- Shooter killed, one protester dead, two injured.
- Incident being investigated as attempted murder.
- Law enforcement officials have not identified any motive.
Donald Trump was shot in the ear during a campaign rally on Saturday, in an attack that left the Republican presidential candidate's face covered in blood and prompted his security forces to surround him, before he emerged and raised his fist in the air, mouthing the words “Fight! Fight! Fight!”
The shooter was killed, one rally-goer was killed and two other spectators were injured, the Secret Service said in a statement. The incident is being investigated as an attempted murder.
Police officials told reporters they had tentatively identified a suspected shooter but were not ready to do so publicly. They also said they had not yet identified a motive.
Trump, 78, had just begun his speech when the shots rang out. He grabbed his right ear with his right hand, then lowered his hand to look at it before kneeling behind the podium before Secret Service agents swooped in and covered him. He emerged a minute later, wearing the red “Make America Great Again” cap, unprepared, and was heard saying “wait, wait” before fist-bumping, then being whisked away by agents to a black SUV.
“I was shot with a bullet that went through the top of my right ear,” Trump later said on his Truth Social platform after the shooting in Butler, Pennsylvania, about 50 miles north of Pittsburgh. “There was a lot of bleeding.”
The shooting occurred less than four months before the November 5 election, when Trump faces an election rematch with Democratic President Joe Biden. Most opinion polls, including those from Reuters/Ipsos shows the two locked in a tight contest.
Leading Republicans and Democrats quickly condemned the violence.
Trump's campaign said he was “doing well.”
Biden said in a statement: “There is no place for this kind of violence in America. We must come together as one nation to condemn it.”
Republican U.S. Rep. Ronny Jackson of Texas said Fox News His nephew had been injured during the demonstration.
The shooting raised immediate questions about security failures by the Secret Service, which provides lifelong protection to former presidents, including Trump.
It was the first shooting of a US president or a major party candidate since the attempted assassination of Republican President Ronald Reagan in 1981.
Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro said Trump left the Butler area under the protection of the U.S. Secret Service with the help of Pennsylvania State Police. Republican U.S. Rep. Daniel Meuser said CNN Trump was heading to Bedminster, New Jersey, where he owns a golf club.
Eyewitness account
Ron Moose, a Trump supporter who was at the rally, said he heard about four shots. “I saw the crowd fall to the ground and then Trump ducked down really quickly, too,” he said. “Then the entire Secret Service jumped in and protected him as quickly as they could. We're talking about within a second everyone was protecting him.”
He BBC He interviewed a man who described himself as an eyewitness and said he saw a man armed with a rifle climbing on a roof near the event. The person, who BBC He did not identify himself, but said he and the people with him began pointing at the man, trying to alert security.
The shooting apparently occurred outside the area guarded by the Secret Service, the agency said. The FBI said it had taken the lead in investigating the attack.
CNNThe FBI, citing sources, identified the suspected shooter as a 20-year-old Pennsylvania man.
Republicans and Democrats denounce violence
Trump is expected to receive his party's formal nomination at the Republican National Convention, which begins in Milwaukee on Monday.
“This horrific act of political violence at a peaceful campaign rally has no place in this country and must be unanimously and strongly condemned,” House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Republican, said on social media.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a Democrat, said he was horrified by what happened and relieved that Trump was safe. “Political violence has no place in our country,” he said.
The Biden campaign was pausing its television ads and halting all other outbound communications, a campaign official said.
Americans fear rising political violence, according to latest data ReutersThe Ipsos poll shows that two in three respondents in May said they were worried there could be violence after the election.
Some of Trump's Republican allies said they believed the attack was politically motivated.
“For weeks, Democratic leaders have been stoking ridiculous hysteria that Donald Trump's reelection would be the end of democracy in America,” said U.S. Rep. Steve Scalise, the No. 2 Republican in the House of Representatives, who survived a politically motivated shooting in 2017. “Clearly, we've seen far-left lunatics act out violent rhetoric in the past. This incendiary rhetoric must end.”
Trump, who served as president from 2017 to 2021, easily outpaced his rivals for the Republican nomination early in the campaign and has largely unified around him the party that had briefly wavered in support of him after his supporters attacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, attempting to overturn his 2020 election loss.
The businessman and former reality TV star began the year facing a number of legal concerns, including four separate criminal prosecutions. He was found guilty in late May of trying to cover up hush money payments to a porn star, but the three other prosecutions he faces, including two over his attempts to overturn his defeat, have been halted by several factors, including a Supreme Court decision earlier this month that found him partially immune from prosecution.
Trump claims without evidence that the four impeachments were orchestrated by Biden to try to prevent him from returning to power.
Republican U.S. Senate candidate David McCormick, who was sitting in the front row at the rally, said he had started to walk up to the stage when Trump said he would bring him up later.
“Within a minute or two, I heard gunshots… It was clear they were gunshots,” he said. Reuters in an interview. “It seemed like an attempted murder… It was terrifying.”
