Donald Trump survived an assassination attempt during a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, on Saturday night. Shortly after Trump began speaking, a series of gunshots rang out and Trump was struck on his upper right ear. He pumped his fist in the air following the attack as Secret Service agents worked to rush him from the stage. The gunman, 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks, was quickly shot dead by Secret Service snipers, but not before one audience member was killed and two others badly injured. Below, in reverse chronological order, is our running account of the shooting and the initial aftermath and investigations.
It’s part of a “move forward,” he said in a Truth Social post:
More details have emerged about the two men wounded in the assassination attempt on Trump. The New York Times reports that James Copenhaver, a retired 74-year-old from Moon Township, PA, is one of the injured men. Per the Times, he is a married father and a registered Democrat.The other victim is David Dutch, a 57-year-old resident of New Kensington, PA. Dutch works as an employee of Siemens and previously served as a member of the Marine Corps. The Times spoke to Dutch’s sister Jennifer Veri-Grazier:
Mr. Dutch has been a longtime Trump supporter, along with other members of his family, Ms. Veri-Grazier said. She saw a picture of her brother before he headed out on Saturday, wearing a flag dress shirt and sunglasses. He seemed “ecstatic,” she said. Now, he is hospitalized with damage to his liver and broken ribs, and awaiting another surgery, she said.“He was exercising his rights and went to the rally, and he didn’t deserve any of this,” Ms. Veri-Grazier said.
In her first public comments since the shooting, Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle said on Monday that the agency will fully cooperate with the independent review ordered by President Biden, and work with Congress on “any oversight action.”
Cheatle said in a statement that the RNC security plan has been beefed up following the shooting. “I am confident in the security plan our Secret Service RNC coordinator and our partners have put in place, which we have reviewed and strengthened in the wake of Saturday’s shooting,” Cheatle wrote in a statement.
In a Sunday night interview with the Michael Goodwin of the New York Post and Byron York of the Washington Examiner, Trump said Saturday night’s shooting was “a very surreal experience, and you never know what you’re going to do until a thing like that happens.” Per the Post:
“The doctor at the hospital said he never saw anything like this, he called it a miracle,” said Trump, who was sporting a large, loose white bandage that covered his right ear. His staff insisted that no photos be taken.
“I’m not supposed to be here, I’m supposed to be dead,” Trump said. “I’m supposed to be dead.”
… “By luck or by God, many people are saying it’s by God I’m still here,” he said.
Trump said Secret Service agents came at him like “linebackers” after the shooting, and showed the reporters a deep bruise on his arm from where an agent grabbed him. “The agents hit me so hard that my shoes fell off, and my shoes are tight,” he said, smiling.
He also confirmed reports that the Republican National Convention will attempt to portray him as a “unifier” following the assassination attempt. The Washington Examiner reports:
Trump explained that before Saturday night, he had finished the speech he planned to give later this week at the Republican convention. “I basically had a speech that was an unbelievable rip-roarer,” he said. “It was brutal — really good, really tough. [Last night] I threw it out. I think it would be very bad if I got up and started going wild about how horrible everybody is, and how corrupt and crooked, even if it’s true. Had this not happened, we had a speech that was pretty well set that was extremely tough. Now, we have a speech that is more unifying.”
Trump did not mean that a new speech has been fully written, but parts of it have already been drafted, starting in the hours after the assassination attempt. The idea is to reframe the intense conflicts Trump has engaged in during his years in national politics. “I’ve been fighting a group of people that I considered very bad people for a long time, and they’ve been fighting me, and we’ve put up a very good fight,” Trump said. “We had a very tough speech, and I threw it out last night, I said I can’t say these things after what I’ve been through.”
And the candidate offered a very Trumpian take the photo of him raising his fist after being shot. He said it is not just an iconic photo but perhaps the most iconic photo ever:
“A lot of people say it’s the most iconic photo they’ve ever seen,” Trump said. “They’re right and I didn’t die. Usually you have to die to have an iconic picture.”
