Donald Trump injured in attempted assassination at rally in Pennsylvania

Donald Trump was injured on Saturday evening in what the FBI described as an attack on a campaign rally in Pennsylvania. The attack was an act of political violence that could further upend the already turbulent US election campaign and deepen the polarization of the country.

The former president was wounded by a volley of gunfire from an “elevated position” outside the venue at 6:15 p.m., the U.S. Secret Service said. The shots killed one spectator and seriously wounded others, all men, authorities said.

Trump was immediately led from the stage to his motorcade. His right ear was covered in blood and his cheek was smeared with blood. He clenched his fists and shouted “Fight!” to the crowd before being driven away.

The Secret Service, which is responsible for protecting current and former presidents, said the suspected shooter fired “multiple shots at the stage” and the attacker was dead. The FBI called the incident “an assassination attempt against our former President Donald Trump.”

The FBI later identified the suspected shooter as Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, of Bethel Park, Pennsylvania.

The shooting was condemned across the U.S. political spectrum. President Joe Biden, who spoke with Trump late Saturday, called the incident “sick” and a reason “why we must unite this country.”

“There is no place for this kind of violence in America,” Biden said.

International politicians also condemned the incident. British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said he was “horrified by the shocking scenes”. Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said he would “pray for President Trump’s speedy recovery”, while French President Emmanuel Macron called the incident “a tragedy for our democracies”.

The shots came just minutes after Trump spoke at a rally for his supporters in Butler, a rural town in northwestern Pennsylvania. Witness accounts and footage suggest seven or eight shots were fired.

On his social media platform Truth, Trump wrote that he had been “struck by a bullet that pierced the upper part of my right ear.”

“I knew immediately that something was wrong because I heard a hissing sound, gunshots and immediately felt the bullet penetrating my skin,” he said. “There was a lot of bleeding, so I realized what was happening.” He expressed his condolences to the families of the participants killed and injured.

It was only after the initial assessment that the police became aware of the shooter. Asked at a press conference whether the incident indicated a security failure, FBI agent Kevin Rojek said it was too early to say anything. However, it was “surprising” that the perpetrator was able to fire several shots. Rojek also declined to comment on the shooter’s motive or the type of weapon used.

According to a social media post from his campaign team, Trump left Butler County and later flew to New Jersey.

Biden was briefed on the shooting shortly after the incident. “He appears to be OK,” the president said in brief remarks about Trump from the police department in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, where he has a vacation home. “You cannot allow something like this to happen. You cannot be like that. We cannot tolerate this.”

Biden continued: “The bottom line is that the Trump rally is a rally that he could have easily held peacefully.”

A spokesman said Biden will return to the White House at 12:30 a.m. Sunday morning.

A Biden campaign official said the president’s re-election team is “paused all outbound communications and working to stop our television advertising as quickly as possible.”

The apparent attack on Trump is the first time in decades that a sitting or former president has been the victim of a shooting. It came less than four months before the presidential election in November and ahead of next week’s Republican convention, where Trump is expected to formally accept his party’s nomination for president.

Trump’s campaign team said after the shooting that he was still looking forward to “joining (his supporters) at the party convention.”

US politics has been marked by deep divisions and heightened political rhetoric in recent years, with sporadic outbreaks of violence over the past four years, including the attack on the US Capitol by Trump supporters on January 6, 2021. Some Republicans were quick to blame Biden’s political rhetoric for the incident.

JD Vance, Republican senator from Ohio and Trump’s potential vice presidential candidate, said the “central premise of the Biden campaign” was that Trump was “an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs. That rhetoric led directly to the assassination of President Trump,” he said.

U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland said the Justice Department would “use all available resources” in the investigation, which the FBI will lead in a separate statement.

Mike Johnson, speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, wrote on X that he had been briefed on the situation and was “praying for President Trump.” Johnson later said the House would “conduct a full investigation” and subpoena the director of the Secret Service and other federal officials to testify before congressional committees “as soon as possible.”

Chuck Schumer, the top Democrat in the Senate, said in a statement that he was “appalled by what happened,” adding: “Political violence has no place in our country.”

Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and former President Barack Obama echoed the sentiment, and Hakeem Jeffries, the top Democrat in the U.S. House of Representatives, said he was “grateful for the decisive response from law enforcement.”

Additional reporting by Felicia Schwartz, Stefania Palma and Demetri Sevastopulo in Washington