Hidden True Crime - 5 Secrets of Thomas Matthew Crooks: Forensic Psychologist Analyzes Trump Assassination Attempt

Episode Date: July 30, 2024

5 Secrets of Thomas Matthew Crooks: Forensic Psychologist Analyzes Trump Assassination Attempt Find out the easiest way to get to sleep, and stay asleep when you click https://shopbeam.com/hiddentruecrime and use code TRUECRIME to get up to 35% at checkout. Videos Used In This Episode: Former classmate of Trump rally gunman says he was ‘bullied almost every day’ Trump Shooter Thomas Matthew Crooks Video Shows Him Joking About Penis | TMZ  Thomas Matthew Crooks' former guidance counselor says "it didn't register" at first Additional Sources: BBC https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c3gw58wv4e9o  Politicio https://www.politico.com/live-updates/2024/07/24/congress/fbi-director-christopher-wray-thomas-crooks-trump-shooting-00170884 CNN https://www.cnn.com/2024/07/15/us/thomas-crooks-trump-rally-shooting-invs/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2024/07/19/politics/trump-rally-shooter-searches/index.html TIME https://time.com/6998557/thomas-matthew-crooks-trump-rally-shooter-fbi-motive/ FOX https://www.foxnews.com/us/trump-would-be-assassin-thomas-crooks-researched-mass-shooter-ethan-crumbley-source https://www.foxnews.com/us/trump-shooter-thomas-crooks-online-search-history-included-depressive-disorder-trump-biden-dnc   New York Times Trump Rally Gunman ‘Didn’t Want Attention’ in School, Classmates Said - The New York Times USA Today: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/investigations/2024/07/14/thomas-crooks-trump-rally-shooter/74397935007/  Lauren Matthias was a television reporter for a decade and has followed the Lori Vallow and Chad Daybell case since 2019. She and her husband, Dr. John Matthias, a criminal psychologist, started Hidden True Crime in 2020 with their Season, 'Beyond the Veil,' a psychological deep dive into the doomsday murders and prophet. What started as a simple conversation at their dinner table became a captivating podcast. Join the dynamic duo of Dr. John Matthias, a forensic psychologist, and Lauren Matthias, an investigative journalist, as they delve into the psychological facets of unthinkable crimes every week. Their unique perspectives and in-depth analysis offer a fresh take on true crime storytelling. Thank you for your support through sponsorships, subscribing, listening, and becoming a Patreon member at Patreon.com/HiddenTrueCrime Our Sponsors:* Check out Acorns: https://acorns.com/HIDDENTRUECRIME* Check out Acorns: https://acorns.com/HIDDENTRUECRIME* Check out Armoire and use my code HIDDENTRUECRIME for a great deal: https://www.armoire.style* Check out Effecty and use my code HIDDENTRUECRIME for a great deal: https://www.effecty.com* Check out Happy Mammoth and use my code HIDDENTRUECRIME for a great deal: https://happymammoth.comSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/hidden-a-true-crime-podcast1836/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Lately, I've been trying to be more intentional about what I wear, intentional about everything, just choosing pieces that feel effortless, still put together, timeless, but also not overthinking it every morning. It's why I keep going back to quince. Their pieces just make getting dressed easier and I feel so classy. I feel elevated. The fits are flattering. The fabric is really high quality. Everything is wearable day to day. I actually got this really, really, beautiful yellow V-neck midi dress from them, and I paired it with some Italian leather sandals. It's one of those outfits that just works. It feels polished but still comfortable. It's exactly what I've been looking for. What surprises me, though, is the quality for the price.

Quince uses premium materials like European linen, organic cotton, but they cut out the middleman. So everything is priced way lower than you'd expect. Refresh. your every day with luxury you can actually use. Head to quince.com slash hidden true crime for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. That's quince, quince, q-u-in-c-com slash hidden true crime for free shipping and 365 day returns. Quince.com slash hidden true crime. Hello, hidden gems. Thank you for joining with us with Dr. John Matthias, forensic and clinical psychologist, and me, a journalist, an investigative journalist, TV reporter, and now you're better half. Or I should say your equal half. Your co-host, partner in crime, your spouse. Dr. John, where do you want to start?

Because this is a very heavy topic, to say the least. I want to begin with the title of our show, which is the five secrets of Thomas Matthew Crooks. And I think by examining, what I'm calling secrets, I also might refer to them as motives. They're not necessarily obvious motives. And motive, by the way, is something that so far nobody's really been able to assess with Thomas Matthew Crooks, or at least not disclose openly. I think the FBI is trying to gather a lot more information, and I'm sure they're going to have a much more comprehensive assessment once they gather the information and hand it over to their behavioral analysis unit. In the meantime, I thought, I think there's enough facts here to start making some assumptions or conjectures.

I know sometimes that makes people nervous because this will be somewhat speculative. Some of these facts are not speculative. These are accurate. So my analysis. We have evidence tonight. We have been studying. But some of your conclusions or some of the things we might speculate on when it comes to the evidence. So I think the key in my analysis will be taking some of the evidence we know to be accurate.

and combine it with some of the research on mass shooters, school shooters. We'll talk about that in a minute. But a lot of the research I'll be discussing tonight is research performed by Peter Langman, who's done extensive studies of skill shooters and mass shooters, adult shooters, all kinds of shooters. This is a little different, obviously, because this is a, this is not a mass shooting. Well, sadly, somebody was killed as a result of this shooting. You know, it could have been much more severe.

There could have been many fatalities. Fortunately, there was only one fatality. Unfortunately, there was one fatality. But by definition, this is not a mass shooting, but the would-be assassin has a great deal in common with mass shooters. So the research on mass shooting and mass shooters is completely relevant. Most of that research, or at least the research we're talking about, is research by Peter Langman.

I'm also going to refer to Catherine Newman, who wrote a book called Rampage, where she's done some extensive studies of school shooters. and I will be discussing a group called the Violence Project, which is Jillian Peterson and James Densley. The violence project is they're both psychologists. They both got together and started this project, the goal of which is to deter mass shooting.

So it's a prevention project, and the way they go about this project is by compiling research on previous mass shooters. Many of those are school shooters. So I'll be discussing their four stages that they see, that apply to more than 80% of mass shooters, and I'll be looking at how those apply here. And I think by looking at the research and looking at the evidence we have,

even though it's not extensive, and by looking at the stages, the potential stages here that Crooks went through, I think we can start putting together a picture. And it's important to point out from the start that Langman, I just attended a workshop with Peter Langman several months ago, but Langman is clear, and just about everyone else who studies this topic is clear in saying that there's not a particular profile. There's no one singular profile that allows us to assess mass shooters.

And what Langman is fond of saying is that, however, there are patterns that many of the shooters fit similar patterns. The patterns, of course, differ somewhat. They're idiosyncratic to each shooter, but there are patterns, and that's what we're going to be considering. The causes are multidimensional, and there's often multiple. pathways to mass shootings. And so it's important to keep that in mind. I think after an event like this, in such a highly charged, polarized political environment, I think there's this desire oftentimes to point fingers and to assign blame and to come up with the simplest explanation, which would be trying to find a single profile that fits the shooter. And that profile doesn't exist. In fact,

one of the fascinating things about this case is precisely the lack of a particular profile, the lack of clear motives. And so I think we'll be dissecting that issue as well. Not a specific profile, but the profile we start with is that of a mass shooter then. Well, not a profile. We're going to be looking at patterns. The other thing that there's a great quote, so Gerald, Gerald Post that's spelled G-E-R-O-L-D Gerald Post, who's now deceased, he started a profiling division at the CIA. Okay. And his goal, his job was to profile foreign political leaders so that we in this country are political leaders here, we had a better sense of how to interact with foreign leaders.

