A bloodied former U.S. President Donald Trump was whisked away by bodyguards after he was shot in his right ear at a campaign rally on July 13 in a dramatic assassination attempt just days ahead of the Republican National Convention.
The shooter was killed and at least one attendee was left dead, while two other spectators were seriously injured during the rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, the Secret Service said. The shooting was being investigated as an assassination attempt, FBI officials said.
The shooting – the first assassination attempt on a U.S. president or major party candidate since a lone gunman shot Republican President Ronald Reagan in 1981 – was certain to reverberate across the divided political landscape, less than four months before the Nov. 5 election rematch with President Joe Biden.
Biden, Trump’s election rival and the presumptive Democratic nominee, decried the incident, with the White House saying he had spoken with Trump. No details of the conversation were given.
“There’s no place in America for this kind of violence. It’s sick. It’s sick,” Biden told a news conference earlier. “We cannot allow for this to be happening. We cannot be like this. We cannot condone this.” (The Japan Times)