Covenant shooter called victims “fa***ts” & “crackers” in leaked manifesto

The manifesto of The Covenant School mass shooter has been leaked to the public. It shows that the killer used anti-gay slurs and that the attack was not – as many conservatives claimed for months – a violently pro-trans rights attack on conservative Christians.

The shooter, identified as Aiden Hale, 28 shortly after the horrific shooting, killed six people, including three children, at The Covenant School in Nashville, Tennessee on March 27. He was shot and killed by police that day.

Related:

Trans Tennesseans fear violent backlash as trans identity blamed for school shooting

“[The shooting is] going to trigger a community of people who already hated us to come and try to shoot us to prove a point,” one trans resident said.

Several people who knew him said that he was a trans man even though he wasn’t out to everyone in his life, which led to right-wing media claiming that Hale – who attended The Covenant School, which is Presbyterian – was attacking Christians in order to punish them for opposing trans equality (Hale used he/him pronouns in online communications prior to the shooting and signed his name Aiden sometimes online).

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On Fox News, Tucker Carlson said that the trans rights movement is the “natural enemy” of Christianity and that trans people are “likely to draw blood” from Christians if they aren’t stopped. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) blamed “hormones like testosterone” for turning Hale into a shooter – even though there was no evidence that Hale was on HRT at the time – and demanded everyone “stop blaming guns.” Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) called the shooting an anti-Christian “hate crime.”

At the time, police did not believe that the attack had targeted Christians as a class and instead believed it was based on “some resentment” Hale had for “having to go to that school,” according to Nashville Police Department spokesperson Don Aaron.

Now, rightwing podcaster Steve Crowder has released pictures of the manifesto on social media, where Hale does not say that he targeted Christians or was motivated by his trans identity. In fact, Hale refers to the students at the school as “fa****ts” several times and decries their “white privilege,” calling them “crackers.”

“Kill those kids!!!” Hale wrote. “Those crackers going to private fancy schools with those fancy khakis + sports backpacks w/ thier [sic] daddies mustangs + convertables. F**k you little s**ts. I wish to shoot you weak**s d**ks w/ your mop yellow hair. Wanna kill all you little crackers!!! Bunch of little fa***ts w/ your white privlages. f**k you fa***ts.”

Two other pages Crowder shared online show Hale’s schedule for the day leading up to the shooting and a page where he called March 27 “Death Day” and said that he was “a little nervous, but excited too” to kill people.

For months conservatives have demanded the release of the manifesto. Hale’s parents transferred ownership of the manifesto to the families of the victims, who did not want it to be released to the public.

Three adults and three children were killed in the shooting. The victims were student Evelyn Dieckhaus (age 9), student Hallie Scruggs (age 9), student William Kinney (age 9), substitute teacher Cynthia Peak (age 61); head of school Katherine Koonce (age 60), and custodian Mike Hill (age 61).