The suspect, who was positioned on top of a structure, was swiftly neutralized following the attack.Trump was the target of an apparent assassination attempt on Saturday, days before he was to accept the Republican nomination for a third time. A barrage of gunfire set off panic, and a bloodied Trump, who said he was shot in the ear, was surrounded by Secret Service and hurried to his SUV as he pumped his fist in a show of defiance.
Trump’s campaign said the presumptive GOP nominee was doing “fine” after the shooting, which he said pierced the upper part of his right ear. “I knew immediately that something was wrong in that I heard a whizzing sound, shots, and immediately felt the bullet ripping through the skin. Much bleeding took place,” he wrote on his social media site.
At least one attendee was dead and two spectators were critically injured, authorities said. The Secret Service said it killed the suspected shooter — who it said attacked from an elevated position outside the rally venue, a farm show in Butler, Pennsylvania — and that Trump was safe.
The attack was the most serious attempt to assassinate a president or presidential candidate since Ronald Reagan was shot in 1981. It drew new attention to concerns about political violence in a deeply polarized U.S. less than four months before the presidential election. And it could alter the tenor and security posture at the Republican National Convention, which will begin on Monday in Milwaukee.
Trump’s campaign said the convention would proceed as planned. President Joe Biden, who is running against Trump, was briefed on the incident and spoke to Trump several hours after the shooting, the White House said. “There’s no place in America for this type of violence,” the president said in public remarks. “It’s sick. It’s sick.” Biden planned to return to Washington early, cutting short a weekend at his beach home in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware.
