaker 3 (19:24):
Yeah, yeah, we know that. To the point about blood
on the on the bleachers behind him, we know that
two civilians were previously wounded. One civilian was fatally wounded.
His name has been released. You can find it online
as a volunteer firefighter and tooling engineer. Overall seemed to
(19:48):
be a good dude, and out of respect for the family,
we're not we're not going to mention the name there
and give them. We want to give them time. But
you can find that online.
Speaker 4 (19:57):
Also a video out there of I believe some form
of er doctor, a general practitioner who attended to him
to some degree, you know, and his shirts.
Speaker 2 (20:08):
Covered in blood.
Speaker 4 (20:09):
He's wearing, you know, maga hat and full trump you know,
merch and he describes helping this guy out and to
use the word brain matter, you know, seeing that there
was brain matter, and that he said he administered chest compressions.
But it's the kind of stuff you do where you
as a medical practitioner, it's like you do it because
you're you're there on the site, but you probably already
(20:31):
know it's too late, but you still do it because
you know, at least you can say you did it
because you were there. But yeah, I would appear this
person received a head shot that you may as well
out there have seen the images of the trajectory of
the bullet of how it was literally the fact that
Trump looked left, I believe, or let's see, you know,
(20:53):
it would be right to my left if I'm looking
at the images to look and gesture to a PowerPoint
type presentation on a large projected screen with something about immigration, right, and.
Speaker 3 (21:07):
That shows us again, It's something we've talked about in
other shows, the history hinges on such small things, in
this case, a matter of inches or centimeters and look.
As is common with these situations, there was immediately a
tsunami of speculation, bad faith, disinfo, plain old conspiracy rock
on the internet. We were talking about it. We were
(21:30):
talking about off air. Folks like I want to thank,
folks like our Power, Robert Evans from behind the Bastards,
Ocent Defender, thousands of other people were delving deep into analysis.
And you have to do this because in the fog
of war after a recent catastrophic attack like this, the
(21:51):
reporting can often be contradictory because the real information only
trickles out at the speed of the investigation. I'm thinking
about the idea it was very common that I initially
suspected even that Trump was perhaps not injured by a
direct bullet wound, but by glass shrapnel.
Speaker 4 (22:09):
That came out pretty quick, and I believe it was
reported by some official and passed on and then sort
of parroted in the media during that zippity Do you
know reporting window that the internet just like requires now.
Speaker 3 (22:24):
Right, Yeah, yeah, you nailed it, man, Because anonymous law
enforcement sources apparently reported this, the journalists and people rolled
with it until Donald Trump himself went on truth social
and made his statement where he confirmed that he was
directly injured by a bullet.
Speaker 4 (22:44):
Have we seen the image that captured the bullet. Let's
talk about that for a second. Yeah, it's crazy. Who
is the guy? Let's see it was.
Speaker 2 (22:54):
I believe in New York Times.
Speaker 4 (22:57):
Yeah, exactly, Uh, Doug Mills, But yes, that's correct, Doug
Mills of the New York Times.
Speaker 2 (23:03):
There's video of him out there talking.
Speaker 4 (23:05):
And you know, when folks are covering these type of events,
they cover it kind of like you cover a sporting event.
They're using very quick shutter speeds, so you're and you're
just blasting blast bla blater like, so you can get
in the moment. You can go back through when you're
editing and find that iconic fist pump with the exact
right expression that you want, and in doing that, this
guy caught.
Speaker 2 (23:26):
It's crazy. You can see this line, this little blurry
line right.
Speaker 4 (23:31):
By Donald Trump's head and he saved I mean that
PowerPoint saved his life.
Speaker 3 (23:37):
Yeah. One of my old professors reached out and said,
person with an interest in history, and said, no matter
how you feel about no matter how people feel about
the events, this photograph will end up in a textbook,
which I think is accurate. Well, what would you say
to the.
Speaker 2 (23:56):
One hundred percent?
Speaker 4 (23:57):
I mean, it's a damn good photograph that captures actively
hits it good for the angle is dope, Like, I'm sorry,
just as a fan of photography.
Speaker 2 (24:05):
It's a cool photo.
Speaker 4 (24:06):
And we're talking about the fist pumping one, not the
bullet capturing one.
Speaker 2 (24:09):
Because the bullet capture where he's on the ground, no,
which is also pretty good.
Speaker 4 (24:13):
But the bullet capturing one literally required the guy the Mills,
Doug Mills to have been going through his photos a
frame at a time, because you can capture photos at
the same speed as video, like you can set your
shutter just to do a succession of blasts. And he
obviously was what is that? And he caught it and
now it's making the rounds. As I mean, I think
(24:34):
we probably again still needs some photo forensics to be like.
Speaker 2 (24:38):
That definitely what that is.
Speaker 4 (24:41):
And I just want to really quickly give props to
a guy I think you know, Jason Pargan I think
is his name.
Speaker 2 (24:46):
He's a writer.
Speaker 4 (24:47):
He wrote that Book's John Dies in the End, and
he's a YouTuber. He makes these really thoughtful media critique videos.
He's been on Daily Zeitgeist before, but he came on
and just really quickly in this short video said it's
really important during times like this to remember that when
something like this happens, ninety percent of the information that
you read out there will be not right, because in
(25:09):
this day of internet immediacy, the real reporting comes from
actual verification of the facts, and because of the nature
of the Internet and how what people have come to expect,
that just doesn't happen, and it all blasts at you,
leaving you to sift through the wreckage of it and
figure out what's true, and then the real reporting comes
(25:31):
much later. So he just urged people to be patient
and truly like wait for what the real facts have
to say. So just putting that out there, we're not
trying to contribute to that instant gratification internet culture.
Speaker 3 (25:44):
I also want to quote something sent by a good
friend of the show, professor Jeff who is out there
in Pennsylvania himself, who sent us a piece by University
of Plymouth over in the UK, guy named Phil Smith
who wrote an incredibly insightful point about this, who also
(26:05):
echoes the same points of Pargin, who wrote John dyes
at the end as David Wong old school cracked guy.
Very smart dudes. And we see some speculation that was
in bad faith. You know, this is the first kind
of thing of its type that happened in an age
of biquitist social media. So there were a lot of
(26:26):
bots out there, there were a lot of bad faith actors,
and there were a ton of conspiracy theories. The most
prevalent then and now is the idea that this tragedy
had been somehow staged for political gain. Despite the death
and injury to innocent people. And so now I would
say the biggest question facing America in the world is,
(26:46):
you know what we said at the top, what could
this mean? How can we address these questions that remain unanswered?
Speaker 2 (26:52):
Right? And you know, I just popped into my head
right now.
Speaker 4 (26:56):
I recently watched the movie Long Legs, which is a
procedural FBI investigation kind of thing, and I think the
reason a lot of times it's smart to base movies
like that in the nineties is because of the lack
of that ubiquitous technology you're talking about, yeah, or even
further than that. And now I'm thinking back, like if
JFK had happened, now, would the conspiracy theories have been
(27:20):
completely different?
Speaker 2 (27:22):
And or it just would have been solved, you know
what I mean?
Speaker 4 (27:25):
Like, really it's a different world and this stuff is
generated from that world. But you do have to wonder,
like what this is like a literal modern Internet age
assassination attempt in the biggest, most visible, you know, way possible.
Speaker 3 (27:42):
So we're going to take a word from our sponsors,
and when we return, we'll ask those questions, what could
this mean for the future, and how can we address
the questions that remain unanswered tonight. Here's where it gets crazy.
(28:03):
Let's start with this. Let's start with what we know
about the shooter, Thomas Matthew Crooks.
Speaker 2 (28:09):
At the time of his death.
Speaker 4 (28:11):
Thomas Matthew Crooks was a twenty year old dietary aide
at the Bethel Park Skilled Nursing and Rehabilitation Center. So
this is his town, you know, he's like literally from
this particular bedroom community suburb.
Speaker 2 (28:25):
What have you of Philadelphia?
Speaker 4 (28:27):
And again, maybe folks from Pennsylvania and Philly will correct
me on that sometimes there are gray areas of what
constitutes a suburb and bedroom It's close enough that I
would say it's definitely adjacent. You could make a day
trip to Philly. He was from Bethel Park, Pennsylvania, an
upper middle class suburb just about an hour away from
(28:48):
where the rally was held, which was a fairground. Crooks
graduated from a local high school in twenty twenty two,
so Reuter's reports that class mates found him to be
bright but quiet, which is kay, that's not tale as
old as time in terms of like lone wolf types
(29:09):
or even serial killers, you know, I mean.
Speaker 3 (29:12):
He also appeared in a Black Rock ad which set
the Internet a flame again. On July thirteenth, the FBI
disclosed more details about this alleged assailant. They analyzed his
social media footprint and they said, in their estimation it
did not contain threatening language. But then they also said
(29:32):
they had had him on their radar somehow. Hopefully we'll
get more details. They found no history of mental health issues.
They currently believe, and we checked this right before we
recorded that Crooks acted alone and importantly was not an
operative of a foreign power. At this point they have
the FBI has yet to officially identify or disclose any
(29:56):
kind of motive, by which we mean they haven't found
and so manifesto you know what I mean.
Speaker 4 (30:02):
Yeah, and Twitter ex or what have you, which is
it's interesting, like I have a dear friend who's a
friend of yours as well, Frank, who is a diehard
Twitter guy, And despite all of the shenanigans with Elon
and changing it to x and stuff, there's a reason
that Twitter still exists because it is a very interesting
cross section of the Internet that's different from other forms
(30:24):
of social media, whether it be because of the comedy,
whether it be because of the prevalence of fringey weirdos
on it. It is entertaining, and there's a real kind
of microcosm that exists within Twitter, and very quickly Twitter
lit up saying this guy was probably part of the
(30:45):
Grouper group, which is a far right kind of troll
four chan type loose organization. I guess I don't know
if you know more about this than I do, Ben,
but the idea being that Trump wasn't right enough or
something like that.
Speaker 3 (31:04):
Or that another thing, because you know, I'm all over
Twitter and stuff. Another thing I saw was the idea
or the the sort of wishful allegation that this young man,
this assailant was somehow anti fascist or antifa as they
would say. There does seem to be no proof of
(31:27):
that at this point. We do know that he did
not purchase the firearm himself. The rightfully used was purchased
by his father.
Speaker 4 (31:35):
We know, eleven years ago, is the latest news. Right
as we started recording, that just came out. So it
wasn't like his dad just bought it ort or was it.
