Thomas Matthew Crooks nearly assassinated Donald Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania in July 2024.
Now a major new book reveals what happened inside the Trump family the day a leftist radical finally succeeded in taking out one of his closest allies.
Barron Trump picked up the phone and said nine words his father will never forget.
What Barron Told the President
According to Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump by New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan, Barron was the first person to reach Donald Trump after conservative activist Charlie Kirk was shot and killed at Utah Valley University on September 10, 2025.
Kirk was considered a “very soft target” by White House security officials – an ally who didn’t command the same Secret Service protection as the president himself.
Barron, then 19, was watching events unfold in real time and panicked.
“This is what happens when you go out there,” Barron said. “This is what happened.”
https://twitter.com/radar_online/status/2069524811068453163?s=20
Trump tried to calm his youngest son.
“Calm down, honey, calm down,” the president told him – while reportedly unnerved himself.
That a 19-year-old had to tell his father that existing in public might get him killed is everything you need to know about what the radical left has become.
The Left Made This Happen
Trump’s team had already run the threat calculus.
Security officials knew that anyone unable to reach the president directly would target the circle around him – his family, his allies, the people who stood next to him in public.
Charlie Kirk was exactly that.
Tyler Robinson, the 22-year-old suspect in Kirk’s assassination, espoused extreme transgender ideology, according to a May 2026 White House counter-terrorism strategy document.
Trump recognized the pattern immediately.
https://twitter.com/MarioNawfal/status/2068115863409209450?s=20
Within days of Kirk’s murder, he declared antifa a terrorist group and signed a national security memorandum directing the DOJ, FBI, and Joint Terrorism Task Force to target anti-fascist political violence before it produced more body bags.
Stephen Miller put it plainly – Kirk’s assassination was the result of an “ideology that is at war with family and nature… that leads, always, inevitably and willfully, to violence.”
This Family Has Bled for America
Eric Trump put words to what every Trump supporter already felt.
On Air Force One bound for Beijing, he sat down with Sean Hannity and zeroed in on Butler, Pennsylvania – the July 2024 rally where Thomas Crooks climbed a rooftop 130 yards from the stage and fired eight rounds at his father’s head.
One bullet caught the upper right ear.
One inch lower and none of what came after would have happened.
“It’s absolutely infuriating,” Eric said. “It’s a 130-yard shot. It’s an unmissable shot if you are even remotely competent with a rifle.”
Two months later, Ryan Wesley Routh set up a sniper’s hideout at Trump’s golf course in West Palm Beach and waited 12 hours in the bushes.
A Secret Service agent spotted him before he could fire.
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Routh is now serving life in prison.
Then came the White House Correspondents’ Dinner in April 2026, where an armed man stormed the lobby and opened fire.
What the Left Refuses to Admit
Here is what the media will never tell you straight.
The same movement that called Trump a “fascist” and a “threat to democracy” spent years building the cultural permission structure for political violence against him and his allies.
When Kirk was killed, Reuters documented more than 600 Americans fired, suspended, or investigated for celebrating his death on social media – and the left’s response was not to condemn the murder but to fund First Amendment lawsuits protecting the people who cheered it.
Not to condemn the murder.
To protect the celebration of it.
Barron Trump was 19 years old when he called his father to tell him his friend was dead and warn him that going out in public might get him killed next.
Think about that the next time someone tells you the left is the side that cares about democracy.
Sources:
- Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan, Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump, New York Times Books, 2026.
- U.S. Senate, S.Res.391, “A Resolution Condemning the Assassination of Charlie Kirk,” 119th Congress, 2026.
- White House, National Security Memorandum on Anti-Fascist Political Violence, September 25, 2025.
- Fox News, “Charlie Kirk Assassination Suspect’s Lawyers Mirror Notorious Killer’s Tactical Delay Strategy,” June 23, 2026.
- Axios, “Timeline of Shootings, Threats Against Trump Over the Years,” May 24, 2026.