US - Shots fired at Donald Trump rally in Pennsylvania as former president is seen with blood across his face, 13 July 2024

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This is all very disturbing and I fear it will beget more violence. I hope Trump makes a full recovery. I’m sure it was very frightening, hence his angrily telling the audience to “fight.” I hope he will deescalate in future comments. Words have power, as Tricia so often says. Both sides speaking calmly can go a long way toward promoting peace and heading off violence. But of course there are always those who will choose violence.

I remember when Bobby Kennedy was gunned down after winning the California primary in 1968. That had been a volatile campaign with Lyndon Johnson deciding not to run, Hubert Humphrey stepping in, peace candidate Eugene Mc Carthy running, and on the day Martin Luther King was assasinated, Bobby Kennedy said this:

“What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence and lawlessness, but is love, and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country, whether they be white or whether they be black. ... let us dedicate ourselves to what the Greeks wrote so many years ago: to tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of this world. Let us dedicate ourselves to that, and say a prayer for our country and for our people.”[30]

Not long before Bobby Kennedy was killed he gave a speech at U.C. Davis near Sacramento, the state capitol. My husband was a local newspaper photographer and had the opportunity to take photos from close vantage points, so Kennedy’s murder hit us hard. We were in our early 20’s and it seemed that the world was going mad. Now, as we edge toward 80, it’s going mad again. Bobby Kennedy’s words are still as true now as they were then.

JMO
 
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Still wouldn’t it get their attention to see someone on a roof?

This video at about 1:43 clearly shows the counter sniper watching him. He would categorically have been able to see a rifle!

Why didn't he shoot him?
 
SBM
BBM

I think so, too. Especially given that we've seen photos of the shooter on the roof getting ready to shoot, and we know police sharpshooters on another roof killed him after he fired.

That means police or SS should have spotted and taken him out before he could fire.
It is hard to believe the elite Secret Service could be so incompetent.

No wonder so many are thinking conspiracy.
 
Secret Service had one job last night - and failed spectacularly

Frank Gardner
Security correspondent

The FBI may be leading the investigation into how this could have happened, but the finger of blame points clearly at the Secret Service.

They have one job – to protect America’s presidents, both current and former – and in that they failed spectacularly last night.

It has been 43 years since the last assassination attempt on a serving US president when Ronald Reagan was shot in the lung but survived.

Today US politicians, and the public, want to know how a would-be assassin was able to crawl onto a rooftop vantage point, armed with a rifle and loose off four shots towards the podium, all in an area that was supposed to have been cleared.

The investigation already underway involves the FBI, the Secret Service and the Department of Homeland Security.

The Director of the Secret Service, Kimberly Cheatle, has been summoned to testify before the US House of Representatives on 22 July.

 
11m ago

It is 'surprising' the gunman was able to open fire on the stage before Secret Service killed him, FBI special agent says

An Associated Press analysis of more than a dozen videos and photos from the scene of the Donald Trump rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, as well as satellite imagery of the site, shows the alleged shooter was able to get astonishingly close to the stage.

The roof where the body lay was less than 150 meters from where Trump was speaking. For reference, 150 meters is a distance at which US army recruits must hit a scaled human-sized silhouette to qualify with the M-16 rifle. The AR-15, like the shooter at the Trump rally had, is the semi-automatic civilian version of the military M-16.

Asked at a press conference whether law enforcement did not know the shooter was on the roof until he began firing, Kevin Rojek, the special agent in charge of the FBI’s Pittsburgh Field Office, responded that “that is our assessment at this time”.

“It is surprising” that the gunman was able to open fire on the stage before the Secret Service killed him, he said.

 

LE evacuated neighbors of the shooter's parents in the middle of the night and told them they could not return until noon on Sunday as they executed a search warrant on the family home of the shooter on Milford Dr in Bethel Park, and conducted a bomb sweep of the neighborhood.
 
"We do not believe that the attempt to eliminate and assassinate Trump was organised by the current authorities," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.

"But the atmosphere around candidate Trump...provoked what America is confronting today.

"After numerous attempts to remove candidate Trump from the political arena - using first legal tools, the courts, prosecutors, attempts to politically discredit and compromise the candidate - it was obvious to all outside observers that his life was in danger."

 
"We do not believe that the attempt to eliminate and assassinate Trump was organised by the current authorities," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.

"But the atmosphere around candidate Trump...provoked what America is confronting today.

"After numerous attempts to remove candidate Trump from the political arena - using first legal tools, the courts, prosecutors, attempts to politically discredit and compromise the candidate - it was obvious to all outside observers that his life was in danger."

So, in three paragraphs he goes from:

We don't think Biden did it

To

Biden did it
 
Authorities have identified the gunman involved in the attack against former US President Donald Trump on Saturday as 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks, who was killed by Secret Service agents at the scene after the shooting.

The FBI named Crooks in a statement early Sunday morning, identifying him as a resident of Bethel Park, Pennsylvania – about 35 miles south of Butler, where Trump was holding his rally.

Crooks graduated from Bethel Park High School in 2022, according to a local media report and a video of the school’s commencement.

He was registered to vote as a Republican, according to a listing in Pennsylvania’s voter database that matched his name, age, and a Bethel Park address that law enforcement was searching Saturday night and is linked to Crooks in public records.

This year’s presidential election would have been the first he was old enough to vote in.
 

LE evacuated neighbors of the shooter's parents in the middle of the night and told them they could not return until noon on Sunday as they executed a search warrant on the family home of the shooter on Milford Dr in Bethel Park, and conducted a bomb sweep of the neighborhood.
Did he have Adam Lanza as a role model?
 
His father, Matthew Crooks, 53, told CNN he was trying to figure out 'what the hell is going on' but would 'wait until I talk to law enforcement' before speaking.

State voter records show Crooks was a registered Republican. According to US media, when he was aged 17 he donated $15 to the liberal ActBlue political action committee on January 20, 2021 - Biden's Inauguration Day.

Crooks was a registered Republican, the Associated Press reported. The election in November would have been the first time he had been old enough to vote in a presidential race.

But in 2021, Crooks, then 17, made a $15 donation to a political action committee that raises funds for left-leaning and Democratic politicians, the news agency reported, according to a Federal Election Commission filing
It's entirely possible that he is a Republican who doesn't like Trump. Just because you belong to one party doesn't mean you automatically approve of the leading candidates.

We don't know enough yet, imo. But, from what we do know, I don't think this 20yo was part of any powerful conspiracy. At this point, I am assuming he was a lone wolf, though possibly influenced by online communities, imo.

I also predict people will still believe conspiracy theories.

jmo
 
Watching GMA, they are saying he appears to have acted alone. But a senatorial candidate and first row witness, Dave McCormick, said he felt shots may have come from 2 directions.
Never take people's assessments on where bullets are coming from as being correct. The acoustics are such that you cannot tell. It sounds different to people in different positions.
 
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