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Trump Survives Assassination Attempt, Shot in Ear at US Election Campaign Rally After Major Security Lapse
Republican presidential candidate and former US President Donald Trump is assisted by the Secret Service after an assassination attempt on his life during a campaign rally at the Butler Farm Show in Butler, Pennsylvania, US, July 13, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Brendan McDermid
Former US President Donald Trump was shot in the ear in an attempted assassination during a campaign rally on Saturday, an attack that will likely reshape this year’s US presidential race while raising sharp questions about security provided to the Republican candidate.
In the moments after the shooting, Trump was swarmed and covered up by his security agents. He quickly emerged from the scrum, his face streaked with blood, and pumped his fist in the air, mouthing the words “Fight! Fight! Fight!”
The Trump campaign later said he was “doing well” and appeared to have suffered no major injury besides a wound on his upper right ear.
Early on Sunday the FBI identified 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks of Bethel Park, Pennsylvania, as the “subject involved” in what it termed an attempted assassination. He was a registered Republican, according to state voter records.
The suspect was shot dead by Secret Service agents, the agency said, after he opened fire from the roof of a building about 140 meters from the stage where Trump was speaking. An AR-15-style semiautomatic rifle was recovered near his body.
One person who attended the rally was killed and two other spectators were critically wounded, the Secret Service said.
Law enforcement officials told reporters they had not yet identified a motive for the attack.
Trump, 78, had just started his speech when the shots rang out. He grabbed his right ear with his right hand, then brought his hand down to look at it before dropping to his knees behind the podium before Secret Service agents covered him.
He emerged about a minute later, his red “Make America Great Again” hat knocked off. He could be heard saying “wait, wait,” before pumping his fist in the air. Agents then rushed him to a black SUV.
“I was shot with a bullet that pierced the upper part of my right ear,” Trump said later on his Truth Social platform following the shooting in Butler, Pennsylvania, about 30 miles (50 km) north of Pittsburgh. “Much bleeding took place.”
Trump left the Butler area under Secret Service protection and later arrived at his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey.
The attack was the first shooting of a US president or major party candidate since the 1981 attempted assassination of Republican President Ronald Reagan.
It raised immediate questions about security failures by the Secret Service, which provides former presidents including Trump with lifetime protection. The FBI said it had taken the lead in investigating the attack.
The shooting occurred less than four months before the Nov. 5 election, when Trump faces an election rematch with Democratic President Joe Biden. Most opinion polls including those by Reuters/Ipsos show the two locked in a close contest.
Investors said that the attack and Trump‘s defiant response would likely increase his chances of winning back the White House, and trades betting on his victory will increase this coming week.
Trump is due to receive his party’s formal nomination at the Republican National Convention, which kicks off in Milwaukee on Monday.
FOUR SHOTS AND THE CROWD DUCKS
Ron Moose, a Trump supporter at the rally, said he heard about four shots. “I saw the crowd go down and then Trump ducked, also real quick,” he said. “Then the Secret Service all jumped and protected him as soon as they could. We are talking within a second they were all protecting him.”
The BBC interviewed a man who said he saw a man armed with a rifle crawling up a roof near the event. The self-described eyewitness, who the BBC did not identify, said he and the people he was with started pointing at the man, trying to alert security.
The shots appeared to come from outside the area secured by the Secret Service, the agency said.
At a briefing late on Saturday, FBI officials told reporters it was surprising that the suspect was able to fire multiple shots. The Secret Service did not have a representative at that briefing.
Hours after the attack, the Oversight Committee in the Republican-led US House of Representatives summoned US Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle to testify at a hearing scheduled for July 22.
“Americans demand answers about the assassination attempt of President Trump,” the panel said in a statement on social media.
Trump supporters blasted the Secret Service.
“How was a sniper with a full rifle kit allowed to bear crawl onto the closest roof to a presidential nominee,” asked conservative activist Jack Posobiec on social media site X.
