• sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
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    4 months ago

    Yeah, according to his wikipedia page, he was:

    • registered republican
    • advocated for conservative views in high school debates
    • donated to a progressive voter turnout project the same day Biden was sworn in

    To me that means he had conservative views that don’t align with Trump’s views. My guess is that he felt Trump steered the party in the wrong direction, which is totally understandable. Prior to Trump, the Republican Party was relatively centrist (look at Romney and McCain, the two prior GOP candidates), and after Trump, the rhetoric among conservatives really ramped up.

    So yeah, I think radical centrist totally fits the bill.

    Honestly, I used to consider myself Republican as a teenager, and that was true until just after the 2012 election. I really liked Rand Paul, and seeing him get totally rejected was disappointing, to say the least. I voted Libertarian in 2016, and for Biden in 2020, all because I absolutely despise Trump. I am no longer under any illusion that I’m conservative (I’m very socially liberal), but I can see how someone who considers themselves conservative could not mesh at all with Trump’s message, to the point where they see him as a threat to their preferred party.

    • Jiggle_Physics@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      He didn’t donate to a progressive fund. That was a 69 year old man, with the same name, in Pittsburgh, not Bethel Park.

      • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
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        4 months ago

        Source? NY Times, Reuters, and BBC all claim that, and they tend to do decent research. I haven’t looked into donation records myself, but if three big, respected news agencies all report the same thing, I tend to believe them. It is possible that they’re all basing it off the same, wrong source since it’s a breaking story, so I’ll give you that, but I’ll need more proof than a random lemmy comment.

        • Jiggle_Physics@lemmy.world
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          4 months ago

          He was 17 when that happened, and you aren’t allowed to make that category of donation, in PA, until 18. Second there is a ZIP code attached to the public record of all donors, the ZIP for the only Thomas Crooks is one for a district in Pittsburgh. This district has one Thomas Crooks, a 69 year old man. While Thomas Crooks the shooter is from Bethel Park. I have screen shots of the information, but every time I try to post an image in the comment it just doesn’t show up.

          • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
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            4 months ago

            Interesting. Have you reached out to the relevant news agencies to correct the record? They could probably verify with a quick call to the 69yo Thomas Crooks.

            But I guess that’s the nature of early information. Thanks for pointing that out, I’ll refrain from further assumptions until I get more concrete information. The investigation is, afterall, ongoing.

            • Jiggle_Physics@lemmy.world
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              4 months ago

              I got this information from other places. It has been circulating for some hours now. However, Looking at it again, for these comments, I realized 15102 is Bethel Park, so it was the shooter, however he made the donation under age, I guess.

          • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
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            4 months ago

            Thanks! I hope we’ll get more reliable information soon from the investigation. It would be good to know if this is an isolated incident, or if the individual got involved in some extremist group. Cases like this seem to be individual actors, but it could always be a cell of some variety.

            • Jiggle_Physics@lemmy.world
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              4 months ago

              I got this information from other places. It has been circulating for some hours now. However, Looking at it again, for these comments, I realized 15102 is Bethel Park, so it was the shooter, however he made the donation under age, I guess.

        • Jiggle_Physics@lemmy.world
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          4 months ago

          I got this information from other places. It has been circulating for some hours now. However, Looking at it again, for these comments, I realized 15102 is Bethel Park, so it was the shooter, however he made the donation under age, I guess.