“I brought up the fact that I’m Hispanic and, you know, I’m for Trump. And he said, ‘Well, you’re Hispanic, so shouldn’t you hate Trump?’ No. He’s great. He was a great president. He called me stupid – or insinuated that I was stupid.”
A former classmate of Thomas Matthew Crooks, a 20-year-old man who attempted to assassinate Trump at a Pennsylvania rally on Saturday, revealed in a recent interview that Crooks had mocked him for supporting Trump and that Crooks did not like Republican politicians in general.
Vincent Taormina told Fox News in an interview, "I brought up the fact that I'm Hispanic and, you know, I'm for Trump. And he said, 'Well, you're Hispanic, so shouldn't you hate Trump?' No. He's great. He was a great president. He called me stupid – or insinuated that I was stupid." The comments, Taormina said, came during a discussion in 2016 in an English class.
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View on X"He just did not like politicians, especially with the choices that we had. He did not like our politicians," he added.
Taormina noted that Crooks was usually silent, except on topics Crooks appeared passionate about, like politics. When those topics came up, Taormina said that Crooks could be "smug [and] arrogant."
"He would just talk, talk and act like he knew everything, especially politics related, and he would say it in a tone that was like, 'I'm better than you,' in a type of way," he said.
Taormina also said that Crooks has a small friend group, adding "They were definitely the type, and they did, make threats to shoot up our school." Taormina and other classmates suspected Crooks was behind a threat, but had no concrete evidence. He said that when one threat came in, Crooks wasn’t in school for a few days.
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