Lots of people on Twitter posting pictures of an AR-15 bullet and calling BS on the claim that Donnie was shot in the ear:

Counted me as one of the 99%, but also counted me as someone who was doubted he was shot (as opposed to shot at) from the get-go:

AV8
@AV8intheblue
It's evermore apparent that 99% of the general public has literally ZERO clue what an ammunition round, even of low caliber like a .22, does to any portion of the human body when it impacts flesh even in a grazing fashion when fired from an AR ...

AF-Pak Hand
@stevesi28838948
Said this back on Saturday on this platform. If the kid was firing a 5.56 round, it would have torn the top of his ear off. I don't understand why there has been no fidelity on this. No press conference from FBI, USSS. No briefing from docs. Didn't go to a level 1 trauma center.

Jason
@XLAnimosity
Exactly, and the constant people on here saying it was a airsoft gun, I knew right away it was a AR of some kind. That's what they sound like from a distance. .223 and .556 rounds decimate human flesh. Literally no damage visible to his ear.

Sorry JD there is no they. And the kid who shot at Trump would have just as easily shot at Biden if he'd been in the area and the opportunity presented itself:

Aaron Rupar
@atrupar

"They literally shot him!" -- JD Vance (who is "they"?)

I had speculated earlier as to the reasons for the shooting. Looks like it was a combination of opportunity (Trump rally 50 miles away) and mental illness (major depressive disorder):

We still don't know his motivation. Was it political (radicalized somewhere online)? Was it opportunistic (kid wanted to make a name for himself and what better way to do it than shoot up a presidential rally in a nearby area)? Was it personal (mental illness and/or hatred of bullies and he identified Trump as the highest profile bully in the country)?
POSTED BY GAL_TUESDAY AT 2024-07-14 12:37 PM

FTA:

When the F.B.I. was able to finally access Mr. Crooks's cellphones and other electronic devices, agents could see that he had searched for images of Mr. Trump as well as President Biden, Attorney General Merrick B. Garland and even F.B.I. Director Christopher A. Wray.

Mr. Crooks also had at typed in "major depressive disorder" and searched for dates and places for appearances for both Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump.

One of Mr. Trump's planned appearances happened to be about 50 miles from Mr. Crooks's house in Bethel Park, Pa.

Crooks went to a shooting range the day before the attempted assassination, according to the FBI. He purchased a ladder and 50 rounds of ammunition the next day, just hours before the shooting.

I don't think Thomas was on Trump's 2016 campaign list, but his parents were:

Trump's 2016 presidential campaign database, obtained by Channel 4 News in 2020, lists the assailant's parents Matthew, and his wife Mary, 53, as living at a residence in the borough of Bethel Park, south of Pittsburgh.

Special counsels are unconstitutional if they make Trump sad

Or so says Aileen Cannon.

I don'y always trust the NY Post's reporting but I've seen similar reporting from other sources I do trust:

Incredibly, not only did Crooks manage to avoid being confronted despite sticking out like a sore thumb, he secured his rooftop perch right under the noses of a local police sniper team stationed inside the building, law enforcement sources told The Post.

The building--the AGR International Inc. factory next to the Butler County Farm Fair grounds--was being used by local police as a "watch post" for snipers to scan for threats as the former president spoke onstage only 130 yards away, according to sources.

Cops were inside, but not on the roof, during the shooting, sources said.

Mob Boss Shot on Fifth Avenue

FTA:

He said that every person in attendance for his speech believed "something that's a little crazy." In his case, he said, "I believe the devil is real and that he works terrible things in our society. That's a crazy conspiracy theory to a lot of very well-educated people in this country right now."

#5 Trump is trying to win the swing states of PA, WI and MI, and he thinks JD Vance, being from the nearby state of OH, will appeal to enough voters in those swing states to carry him/them to victory in November.

Republicans against Trump
@RpsAgainstTrump

Donald Trump's VP nominee JD Vance: "We are effectively run in this country ... by a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they've made. And they want to make the rest of the country miserable too."

FTA:

What Trump offers is an easy escape from the pain. To every complex problem, he promises a simple solution. He can bring jobs back simply by punishing offshoring companies into submission. As he told a New Hampshire crowd--folks all too familiar with the opioid scourge--he can cure the addiction epidemic by building a Mexican wall and keeping the cartels out. He will spare the United States from humiliation and military defeat with indiscriminate bombing. It doesn't matter that no credible military leader has endorsed his plan. He never offers details for how these plans will work, because he can't. Trump's promises are the needle in America's collective vein.

The great tragedy is that many of the problems Trump identifies are real, and so many of the hurts he exploits demand serious thought and measured action--from governments, yes, but also from community leaders and individuals. Yet so long as people rely on that quick high, so long as wolves point their fingers at everyone but themselves, the nation delays a necessary reckoning. There is no self-reflection in the midst of a false euphoria. Trump is cultural heroin. He makes some feel better for a bit. But he cannot fix what ails them, and one day they'll realize it.

I'm not sure when or how that realization arrives: maybe in a few months, when Trump loses the election; maybe in a few years, when his supporters realize that even with a President Trump, their homes and families are still domestic war zones, their newspapers' obituaries continue to fill with the names of people who died too soon, and their faith in the American Dream continues to falter. But it will come, and when it does, I hope Americans cast their gaze to those with the most power to address so many of these problems: each other. And then, perhaps the nation will trade the quick high of "Make America Great Again" for real medicine.

In a 2016 article in The Atlantic, "Opioid of the Masses," Mr. Vance wrote: "During this election season, it appears that many Americans have reached for a new pain reliever." He went on: "It enters minds, not through lungs or veins, but through eyes and ears, and its name is Donald Trump."