And so he began this whole division that was concerned with developing these detailed profiles of everything that might be relevant in interacting with our foreign leaders and adversaries, such as Putin. And one of the things Gerald Post used to say, it's a statement I love, is that he would say the cause is not the cause. And what he meant by that is what the most. obvious explanations for these types of crimes often are misleading, that oftentimes there's multiple pathways that lead to these types of events. And, you know, an example would be in an instance

like this, that the knee-jerk response might be that this is some type of ideological retaliation or, right? Right. I think that was the knee-jerk reaction, absolutely. Right. And so I think what Post is saying is if you think, if you jump on that as an explanation, And you see that as the cause. You're probably going to start looking for that as the cause, no matter what else you're looking at. And what he says essentially is even if that is a motive or part of the cause, it's still not the cause. That the cause is deeper. It's multidimensional.

And you have to always dig a little deeper to start assessing what the motives are and what the cause is. And so hopefully we'll start doing that here today. This is going to be speculative because we don't have a lot of evidence. We don't have, I don't have, there's so much information I would like to see. to make a full analysis, and we don't have that. An example of that would be that on the morning of or barely soon before he attempted this assassination that the perpetrator here was searching for pornography. And so the FBI knows exactly what those search terms were.

They know exactly what type of pornography he was looking for, right? And I don't. And you might say, who cares, right? And I say to that, I care because I've dealt with, I've assessed a lot of sex offenders over the years. And the type of pornography, the kind of pornography, the extent of the use of pornography, all of those things matter. And so, you know, is he, for example, is he looking at atypical images? Is he looking at images of children? Is he looking at images of adult females?

all those types of answers to that question would lead to potentially a different direction of my analysis. But in the absence of that type of information, and you might say, for example, well, this is just a small piece of information. True, but it's also a piece of information that could really take us deeper into this analysis. So in that sense, I have this evidence that he was doing this, but I don't exactly know what it means. We don't have the specifics, which you would typically have when assessing a sex offender. something that you have done hundreds, thousands of times. Right. In other words, we all have confirmation bias when it comes to something like this and

knee-jerk reactions, but your hope and to open us to this analysis is to stay open. Right. Which is the thing you often say. Stay open. My goal here is to begin this analysis, and maybe if I'm lucky or if anyone cares to hand off the baton to other people, maybe to open the door a little bit so that other people can think about some of these issues. Maybe I can begin this process or this analysis. I'm sure the FBI already has, but I don't have sufficient information to give definitive conclusions or

conclusions that I'd be completely confident in providing. Fair enough. Makes sense. Let's begin. Yeah. So let's start with the first secret. So this is an interesting secret. And I think I'm going to anchor my analysis on this particular secret. And that is that Thomas Matthew Crooks performed a search for the term major depressive disorder. What's interesting about that is, well, first of all, let's back up a little bit. When was that, by the way? Are you saying near the time of the shooting? No. He did this in April of 2024. Okay. So in April of 2024, so we do know the month, we know the year. He searched for major depressive disorder. Again, I'm making assumptions here, I'm going to assume that he's making, he's performing that search because he's concerned that

perhaps he has depression. You might say, well, maybe someone he knows has it or maybe he's just interested in what depression looks like or is and maybe he doesn't have it. And all that could be true. However, there's another search he performs after he looks for major depressive disorder. And that is crisis treatment for major depression. So when you have a search for major depression, and then it's followed with crisis treatment for major depressive disorder. Again, I'm assuming here, but it looks to me like this is something he has and that he wants help resolving. So it's one thing to look up information about major depressive disorder. It's another to look for crisis treatment.

So by looking for crisis treatment, it appears to me that he's looking for help. Now, there's another interesting element of this, and that is, and by the way, this is why I consider it a secret. it's because his mother Mary and his father, Matthew, are both licensed professional counselors in the state of Pennsylvania. And that means I don't know exactly what they do. There's many roles you can play with an LPC. So that's called an LPC. We have it in Nevada. Many states have it. A licensed professional counselors, typically someone with a master's degree, they've undergone training to receive a license from the state that allows them to perform therapy if they've gotten that far. So essentially, you have two parents that are therapists.

So think about the scenario for a minute. You have two parents that are licensed therapist, LPCs, who have a son who's Googling major depressive disorder and looking for treatment for that, presumably. Not going to them. He's got a crisis center, probably a hotline in his home. But he's going. Exactly. Exactly. That's exactly.

That's why this is a secret. Because in theory, he has two mental health professionals right next to him. He lives in the home with his parents. And yet, he's not, apparently he's not willing to disclose that to them. He's so disconnected from his parents, at least around this issue, that he's not willing to talk to them about it. And we know that one of the significant interventions for school shooters or mass shooters is the willingness or the ability to engage with other people, to seek help, to just talk about

it. Let's start with depression. He's in a home with two other therapists, parents that are professional therapists. He's Googling it. He's apparently not willing to talk to them about it or he hasn't. Maybe he did. I don't know. But it seems to me that this is a bit of a secret.

The question I have about the depression, there's a couple of questions. Number one, how did he get there? How did he get depression? And if he has major depression, and again, I'm not diagnosing. I'm just reiterating one of his search terms, which is major depressive disorder. So I don't know enough about him to obviously diagnose, but I'm reiterating that he did that he searched for this. So how does someone get to the point where they are Googling and presumably might have some symptoms of major depression disorder and they're not willing to talk about it with

their parents? This is going to bring us to, so here's the book, the Violence Project. I mentioned it earlier. I'm going to, I'm going to talk about the four stages or Peterson and Demsley refer to them as the, they also refer to these as patterns and their research shows that roughly four out of five maybe more, sometimes more mass shooters go through these different patterns. Here's the first one. First, many mass shooters, I'm going to quote from the book. This is page 16 of their book, The Violence Project. Quote, first, many mass shooters experience childhood abuse and exposure to violence at a young age,

often at the hands are their parents. Parental self-harm is common, as is physical abuse, sexual abuse, domestic violence in the home, and severe bullying by classmates. This early exposure to violence and unaddressed trauma feeds the perpetrators' rage and despair later in life. Mental health concerns such as depression, anxiety, and paranoia commonly developed during adolescence and are rarely identified or treated. So let's look at stage one. If I presume that the first secret is major depression, and we look at the research on this, which shows that the first pattern that many of these shooters experience is childhood abuse or exposure to violence, including bullying, we know of the elements listed here.

We know that he's experienced severe bullying by classmates. Right. There's been some varying accounts in the media, but the fact of the matter is, there have been witnesses that have come forward and said, absolutely, he was bullied. There have been at least three classmates that have talked about the bullying. In fairness, to the other side of the argument, Jim Knapp, who was a guidance counselor, now retired, who was a guidance counselor at Beth Fuller. high school in Pennsylvania where Crooks attended school. He said that he didn't see any bullying and he didn't believe that Thomas Matthew Crooks was bullied. So I actually had to go back and look

up some pictures that I was able to keep from when I was a guidance counselor and some notes that I took myself. And therefore, I was able to look at those notes and look at his picture. And therefore, you know, it started all come back. The recollection all came back. And when I recognized who it was and what happened, it just made my stomach sink. Knapp retired in 2022 the same year Crooks graduated from Bethel Park High School. Now, Knapp tells me to note he wants people to understand that he doesn't believe there was any bullying going on. He tells me that actually during Crooks' senior year, he didn't miss any days except for just one. And so he says if there was any bullying going on, he certainly would have probably missed more days.

But wouldn't that go towards what you're actually saying, which is he's not talking about it? Well, yes and no. According to Knapp, the teachers keep a close eye on this. the teachers have their ear to the ground. They would have known or seen something. But I agree. I don't think that the teachers are in the trenches. I don't, yeah. They're in the trenches.

