this post was submitted on 17 Jul 2024
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US Authoritarianism

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ChonkyOwlbear is an Illegitimate Usurper

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submitted 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) by alphanerd4 to c/usauthoritarianism
 

Caring deeply about my message exactly every 4 years is truly inspiring

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[–] homesweethomeMrL 210 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (19 children)

~~The $15 donation was another guy with the same name. This guy was 17 at the time.~~

Snopes sez: false https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-shooter-donation/

[–] surewhynotlem 92 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I just want to chime in and say thank you for editing your post after finding new information. If everyone in the world was like you, this place would suck a lot less.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 6 months ago

Not only editing but leaving the old info so people don't get confused, that's awesome behaviour.

[–] makyo 33 points 6 months ago

He has the same name as a guy who donated to ActBlue?! DEM

[–] [email protected] 22 points 6 months ago

The FEC filing for the donation matches the shooters address: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-shooter-donation

[–] postmateDumbass 16 points 6 months ago

Dem too.

/s

[–] Knock_Knock_Lemmy_In 7 points 6 months ago (2 children)
[–] [email protected] 7 points 6 months ago

True that it's the same person.
Which would mean false for them being different people

[–] BluesF 7 points 6 months ago (2 children)

Snopes says it's true that he donated, not that someone else did.

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[–] PP_BOY_ 95 points 6 months ago (6 children)

Everything to me just points to this being a very confused and disaffected kid who wanted to do something memorable with his life. I genuinely don't think there was much consideration beyond that. He was 20 years old, were your political beliefs as concrete and nuanced when you were that age as they are today?

[–] chemical_cutthroat 51 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I was 19 for 9/11. It solidified where I stood pretty well. I'd say 20 year olds today could easily be just as galvanized, especially with the way social media has changed things since then.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 6 months ago (3 children)

Hey we're the same age! I remember when 9/11 happened and the subsequent invasion of Afghanistan, that I didn't really know the main differences of news sources and fully understand how they leaned one way or another. I remember watching Fox News at the time, but didn't really realize that it was blatant propaganda. It wasn't until I started looking into other news sources and then looked into media biases that I started to realize just how fucked up Fox News is.

So I don't really expect most 19 or 20 year olds to really know what's trustworthy and what's not.

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[–] makyo 29 points 6 months ago

He's the prototypical American lone wolf shooter, it's not complicated

[–] UnderpantsWeevil 22 points 6 months ago

Everything to me just points to this being a very confused and disaffected kid who wanted to do something memorable with his life.

Used to be, a guy like this would simply shoot up a school. But now that he's shooting at our Dear Leader, its time to get serious about ~~gun control~~ ~~mental health~~ ~~violent political rhetoric~~ Tankies.

[–] Korne127 14 points 6 months ago (1 children)

were your political beliefs as concrete and nuanced when you were that age as they are today

…yeah. To be fair, I'm 22, but I've been in the board of a local political party for over 3 years now. You could maybe make that argument for 16, but honestly, even then I was at political demonstrations.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 6 months ago (6 children)

I'd argue that your experience is an exception and not the rule. Most teenagers aren't nearly so politically involved. And at 29, I'm a very different person than when I was 20.

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[–] aseriesoftubes 6 points 6 months ago

Yep, this is it. Before, he was an awkward kid from a backward place with no friends and no prospects. Now, his name is forever associated with Donald Trump.

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[–] udon 33 points 6 months ago (8 children)

It IS weird though that he tried to shoot the Rep candidate and I can't really see why, yet. We will probably hear a lot of explanations for this and I'd be curious about yours.

So far I have heard rumours about a possible inside job/secret service involvement as an explanation, because they should have been aware of him. Might be, but I personally haven't seen anything too convincing to verify or falsify this.

Another one I could see is that he wanted to vote Republican but at some point realized that Trump sucks ass to put it mildly. So he tried to somehow push the Rep party to at least get back in touch with the idea of sanity by killing him?

Other than that... make Trump a martyr somehow? Have a plot to blame it on the Dems? Mental issues?

[–] Phegan 27 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I feel like he was unwell, and trying to apply reason to his motives will be a fool's errand.

[–] Wilzax 12 points 6 months ago

Just because someone is unwell doesn't mean that reason can't be applied to his motives. Most mental illnesses still follow some (twisted and perverse) logic

[–] [email protected] 11 points 6 months ago

There are two explanations which I don't find ludicrous, if you assume the shooter to be far right:

  • He was a Qanoner who bought the "we've gotta hunt the pedophiles" but didn't develop the cognitive dissonance to also think "but that doesn't mean Trump obviously".

  • He was angry about Trump trying to distance himself from Project 2025 (even though that was merely rhetoric, but an angry and radical 20 years old may not understand that).

[–] Clinicallydepressedpoochie 10 points 6 months ago (1 children)

There could be a million reasons. It seems morbid speculating.

[–] udon 9 points 6 months ago (1 children)

This is quite a significant incident in the middle of an important election campaign. While some reasons for the attempt may seem insignificant (e.g., mental illness), others could turn out to be quite important moving forward (e.g., involvement of secret service, faked attempt by Trump's team etc.). Any evidence for or against any of these could have political implications and effects on the election results.

[–] Clinicallydepressedpoochie 8 points 6 months ago

The amount of information available to the public right now is very little. More focus should be put on how the secret service let this happen.

[–] Bertuccio 6 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Trump is a fascist and some small portion of Republicans still don't support fascists.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 months ago (4 children)

There are three theories

  1. Trump had people hire him to pretend to assassinate him, and he went along with it thinking it'd boost Trump's ratings (Kinda dumb and conspiratorial)

  2. He wasn't aiming for Trump, but someone in the crowd, and Trump was hit by mistake (Given that he doesn't aim for center of mass, this makes sense)

  3. He wanted to kill Trump, fearing he wasn't Right Leaning enough (There are already people bashing Vance not for being racist, but for not being racist enough)

Also wasn't the payment to the Biden campaign found to actually be someone else with a similar name?

[–] evidences 9 points 6 months ago

Also wasn't the payment to the Biden campaign found to actually be someone else with a similar name?

The donation was to ActBlue not Biden and the FEC filing was his name at the house he lived at. It's unlikely it was someone else unless he was named for his grandpa or something and he lived with them

You can view the FEC filings yourself by going to the FEC website and search his name and zip code in the individual contribution search.

[–] TokenBoomer 7 points 6 months ago
[–] udon 6 points 6 months ago

Ah, I didn't consider the other side of the spectrum that maybe Trump isn't fascist enough for him.

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[–] whoreticulture 6 points 6 months ago

Suicide by cop.

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[–] Fedizen 29 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

I've seen actblue ask for money for literally everything. Likely they were advertising for something conservative.

[–] runjun 27 points 6 months ago (4 children)

There was a “lifehack” going around a while back about making it so if you failed you had to donate to something you don’t like to motivate yourself.

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[–] Veneroso 10 points 6 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 47 points 6 months ago (2 children)

Summary since I haven't seen it in the comments yet: they cracked his phone. There was some sort of high level briefing and some info got leaked:

  1. He either had or just googled some kind of depressive disorder (could potentially relate to motive if he was bipolar and having a manic episode or something).

  2. He had pictures saved of the schedules for both Trump and Biden's national convention appearances. So he could have been trying to go after both of them, potentially.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 6 months ago

Fash don't care about the truth. It's an ideology based entirely on lies.

[–] RagingRobot 6 points 6 months ago

His face kind of looks like Elizabeth Warren. She's a Democrat! Lol

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