The suspected gunman has been identified as 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks, of Bethel Park, Pennsylvania, which is about 40 miles from where the rally was held. He had no criminal record, and his motive for the assassination attempt remains unclear.
The FBI says Crooks appears to have acted alone, but it is still working to determine whether he had any co-conspirators. Thus far, the investigation has not uncovered evidence of his ideology. He was a registered Republican, and also appears to have made a small donation to liberal turnout organization in 2021.
Crooks was an award-winning math student at Bethel Park High School, where he graduated in 2022. He recently graduated from a local community college with an associates degree in engineering science, and was working as a dietary aide at a nursing home, the Bethel Park Skilled Nursing and Rehabilitation Center. It has told reporters his background check came back clean.
The gunman fired at Trump using an AR-style rifle, which was purchased by his father. Crooks was also a customer of a local shooting range. Two suspected explosive devices were found in his car and at his home, according to the FBI.
Crooks’s phone is being analyzed by a FBI lab. His social media presence is still under investigation. Discord says he apparently had an account on the platform, but the company said in a statement that “It was rarely utilized, has not been used in months, and we have found no evidence that it was used to plan this incident, promote violence or discuss his political views.”
President Biden gave a six minute address from the Oval Office on Sunday night in which he condemned the assassination attempt on Donald Trump and called for lowing the temperature of political rhetoric in the country.
“We cannot, we must not, go down this road in America,” Biden said in the national address. “There is no place in America for this kind of violence, for any violence ever. Period. No exceptions. We can’t allow this violence to be normalized.”
“Politics must never be a literal battlefield, God forbid a killing field,” Biden implored.
“We debate and disagree, we compare and contrast,” he said, “but in America we resolve our differences at the ballot box.”
The Washington Post’s Josh Dawsey reports:
A person who spoke to Trump in the last 12 hours said he was almost “spiritual” about the situation — “and that’s totally not normal for him.”
“He thinks he was handed a gift from God. He can’t believe it,” the person said.
The person said that Trump is telling his team that they need to do “unity” at the convention. The convention now becomes more about his courage and his resilience, the person said. “They want speakers to dial it down, not dial it up.”
Writing for the Daily Mail, former FBI agent Frank Figliuzzi tries to make sense of what went wrong with the security at the Trump rally:
We know that a Secret Service sniper must have had a clear view of the rooftop because the gunman Thomas Matthew Crooks was shot dead within a few seconds of opening fire on Trump. But why did that sniper ignore Crooks till then? One plausible explanation is that the Secret Service (which is entirely separate from the FBI) assumed the assassin was a police sniper, part of their security team.
That implies serious failures in communication. When it comes to planning for events such as this, I would expect police and Secret Service teams to not only meet and introduce themselves but map out their specific roles in detail. They ought to have been able to recognise each other by sight. They should also have double-checked at every stage throughout the rally, ensuring they knew who everybody was and what they were doing. That’s just basic.
He also disagreed with how the Secret Service handled protecting Trump on stage after the shooting started:
The inquiry must also focus on the aftermath of the shooting. Former president Trump was bundled to the ground, behind reinforced barriers – those hoardings, painted with slogans, are made of galvanised steel. As his Secret Service team began to lead him away to his vehicle, they shielded him with their bodies. But it appears from news video that the message ‘shooter is down’ was sent and at that point Trump was able to turn to the crowd, punch the air and shout his defiance. … In that moment, the Secret Service had no way of knowing if the gunman was acting alone. Other shooters might have been present. …
Audio also appears to catch Trump asking for his shoes as he is being bundled towards his car – and his bodyguards complying with this request. That’s against all protocol. The protection squad has one job: to protect their man. They are his human shield. If necessary, they can hog-tie him and carry him but they should never risk his life by looking for his shoes.
The New York Times reports that according to former White House physician and Texas Representative Ronny Jackson, Trump told Jackson he owes his life to an anti-immigration chart he was referencing on a large screen at the time an assassin tried to shoot him:
“That chart that I was going over saved my life,” Mr. Trump, the Republicans’ presumptive presidential nominee, told the doctor, Representative Ronny Jackson of Texas, by phone a few hours after an assassination attempt.