They're not in the class cafeterias, right? The classmates are. And the classmates are noticing it. And in fact, let me, this is from a New York Times article. I'm going to quote, Juliana Grooms here, age 19. She was a classmate of crooks. She says, quote, students teased him about his poor hygiene,

his body odor, and his awkward socks. military bearing. Oftentimes kids said, hey, look at the school shooter over there. She said he was such an easy target. And she's not alone, by the way. There's another classmate who was very vocal about this. He was in an interview for one of the major news stations. He was bullied almost every day. In what way can you explain? I mean, he would sit alone at lunch. I mean, he was just a outcast and you know how kids are nowadays. So. They're going to see someone like that and they're going to target him because they think it's funny or whatever. So it's the best way I can describe it. And it's honestly kind of sad. Like, I don't want to say this is what provoked it, but you never know. You said it was a loner? Yeah.

I want to say he was a loner more because he was just, he was quiet, but like he was just bullied. Like, he was bullied so much, so much. unless he's high school Yeah What did they still remember at all What they said to him or called him No He was just made fun of

I guess for the way he dressed Or his appearance Okay so that was Jason Kohler Another classmate He's saying very much the same things As Juliana Grooms They both observe bullying firsthand It's worth noting

That one of the elements of that bullying Is that the term that Julianna Grooms uses is she called him quote, an awkward solitary bearing, which I take to mean, let's translate that. She's being kind. I appreciate that, but essentially what she's saying is he's a bit nerdy. He's a bit socially awkward. I think she's not going to call him that.

But some of the terms that I've seen used among the classlights that have been interviewed to describe Thomas Matthew Crooks have been loner, outcast. That's one of the terms Jason Kohler used, weird, quiet. No friends. He kept himself, didn't talk to anyone. And even those that said, I don't think he was bullied, said that he was quiet and wouldn't talk. I mean, that's just sort of like across the board, socially awkward, kept to himself quiet. And then, of course, not everyone is going to see the bullying, but certainly people did. Right. And so I think to me, if you have this history of bullying and it's creating a,

a certain amount of shame. Also, maybe some of the confusion was that it doesn't appear that he was physically bullied. It appears that most of this was teasing. Most of this was emotional. And so that's clearly a form of shaming. It's attempting to denigrate him. It's going to belittle him. It's going to make him feel it's going to more than likely it's going to decrease the sense of self-worth. Yeah. And since we know that self-esteem or at least low self-esteem, is a big part of major depressive disorder. It's not hard to imagine that over time, this relentless bullying,

and that was a term, by the way, that one of the classmates used, that this relentless bullying may have led to some of his depression. Because of the bullying, it's not hard to imagine that, and because of his appearance, to other students, at least,

the perception of how he looked and how he acted, that I think all of this started feeding on itself. It became kind of a vicious cycle that reinforced itself. And as he was bullied, he withdrew more, and I think this continued, he ended up becoming interested. Some of his favorite activities were video games. He liked to play chess. He was into computer coding.

The video game component is quite common among adolescents who isolate themselves and that are somewhat socially awkward. So you have that. To getting back to the question of why he's not talking to his parents about it, I think the shame from the bullying is potentially something he doesn't want to reveal. It's something he doesn't want to talk about. So why is he Googling this on his own? Why is he Googling crisis treatment for depression and not talking to them about it? Maybe it's because the shame is so deep and the humiliation is so deep that he doesn't even want to talk about it with his parents.

The other possibility here is if we're thinking about the violence, project and the research they've done and the patterns they talk about, this idea of some other type of abuse could be in play. Now, one of the options they mentioned here is domestic violence in the home. Is that possible? Is it possible that the parents were contentious? Did they have problems in their marriage? Did they fight frequently? I don't know. If that's part of the equation, then certainly that would be traumatic for somebody like crooks, who presumably, who's presumed, yeah, I don't know. I'm just throwing this out there as an option in terms of why he might not talk to his parents about depression. It might be that there's conflict in the home.

And he doesn't want to talk about it with them because in many ways, they're divided. Sure. In many ways, this family's divided. So he doesn't feel safe talking to them about it. Maybe there's another possibility. And again, this is pure speculation. Maybe there was some type of of abuse from a relative or someone outside the home. I don't know. Maybe he was abused earlier and maybe the parents didn't know about it. Maybe, right?

Maybe a relative visiting. Who knows? These things are, they're often secrets and families and quite often they're not disclosed. So maybe that's part of this too. I'm just... You're throwing out things that would matter in a full analysis to understand this. Right. And risk factors when it comes to this.

the violence project and research. Right. If we're assessing his secrets and one of his biggest secrets is this major depression, then I'm trying to figure out how did he get there and why isn't he talking about it? And these are some of the reasons. And of course, the other question is how does this fit into this pattern of mass shooters that Peterson and Denzley talk about in their book and in their research? So I think those are some elements that are of interest in looking at crooks and that, you know, could play a role in this later assassination attempt. So I think that might be the first secret that's really critical here.

And I think it's important to recognize the impact of bullying and how that creates the social isolation. Now, before we continue, a quick word from our sponsor, because Jems, as a busy mom and a journalist, who needs to make every minute count, whether working or creating more quality family time, insomnia is not my friend and it can throw everything off. When it comes to work, I like my alone time and starting before the sun is up so that I can switch to motherhood as soon as the family wakes. And if I am up all night, worried and fretting and my mind spinning until 3 a.m., because that's what insomnia does to me, I might as well kiss the next day goodbye.

And not just for work and my to-do list, but for everybody I love. I have no energy, no time, no schedule. So how did I use to solve this? I used to try those over-the-counter sleep aids, but those came out of cost. The cost was groginess the next day, no matter how much caffeine I drink. And that is where Dream has been a game changer for me and for our entire family, honestly, so much so that that is why I am sharing the good news, because Dream is a revolutionary approach to sleep in the form of a guilt-free indulgent hot chocolate with natural sleep-supportive ingredients.

And get this, just so everybody is aware, because I'm sure many people are wondering, yes, it is gluten-free, it is dairy-free, it is vegan, it is non-GMO, and it is keto-friendly. It allows me to fall asleep, stay asleep longer, and then I wake up refreshed without the groginess. I wake up, energized and ready to get to work. I actually feel less stress. So it helps my emotions. I feel completely rested and alert all day, even feeling like I can be more emotionally present as a parent. It is an amazing bedtime routine that I have now used for nearly a year. Our whole family has benefited and knows the routine.

And mostly they've benefited because better sleep means a better you. It is a low calorie drink. I wind down each night, just 15 calories, no added sugar. I sip it about a half hour before bed, give or take. I've also made dream popsicles to enjoy this summer in this heat wave. I've recently been loving the capsules during this 115 degree weather. Dream has given our gems an awesome deal for their first order. So head to shopbeam.com slash hidden true crime.

The link is also in the podcast notes. You can go click it there, but it is shopbeam.com slash hidden true crime, S-H-O-P-B-A-M dot com slash hidden true crime. And then use the code true crime to get up to 35% off at checkout. Now, realize typically our show code is hidden true crime. This is just true crime. True crime is the code to get up to 35% off at checkout. Shopbeam.com slash hidden true crime.

Use the code true crime. Let me know what you think. Let's get back to our episode, but tell me how you feel. Tell me what your thoughts are on this. I hope that it changes your life as much as it has changed ours. I think the next secret, if we move along to the five secrets, I think the next major secret here is probably at some point. So he's Googling major depression in April.

This event occurs in July. So you have several months there, roughly two or three months, until the assassination attempt. My guess is, if I had to guess, my guess is at some point this depression worsens. It increases. And for whatever reasons. After April, in other words.