You know, it was a legacy family weapon right right.
Speaker 3 (31:48):
And we know a little bit about political activity. Crooks
was registered Republican, as is his father, his mother is
a registered Democrat. His one of the administrators at the
nursing home that employed him said, similar to his classmates statements,
They said he performed his job without concern. His background
(32:09):
check was clean. We know that he donated like fifteen
dollars to a Progressive Democrat center to kind of get
the vote out movement when Biden was elected. But there's
still so many unanswered questions about crooks. As we were recording,
(32:30):
or right before he went into it, the FBI having
found possible bomb making material in his car, just.
Speaker 2 (32:38):
Like Magcutional like in the Charlie. Likely he was going
to use it later.
Speaker 4 (32:43):
But I'm wondering because when I hear that, I think
it's ready to go and he's gonna shoot and then
set it off the car.
Speaker 3 (32:51):
Yeah, unclear at this point, but we know that the
FBI evacuated neighbors in the area and then extends re
searched his home obviously for electronic devices, and he written records.
But the thing we have to know is to these
earlier points, a lot of the stuff you're going to
hear about this guy is going to be untrue or speculative.
(33:14):
Some people are just getting things wrong with the best
of intentions or with the limited information they have, just
like us tonight. But other people are going to be
trying to use this to push.
Speaker 4 (33:25):
You, yeah, in order to push an agenda or to
weaponize this event in their favor, right, right, and really
could just I think I made it clear, but the
Groper thing absolute speculation. But it was sent to me
by a Twitter person who's very active on Twitter, almost
as though it were definitely probably true, like just the
(33:47):
tone of it, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2 (33:48):
And this is a person I think is very smart.
Speaker 4 (33:50):
But in these times, we're all susceptible to this, we
really are. You have to be vigilant and be patient
to not allow yourself to be taken in and report
things to others as though it's definitely true, because.
Speaker 3 (34:03):
You know, one of the number one things the humans
hate unanswered questions.
Speaker 4 (34:08):
Yeah, and they also like being right and being the
first one to tell somebody something.
Speaker 3 (34:12):
Yes, to be promethean. Yeah, that's a great observation. Let's
talk about some of these unanswered questions. How the hell?
First off, how the hell did one guy a civilian,
no military record, no kind of counter intel training, how
did he manage to get so very close. Why wasn't
there already a security detail of some sort positioned on
(34:35):
that roof? The high ground is very valuable real estate.
Speaker 4 (34:38):
Four hundred feet it's really feet, not meters. That's insane.
And when you look at it on the satellite, because
of the scale whatever, it looks farther than it really is.
Like it's across what looks like a road, but it's
more of a path, kind of like a dirt kind
of you know, path cut into this fair ground. But yeah,
it doesn't make any sense because you had these two
(35:00):
snipers and their full get up on this roof. Two
why are there two on one? Why isn't there one
on that one and one on the other one? Because
it's just wild man, it's at the very least a
gross oversight and negligent acts.
Speaker 2 (35:18):
At the very most some vision.
Speaker 3 (35:22):
But if you know, if you have the time to
prepare a perimeter right and you have assuming that you
do not have a very hard austere limit on resources,
then you would want to dominate the high ground. You
want to command and control that and the map, like
you mentioned, you can see the satellite shot, you can
(35:43):
see other versions. You can see clear outlines of the
initial gunfire and then the Secret Service response. It's rough,
you know, one of the most plausible things I've heard
about how this guy got so close is what I
would call the disease of not my problem. When you
(36:04):
have a lot of different agencies interacting, just like in
any other big live production. To be honest, then you
have to be certain that roles are specifically assigned. So
is it possible that local yeah, yeah, thought the jurisdiction,
Yeah right, Hey, the Secret Service will do this. Maybe
Secret Service thought, hey, the local law will do this.
(36:26):
Those are answers we don't have yet, I mean. And
then secondly, dude, the shot itself, the not just the
shots that injured civilians and kill the civilian, but the
shot that got Trump uh set the conspiracy world of
flame because it's like winning the lottery twice. Any person
(36:47):
familiar with firearms can tell you, for the most part,
head shots are not the norm. That's what you see
in film and right exactly. And for a lot of
people who have been making high bolic statements, the closest
they have been to that situation is call of duty.
So maybe sit out.
Speaker 4 (37:06):
I just don't understand why there were two security snipers
with their weapons pointed in the same direction, right next
to each other.
Speaker 2 (37:16):
When there could have been one of those on that
other roof.
Speaker 3 (37:20):
Usually you want a team of two.
Speaker 2 (37:22):
Okay, that makes sense, but still the other roof, it's
just it's right there, man, that's the yet, that's the
real pickle here.
Speaker 3 (37:31):
And the general rule is that if you are firing
on a humanoid target, you aim for center mass because
aiming for the biggest part gives you the highest chance
of successfully hitting the target.
Speaker 2 (37:46):
Right.
Speaker 3 (37:46):
So we also know that Crooks was there's great analysis
of this on Twitter. We also know that Crooks was
firing to your point immediately after he got confronted by
that police. He was moving quickly so making.
Speaker 4 (38:04):
Me invite at a time and gotten a better shot
off if he hadn't been discovered in that way.
Speaker 3 (38:11):
So now we see a near instantaneous reaction because he
knows the window of time is now incredibly abbreviated. Firing
under stress, you know what I mean. These are the
opposite of ideal conditions for this kind of I hate
to say it, but this kind of exercise. So what
(38:31):
there are a lot of questions that need be answered
about the shot, and then third, did you think that
pause was weird after the shot they'll let me get
my shoes moment.
Speaker 4 (38:43):
Well, first of all, I want to note it is
it a known thing that Trump likes to do his
speeches with no shoes on.
Speaker 3 (38:50):
That confused me as well.
Speaker 4 (38:52):
I mean, maybe you know some bands like to play
barefoot or whatever, but like maybe it's a comfort level
thing and you can't see his feet, but it'd usually
when they walk on and off, you see their feet.
They do do a walk on and walk off. What's
the deal with the shoes, that's that's unrelated here. Clearly
there's no shoe. We're not here to to litigate the
shoe conspiracy, but it was an unusual thing for him
(39:14):
to say so emphatically. And then yeah, I mean again,
I think we know that Trump is a master media
manipulator or just you know, opportunists at the very least,
let's call it that to be fair. And he took
that moment knowing that there were a million shutters going off,
and he knew that was going to create that image,
and he did it. He thought it was worth it.
(39:35):
But to your point, there was the kill confirmation.
Speaker 2 (39:38):
But there could have been a second shooter, or they.
Speaker 4 (39:40):
Didn't know unless they did, which we're gonna go. I
don't know, I can't. I'm just it's it's hard not to,
especially in the world that we occupy. It's hard not
to have those thoughts cross your mind, is all I'm saying.
Speaker 3 (39:53):
And let us know what you think about the let
me get my shoes comment. And also, you know, I'm
grateful to have spoken with some former USSS about this
and other related things. Tell us, folks, if you have
any experience in security, is this sop? Is this standard
(40:13):
operating procedure? Were they waiting for the all clear to
move this candidate and former PTUs or was there something
wonky about it? While you're writing that email to us
conspiracydiheartradio dot com. Let's talk about the fourth unanswered question.
For a lot of people, audience behavior or perceived audience behavior.
(40:37):
This could be seen as reading tea leaves because a
lot of it is based on conclusions from video clips.
But we see what looks to be unusual behavior for
a shots fired situation in a largely civilian crowd. Usually
people go nuts, run willy nilly. There's a lot of screaming,
the smart ones try to find cover. There's some clips
(41:01):
that I think gave all of this pause.
Speaker 4 (41:03):
Yeah, I sent a clip around that I just again
just kind of doom scrolling on Instagram, which is sort
of my platform of choice, and someone was already kind
of making hay out of this clip, zooming in, drawing
little circles and arrows, you know, the ones of this
woman in sunglasses standing right behind the president, and just
before the shots go off, she holds up.
Speaker 2 (41:25):
A campaign sign.
Speaker 4 (41:27):
The shots go off, and she just kind of has
just a stone cold expression on her face, like people
all around her are ducking hitting the deck. There is
all those elements you describe, then the screaming, you know,
the we're trying to get to cover in some respect,
and she just doesn't do any of that and just
(41:48):
gently kneels down, and you see her she goes out
of the frame and then comes back into frame and
has her phone and is filming, and no one else
is around.
Speaker 2 (41:57):
Her is doing that just too scared. It's odd.
Speaker 4 (42:03):
That behavior just struck me as odd. I don't know
what it means. I don't know if this was a
plane closed somebody or if what based on what we know.
Speaker 2 (42:13):
Yeah, like certainly there was.
Speaker 4 (42:15):
No take the shot right, because we know the shot
was taken largely driven by that window of time that
was triggered by the person being discovered.
Speaker 3 (42:27):
And to be completely fair, I would say another important
thing here is this could be a function of people
being entirely reliant on cell phones.
Speaker 2 (42:38):
So how I experienced the world so.
Speaker 3 (42:40):
That somebody may have thought this is for history. Oh
another ques.
Speaker 4 (42:44):
I've seen that shot yet though by the way, from
that particular advantage, have not seen that one making the rounds.
Speaker 2 (42:49):
Just need to point that out. The feds have well,
hold the phones, y'all.
Speaker 4 (42:52):
Let's take a quick pause here, hear a word from
our sponsor, and then we'll come back with more of
this discussion.
Speaker 2 (43:02):
And we've returned.
Speaker 3 (43:04):
Another unanswered question is motivation. Why did crooks target Trump?
We know he was twelve years old when Donald Trump
was first elected to the highest office in the land
in twenty sixteen, But we don't know whether there was
a specific folkrum moment, right, specific crossroads, something that would
make an otherwise apparently non threatening young man launch a
(43:27):
suicide run. We know he's active on discord, we know
he was you know, he was a computer enthusiast. But
right now the FBI has Crooks's phone and his other
cop devices over at Langley, and they're interviewing pretty much
everyone the guy interacted with, ever, all within the reach
(43:49):
of the US as you would. I mean, with all
these examples, it's easy to see how this assassination attempt
became the subject of numerous conspiracies. I think we're both
familiar with the most popular one, which we mentioned earlier,
the idea that the shooting was somehow staged orchestrated, and
(44:09):
it's not just bots saying this.
