One tiny detail in the short, tragic life of Thomas Matthew Crooks, the 20-year-old who attempted to assassinate Donald Trump at a rally in Pennsylvania, has become the subject of online attention. In 2022, Crooks, who was then still at school, briefly appeared in a promotional video for the asset manager BlackRock. Crooks can be seen for a couple of seconds, turning to look at his teacher. He doesn’t speak in the video and was not paid for his appearance; he has never worked for the company. This tenuous connection was enough, however, to reignite a conspiracy theory that has long focused on BlackRock.
The first tweet revealing Crooks’ appearance in the BlackRock video was viewed more than 17 million times in less than 24 hours. Among the thousands of replies, the overriding sentiment was that the assassination attempt was an “inside job”, that there are “no coincidences”, and that BlackRock had had some role in the attempt to assassinate Trump.
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