I don't know why, you know, oftentimes there might be triggers for mass shooting. I don't know if there are in this case. We just don't have as much information as we would want or as I would want. But I think at some point the depression becomes worse. And my guess is he decides that he wants to harm himself. And so by making that decision, you have essentially a situation where there's no restraints. That, by the way, is a commonality with a lot of mass shooters

and school shooters in particular. A lot of school shooters, when they make the decision or mass for that matter, when they make the decision to engage in this process of violence and take many, many lives, they know they're not getting out alive. They know that either they're going to take their own life or somebody else is going to take theirs. And you have to believe, I have to believe, that Crooks obviously knows that by going into an arena with innumerable police officers and secret service agents, He knows he's not getting out of there alive.

And so I think you go from depression to self-harm. And this is the point when he makes that decision. I don't know when it is, but when he makes that decision, this is the tipping point. This is the point when everything changes. So you have, I'm going to refer back, I mentioned Julianna Grooms.

You have a lot of classmates who say about Thomas Matthew Crooks they say that he's a loner, he just wants to be left alone, he doesn't want to be teased, he's trying to avoid this bullying, obviously. But Juliana Grooms, I think, 19 classmates summarized it best when she said, quote, and this is in the New York Times article, quote, he didn't want attention, good or negative. So most of his classmates are describing him as someone who's not attention seeking. So this is our third secret. And that third secret is that Thomas Matthew Crooks, once he makes the decision to self-harm,

I believe he goes from a situation of not wanting to be noticed to wanting to be noticed. I was just going to say it's hard to not want to be noticed. If he made the choices he made, he certainly knew he was going to be news. So he shifted, in other words. Right. shifted. And this brings me back to the research, the Violence Project research

to the pattern number two or stage number two. Stage number two is that mass shooters reach a crisis point that pushes them over the edge. Often that crisis point can be a self-harming crisis. He seems to fit

stage number one because of the bullying. We know that for sure. Maybe some other elements, maybe some other traumas, but the bullying for sure. He fits stage number two, because I think the depression leads to this crisis point where he's pushed over the edge, where he decides he wants to self-harm. And at that point, I think anything's possible at that point. I think that there's no restraints. I think that his behavior at that point is hugely unpredictable, and it can move him to an extreme, which obviously it did.

You know, there's so very little research on assassination attempts on presidents. But there is one person in particular, his name is Lawrence Friedman. Lawrence Friedman is now deceased. But Lawrence Friedman was appointed by Lyndon B. Johnson after the assassination of Robert Kennedy in 1966. He was appointed to serve as the psychiatric consultant to the National Commission on the causes and prevention of violence. he was also tasked with developing a profile of presidential assassins for the Secret Service. What could be more relevant? And even though this occurred a while ago, it has current interest and import because there just haven't been that many assassination attempts on presidents.

So a lot of his research is still relevant today because when he was looking at this information back in the late 70s, He had at that time what amounted to most of the sample that we would still have today. So in his article, this is a 1981 article from the Saturday Evening Post, called the Assassination Syndrome by Lawrence Friedman, psychiatrist, July, August, 1981 edition. I'm going to quote Friedman on the last page of the article. He says, fame and recognition, As the killer of the president were, we know, a part of their expected reward. Acclamation and martyrdom from this community of their fantasy were also part of the expectation.

So Friedman, like many people in the Violence Project, for example, they talk about this, that fame and recognition are often a part of this. But Friedman as far back as the late 70s knew that this was an important part of these types of crimes. So even back then they knew that that is interesting. And that, by the way, is something that Peter Langman talks a lot about. So in the workshop I attended with Langman a few months ago, he talked about this idea of going from zero to hero, that a lot of shooters go. They see themselves as zeros and their goal is to at least in their mind, transform into heroes that are capable of decisive action. And there's a transformation going on.

They're transforming from these kind of emasculated, loose. losers and loners to these decisive kind of ultra-masculine heroes in their mind's eye. They're reversing the narrative. They're flipping the script. And they're going to show the world and all these people that bullied them and thought negatively of them, they're going to show them that they have it all wrong, that they're actually worthy of attention. And they're capable of in their mind's eye, they're capable of major actions that have an

impact on the world stage. And I think that's what Thomas Matthew Crooks believed. So this is obviously another secret because I think if you had told any, if you had told any of his classmates, hey, this guy, this guy is going to attempt assassination on the former president. People would have been just astounded. No. I mean, he's not capable of it. He's right. Why? You know, right. His neighbors, everybody in the neighborhood had the same reaction. Are you sure it's him? Are you sure you have the right guy? And so here you have this other secret. So now we're moving from major depression to I believe. And again, this is this is conjecture. I'm just basing this on my experience and research. You're moving for major depression, which no one knows about including his therapist parents to this desire to harm himself, which really releases all constraints on his behavior to this desire for fame and notoriety. And that takes us to the fourth secret. And I think the The Force Secret is probably the most important. So once you get to this point, I think now we're at a point where Crooks is seeking

some type of retribution. Yes. Okay. That's number four. Right. Number four, he's harboring all these wounds from his past, from the bullying, and he wants to make a grand gesture on an international stage. The ultimate hold my beer.

You know what I mean? Like, watch this. And not even to make light of it, but that's where that term comes from. You know, like watch this. You haven't seen anything yet, you know? Let me prove to you. And so this is going to take me back. This is a really important point.

And Friedman, who I just talked about, Lawrence Friedman, now deceased. But Friedman gave an interview to People Magazine. It wasn't called People Magazine back in 1978. It was just called People, or People Weekly. But people, I'll call it People Magazine since we all know that. On June 5th, 1978, there was an issue. of People magazine that featured volume nine, issue 22. There was an article that featured an interview with Lawrence Friedman, and he was talking about terrorism and presidential assassinations or assassins,

and here's what he said. Quote, presidential assassins aren't killing a man, but a depersonalized symbolic figure who commands power, attention, and celebrity, all of the things they lack. Wow. Wow. What a quote. Yeah, right. So I think Friedman really nails this in terms of helping us understand what's going on here, that you have in Crooks a disenfranchised, a masculated loner who feels probably a lot of weakness. Nobody knows him. He's invisible, right? He feels vulnerable. He feels nerdy. People are bullying him left and right, he's depressed. And so once he decides, I think, once he decides that he's going to end it or take his life, he realizes he's, he can get fame and notoriety for his behaviors. He has to pick a target.

And he picks a target who's probably the most famous human being on the planet. He's also probably, right, he's probably one of the most polarizing figures. Friedman mentions that the symbolic figure commands power, attention, and celebrity. And so we know Trump does all of those things. And so in many ways, Donald Trump, Donald Trump symbolizes everything that crooks is not. Correct. And so from a symbolic standpoint, Trump is the perfect figure,

the perfect target for this kid. And I say kid, I know he's 20, but, I mean, look at him. He looks like a kid. He feels like he's still an adolescent to me. I mean, he's 20. He's just barely out of adolescence. I know. We always get backlash when we call someone that's a legal adult, a kid.

So forgive us, but I see what you see too. This is someone who just graduated from community college with their associate degrees, getting this first job, you know. Right. I hear you. And so this is really important, I think, because it explains why somebody like Donald Trump would be the target. Yeah. Because Trump represents or symbolizes just about everything that crooks does not.

And I think that in some ways, as Freeman points out, by targeting someone like Trump, he's in some ways trying to tell the world that he matters, that he's significant. He wants the world to notice him, right? And again, you see this transformation. And we see this with a lot of the criminals we talk about. You see this transformation from, we see this attempt at reparation. He's trying to repair this really damaged identity, this really damaged sense of self, this depressed self. He's trying to repair that through violence.

