The man who shot Trump was shot at the rally site he attacked, according to the FBI, and there are images of the suspect’s body on the roof. But one young man on social media says they “got the wrong guy.”
Since last Sunday, shortly after the attack on Donald Trump, a video of a young man claiming to be the alleged shooter Thomas Matthew Crooks began circulating on social media. The 20-year-old man who was identified by the FBI as the shooter at the Butler demonstration was presumed dead after the attack he unleashed, but the video says this is not true.
The young man in the video, with glasses and long hair, claims to be Crooks and says: “I hate Republicans, I hate Trump and guess what: you got the wrong person.” The video is shared several times on social media, including Facebook, because it contains real content.
The original recording was made by a user of the social network X, with the profile @jewgazing [gazear os judeus, numa tradução livre do nome do perfil]who has since changed his account name several times in recent days after content he created went viral.
On Sunday, after creating the video, @jewgazing admitted in a comment that he regretted posting the video and that it was a “joke”: “I shouldn’t have posted that video.”
On the day of the attack, the FBI claimed that the shooter had been shot at the place where he was standing with his gun firing at the Republican rally: on a rooftop 150 metres from the stage where Donald Trump was speaking. The information was confirmed by the agency’s spokesman, Anthony Guglielmi, who added that the suspect was killed by a US Secret Service sniper. The image of the body of the suspect of the attack on the former US president and Republican candidate was, in fact, recorded by news agencies.
In addition to the fact that all this information contradicts what is stated in the video, the image of the young man that appears in this publication does not correspond to those that have been officially released of the author of the attack on Trump. Crooks’ face structure is oval, while that of the author of the video is more rounded.
On the left, @jewgazing and on the right, an image of Crooks that was posted on the website of the Bethel Park School District, which he attended until 2022, the year he graduated.
One of the first reports to be reported by the American press was that Thomas Crooks was a registered Republican voter and that he had donated $15 to a group linked to the Democratic Party, the Progressive Turnout Project. However, the motives for the attack are still unknown and the case is being investigated by the FBI.
On Sunday, the day after the attack, in one of his remarks on the matter, US President Joe Biden announced an independent investigation into the attack and ordered a reassessment of the security of Donald Trump and the Republican National Convention.
He liked chess, studied programming and was a Republican voter. Who is Thomas Crooks, the 20-year-old who shot Trump?
Conclusion
The video circulating on social media featuring a young man claiming to be the man who shot Donald Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, contains false content. It is being shared as true, but it contradicts official information and images disseminated by the media about the shooting of the alleged shooter, Thomas Crooks, still at the scene. The author of the viral video has already admitted on X that the video in which he claimed to be Thomas Crooks, who hated Republicans and Trump and in which he complained that the FBI had caught “the wrong guy” was a “joke.”
Thus, according to Observer’s classification system, this content is:
MISTAKEN
In Facebook’s ranking system this content is:
FAKE: Claims about the main content are factually inaccurate. This option usually corresponds to “false” or “mostly false” ratings on fact-checking websites.
NOTE: This content was selected by Observador as part of a fact-checking partnership with Facebook.
Source: Observadora
