Honestly, the image of Donald Trump standing on that stage in Butler, Pennsylvania, with blood on his face and his fist in the air is probably burned into your brain. It's one of those moments where time just stops. But while we've all seen the video a thousand times, the story of Thomas Matthew Crooks, the man who tried to assassinate Trump, is still weirdly blurry for a lot of people.
He wasn't some high-profile political operative. He wasn't a radicalized member of some underground cell. He was just a 20-year-old kid from a suburb of Pittsburgh. A quiet kid. A smart kid. A kid who somehow decided that July 13, 2024, was the day he'd try to change history with a rifle he bought from his own father.
The Profile of a Loner
Bethel Park is a pretty normal place. It’s leafy, quiet, and suburban. That’s where Crooks grew up. He lived with his parents, who were both social workers, in a nice house on a nice street. He liked Legos. He liked his cat. He was into building model airplanes.
Basically, he was the guy nobody noticed.
High school wasn't great for him. Classmates at Bethel Park High said he was bullied "almost every day." He wore hunting outfits to class and sat alone at lunch with his headphones on. He wasn't a total ghost, though. He was incredibly smart—scored a 1530 on his SATs. That’s top-tier, Ivy League territory.
But there was this weird disconnect. He tried out for the school's rifle team and got rejected because he was a terrible shot. Fast forward a few years, and he’s practicing at the Clairton Sportsmen's Club over 40 times in a single year. He was clearly working on something.
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The Breakdown of the Attack
The actual mechanics of how the man who tried to assassinate Trump got onto that roof are still a massive point of contention. The Secret Service took a lot of heat for it, and rightfully so. Crooks drove to Butler, parked at a gas station, and just... walked around.
He had a rangefinder. He was checking distances. He even had a drone he flew over the site earlier in the day to scout the layout.
- The Weapon: It was a DPMS Panther Arms AR-15 style rifle. His dad bought it years ago and sold it to him for $500.
- The Position: He climbed onto the roof of the American Glass Research (AGR) building. It was less than 150 meters from the stage.
- The Timing: He was spotted by local police and even a few rallygoers before he fired. One officer even climbed a ladder and saw him, but Crooks turned the gun on him, and the officer had to drop back down for safety.
Seconds later, he started firing. Eight shots. One grazed Trump’s ear. One killed Corey Comperatore, a former fire chief who was just there to support his candidate. Two others were critically injured.
Then, in about 15 seconds, it was over. A Secret Service counter-sniper took him out.
Why Did He Do It?
This is the part that drives investigators crazy. Usually, with these types of shooters, there’s a manifesto. A rambling YouTube video. Something.
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Crooks left nothing.
The FBI went through his phone, his computer, his entire digital life. They found 17 different social media accounts. He’d searched for images of both Trump and Biden. He looked up the dates of the Democratic National Convention. He searched for "Lee Harvey Oswald."
His political history is a total mess of contradictions:
- He was a registered Republican.
- He donated $15 to a progressive group (ActBlue) the day Biden was inaugurated.
- His Gab account (allegedly) showed support for pro-immigration policies.
- Other reports mentioned antisemitic and anti-immigrant searches.
It’s almost like he wasn't looking for a political cause, but rather a "target of opportunity." He wanted to be famous. He wanted to do something big. The Butler rally was just the closest "big thing" on the calendar.
The Second Man: Ryan Wesley Routh
You can’t talk about the man who tried to assassinate Trump without mentioning that it actually happened twice in 2024. Two months after Butler, a guy named Ryan Wesley Routh was caught hiding in the bushes at Trump’s golf course in West Palm Beach.
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Routh was a totally different animal. He was 58. He had a criminal record a mile long—over 100 counts. He was obsessed with the war in Ukraine and had even written a book where he literally told Iran they should assassinate Trump.
He hid in the shrubbery for 12 hours with an SKS rifle, a GoPro, and ceramic plates for body armor. Unlike Crooks, Routh didn't get a shot off. A Secret Service agent saw the barrel of his gun poking through the fence and opened fire. Routh fled but was caught on I-95.
Just recently, in September 2025, a jury found Routh guilty on all counts. At his sentencing, it came out that he was actually trying to "finish the job" that Crooks started. He even wrote a letter offering $150,000 to anyone who could complete the assassination if he failed.
What We’ve Learned Since
Looking back from 2026, these incidents changed how we handle political security. The Secret Service went through a massive overhaul. We learned that the "lone wolf" isn't always a basement-dwelling radical; sometimes they’re just people who fall through the cracks of a polarized society.
If you’re trying to make sense of this, here are the real takeaways:
- Security isn't just about walls. The failure in Butler was a failure of communication between local and federal police. If they’d just shared a radio frequency, Crooks might have been stopped before he ever climbed that ladder.
- Motives are rarely simple. Stop looking for a "Red" or "Blue" explanation. For guys like Crooks, the violence itself is often the point, not the politics.
- The "loner" trope is real. Both men had significant gaps in their social lives. Crooks was a bullied outcast; Routh had a falling out with his own family.
The best thing we can do now is stay informed and keep a critical eye on the investigations. The final reports from the House Task Force are public now—go read them if you want the dry, technical details. But the human story? That’s much harder to pin down.
Next steps for you:
- Check the official FBI vault for the latest declassified documents on the Butler investigation.
- Review the bipartisan Task Force report if you want to see the specific lapses in Secret Service protocol.
- Stay skeptical of "manifestos" you see on social media—many have been debunked as fakes.