Speaker 2 (44:12):
Well no, and then the question becomes orchestrated by whom, right,
and to what end.
Speaker 4 (44:18):
One version of it is that it was staged by
Trump or his campaign in order to what create a
news event that would give him some sympathy in the
face of his recent convictions. I just don't buy that, because,
like I said at the top, dudes already kind of
in victory lap mode because of everything that's going on
(44:38):
with his opponent, who is the source of or the
subject of most of the consternation, right, Like, it almost
feels like a lot of the stuff with Trump didn't happen,
Like the you know, the the convictions for the hush
money and all of that, So it doesn't make sense
to do this. Now, you'd keep this in your back
pocket and wait for the polls, see what's happening, and
then deploy some crazy false flag thing like this. So
(45:03):
I don't know, man, in my head, it all this
talk with the Supreme Court decisions about anything done under
the guy, under the auspecies of a presidential act. I'm like,
is this a botched Biden attempt on Trump's life? That's
what's really going through my head.
Speaker 3 (45:21):
Yeah, to the idea that Trump or people associated with
his campaign may have staged an event a false flag, well,
the concept there, the conspiracy theory, is that this was
an attempt to galvanize supporters, get positive press, distract from
the recent unpleasantness of his court cases, and force his
(45:43):
Democratic opponents into a lose lose situation temporary they had
to be forced into a temporarily supportive position. But the
weird thing is the assassination attempt, conspiracy or know already
resulted in all three of those outcomes, and you know,
two innocent people grievously injured, one innocent man dead. The
(46:06):
next subgenre is okay well to sow it up. Proponents
of the Trump staged idea point to all the unanswered
questions we brought up as proof of their claims. The
funny thing is, to your point, the idea the next
subgenre that it was somehow staged by Biden, the Biden
campaign or other democratic power figures. It's pretty much the
(46:31):
same kind of theory, but with the positions flipped, and
they're saying, hey, the Biden campaign is at a crisis point,
weak performances and recent appearances. There's that mutually embarrassing debate
his own party, members of it are calling for him
to step down. Maybe this assassination was a Machiavellian way
(46:53):
of pausing those conversations. And the weirdest thing the people
who genuinely believe that point to the exact same questions
as proof of their theory. They just have a different
contextual framework for it.
Speaker 4 (47:08):
And I'm mainly dealing in thought experiments here. I don't
really think that this was staged on. I do tend
to go with the lone wolf thing, you know, and
the breakdown of security and communication. There is, of course,
another option in the conspiracy realm here, the idea that
this was planned by some sort of foreign agency or operation.
Speaker 3 (47:33):
Yeah right, because fiction has taught us to think that way,
and indeed, the United States has a history of launching
similar operations. If we're just being completely honest, keeping it
one hundred, the idea here, like you said, is that
some outside force, maybe a rival state or a terrorist group,
(47:53):
may have staged a shooting to boost Trump's popularity, or
maybe they actually tried to kill the guy and they
just botched it. In general, when people are talking about this,
they seem to believe Russia was somehow involved, which kind
of makes sense because Russia does have a track record
of what we would call innovations in assassinations, but they
(48:14):
also have a track record for beat me here, Paul,
those operations up. Yeah, you know what I mean. So
we could see how people might point to precedent and
ask about Russia. But there's absolutely no proof of outside
ops at this point.
Speaker 4 (48:29):
Any of this now, and there is another question of
larger machinations. You know, America has long been understandably I suppose,
I don't know. I can kind of see a skeptical
of the lone wolf assassination narrative. I just I don't know.
I just we know it's sort of the same thing
that would drive someone to do as school shooting. You know,
(48:51):
there is that maybe you were bullied, maybe you were
radicalized in some way, but you're not being used as
a tool and you decide to take it. You know,
the whole Holden call Field model of it all kind
of being the outsider and you want to make an
impact and leave your mark. I do think that I
don't understand the skepticism and the lone wolf theory.
Speaker 3 (49:11):
Well, yeah, it's it goes back to some hard unanswered
questions about similar events like Sirhan Sirhan Lee, Harvey Oswald
and Jack Ruby. There this skepticism there, I think comes
from the obvious dissonance between having the security of the
(49:32):
world's most powerful country seem to drop the ball in
a crazy way and right now. You know. One of
the reasons these questions will continue to proliferate, probably for
quite some time, is because, like Oswald, Crooks is dead.
He will never be in court, he will never respond
to questions. He's not going to speak about his motivations
(49:54):
because it's physically impossible for him to do so. Now
he is a asked question mark a piece of unwelcome
punctuation burned into the already troubled story of an America divided.
And that's where we get to the talking points. Noel,
did you notice that a lot of people and pundits
were saying kind of the same.
Speaker 4 (50:15):
Thing, mainly, there's no room for this kind of violence,
political violence an American discourse in American political life.
Speaker 3 (50:27):
I heard that when I also heard one thing's for sure,
this will change the energy of the election. What no way?
Speaker 4 (50:35):
Well, yeah, and I believe Biden used the term lowering
the temperature on politics.
Speaker 3 (50:43):
Yeah, and it's been proliferated that way. Mainstream media outlets
are quickly defining and solidifying their narratives. I'm not saying
that's necessarily sinister, but if you want to play along,
we can help you keep a notebook in a pin
handy for whenever you counter meet about this assassination attempt,
and make a note of every statement you hear using
(51:05):
the exact same language to describe an aspect of the story.
We are confident you're gonna find a lot of seemingly
different news outlets hitting the same phrases. They're cooking live
well it's the.
Speaker 4 (51:19):
Same reason that shows like The Daily Show and John
Oliver can do all those amazing clip kind of packages
of like news pundits and anchors saying the exact same
stuff because they're just getting the talking points that are
kind of being filtered down to them, and then they're
sort of making it their own, but they're usually a
bit lazy about it, so it kind of ends up
being the same things repeated over and over and over again.
Speaker 3 (51:41):
Mm hmm. Yeah, it turned out the temperatures, I think
the best example of that way. We also know that
there are going to be inevitable documentaries, probably films that
say they're inspired by a true story. A lot of
those are probably already in production right now, just candidly
because Hollywood's kind of ruthless. And then there's another thing,
the internal talking points, the smokey back room conversations. There
(52:05):
are going to be people in the GOP camp and
in the Democratic camp who, when removed from microphones, they're
going to tell each other this is a golden opportunity.
Speaker 4 (52:16):
Well yeah, I mean, the talking points on the Trump
side can immediately be like they're trying to silence me,
and I will not be silenced, you know, whoever they are,
because since the guy's dead, I mean, there will be
information will come out, hopefully about his motives, but that's
going to be kind of secondary to what the rhetoric
decides they want to do with this.
Speaker 3 (52:36):
You know, think about this, a lot of people aren't
going to be reading policy proposals or the printed or
televised statements from law enforcement. They're going to look at
a photo and they're going to draw their conclusions from
those photos. That's that's the power of the ephemeral social media.
I mean, look, if you work in law enforcement security,
(52:59):
you know this right now. For those folks, the current
rule is silence. No speaking to the press at all
unless you've been greenlit up the wazoo. Don't talk to
your family, don't talk to your friends about what you're doing,
no matter how limited your evolvement may be. That's the
right thing to do. But also we're going to see
a lot of I'm sure a lot of horse trading
(53:22):
is happening the GOP, you know, say the quiet part
out loud. A lot of them are not one hundred
percent aligned with the Trump campaign, but it would be
political suicide for them to say so publicly. The Democratic
Party in a similar way, is not one hundred percent
on board with this whole Biden thing. And so these
internal factions are forming and they're cooking up their own
(53:44):
responses to this tragedy, along with strategies for how to
leverage it for themselves. And we know it sounds soulless.
We are completely aware of that, but it is true.
Does that sound too hyperbolic?
Speaker 4 (53:58):
Nah man, I mean that's absolutely you know, the fact
that you can now again not to be too cynical
about it, but that someone was killed, not the person
that was intended to be killed, perhaps, but that allows
you to make it an international tragedy, and now we
can this person who was killed can be martyred and
used for this goal of creating this kind of ground
(54:19):
swell of support. But I was texting with a friend
who I mentioned earlier, and apparently down the ticket on
the Democrat side, there is still a lot of support
for Democratic policies over the Project twenty twenty five stuff
that we've talked about the kind of doom, doom and
gloom you know of all of that, And it makes
(54:40):
sense because Trump is even like visibly distanced himself from
all of that, because I think there isn't support for that.
So while there might not be support for the democratic candidate,
it does feel like there's support for democratic policies over
some of the more radical Republican part policy. So I'm
wondering if this is going to be a great balancing
(55:01):
of the scales in a way that could be positive.
I don't know, man silver lining it here, I just
don't know.
Speaker 3 (55:08):
We know the exact same conversations are occurring in think
tanks and lobbying cartels. I've decided to start calling lobbyists
lobbying cartels.
Speaker 2 (55:17):
I think that's appropriate.
Speaker 3 (55:19):
Thanks man, What the money moves, and.
Speaker 2 (55:22):
They make money moves, like Cardi B says.
Speaker 3 (55:24):
Right, right. And some of these internal talking points are
going to be later public points of narrative control attempts,
but a lot of them are not meant to be
publicly encounter conversations. So we're going to see a narrative
war happening here. It's already occurring. The larger responses from
the international sphere are pretty much in line with what
(55:45):
you would expect, thoughts and prayers. Obviously, we didn't do
it America. Various countries are saying. But I asked some
folks about the Russian response, and when it came out,
it was interesting because it openly stated they don't believe
Joe Biden or the Biden administration order to hit. But
(56:05):
they did say we believe the anti Trump rhetoric of
the Biden administration created the environment that led to the
assassination attempt.
Speaker 2 (56:15):
Okay, well, you know what I mean. I just feel
like the rhetoric is a lot.
Speaker 4 (56:21):
I've long accused the Democratic Party of being pretty soft
in their rhetoric, and if anything, the Republicans are the
ones that, in their talking points are calling for essentially
violence and you know, low key right, So I don't
know if I buy that.
Speaker 3 (56:35):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (56:36):
Also it's Russia.
Speaker 3 (56:38):
Uh, I'm just gonna leave that one there. Now. Again,
there's so much more to get to. By the time
you hear this new information, we'll have developed. We talked
about bomb making material in Crooks's vehicle.
Speaker 4 (56:52):
And the.
