Trump survives as shots fired at campaign rally
FORMER United States president Donald Trump was the target of an assassination attempt at a rally in Pennsylvania on Saturday, days before he was to accept the Republican nomination for a third time.
A barrage of gunfire set off panic, and a bloodied Mr Trump, who said he was shot in an ear, was surrounded by Secret Service agents and rushed to his vehice, as he pumped a fist in a show of defiance.
Mr Trump’s campaign said the presumptive Republican nominee was doing “fine” after the shooting, which, he said, pierced the upper part of his right ear.
“I knew immediately that something was wrong, in that I heard a whizzing sound, shots, and immediately felt the bullet ripping through the skin. Much bleeding took place,” he wrote on his social media website, Truth Social.
Early yesterday, the FBI identified the gunman as 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks, of Bethel Park, Pennsylvania. The agency said the investigation remained active and ongoing.
Secret Service agents fatally shot Crooks, who attacked from an elevated position outside the rally venue at a farm show in the town of Butler, Pennsylvania, the agency said. One attendee was killed and two spectators were critically injured, authorities said.
The attack was the most serious attempt to assassinate a president or presidential candidate since Ronald Reagan was shot and wounded in 1981. It drew new attention to concerns about political violence in a deeply polarised US, less than four months before the presidential election, and it could alter the atmosphere and the security situation at the Republican National Convention, which begins today in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Organisers said the convention will proceed as planned.
Mr Trump flew to New Jersey after visiting a local Pennsylvania hospital on Saturdau evening, landing at Newark Liberty International Airport shortly after midnight. Video footage posted by an aide showed the former president leaving his private jet flanked by Secret Service agents and heavily armed members of the agency’s counter-assault team, an unusually visible show of force by his protective detail.
President Joe Biden, who is running against Mr Trump, was briefed on the incident and spoke to Mr Trump several hours after the shooting, the White House said. “There’s no place in America for this type of violence,” the president said, in public remarks. “It’s sick. It’s sick.”
Officials said the gunman in Butler was tackled by members of the US Secret Service counter-assault team. The heavily armed tactical team travels everywhere with the president and major party nominees and is meant to confront any active threats while other agents focus on safeguarding and evacuating the person at the centre of protection.
An Associated Press analysis of more than a dozen videos and photos from the scene of the Trump rally, as well as satellite imagery of the site, shows the gunman was able to get astonishingly close to the stage where the former president was speaking.
A video posted to social media shows a person wearing grey camouflage clothing lying motionless on the roof of a building at AGR International, a manufacturing plant just north of the Butler Farm Show grounds, where the rally was held.