Donald Trump was speaking at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, on 13 July, wearing a red “Make America great again” baseball cap and holding forth about illegal border crossings, when a gunman opened fire.
The former president put his hand to the side of his head. There was blood on his right ear. He ducked down behind the podium as more gunshots sounded. People in the crowd began to scream. Secret service agents piled on top of Trump shouting, “Get down. Get down. Get down.”
“I was shot with a bullet that pierced the upper part of my right ear,” Trump later said. “I heard a whizzing sound, and immediately felt the bullet ripping through the skin.”
Secret service officers returned fire, killing the suspected gunman. He appeared to be firing from a rooftop outside the venue – beyond the event’s security perimeter.
“Shooter is down. We’re good to move,” shouted one of the agents with Trump. As a phalanx of dark-suited men attempted to bundle Trump off the stage, shielding his body with theirs, he forced one arm free and raised his fist.
Trump instinctively grasped the politics of the moment, as well as the power of the image of him gesturing defiantly after the assassination attempt. Fist clenched, blood streaking his face, an American flag billowing in the clear blue sky behind him, Trump mouthed the word, “Fight.” Will this be the moment that wins him the election?
The crowd cheered and began chanting, “USA, USA.” Agents with pistols drawn surrounded Trump until he reached his motorcade. The secret service later confirmed that the former president was safe, but one spectator had been killed and two more critically wounded. The FBI later revealed that the suspected gunman was 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks, thought to be a registered Republican.
Joe Biden condemned the attack as “sick” in a televised statement shortly after the shooting. He said there was “no place in America for this kind of violence”. His campaign suspended television adverts attacking the former president.
Meanwhile, the Republican National Committee said its convention would go ahead as planned in Milwaukee this week, where Trump is due to formally accept the party’s nomination and unveil his vice-president.
In the immediate aftermath of the shooting, wild conspiracy theories and disinformation flooded social media claiming that Trump had been targeted by the “deep state” or the far-left Antifa movement. At a minimum, Trump’s supporters will now try to pin at least some of the blame on Democrats for depicting him as an existential threat to American democracy, with the republic’s very future on the ballot this November.
Trump missed being killed by centimetres. In a different country, this incident might jolt the political establishment to action – convincing leading figures in both parties that the nation’s bitterly divided politics and embrace of violence had gone too far. But this is America, where multiple presidents and notable political figures have been shot, and several killed in recent decades. During the 1960s, Martin Luther King Jr, John F Kennedy, and Robert F Kennedy were all assassinated. The most recent president to be shot at was Ronald Reagan in 1981, who underwent surgery after a bullet pierced his lung, but survived.
The risk of political violence in the current presidential election was already being openly discussed. A mob of armed Trump supporters stormed the US Capitol and tried to overthrow the results of the last election in January 2021. A poll last month found 10 per cent of Americans said the use of violence would be “justified to prevent Donald Trump from becoming president”, according to the New York Times. Another 7 per cent said they supported the use of force to restore Trump to the White House. (One third of respondents owned a gun.)
The attack on Donald Trump was shocking, but it wasn’t unprecedented by American standards, and it wasn’t entirely unforeseeable. There may be worse to come.
[See also: Biden’s only choice]
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