The clash between Tucker Carlson and the FBI is less about one gunman’s online habits than about who gets to define reality after a national trauma. Carlson frames himself as exposing a cover-up: a young shooter with a “robust online presence,” training with targets in his room, allegedly ignored or concealed by federal authorities. The FBI counters that this story rests on a distortion—that it never claimed Crooks had “no online footprint,” and that critics are retrofitting assumptions into official statements that don’t exist.

In the space between those claims sits a shaken public, still missing key answers about motive, missed warnings, and institutional failure. The attempted assassination of Donald Trump already shattered confidence in security protections; the resignation of the Secret Service director confirmed that something fundamental broke. Now, every withheld file, every disputed quote, and every viral video feeds a deeper suspicion: that the full story is still being managed, not told.