Mr. Trump was referring to a chart featuring immigration statistics on a screen to his right at his rally in a field in Butler County, Pa. He had turned to point to it and describe what was on the screen when shots rang out.
“He goes, ‘The border patrol saved my life,’” Dr. Jackson recounted in an interview on Sunday. “‘I was going over that border patrol chart.’ He said, ‘If I hadn’t pointed at that chart and turned my head to look at it, that bullet would have hit me right in the head.’”
On Sunday afternoon, the Pennsylvania State Police confirmed the names of the three people injured in the Trump rally shooting. Corey Comperatore, 50, of Sarver, Pennsylvania, was killed. The two injured men, who both remain hospitalized in stable condition, are James Copenhaver, 74, of Moon Township; and David Dutch, 57, of New Kensington.
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports that Comperatore was a father of two and former fire chief for Buffalo Township, Pennsylvania. His brother says he died shielding his family from harm:
In separate social media posts, Corey Comperatore’s family mourned his loss.
“The PA Trump Rally claimed the life of my brother, Corey Comperatore,” posted Dawn Comperatore Schafer on Facebook. “The hatred for one man took the life of the one man we loved the most.”
“He was a hero that shielded his daughters. His wife and girls just lived through the unthinkable and unimaginable. My baby brother just turned 50 and had so much life left to experience. Hatred has no limits and love has no bounds. Pray for my sister-in-law, nieces, my mother, sister, me and his nieces and nephews as this feels like a terrible nightmare but we know it is our painful reality.” …
Mr. Comperatore’s wife and daughter, in statements on Facebook, described a chaotic scene in which he tried to protect his family.
His daughter, Allyson Comperatore, wrote that her father died “a real-life superhero,” who quickly threw her and her mother to the ground when gunfire started at the rally. “He shielded my body from the bullet that came at us. He loved his family. He truly loved us enough to take a real bullet for us,” she wrote.
Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro on Sunday celebrated Comperatore’s heroism, as well:
A GoFundMe has been set up to support Comperatore’s family.
The president addressed Trump’s assassination attempt in remarks from the White House. He also ordered a full review of the RNC security plan, and will deliver a prime-time Oval Office address — his third as president — on Sunday night at 8 p.m.
An explanation may still emerge, but it hasn’t yet:
According to local sheriff who spoke with the Washington Post, a Butler Township cop came agonizingly close to stopping the attack:
[Butler County Sheriff Michael T. Slupe, said in an interview that] an officer from Butler Township hoisted himself just high enough to peer onto the roof of the building adjacent to the rally when the gunman turned around and aimed at him. Because the officer was gripping the roof’s edge, Slupe said, he didn’t have a gun in his hand and so dropped back down to the ground. “He lets go because he doesn’t want to get killed,” Slupe said.
That’s when the gunman began firing onto the fair grounds, the county sheriff said.
Slupe said the municipal officer went to examine the roof based on a law enforcement request to try to identify a suspicious individual seen near the rally. He said he did not know if that request came from a federal, state or local agency.
“So police responded to try to find the guy, searched the area, but couldn’t find him, so said, ‘Well, let’s try the roof.’”
Per Politico Playbook, some MAGA world members are having second thoughts about blaming Biden and the left for what happened:
[This morning,] top Republicans are sending a clear message to cool it. Trump campaign leaders SUSIE WILES and CHRIS LaCIVITA wrote in an internal campaign memo that they “will not tolerate dangerous rhetoric on social media.”
LaCivita himself deleted a posting where he said, “they tried to keep him off the ballot, they tried to put him in jail and now you see this,” as WaPo’s Michael Scherer notes. Same for Rep. MIKE KELLY (R-Pa.) — a Butler native who was at the rally — who scrubbed, “We will not tolerate this attack from the left,” from an early post.
