The Full Belmonte, 7/14/2024
July 14, 2024
By the staff of The Morning
Good morning. We’re covering the latest on the assassination attempt against Donald Trump.
Doug Mills/The New York Times
Political violence
“Authorities have identified the gunman who tried to assassinate Donald Trump yesterday but are still racing to understand what the shooter’s motives were and how he was able to get so close to Trump.
The F.B.I. named the gunman as Thomas Matthew Crooks, a 20-year-old from Bethel Park, Pa., roughly 40 miles from Butler, the small city in western Pennsylvania where the attack occurred. Crooks was a registered Republican, though records show that he had donated money to a liberal voter turnout group in 2021. Here is the latest on Crooks.
The attack killed one spectator at the scene and left two others critically injured, officials said. Trump had blood on his face as he was escorted from the stage but was safe this morning.
The assassination attempt added a shocking and violent turn to a presidential campaign that had already been more tumultuous than any in decades. In today’s newsletter, we’ll help you understand what we know this morning.
What happened
Our colleague Simon Levien was at the rally during the shooting. ‘Trump had just started to talk about immigration in his stump speech when several shots rang out from the bleachers to his right,’ he wrote. ‘Everyone immediately ducked — myself included.’
There were two bursts of fire — first three shots, and then five.
Trump put his hand to his ear and then ducked, before Secret Service agents rushed the stage to shield him. As they began to move him offstage, Trump told them to wait and defiantly pumped his fist, with blood on his face, while the crowd chanted, ‘U.S.A.’ (Watch the video here.)
‘It’s difficult to imagine a moment that more fully epitomizes Mr. Trump’s visceral connection with his supporters, and his mastery of the modern media age,’ The Times’s Shawn McCreesh wrote.
A photo showing what appears to be a projectile passing by Trump during the rally. Doug Mills/The New York Times
Trump said on social media that he had been ‘shot with a bullet that pierced the upper part of my right ear.’ Law enforcement agencies have not given specifics about what they believe happened.
The veteran Times photographer Doug Mills was also at the scene. ‘I could see blood on’ Trump’s face, he said. ‘I kept taking pictures. As tough as he looked in that one picture with his fist looking very defiant, the next frame I took, he looked completely drained. Very, very shocked.’ (This photograph by Doug appears to capture the path of the bullet, and Doug describes his experience here.)
The suspect fired shots from an elevated position outside the rally, the Secret Service said. Officials also said that they had recovered an AR-15-type rifle near his body. Videos posted to social media and verified by The Times showed the suspected gunman lying motionless on the roof of a building around 400 feet north of the stage. In an interview with the BBC, a man said he saw somebody with a rifle on a rooftop before the shooting and tried to signal to the Secret Service.
Reactions
Some attendees of the rally, which had been gleeful, began to cry, pray or scream. ‘The first thing I thought to myself was, America’s under attack,’ Corey Check, a local activist, said. ‘I grabbed the hands of a couple of people I didn’t even know. We said the Lord’s Prayer. I called my family and told them I loved them.’
President Biden spoke publicly after the shooting and spoke with Trump later in the night. ‘Look, there’s no place in America for this kind of violence,’ Biden said in a brief televised speech. ‘It’s sick.’
Other politicians, including some touched by violence themselves, also denounced the shooting. ‘I’m holding former President Trump, and all those affected by today’s indefensible act of violence in my heart,’ Gabby Giffords, a former representative who survived an assassination attempt, posted on social media. ‘Political violence is un-American and is never acceptable — never.’
More coverage
‘It was the first attempted assassination of a current or former American president in the era of social media, and the conspiracy theories, finger-pointing and campaign gamesmanship moved at the speed of the internet, far faster than the actual facts,’ The Times’s Jonathan Weisman explained.
This Times graphic explains the layout and location of the important sites from yesterday’s shooting.
CNN compiled photos of Trump at the rally that show multiple angles of him exiting the stage.
The Biden campaign scrambled to pause television ads and campaign communications after the shooting.