He went even further in a July 2016 opinion piece for The Atlantic, titled "An Opioid for the Masses," Vance wrote of Trump's big campaign promises, "He never offers details for how these plans will work, because he can't. Trump's promises are the needle in America's collective vein ... Trump is cultural heroin. He makes some feel better for a bit. But he cannot fix what ails them, and one day they'll realize it."

He was a registered Republican, records show, and he once donated to ActBlue $15 earmarked for the Progressive Turnout Project. His mother was a registered Democrat; his father, a Libertarian who investigators say legally purchased the gun found next to Mr. Crooks after he was shot and killed by Secret Service counter-snipers.

#11 I read that the father is a registered Libertarian, the mother is a registered Democrat and Thomas was a resigistered Republican.

Coincidence? Yay or Nay?:

Brian Krassenstein
@krassenstein
But ... but ... but Joe Biden will get us into more wars (as he has really pulled us out of all wars):

J.D.Vance last night:

"A lot of people recognize that we need to do something with Iran"but not these weak little bombing runs. If you're going to punch the Iranians, you punch them hard."

FTA:

In observing Trump's central role in the normalization of political violence in the United States, my point is not to blame the victim for his own attempted assassination. It is, however, to insist that cultivating a culture of political violence necessarily involves unleashing forces and permissions that one cannot contain to one's political enemies. A culture that at once tolerates the kind of violence Trump has encouraged and permits disaffected young men"for reasons political, ideational, or mental health-related"easy access to AR-15s is a culture that is going to have more political assassination attempts. We write a lot about political violence on Lawfare, and many others have sounded this warning as well. And while I never imagined that the politician on the business end of the AR-15 would be Trump himself, the fact that it has turned out to be so does not diminish the point.

. . .[I]t is possible to be at the same time a threat to democracy and a victim of a horrible crime. The fact that Trump has been shot emphatically does not mean that his behavior does not threaten American democracy--just as the fact that Huey Long, the populist governor of Louisiana in the 1930s, was assassinated did not acquit him of being a corrupt authoritarian. That Trump is also a corrupt authoritarian surely cannot justify his attempted assassination or any political violence, but just as surely, the fact that a person attempted his assassination does not nullify the threat he poses. The two facts must be allowed to coexist.

Any questions?:

JD Vance (9/2021) : "We need a De-Ba'athification program in the U.S....We should seize the administrative state for our own purposes. We should fire ... every civil servant in the administrative state. Replace them with our people."

Any questions?:

The Intellectualist
@highbrow_nobrow

CBS News: Hungary's Viktor Orbn seized control of universities rewrote the Constitution and neutered the courts. Is that what you're advocating for in the US?

JD Vance: I think Orbn made smart decisions that we could learn from in the US. (June 2024)

MeidasTouch
@MeidasTouch

"Channel 4 News can reveal that Thomas Crooks's, [the shooter's] father, the owner of the rifle that was used to shoot at Donald Trump, was held on a database and profiled by the former president's election campaign and identified by them as a strong Republican supporter, gun owner and hunter. The information was compiled as part of a secret Republican project to gather data on millions of gun owners across America and use it to target pro-gun messages in the run up to the 2016 election...We know they profiled them using secret computer models to identify likely gun owners and enthusiasts, and Mr. Crooks scored very highly, 0.99 out of 1 for being a gun owner and 0.95 out of one 1 being a hunter. In fact, out of more than 19,000 people in Bethel Park who were profiled, Mr. Crooks was in the top 20 and the database classified him as a strong GOP or Republican voter."

Hmm, you can see that someone(s) in the family were enthusiastic gun owners, and you can see that Crooks' father suspected his son was the shooter and notified police:

More than a dozen guns were found in a search of the Crooks family home, four senior officials told NBC News.

After Crooks opened fire, his father called police to say he was worried that his son and his AR rifle were missing, three senior officials said. Police went to the home after the call.

So it seems this info (from the above link):

"The programme can now reveal the information was compiled as part of a secretive project aiming to identify millions of gun owners in America who could be targeted with pro-gun rights messages in the lead-up to the 2016 election campaign."

coupled with this reporting:

Local Pittsburgh News WPXI: Crooks' motive is still unclear. Records show he is a registered Republican and neighbors today told us that they've actually seen Trump signs outside of the home over the last few years

"It makes me wonder why he would carry out an assassination attempt on the conservative candidate."

We don't know Thomas Crooks motivation. If he was a Trump supporter who turned on Trump that would not be an unheard of development. In an article I posted yesterday history professor Timothy Snyder esplains:

We might be tempted to think that violence against one side must come from the other side. But the bloody genie, once unleashed, often stays close to home. Those who have made violence normal are especially vulnerable, because they will always have colleagues or followers who think they have not gone far enough.

Trump's 2016 campaign targeted Crooks parents as potential supporters due to their interest in guns, which they probably got a lot of pro-gun messages from the campaign in both 2016 and 2020 in the hopes of getting them to vote for Trump:

Trump campaign secret data on gunman's family

The gun-related profiles which appear in the 2016 Trump campaign database range between 0--meaning no likelihood--and 1--a certainty.

Matthew Crooks scored highly across a range of gun-related models including: 0.99 for the likelihood of returning a warranty card for a firearms purchase; 0.95 for the likelihood of pursuing hunting sports; and 0.94 for the likelihood of shopping at the hunting retailer.

Overall, averaged across all three of these measures, out of more than 19,000 people in Bethel Park, Matthew Crooks was among the top 20 highest scoring individuals.