Donald Trump survived a weekend assassination attempt days before he is due to accept the formal Republican presidential nomination, in an attack that will further inflame the US political divide and has raised questions about security lapses.
On Saturday, Mr Trump (78), had just begun a campaign speech in Butler, Pennsylvania, about 50km north of Pittsburgh, when shots rang out, hitting the former president’s right ear and streaking his face with blood.
Mr Trump mouthed the words “Fight! Fight! Fight!” to supporters, pumping his fist, as Secret Service agents rushed him away. His campaign said he was doing well and appeared to have suffered no serious injury besides a wound on his upper right ear.
The FBI identified 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks of Bethel Park, Pennsylvania, as the suspect in what it called an attempted assassination. He was a registered Republican, according to state voter records and had made a $15 donation to a Democratic political action committee at the age of 17.
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Law enforcement officials told reporters they had not yet identified a motive for the attack. Both Republicans and Democrats will be looking for evidence of Crooks’s political affiliation as they seek to cast the rival party as representing extremism.
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The shooting occurred less than four months before the November 5th election, when Mr Trump faces a rematch with president Joe Biden. Most opinion polls show the two locked in a close contest.
The shooting altered the discussion around the presidential campaign, which had recently focused on whether Mr Biden (81), should drop out following a disastrous June debate performance.
The Biden campaign had been seeking to reset its message, depicting Mr Trump as a danger to democracy for his continued false claims about election fraud but said on Saturday it was suspending its political advertising for now.
Secret Service agents shot dead the suspect, the agency said, after he opened fire from the roof of a building about 140m from the stage where Mr Trump was speaking. An AR-15-style semi-automatic rifle used in the shooting was recovered near his body, according to sources.
The firearm was legally purchased by the suspect’s father, ABC and the Wall Street Journal reported, citing sources. Bomb-making materials were found in the suspect’s car, the Associated Press reported, citing sources.
Corey Comperatore, a former fire chief of the Buffalo Township Volunteer fire company in Pennsylvania who attended the rally, was killed. Two other spectators were critically wounded.
“In this moment, it is more important than ever that we stand United, and show our True Character as Americans, remaining Strong and Determined, and not allowing Evil to Win,” Mr Trump said on his Truth Social service on Sunday.
The Secret Service in a statement denied accusations by some Trump supporters that it had rejected campaign requests for additional security.
“The assertion that a member of the former president’s security team requested additional security resources that the US Secret Service or the Department of Homeland Security rebuffed is absolutely false,” said Secret Service spokesperson Anthony Guglielmi in a statement. “In fact, recently the US Secret Service added protective resources and capabilities to the former president’s security detail.”
While mass shootings at schools, nightclubs and other public places are a regular feature of American life, the attack was the first shooting of a US president or main party candidate since the 1981 attempted assassination of Republican president Ronald Reagan.
In 2011, Democratic then-congresswoman Gabby Giffords was seriously wounded in an attack on a gathering of constituents in Arizona. Republican US representative Steve Scalise was also badly wounded in a politically motivated 2017 attack on a group of Republican representatives practising for a charity baseball game.
Ms Giffords later founded a leading gun control organisation. Mr Scalise has remained a stalwart defender of gun rights.
Americans fear rising political violence, recent Reuters/Ipsos polling shows, with two out of three respondents to a May survey saying they worried violence could follow the election.
Trump supporters stormed the US Capitol on January 6th, 2021, in an attempt to overturn his election defeat, fuelled by his false claims that his loss was the result of widespread fraud. About 140 police officers were injured in the violence, four riot participants died that day, one police officer who responded died the following day and four responding officers later died by suicide.
Mr Trump is due to receive his party’s formal nomination at the Republican National Convention, which kicks off in Milwaukee, Wisconsin on Monday.
The shots appeared to come from outside the area secured by the Secret Service, the agency said. Hours after the attack, the oversight committee in the Republican-led US House of Representatives summoned Secret Service director Kimberly Cheatle to testify at a hearing scheduled for July 22nd.
Leading Republicans and Democrats quickly condemned the violence, as did foreign leaders. “There’s no place for this kind of violence in America. We must unite as one nation to condemn it,” Mr Biden said in a statement.
Some of Mr Trump’s Republican allies said they believed the attack was politically motivated. “For weeks Democrat leaders have been fuelling ludicrous hysteria that Donald Trump winning re-election would be the end of democracy in America,” said Mr Scalise, the No 2 House Republican.
“Clearly we’ve seen far-left lunatics act on violent rhetoric in the past. This incendiary rhetoric must stop.”
Mr Trump began the year facing multiple legal worries, including four separate criminal prosecutions. He was found guilty in late May of trying to cover up hush money payments to an adult film star. But the other three prosecutions he faces – including two for his attempts to overturn his defeat – have been ground to a halt by various factors, including a US supreme court decision early this month that found him to be partly immune to prosecution.
Mr Trump contends, without evidence, that all four prosecutions have been orchestrated by Mr Biden to try to prevent him from returning to power.
– Reuters