But not everyone is rising to the moment. DONALD TRUMP JR. wrote on X this morning that “Dems and their friends in the media knew exactly what they were doing with the ‘literally Hitler’ bullshit!” He added that if “Democrats got their way, my dad would be dead right now. Don’t let them memory hole it.”
The rifle found on the shooter was apparently used to help ID him:
Multiple reports, including from the Associated Press, indicate that he had bomb-making materials, as well:
Law enforcement officials tell The Associated Press bomb-making materials were found inside the vehicle of the man suspected in the Trump rally shooting. There were also bomb-making materials found at his home.
He posted a new message filled with Christian terminology on Truth Social on Sunday morning:
‘Assassination attempts of authoritarian figures, successful or unsuccessful, generally do not prevent authoritarianism. They enable it.’
Jonathan Chait responds to the Trump assassination attempt:
Even though American history has seen a long litany of murders and attempted murders — Gerald Ford survived two attempts on his life within a few weeks of each other — this one feels scarier. That is because our social peace has grown more precarious. An assassination attempt on Donald Trump is a far more dangerous thing than an attempt to kill Mitt Romney would have been a dozen years ago, or Al Gore a dozen years before that.
And while the responsibility for maintaining social peace and the norm of non-violence is shared equally across the political spectrum, the blame for its decay is not.
Trump stokes and feeds upon a lust for violence. He possesses a demagogue’s skill for manipulating his supporters’ most elemental emotions. As a private citizen he exploited a white woman’s rape in Central Park to demand the execution of innocent young men of color. He continues to call for various critics to be executed for their disloyalty. When a maniac attempted to kill Nancy Pelosi and smashed the skull of her husband, he cheered it on. He continues to glorify and promise to free the criminals who assaulted police in the attack on the Capitol in an attempt to seize an unelected second term.
It is not Trump’s fault that someone tried to kill him. It is absolutely his fault that it has immediately set off a widespread fear of reprisals and chaos.
Read the rest here.
Cory Mills, a Republican congressman and U.S. Army veteran, explained on CNN how close the would-be assassin was. The military-style rifle fired from a rooftop about 200 yards from Trump’s position is “nothing for a shot,” Mills said, adding that at such a range bullets would strike a target within a 2-inch circle — much smaller than the profile of Trump’s head or his torso.
A veteran sniper, Mills was asked if the assassin was a good shot. “He wasn’t, and that’s the thing that saved the president.”
The security protocol for attendees was reportedly the same as it has been for other Trump rallies, including a ban on weapons and requiring attendees to submit to security checks and to walk through metal detectors before entering the rally. But the shooter appears to have set up on the roof of a building outside that secure area for attendees. Nonetheless, it’s not clear how he was able to do that while escaping the notice of Secret Service personnel and others.
NBC News talked to some security experts about what might have gone wrong:
Security experts said it was difficult, and perhaps impossible, to eliminate every threat, particularly with long-range weapons and outdoor events.
But some said routine precautions should have prevented the shooter from getting onto the nearby roof.
Steve Nottingham, a former SWAT commander in Long Beach, California, called Saturday’s shooting “a fundamental security failure.” He has worked security details for visiting world leaders, including presidents, and now trains officers on how to respond to critical incidents. He pointed at likely breakdowns in the pre-event scouting and real-time monitoring of places a gunman could shoot from. “They were behind the curve, because they should have had those places covered ahead of time,” Nottingham said.
Jim Cavanaugh, a retired special agent in charge with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives who has been on Secret Service details, said he was surprised that the shooter was able to occupy an elevated position within rifle range of the rally site. “Whenever I’ve been with them, every single high ground is taken by them or the local SWAT police,” Cavanaugh said. “There’s nobody allowed walking on rooftops. They command the high ground.” He said a high-powered rifle like an AR-15 can hit targets 200 yards away. Trump was about 148 yards from the rooftop where the shooter was found dead, NBC News found, based on an analysis of Google Earth images.
