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 U.S. political divide.
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 U.S. Secret Service.
Trump, 78, was holding a campaign rally in Butler, Pa. —one of the states expected to be the most competitive in the Nov. 5 election — when shots rang out, hitting his right ear and streaking 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.
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Trump is due to receive his party’s formal nomination at the Republican National Convention, which kicks off in Milwaukee on Monday.
Michael Whatley, who chairs the Republican National Committee, said on Fox News Sunday that authorities are 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.
Motive not yet known
The FBI identified Thomas Matthew Crooks of Bethel Park, Pa., 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’s political affiliation as they seek to cast the rival party as representing extremism.
“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.
Witnesses say the shots fired at former U.S. president Donald Trump appeared to come from outside the area secured by the Secret Service. The FBI said it had taken the lead in investigating the attack.
Secret Service agents fatally shot the suspect, the agency said, after he opened fire from the roof of a building about 140 metres from the stage where Trump was speaking. An AR-15-style semiautomatic 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.
Authorities identified a rally attendee who was shot and killed as Corey Comperatore, 50, of Sarver, Ga., who Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro told reporters was killed when he dove on top of his family to protect them from the hail of bullets.
Pennsylvania State Police on Sunday identified the two people wounded in the shooting, both of whom were listed in stable condition. They are 57-year-old David Dutch, of New Kensington, Pa., and 74-year-old James Copenhaver, of Moon Township, Pa.
The Secret Service in a statement 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 U.S. Secret Service or the Department of Homeland Security rebuffed is absolutely false,” Secret Service spokesperson Anthony Guglielmi said in a statement. “In fact, recently the U.S. Secret Service added protective resources and capabilities to the former president’s security detail.”
The shots 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 U.S. House of Representatives summoned Secret Service director Kimberly Cheatle to testify at a hearing scheduled for July 22.
Some of Trump’s Republican allies said they believed the attack was politically motivated.
In the wake of the assassination attempt against Donald Trump, Republican strategist Chip Felkel says it’s important the Trump campaign takes a measured and restrained tone as the Republican National Convention gets underway in Milwaukee. ‘In a weird, ugly way, this is of great benefit to the mobilization of Trump supporters,’ he says.
“It’s one side that is going after Donald Trump in a way to demonize him personally,” said Rep. Steve 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 in the 2020 election — have been ground to a halt by various factors, including a U.S. 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.
