GOP Senator Does Deep Dive on Trump Assassination Attempt and Remains Troubled by 'Unresolved' Questions
More than 18 months after Thomas Matthew Crooks shot President Donald Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, questions central to understanding that event remain unanswered, according to a Republican U.S. senator who is not satisfied with that state of affairs.
Republican Sen. Dave McCormick of Pennsylvania, who attended the rally where Trump was wounded on July 13, 2024, says critical questions need answers, according to the New York Post.
In July 2025, CBS News asked some of the questions: “Crooks left no known written explanation. His political leanings remain unclear. Was the Butler rally just a convenient option for a young man planning mass violence, or was he committed to shooting Mr. Trump? Did he have a plan for his bombs? Did he understand he was on a suicide mission?”
McCormick vented his concerns Wednesday on “Pod Force One,” a podcast hosted by New York Post columnist Miranda Devine.
McCormick has a unique perspective on the near tragedy. In the “Pod Force One” interview, he recounted that he was campaigning for his Senate seat at the time of the Butler rally and that Trump had actually invited him to come on stage just before the shooting. But Trump changed his mind almost immediately, when McCormick had gotten close to the lectern where Trump stood.
“He says, ‘I want to talk about the border,'” McCormick said, quoting Trump. “‘Dave, go sit back down. I’ll have you come up in a little bit.’
“Within a minute or so of sitting down, I heard the shots,” McCormick said.
As a man who was very nearly on stage with Trump at the time of the shooting and as a Pennsylvania elected official, it was clear that McCormick had given the incident a great deal of thought.
“I’m not satisfied about what happened because when you go to the place and you see how close it was, the idea that a lone gunman — I’m typically not one who’s prone to conspiracy theories — but the fact that a lone gunman could get up there at that distance,” McCormick told Devine.
“It was less than 150 yards … seems just hard to imagine such a breach — and such a breach in security, such a breach in protocol,” he said.
The entire interview is below. The video starts with McCormick’s “I’m not satisfied” comments.
Glimpses have emerged.
In August 2020, Crooks posted a YouTube comment that said, “IMO [in my opinion] the only way to fight the gov is with terrorism style attacks, sneak a bomb into an essential building and set it off before anyone sees you, track down any important people/politicians/military leaders etc and try to assassinate them.”
Devine asked, “Such a feat for a 20-year-old with no supposedly social media presence, although we did find that he did have it, but it was kept from us. Why?”
“I’m not sure. But I think it’s one of those things that I am unresolved,” McCormick said. “We go back to the public trust, public confidence, when things aren’t fully wrestled to the ground, even if there’s legitimate answers, you breed mistrust …
“And the truth is always better when you just bring air onto it … and the American people, they can take it,” he said.
“They can take the truth — whether it’s about JFK’s killing, or whether it’s about the Epstein files, or whether it’s about the attempt on President Trump’s life at Butler — the American people, unless it’s a matter of national security where something is going to compromise our capacity to protect the American people, I think, more is better,” McCormick said.
McCormick is not the only Republican with questions. In an interview published last week by the U.K.’s Daily Mail, Vice President JD Vance said he remains in the dark as to the reason Crooks tried to kill Trump.
“I don’t know,” he said, calling Crooks a “loner who got radicalized on the internet.”
“He was a Trump guy at some point in his life and then about six months or so before he took a shot at the president of the United States, or maybe it was a little bit beforehand, he went from very radically pro-Trump to very radically anti-Trump,” he said.
“I have not gotten a satisfactory answer to how Thomas Crooks went from radically pro-Trump to so radically anti-Trump. Maybe we will never know the answer to that,” Vance said. “Sometimes motivations go unsolved.”
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