Commentary
The attack on Trump is antithetical to America, The Times’s editorial board writes.
‘The darkest hours of American history, the ones shadowed by political violence, remind us that incitement and hatred must be constantly challenged,’ the Washington Post editorial board writes.
‘Transparency in the investigation will be critical to avoid the spread of conspiracy theories on the right and left,’ The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board writes.
‘Now is the time for America’s moral center to rise up and declare — with one voice, neither red nor blue — ‘Enough,’ David French of Times Opinion writes.
Israel-Hamas War
In southern Gaza. Haitham Imad/EPA, via Shutterstock
“Israel conducted a major airstrike in southern Gaza that it said had targeted a top Hamas military commander, Muhammad Deif. The Gaza Health Ministry said 90 people had been killed in the assault.
Hamas now acts as a guerrilla force. Its fighters are hiding under residential neighborhoods and emerging in plain clothes.” [New York Times]
More International News
Caño Cabra, in central Colombia. Federico Rios for The New York Times
“Shifts in the international drug trade have devastated poor Colombians whose livelihood is tied to cocaine.” [New York Times]
“Ukraine, now armed with American-made deep-strike missiles, is targeting Russian air defenses and logistics hubs in Crimea.” [New York Times]
“Hundreds of fires are burning in Brazil, weeks before the usual wildfire season.” [New York Times]
“The image of a bloodied and defiant Donald Trump pumping his fist at a crowd in Pennsylvania — his lips appearing to form the word ‘fight’ against the backdrop of an American flag under a blaring sun — will instantly enter the history books as one of those era-defining moments.
The assassination attempt on the former US president at a rally yesterday upends an already volatile and unpredictable campaign, punctured by charged rhetoric and radicalized views. It also appears to irrevocably alter the political landscape in Trump’s favor ahead of November elections.
Not only did he survive the shot that grazed his ear — and is now recovering in his New Jersey golf course — but the narrative he has shaped over the years about how everyone was out to get him suddenly appeared validated when minutes into his stump speech a shooter opened fire on the 78-year-old Republican presidential candidate.
WATCH: Trump is seen grabbing at his ear after a loud popping noise was heard at the rally.
For his legions of MAGA devotees, this makes him even more of a martyr to the cause, Trump as the ultimate survivor. One of his GOP acolytes called him unstoppable. His campaign quickly sent out a fundraising text message quoting Trump saying: ‘I will Never Surrender!’
The Democrats, meanwhile, are in disarray as President Joe Biden, 81, stubbornly clings on even as doubts about his age and mental acuity have dogged him for weeks, with calls for him to step aside steadily growing.
He’s now been knocked off the front pages — but if anything he’s even less in control of events. And that is deeply worrying for Western democracies looking to the leader of the free world for a semblance of order and clarity.
WATCH: ‘We cannot be like this, we cannot condone this,’ Biden says during an address to the nation.
Instead, the rest of the world is also experiencing the polarization of politics and what can happen in a deeply divided society when the political discourse is riddled with exaggerations and lies that are then amplified via social media.
From Asia to Europe and South America, the past few years have seen assassination attempts against a range of top political leaders in broad daylight.
In May, Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico — a populist leader in the style of Trump — was shot four times at close range by a lone wolf. He survived and promptly seized upon the assassination attempt to ramp up his attacks on the media, prosecutors and the opposition. If anything, it’s become about retribution against his enemies.
And as for all this could play out in the US, one has to only look back to 2018 for an eerie precedent with Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro, a political figure who is almost a cookie-cutter Latin American version of Trump.
The far-right leader was stabbed in the stomach at a campaign rally a month before elections. It was a defining moment that fired up his base and propelled him to power.