In a late press conference overnight Saturday, special agent Kevin Rojek said that the FBI had “tentatively identified” the suspected shooter, but that “at this time we are not prepared to identify who the shooter is — we are close to an identification.”
“We do not currently have an identified motive,” he said.
He also said that the “Secret Service wasn’t available for the press conference at this time” — and acknowledged that “it is surprising” the shooter was able to fire several rounds, and said, as to how it was possible for him to get that close to Trump, “the Secret Service needs to answer that question.”
At the same press conference, State Police Lt. Col. George Bivens said that the Secret Service was responsible for surveying the venue.
The New York Times visual investigations team reports:
The audio analysis of the gunshots conducted by The Times and Robert C. Maher, a gunfire acoustics expert at Montana State University in Bozeman, indicates that two bursts of shots were fired. Both the first round of three and the second of five shots were fired approximately 330 to 390 feet from the C-SPAN microphone Mr. Trump was speaking into. That location was consistent with the location of the suspect’s body. There was no significant difference between the sound of the eight shots, which suggests that they likely came from the same firearm, Mr. Maher said.
According to Semafor’s Shelby Talcott:
A close Trump confidant first mentioned to me in the summer of 2022 their fear that the former president would face an attempt on his life. The person suggested the attack was inevitable: it was not a matter of “if,” but “when.”
Since then, I’ve heard the concern spoken more times than I can count in conversations covering the Trump campaign. The idea among many close to Trump is this: That the opposing side’s hatred of him is so strong that it would spur on an attempt against his life. Some even speculated darkly, and without evidence, that his political opponents would make the attempt. …
I’ve spoken to my editors periodically over the last two years over how to responsibly report on the fears in Trump’s circle. At the time it was a quiet sense of danger, without any clear changes to the security posture around the former president. We also felt that raising the prospect could, in some sense, increase the risk. In fact one Trump ally told me that the campaign was irritated when they speculated in public about the possibility.
Mayor Bob Dandoy offered his perspective on the logistics in a Facebook post
The rally for President Trump was held at the Butler farm showgrounds which is actually outside of the city. We did have some law-enforcement there to help with security. All of our people are OK and have heard nothing otherwise about any of the law enforcement officers.
Butler is a small town and not surprisingly, as mayor, I was not in the loop with major security concerns for President Trump. I’m not on the Secret Service speed-dial. Much of what I’ve learned, I’ve learned as you have; there’s not a lot I can tell you it’s more than what you’re getting through the media.
Certainly, we’re dismayed and shocked. No matter what our political stance may be, these were people who were engaged in their right to assemble, exercising their right to free speech. We must remember that any attack on these rights is an attack on all of our rights. This type of violence is unacceptable.
Per NBC News, the shooter was about 148 yards from Trump. Video footage has also shown Secret Service snipers set up on one of the rooftops behind the stage.
The patients, who were both injured at the Trump rally in Butler, were flown in by Lifeflight and are being treated in the hospital’s trauma center.
Both Speaker Mike Johnson and House Majority Leader Steve Scalise have announced they will launching an investigation:
Per a White House official, tonight the president spoke with Trump, Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, and Butler Mayor Bob Dandoy. Biden is returning to the White House tonight, and will be briefed again on the investigation in the morning.
The agency says in a statement that it has now “assumed the role of the lead federal law enforcement agency” in the investigation into the shooting. It has also asked for anyone with information that may assist with the investigation to call 1-800-CALL-FBI.
Rico Elmore, a city councilman from Rochester, Pennsylvania, was in the the VIP section when the shooting started. It took “a split second to recognize the gunshots … so I heard the first shot go out and I thought that’s someone messing around or something. And then, the second one, and in a split second, thought This is real. And my first instinct is everyone around me needs to get down. I yelled everyone to get down and at the people in the stands to get down.”
Elmore saw another rally attendee had been shot and immediately rendered aid. “I’m not a medic but I was in military and took my jacket off and took my tie off and ran and jumped over the barrier and tried to render aid.”
