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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.
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Israel to Issue 54,000 Call-Up Notices to Ultra-Orthodox Students
Haredi Jewish men look at the scene of an explosion at a bus stop in Jerusalem, Israel, on Nov. 23, 2022. Photo: Reuters/Ammar Awad
Israel’s military said it would issue 54,000 call-up notices to ultra-Orthodox Jewish seminary students following a Supreme Court ruling mandating their conscription and amid growing pressure from reservists stretched by extended deployments.
The Supreme Court ruling last year overturned a decades-old exemption for ultra-Orthodox students, a policy established when the community comprised a far smaller segment of the population than the 13 percent it represents today.
Military service is compulsory for most Israeli Jews from the age of 18, lasting 24-32 months, with additional reserve duty in subsequent years. Members of Israel’s 21 percent Arab population are mostly exempt, though some do serve.
A statement by the military spokesperson confirmed the orders on Sunday just as local media reported legislative efforts by two ultra-Orthodox parties in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition to craft a compromise.
The exemption issue has grown more contentious as Israel’s armed forces in recent years have faced strains from simultaneous engagements with Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, Houthis in Yemen, and Iran.
Ultra-Orthodox leaders in Netanyahu’s brittle coalition have voiced concerns that integrating seminary students into military units alongside secular Israelis, including women, could jeopardize their religious identity.
The military statement promised to ensure conditions that respect the ultra-Orthodox way of life and to develop additional programs to support their integration into the military. It said the notices would go out this month.
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Influential Far-Right Minister Lashes out at Netanyahu Over Gaza War Policy
Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich attends an inauguration event for Israel’s new light rail line for the Tel Aviv metropolitan area, in Petah Tikva, Israel, Aug. 17, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Amir Cohen
Israel’s far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich sharply criticized on Sunday a cabinet decision to allow some aid into Gaza as a “grave mistake” that he said would benefit the terrorist group Hamas.
Smotrich also accused Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of failing to ensure that Israel’s military is following government directives in prosecuting the war against Hamas in Gaza. He said he was considering his “next steps” but stopped short of explicitly threatening to quit the coalition.
Smotrich’s comments come a day before Netanyahu is due to hold talks in Washington with President Donald Trump on a US-backed proposal for a 60-day Gaza ceasefire.
“… the cabinet and the Prime Minister made a grave mistake yesterday in approving the entry of aid through a route that also benefits Hamas,” Smotrich said on X, arguing that the aid would ultimately reach the Islamist group and serve as “logistical support for the enemy during wartime”.
The Israeli government has not announced any changes to its aid policy in Gaza. Israeli media reported that the government had voted to allow additional aid to enter northern Gaza.
The prime minister’s office did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment. The military declined to comment.
Israel accuses Hamas of stealing aid for its own fighters or to sell to finance its operations, an accusation Hamas denies. Gaza is in the grip of a humanitarian catastrophe, with conditions threatening to push nearly a half a million people into famine within months, according to U.N. estimates.
Israel in May partially lifted a nearly three-month blockade on aid. Two Israeli officials said on June 27 the government had temporarily stopped aid from entering north Gaza.
PRESSURE
Public pressure in Israel is mounting on Netanyahu to secure a permanent ceasefire, a move opposed by some hardline members of his right-wing coalition. An Israeli team left for Qatar on Sunday for talks on a possible Gaza hostage and ceasefire deal.
Smotrich, who in January threatened to withdraw his Religious Zionism party from the government if Israel agreed to a complete end to the war before having achieved its objectives, did not mention the ceasefire in his criticism of Netanyahu.
The right-wing coalition holds a slim parliamentary majority, although some opposition lawmakers have offered to support the government from collapsing if a ceasefire is agreed.
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Australia Police Charge Man Over Alleged Arson on Melbourne Synagogue
Australia’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese speaks to the media during a press conference with New Zealand’s Prime Minister Christopher Luxon at the Australian Parliament House in Canberra, Australia, Aug. 16, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Tracey Nearmy
Australian police have charged a man in connection with an alleged arson attack on a Melbourne synagogue with worshippers in the building, the latest in a series of incidents targeting the nation’s Jewish community.
There were no injuries to the 20 people inside the East Melbourne Synagogue, who fled from the fire on Friday night. Firefighters extinguished the blaze in the capital of Victoria state.
Australia has experienced several antisemitic incidents since the start of the Israel-Gaza war in October 2023.
Counter-terrorism detectives late on Saturday arrested the 34-year-old resident of Sydney, capital of neighboring New South Wales, charging him with offenses including criminal damage by fire, police said.
“The man allegedly poured a flammable liquid on the front door of the building and set it on fire before fleeing the scene,” police said in a statement.
The suspect, whom the authorities declined to identify, was remanded in custody after his case was heard at Melbourne Magistrates Court on Sunday and no application was made for bail, the Australian Broadcasting Corp reported.
Authorities are investigating whether the synagogue fire was linked to a disturbance on Friday night at an Israeli restaurant in Melbourne, in which one person was arrested for hindering police.
The restaurant was extensively damaged, according to the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, an umbrella group for Australia’s Jews.
It said the fire at the synagogue, one of Melbourne’s oldest, was set as those inside sat down to Sabbath dinner.
Israeli President Isaac Herzog went on X to “condemn outright the vile arson attack targeting Jews in Melbourne’s historic and oldest synagogue on the Sabbath, and on an Israeli restaurant where people had come to enjoy a meal together”.
“This is not the first such attack in Australia in recent months. But it must be the last,” Herzog said.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described the incidents as “severe hate crimes” that he viewed “with utmost gravity.” “The State of Israel will continue to stand alongside the Australian Jewish community,” Netanyahu said on X.
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese late on Saturday described the alleged arson, which comes seven months after another synagogue in Melbourne was targeted by arsonists, as shocking and said those responsible should face the law’s full force.
“My Government will provide all necessary support toward this effort,” Albanese posted on X.
Homes, schools, synagogues and vehicles in Australia have been targeted by antisemitic vandalism and arson. The incidents included a fake plan by organized crime to attack a Sydney synagogue using a caravan of explosives in order to divert police resources, police said in March.
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