He believes that by murdering someone like Trump, that he can make up for all those past wounds, that he can somehow transform from this loner to this person who's capable of this grand gesture. In his minds, again, I mean, obviously most Americans don't see this as a grand gesture. They see this is a pathological, violent attempt that makes no sense. Correct. But you're showing what he is thinking about it. From his point of view. And by the way, Julianna Grooms, the class I mentioned earlier,

also talked about the way that Crooks dressed. And apparently some of his favorite attire was wearing a SpongeBob t-shirt with baggy jeans. I had to laugh at that because, well, number one, our child, our young. I was going to that. He loves spongy. Sounds like our six-year-old, or seven-year-old now. Yeah. But SpongeBob, the reason it's funny or interesting to me is SpongeBob is in many ways,

kind of this, he's a cartoon character, obviously, but he's kind of this lovable loser, that he's always fumbling around and making mistakes. He never gets anything right. And yet, you know, in the end, he kind of comes out on top and people, all the sea creatures love him, right? And it's interesting to me that Crooks is wearing SpongeBob T-Shirts a lot to school. because to me he seems to maybe potentially relate to some of those qualities in SpongeBob. I think SpongeBob is more social than gross.

Yes, and he makes a good crabby patty. Right. Oh, yeah, he makes a wonderful crabby patty, even if he doesn't have the recipe. I'm also going to read another part of this Friedman article. This is from the same People magazine 1978. He says, quote, a presidential assassin is a man who, projects his private miseries and self-loathing into the act of assaulting the head of state. So I think you have that too.

So the question of why is he doing this, that's certainly part of it. He's projecting his private miseries and self-loathing onto the head of state or the past head of state in this particular case. So at least some of this, I think, has to do with not just this desire to transform the past, to kind of transform this wound into something in his mind's eye that kind of represents strength, but to stand up to what Donald Trump represents. And so symbolically also, I think in Crook's mind's eye and Crook's psyche, Donald Trump probably also symbolizes a lot of the bullies that he's had to deal with in the past. Donald Trump symbolizes certain ideals of masculinity that probably

threaten Thomas Matthew Crooks. And so I think there's many, many reasons. But going through this process again. Once he decides he's going to harm depression, harming himself, the fame and the notoriety. One interesting part of this is that Crooks doesn't just seem to have Donald Trump on his mind that in terms of targets, he's got all these political figures in his phone. He's got all these images. He's also, he's Googled the DNC, the Democratic National Convention. He's Googled the RNC. It seems like he would have been content to target any of these politicians that he disliked. Again, according to a lot of his classmates, there's a quote from one of his classmates saying, quote, he had a smug dislike for all politicians.

So it's interesting that he did target Donald Trump when it appeared. And one of the difficulties I think that FBI is having in terms of pinning down motive here is that there do not seem to be any ideologically based motives. Well, I think we're all thinking that when you brought this up at the beginning, we all have some sort of confirmation bias about. what we think this is, and I think the first thing we jump to is something that's politically motivated. And so this is important to talk about. You're seeing there is nothing here that points to something that's specifically politically motivated, minus the fact that he's a politician. Yeah. Well, that and the fact that when he learned that essentially Trump was going to be visiting in his backyard, that I think he saw that as a real opportunity. So, but the point is that he seemed to

dislike all politicians. equally, number one, and number two, that I think any politician that he would have had access to would have served his purpose. I think he would have accomplished the same goal with Biden. I think from a polarizing standpoint, though, and in terms of seeing a politician as symbolizing many of the elements that Thomas Crookes is trying to negate, Donald Trump would, for him, I think, would be a very logical choice. Right. It does seem logical, as you've already pointed out, when it comes to his motives, but not because of a party affiliation or anything like that. Right, exactly. One of the struggles here, I think, with the FBI is they're not finding some manifesto of hate that would point to someone on the right like Donald Trump.

So it makes it more confusing for them. You know, I will point out, I will, so I'm going to read this. One of Friedman's findings, by the way, going back to the late 70s when he profiled presidential assassins is precisely this, that they don't really have clear partisan motives. And he found that even back then. And this is what in the article of the assassination syndrome by Friedman, here's what he says. Quote, the assassins of American presidents have been emotionally disturbed social isolates acting on their own without any rational expectation. that they or the party and cause with which they identified could benefit from the slain. So this isn't bizarre.

This isn't bizarre that he had no political motivation. Even back then, Friedman is noticing that presidential assassins or would-be assassins really are, to use a term, they're emotionally disturbed social isolates who really aren't acting for political reasons. They're not acting out any ideology per se. As he puts it in the second paragraph of his article, they carry out profoundly. political attacks for confused personal reasons. That's what's going on here. This isn't political. This is personal. And even Friedman back then was seen that presidential assassins are acting more out of personal

failures. Failures in intimacy, failures in work, occupations, failures in many things. They were acting for personal reasons more than political reasons. So I think that's interesting because many years have passed since Friedman did this research, and yet we're looking at another would-be assassin who doesn't seem to have any particular political motivations for committing these attempted assassination. And we've been researching and scarring out, how long has it been? And there has been nothing to show that this was politically motivated. He even had a divided family, a libertarian father, possibly a Democrat.

mother, those in his political classes in school simply said he didn't really make his party affiliation even known. He just disliked politicians. One of his classmates, Zach Bradford, who knew him quite well, said that he didn't show a lot of political leanings, quote, he was slightly right leaning. Also in 2017, this has now become well known. He gave $15 to a Democratic organization that attempts to increase voter turnout. Act Blue. And the donation was made through Act Blue for the turnout project. That was in 2017.

But then in 2018, he registered as a Republican. So the year after he makes that donation, he registers as a Republican. So it is very confusing. Yeah, it's not clear. But it's consistent. It's consistent with Friedman's findings. And it's consistent with the evidence in this case that this doesn't appear to be. a hyper-partisan left-leaning Antifa-type guy that wanted to take down someone on the right or,

you know, the main political figure on the right. And I think that's confounding a lot of people. Now, that could change, by the way. I mean, I'm sure they're going to continue this research and they can continue to dig deep into this issue. So my analysis could completely change in a month. Let's say evolve. Your analysis could evolve. It could evolve, right. I still think, I would still stand by the elements I've already pointed out, the depression, the desire for self-harm, the seeking fame and notoriety, the attempt to address old grievances about his past, that Trump becomes a symbolic figure for him, symbolic of all the things he's trying to rid himself of. Trump becomes a symbol of the grievances he's had, of the bullying, he's experienced, all that

kind of stuff. So that brings me, by the way, to the third stage of the Violence Project research model and that stage is that mass shooters, they seek previous models from the past. In other words, they often look for a script to follow in terms of their shooting and they look for someone to blame for the problems and grievances. And again, I just mentioned that issue of blaming Trump as a symbol for a lot of his problems and grievances. But it's also important to note that in looking for a script to follow, that he fits this model perfectly. Crooks was in an American history, class with a fellow student. Her name is Sarah DeAngelo.

Sarah DeLangelo was in American History class with Thomas Crooks. And she noted that Crooks studied the assassination of JFK. Also, Christopher Ray, in his testimony to Congress the other day, disclosed that Crooks searched for, he put this search term into a search engine,

which was, quote, how far away was Oswald from Kennedy. So not only is a student of the JFK assassination, but he's looking for very specific search terms that have to do with assassination. So here you're getting this violence project, these stages, you're getting the third stage, and he's looking for a script. He's finding that script in the assassination of Kennedy, and he's also conforming to this idea that he has someone to blame. It's also important to note on the script or kind of this model from trying to find these models from the past that can guide him in this type of shooting. He also researched Ethan Crumbly.

And he was very interested in how Crumley did it, steps he took. And so here you have at least two examples of a shooter, not necessarily looking to follow their scripts. I think it's more about motivation. I think he's looking at these past shootings and it's giving him a certain amount of confidence that he can pull this off, particularly the JFK assassination. So I don't think that he's actually trying to duplicate the circumstances of what Crumbly and clearly not Crumbly because Crumbley did go into a school. But he's trying to get confidence from this. He's trying to get some energy and motivation for his behavior before he engages in it.

