It is still early, and we have limited information, so it is impossible to know the full story about Thomas Crooks and the Trump assassination attempt yet, but the following is one plausible story to explain the tragic events and the curious way in which they unfolded.
The Secret Service has done hundreds of Trump rallies at this point (thousands of other events), and nothing ever happens. They still go through the motions of security, but sleepwalk through the entire process—from pre-planning and set-up to coverage of the live event. All the previous rallies have probably had similar glaring holes in security, but no one ever noticed or cared because nothing bad ever happened. So when it does, they are caught off guard and don’t know how to react. The Secret Service and police were like all of us at first, thinking, “Wait, is this real? Is this actually happening?” By then, the shooter has already gotten off three shots.
Your first impression is: “This can’t be real, he must be some livestreamer LARPing, filming a prank or something...” The snipers were probably terrified of killing someone who was just a TikTok star trying to create viral content. Even the nearby Trump fans who filmed the shooter were more confused than alarmed. Sure they were suspicious/concerned enough to alert the police to check out the guy on the roof, but if they actually thought he was a real assassin about to shoot the president, they would have been running around screaming bloody murder. The internet has made us so jaded and detached that we can’t recognize reality when it’s right in front of us. Reality doesn’t hit us until it’s too late.
It seems impossible that some 20-year-old kid could do this all by himself. The Secret Service couldn’t possibly be this inept, could they? But the sad truth is they can be this inept. It’s actually quite easy to assassinate anyone if you really want to, but thank God few do. Is it really so hard to believe an autistic male gamer could outsmart a fat boomer lady? Crooks probably spent years training for special-operation scenarios like this in video games. He scoped out the scene that day and thought LOL, this’ll be so easy. Crooks strikes me as the typical school shooter type—but instead of shooting the school bully, he went after the world bully (or who he and others with TDS perceive to be a bully). Crooks likely had major depression and extreme nihilism with a dash of schizophrenia. It was probably a murder-suicide mission where he planned to assassinate Trump first with a quick headshot, then take down as many MAGA supporters as he could before being shot himself. He’d go down in history as the most famous assassin ever. (If he was trained by professionals, they probably would have told him to aim for the chest, not the head.)
It could all be explained by extreme incompetence. The Secret Service director is even incompetent in her explanations for their incompetence (the sloped roof excuse). She simply probably thought that sounded better than, “The DEI agents I hired just didn’t think to cover that roof, and we have sparse security for Trump events to begin with because I don’t particularly like him, but trust me, I didn’t actually want him to be killed…” The Secret Service has declined in quality for years due to DEI, and they gave Trump the D-team, not because they are trying to kill him, but he’s just lower on their priority list. Plus as I said, Trump does so many of these rallies, and nothing ever happens. So why waste the time, money, resources, and manpower on this “jerk”? The Secret Service director should still be blamed (and possibly even prosecuted) for gross incompetence, which was so gross it became dangerous. But it is not necessarily the case that she and the Secret Service were working with Crooks and willingly allowed him to assassinate Trump. (Though that possibility cannot be entirely ruled out.)
There is a higher possibility, however, that there was some other (non-Secret Service) deep state involvement with Crooks (from the FBI, CIA, or DHS). He could have been engaged in private group chats with undercover federal agents (or foreign agents) who helped plan the assassination. But even if that was the case, most of the Secret Service and police on the grounds that day were unlikely to be in on it. If there was a greater conspiracy, it would be easier to cover up if those primary Secret Service agents were not involved. The hypothetical conspirators were betting on the incompetence of the Secret Service for Crooks to succeed. At most, maybe a couple strings were pulled to help ensure that particular building and roof were empty that day—or the conspirators had pre-knowledge that it would be empty. The best evidence for previous Fed involvement with Crooks is the lack of evidence about Crooks at all. This kid is like a ghost. No 20-year-old in 2024 has this small of an internet footprint, especially a nerdy incel type who probably lived most of his life online. The Feds must have erased his internet interactions because most of his recent interactions were with undercover Feds.
What about some of the other conspiracies floating around? The blue-anon “Trump staged it” conspiracies don’t even deserve a response, but if it was all staged to make Trump look heroic, he wouldn’t have said, “Let me get my shoes” before the iconic moment. As for the “second shooter” conspiracies, they seem dubious. If there was an additional professional sniper, Trump would be dead. Even if Crooks was a patsy, a second shooter would be unnecessary, overcomplicating the plot and opening themselves up to exposure. (Unless the second shooter was only there to take out Crooks after he shot Trump, ensuring the patsy was killed and not taken in alive. But by all accounts the police sniper shot Crooks.)
In this digital age full of cell phone cameras everywhere, deep state conspirators can’t be as blatant as they were in the past (like with JFK). If Crooks was being groomed by Feds for the shooting, this would have been done entirely in private encrypted chat servers, which will never be found or traced back to them. And if it was an inside job, no one will ever be able to prove it because the people investigating the crime scenes are the ones who committed the crime. We will never see the real evidence. So was Crooks part of a conspiracy? Maybe. That's the best I can say for now. Most likely, no one will ever know the full truth.