Former Classmate Recalls Trump Shooter Grilling Him Over Support for Former POTUS: ‘You’re Hispanic, So Shouldn’t You Hate Trump?’

TAORMINA: “Thomas was a quiet kid unless there was something that he was passionate about, politics being one of them. He just did not like politicians, especially with the choices that we’ve had. He did not like our politicians. It was especially during 2016, it was Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton, all of them. He showed this — that he disliked all of them, did not like any of them. So I brought 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?’ And I was like, ‘Um, no. He’s great. I mean that. He’s a great president.’ And he’s — you know, he called me stupid or insinuated that I was stupid, he said, ‘Well, that’s kind of stupid.’ He was a know-it-all. So, like, once again, if he was passionate about something, he would just talk, talk, talk and acted like he knew everything, especially politics-related. He was just — he would say it in a tone that was, like, ‘I’m better than you’ type of way, and meanwhile, it’s like, dude, we’re in the same classes. You know what I mean? We+re talking about the same stuff here. And whatever comes to politics, at the end of the day, like, I can agree, you can agree, you can disagree, I can disagree, [inaudible]. At that point it doesn’t matter. At that point we’re just starting to figure out who we like and all. But yeah, he was real smug, arrogant whenever he was talking, and whether that was his way to try to make friends or be funny, I don’t know, but it got under my skin a lot. (...) So, his friend group, they were known for being, like, just out there, little bit more recluse, some of them didn’t even show up to school, some of them went home school, some of them — I think one of them went to, like, private school. They were definitely the type and they did make threats to shoot up our school. And that year, I believe it was our — I believe it was our freshman year because I had left our freshman year. Before I left, you know, everyone going through Snapchat, everybody’s texting everybody, you know, saying this, that and the third, everybody was saying it was Thomas who made a threat and it was that friend group. Everyone was mainly blaming the friend group, like, it kept coming up it was Thomas, and — he never did anything. You know what I mean? He left school for a couple of days, it wasn’t anything like a suspension or anything, it was just couple of days. (...) He was not severely bullied. (...) Almost nobody knew. So, you know, for somebody who got severely bullied, I mean, I’m not gonna name names, but I could name you a few students that were severely bullied and I remember their names. He’s not one of them. (...) The signs were there and somebody definitely had to know. Somebody, whether he was talking to somebody or somebody just didn’t realize, it was overlooked, somebody should have known because he was not a loner. And both of his parents and counselors, how do you not see that warning sign? Every — anybody who knew him knew him should have seen something, should have known something. I know it’s kind of easy to hide, but people are gonna get their affairs in order before they do something this bold and this drastic. And nobody saw it. And why?”