Speaker 3 (56:53):
FBI evacuating part of his neighborhood and searching his home.
The head of the Secret Service we're talking about this
off air is going to testify to Congress on July
twenty second. We'll see how that works out. Right now,
we are just a few minutes away from Donald Trump
making his next public appearance at the Republican National Convention
(57:16):
in Milwaukee, where he will, I'm sure be delighted to
meet our pals Sophie Lichterman and Robert Evans.
Speaker 2 (57:24):
That's right. I saw that they were out there doing
God's work.
Speaker 4 (57:29):
So yeah, by the time you're hearing this episode, it
will be Wednesday, the seventeenth of July. A lot of
this information will likely have evolved, but we're going to
keep an eye on it and then look forward to
having our buddy Matt back to hear his take on all.
Speaker 2 (57:44):
Of this, so you know, hopefully this at least again.
Speaker 4 (57:49):
I can't thank you enough, Ben for doing the line
share of the legwork here and more and just you know,
all of the outreach you've done and getting all this
stuff together in a sane manner that is at the
very we're talking about some of these more.
Speaker 2 (58:03):
Out there theories.
Speaker 4 (58:05):
But I don't I hope we're not lending any one
thing credence. It's something we're all in the same boat,
like I said, and like when I said, it occurred
to me a botched Biden hit.
Speaker 2 (58:14):
That's just what my.
Speaker 4 (58:15):
Conspiracy brain is nagging at me and saying, maybe it's
that I don't necessarily think that's true, but we also
just don't know.
Speaker 3 (58:23):
Yeah, and we want your help, and that's that's that's
the thing. We want to be honest and straightforward about that,
and that's very well said. We are going to be
with you. We're all in this together as the situation develops.
Most importantly right now, stay safe, stay tuned. We want
to hear from you, and we try to be easy
to find online.
Speaker 4 (58:44):
Yeah, you can find us at the handle conspiracy stuff,
where we exist on YouTube, or we have video content
coming at you all the time on Facebook where we
have our Facebook group. Here's where it gets crazy on
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(59:24):
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Speaker 4 (59:44):
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Speaker 3 (01:00:06):
Stuff they Don't want you to know is a production
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From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
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Speaker 2 (00:24):
Hello, and welcome back to the show. My name is NOL.
Speaker 3 (00:27):
Our colleague Matt is away but will be returning soon.
They called me Ben. We're joined as always with our
super producer Paul Mission Control Deckant. Most importantly, you are you.
You are here. That makes this the stuff they don't
want you to know. This is breaking news. We have
moved our regularly scheduled programming as we record this evening NOL.
(00:49):
It is the evening of July fifteenth, twenty twenty four.
The news continues to rock the United States and the
world at large. An assassination attempt on Donald J. Trump,
a former US president and current Republican candidate for the
next presidential election.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (01:08):
I think we all probably experienced it very similarly, likely
in the form of a text from a friend or
a casual you know viewing of of some coverage that
then was interrupted. Whatever network is is your you know
network of choice for news.
Speaker 2 (01:25):
We all found out about.
Speaker 4 (01:26):
It pretty quickly, and it's historic events, no matter how
you crack it, whichever side you fall on. I mean like,
this is a big deal, and the question now becomes
what happens next?
Speaker 2 (01:38):
And also what happened?
Speaker 3 (01:42):
Yeah, well said, Let's begin with a disclaimer. At this moment,
the public has relatively little factual information, and in the
absence of transparency and factual information, speculation thrives. So in
tonight's episode, we're exploring what happened, what we know for
sure right now, and why so many people already seem
(02:02):
to disagree on the big picture. We don't have all
the answers. Our understanding of the situation will continue to
evolve as new details emerge. When you're hearing this now,
it is published on July seventeenth, Wednesday, which means that
Donald Trump has already made an appearance at the Republican
National Convention. But no matter what happens, no matter how
(02:25):
our understanding of this situation evolves, the most important thing
is that we are here with you, and we are
immensely grateful that you, fellow conspiracy realist, have joined us
this evening.
Speaker 4 (02:38):
And you know we're all in the same boat here.
I mean, Ben, I know you immediately as you do
went deep as much as humanly possible. You have contacts
and folks that have skin in the game, that have
experience in this world, and you know I do too,
to a much lesser degree. But we don't have much
more information than you, and we're not here to speculate
(02:59):
per se. We're here to talk about what is being
speculated about and to give you the facts as we
know them. So we're not here to freak anybody out
or anything along those lines. We're here to kind of
like experience this together and learn about this together and
just try to cool it a little bit.
Speaker 3 (03:15):
And we're grateful that you're here. And with that, let's
dive in. Here are the facts. On July thirteenth, twenty
twenty four, former US president current Republican presidential candidate Donald J. Trump,
(03:36):
whom you may have heard of, previously spoke at a
rally held at a place called the Butler Farm Showgrounds
near the town of Butler, Pennsylvania. And at first this
was like a regular rally, and this is Philadelphia adjacent.
Speaker 4 (03:52):
It's sort of like a I guess what you might
call a bedroom community or like a outer suburb.
Speaker 2 (03:57):
Because if you've been to the state of Pennsylvania.
Speaker 4 (03:59):
You know, you go from urban to farmland pretty quickly,
and this is somewhere between those two worlds, right.
Speaker 2 (04:07):
Yeah, Yeah.
Speaker 3 (04:08):
People gathered from across the area and from across all
corners of the United States candidly to hear Donald Trump speak.
This is totally in line and with previous rallies and
not unusual. The next election here in the US war
president is just a few months away, so it's quite
(04:29):
common for candidates from any party to make the rounds.
And what they're usually doing is they're attempting to garner support.
They're also attempting to get more funding as ever, and
they're hopefully hearing on the ground concerns from prospective voters.
This is not unusual at this point. It's also not
(04:49):
unusual for these folks to be protected by multiple law
enforcement agencies, federal and local.
Speaker 4 (04:57):
And given you know, Joe Biden his recent performance in
the presidential debate, which seems to have caused a lot
of folks in the Democratic Party to lose faith in
him significantly in terms of his ability to perform and
carry out you know, all the tasks and pressures and
everything that goes along with being the president. You know,
(05:18):
he did a bad performance and it really kind of
took over the news cycles. So while I wouldn't say
Trump is in victory lap mode exactly, yet it does
feel like the pressure from his side has been lowered
a little bit in terms of, like, you know, the stakes,
and he's not really having to defend himself, even against
his recent felony convictions, not even something he's having to
(05:40):
go out there and make the rounds to defend because
it's not being discussed because of the fact that Joe
Biden really did come off as having some evidence of
cognitive decline.
Speaker 3 (05:53):
Right, evidence of cognitive decline. And you know, the thing
is the United States Secret Service or the USSS as
you would say in acronym land, their job is a
political right. They're technically under the Treasury Department, and they're
tasked with protecting people like this. The ideology or the
(06:17):
political alignment should not matter. And whenever you see a
rally of this magnitude, the Secret Service is the most
visible group running protection, but there are many, many, many
more agencies involved, including local law enforcement, and that may
indeed be a problem. I don't think a lot of
people realize just how much planning goes into these appearances
(06:40):
way before the rallies.
Speaker 4 (06:41):
It would have to even if you're just a candidate,
a popular candidate. This is someone who's a former president.
Correct me if I'm wrong, Ben, If you've been the
president before, aren't you.
Speaker 2 (06:50):
Entitled to Secret Service detail for life?
Speaker 3 (06:53):
Yes? Yeh, have to be.
Speaker 2 (06:54):
It would have to be.
Speaker 3 (06:55):
It's not even like a it's not even like a
cool side benefit. It's a national security issue for the
rest of your life. The idea of establishing security in
this case, without going to into the weeds, this means
the basic stuff establishing a perimeter, which we'll talk about,
(07:17):
scoping out individual duties which we'll talk about, positioning everybody visible.
High ground security like scoping getting your getting your playing
clothes in there amid the crowd, and addressing what we
will call environment or event specific concerns. As the FBI,
for instance, clocked an actionable threat against this candidate, right,
(07:41):
how do we nip this in the butt? Ald to say,
by the time the protectee arrives the person who's being protected,
the area has been massively transformed in ways that the
average civilian, the average member of the public might not
notice well and if.
Speaker 4 (07:57):
I'm not mistaken, then if there is an actionable threat,
isn't it still up to the individual whether or not
to carry out the event? Like can secret service like
supersede that person's own will and say, no, it's too
great a threat, we have to cancel. Because I've certainly seen,
you know, instances where maybe there's a threat but the
(08:18):
person says it's too important, We're gonna I've got to
go through with this. Just be on the lookout. And
maybe I'm just thinking too much about like film world,
but can they You can't really force somebody to not
do what they want to do. Your job is just
to protect them despite what they want to do. Sometimes,
to my understanding, the the way the decision making process
(08:41):
occurs is such that they're these two like these two.
Speaker 3 (08:47):
Sides of an argument. If you wanted potus or a
candidate to do something and security said they could not,
it usually gets resolved before it would ever get to
that level of longer heads, but it is perhaps possible.
The thing is, we have to realize there's an entire
industry built around keeping these people alive. Trump's and it
went wrong. It went wrong this weekend Trump's Trump's rally
(09:14):
for a lot of People's kind of an all day
event right there. You tailgating like a concert. You know,
people are meeting old friends, people are buying merch and
snacks and swagged they're.
Speaker 4 (09:25):
Getting in the parking lot. You know, it's like a
fish show. I'm kidding that part's not true. But there
is a festivally. You know it's happening. It absolutely is well.
Speaker 3 (09:36):
Because you know, if you're winning hearts and minds, you
want people to feel galvanized and energized. So by the
time Trump hits the stage at approximately six h three PM,
the crowd is raucous, the energy is electric. Pennsylvania is
technically what we will call a swing state, but the
area around Butler, Pennsylvania is has long been considered and
(10:00):
self described as a stronghold of support for the Trump
campaign in particular. But his speech, No, his speech is
interrupted just a few minutes in. It's around six to
eleven PM when we hear the gun shots, six to
eight gun shots from a from someone who's later identified
as a twenty year old man named Thomas Matthew Crooks.
(10:24):
These were shots at Trump and into the crowd using
what the News described as an AR fifteen style rifle,
So like a five point five six semi auto.
