July 15, 2024

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IntelBrief: Former President Trump Survives Assassination Attempt at Campaign Rally

AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar

Former U.S. President Donald Trump, who is running against incumbent President Joe Biden, narrowly survived an assassination attempt following a campaign rally in Butler, PA, over the weekend. While more details continue to emerge, the shooter, a 20-year-old male from the Bethel Park suburb of Pittsburgh, PA, was killed by the U.S. Secret Service (USSS). One individual in the crowd and two others were critically injured by the gunman. Trump said on social media that the bullet grazed the upper part of his right ear. President Biden condemned the attack and spoke to the nation on Sunday afternoon, making it clear that there is no place for political violence in the United States, and called former President Trump to see how he was recovering. Other Democrats joined the bipartisan condemnation of the attack, which former presidents all joined in. Trump still plans to attend the Republican National Convention, set to kick off today in Milwaukee, WI.

The gunman, identified as Thomas Matthew Crooks, was able to fire eight shots before he was neutralized. There is already a firestorm over the role of USSS, the federal law enforcement agency operating under the Department of Homeland Security tasked with protecting current and former political leaders. Some have questioned why the venue was not secured against this kind of an attack, with the gunman firing from an elevated position outside of the rally with an “AR-style rifle.” The Wall Street Journal is reporting that law enforcement authorities found explosive devices in the shooter’s vehicle. The incident is being treated as an act of domestic terrorism by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

Rep. James R. Comer (R-KY.), chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability, plans to have the director of the USSS, Kimberly Cheatle, testify at a hearing next week. That the shooter was able to get so close and in a position to nearly kill former President Trump indicates a massive security failure, which will likely result in a serious investigation into what went wrong.

Both sides have framed the upcoming election as existential, and the assassination attempt comes after years of heated back and forth between the extremes on the political spectrum. There is little question that this will make the run-up to the 2024 U.S. presidential election immensely more fraught. Every campaign rally by either candidate will now be extremely tense, to say nothing of the extreme rhetoric likely to be espoused by supporters on both sides. According to polling conducted by Professor Robert Pape of the University of Chicago, approximately 10 percent of American adults agree that the use of force is justified to prevent Donald Trump from becoming president. This equates to 26 million American adults.

Shortly after the shooting, Senator J.D. Vance of Ohio said that inflammatory language used by Democrats was partly to blame for the violence, even though no evidence related to the shooter’s motive has yet been released. The suspect is reportedly a registered Republican who, in the past, made a $15 dollar donation to a Democrat-aligned group called The Progressive Turn Out Project. Some are seeking clues in the gunman’s t-shirt, which bore the logo of Demolition Ranch, a popular YouTube channel.

Even the Kremlin appeared to weigh in on the incident, with spokesman Dmitry Peskov telling reporters, “We do not believe that the attempt to eliminate and assassinate Trump was organized by the current authorities…but the atmosphere around candidate Trump…provoked what America is confronting today.” Meanwhile, world leaders and elected officials from a number of countries, including Mexico, Ecuador, Israel, Hungary, Argentina, Italy, India, China, Canada, Germany, South Korea, Ukraine, the United Kingdom, Japan, France, and others reacted by condemning the attack and expressing support.

Almost immediately after the shooting, the online information environment was inundated with a flood of mis- and disinformation, with conspiracies related to the so-called ‘Deep State,’ accusations of a false flag incident, and even accusations against President Biden himself, with Rep. Mike Collins (R-Ga.) publishing the following post on the social media platform X: “Joe Biden sent the orders,” a post that was viewed more than 4 million times over the weekend. The Washington Post reported that Collins later called for Biden to face charges for “inciting an assassination.” Online, the shooting galvanized accelerationists, while others called for civil war, sharing images of a bloodied and defiant Trump standing with his fist raised as he’s surrounded by Secret Service agents attempting to shield him.

The United States has a history of political assassinations, with four U.S. presidents and one candidate assassinated since the country was founded. Abraham Lincoln (1865), James Garfield (1881), William McKinley (1901), and John F. Kennedy (1963) were killed by assassins, while President Kennedy’s younger brother, Robert F. Kennedy, was killed in 1968 while campaigning for the Democratic nomination. In 1975, there were two assassination attempts directed at President Gerald Ford and in 1981, President Ronald Reagan was shot by an assassin, although he survived the attempt. In 2011, U.S. representative Gaby Giffords (D-AZ.) was shot and in 2017, Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA.) was shot, although both Giffords and Scalise survived and recovered.

Worldwide, the assassination attempt of Trump is merely the latest in a string of similar incidents. In May, Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico was shot four times at close range by a lone actor, though Fico survived the shooting. In July 2022, former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was shot and killed by an assassin using a homemade weapon. In November 2022, Pakistani politician and former Prime Minister Imran Khan was shot in the leg, while in September 2018 Brazilian politician Jair Bolsonaro was stabbed on the campaign trail.

In his remarks from the White House yesterday, President Biden stated clearly: “An assassination attempt is contrary to everything we stand for as a nation.” It remains to be seen if the U.S. can pull back from the brink of political violence and extremist rhetoric, yet many remain pessimistic as the country gears up for the next five months of campaigning.