It’s some testament to our times that there was an immediate and big hunger among many people to find some way that Matthew Livelsberger’s suicide-cum-Cybertruck fireworks incident in Las Vegas was tied in some way to the ISIS-inspired terrorist attack in New Orleans. The chances of that being the case now seem increasingly remote. I have yet to see any clear theory of what “message” Livelsberger was trying to send by torching his rented Cybertruck in front of a Trump building. But a pretty dark picture is emerging of the man himself, which provides some background for the ideation if not the “message” itself. Livelsberger appears to have been a hardcore Trump supporter and, in the description of at least one person who knew him, a chronic rage case who was abusive to multiple partners.
I’m not usually a big fan of Daily Mail reporting. But they talked to a woman who knew Livelsberger or, more specifically, his ex-wife during that marriage, who described him as misogynistic and unstable, a man who was threatened by his wife’s independence. A Colorado paper spoke to a subsequent longterm girlfriend who had a much more positive impression of him but said he was a changed person after he returned from a Middle East deployment with a traumatic brain injury in 2019. He got back in contact with this ex-girlfriend by text on his Cybertruck journey from Colorado to Las Vegas. He gave no indication of what he was about to do and portrayed himself as having a great time in his supercool rented Cybertruck.
Livelsberger subsequently married another woman who just recently gave birth to a child. The reporting remains fuzzy. But it seems that there was a blow up of some sort in that relationship, immediately after the child was born and possibly her leaving him over his cheating on her, which triggered the trip to Las Vegas.
Basically a dark, dark story, the only positive part of which is that, aside from a few people who suffered minor injuries in front of the Trump hotel, he didn’t seriously harm anyone else in his violent and inscrutable end.