I haven't seen a lot about this in the national news, but the lawyer for the 2019 El Paso mass shooter (Patrick Crusius) is now expressly stating that his client thought he was working for Trump to stop the "invasion" (by brown people) the president said was occurring in Texas.
https://elpasomatters.org/2025/03/30/patrick-crusius-donald-trump-aug-3-2019-walmart-mass-shooting/
Patrick Crusius believed he was fulfilling Trump’s wishes in El Paso attack, his attorney says
"Patrick Crusius believed he was acting at the direction of President Donald Trump when he murdered 23 people and wounded 22 others at an El Paso Walmart in 2019, his defense lawyer told El Paso Matters.
“He thought he had to stop the invasion because that’s what his president was telling him, which is just not rational,” defense attorney Joe Spencer said in his first extended interview about the mass shooting that Crusius said was meant to stop “the Hispanic invasion of Texas.”
“He thought, if he doesn’t do it, then nobody’s going to do it. He’s got to start,” Spencer said."
It's not lost on me that Trump sycophants and apologists have a whole ream of excuses at the ready; the shooter had a history of serious mental illness, his lawyer is a Democrat who (rightfully) thinks Trump's white nationalist rhetoric is dangerous, Crusius awkwardly tried to absolve Trump in his manifesto, and so forth. The fact is however that just because fascists are willing to spew disingenuous lies to cover up Trump and the larger fascist propaganda industry's involvement in motivating a mass murderer, doesn't mean any thinking person has to treat those disingenuous excuses seriously. This guy was one of Trump's legion of white nationalist fanboys; he was quoting Great Replacement conspiracy theories in his cut and pasted manifesto, he was adamantly against his lawyer subpoenaing Trump, and the shooter even admitted a 2019 Trump rally in Florida was the moment that convinced him to plan and enact the murders.
"Spencer said Crusius told him that a key event leading to the murderous rampage in El Paso occurred in May 2019 in Panama City Beach, Florida, when Trump spoke at a rally.
“I mean, you have 15,000 people marching up and you have hundreds and hundreds of people and you have two or three border security people that are brave and great,” Trump said, then added falsely that Border Patrol agents weren’t allowed to use weapons.
“But how do you stop these people?” Trump said.
“Shoot them,” someone in the audience shouted, drawing laughter from the crowd and a smile from the president.
“That’s only in the (Florida) Panhandle you can get away with that statement,” Trump said while shaking his head. “Only in the Panhandle.”
Crusius said he saw video of that Trump rally and was motivated to act, Spencer said. In June 2019, a month after the Florida Trump rally, Crusius purchased a semiautomatic rifle online and had it delivered to a gun dealer in his hometown of Allen, Texas, near Dallas, according to court records."
Like are you fucking kidding me? Please keep in mind that as you read this, the Trump regime is currently arguing that Venezuelan migrants are literally "an invasion" that justifies the president invoking war powers to ship them to a slave labor prison in El Salvador without due process. Of *course* this maggot fascist believed Trump was serious about migrants "invading" America and destroying the country because Trump himself is serious every time he says it! And the fact that Crusius was suffering from documented mental illness isn't a valid excuse either because when you tell folks that they're being invaded by brown people who're going to rape and murder them, you don't get to pretend its a surprise when vulnerable people high on your white nationalist conspiracy theories take that seriously; the negligence itself, is the problem here just as much as the overt race war rhetoric is.
By the way, don't sleep on the fact that the primary reason you're only hearing all of this now is that his lawyer has been under a gag order that was only dissolved in late March; you know, after Trump was elected again.
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