As we mull the shooting of Donald Trump and its aftermath, let’s consider, “What if?” What if the Secret Service had shot Thomas Matthew Crooks as he crawled across the roof, before he opened fire on the once and possibly future president?
Crooks would have been a hero (and martyr) of the right wing. Headlines in right-leaning media would have screamed, “Young Trump Supporter Shot Dead by Feds Outside Rally.” It would have been the same play that the right ran after a woman named Ashli Babbitt was shot by a federal police officer as she and an outraged mob tried to force their way into a barricaded area during the Jan. 6, 2021, invasion of the Capitol.
Trump called Babbitt “An innocent, wonderful, incredible woman, a military woman,” and called the officer who shot her “a disgrace.” Later, it was discovered Babbitt had a criminal record of violence for repeatedly ramming a car being driven by her rival in a love triangle. Crooks was about as politically ambiguous as a person could be. About all we know of his views at this point is that he donated $15 to a Democratic website 3 1/2 years ago when he was 17, and registered to vote Republican when he turned 18. Given Crooks’ threadbare political history, the entire world would have profiled him as a Trump supporter if he’d been shot by a counter-sniper before shooting at the former president.
First off, he dressed like a Trumper. His choice of attire for his attack was a T-shirt repping Demolition Ranch, a YouTube channel dedicated to blasting stuff with exotic weapons and setting off explosions for entertainment. Let’s just say its target audience is not coastal liberal elites. Second, Crooks was armed. It’s been a thing for a while now to parade around with assault weapons at political protests and outside political rallies, and Trump has been one of the politicians encouraging that.
Former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson testified to Congress that Trump wanted the Secret Service to shut off metal detectors and let armed people into his Jan. 6 rally because “they’re not here to hurt me.” With all the fringy flakes packing heat in public these days, it’s grown increasingly difficult, and in some cases impossible, for law enforcement to tell who’s a real threat and who’s just doing heavily armed performance art. It didn’t use to be this way.
I got my first presidential press pass in 1984 and covered events by Ronald Reagan, Walter Mondale, Jesse Jackson and Gary Hart. In those days, possession of firearms anywhere near a campaign event was prima facie evidence you were up to no good, and you’d have spent the rest of your day, and maybe more, in the friendly confines of a local jail. The one thing I’m sure of with the Trump assassination attempt is that if the Secret Service had shot first, the same congressfolk who ran agency Director Kimberly Cheatle out of Washington for failing to protect Trump would be trying to run her out for her “trigger happy” agents shooting Crooks. I can see that hearing now:
Q: At the time your agents opened fire on this young man, he was outside your security perimeter, wasn’t he not? A: Yes, he was. Q: Is it your standard policy to shoot at people outside the designated perimeter?
A: Not ordinarily, but he was spotted crawling across a roof to a position overlooking the venue with a rifle. Q: Isn’t it possible he was simply crawling across that roof to get a better view of President Trump’s speech? And so on, and so on.
It’s worth noting here that while guns weren’t allowed inside the Republican National Convention the week after Trump was shot, they were allowed just outside the arena. If the members of Congress on the warpath against the Secret Service actually wanted to solve the problem, they’d pass a law saying that anyone bringing a gun within shooting distance of a political event can be disarmed and detained, at least for the duration of the event. But they don’t, so they won’t.