Speaker 4 (10:37):
Which has range, right, I mean yeah, especially is it
like a proper sniper sniper rifle? Is there like something
that's more high velocity that could hit a target from
farther away than we're talking here that maybe the average
Joe couldn't get it is along those lines, or it's
a little less than that.
Speaker 3 (10:57):
There are other there are other armaments that could shoot
further that would be more specifically designed for this. We
know that Crooks was positioned on the roof of a
building that was about four hundred ish feet north of
the rally stage where Trump was speaking. And you know,
(11:17):
you and I both and Paul and Mat as well
have found different versions of the layout. Have found satellite
imagery you can tell where he was. You can also
see photographs of the guy's body after videos.
Speaker 4 (11:35):
Yesh, maybe the video is after he was I mean
a spoiler alert he was taken out. But you know
there is there are photographs where you can see what
appears to be the top half of a person prone
army crawling I believe it would be the term on
this roof. And then there are there is video of
people that then went to where the shots came from
(11:56):
and got a shot.
Speaker 2 (11:57):
Of his his deceased body.
Speaker 3 (12:01):
And these are still just the we're just in the
factual part. Absolutely, this might be a longer win, but
we think it's worth the time. This structure that Crooks
was a top was considered outside of that security perimeter,
so he himself was not subject to screening, and he
used a ladder to reach the rooftop. Then as he said,
(12:21):
no bear crawled across to achieve position. He got clocked
and observed, but apparently not engaged nor made as he
arrived in position with a firearm and a cell phone.
Speaker 2 (12:33):
I believe he was observed. Yeah, I'm sorry, Yes, observed.
Speaker 4 (12:37):
And and like like flagged as a keep an eye
out even right right, whether by local law. That must
have been by local law enforcement if I'm not mistaken.
Speaker 3 (12:49):
Well, the sieves in the crowd noticed this because again
he's so close that you could see him, you know,
without any kind of binoculars or other optic assistance. And
some people apparently said okay, even though this guy's in
casual dress a neutral colored T shirt sometimes described as
gray camo for a gun tuber brand, They said maybe
(13:11):
he's part of plain clothed security. Other people aired on
the side of caution went to whatever authority they could
find and said, Hey, there's something creepy on the roof
over there.
Speaker 4 (13:21):
But isn't it wouldn't it be standard operating procedure to
have posted snipers looking like posted snipers. There's no point
in having a sniper and plain clothes. Plain clothes is
meant to blend into a crowd if you're alone, you know,
gunman on a roof wearing freaking YouTube gun club t shirt.
What benefit does that serve in terms of like any
(13:44):
form of like covert operation, that makes zero sense, that
would not be done.
Speaker 3 (13:49):
We know that these reports came minutes before Crooks took action.
A local police officer found the ladder and ascended to
the rooftop and encountered Crooks. And when he did, when
he confronted Crooks, Crooks turned and aimed the rifle at
this officer, which caused the officer backed out the ladder,
(14:11):
at which point Crooks returns his attention to the rally
stage and opens.
Speaker 4 (14:16):
Fire immediately because he knows his window is narrowing at
this point, Like this guy, he's not going to take
him out by hand personally, but he is going to
report him and people are coming for him, so he
knows if he's going to do the thing, he's got
to do it now.
Speaker 3 (14:30):
At about twenty seconds after his initial shot, nearby snipers
on another roof fatally executed him via return fire counterfire,
and so we have a window of about twenty seconds
there of active fire. And due to the extensive video
(14:52):
evidence that you mentioned, it's been shared across pretty much
every media outlet. At this point, we know what happens next.
After that initial shot. We see the former president of
the United States, mid speech to supporters, raise a hand
to his right ear, and then he pauses and he
(15:13):
drops down behind the lectern for cover. Secret Service agents swarm,
creating the human shield. A couple more gunshots. You can
hear I'm sure you heard this too. You can hear
the audio.
Speaker 2 (15:26):
With my shoes.
Speaker 3 (15:28):
Yeah, let me get my shoes. You can hear the
audio where Secret Service receives confirmation of the kill right
of the Oh.
Speaker 2 (15:35):
I don't know that I've heard that. No, I don't
think I have not heard that, but I don't doubt it.
Speaker 4 (15:40):
This is all being captured on the lectern mic probably right,
like this is where we're getting that whatever audio was
recorded for streaming purposes or for you know, later capture
or whatever.
Speaker 3 (15:51):
And so there's this pause, and I love that you
mentioned this. After about twenty five seconds, agents helped Trump stand.
Blood is visible on his ear in the right side
of space. Yeah. He tells the agents to Paul's just
like you said. He says, let me get my shoes,
and then he raises his fist to the crowd and
he's mouthing out the word fight as they chant Usa, Usa.
(16:14):
He's escorted to a vehicle. He's taken to a nearby hospital.
Source of hours in the area was one of the
first non government employees to reach the hospital before the
news hit the press. Later we would learn that was
the nearby Butler Memorial Hospital.
Speaker 4 (16:30):
Yeah, and Evan Vucci, who believe is an Associated Press photographer,
capture to what again.
Speaker 2 (16:37):
Whatever side of fall you fall in?
Speaker 4 (16:38):
This is an iconic photograph that Trump.
Speaker 2 (16:42):
Knew he was making. He knew he was creating.
Speaker 4 (16:45):
This photograph of trouble, with his fist in the air,
American flag upside down flying in the background, him being
clutched by a secret service in full secret service regalia
looking defiant. I gotta give it to the guy. He's
nothing if not media savvy. He and to my previous
(17:06):
question ben about like, at what point do you defer
to the person you're protecting versus just you know, no, we're.
Speaker 2 (17:14):
Taking He had to say, wait a second, he could.
Speaker 4 (17:18):
Have and I'm not trying to like big up drop
or anything, but like he was in harm's way, and
he did, for a second continue to be in harms
way for the purposes of this pretty incredible photo op.
And that was after, to be fair, that was after
the kill confirmation. It was okay, sorry, okay.
Speaker 3 (17:35):
But at this point in this chaos, in this pandemonium, question, right,
your immediate question is is this alone wolf? Is there
someone else out there? And look, he receives what we
used to call a million dollar wound, and that's not
disparaging this candidate at all. It's just a wound like
(17:58):
that that great is your ear? Are you familiar with
the phrase one?
Speaker 2 (18:03):
I was gonna ask you the origin of it because
I don't. I don't.
Speaker 4 (18:05):
It doesn't quite even make sense to me, and the
least in the way that I'm thinking about it.
Speaker 2 (18:08):
So he help us out.
Speaker 3 (18:10):
Yeah, so million dollar wound. You hear it in Vietnam
or the Vietnam conflict. You hear it in later conflicts
as well. I mean, it dates back to like World
War Two. But the idea is, you get a type
of wound in combat that's serious enough to get you
sent away from fighting, but it's not fatal and it's
(18:32):
not permanently crippling.
Speaker 4 (18:35):
Right because to your point in the outline here that,
by the way, kudos, Bet. I mean, you couldn't have
been sleeping after this event because you cobbled together everything
that we have out there, whether it be the facts,
whether it be all of the stuff the theories we're
going to talk about. But you point out that he
could have had his ear blown off, you know, and
we're going to get into the trajectory of the whole thing,
(18:57):
but it likely was just ripped a little bit and
the blood spattered onto his face. Also, there was blood
on the bleachers. Yeah, there was a spatter of blood
on the bleachers. And I bet you he's probably going
to be deaf in that ear. I don't know what
you think about that, Maybe not, I guess if maybe,
I don't know how that works, he described in his statement,
(19:17):
knowing it was serious when he heard a whizzing sound,
you know, and.
Speaker 3 (19:24):
Yeah, yeah, we know that. To the point about blood
on the on the bleachers behind him, we know that
two civilians were previously wounded. One civilian was fatally wounded.
His name has been released. You can find it online
as a volunteer firefighter and tooling engineer. Overall seemed to
(19:48):
be a good dude, and out of respect for the family,
we're not we're not going to mention the name there
and give them. We want to give them time. But
you can find that online.
Speaker 4 (19:57):
Also a video out there of I believe some form
of er doctor, a general practitioner who attended to him
to some degree, you know, and his shirts.
Speaker 2 (20:08):
Covered in blood.
Speaker 4 (20:09):
He's wearing, you know, maga hat and full trump you know,
merch and he describes helping this guy out and to
use the word brain matter, you know, seeing that there
was brain matter, and that he said he administered chest compressions.
But it's the kind of stuff you do where you
as a medical practitioner, it's like you do it because
you're you're there on the site, but you probably already
(20:31):
know it's too late, but you still do it because
you know, at least you can say you did it
because you were there. But yeah, I would appear this
person received a head shot that you may as well
out there have seen the images of the trajectory of
the bullet of how it was literally the fact that
Trump looked left, I believe, or let's see, you know,
(20:53):
it would be right to my left if I'm looking
at the images to look and gesture to a PowerPoint
type presentation on a large projected screen with something about immigration, right, and.
Speaker 3 (21:07):
That shows us again, It's something we've talked about in
other shows, the history hinges on such small things, in
this case, a matter of inches or centimeters and look.
As is common with these situations, there was immediately a
tsunami of speculation, bad faith, disinfo, plain old conspiracy rock
on the internet. We were talking about it. We were
(21:30):
talking about off air. Folks like I want to thank,
folks like our Power, Robert Evans from behind the Bastards,
Ocent Defender, thousands of other people were delving deep into analysis.
And you have to do this because in the fog
of war after a recent catastrophic attack like this, the
(21:51):
reporting can often be contradictory because the real information only
trickles out at the speed of the investigation. I'm thinking
about the idea it was very common that I initially
suspected even that Trump was perhaps not injured by a
direct bullet wound, but by glass shrapnel.
Speaker 4 (22:09):
That came out pretty quick, and I believe it was
reported by some official and passed on and then sort
of parroted in the media during that zippity Do you
know reporting window that the internet just like requires now.
Speaker 3 (22:24):
Right, Yeah, yeah, you nailed it, man, Because anonymous law
enforcement sources apparently reported this, the journalists and people rolled
with it until Donald Trump himself went on truth social
and made his statement where he confirmed that he was
directly injured by a bullet.
Speaker 4 (22:44):
Have we seen the image that captured the bullet. Let's
talk about that for a second. Yeah, it's crazy. Who
is the guy? Let's see it was.
Speaker 2 (22:54):
I believe in New York Times.
Speaker 4 (22:57):
Yeah, exactly, Uh, Doug Mills, But yes, that's correct, Doug
Mills of the New York Times.
