Category: The American Spectator
Tucker dropped the Crooks files — now Glenn Beck demands answers to 6 critical questions
On November 14, Tucker Carlson released an investigative video, exposing new details about Thomas Matthew Crooks, the 20-year-old who nearly succeeded in assassinating President Donald Trump at his Butler, Pennsylvania, rally on July 13, 2024.
In the 34-minute video, Carlson made three bombshell claims:
1. The FBI spent months falsely claiming Crooks had no online footprint while hiding a years-long digital trail of extremist posts across multiple platforms, including Discord, Snapchat, and YouTube, as well as an extensive search history in the days leading up to the assassination attempt.
2. Crooks began as a pro-Trump, far-right teen advocating dictatorship and racial violence, then dramatically flipped in 2020 to virulent anti-Trump rhetoric and explicit threats of assassination, decapitations, and terrorism-style bombings.
3. Crooks was groomed online by a neo-Nazi handler linked to a U.S.-designated terrorist group, yet the FBI — under both Christopher Wray and now Trump appointee Kash Patel — continues to cover up Crooks’ full history, motive, and evidence, including physically scrubbing the crime scene.
After these revelations, Glenn Beck says there are six critical questions the American public must demand answers to.
FBI slept on Crooks’ kill list
For starters, Glenn is highly skeptical about the FBI’s dismissal of Crooks’ disturbing online activity.
During his pro-Trump era, Crooks directed violent comments almost exclusively toward Democrat officials — overtly calling for their gruesome deaths. This was happening under Joe Biden’s FBI — “a period when the U.S. government … was monitoring social media more aggressively than any other point in U.S. history,” says Glenn.
“People were arrested for memes at this time, but Crooks? Nothing … not a warning, not a knock on the door, not one single action,” he says.
Crooks’ 2020 plot twist: MAGA → Trump assassin
Sometime in 2020, Crooks’ digital footprint, per Carlson’s documentary, reveals an abrupt ideological flip. His comments were just as violent, but suddenly, they were directed at Trump and his supporters. He began mocking Trump’s handling of COVID-19, anti-lockdown protests, and conservative media figures, including Carlson himself, for downplaying the virus.
The FBI in its post-assassination attempt report, however, revealed only half of Crooks’ political leanings, omitting the anti-Trump part.
Neo-Nazi Discord daddy groomed him — crickets from FBI
Around the same time Crooks’ political leanings reversed, a shadowy online figure under the alias Willy Tepes, whom Carlson posits is a neo-Nazi Discord groomer affiliated with the U.S.-designated terrorist group Nordic Resistance Movement, began interacting with Crooks. According to the exposé, Tepes encouraged Crooks’ violent rhetoric, openly approving of his barbaric ideations aimed at government officials.
“So now you have our state department” and “our intelligence community that is monitoring people online, especially Nazis in the rest of the world and Nazis here, and yet there’s nothing. Not a single red flag is triggered, not a single investigation, no monitoring, no intervention,” says Glenn, noting that this same FBI was monitoring “Catholic churches and priests.”
Further, in the days leading up to the assassination attempt, Crooks, Carlson alleged, searched Trump’s name hundreds of times, as well as Jack Ruby, bomb-making, car and sniper attacks, successful assassinations, and how to evade police gunfire.
“All of these things should ring every NSA alarm bell. Nothing — again,” says Glenn.
“They didn’t stop him. They didn’t prevent or try to prevent. They didn’t warn anyone. Instead, as soon as he was shot, they rushed out a narrative — a very specific narrative — and then they shut down anything that conflicted with it.”
Trump’s FBI still running cover?
Perhaps the most head-scratching revelation in Carlson’s exposé is that Trump’s own FBI has continued to keep Crooks’ shocking history under wraps.
“I understand it when it’s Biden’s FBI, but now Trump’s FBI? Now, why didn’t Trump’s FBI immediately come out [with this information]?” asks Glenn, noting that Dan Bongino is on record reiterating the narrative that Crooks had virtually no digital footprint.
He uses the metaphor of an iceberg for the FBI. “You see an iceberg, and you just see just the top of it. Two-thirds of that is under the water, so we’re seeing the tops change,” he says.
