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Watching that video of his classmate being interviewed just gave me the impression that Crooks hated politicians in general.
Since I myself hate Biden and Trump equally, I can very much sympathize with his viewpoint.
A very simple explanation for why Crooks targeted Trump rather than some other politician is that the two most prominent politicians in the US are Biden and Trump, and Trump is much easier to target than Biden because Trump constantly does outdoor appearances whereas Biden mostly stays hidden away.
It's entirely irrelevant. There's always some loner who hates people and would like to kill.
What's interesting is how it is, at all, possible that he was observed, photographed, looked for and yet ended up on a prime firing position, taking shots at the candidate without being stopped by security.
Or why his social media are not all over the place. Is the trans angle real or just someone playing around with genAI ? etc.
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Simple, but low prior. I got ChatGPT to list 30 notorious modern assassination attempts. Of those, all or almost all that come close to fitting the bill were by people with a history of (severe) mental illness. The only anecdote the classmate gave had Crooks calling him stupid for supporting Trump. Both the fact that he is a Trump supporter and that the target of the attempt was Trump make that fact less conspicuous, but still... maybe the simplest explanation for an assailant risking his life to assassinate one of the most hated candidates ever is that he hated that candidate in particular.
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