Speaker 2 (23:03):
There's video of him out there talking.
Speaker 4 (23:05):
And you know, when folks are covering these type of events,
they cover it kind of like you cover a sporting event.
They're using very quick shutter speeds, so you're and you're
just blasting blast bla blater like, so you can get
in the moment. You can go back through when you're
editing and find that iconic fist pump with the exact
right expression that you want, and in doing that, this
guy caught.
Speaker 2 (23:26):
It's crazy. You can see this line, this little blurry
line right.
Speaker 4 (23:31):
By Donald Trump's head and he saved I mean that
PowerPoint saved his life.
Speaker 3 (23:37):
Yeah. One of my old professors reached out and said,
person with an interest in history, and said, no matter
how you feel about no matter how people feel about
the events, this photograph will end up in a textbook,
which I think is accurate. Well, what would you say
to the.
Speaker 2 (23:56):
One hundred percent?
Speaker 4 (23:57):
I mean, it's a damn good photograph that captures actively
hits it good for the angle is dope, Like, I'm sorry,
just as a fan of photography.
Speaker 2 (24:05):
It's a cool photo.
Speaker 4 (24:06):
And we're talking about the fist pumping one, not the
bullet capturing one.
Speaker 2 (24:09):
Because the bullet capture where he's on the ground, no,
which is also pretty good.
Speaker 4 (24:13):
But the bullet capturing one literally required the guy the Mills,
Doug Mills to have been going through his photos a
frame at a time, because you can capture photos at
the same speed as video, like you can set your
shutter just to do a succession of blasts. And he
obviously was what is that? And he caught it and
now it's making the rounds. As I mean, I think
(24:34):
we probably again still needs some photo forensics to be like.
Speaker 2 (24:38):
That definitely what that is.
Speaker 4 (24:41):
And I just want to really quickly give props to
a guy I think you know, Jason Pargan I think
is his name.
Speaker 2 (24:46):
He's a writer.
Speaker 4 (24:47):
He wrote that Book's John Dies in the End, and
he's a YouTuber. He makes these really thoughtful media critique videos.
He's been on Daily Zeitgeist before, but he came on
and just really quickly in this short video said it's
really important during times like this to remember that when
something like this happens, ninety percent of the information that
you read out there will be not right, because in
(25:09):
this day of internet immediacy, the real reporting comes from
actual verification of the facts, and because of the nature
of the Internet and how what people have come to expect,
that just doesn't happen, and it all blasts at you,
leaving you to sift through the wreckage of it and
figure out what's true, and then the real reporting comes
(25:31):
much later. So he just urged people to be patient
and truly like wait for what the real facts have
to say. So just putting that out there, we're not
trying to contribute to that instant gratification internet culture.
Speaker 3 (25:44):
I also want to quote something sent by a good
friend of the show, professor Jeff who is out there
in Pennsylvania himself, who sent us a piece by University
of Plymouth over in the UK, guy named Phil Smith
who wrote an incredibly insightful point about this, who also
(26:05):
echoes the same points of Pargin, who wrote John dyes
at the end as David Wong old school cracked guy.
Very smart dudes. And we see some speculation that was
in bad faith. You know, this is the first kind
of thing of its type that happened in an age
of biquitist social media. So there were a lot of
(26:26):
bots out there, there were a lot of bad faith actors,
and there were a ton of conspiracy theories. The most
prevalent then and now is the idea that this tragedy
had been somehow staged for political gain. Despite the death
and injury to innocent people. And so now I would
say the biggest question facing America in the world is,
(26:46):
you know what we said at the top, what could
this mean? How can we address these questions that remain unanswered?
Speaker 2 (26:52):
Right? And you know, I just popped into my head
right now.
Speaker 4 (26:56):
I recently watched the movie Long Legs, which is a
procedural FBI investigation kind of thing, and I think the
reason a lot of times it's smart to base movies
like that in the nineties is because of the lack
of that ubiquitous technology you're talking about, yeah, or even
further than that. And now I'm thinking back, like if
JFK had happened, now, would the conspiracy theories have been
(27:20):
completely different?
Speaker 2 (27:22):
And or it just would have been solved, you know
what I mean?
Speaker 4 (27:25):
Like, really it's a different world and this stuff is
generated from that world. But you do have to wonder,
like what this is like a literal modern Internet age
assassination attempt in the biggest, most visible, you know, way possible.
Speaker 3 (27:42):
So we're going to take a word from our sponsors,
and when we return, we'll ask those questions, what could
this mean for the future, and how can we address
the questions that remain unanswered tonight. Here's where it gets crazy.
(28:03):
Let's start with this. Let's start with what we know
about the shooter, Thomas Matthew Crooks.
Speaker 2 (28:09):
At the time of his death.
Speaker 4 (28:11):
Thomas Matthew Crooks was a twenty year old dietary aide
at the Bethel Park Skilled Nursing and Rehabilitation Center. So
this is his town, you know, he's like literally from
this particular bedroom community suburb.
Speaker 2 (28:25):
What have you of Philadelphia?
Speaker 4 (28:27):
And again, maybe folks from Pennsylvania and Philly will correct
me on that sometimes there are gray areas of what
constitutes a suburb and bedroom It's close enough that I
would say it's definitely adjacent. You could make a day
trip to Philly. He was from Bethel Park, Pennsylvania, an
upper middle class suburb just about an hour away from
(28:48):
where the rally was held, which was a fairground. Crooks
graduated from a local high school in twenty twenty two,
so Reuter's reports that class mates found him to be
bright but quiet, which is kay, that's not tale as
old as time in terms of like lone wolf types
(29:09):
or even serial killers, you know, I mean.
Speaker 3 (29:12):
He also appeared in a Black Rock ad which set
the Internet a flame again. On July thirteenth, the FBI
disclosed more details about this alleged assailant. They analyzed his
social media footprint and they said, in their estimation it
did not contain threatening language. But then they also said
(29:32):
they had had him on their radar somehow. Hopefully we'll
get more details. They found no history of mental health issues.
They currently believe, and we checked this right before we
recorded that Crooks acted alone and importantly was not an
operative of a foreign power. At this point they have
the FBI has yet to officially identify or disclose any
(29:56):
kind of motive, by which we mean they haven't found
and so manifesto you know what I mean.
Speaker 4 (30:02):
Yeah, and Twitter ex or what have you, which is
it's interesting, like I have a dear friend who's a
friend of yours as well, Frank, who is a diehard
Twitter guy, And despite all of the shenanigans with Elon
and changing it to x and stuff, there's a reason
that Twitter still exists because it is a very interesting
cross section of the Internet that's different from other forms
(30:24):
of social media, whether it be because of the comedy,
whether it be because of the prevalence of fringey weirdos
on it. It is entertaining, and there's a real kind
of microcosm that exists within Twitter, and very quickly Twitter
lit up saying this guy was probably part of the
(30:45):
Grouper group, which is a far right kind of troll
four chan type loose organization. I guess I don't know
if you know more about this than I do, Ben,
but the idea being that Trump wasn't right enough or
something like that.
Speaker 3 (31:04):
Or that another thing, because you know, I'm all over
Twitter and stuff. Another thing I saw was the idea
or the the sort of wishful allegation that this young man,
this assailant was somehow anti fascist or antifa as they
would say. There does seem to be no proof of
(31:27):
that at this point. We do know that he did
not purchase the firearm himself. The rightfully used was purchased
by his father.
Speaker 4 (31:35):
We know, eleven years ago, is the latest news. Right
as we started recording, that just came out. So it
wasn't like his dad just bought it ort or was it.
You know, it was a legacy family weapon right right.
Speaker 3 (31:48):
And we know a little bit about political activity. Crooks
was registered Republican, as is his father, his mother is
a registered Democrat. His one of the administrators at the
nursing home that employed him said, similar to his classmates statements,
They said he performed his job without concern. His background
(32:09):
check was clean. We know that he donated like fifteen
dollars to a Progressive Democrat center to kind of get
the vote out movement when Biden was elected. But there's
still so many unanswered questions about crooks. As we were recording,
(32:30):
or right before he went into it, the FBI having
found possible bomb making material in his car, just.
Speaker 2 (32:38):
Like Magcutional like in the Charlie. Likely he was going
to use it later.
Speaker 4 (32:43):
But I'm wondering because when I hear that, I think
it's ready to go and he's gonna shoot and then
set it off the car.
Speaker 3 (32:51):
Yeah, unclear at this point, but we know that the
FBI evacuated neighbors in the area and then extends re
searched his home obviously for electronic devices, and he written records.
But the thing we have to know is to these
earlier points, a lot of the stuff you're going to
hear about this guy is going to be untrue or speculative.
(33:14):
Some people are just getting things wrong with the best
of intentions or with the limited information they have, just
like us tonight. But other people are going to be
trying to use this to push.
Speaker 4 (33:25):
You, yeah, in order to push an agenda or to
weaponize this event in their favor, right, right, and really
could just I think I made it clear, but the
Groper thing absolute speculation. But it was sent to me
by a Twitter person who's very active on Twitter, almost
as though it were definitely probably true, like just the
(33:47):
tone of it, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2 (33:48):
And this is a person I think is very smart.
Speaker 4 (33:50):
But in these times, we're all susceptible to this, we
really are. You have to be vigilant and be patient
to not allow yourself to be taken in and report
things to others as though it's definitely true, because.
Speaker 3 (34:03):
You know, one of the number one things the humans
hate unanswered questions.
Speaker 4 (34:08):
Yeah, and they also like being right and being the
first one to tell somebody something.
Speaker 3 (34:12):
Yes, to be promethean. Yeah, that's a great observation. Let's
talk about some of these unanswered questions. How the hell?
First off, how the hell did one guy a civilian,
no military record, no kind of counter intel training, how
did he manage to get so very close. Why wasn't
there already a security detail of some sort positioned on
(34:35):
that roof? The high ground is very valuable real estate.
Speaker 4 (34:38):
Four hundred feet it's really feet, not meters. That's insane.
And when you look at it on the satellite, because
of the scale whatever, it looks farther than it really is.
Like it's across what looks like a road, but it's
more of a path, kind of like a dirt kind
of you know, path cut into this fair ground. But yeah,
it doesn't make any sense because you had these two
(35:00):
snipers and their full get up on this roof. Two
why are there two on one? Why isn't there one
on that one and one on the other one? Because
it's just wild man, it's at the very least a
gross oversight and negligent acts.
