Trump heads to Republican convention after surviving assassination attempt

US President Joe Biden delivers remarks after former president Donald Trump was injured following a shooting at a 13 July election rally in Pennsylvania. (Photo: EPA-EFE / Bonne Cash / Pool)

By Reuters

14 Jul 2024

Trump wrote on his Truth Social site that he had ‘just decided that I cannot allow a “shooter”, or potential assassin, to force change to scheduling, or anything else. Therefore, I will be leaving for Milwaukee, as scheduled.’

Donald Trump said he was headed for Milwaukee on Sunday, where Republicans will formally make him their presidential nominee later this week after he survived an assassination attempt that further inflames an already bitter US political divide.

trump shooting Former US President Donald Trump is rushed off stage by secret service agents after the shooting in Butler, Pennsylvania, on 13 July 2024. Photo: EPA-EFE / David Maxwell)

President Joe Biden, a Democrat, said he had ordered a review of how a 20-year-old man carrying an AR-15-style rifle managed on Saturday to get close enough to shoot from a rooftop at Trump, who as a former president has lifetime protection by the US Secret Service, a unit of the federal Department of Homeland Security

Trump (78) was holding a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania — one of the states expected to be most competitive in the 5 November election — when shots rang out, one of which hit his right ear and streaked his face with blood. His campaign said he was doing well and appeared to have suffered no major injury besides a wound on his upper right ear.

Trump is due to receive his party’s formal nomination at the Republican National Convention (RNC), which kicks off in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on Monday. RNC Chairperson Michael Whatley said on Fox News on Sunday that authorities were working together to safeguard the venue, where officials have spent months making security preparations.

“I was going to delay my trip to Wisconsin, and the Republican National Convention, by two days, but have just decided that I cannot allow a ‘shooter’, or potential assassin, to force change to scheduling, or anything else. Therefore, I will be leaving for Milwaukee, as scheduled,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social site on Sunday.

He said he would be leaving in the afternoon.

The FBI identified 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.

Law enforcement officials told reporters they had yet to identify a motive for the attack. Both Republicans and Democrats will be looking for evidence of Crooks’ political affiliation as they seek to cast the rival party as representing extremism.

trump biden US President Joe Biden delivers remarks after former president Donald Trump was injured following a shooting at a 13 July election rally in Pennsylvania. (Photo: EPA-EFE / Bonne Cash / Pool)

“There is no place in America for this kind of violence,” Biden said at the White House. “I urge everyone, everyone please don’t make assumptions about his motive or affiliations.”

Trump and Biden are locked in a close election rematch, according to most opinion polls.

The shooting whipsawed the discussion around the presidential campaign, which had recently focused on whether Biden (81) should drop out following a disastrous June debate performance.

The Biden campaign had been seeking to reset its message, depicting 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 fatally shot the suspect, the agency said, after he opened fire from the roof of a building about 140m from the stage where 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.

Rally-goer killed ‘while protecting family’

Authorities identified a rally attendee who was shot and killed as Corey Comperatore (50) of Sarver, Pennsylvania, who Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro told reporters was killed when he dived on top of his family to protect them from the hail of bullets.

“Corey was an avid supporter of the former president, and was so excited to be there last night with him in the community,” Shapiro said, adding, “Political disagreements can never, ever be addressed through violence.”

Two other rally attendees were critically wounded, the secret service said.

The secret service 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 fact, recently the US Secret Service added protective resources and capabilities to the former president’s security detail.”

Neighbours stunned

Residents of Bethel Park, Pennsylvania, where the alleged shooter lived, expressed shock at the news on Sunday.

“It’s a little crazy to think that somebody that did an assassination attempt is that close, but it just kind of shows the political dynamic that we’re in right now with the craziness on each side,” said Wes Morgan (42), who added that he rides bikes with his children on the street where the alleged shooter lived. “Bethel Park is a pretty blue-collar type of area. And to think that somebody was that close is a little insane.”

While mass shootings at schools, nightclubs and other public places are a regular feature of US life, the attack was the first shooting of a US president or major party presidential candidate since the 1981 attempted assassination of Republican President Ronald Reagan.

In 2011, Democratic Congresswoman Gabby Giffords was seriously wounded in an attack on a gathering of constituents in Arizona. Republican US Representative Steve Scalise was badly wounded in a politically motivated 2017 attack on a group of Republican representatives practising for a charity baseball game.

Giffords later founded a leading gun control organisation and Scalise has remained a stalwart defender of gun rights.

Political violence

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 6 January 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.

The shots at the Trump rally 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 House of Representatives summoned secret service Director Kimberly Cheatle to testify at a hearing scheduled for 22 July.

Some of Trump’s Republican allies said they believed the attack was politically motivated.

“It’s one side that is going after Donald Trump in a way to demonise him personally,” said Scalise, the No 2 House Republican. “The left seems to have targeted Donald Trump as a person.”

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 a porn 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 Supreme Court decision this month that found him to be partly immune to prosecution.

Trump contends, without evidence, that all four prosecutions have been orchestrated by Biden to try to prevent him from returning to power. DM

Who is Thomas Matthew Crooks, the suspected shooter?

Federal law enforcement authorities scrutinised the background of Thomas Matthew Crooks on Sunday in a search for what drove the 20-year-old gunman to open fire on Trump.

Crooks, identified by the FBI as the suspected gunman in the assassination attempt, was shot and killed by the secret service seconds after he allegedly fired shots toward a stage where Trump was speaking on Saturday in Butler, Pennsylvania.

A resident of Bethel Park, about an hour away from where the shooting occurred, Crooks was a registered Republican who would have been eligible to cast his first presidential vote in the 5 November election. Public records show his father is a registered Republican and his mother a registered Democrat.

Federal Election Commission filings show Crooks appears to have made a small $15 donation several years ago to a political action committee called ActBlue that raises money for left-leaning and Democratic politicians. The donation was earmarked for the Progressive Turnout Project, a national group that rallies Democrats to vote. The groups did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.

Crooks’ parents could not immediately be reached for comment by Reuters. His father, Matthew Crooks (53) told CNN that he was trying to figure out what happened and would wait until he talked to law enforcement before speaking about his son.

‘Super smart’

In the family’s home town, one of Thomas Crooks’ former classmates at Bethel Park High School said the suspect did not show any particular interest in politics. Rather, his interests centred on building computers and playing games, the 20-year-old classmate, who asked not to be identified, said in an interview.

Crooks often kept to himself, the classmate said, and politics never came up. Their conversations revolved around school, the classmate said.

“He was super smart. That’s what really kind of threw me off was, this was, like, a really, really smart kid, like, he excelled,” the classmate said. “Nothing crazy ever came up in any conversation.”

The classmate added that he had not seen or heard from Crooks since the suspect graduated in 2022.

While in school, Crooks received a $500 “star award” from the National Math and Science Initiative, according to the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review newspaper.

As law enforcement dug into his background, the streets around the Crooks home were blocked off by a heavy police presence on Sunday.

Residents who live nearby described feeling shocked and unsettled that an assassination attempt had been linked to a person from the sedate city of 33,000 people. DM

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World

Rally-goer killed ‘while protecting family’

Neighbours stunned

Political violence

Who is Thomas Matthew Crooks, the suspected shooter?

‘Super smart’