A highly decorated Army soldier who fatally shot himself just before an explosion of a Tesla Cybertruck at the Trump hotel in Las Vegas left a note saying it was a stunt to serve as “wake up call” for the country’s ills.

Matthew Livelsberger, a 37-year-old Green Beret from Colorado Springs, Colorado, also wrote in notes he left on his cellphone that he needed to “cleanse” his mind “of the brothers I’ve lost and relieve myself of the burden of the lives I took.” Livelsberger served in the Army since 2006 and deployed twice to Afghanistan.

“This was not a terrorist attack, it was a wake up call. Americans only pay attention to spectacles and violence. What better way to get my point across than a stunt with fireworks and explosives,” Livelsberger wrote in one letter found by authorities and released Friday.

  • RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world
    42·
    3 days ago

    Found the reason why.

    The writings found on Sergeant Livelsberger’s phone suggest that he had been increasingly concerned about politics. In one note shared by the police, Sergeant Livelsberger said that people should “try peaceful means first but be prepared to fight” to get Democrats out of the federal government.

    So this isn’t necessarily a problem with Trump, this guy was just another “democrats are the problem with the Real America™” Republican that happened to have mental issues driving him to be a suicide bomber.

    He wasn’t even anti-Musk, he seems to have worshipped the authoritarian.

    In another, he said that “masculinity is good and men must be leaders,” adding that people should rally around Mr. Trump and Elon Musk, Tesla’s chief executive and a top donor to the Trump campaign.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/03/us/las-vegas-tesla-explosion-soldier-ptsd-notes.html