“I’m questioning: Does anyone know how deep this goes? Because I don’t think it matters who’s running it.”
FBI: Fast cremation
The FBI also approved and coordinated the release of Crooks’ body for cremation just 10 days after the shooting.
“You don’t do that in a presidential assassination attempt. You don’t do that in a local homicide case unless you want something gone,” says Glenn.
The essential questions
1. Why did the FBI push the narrative that Crooks had a minimal digital footprint when quite the opposite is true?
2. Why did the FBI present only half of Crooks’ political history, hiding his era of Trump hatred? Who exactly was involved in the decision?
3. After the election and the appointment of Kash Patel and Dan Bongino, why did the FBI continue to uphold the original narrative? Who made that decision?
4. Given that the government constantly monitors potentially dangerous online activity, why did Crooks’ violent comments, suspicious search history, and consorting with a known Swedish Nazi group go ignored?
5. Why did the FBI clean the scene prematurely by allowing Crooks to be cremated shortly after the crime?
6. Why is it that every time our FBI and government make a mistake, it seems to point in the direction of “ignorance, negligence, hiding inconvenient data, shaping a political narrative”?
“There’s something very wrong. The official story is impossible to believe,” says Glenn, calling these questions not partisan but “self-preservation” inquiries.
“You can feel the republic slipping through your fingers. If we do not correct these things, we do not have a government of, by, and for the people.”
To hear more of Glenn’s commentary and analysis, watch the video above.
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Fathers step up to defend girls’ sports after liberal state defies President Trump — and biology
Concerned fathers of female athletes are taking matters into their own hands.
After two bills failed to pass through the Maine state legislature, parents are taking to the streets to collect signatures in hopes of getting their own set of rules passed.
‘We will effect change across the entire state all at once.’
The group of fathers, called Maine Girl Dads, is asking the general public of Maine to sign a petition for the initiative titled “An Act to Designate School Sports Participation and Facilities by Sex.”
The act would require schools in the state to designate “athletic teams and private facilities,” including bathrooms and locker rooms, on the basis of biological sex.
“This is important, as we will effect change across the entire state all at once, while providing a private right of action for enforcement, clarifying statutory cross-references, and ensuring severability,” the group wrote on its website.
The dads are hoping to garner the 68,000 signatures required to get the initiative on the ballot in the 2026 midterms next November.
Weathering a cold November day in the Northeast, the group recently held a signature drive that saw overwhelmingly positive results.
RELATED: Maine Democrat says transgender athletes make women better
“We collected over 53K signatures! In just one day, we’re over halfway to our goal of 100K,” the group recently wrote on X. “When this gets on the 2026 ballot, we win and girls’ sports are protected. Let’s keep going, Maine!”
WMTW-TV caught up with Steven Scharf, one of the men taking roadside signatures over the weekend, to see what the reactions were like from the general public.
“Everybody who’s stopped by has been very eager to sign and can’t understand why this is not just automatic and why this needs to go through a process of being voted on, and why the state legislature has not passed this as is,” Scharf told the outlet.
Sending the question of banning boys from girls’ sports directly to the voter circumvents the state. Not only has Maine defied President Trump’s early February executive order on this matter, but the state Senate has shot down two different bills that would have achieved the same end.
RELATED: Liberal state gives ridiculous reason to justify refusal to ban men from women’s sports
Two bills passed the Maine House, which has a virtual split between Democrats (74) and Republicans (73), with three independents. However, neither passed in the state Senate, which is composed of 20 Democrats, 14 Republicans, and one independent.
Proposal LD 1134 was rejected by the Senate on June 13, while LD 233 was rejected just days later on June 16.
If the Maine Girl Dads get their way and their proposal is passed, it would become effective on Jan. 1, 2027.