Are we to the final secret now? Most people don't realize how much their personal information is being bought and sold every day. Data brokers are making billions, pulling details about you from public records and the Internet, and then packaging and selling it, usually without your consent. That's how your information lands in the hands of scammers, spammers, even stalkers. It's why you get endless robocalls and why ads seem to follow you everywhere. That's where ORA comes in. ORA actively removes your data from broker sites and keeps it off.

They also instantly alert you if your information shows up in a breach or on the dark web. But ORA goes beyond data protection. With one app, you get a VPN, antivirus, password manager, spam call protection, dark web monitoring, even up to $5 million in identity theft insurance, all backed by 24-7 U.S.-based fraud support. Other companies might sell just credit monitoring or just a VPN. Ora gives you all of it, together, at the same price competitors charge for just one service. Start your free trial today atora.com slash remove. Protect yourself now atora.com slash remove.

Yeah. What's one financial lesson you learned the hard way? I'll go first. It's not too late to start saving. Today's episode is sponsored by Acorns. Acorns is a financial wellness app that makes it easy to start saving and investing for your future. You don't need to be an expert. Acorns will recommend a diversified portfolio that matches you and your money goals.

You don't need to be rich. Acorns lets you get started with the spare money you have right now. And one of the best things about acorns is they allow you to see projected growth on their website. Simply go online, type in how much money you'd put in and see the potential future balance of your account. Sign up now and join the over 13 million all-time customers who have already saved and invested over $22 billion with Acorns. Head to Acorns.com slash hidden true crime or download the Acorns app to get started. Paid non-client endorsement. Compensation provides incentive to positively promote Acorns, Tier 1 compensation provided.

Investing involves risk. Acorns Advisors LLC and SEC registered investment advisor. A few important disclosures at Acorns.com slash hidden true crime. hormonal changes are so hard to see the least. Hot flashes, anyone else, add in the thousands of hormone disruptors that are in our environment, and it is even worse. From our water, food, the air we breathe, and the clothes we wear, they are everywhere. But the good news is that when hormone harmony enters the picture, it can help reduce hormonal symptoms in women of all ages.

Hormone harmony is a supplement that contains science-backed herbal extracts called adaptogens. The best thing about adaptogens, they help the body adapt to it. any stressors like chaotic hormonal changes that happen naturally throughout a woman's life. Hormone harmony is actually part of my personal 2024 playbook. Hormone harmony makes no compromises when it comes to quality and it shows. For a limited time, you can get 15% off your entire first order at happy mammoth.com. That's happy H-A-P-P-Y mammoth. M-A-M-M-O-T-H.com. Just use the code hidden true crime at checkout.

That's code hidden true crime. use that with happy mammoth.com for 15% off today. Does anyone else find themselves saying, I feel way older than I actually am or I feel way younger? Did you know there might be some truth behind that feeling? That's where true diagnostic comes in. With their true age test, you can discover your true biological age, plus get insights into health risks for heart disease or Alzheimer's, even your mortality. I just ordered my true diagnostic test and while nervous, I'm looking forward to what it may tell me about my own health. so I can take control of things now.

When taking tests pertaining to my health, I want to make sure it's scientifically backed and true diagnostic is. Their true age test is based on peer-reviewed research from scientists working at Harvard, Duke, and Yale. And by tracking your biological age, you can actually see how the changes you make, whether that's exercise, diet, or sleep will affect your health over time. Ready to find out your biological age? Right now, our listeners can get 20% off their entire order at true diagnostic.com

by using code Hidden True Crime at checkout. That's True Diagnostic, T-R-U-D-A-G and O-T-I-C-C-D-N-O-S-T-I-C. Just use code Hidden True Crime to save 20% off. Plus, if you subscribe, you'll get an additional 20% off. Discover your true age today. Okay. So I think that brings us to our fifth secret. And maybe this isn't so much a secret, I don't know.

But I really think that there's a sense here in which Thomas Matthew Crooks feels emasculated. And this is true, by the way, this is very true of many school shooters and mass shooters, that a lot of them feel like they can't kind of live up to this idea of Norman of masculinity. And when I say Norman of masculinity, let me define that quickly in terms of some research by Ronald Levant, who is a psychologist, who's on a great deal of research on men and masculinity and how masculine roles impact mental health in particular. According to Levant, nowadays, some people use the term toxic masculinity, but that's kind of a pop culture term.

In academic circles, that's called TMI, and I don't mean too much information. And that's pop culture too, TMI masculinity. I've been on social media. You know, I've been around social media too long when I'm starting to associate. TMI with psychological research terms. But psychological research term of toxic masculinity is TMI. Is that what you're saying? TMI means traditional masculinity and ideology.

It's the equivalent of toxic masculinity, but the pop culture term. Levant talks about these seven pillars of Norman of masculinity, which are the following avoidance of femininity. So, you know. The opposite. Right. The attempt to avoid anything else to do with the feminine. negativity towards sexual minorities.

So, in other words, rejection of LGBTQ communities, self-reliance, toughness, dominance, sexual prowess, and restrictive emotionality. You might be saying, well, so what? What does any of this has to do with? What does any of this has to do with Thomas Matthew Crooks? And the short answer is that Levant, by the way, refers to this idea in culture as the tough standard. The tough standard is that men need to live up to these normative ideals of masculinity, the seven areas I just mentioned, essentially. This is from an article by Peter Langman, Desperate

Identities. This is probably one of the best articles on the motivations of mass shooters that you can find. It's in the journal Criminology and Public Policy, 2019, Volume 19, pages 61 through 84. Here's what Langman says. Researchers who study the perpetrators of mass. violence have noted identity issues as a significant factor. Kellner viewed school shootings as acts of violence that were driven by, quote, crises and masculinities in which young men use guns and violence to create ultra-masculine identities. The reason I think this is important is you have a guy who classmates are identifying as

very nerdy. SpongeBob Squarepants. A lot of the bullying has to do with, I think, as a lot of. to do with, at least in part, kind of these masculine stereotypes that this kid doesn't fit. And if you look at the evidence, by the way, it's interesting, right? Because let's talk about his attire. So he wears military clothing. He wears military garb and hunting outfits. A lot of them have to do with camouflage themes, I guess. He's well known for kind of wearing these camo shirts and pants to school quite a bit. That would be like considered, I guess, a normative masculine attire, right?

Right, exactly. Let's look at how and why this issue of masculinity might matter in this case. So if we're going to do that, let's start with his father. I've seen some video of his father. Now, I don't know anything about his father. So this is, I'm just, this is just based on my experience as a clinician and forensic psychologist for many years. But his father's kind of this big guy with a beard, right? He's a libertarian. His father owns more than 20 guns. His father goes to the shooting range, with his son, Thomas Matthew Crookes, all the time, apparently. This is one of the things that they really do together, they enjoy together.

This is one way that they bond. Bonding over father and son. Okay. This might be the main way in which father and son come together. And it's through guns. Okay. Father and son are both a part of the Claritin Sportsman Club, which is a shooting range. That's where they would often go to shoot.

I think just looking at these simple elements. So, you know, clearly I think there's something in here about trying to appease or bond with his father around guns and kind of these masculine themes, attire, camo, military outfits, hunting. I don't know if they hunted, but certainly he wore hunting clothes to school. Most likely they did. Yeah, connection. And so, yeah, even though these might be small things, I think they're kind of starting to. to push us over into why this would be important to Thomas Matthew Crooks. Okay.

