Steve Bannon has cooked up a new explanation for what may have driven a supporter of President Donald Trump to massacre five people at a Mormon Church in Michigan.
The MAGA commentator, who was once a White House strategist in the first Trump administration, said that “psychotic drugs” may be why Thomas Sanford fatally shot two people and burned three others alive.
“I think these shooters this weekend were also on these psycho, you know, the psychotic drugs,” Bannon said on his show Monday. “We’ve let the psychiatry industry basically poison the minds and the bodies with drugs. We have a massive problem that is the foundational element of the violence atop.”
Lukas Katilius/AP
Bannon provided no evidence to support that Sanford had been on psychotic drugs.
The host made no other mention of the shooting during his two-hour morning show.
Sanford, 40, was fatally shot by police at the scene, but not before he rammed his GMC Sierra into a Church of the Latter-day Saints, opened fire at hundreds of parishioners inside it, and then torched the building. Two died by gunfire, and the flames fatally engulfed three, officials said on Monday afternoon.
Reports indicate that Sanford was married, had a child, and was a retired U.S. Marine who served in Iraq. He told a local city council candidate less than a week before the shooting that he struggled with drug addiction upon his return stateside.
Authorities have described the mass killing as a “targeted attack,” but have yet to release an official motive. However, Sanford’s chat with the local council candidate Kris Johns revealed that he detested Mormonism, going as far as telling Johns—a stranger who had knocked on his door while canvassing—on Sept. 22 that he viewed the Church of Latter-day Saints as “the antichrist.”
Sanford also revealed in his conversation with Johns that he previously had a failed relationship with a woman from a Mormon family in Utah, reports the Detroit Free Press. No other details about the relationship have been revealed.
Claims from the right characterizing the attack as being done by an anti-Christian leftist—made before Sanford was identified as the murderer—have fallen flat. Social media posts show Sanford came from a family of Trump supporters, and he displayed a “Trump-Vance” sign from the 2024 election at his house.
Johns told the Free Press that Sanford told him he was a Christian and a member of Solid Rock Community Church, which was holding a service on Sunday, eight miles north of where Sanford carried out his cold-blooded attack.
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