Most of us, including President Joe Biden, who called upon Americans to “reject” political violence, may have been too quick to assume that the attempted assassination of Donald Trump on July 13 was politically motivated.

The FBI, by contrast, concedes that it hasn’t identified a motive. That inability continued after an FBI search of the shooter’s two cellphones failed to find “any indication of a motive, ideology or political views”, CBS reported on July 17.

History reveals that not all high-level assassination attempts are politically motivated…

There’s a significant body of evidence that politics played no role in the decision by a mentally deranged John Hinkley, Jr. to shoot President Ronald Reagan in 1981; that Hinkley, a loner, wanted to kill a President — as opposed to Reagan in particular — to impress the then young actress, Jody Foster.

Hinkley was obsessed with Foster. In a letter to her, Hinkley boasted he would carry out “this historical deed.” In that same letter, Hinkley also mentioned the murder of John Lennon.

Mark David Chapman, the man who assassinated Lennon, said, after spending 40-years in prison, that he’d been seeking glory.

Hinkley, who was found not guilty by reason of insanity, may well have been seeking glory and had that “historical deed” in mind on Oct. 9, 1980, when he was arrested at the Nashville airport and charged with carrying a concealed firearm while President Jimmy Carter was in town. That event occurred many months before Hinkley’s failed attempt to assassinate Carter’s former political rival the following year.

Like Hinkley, 20-year old Thomas Matthew Crooks, a registered Republican, who also reportedly donated $15 to the Progressive Turnout Project the year prior to registering as a Republican, was said by his former high school classmates to have been a “loner“. Several described him as constantly bullied because, as a gun enthusiast, Crooks regularly wore “camouflage outfits” to school. A classmate also described Crooks as “slightly right-leaning”. One described him as “definitely conservative”.

And, eerily, like Hinkley, evidence has emerged that Crooks may have been looking to carry out an “historical event” — as opposed to targeting only the Republican nominee. The FBI revealed that Crooks’ online search history found him seeking images of President Joe Biden and the Democratic National Convention as well as searching for Trump’s image and the Republican National Convention.

So, one possibility is that, like Hinkley and Chapman, Crooks may have been looking for glory by carrying out an “historical deed” — by assassinating either candidate if and when the opportunity arose. Indeed, in Crooks’ mind, Trump’s decision to conduct an outdoor rally in Butler, Pennsylvania — about an hour’s drive from Bethel Park, PA where he resided at his parents’ home — may have been seen as a golden opportunity to carry out that “historic deed”. With Trump’s rally announced publicly some ten days in advance, Crooks twice visited the rally site before he eventually attempted to kill the former President.

The misguided search for “glory”, or what amounts to notoriety, may not have been the only possible apolitical motive.

Donald Trump is and always has been infamous for being a “bully“. It’s possible that his decision to shoot at the former President may very well have been nothing more a decision to strike out at the embodiment of his torment — bullying! That would make him closer, as a number of people have now surmised, to a run-of-the-mill school/mass shooter, than a presidential assassin.

While we may never know what truly motivated this assassination attempt, it was a mistake for many of us, including the author, to initially assume the event was politically motivated. It’s not a small error.

At the same time, in addition to the repeatedly articulated perception that Trump is a “threat” to democracy, his claim — “I took a bullet for democracy” — is reduced to an absurdity. No one has ever claimed that either President Reagan or John Lennon “took bullets for democracy” precisely because there was no political motive associated with what happened to them.

UPDATE, 8/29/24: Newly released FBI data and findings confirm the observations made in this article. The FBI confirmed that Crooks had a “mixture of ideologies”; that he researched both the RNC and DNC and the locations of both Trump and Biden rallies. Crooks became “hyper-focused” on the Butler rally after it was announced. The FBI, which is still unable to describe a motive, concluded that Crooks viewed the Butler rally as a “target of opportunity”.