Speaker 2 (35:18):
At the very most some vision.
Speaker 3 (35:22):
But if you know, if you have the time to
prepare a perimeter right and you have assuming that you
do not have a very hard austere limit on resources,
then you would want to dominate the high ground. You
want to command and control that and the map, like
you mentioned, you can see the satellite shot, you can
(35:43):
see other versions. You can see clear outlines of the
initial gunfire and then the Secret Service response. It's rough,
you know, one of the most plausible things I've heard
about how this guy got so close is what I
would call the disease of not my problem. When you
(36:04):
have a lot of different agencies interacting, just like in
any other big live production. To be honest, then you
have to be certain that roles are specifically assigned. So
is it possible that local yeah, yeah, thought the jurisdiction,
Yeah right, Hey, the Secret Service will do this. Maybe
Secret Service thought, hey, the local law will do this.
(36:26):
Those are answers we don't have yet, I mean. And
then secondly, dude, the shot itself, the not just the
shots that injured civilians and kill the civilian, but the
shot that got Trump uh set the conspiracy world of
flame because it's like winning the lottery twice. Any person
(36:47):
familiar with firearms can tell you, for the most part,
head shots are not the norm. That's what you see
in film and right exactly. And for a lot of
people who have been making high bolic statements, the closest
they have been to that situation is call of duty.
So maybe sit out.
Speaker 4 (37:06):
I just don't understand why there were two security snipers
with their weapons pointed in the same direction, right next
to each other.
Speaker 2 (37:16):
When there could have been one of those on that
other roof.
Speaker 3 (37:20):
Usually you want a team of two.
Speaker 2 (37:22):
Okay, that makes sense, but still the other roof, it's
just it's right there, man, that's the yet, that's the
real pickle here.
Speaker 3 (37:31):
And the general rule is that if you are firing
on a humanoid target, you aim for center mass because
aiming for the biggest part gives you the highest chance
of successfully hitting the target.
Speaker 2 (37:46):
Right.
Speaker 3 (37:46):
So we also know that Crooks was there's great analysis
of this on Twitter. We also know that Crooks was
firing to your point immediately after he got confronted by
that police. He was moving quickly so making.
Speaker 4 (38:04):
Me invite at a time and gotten a better shot
off if he hadn't been discovered in that way.
Speaker 3 (38:11):
So now we see a near instantaneous reaction because he
knows the window of time is now incredibly abbreviated. Firing
under stress, you know what I mean. These are the
opposite of ideal conditions for this kind of I hate
to say it, but this kind of exercise. So what
(38:31):
there are a lot of questions that need be answered
about the shot, and then third, did you think that
pause was weird after the shot they'll let me get
my shoes moment.
Speaker 4 (38:43):
Well, first of all, I want to note it is
it a known thing that Trump likes to do his
speeches with no shoes on.
Speaker 3 (38:50):
That confused me as well.
Speaker 4 (38:52):
I mean, maybe you know some bands like to play
barefoot or whatever, but like maybe it's a comfort level
thing and you can't see his feet, but it'd usually
when they walk on and off, you see their feet.
They do do a walk on and walk off. What's
the deal with the shoes, that's that's unrelated here. Clearly
there's no shoe. We're not here to to litigate the
shoe conspiracy, but it was an unusual thing for him
(39:14):
to say so emphatically. And then yeah, I mean again,
I think we know that Trump is a master media
manipulator or just you know, opportunists at the very least,
let's call it that to be fair. And he took
that moment knowing that there were a million shutters going off,
and he knew that was going to create that image,
and he did it. He thought it was worth it.
(39:35):
But to your point, there was the kill confirmation.
Speaker 2 (39:38):
But there could have been a second shooter, or they.
Speaker 4 (39:40):
Didn't know unless they did, which we're gonna go. I
don't know, I can't. I'm just it's it's hard not to,
especially in the world that we occupy. It's hard not
to have those thoughts cross your mind, is all I'm saying.
Speaker 3 (39:53):
And let us know what you think about the let
me get my shoes comment. And also, you know, I'm
grateful to have spoken with some former USSS about this
and other related things. Tell us, folks, if you have
any experience in security, is this sop? Is this standard
(40:13):
operating procedure? Were they waiting for the all clear to
move this candidate and former PTUs or was there something
wonky about it? While you're writing that email to us
conspiracydiheartradio dot com. Let's talk about the fourth unanswered question.
For a lot of people, audience behavior or perceived audience behavior.
(40:37):
This could be seen as reading tea leaves because a
lot of it is based on conclusions from video clips.
But we see what looks to be unusual behavior for
a shots fired situation in a largely civilian crowd. Usually
people go nuts, run willy nilly. There's a lot of screaming,
the smart ones try to find cover. There's some clips
(41:01):
that I think gave all of this pause.
Speaker 4 (41:03):
Yeah, I sent a clip around that I just again
just kind of doom scrolling on Instagram, which is sort
of my platform of choice, and someone was already kind
of making hay out of this clip, zooming in, drawing
little circles and arrows, you know, the ones of this
woman in sunglasses standing right behind the president, and just
before the shots go off, she holds up.
Speaker 2 (41:25):
A campaign sign.
Speaker 4 (41:27):
The shots go off, and she just kind of has
just a stone cold expression on her face, like people
all around her are ducking hitting the deck. There is
all those elements you describe, then the screaming, you know,
the we're trying to get to cover in some respect,
and she just doesn't do any of that and just
(41:48):
gently kneels down, and you see her she goes out
of the frame and then comes back into frame and
has her phone and is filming, and no one else
is around.
Speaker 2 (41:57):
Her is doing that just too scared. It's odd.
Speaker 4 (42:03):
That behavior just struck me as odd. I don't know
what it means. I don't know if this was a
plane closed somebody or if what based on what we know.
Speaker 2 (42:13):
Yeah, like certainly there was.
Speaker 4 (42:15):
No take the shot right, because we know the shot
was taken largely driven by that window of time that
was triggered by the person being discovered.
Speaker 3 (42:27):
And to be completely fair, I would say another important
thing here is this could be a function of people
being entirely reliant on cell phones.
Speaker 2 (42:38):
So how I experienced the world so.
Speaker 3 (42:40):
That somebody may have thought this is for history. Oh
another ques.
Speaker 4 (42:44):
I've seen that shot yet though by the way, from
that particular advantage, have not seen that one making the rounds.
Speaker 2 (42:49):
Just need to point that out. The feds have well,
hold the phones, y'all.
Speaker 4 (42:52):
Let's take a quick pause here, hear a word from
our sponsor, and then we'll come back with more of
this discussion.
Speaker 2 (43:02):
And we've returned.
Speaker 3 (43:04):
Another unanswered question is motivation. Why did crooks target Trump?
We know he was twelve years old when Donald Trump
was first elected to the highest office in the land
in twenty sixteen, But we don't know whether there was
a specific folkrum moment, right, specific crossroads, something that would
make an otherwise apparently non threatening young man launch a
(43:27):
suicide run. We know he's active on discord, we know
he was you know, he was a computer enthusiast. But
right now the FBI has Crooks's phone and his other
cop devices over at Langley, and they're interviewing pretty much
everyone the guy interacted with, ever, all within the reach
(43:49):
of the US as you would. I mean, with all
these examples, it's easy to see how this assassination attempt
became the subject of numerous conspiracies. I think we're both
familiar with the most popular one, which we mentioned earlier,
the idea that the shooting was somehow staged orchestrated, and
(44:09):
it's not just bots saying this.
Speaker 2 (44:12):
Well no, and then the question becomes orchestrated by whom, right,
and to what end.
Speaker 4 (44:18):
One version of it is that it was staged by
Trump or his campaign in order to what create a
news event that would give him some sympathy in the
face of his recent convictions. I just don't buy that, because,
like I said at the top, dudes already kind of
in victory lap mode because of everything that's going on
(44:38):
with his opponent, who is the source of or the
subject of most of the consternation, right, Like, it almost
feels like a lot of the stuff with Trump didn't happen,
Like the you know, the the convictions for the hush
money and all of that, So it doesn't make sense
to do this. Now, you'd keep this in your back
pocket and wait for the polls, see what's happening, and
then deploy some crazy false flag thing like this. So
(45:03):
I don't know, man, in my head, it all this
talk with the Supreme Court decisions about anything done under
the guy, under the auspecies of a presidential act. I'm like,
is this a botched Biden attempt on Trump's life? That's
what's really going through my head.
Speaker 3 (45:21):
Yeah, to the idea that Trump or people associated with
his campaign may have staged an event a false flag, well,
the concept there, the conspiracy theory, is that this was
an attempt to galvanize supporters, get positive press, distract from
the recent unpleasantness of his court cases, and force his
(45:43):
Democratic opponents into a lose lose situation temporary they had
to be forced into a temporarily supportive position. But the
weird thing is the assassination attempt, conspiracy or know already
resulted in all three of those outcomes, and you know,
two innocent people grievously injured, one innocent man dead. The
(46:06):
next subgenre is okay well to sow it up. Proponents
of the Trump staged idea point to all the unanswered
questions we brought up as proof of their claims. The
funny thing is, to your point, the idea the next
subgenre that it was somehow staged by Biden, the Biden
campaign or other democratic power figures. It's pretty much the
(46:31):
same kind of theory, but with the positions flipped, and
they're saying, hey, the Biden campaign is at a crisis point,
weak performances and recent appearances. There's that mutually embarrassing debate
his own party, members of it are calling for him
to step down. Maybe this assassination was a Machiavellian way
(46:53):
of pausing those conversations. And the weirdest thing the people
who genuinely believe that point to the exact same questions
as proof of their theory. They just have a different
contextual framework for it.
Speaker 4 (47:08):
And I'm mainly dealing in thought experiments here. I don't
really think that this was staged on. I do tend
to go with the lone wolf thing, you know, and
the breakdown of security and communication. There is, of course,
another option in the conspiracy realm here, the idea that
this was planned by some sort of foreign agency or operation.
Speaker 3 (47:33):
Yeah right, because fiction has taught us to think that way,
and indeed, the United States has a history of launching
similar operations. If we're just being completely honest, keeping it
one hundred, the idea here, like you said, is that
some outside force, maybe a rival state or a terrorist group,
(47:53):
may have staged a shooting to boost Trump's popularity, or
maybe they actually tried to kill the guy and they
just botched it. In general, when people are talking about this,
they seem to believe Russia was somehow involved, which kind
of makes sense because Russia does have a track record
of what we would call innovations in assassinations, but they
(48:14):
also have a track record for beat me here, Paul,
those operations up. Yeah, you know what I mean. So
we could see how people might point to precedent and
ask about Russia. But there's absolutely no proof of outside
ops at this point.
