MUSICAL MECHANIC CLAIMS TRUMP TOO EASY TO MISS
- Justus A.S. Clayfield
- Jan 1, 2025
- 13 min read
Updated: Aug 10, 2025
“I think he’s quite possibly the greatest president we’ve ever had.” Ken LaBarbera, an independent mechanic local to Boundary County had told me during episode 15 of Interesting People. “Why? Well, because of who he is and [how] he stands for what I believe to be good for this country. Hopefully, he can put an end to some of this debauchery that’s going on in many different sectors. I don’t like a lot of things that are happening in society today and I wish that they could be eased up or straightened out. I like the Trump guy because he has a good take. He’s realistic and I think he’s great for the country.”
“So have you heard about his attempted assassination?” I asked Ken, looking for his opinion on the matter.
“Oh, yes.” He responded almost immediately.
“What are your thoughts on that?” I finished my two-part question.
“I think that someone tried to shoot him.” Ken started bluntly. “It just grazed his ear although it was odd because it was a really easy shot from where that guy was. It was almost too easy to miss.”
On July 13, 2024, Donald Trump survived an assassination attempt by Thomas Matthew Crooks. Thomas, who was a twenty-year-old man from Bethel Park, Pennsylvania, shot and wounded Trump’s upper right ear. He fired eight rounds from the roof of a nearby building not only injuring Trump but two others as well. Their names are David Dutch and James Copenhaver, both of which are lucky to be alive. Corey Comperatore, an avid Trump supporter, wasn’t so lucky. As a volunteer fire chief, Corey displayed true American valor when he dove on top of his family to shield them from fire. According to the governor of Pennsylvania, Corey died a hero.
“It was such an easy shot, he should not have missed.” Ken clarified his last statement referring to Thomas Crooks. “For some reason, whether he knew someone was coming up and going to shoot him, he made a quick shot and missed the target.”
As it was later revealed, Thomas was distracted before firing his AR-15 style rifle. This happened when confronted by a police officer climbing to the roof of the building where he was concealed. At 6:08 PM, a local law enforcement officer reported over the radio, "Someone's on the roof." Police bodycam footage showed a search operation begin and shortly thereafter, Thomas spotted the officer with his hands clinging to the edge of the roof. After aiming his rifle at the officer, the officer let go and fell eight feet to the ground below where he severely injured his ankle. Immediately after this, Thomas opened fire into the rally below. Following his attack, a member of Butler County's Emergency Services shot at Thomas managing to hit his rifle stock, which fragmented into debris impacting his face, neck, and right shoulder. Because of this, he was forced to reposition, enabling a member of the Secret Service to shoot and kill Thomas Matthew Crooks.
This makes Ken’s last comment concerning the shooter strangely apt considering this interview was recorded before any of the previous information had been made public. Though he claims only to be a mechanic, musician, and father, Ken LaBarbera proved that he has a far greater understanding of the world than anyone may expect.
“What are your thoughts on Joe Biden?” I asked Ken about the 46th President of the USA.
“Joe Biden should retire.” Ken began. “He was never really any good at anything. He should’ve never been the president, and I believe that he was installed.”
“What do you mean installed?” I looked for further understanding.
“Installed; somebody made sure that he won.” Ken said simply. “There’s reasons for that. He’s more or less like a puppet that they were able to tell what to do. They were pretty sure that he wouldn’t put up much of a fight because he was getting old. Who knows, maybe he had traces of dementia before all this and they knew that. I don’t know, but it seems as though he was installed by people who wanted Trump out of the way [so] they rigged the election and made it happen. Then, if anybody ever says that, you’re a conspiracy theorist or whatever. So I have no time to listen to any of that. It’s already done. We put up with four years of you (Joe Biden) and now it’s so thoroughly obvious that you should’ve already retired, but no! We’re stuck with him for at least another few months.”
“We’ll get through it!” I told Ken with a smile before moving on to my next question. “What’s the message that you believe the world needs to hear?”
“Well, to me…” Ken motioned to himself. “It’s a battle between good and evil. I don’t think any message from me is going to change that. I don’t think somebody that is doing evil would ever have any reason to listen to what I have to say. But maybe they would, [so] I would just say we can get along. If we could learn to live with each other and be tolerant so we can all live on this planet, maybe, in some sort of happiness. I don’t think that’s ever going to happen, but if I had my way, that would be it. I believe that the earth is ruled by the devil. If you’re good, and you’re on the good side, that’s only because you see that and you don’t want to go there and you want to be good and do good things because that’s what we’re commanded to do in the Bible. No, I’m not a big church-going guy, but wherever two gather in my name… that’s church, from what I understand. Yes, I could do more, I could go to church and talk with people more. I would probably meet people that I should be going and meeting.” Ken paused with a chuckle. “Because it gets a little quiet here, you know? I remember my dad told me, if you want a wife, go to church. You don’t go to the bar to find your wife. Of course, my dad left us when I was six, so I take that with a grain of salt.”