In a post on X, Bolsonaro — a staunch Trump supporter — told him ‘see you on inauguration day.’ — Flavia Krause-Jackson
Trump gestures to the crowd as he is ushered offstage. Photographer: Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images
The seconds following the attempt on Trump’s life were marked with more confusion and bewilderment than chaos, Bloomberg’s Hadriana Lowenkron describes. She found herself among a sea of MAGA supporters at the rally in Butler, Pennsylvania — one of the six critical swings states in the election. People were incredulous, others froze. By the time people realized what had happened, Trump had been whisked off stage.
Who was the attempted killer? The FBI identified the male suspect as Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, from Bethel Park, Pennsylvania, about an hour’s drive from the scene of the crime. He was killed on site after firing from an ‘elevated position’ at the outdoor rally. The incident is being treated as an assassination attempt, and a motive has yet to be determined. The New York Times pointed to him having been a registered Republican and not having a prior criminal record. Federal campaign-finance records also show he donated $15 to the Progressive Turnout Project, which aims to mobilize Democratic voters, in January 2021.
From Abraham Lincoln to John F. Kennedy, the assassination of a sitting US president has shaped US history. Trump was not in power, nor was he greatly injured. Nevertheless, you’d have to go back four decades to find something comparable. That would have been when John Hinckley, fixated with Jodie Foster after seeing her in Taxi Driver, shot Ronald Reagan in his first term outside the Hilton Hotel in Washington.
President John F. Kennedy is struck by an assassin's bullet as he travels through Dallas in a motorcade on Nov. 22, 1963. Photographer: Three Lions/Hulton Archive/Getty Images
World leaders responded with shock, widely condemning political violence and wishing Trump a speedy recovery. The billionaire mogul may be a divisive figure, but the leaders in the Group of Seven — who would prefer him not restored to the Oval Office — were unequivocal in expressing their dismay on what it means and where it could lead. Germany’s Olaf Scholz called the attack ‘despicable,’ and France’s Emmanuel Macron described it as ‘a tragedy for democracies.’
This is the first assassination attempt on a US presidential candidate unfolding in real time under the glare of social media. And seconds after Trump was escorted offstage, posts and clips went into overdrive — and so did disinformation with several unfounded claims about the event swirling on Elon Musk’s X, along with Telegram and Gab.
The Republican National Convention looms and that was going to be Trump’s coronation as the formal Republican nominee. One can only imagine what the atmosphere at the convention starting tomorrow will be given the cult of personality around the former president. He plans to attend, a day after the attempted shooting. Expect tight security to be even tighter, and the atmosphere febrile.
Elon Musk, the world’s richest person, posted a message on X that said: ‘I fully endorse President Trump and hope for his rapid recovery.’ Musk donated to a super political action committee working to elect Trump to the White House, sources say. While it’s unclear how much he has given, they characterized the figure as a sizable amount.
Investors will initially favor traditional haven assets and perhaps lean into trades most linked to Trump’s chances of winning with Democrats agonizing over Biden’s viability to stay in the race. There is little precedent for events like those in Pennsylvania. When Reagan was shot four decades ago, the stock market dipped before closing early. The next day, March 31, 1981, the S&P 500 rose over 1%.” [Bloomberg]
America, campaign transformed
Photo illustration: Aïda Amer/Axios. Photo: Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images
America is reeling.
“The attempted assassination of Donald Trump, 115 days before Election Day, has ushered in a dark new chapter of political violence — and redefined a campaign already packed with historic firsts, Axios' Zachary Basu writes.
Why it matters: On the eve of a Republican National Convention built on themes of victimhood and political persecution, Trump came inches — literally — from martyrdom.
Republicans couldn't ask for more of a contrast, with President Biden spending the last two weeks in a standoff with Democrats who fear he's too feeble to campaign effectively.
Trump, who said on Truth Social that he felt the bullet ‘ripping through’ his skin, will be welcomed in Milwaukee tomorrow as a hero, a fighter — even, to elements of his evangelical base, a messiah.
The images from the shooting, plastered on front pages around the world this morning, became iconic in real time.
With blood dripping from his right ear, Trump was captured by photographers pumping a defiant fist to shell-shocked supporters as he was swarmed by Secret Service agents.