Speaker 4 (48:29):
Any of this now, and there is another question of
larger machinations. You know, America has long been understandably I suppose,
I don't know. I can kind of see a skeptical
of the lone wolf assassination narrative. I just I don't know.
I just we know it's sort of the same thing
that would drive someone to do as school shooting. You know,
(48:51):
there is that maybe you were bullied, maybe you were
radicalized in some way, but you're not being used as
a tool and you decide to take it. You know,
the whole Holden call Field model of it all kind
of being the outsider and you want to make an
impact and leave your mark. I do think that I
don't understand the skepticism and the lone wolf theory.
Speaker 3 (49:11):
Well, yeah, it's it goes back to some hard unanswered
questions about similar events like Sirhan Sirhan Lee, Harvey Oswald
and Jack Ruby. There this skepticism there, I think comes
from the obvious dissonance between having the security of the
(49:32):
world's most powerful country seem to drop the ball in
a crazy way and right now. You know. One of
the reasons these questions will continue to proliferate, probably for
quite some time, is because, like Oswald, Crooks is dead.
He will never be in court, he will never respond
to questions. He's not going to speak about his motivations
(49:54):
because it's physically impossible for him to do so. Now
he is a asked question mark a piece of unwelcome
punctuation burned into the already troubled story of an America divided.
And that's where we get to the talking points. Noel,
did you notice that a lot of people and pundits
were saying kind of the same.
Speaker 4 (50:15):
Thing, mainly, there's no room for this kind of violence,
political violence an American discourse in American political life.
Speaker 3 (50:27):
I heard that when I also heard one thing's for sure,
this will change the energy of the election. What no way?
Speaker 4 (50:35):
Well, yeah, and I believe Biden used the term lowering
the temperature on politics.
Speaker 3 (50:43):
Yeah, and it's been proliferated that way. Mainstream media outlets
are quickly defining and solidifying their narratives. I'm not saying
that's necessarily sinister, but if you want to play along,
we can help you keep a notebook in a pin
handy for whenever you counter meet about this assassination attempt,
and make a note of every statement you hear using
(51:05):
the exact same language to describe an aspect of the story.
We are confident you're gonna find a lot of seemingly
different news outlets hitting the same phrases. They're cooking live
well it's the.
Speaker 4 (51:19):
Same reason that shows like The Daily Show and John
Oliver can do all those amazing clip kind of packages
of like news pundits and anchors saying the exact same
stuff because they're just getting the talking points that are
kind of being filtered down to them, and then they're
sort of making it their own, but they're usually a
bit lazy about it, so it kind of ends up
being the same things repeated over and over and over again.
Speaker 3 (51:41):
Mm hmm. Yeah, it turned out the temperatures, I think
the best example of that way. We also know that
there are going to be inevitable documentaries, probably films that
say they're inspired by a true story. A lot of
those are probably already in production right now, just candidly
because Hollywood's kind of ruthless. And then there's another thing,
the internal talking points, the smokey back room conversations. There
(52:05):
are going to be people in the GOP camp and
in the Democratic camp who, when removed from microphones, they're
going to tell each other this is a golden opportunity.
Speaker 4 (52:16):
Well yeah, I mean, the talking points on the Trump
side can immediately be like they're trying to silence me,
and I will not be silenced, you know, whoever they are,
because since the guy's dead, I mean, there will be
information will come out, hopefully about his motives, but that's
going to be kind of secondary to what the rhetoric
decides they want to do with this.
Speaker 3 (52:36):
You know, think about this, a lot of people aren't
going to be reading policy proposals or the printed or
televised statements from law enforcement. They're going to look at
a photo and they're going to draw their conclusions from
those photos. That's that's the power of the ephemeral social media.
I mean, look, if you work in law enforcement security,
(52:59):
you know this right now. For those folks, the current
rule is silence. No speaking to the press at all
unless you've been greenlit up the wazoo. Don't talk to
your family, don't talk to your friends about what you're doing,
no matter how limited your evolvement may be. That's the
right thing to do. But also we're going to see
a lot of I'm sure a lot of horse trading
(53:22):
is happening the GOP, you know, say the quiet part
out loud. A lot of them are not one hundred
percent aligned with the Trump campaign, but it would be
political suicide for them to say so publicly. The Democratic
Party in a similar way, is not one hundred percent
on board with this whole Biden thing. And so these
internal factions are forming and they're cooking up their own
(53:44):
responses to this tragedy, along with strategies for how to
leverage it for themselves. And we know it sounds soulless.
We are completely aware of that, but it is true.
Does that sound too hyperbolic?
Speaker 4 (53:58):
Nah man, I mean that's absolutely you know, the fact
that you can now again not to be too cynical
about it, but that someone was killed, not the person
that was intended to be killed, perhaps, but that allows
you to make it an international tragedy, and now we
can this person who was killed can be martyred and
used for this goal of creating this kind of ground
(54:19):
swell of support. But I was texting with a friend
who I mentioned earlier, and apparently down the ticket on
the Democrat side, there is still a lot of support
for Democratic policies over the Project twenty twenty five stuff
that we've talked about the kind of doom, doom and
gloom you know of all of that, And it makes
(54:40):
sense because Trump is even like visibly distanced himself from
all of that, because I think there isn't support for that.
So while there might not be support for the democratic candidate,
it does feel like there's support for democratic policies over
some of the more radical Republican part policy. So I'm
wondering if this is going to be a great balancing
(55:01):
of the scales in a way that could be positive.
I don't know, man silver lining it here, I just
don't know.
Speaker 3 (55:08):
We know the exact same conversations are occurring in think
tanks and lobbying cartels. I've decided to start calling lobbyists
lobbying cartels.
Speaker 2 (55:17):
I think that's appropriate.
Speaker 3 (55:19):
Thanks man, What the money moves, and.
Speaker 2 (55:22):
They make money moves, like Cardi B says.
Speaker 3 (55:24):
Right, right. And some of these internal talking points are
going to be later public points of narrative control attempts,
but a lot of them are not meant to be
publicly encounter conversations. So we're going to see a narrative
war happening here. It's already occurring. The larger responses from
the international sphere are pretty much in line with what
(55:45):
you would expect, thoughts and prayers. Obviously, we didn't do
it America. Various countries are saying. But I asked some
folks about the Russian response, and when it came out,
it was interesting because it openly stated they don't believe
Joe Biden or the Biden administration order to hit. But
(56:05):
they did say we believe the anti Trump rhetoric of
the Biden administration created the environment that led to the
assassination attempt.
Speaker 2 (56:15):
Okay, well, you know what I mean. I just feel
like the rhetoric is a lot.
Speaker 4 (56:21):
I've long accused the Democratic Party of being pretty soft
in their rhetoric, and if anything, the Republicans are the
ones that, in their talking points are calling for essentially
violence and you know, low key right, So I don't
know if I buy that.
Speaker 3 (56:35):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (56:36):
Also it's Russia.
Speaker 3 (56:38):
Uh, I'm just gonna leave that one there. Now. Again,
there's so much more to get to. By the time
you hear this new information, we'll have developed. We talked
about bomb making material in Crooks's vehicle.
Speaker 4 (56:52):
And the.
Speaker 3 (56:53):
FBI evacuating part of his neighborhood and searching his home.
The head of the Secret Service we're talking about this
off air is going to testify to Congress on July
twenty second. We'll see how that works out. Right now,
we are just a few minutes away from Donald Trump
making his next public appearance at the Republican National Convention
(57:16):
in Milwaukee, where he will, I'm sure be delighted to
meet our pals Sophie Lichterman and Robert Evans.
Speaker 2 (57:24):
That's right. I saw that they were out there doing
God's work.
Speaker 4 (57:29):
So yeah, by the time you're hearing this episode, it
will be Wednesday, the seventeenth of July. A lot of
this information will likely have evolved, but we're going to
keep an eye on it and then look forward to
having our buddy Matt back to hear his take on all.
Speaker 2 (57:44):
Of this, so you know, hopefully this at least again.
Speaker 4 (57:49):
I can't thank you enough, Ben for doing the line
share of the legwork here and more and just you know,
all of the outreach you've done and getting all this
stuff together in a sane manner that is at the
very we're talking about some of these more.
Speaker 2 (58:03):
Out there theories.
Speaker 4 (58:05):
But I don't I hope we're not lending any one
thing credence. It's something we're all in the same boat,
like I said, and like when I said, it occurred
to me a botched Biden hit.
Speaker 2 (58:14):
That's just what my.
Speaker 4 (58:15):
Conspiracy brain is nagging at me and saying, maybe it's
that I don't necessarily think that's true, but we also
just don't know.
Speaker 3 (58:23):
Yeah, and we want your help, and that's that's that's
the thing. We want to be honest and straightforward about that,
and that's very well said. We are going to be
with you. We're all in this together as the situation develops.
Most importantly right now, stay safe, stay tuned. We want
to hear from you, and we try to be easy
to find online.
Speaker 4 (58:44):
Yeah, you can find us at the handle conspiracy stuff,
where we exist on YouTube, or we have video content
coming at you all the time on Facebook where we
have our Facebook group. Here's where it gets crazy on
x fka Twitter, on Instagram and TikTok. We go by
the handle conspiracy stuff show.
Speaker 3 (59:01):
And the rumors are true. There is a conspiracy afoot
about our telephonic line. If you are so inclined, you
can give us a phone call. The number is say
it along at home one eight three three std WYTK.
You'll hear a hopefully familiar voice and a beep like
so beep, and then you got three minutes. Those are yours?
Run wild all we ask is that you use a moniker,
(59:24):
give yourself a cool nickname, give us, let us know
if there's permission to use your name and or message
on the air, and most importantly, don't censor yourself. If
you have something that needs more than three minutes. If
you want to send us some links, you can contact
us via our email address any old evening of the
week until the black Vans come for us.
Speaker 4 (59:44):
We are conspiracy atiheartradio dot com.
Speaker 3 (01:00:06):
Stuff they Don't want you to know is a production
of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Stuff They Don't Want You To Know News
Hosts And Creators
Matt Frederick
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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