During an election rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, on Saturday, Donald Trump was hurried off stage following an assassination attempt on the former president.
Secret Service agents quickly surrounded Trump, ducking behind the podium. Blood was visible on Trump’s right ear as agents escorted him off the stage and into a waiting vehicle to swiftly remove him from the scene.
According to a spokesperson, Trump is “fine.” The suspected gunman, a 20-year-old man who was killed by the Secret Service, reportedly fired multiple rounds from a rooftop adjacent to the venue, law enforcement sources say.
Within hours of the incident, President Joe Biden, Trump’s likely opponent in the upcoming November election, addressed the press in Delaware.
“There is no place in America for this kind of violence. It’s sick,” Biden stated. “We cannot be like this. We cannot condone this.”
The president later spoke by phone with the former president. He cut short his weekend at the beach and planned to return to the White House late Saturday evening.
However, the incident has swiftly become a flashpoint in the partisan battles that have characterized American politics in recent decades. Some Republican politicians have blamed Democrats for the attack, citing the heated rhetoric about the former president’s threat to American democracy.
“The central premise of the Biden campaign is that President Donald Trump is an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs,” posted Ohio Senator JD Vance, who is reportedly on the shortlist to be Trump’s vice-presidential pick, on social media. “That rhetoric led directly to President Trump’s assassination attempt.”