‘Fight...fight...fight!’ the indignant former president appeared to shout as he was shuttled away from the crime scene, where two people, including the shooter, were left dead.
Trump's first dispatch after the shooting, at 8:42 p.m. ET. Via Truth Social
The big picture: Despite swift condemnation by Biden and other top Democrats, the assassination attempt will turbocharge the persecution narrative Trump has placed at the center of his campaign.
‘In the end, they're not coming after me. They're coming after you — and I'm just standing in their way,’ Trump told supporters after his first federal indictment last summer.
The quote is the main headline on his campaign homepage and is plastered on a wall of Milwaukee's Fiserv Forum, the GOP convention's main hall.
Trump's campaign already has cast this election as existential. The assassination attempt undoubtedly will lead to a surge in donations — especially with the massive spotlight on the RNC this week.
Trump ‘will be greeted as a kind of martyr of this event, and I think it could be angrier or it could be more somber,’ former Obama strategist David Axelrod said on CNN. ‘But it's certainly not going to be the same.’
The Secret Service tends to Trump onstage. Photo: Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images
Between the lines: Some Democrats have been quick to point out that Trump has used extreme rhetoric and downplayed political violence for years, including the Jan. 6 Capitol riot and the attack on Paul Pelosi, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's husband.
Many Republicans blamed the violence on Biden and his allies, arguing that sustained attacks on Trump as a threat to democracy have created a toxic environment. They pointed to a comment Biden made to donors on July 8: ‘It's time to put Trump in the bullseye.’ (AP)
Both Trump and Biden will now face pressure to dial down the temperature ahead of an election that has transformed the country into a tinderbox.
What to watch: The biggest electoral impact could come courtesy of low-information and politically disengaged Americans, who are expected to make up a decisive voting bloc.
The attempted assassination was so shocking that it immediately cut through a wide range of cultural and digital bubbles, drawing reactions from influencers, athletes and CEOs.
Elon Musk immediately endorsed Trump in a post that racked up more than 125 million views on X.
YouTuber Jake Paul, who has legions of young followers, tweeted: ‘If it isn't apparent enough who God wants to win. When you try and kill God's angels and saviors of the world it just makes them bigger.’ [Axios]
Biden's new test
Photo illustration: Aïda Amer/Axios. Photo: Samuel Corum/AFP via Getty Images
“The Biden campaign said it's ‘pausing all outbound communications and working to pull down our television ads as quickly as possible.’
Why it matters: How the president restarts his campaign is a much harder call, Axios' Hans Nichols writes.
Advisers say Biden's response to the shocking assassination attempt gives him an opening to try to lower the overall temperature in the country.
It could reinvigorate his presidency, and quell criticism from elected Democrats that he isn't up to the job.
Behind the scenes: Before the shooting, Biden advisers were unanimous that he needs to take his fight directly to Trump.
Biden has made combating political extremism the central plank of his campaign, repeatedly telling supporters that Trump's response to far-right extremism in Charlottesville, Virginia, compelled him to run.
That's a tougher case to make against a man who came within millimeters of losing his life.
There's now a broad recognition that Biden is facing a delicate balancing act: He must continue to warn that Trump is a threat to democracy, while acknowledging the threat to Trump's life.
Biden eventually connected with Trump last night, and returned to the White House from Delaware past midnight. Biden's first inclination, advisers said, was to gather more information before addressing the nation.
When he did, he made a point of trying to reach out to his rival, calling him ‘Donald.’
The bottom line: Republicans are confident the shooting — and Trump's defiant raised fist — will benefit them.
Democrats cautioned it's too early to draw easy conclusions about political implications.” [Axios]
What we know
Photo: Evan Vucci/AP
“AP's Evan Vucci — who took the photo above, and the instantly iconic image of Trump with flag and fist — told CNN's Kasie Hunt this morning:
‘I covered Iraq and Afghanistan, so I've been in these situations before. ... As a still photographer, I don't get a second chance.’
