Trump attempted shooting: what drives a solo assassin to kill? A psychologist explains

By Geoff Beattie, Professor of Psychology, Edge Hill University

The image of the would-be assassin at Donald Trump’s rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, on July 13 is now part of history. A young man in beige lying dead on the flat roof. Minutes earlier, this self-appointed executioner had been pointing his rifle at Trump, aiming to shoot the former president in front of his followers.

What drove this young man to try to kill? Thomas Matthew Crooks was 20 years old, two years out of school and still living with his parents in a town an hour away from the shooting. In his 2022 school yearbook photos, Crooks bears little resemblance to the assassins of…

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