“You talked about, as a child, that because of family difficulties, you were often left in a position where you were out on the streets roaming about as a teen.” I recalled from our previous conversation.
“Oh yeah.” Ken confirmed.
“What did that look like?” I continued my question. “How did that form you as a person?”
“Jeepers, yeah.” Ken exhaled heavily. “Mom and Dad didn’t get along, long story short. Mom had to go to work, and I was six years old. So I began to have a lot of time on my hands [where] no one was looking after me. [I] got myself into all sorts of odd troubles. [I] had to learn the hard way where your dad would maybe explain things to you. This is the thing about family, when you separate the family and people go away from each other, you can no longer have an influence on your own children.”
“So you talked a little bit earlier off-camera about how you would find ways to make money as a teen.” I reminded Ken of what he had told me. “What’s an example of that?”
“Even younger than a teen.” Ken corrected me. “I was maybe eleven or twelve years old and I was living on Long Island at the time. That’s a place where people throw things away at will because of the over-abundance of money. It’s just ridiculous. So I would walk around, and I would find a lawnmower. I loved lawnmowers, especially like an old Snapper, a [really] nice one, that wouldn’t start so someone pushed it to the curb. Well, I would push that away and push it home and then make it run. Then, go mow somebody’s lawn and make five bucks. The thing would be smoking; knocking.” Ken said laughing. “You’d dump some more motor oil in there and it would make it one more time. But that was enough to make five bucks. The way I grew up was you would take stuff out of the garbage, fix it, and then if that was a lawnmower, you’d use that to go make money. Or you’d sell it. You’d take stuff out of the garbage and make it work.”
“So basically what springboarded you to getting where you are today was picking up garbage, fixing it, and going to make those tools work so you could make money?” I clarified the story that Ken had thus far described.
“Absolutely, yep.” Ken responded affirmatively. “I make money no matter what.”
“Where did you learn to play the guitar?” I asked, wondering how music ever found its way into his life.
“I used to play the cello up until I was fifteen.” Ken imitated playing the cello with his hands. “I took some lessons, thanks to my Mom. She was able to make that happen for me. Then I found all those other things like rock and roll. So I found a guitar in the garbage, took it apart, [and] built a new body for it. [This] was in shop class in high school. [I] put it back together and a friend of mine was a drummer, so we would just jam. Because I wasn’t very good, I didn’t try to learn other people’s songs. I was like, ‘Let’s just make noise.’ And still, that’s what I do.” Ken said with a jolly laugh. “But [I] make more specific noise with sense involved. That’s mostly what I do is jam with other people. I like it best that way. I don’t want to know what song, just tell me what key you’re in and start playing. Then, I can hear the cadence of the music. If it’s a common song (even if it’s somewhat uncommon), I know where it’s going because we all live in this world where music makes sense. The music I play, I would consider it sensible music.”
“Why do you really play guitar?” I looked more in-depth into his music. “Why do you go out and do performances?” I referred to Ken’s band, the Turnspit Dogs, which is photographed below. “Why do you get on stage locally and do this stuff?”
“That’s a great question because even as a player, we ask ourselves that.” Ken smiled jokingly. “It’s the same question. What’s the point here? Am I trying to attract attention to myself? Do I think that I’m so great? Really, in the giant scheme of musicians, I come up as a novice in my own mind, of course. I say ‘of course’ because I can see very clearly that talent is given to you by God. Some of them, or some of us, have the dump truck load, and others [have] a little smattering. This is the thing, we all are given these gifts, and then what do you do with the gift? Do you really spend time on it or do you just play with it for fun? I don’t know, I must say it’s been rather foggy my entire musical lifespan, but I love music dearly. As Duke Ellington would say, music is my mistress. It’s exciting to get out and play. It’s fun to share that with other musicians. That’s the real thing; sharing and being on the spot. Most things that I play are generally unrehearsed. We all know the way the song goes. There are multiple, multiple songs, most people would agree, that have a common way of going. One, four, five. One, five, four. Blah, blah, blah, it always returns. You can hear it coming. That’s what I do, as a player, is I hear it coming. So why though?” Ken returned to the question I had initially asked him. “Sometimes I say, ‘Well, it’s another hundred bucks!’ It’s a hundred bucks if I go out and play, but it’s more than that; it’s a friendship thing. I would like to say that I love to jam or improvise and I realize that I need as many people to play with as I can get. I like a common-sounding song and sweet-sounding music.”
“How long have you been an auto mechanic?” I had asked Ken in his first interview with me.
“Well, actively making money as a mechanic since 2006.” Ken informed me.
“Wow, tell me about that.” I said in surprise knowing that Ken works independently of any business. “How did that come to be?”