“I held the back of his head — I don’t know it was the back of his head where he was hit, it may have been the front and went out the back — but I held and tried to stop the bleeding until the medics came and and I found out he didn’t make it,” Elmore said.
Things got ugly fast:
Chris LaCivita, the Trump campaign’s co-manager, added to the pile-on against Joe Biden and the Democrats coming from the right, implicitly blaming them for the shooting:
The attorney general said in a statement that “the Justice Department will bring every available resource to bear to this investigation”:
I have been briefed on the shooting at former President Trump’s rally, and have briefed the President. The FBI, ATF, U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Pennsylvania, and the Department’s National Security Division are currently working with the Secret Service as well as state and local law enforcement partners on the ground in Butler, Pennsylvania.
Worth noting:
As is so often the case with high-profile shootings in America, the Associated Press reports that an AR-style rifle was recovered by authorities.
The New York Times takes note of the near-instant deluge of baseless speculation online:
Without providing proof, the social media posts blamed shadowy figures on the left for targeting Mr. Trump, and built on ideas circulated by Mr. Trump that the “deep state,” or a cabal within the government, was seeking to stop him from returning to office. The unverified claims surfaced on platforms including Gab, Truth Social and Parler, which are favored by the far-right, as well as on X, Telegram, Facebook and Instagram. …
Some social media accounts said that a gunman with ties to the “deep state” had opened fire and shot Mr. Trump. Without citing evidence, the accounts also blamed government agencies such as the F.B.I. and the Centers for Disease Control for targeting Mr. Trump. …
Others claimed on social media that any shooter was a member of the far-left Antifa group, or was acting on behalf of transgender individuals. None of the posts provided evidence for their theories.
Though the shooter’s identity and motives are still unknown, many Trump supporters, including at least two Republican congressmen, said Biden, the Democratic Party, and the mainstream media are to blame.
Some, like Representative Ronny Jackson, said the left tacitly encouraged violence against Trump by vilifying him throughout his political career:
Trump’s potential VP picks are making similar statements:
But Representative Mike Collins actually accused Biden of ordering an assassination attempt against Trump. He cited a report that Biden used the phrase “It’s time to put Trump in the bullseye” during a call to donors on July 8.
Though, in retrospect, this is an unfortunate choice of words by Biden, it’s clear he was speaking metaphorically, not urging donors to literally shoot his opponent. Trump is known for repeatedly using violent rhetoric and even shrugging off the January 6 mob’s “hang Mike Pence” chant as “common sense.”
Donald Trump’s eldest daughter posted a message to Instagram and Twitter thanking people for their support after her father’s shooting. She concluded, “I love you Dad, today and always.”
Ivanka served in her father’s administration for four years but announced on the night Trump launched his reelection campaign that she does not plan on being involved in politics going forward. Since then, she has said little publicly about politics, aside from sporadically expressing her love for her father on Instagram.
Doug Mills, a photographer for the New York Times, actually captured the bullets flying by Trump:
In a statement released just before 9 p.m., the Secret Service said that “a suspected shooter fired multiple shots towards the stage from an elevated position outside of the rally venue.” A video shared on social media soon after the shooting purports to show the gunman lying dead on a nearby rooftop:
The USSS also said that one spectator was killed and two critically injured during the attack.
James Hulings, the chair of the Butler County Republican Party, said he was about 40 feet from Trump, seven rows from the front of the stage, when he heard gunfire from his left. “I heard first three shots, bap bap bap, and the Secret Service guys all rushed onstage and took Donald Trump down and covered him up and then two more shots and maybe some more shots,” he said.
Hulings remained watching the bleachers to his left where someone was shot. “They told us to get down, but I didn’t get down, and, by the time everyone got down, there wasn’t any place on the ground, so I just stood there and stood on a chair and wanted to see what was going on.” He said he “stood there for a minute” but eventually the police were getting upset so he ducked down.
The newly elected county chair said that he was “absolutely sick” that such a horrific event had happened in his exurban community. “It’s very conservative,” he said. Hulings noted that in the town where he lives, “we have more churches than bars two to one.”