REPUBLICANS, DEMOCRATS DECRY VIOLENCE
Leading Republicans and Democrats quickly condemned the violence, as did foreign leaders.
“There’s no place for this kind of violence in America. We must unite as one nation to condemn it,” Biden said in a statement.
Biden’s campaign was pausing its television ads and halting all other outbound communication, a campaign official said.
The attack heightened longstanding worries that political violence could erupt during the presidential campaign and after the election. The concerns in part reflect the electorate’s polarization, with the country appearing bitterly divided into two camps with divergent political and social visions.
“This horrific act of political violence at a peaceful campaign rally has no place in this country and should be unanimously and forcefully condemned,” Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson said on social media.
Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said he was horrified by what happened and was relieved Trump was safe. “Political violence has no place in our country,” he said.
Americans fear rising political violence, recent Reuters/Ipsos polling shows, with two out of three respondents to a May survey saying they worried violence could follow the election.
Some of Trump‘s Republican allies said they believed the attack was politically motivated.
“For weeks Democrat leaders have been fueling ludicrous hysteria that Donald Trump winning re-election would be the end of democracy in America,” said US Representative Steve Scalise, the No. 2 House Republican, who survived a politically motivated shooting in 2017.
“Clearly we’ve seen far left lunatics act on violent rhetoric in the past. This incendiary rhetoric must stop.”
Trump, who served as president from 2017-2021, easily bested his rivals for the Republican nomination early in the campaign. He unified his party around him after its support wavered briefly when his supporters breached the US Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, attempting to overturn his 2020 election defeat.
The businessman and former reality television star entered the year facing a raft of 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 — have been ground to a halt by various factors, including a Supreme Court decision early this month that found him to be partly immune to prosecution.
Trump contends that all four prosecutions have been orchestrated by Biden to try to prevent him from returning to power.
The post Trump Survives Assassination Attempt, Shot in Ear at US Election Campaign Rally After Major Security Lapse first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Hamas Confirms Death of Terror Chief Mohammed Deif Months After Israeli Strike
Picture said to show leader of Hamas’s military wing, known as Al-Qassam Brigades, Mohammed Deif in a location given as Gaza Strip in this handout picture released on Jan. 7, 2024. Photo: Israel Defense Forces/Handout via REUTERS
The Palestinian terrorist group Hamas officially confirmed on Thursday that its military chief, Mohammed Deif, was killed during the Gaza war, almost six months after the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) reported his death.
Deif, the architect of Hamas’s military capabilities, is believed to have been one of the masterminds behind the terrorist group’s invasion of and massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023 — which sparked the Gaza war.
Abu Ubaida, a Hamas spokesperson, also reported the deaths of Deif’s deputy, Khan Younis Brigade commander Rafa Salama, as well as senior operatives Marwan Issa, Ghazi Abu Tama’a, Raad Thabet, Ahmed Ghandour, and Ayman Nofal.
According to the IDF, Deif was killed in an airstrike in Khan Younis in southern Gaza on July 13 of last year.
Following weeks of intelligence assessments, Israeli authorities gathered evidence to confirm Deif’s death before publicly announcing it in early August.
“IDF fighter jets struck in the area of Khan Yunis, and … it can be confirmed that Mohammed Deif was eliminated in the strike,” the military said. “His elimination serves the objectives of the war and demonstrates Israel’s ability to carry out targeted strikes with precision.”
At the time, Hamas neither confirmed nor denied Deif’s death, but one official, Ezzat Rashaq, stated that any announcements regarding the deaths of its leaders would be made solely by the organization.
“Unless either of them [the Hamas political and military leadership] announces it, no news published in the media or by any other parties can be confirmed,” Rashaq said.
In November, the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Deif, as well as for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity related to the Oct. 7 attacks on Israel and the ensuing war in Gaza.
Deif is believed to have collaborated closely with the late Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, managing military operations and coordinating with the group’s top commanders throughout the conflict.
After Deif’s assassination, then-defense minister Gallant posted an image on social media praising the Israeli military’s accomplishment.