He also tried out for the rifle team. Apparently, the high school is a rifle team and he didn't make it. He was cut from the rifle team. One of his class, one of his classmates said, quote, he was a comically bad shot. Okay. So that's, yeah, that's a problem. That would affect him. So here you have a kid whose relationship with his father is at least in part

built around these shared experiences with guns and shooting ranges. And yet he's cut from the rifle team, which I don't know. I'm sure his father was probably fine with it, but maybe in Crooks' mind, he felt like a failure. Yeah, it doesn't matter what his father thinks. It's what Crook thinks. And you have kids at school calling him the school shooter, right? That's his nickname. So all of this must be confusing to him.

You know, guns are important to him because they're important to his father, even though his father knows that this is a kid who plays chess and video games. and, you know, I don't know, maybe he's playing violent, a lot of violent video games like Halo, who knows? But it sounds like, you know, that's what a lot of kids do, you know, so. Right. A lot of kids play video games. So I think the question, part of the question I have is there's another side to this, which is that crooks, in terms of being a loner,

he doesn't appear to have a girlfriend. There doesn't appear to be any history of girlfriends. There's this apparent failure on the side of relationships as well. And another one of Langman's books called School Shooters, this is Langman's book from 2015. Langman talks about a lot of repeated failures on the part of eventual shooters. One of the things he says is page 172. Many perpetrators were consumed with anguish over their inability to have a girlfriend. For most shooters, intimacy was one more domain in which they failed.

So again. Yeah, and he looked at form before that, you know, also that's interesting. If we're talking about this idea of masculinity or this masculine ideal, you know, he doesn't have a girlfriend. There's another thing here, too, which Langman talks about, which that oftentimes school shooters have issues around their body. And oftentimes there's this inferiority if they don't kind of meet that masculine standard of size and shape. In his book, page 158, Langman brings that up again here. He says, besides medical problems, simply being short and weak can be devastating for males, particularly if they have other identity issues.

Here he talks about Elliot Roger, the in-cell, who went on a spree killing. He says, we know that Elliot Rogers was quite short. He said, Rogers' desperation to grow was so great that he would lie on the ground, quote, trying to stretch my body as much as I could. He also became painfully aware

that he was weaker and less athletic than his peers. According to Rogers in his manifesto, he said, quote, this vexed me to no end. Throughout his life, he felt inadequate as a male. I think you have similar issues with gross. In fact, do you want to, can you? I was just going to say, well, I think we do too. Okay.

Let's play this one. Six foot four. I go to Stanford University. I have a 10-inch penis. And six-foot-four. I go to Stanford University. I have a 10-inch penis. And then we'll just keep listening.

I think twice is plenty. That's pretty much. Twice is good. That was a fascinating clip to me. He talks about his height. He just mentioned Elliot Rogers. He talks about where he goes to school, Stanford University, which is interesting.

You know, his parents are educated. You pointed out, they probably both have master's degrees. He had just graduated from a community college with an associate degree. And then, of course, the size of. Right. In many ways, this little clip is telling us all we need to know about how he feels about masculinity. He's not 164. All you need to know.

All you need to know. And I'm probably not going to be the first psychologist to point out that the very Freudian idea, I'm sure you know where I'm going with this. Yes, I do. The very Freudian idea that guns are often associated with phallic-like objects. Yes, we all know. Guns are phallic symbols and, they often serve the symbolic purpose of acquiring a sense of potency and power.

In fact, I'm going to read from another Langman book. This is Peter Langman, Warning signs. This is his latest book. Warning signs, identifying school shooters before they strike. This is page 97. Langman is talking about the importance of guns. Quote, holding a gun means holding the power of life and death. For people who fear utterly inadequate and insignificant, this power exerts

an irresistible appeal. After his attack, Michael Carniel commented, quote, more guns is better. You have more power. You look better if you have a lot of guns. A kid would say one gun is good, but a lot of guns are better. Similarly, after Nathaniel Brazil shot and killed a teacher,

he said, quote, what was I thinking? I was carrying a gun. I guess it made me feel big and powerful. William Atkinson wrote, quote, guns are power, and it's who has the most power that matters. So you have a kid. Actually, you have a young adult. I'm sorry, I shouldn't say kid.

I feel like you, if you look at the clip there, he just looks so young. He looks like a kid. This is a 20-year-old. It looks like a kid. And she's an adult. Right. He's an adult. This is a gun-toting, camel-wearing, father-bonding child,

father-bonding around guns and firearms, who probably feels a lot of inadequacy. Who didn't make the rifle. team. It didn't make, he got cut from the rifle team. He probably was a bad shot, a bad aim. Thank goodness. A great deal of inadequacy around as he points out there, around his height, around his genitals, around his education, around things that he believes a real man or a hyper-masculine man might look like and might look like and where they might attend college. Well, he doesn't seem to

meet this ideal. It sounds like he doesn't. and meet this ideal, which is why he's saying these things. I think this is part of the equation. And I think this is a secret because, obviously, as the Langman quote just showed, this is not something that he's going to necessarily be aware of or discuss. Clearly, it's something he's feeling. Clearly it's something that's repressed. You saw that in the video clip.

But is it something he's going to be open about? Is it something that he's going to acknowledge? More than likely not. And if I had to guess, and again, I don't know, but in terms of, Were there some triggers or crisis points that kind of pushed him over the edge? If I had to really guess, I think it probably had something to do with this last issue of his masculinity and really feeling kind of inferior and powerlessness, you know, a certain amount of inferiority and powerslessness around it. And so what better way to reassert your masculinity and to show your masculinity than by attacking one of the most famous people in the world,

who, by the way, is quite open about the fact that, he detest weakness. And then he is very invested in showing strength and being strong. And as he rose from the assassination attempt, his words were fight. And so that that's someone who, again, is the very opposite of somebody like crooks, someone who that in many ways crooks would despise because Donald Trump represents that type of hypermasculinity that he only wishes he could aspire to. I want to point out, I want to point out the last stage, the fourth stage of the violence project, just to get some, just to complete my thoughts there. So I mentioned the three stages, the final stage is opportunity. And I think this plays a role in this assassination attempt as well, because I believe once Crooks learns that Donald Trump is speaking roughly 30 minutes from his home, he sees that as an opportunity.

And so whether he's going to target Trump or Biden or some other political figure, he's got images of all these figures on his phone, by the way. So one has the sense it could have been any one of them. He has Christopher Ray on his phone. I can read you all the images. He's got what? A lot of them. He's got a lot of political figures on his phone.

And presumably any of them could have been targets. So the final stage is opportunity. I believe that's what really brings Donald Trump into focus. for Thomas Matthew Crooks is that he's in his backyard, so he sees him as accessible. He's probably, once he learns of where he's going to speak, he's probably done some surveillance on the site. And he's obviously learned about the roof where he eventually ends up.

He flew a drone. Yeah. Right. And so I think all of these things come together outside of ideology or political beliefs. Donald Trump was in his backyard, and he believed he had opportunity, and he also knew that he had access to his dad's firearms. So all of those things came together,

and that's how this led to this assassination attempt. I do want to mention a little bit more of Langman's research. Langman wrote what now I would consider now to be a classic book on school shootings and mass shootings. And by the way, when I know some people are probably going to say, well, wait, he's a lone wolf shooter. This is an assassination attempt. This isn't a mass shooting.

This isn't a school shooting. I think that there are going to be plenty of people saying that, yes. And my response to that is, yes, that's true. But almost all the same patterns that apply to school shooters, apply to mass shooters, and they apply to presidential assassins as well. They're very similar. There's a lot of overlap. We don't, except for the research by Friedman,

we don't have a huge amount of research specifically on presidential assassins because there aren't that many. And so it's useful in terms of thinking about what's going on here to look at all the research on school shooters and mass shooters and how they apply here. Because in many ways, Thomas Matthew Crooks looks a lot like a school shooter and a mass shooter. It just so happens that he's displacing his rage onto a past president.

