Trump Shooter's Classmate Drops Bomb on Media, Says 'Signs Were There' Years Before Attack - 'Not Severely Bullied'
A former high school classmate of Thomas Crooks said the young man who tried to kill former President Donald Trump showed contempt for Trump years before Saturday’s rally.
“I brought up the fact that I’m Hispanic and, you know, I’m for Trump. And he said, ‘Well, you’re Hispanic, so shouldn’t you hate Trump?'” Vincent Taormina told Fox News Tuesday.
“And I was like, no. He’s great. He’s a great president. He called me stupid – or insinuated that I was, like, well, that’s kinda stupid.”
He said Crooks was “a know-it-all.”
JUST IN: Former Thomas Crooks classmate says Crooks was a known Trump hater and was a “know it all.”
The FBI still doesn’t know what Crooks’ motive could have been.
Hispanic classmate Vincent Taormina recalled a political disagreement he had with Crooks after he told him that… pic.twitter.com/LzgnohInnw
— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) July 17, 2024
Taormina said their discussion about Trump took place in 2016.
“He just did not like politicians, especially with the choices that we had,” Taormina said.
“He did not like our politicians,” he said.
Taormina said Crooks was only silent when he felt like being so.
“If he was passionate about something, he would just talk, talk, talk and act like he knew everything, especially politics related, and he would say it in a tone that was like, ‘I’m better than you,’ in a type of way,” Taormina said.
Crooks was “real smug, arrogant, whenever he was talking. And whether that was his way to try to make friends or be funny, I don’t know, but it got under my skin a lot,” he said.
Taormina called the friends who hung out with Crooks “out there.”
“Some of them didn’t even show up to school. Some of them went home school,” he said.
“They were definitely the type, and they did, make threats to shoot up our school,” he said.
He said the incident happened his freshman year in high school.
He recalled “everyone going through Snapchat, like everybody’s texting, everybody, you know, saying this or that.”
“Everybody was saying it was Thomas who made the threat and it was that friend group. Everyone was mainly blaming the friend group, but a name that kept coming up was Thomas. And he never did anything, you know what I mean? He left school for a couple of days. It wasn’t anything like a suspension or anything. It was just a couple of days, you know,” he said.
Social media is so frustrating from conspiracy theories to people trying to get famous. This
Is Thomas Matthew Crooks ( not the other guy claiming to be him). This confusion only hurts the investigation and swirls into conspiracy. #ThomasMathewCrooks pic.twitter.com/ozTMrcPMGZ— michelle archer (@drdsat) July 14, 2024
He pushed back against the media narrative of Crooks as suffering in high school.
“He was not severely bullied. Almost nobody knew,” he said.
Taormina said someone should have known what Crooks was planning.
“The signs were there,” he said.
“Somebody should have known, because he was not a loner,” he said. “And both of his parents being counselors, how do you not see that warning sign?”
“Everybody, anybody who knew him … should have seen something, should have known something was up” he said. “And I know it’s kind of easy to hide, but people are going to get their affairs in order before they do something this bold and this drastic, and nobody saw it. And why?”
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