An attack on Donald Trump shocks the USA. The former president is attacked at a campaign event. Chaos breaks out afterwards. The most important things at a glance.
The United States is in shock. Shots were fired at a campaign rally of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump in the state of Pennsylvania on Saturday evening. Trump was escorted off the stage with a bloody face. According to the Secret Service, the suspected shooter and a spectator were killed in the incident, and two other spectators were seriously injured.
Trump himself spoke out after the attack and said that a shot had injured his ear. Later that evening, the FBI classified the attack as an “attempted murder.” Law enforcement authorities are said to be investigating at full speed.
Answers to the most important questions.
What exactly happened at the campaign event?
Donald Trump’s campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania starts as usual. The audience cheers him on. He begins his speech, cursing Joe Biden – in his opinion the “worst president of all time”. Suddenly, gunshots are heard. Trump puts his hand to his ear and ducks behind his lectern. The Secret Service team rushes over and pulls him to the ground. Panic breaks out in the audience for a moment. People scream and throw themselves on the ground.
The Secret Service is just about to escort the ex-president off the stage when Trump pauses: “Wait,” he says, then shouts “Fight, fight,” while raising his fist in the air with a blood-smeared face. When his supporters see this fist, there is no stopping them. They cheer him on, breaking into euphoric choruses of “USA, USA, USA.”
The Secret Service then announces that Trump is safe.
How is Donald Trump doing?
Shortly after the attack, Trump’s campaign spokesman Steven Cheung announced that Trump was fine. The 78-year-old former president was being examined at a local medical facility. He went on to say that Trump thanked “the security forces and first responders for their quick action during this horrific act.”
A short time later, Trump himself spoke out on his online platform Truth Social. A bullet had “pierced the upper part of my right ear,” he said. “It is unbelievable that such an act can happen in our country.”
See here the pictures of an evening that will go down in history.
The chaos in pictures
“Fight,” shouts Donald Trump with a blood-smeared face
What is known about the suspected assassin?
Much is still unclear. There is no public information about the identity of the suspected attacker. The attacker fired several shots “from an elevated position” outside the meeting place, the Secret Service reported on X. The shooter was then “neutralized,” the agency confirmed. An eyewitness told the BBC that viewers had seen an armed man lying on the roof of a house shortly beforehand. According to US media, investigators found an assault rifle.
The FBI classifies the attack on Donald Trump as an “attempted assassination.”The shooting was “an attempted assassination of our former President Donald Trump,” FBI agent Kevin Rojek said at a press conference in Butler, Pennsylvania.
What are the reactions?
US President Joe Biden condemned the attack in the strongest possible terms. There is “no place for this kind of violence” in the USA, he said. “It’s sick.” The president had previously stated that the USA must “stand together as one nation to condemn this.” He also said that he was “grateful to hear that Trump is safe and well.”
Several high-ranking representatives of both parties also condemned the attack, including former President Barack Obama and Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi. The Republican Speaker of the House of Representatives, Mike Johnson, wrote on the X platform that he was praying for Trump. The Democratic minority leader of the House, Hakeem Jeffries, made a similar statement. “America is a democracy,” he wrote on X. “Political violence in any form is never acceptable.”
Heads of state and government around the world were shocked by the news from Pennsylvania.
Read the collected reactions here:
What does the incident mean for the rest of the election campaign?
One thing is certain: the attack will further fuel the highly polarized election campaign. The Republicans have already found their scapegoat. “Joe Biden sent the order,” writes conservative Congressman Mike Collins at X. JD Vance, a senator from Ohio, is particularly clear. “The premise of the Biden campaign is that President Donald Trump is an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs,” says Vance, who is being considered as Trump’s vice presidential candidate. “This rhetoric led directly to the attempted assassination of President Trump.”
“There is no moment of pause, the attempted assassination is immediately exploited politically by the Republicans. Joe Biden is to blame – it’s that simple,” writes my colleague Marc Etzold in his analysis.
Next week, Donald Trump will be officially elected as the Republican Party’s presidential candidate in Milwaukee.
Is the assassination attempt on Trump an isolated incident?
Throughout the history of the United States, there has been repeated violence against presidential candidates as well as sitting presidents:
- In 1865, US President Abraham Lincoln was shot in the box of a theater in the US capital Washington while watching a comedy.
- James Garfield was killed in 1881, William McKinley in 1901.
- US President John F. Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963 in Dallas, Texas.
- Kennedy’s brother Robert F. Kennedy, Democratic candidate, died on June 6, 1968, after an attack in Los Angeles.
- When President Ronald Reagan was shot in Washington in 1981, a bodyguard threw himself over him to protect him. After the attack, his approval ratings rose massively. In 1984, Reagan was re-elected with an overwhelming result.
Source: Stern
I have been working in the news industry for over 6 years, first as a reporter and now as an editor. I have covered politics extensively, and my work has appeared in major newspapers and online news outlets around the world. In addition to my writing, I also contribute regularly to 24 Hours World.