And he's not doing it in a classroom. He's just doing it on a larger stage, trying to make a grander gesture with one specific individual who's symbolic of many of the problems he's experienced in his life that he's trying to overcome. And so having said that, I want to talk a little bit. So in Langman's classic book called Why Kids Kill written in 2009, Langman identifies four really critical elements, common elements, commonalities among school and mass shooters. and those are a failure of empathy. Okay. Existential rage.

Extreme reactivity, meaning that many kids, or maybe not many, but a fair amount of kids are bullied, and they don't necessarily react the way Crooks did. So extreme reactivity means that young adults like crooks are very vulnerable. Their identities are already damaged. They're already suffering from some type of depression more than likely.

And their reactions to their wounds, to their bullying, to rejection, to slights, all that kind of stuff. Their reactions to, I mean, their reactions to normal events tend to be abnormal. So in other words, they lack resilience. They lack normal coping skills. And the reason is because their identities are so damaged that they just don't have the capacity to respond the way a healthier human being

would. And the other area that the Langman identifies in addition to failures of empathy and existential rage and extreme reactivity is what he calls shame, envy, and failures of manhood. We've already talked about the failures of manhood, but behind a lot of that is shame and behind a lot of that is envy, that they're envious like Elliot Roger, they're envious of men who are better athletes, who are larger, who have more girlfriends, all of that is in play potentially with crooks he has no girlfriends he's not a big kid he's kind of a scrawny kid he's a bit nerdy right he's being bullied at school you see those same elements with thomas matthew crooks and by the way you see those same elements with brian coberger for example

you see them with elliott roger you see them with um you see them with a lot of of of shooters who engage in these types of extreme behaviors. Or criminals, not necessarily a shooter. Or criminals, yeah. Or with Brian Coburger. Right. And obviously, obviously, Coburger hasn't been convicted.

Correct. But what we see in him, and for those that are interested, we did an entire series, and Brian Coburger following that from the very beginning, you can find that on our podcast. We were also actually on Dateline. when it came to Brian Koberger.

And what's that? I'm going to read, this is a book. So I've talked about Levant, Ronald Levant. This is called the Tough Standard. I'm going to read a quote here quickly from Levant that I think is really important for our discussion. Okay. This is from Levant's book, Levant and Shanna Pryor.

It was published in fairly recently 2020. This is page 66. The title is the tough standard, the hard truce about masculinity and violence. Levant says, quote, the behaviors exhibited by many of these shooters reflected their adherence to several masculine norms, such as aggression and toughness. Feelings of sadness felt by these shooters who experience rejection, bullying, and loneliness are transformed in the anger and aggression, including violence. This illustrates the difficulties that boys and men who are reared to conform to traditional masculinity norms have in dealing with vulnerable emotions such as sadness, loneliness, and hurt feelings. And it speaks to the lack of options that boys and men imprisoned with the masculinity have

when faced with the everyday ups and downs of life. And I think that's important because what Levant is saying and what Langman is saying to some degree too, is that this idea of extreme reactivity occurs because a lot of kids, like a lot of shooters like Crooks or Elliott Roger, they simply lack the resilience. They lack the resilience and the emotional intelligence to really experience all the emotions and to express all the emotions. And so that really restricts their options in terms of how they behave. If everything becomes anger, if every emotion gets transformed into anger and aggression,

then how do you expect these people to respond? They only have one emotion. They're one-dimensional. They're like these cartoon figures that really don't have access to all their emotions. They have access to anger. And so that's how they respond. When they're rejected or lonely or feel slights,

they respond with anger and violence and aggression. So I just have some final thoughts here. I think I'm going to get on my soapbox a little bit. if I haven't already done that through this whole show. Go ahead. When I think about this tragedy, I think a lot of this begins with these acts of unkindness, these acts of bullying,

these acts of belittling and demeaning behavior by schoolmates. And when I think about that, I think, you know, in the most simplistic terms, I think, you know, because I'm thinking about our world today and all the polarization and all the hate and all the anger out there. And certainly that's a part of this story. But a lot of this begins with all that, I'll call it unkindness. And so to me, the antidote to unkindness is really simple. And that should be acts of kindness.

And, you know, I know that's, it's a really simple. simple lesson. And when I think about that, I sometimes think of Emmanuel Kant, the famous German philosopher who he had this idea of what he called the categorical imperative. And the categorical comparative essentially said that we need to treat other human beings as an end in themselves and not as a means to an end. So in other words, what he was saying is that if we see people after, as they are in and of themselves and not what we can get from people.

But if we just treat others as they are, then we learn to have empathy for them. And I think, you know, buried beneath all of our ideologies and our grievances and all of this stuff that we saw in this case, beneath all of that, I think the real challenge is to somehow find kindness. and that applies not only to the kids who bullied crooks, but obviously to crooks himself. I mean, Cooks couldn't, he saw Donald Trump symbolically

and not as a human being. He saw him in a right, he saw him in a way that he felt like he had to engage in violence to rectify the situation, or maybe not the situation, but he had to engage in violence in his mind's eye to resolve his own problems. And when I think about kindness,

today in our world, in this environment we live in. You know, one of the questions I've been thinking about since we wanted to do this show was, why is it so difficult? Why is kindness so difficult today? I think part of it is that to be kind really in some ways means developing an understanding of the complexity of relationships and recognizing that conflict oftentimes is a part of life and the differences are a part of life and conflict not just in ourselves but conflicts in all our relationship. There's no such thing as a perfect relationship. There's no such thing as a

conflict-free world or conflict-free relationships. So I think part of it is recognizing that difference is a part of our world. And I think there's a real struggle sometimes to see other people for who they are rather than how we want to see them, especially in a world that's so divided. You know, in a world that's so divided, I think we just want to be on our side and we want to be right and we really lose the capacity to see what's in front of us, to see other people's kindness and to engage in our own kind acts. And to have empathy to see other people as an end in themselves and not as a means to an end. And so I think the challenge is really, for me, the lesson here is to understand that empathy, and kindness means that we really have to embrace our own divided natures. And we have to embrace the fact that we might be different, but that doesn't mean we can't be kind. And we have to embrace the fact,

I think, that we're all human beings, we're all in the same boat, we're all imperfect, we all have problems, we all suffer, we all have pains, but we're all in it together. We all share those elements, both good and bad of being human. And I would, and I would, wish it were that simple, but we're all, we all share in the same pains, the same sufferings. And potentially, I think we're all capable of kindness and empathy. And I guess my, my aspiration would be that we work on it, you know, that we just, we, no matter as much as we can, where we can find empathy and kindness that we strive to do so. And I don't know, I'm sure that getting out of the soapbox isn't going to bring down the temperature.

But it's very sad to me that we had to go through this and that somebody as peculiar and unknown as Thomas Matthew Crooks was, that he had to do this to get our attention. And, you know, hopefully we can learn some lessons from it. Most people don't realize how much their personal information is being bought and sold every day. Data brokers are making billions, pulling details about you from public records and the internet, and then packaging and selling it, usually without your consent. That's how your information lands in the hands of scammers, spammers, even stalkers. It's why you get endless robocalls and why ads seem to follow you everywhere.

That's where ORA comes in. ORA actively removes your data from broker sites and keeps it off. They also instantly alert you if your information shows up in a breach or on the dark web. But ORA goes beyond data protection. With one app, you get a VPN, antivirus, password manager, spam call protection, dark web monitoring, and even up to $5 million in identity theft insurance, all backed by 24-7 U.S.-based fraud support. Other companies might sell just credit monitoring, or just a VPN. ORA gives you all of it, together, at the same price competitors charge for just one service.

Start your free trial today atora.com slash remove. Protect yourself now atora.com slash remove.