“Well, right out of high school, I was offered [a] trade school option. So I went in for carpentry.” Ken began to fill me in, though his answer seemed random at first. “Sixteen, seventeen, and eighteen, I was able to go half my day of school to a trade school and learn the trade of carpentry because that interested me. Then, right out of there, I went directly into the trades. I worked for the federal government for a little while. That was about two years of that right out of high school. I was making double what my friends were making. Immediately, I saw that there’s money in knowledge and understanding.”
“Yes.” I agreed with him.
“Then, from there I went into the private construction world and was hired by various people.” Ken went on. “I cut my teeth in a world where people were particular, and that helped me. Taking carpentry into this world that I’m in right now is fabulous. So anyway, I did carpentry up until I left Long Island when I was twenty-eight. I had met my wife, Maria, God rest her soul, about twenty-eight years old. She was so wonderful and all she wanted in the world was a good man to have a family with, and so we talked. I said, ‘Well, we can’t do this here on Long Island.’ I don’t know what I would do to make enough money to make that work. I said we need to find a place to go, so it was September of 1992 [when] we pulled in here.”
By “here”, Ken meant Boundary County, Idaho. In his interview with me, Ken detailed that after purchasing a small piece of property in November, he manually built a house suitable for a growing family. Three days after finishing the driveway, there was three feet of snow on the ground. Ken later reflected on this warmly.
“I remember my wife, Maria, God rest her soul, out here in the driveway.” Ken began affectionately. “We didn’t have a shovel, and she was out here with a broom trying to broom the snow away so we could walk around freely. It was just a great experience of being under the gun and then pulling through. It almost makes me want to cry to think back on how wonderful people have been here and how great that it was. I wouldn’t trade it for anything. You know, if I could go back with an eraser… which no one can, and I would never do that. I wouldn’t change a thing. Unfortunately, terrible things happened [many] years later. Maria…” Ken paused, gulping with hesitancy. “...was diagnosed with breast cancer. Then, two years after that [in] 2008, after a roller coaster ride and lots of chemotherapy, she passed away.”
“I’m very sorry for your loss.” I told Ken not knowing what else to say.
“It’s hard for me to imagine that someone could look back and say, ‘Well, I would change it!’ Yes, it would be me that died. Then she would be here with the children because that seems right to me.”
What many don’t know is that Interesting People, the series that features Ken LaBarbera in his own standalone episode, is filmed in ten minute intervals. For ten minutes, I’ll interview the subject giving them the opportunity to answer my questions openly. At the close of this segment, the camera and audio equipment will be stopped allowing for either a break or a reset. Upon a reset, I’ll continue asking new questions. It was at this point in my interview with Ken that we had concluded a ten-minute section, so I used this as my opportunity to divert our conversation towards a less sensitive topic.
“I’ve heard that you work exclusively on Subarus.” I asked Ken, still curious as to what started his career as an auto mechanic. “Is that true?”
“Well, it was true.” Ken related. “But now things have changed.” “Okay, so why did you…” I stuttered over my question. “For how long was that the case?” “Well, 2006 is when my wife, Maria, God rest her soul, needed to be helped and watched over. I needed to be home and I couldn’t be off building things for people, so I decided that I would start fixing cars. A friend of mine introduced me to Subaru, and then, that’s when a whole bunch of Subarus, people were buying them like crazy in this area. So, I saw that as opportunity. I just stood up and decided, whatever I got to do, I’m gonna learn how to work on these Subarus. I’ll be the competitive guy who can make it happen. I love Subarus because there’s so many of them. I saw it as a business opportunity. I was like, I’m the guy; the dealer alternative. I [knew] these motors in and out because I began to buy them and shred them to little bits and take the motor down to nothing. I got some service manuals, like ones from the dealer, read them, and dove into it because this is what I do, I am the guy, and then people started taking me seriously because I took myself seriously.”
Even though I had changed the subject, our conversation remained the same. Yet, my understanding of Ken LaBarbera was fundamentally changed. Ken was born on March 9th, 1964, and has lived in Boundary County, Idaho for over thirty-two years. From the information I’ve gathered through our two interviews, he was initially a carpenter. He built his home with his own two hands so that, along with his wife, he could raise three children. When his wife was diagnosed with breast cancer, he learned how to repair Subarus so that he could stay home and be available for her aid. In her passing, he has continued to serve the community standing as a pillar of help. During all of this, Ken has also continued to perform musically at various local establishments. He even made his own CD in 1999 featuring a live recording at Naples City Limits.
Sometimes, as a journalist, you get so caught up in finding the headline that you miss the story. At least, that’s what I found to be true with Ken LaBarbera. While I thought this article would pertain to politics, it’s really about the musical mechanic. After many interactions with Ken, I coined this expression to describe him because he’s both a talented musician and a reliable mechanic. Most importantly, he’s a friend of the community which makes him a friend of Clayfield. Thank you, Ken LaBarbera for appearing on Interesting People to share your story! I’m very grateful for people like you in the world.
Candidly,
JUSTUS A.S. CLAYFIELD
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