“The assassination of mass murderer Mohammed Deif — ‘Gaza’s Bin Laden’ — is a major step toward dismantling Hamas as a military and governing entity, and achieving the war’s objectives,” he said.
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‘A Bad but Necessary Deal’: Five Members of His Family Were Murdered — Today, Their Killer Walks Free
Oran Almog, right, addressing the UN Security Council next to Israeli Ambassador to the UN Danny Danon on July 25, 2017. Photo: Screenshot
While the release of three Israeli hostages on Thursday brought relief and elation across Israel, it also triggered a wave of mixed emotions, especially among victims who saw the terrorists responsible for their suffering set free. One of them is Oran Almog, who was just ten years old when a Palestinian terrorist disguised as a pregnant woman blew up the restaurant he was in, killing five members of his family and leaving him blind.
Yet, while Thursday’s release of Sami Jaradat — the mastermind behind the October 2003 massacre of Almog’s family — was a deeply personal blow, the return of hostages remained a necessary step, he said.
“That the terrorist who killed my family will find himself free is deeply painful, heartbreaking even,” he told The Algemeiner. “But at the same time, I know that even today — especially today — I must set aside my personal pain and focus on the significance of this deal. And the significance is clear. We are getting our hostages home, and that is the only thing that matters.”
Almog’s father, Moshe Almog, his younger brother, Tomer, his grandparents Admiral (res.) Ze’ev and Ruth Almog, and his cousin, Asaf, were murdered when the suicide bomber, Hanadi Jaradat, a 29-year-old lawyer from Jenin, managed to get past the security guard of the Maxim restaurant — jointly owned by a Jewish Israeli and an Arab Israeli — and blow herself up. Sixteen other people were also murdered in the attack, among them four children. Almog lost his eyesight, and his mother, sister, and aunt were among the 60 injured Israelis.
“Sami Jaradat’s continued imprisonment will never bring my family back, but his release can bring the hostages back home alive,” Almog explained.
Emotional meeting between Agam Berger and her family at Beilinson Hospital in Israel. Photo: Haim Zach (GPO)
Almog knows firsthand what it means to be on the receiving end of a hostage-prisoner exchange.
Just two weeks after marking the 20th anniversary of the Maxim restaurant attack, another tragedy struck his family. On Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terrorists brutally murdered Nadav and Yam and abducted Chen, Agam, Gal, and Tal from the Almog-Goldstein family in Kfar Azza.
Fifty-one days later, in November 2023, they were released from Hamas captivity in a temporary ceasefire deal.
Under the current ceasefire agreement reached earlier this month, Hamas will release a total 33 Israeli hostages, eight of whom are deceased, according to the terrorist group. In exchange, Israel will free over 1,900 Palestinian prisoners, many of whom were serving multiple life sentences on terrorism offenses. Thursday saw the release of three Israelis — including IDF surveillance soldier Agam Berger, 20, and civilians Arbel Yehoud, 29, and Gadi Mozes, 80 — and five Thai nationals, who were working in Israeli kibbutzim when they were abducted.
“This is a bad deal, very bad, but the alternative is that much worse,” Almog said. “We must look ahead, put today aside, and recognize that releasing prisoners serves a greater purpose.”
However, Almog expressed hope that Israel would move toward a more decisive and uncompromising approach in its fight against terrorism.
“I sincerely hope that as a country, we will have the wisdom to decisively thwart terrorism,” he said, emphasizing the need to break free from the ongoing cycle of prisoner exchanges.
“I don’t want us to find ourselves trapped in a cycle of releasing terrorists, only for them to return to terror, and then repeat the process again and again,” he added.
Almog has previously addressed the UN Security Council, urging action against the so-called “pay-for-slay” scheme, in which terrorists and their families receive monthly stipends from the Palestinian Authority. The terrorist behind the murder of Almog’s family received $3,000 a month while behind bars, making him almost a millionaire by the time of his release.