“We’re a conservative Christian people, we’re all going to be praying for Donald Trump,” he said.
In his first statement following the attempt on his life, Trump confirmed he was shot by a bullet in the ear: “knew immediately that something was wrong in that I heard a whizzing sound, shots, and immediately felt the bullet ripping through the skin,” he said in part.
President Biden spoke to reporters in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, at 8:15 p.m. — about two hours after the shooting.
“I tried to get a hold of Donald, he’s with his doctors. Apparently he’s doing well. I plan on talking to him shortly, I hope, when I get back to the telephone,” Biden said, adding that “everybody must condemn” political violence. He said he plans on issuing further updates later.
Trump spoke for about six minutes before shots rang out, delivering his standard rally speech. You can see the full video on C-SPAN.
He started by commenting on the “big crowd” and lamenting that the “fake news” refused to turn the cameras around and show it because “nobody would believe it.” (Trump has been saying this for years, though the media regularly shows the size of his rally crowds.) Then Trump mocked Joe Biden, claiming only “93 people” showed up to one of his recent events.
Trump promised to deport millions of undocumented immigrants, who he falsely claims are largely from mental institutions and prisons. “We’ve got to bring our country back to health, because our country is going to hell, if you haven’t noticed,” he said. “Millions and millions of people are pouring in from prisons and from mental institutions. We’re going to stop it. We’re going to bring them back. We’re going to deport.”
Trump vowed to “defeat Crooked Joe Biden and Laffin’ Kamala Harris,” using his new nickname for the vice-president. And he claimed that he didn’t actually lose the last election.
“We did fantastically in 2016,” he said. “We did much better in 2020 and it was rigged, it was a rigged deal.”
Next Trump shouted out Republican Senate nominee David McCormick, who was in the crowd. He said his Democratic opponent, Senator Bob Casey, is “a real stiff” who “votes for Biden or whoever happens to be furthest left.”
Trump accused Biden of not understanding the meaning of “Make America Great Again,” joking that he’d be “at some beautiful place with a gorgeous ocean” if Biden “was doing the job.”
Finally, Trump pivoted back to claiming that “dangerous people,” “criminals,” and “drug dealers” are flooding into the country and had his team bring up a chart on illegal border crossings during his administration (which was not visible on the C-SPAN feed). Trump was discussing the chart when the first shots rang out. “And you know, that’s a little bit old, that chart,” he said. “That chart’s a couple of months old. If want to really see something that’s sad, take a look at what happened …”
Then Trump grabbed his ear and crouched down as he was hit.
Richard Goldinger, the Butler County district attorney, said that one attendee is dead and a second is in serious condition. Goldinger, who was not at the Butler Farm Show where Trump was speaking before a large crowd, said people described a scene of “chaos” to him. The longtime prosecutor said the attempt on Trump’s life was “honestly somewhat embarrassing for my community.
“I am just happy that the president is going be okay and certainly offer my condolences to the individual who perished and pray that the individual with injuries will survive,” he said.
The president said in a statement that he has been briefed on the shooting, which he strongly condemned:
I’m grateful to hear that he’s safe and doing well. I’m praying for him and his family and for all those who were at the rally, as we await further information.
Jill and I are grateful to the Secret Service for getting him to safety. There’s no place for this kind of violence in America. We must unite as one nation to condemn it.
A Biden campaign official says the campaign “is pausing all outbound communications and working to pull down our television ads as quickly as possible.”
New York City mayor Eric Adams says, “Out of an abundance of caution, the NYPD will be increasing its presence across the city, including at Trump Tower.”
An eyewitness who spoke with the BBC claimed that he saw the sniper who shot at Trump set up outside the perimeter of the rally. The man, who had a beer in his hand, described a shooter in tan clothing climb onto a white roof outside the rally and “bear crawl” toward his position. “We could clearly see him with a rifle,” the witness said. He then began calling to nearby police and pointing out the man to Secret Service. “They didn’t know what was going on,” he said. A few minutes into Trump’s speech, the man claimed that he heard five shots from the rifle. After the gunfire ended, he claimed, “The Secret Service blew his head off.” Agents then approached the shooter’s position on the roof to confirm he was dead.
