SOURCES: ABC News, Forbes
The FBI has identified the shooter as 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks of Bethel Park, Pennsylvania. He was immediately killed, the FBI said.
What we know
- Former President Donald Trump was injured in an assassination attempt at a campaign rally yesterday in Butler, Pa. Trump, who emerged with a bloodied face, said he was shot in the ear and described a “whizzing sound” and a “bullet ripping through skin.”
- The FBI said the shooter, identified as 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks of Bethel Park, Pennsylvania, was immediately killed by the Secret Service. A motive is still not known.
- The shots at Trump were fired from an elevated position outside the Secret Service’s security perimeter for the venue. Sources said it was a semiautomatic rifle and law enforcement is investigating if the gun was purchased by the shooter’s father.
- A spectator was killed and two were critically injured in the shooting, the Secret Service said, although it did not provide further details about the victims.
TOPLINE
Top political figures on both sides of the aisle have urged calmer rhetoric in the wake of the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump, former First Lady Melania Trump has called for the country to “reunite” and legislators have moved to push for enhanced Secret Service protection for presidential candidates while investigators search for the motive behind Saturday evening’s shooting.
KEY FACTS
Reps. Ritchie Torres, D-N.Y., and Mike Lawler, R-N.Y., said Sunday they will introduce bipartisan legislation to give enhanced Secret Service protection to Trump, President Joe Biden and independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. this election cycle in the wake of Trump’s attempted assassination Saturday.
Former First Lady Melania Trump, who has rarely been seen by her husband’s side since he launched his presidential campaign in November of 2022, released a lengthy statement Sunday urging Americans to “reunite” and lessen the harsh political divides that have defined this presidential election cycle.
She urged the country to “remember that when the time comes to look beyond the left and the right, beyond the red and the blue, we all come from families with the passion to fight for a better life together, while we are here, in this earthly realm.”
The Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey announced it would be closed Sunday following the attack on Trump at his rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, after which he and his team flew to New Jersey.
House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., told NBC News on Sunday morning that it was important all Americans “treat one another with dignity and respect” while at the same time putting some blame for the events on Biden’s recent comments about his campaign strategy that included, “It’s time to put Trump in the bullseye.”
Johnson said he knows Biden “didn’t mean what is being implied there,” but “that kind of language on either side should be called out.”