Still, Almog concluded with a deeply uplifting message for the returning hostages, confident that they would have a chance at a good life, drawing from his own experiences since the terror attack.
Oran Almog. Photo: Facebook
After his release from the hospital, he began a long rehabilitation process, culminating in third place at the World Blind Sailing Championship with Etgarim, a nonprofit founded by disabled veterans and rehabilitation experts, and supported by the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews (IFCJ). He was chosen to light a torch at Israel’s Independence Day ceremony marking the 60th anniversary of the state and, despite his disability, insisted on enlisting in the IDF, serving in an elite unit. Today, he is a managing partner at a financial technology fund, works with Etgarim, and shares his story globally through lectures.
“I know the hostages will be able to return, to live, and to live well. With enough support — and a great deal of willpower — it is truly possible to rebuild life, even after the deepest catastrophes,” he said.
The post ‘A Bad but Necessary Deal’: Five Members of His Family Were Murdered — Today, Their Killer Walks Free first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Pro-Israel Lawmaker Randy Fine Wins Florida GOP Primary, Favorite to Replace Trump Adviser Mike Waltz in Congress
Florida state Sen. Randy Fine. Photo: Reuters
Florida state Sen. Randy Fine emerged victorious on Tuesday in the Republican primary election for the Sunshine State’s 6th Congressional District in the US Congress, making the firebrand conservative the overwhelming favorite to secure the highly-coveted seat to replace now-former Rep. Mike Waltz.
The congressional seat became vacant after Waltz stepped down to become the national security adviser for US President Donald Trump in the White House. Waltz had managed to secure reelection in November with 66 percent of the vote.
Fine, who is Jewish, has established himself as a stalwart ally of Israel. In the year following the Hamas-led slaughter of 1,200 people and kidnapping of 251 hostages during a cross-border invasion into southern Israel, Fine has spearheaded efforts to uproot antisemitism within the state of Florida.
In August 2024, he chided Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) for taking a trip to Ireland, repudiating the country as “antisemitic.”
“I was certainly disappointed to see not only folks go to what is clearly an antisemitic country that supports Muslim terror, but I was also disappointed that the game wasn’t cancelled, which it should have been,” Fine said.
Ireland has been a fierce critic of Israel since Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre, even joining a legal case brought by South Africa to the International Court of Justice accusing the Jewish state of genocide in Hamas-ruled Gaza. The move, which came after the Irish government in May officially recognized a Palestinian state, led Israel to shutter its embassy in Dublin.
In August 2024, Fine launched an investigation into alleged antisemitic and pro-terrorist ideology within instructional materials at Florida public universities. Fine suggested that activist professors were using textbooks that were indoctrinating students with anti-Israel sentiment.
“When we learned that Florida universities were using a factually inaccurate, openly antisemitic textbook, we realized there was a problem that had to be addressed,” Fine said.
Following the New Year’s Day ISIS-inspired terrorist attack in New Orleans, Fine raised eyebrows by repudiating Islam as a “fundamentally broken and dangerous culture.”
“Muslim terror has attacked the United States — again. The blood is on the hands of those who refuse to acknowledge the worldwide #MuslimProblem. It is high time to deal with this fundamentally broken and dangerous culture,” Fine posted on X/Twitter.
The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the foremost pro-Israel lobbying group in the US congratulated Fine for his primary victory on Tuesday.
“We are proud to support pro-Israel candidates who help strengthen and expand the US-Israel relationship. Being pro-Israel is good policy and good politics,” AIPAC, which endorsed Fine, posted on social media.
The Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC), an organization that attempts to forge closer ties between the Jewish community and the Republican Party, touted Fine’s vigorous crusade against antisemitism within the Florida state legislature.
“Randy Fine is a warrior for his constituents and has served for years in the Florida legislature with distinction,” RJC wrote on X/Twitter. “Randy Fine will be a fierce advocate for the Jewish community in the House of Representatives. Importantly, he has led the fight and been the loudest voice against the rise of antisemitism in Florida and across the country.”
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