At an overnight news conference, the FBI officially labeled the attack an ‘assassination attempt,’ but said a motive hasn't been determined.
A rally attendee and the suspected shooter have died, and two spectators were critically injured, the Secret Service says.
AP reports the shooter was killed by members of the Secret Service counterassault team. The heavily armed tactical team confronts active threats, while other agents focus on evacuating the protectee.
The apparent gunman ‘fired multiple shots toward the stage from an elevated position outside of the rally venue,’ per the Secret Service.
The FBI identified him as Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, of Bethel Park, Pa.
House Republican leaders vowed to investigate the incident, requesting a briefing and hearing with the head of the Secret Service.
Map: CNN via Kaitlan Collins
The shooter was able to get astonishingly close to the stage where former President Trump was speaking, according to an AP analysis of more than a dozen videos and photos taken at the Trump rally, as well as satellite imagery.
A video posted to social media, and geolocated by AP, shows the body of a man wearing gray camouflage lying motionless on the roof of a manufacturing plant just north of the Butler Farm Show grounds, where Trump's rally was held.
The roof was less than 150 yards from where Trump was speaking.
Front pages of today's N.Y. Times, Washington Post.
For history ... 6:16 p.m. ET:
AP-US--APNewsAlert
BUTLER, Pa. (AP) — Donald Trump escorted off stage by Secret Service during rally after loud noises ring out in crowd.
Biden: ‘We cannot be like this’
President Biden speaks last night in Rehoboth Beach, Del. Photo: Tom Brenner/Reuters
“President Biden, speaking on-camera at 8:13 p.m. ET in Rehoboth Beach, Del.: ‘I have tried to get ahold of Donald. He's with his doctors. ... [A]pparently he's doing well. I plan on talking to him shortly, I hope, when I get back to the telephone.’
‘Look, there is no place in America for this kind of violence. It's sick. It's sick. It's one of the reasons why we have to unite this country. We cannot allow for this to be happening. We cannot be like this. We cannot condone this.’
‘T]he bottom line is that ... the Trump rally was a rally that ... should have been able to ... be conducted peacefully without any problem. ... [E]verybody — everybody must condemn it. Everybody.’ Transcript.
Via X [Axios]
Trumpworld pride, rage
“Chris LaCivita, a Pittsburgh native and combat-wounded Marine, is one of two leaders of former President Trump's campaign, along with Susie Wiles. Wiles and LaCivita said in a statement last night:
‘President Trump is doing well and grateful to law enforcement and first responders for their fast action. President Trump looks forward to joining you all in Milwaukee as we proceed with our convention to nominate him to serve as the 47th President of the United States. As our party's nominee, President Trump will continue to share his vision to Make America Great Again.’
Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio) is one of the three finalists to be Trump's V.P., along with North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum and Sen Marco Rubio (R-Fla.).” [Axios]
Exercise guru Richard Simmons found dead at age 76
Exercise guru Richard Simmons has died at his home in Hollywood at the age of 76 on Saturday morning. He recently told PEOPLE that he was feeling good.
READ MORE at USA Today
Ruth Westheimer Gabby Jones for The New York Times
“Lives Lived: Ruth Westheimer, the grandmotherly psychologist known as “Dr. Ruth,” became America’s best-known sex counselor with her frank, funny and taboo-breaking radio and television programs. She died at 96.” [New York Times]
THE WEEK AHEAD
What to Watch For
“The Wimbledon men’s final is today. Carlos Alcaraz will play against Novak Djokovic.
Two soccer tournaments end today: Euro 2024, where the final is Spain vs. England, and the Copa América, where it’s Argentina vs. Colombia.
The Republican National Convention begins tomorrow in Minneapolis.
Rwanda votes in its presidential election tomorrow.
M.L.B.’s Home Run Derby is tomorrow, and the All-Star Game is on Tuesday.
Nominations for the Emmy Awards are announced on Wednesday.
The W.N.B.A.’s All-Star Game is on Friday.” [New York Times]