The former president put out the following statement:
At approximately 6:11 p.m., a volley of at least three gunshots rang out as Trump delivered his campaign speech. He winced between the first and second shot, apparently hit, and reached his hand up to the right side of his face, then immediately ducked. Secret Service agents leaped onto the stage and threw their bodies over him as more bullets snapped through the air. After the gunfire ended, the agents hoisted Trump to his feet. “Let me get my shoes, let me get my shoes,” he told them, as they formed a human shield around him with their bodies. When he stood up, the top of his right ear was covered in dark-red blood, which trailed off in a line on the side of his face stopping just below his nose. As he moved offstage, Trump punched a fist into the air and pumped it, mouthing “Fight, fight, fight” to cheers from the crowd, which responded with “USA! USA! USA!”
One man who spoke to CBS News identified himself as an emergency-department physician and described someone who appeared to have been shot in the head. “They guy had spun around, was jammed between the benches. He had a headshot here [points to temple]. There was lots of blood and brain matter. The man said that he did CPR and chest compressions on the victim.
Butler County district attorney Richard Goldinger said in a statement that one audience member was killed at the rally and that the shooter is dead, per the Washington Post.
As we await more information, three previous incidents of presidential candidates being shot and wounded (or worse) come to mind. In October 1912, former president and Progressive Party candidate Theodore Roosevelt was shot during a speech in Milwaukee; legendarily, a copy of his speech kept the bullet from killing him, but it remained lodged in his body, and created a temporary wave of sympathy for the old Rough Rider. In June 1968, Senator Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated in Los Angeles the night he won a key presidential primary. And in May 1972, insurgent Democratic presidential candidate George Wallace was shot and severely wounded in a Maryland shopping center during a campaign appearance. Wallace survived, although he suffered severe injuries that consigned him to a wheelchair the rest of his life.
Saturday’s rally at the Butler Farm Show complex in Butler, Pennsylvania, was Trump’s last scheduled public appearance before the start of the Republican National Convention on Monday. Thousands of his supporters turned out, according to the Pittsburgh Tribune, despite the 90-degree heat. Medics were called to tend to multiple people as rallygoers struggled with the lack of shade and water. Trump was set to take the stage at 5 p.m., but he was about an hour late.
Trump spokesperson Steven Cheung has released a statement announcing that Trump is “fine and is being checked out at a local medical facility.” He also thanked “law enforcement and first responders for their quick action during this heinous act.”
The Secret Service has released a statement confirming that Trump is safe:
President Biden first heard the news of the Trump shooting when walking out of church in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, on vacation. When asked if he heard what happened, according to the Washington Post, he said “no” and returned to his residence.
Here is footage of Trump onstage as the shots rang out, in the video you can see Trump appear to reach up and and touch his ear.
Trump was rushed offstage by Secret Service agents and had blood on his right ear. He pumped his fist in the air as they carried him off.
Saurabh Sharma, the President of American Moment, a right-wing nonprofit, told New York that he was standing at the rail in the front of the crowd when he heard what he described as “gunshot-like sounds,” though he noted that sounded “a little light” coming from stage right.
He said former President Trump went down and was almost instantaneously covered by the Secret Service. Sharma added that on the bleachers that were stage right, there seemed to be an injury. People had bloodstains on their clothing, and a body was carried out. Sharma said he did not see any bloodstains around the podium where Trump was speaking.
The crowd was told to duck afterward, though some people were peeking up despite being told to keep their heads down.
The people in the crowd remained mostly calm from what Sharma saw and filtered out slowly, taking their time. He did note that there “were definitely some women crying, saying, ‘They are trying to kill him.’”
More on the shooting
- How Security Went So Wrong at Trump’s Rally
- RNC Day 1: A VP, Trump’s Big Bandage, and a Lot of Biden Bashing
- God’s Strongman
