Donald Trump baselessly suggests 'nutjob' Alec Baldwin may have had 'something to do with' the shooting
Former President Donald Trump baselessly claimed that Alec Baldwin might have purposefully shot crew members on the set of the movie "Rust."
The firing of a prop gun by Baldwin on set led to the death of the director of photography, Halyna Hutchins, and injured the director, Joel Souza.
"He's a troubled guy. There's something wrong with him. I've watched him for years. He gets into fistfights with reporters," Donald Trump told conservative radio host Chris Stigall in a podcast on Thursday.
"He's a cuckoo-bird, he's a nutjob. And usually, when there's somebody like that, you know, in my opinion, he had something to do with it."
Alec Baldwin has described the event as a "tragic accident." In the police affidavit, Baldwin said that he was told that the gun was not loaded.
Trump added that he thought Baldwin had behaved irresponsibly by pointing the gun at a crewmember, whether it was loaded or not.
"But if nothing else, how do you take a gun and just, whether it's loaded or not loaded, how do you take a gun, point it at somebody that's not even in the movie and just point it at this person and pull the trigger and now she's dead?" he said.
Trump said on the podcast that if he had been handed a gun, he would first discharge it into the air to make sure it wasn't loaded.
He added that Hutchins was a crewmember and not an actress, which he said made it odd that the gun was aimed at her.
"It's weird," Trump said. "Who would take a gun and point it at a cinematographer and pull the trigger, and she's dead?"
Investigators have been looking into how live ammunition ended up in the gun, and Trump suggested that Baldwin might have loaded the gun that killed Hutchins.
"As bad as it may have been kept, meaning you know the people that take care of the equipment and the guns and everything else… But even if it was loaded, and that's a weird thing— maybe he loaded it," he said.
The former president went on to say that he thought Baldwin's impersonation of him on Saturday Night Live over the years was "terrible."
"There's something wrong with him. He's a sick guy. I mean, I've seen him for years because he did. I thought a poor job of imitating me," Trump said.
Donald Trump Jr. has also mocked the actor over the incident, selling shirts that say "guns don't kill people, Alec Baldwin kills people."
The investigation into Hutchins' death is ongoing. No one has been charged.