How the assassination attempt on Trump unfolded
Cựu tổng thống Donald Trump khi đang phát biểu tại Butler, Pennsylvania vào tối thứ bảy ngày 13/7/2024 đã bị bắn vào tai bởi một tay súng 20 tuổi. Đã có ít nhất ba người tham dự cuộc biểu tình đã bị bắn, một trong số họ đã thiệt mạng.
Former President Donald Trump’s rally speech in Butler, Pennsylvania, Saturday evening began just as it had at dozens of rallies previously – his attendees chanted “USA! USA!” and Trump clapped and pointed to faces in the crowd before taking the lectern.
About 150 yards to the north of the former president, a gunman was climbing onto the roof of a building outside the rally security perimeter. He had an AR-style weapon with him. Six minutes into the former president’s speech, the gunman took aim at Trump and squeezed the trigger.
What happened next was as miraculous as it was historic. The gunman, later identified by the FBI as 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks, fired multiple shots, including one that Trump said skimmed his ear. Trump ducked to the ground. Five Secret Service agents rushed to the stage and covered the former president, as the pop-pop from another two additional bursts of gunfire rang out across the Butler Farm Show grounds.
Forty-three seconds after the first shot was fired, a Secret Service agent said the shooter was down. Trump, his ear and face bloodied, was brought to his feet. He raised his fist in a defiant and iconic pose to his supporters to let them know he was OK before agents took him off the stage and into his SUV.
At least three rally attendees were shot, one of whom was killed.
The incident is being investigated as an assassination attempt. It is the first time since 1981, when John Hinckley Jr. tried to assassinate Ronald Reagan, that a current or former president has been shot at. It’s still too soon to determine what security failures may have occurred, such as how the shooter was able to get a clear line of sight to Trump.
Attendees have helped to fill in some details, including chaos in the immediate aftermath of the gunfire and suspicions about the gunman before he scaled the roof of the building just outside the rally site – transforming an ordinary political event into both an extraordinary moment in American politics and a deadly crime scene.
As he so often does, Trump would fill in more details about what happened through his own social media.
“I was shot with a bullet that pierced the upper part of my right ear. I knew immediately that something was wrong in that I heard a whizzing sound, shots, and immediately felt the bullet ripping through the skin. Much bleeding took place, so I realized then what was happening,” Trump posted on Truth Social at 8:42 p.m., thanking law enforcement for their quick response and expressing condolences for the attendee who was killed.
Biden was attending church in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, when the shooting occurred.
After leaving church, the president was briefed on the attack on his predecessor. Biden then made an unscheduled stop at the local Rehoboth police department, where he denounced the “sick” shooting and said there was “no place in America for this kind of violence.”
“I have tried to get ahold of Donald,” Biden said. “He’s with his doctors. They — apparently, he’s doing well. I plan on talking to him shortly, I hope, when get back to the telephone.”
Biden and Trump did speak by phone later that evening. A source briefed on the call said it was “good” and “short and respectful.”
Before Saturday’s call, the two men hadn’t spoken to each other directly in years.
Source: Jeremy Herb & Dakin Andone, CNN
Read more on: https://edition.cnn.com/2024/07/14/politics/what-happened-trump-assassination-attempt/index.html