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Obscure Belgian Nonprofit That Filed More Than 1,000 ICC Cases Against Israeli Soldiers Has Ties to Hezbollah, Report Alleges
An obscure Belgian nonprofit that has single-handedly filed more than 1,000 complaints against Israeli soldiers at the International Criminal Court (ICC) bills itself as a neutral legal entity crusading against “war crimes and human rights violations perpetrated by the Israeli state.” According to a new watchdog report, though, one of its co-founders has openly identified himself as a former Hezbollah terrorist, and the organization itself is entrenched within Hezbollah’s financing network across multiple continents.
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Democrats reject ‘current policy’ — unless it pays their base
Washington’s latest fights make one thing unmistakable: Democrats shift their arguments as needed, but always in service of higher taxes, higher spending, and a bigger federal footprint. When the question earlier this year was whether to keep current tax policy and avoid a massive tax hike, Democrats fought against keeping current policy.
Now, after forcing a government shutdown, they claim they must preserve current — but temporary — Obamacare subsidies. Two opposite stances, one consistent goal: bigger government.
On taxes, ‘current policy’ doesn’t count. On spending, ‘current policy’ functions like holy writ.
Earlier this year, Congress faced a hard deadline. Lawmakers had to choose between extending the 2017 American Job Creation Act tax rates or letting them snap back to pre-2017 levels — a $4 trillion tax increase across income brackets. Republicans pushed to retain the lower rates. Democrats pushed for the tax hike.
Democrats insisted the looming deadline was Republicans’ fault and said the surge in revenue would help slow growth in deficits and debt. Republicans ultimately prevailed and passed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. Democrats erupted.
We all know what happened next. Less than three months later, Congress approached the September 30 deadline for annual appropriations. With negotiations still incomplete, Republicans advanced a clean, short-term extension to keep the government open. The House passed it. President Trump signaled he would sign it. Senate Democrats filibustered it.
Republicans tried over a dozen times to reopen the government. Senate Democrats blocked them every time — until this week. Their central demand: extend the temporary “emergency” premium subsidies that Democrats expanded during the pandemic. Those subsidies, scheduled to expire, broadened eligibility beyond 400% of the federal poverty line and boosted benefits for those below it. Democrats already extended them once through 2025.
Now, with the pandemic long over — President Biden signed the resolution ending it on April 10, 2023 — Senate Democrats want the emergency expansions made permanent.
The inconsistency could not be clearer.
When expiring tax law meant taxes would rise, Democrats described preventing that increase as a tax cut — even though extending the law simply kept existing policy in place. The fact that the policy had been the law for eight years meant nothing.
But when expiring pandemic-era subsidies would return Obamacare to its original structure, Democrats suddenly insist that current policy must prevail. They now treat temporary emergency expansions — linked explicitly to COVID, extended once already, disproportionately benefiting upper-income households — as untouchable programs that must become permanent.
On taxes, “current policy” doesn’t count. On spending, “current policy” functions like holy writ.
RELATED: Trump officially ends ‘pathetic’ Democrats’ record-breaking shutdown
Photo by Bonnie Cash/UPI/Bloomberg via Getty Images
The reasoning shifts, but the outcome never does: Democrats always land on whatever argument leads to more government. Their broader shutdown demands confirm it — ending Medicaid reforms and restoring spending levels President Trump and Republicans reduced. Every item points in the same direction: more federal dollars out the door.
Democrats note that Republicans, too, support keeping some expiring policies. True. Which makes the underlying purpose even more important to identify.
Republicans fought to maintain 2017 tax levels so Americans could keep more of what they earn — and keep that income out of Washington’s hands. Democrats want permanent expansion of Obamacare subsidies to preserve and grow benefits for people who were never intended to receive them, locking in a larger federal role.
Future fights will come; today’s climate guarantees them. One more thing is just as guaranteed: Democrats’ arguments will continue to change as needed, and their demands for higher taxes, higher spending, and a larger federal government will not.
Courage Under Fire
First came the water pouring down the slopes of Japan’s Mount Fuji on October 19, 1979. Then on top of the torrents came the fire that killed 13 U.S. Marines and burned dozens more. Though investigators afterward may not have consulted the Bible, they ended up attributing the unusual mix of elements involved to the same force that, per the Book of Exodus, enveloped ancient Egypt in hail and fire. “It was an act of God,” investigators concluded.
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