MILWAUKEE (Reuters) -Donald Trump was in Milwaukee on Monday to make final preparations for the Republican presidential nomination later this week after narrowly escaping an assassination attempt that he said presented an opportunity to bring the country together.
Trump, 78, was holding a campaign rally on Saturday in Butler, Pennsylvania – a key state in the Nov. 5 election – when a 20-year-old man with an AR-15-style rifle got close enough to shoot at the former Republican president from a rooftop.
One shot hit Trump’s upper right ear, leaving his face streaked with blood, but he was not severely wounded.
“That reality is just setting in,” Trump told the Washington Examiner on Sunday. “I rarely look away from the crowd. Had I not done that in that moment, well, we would not be talking today, would we?”
One person in the crowd was killed and two others wounded before Secret Service agents fatally shot the suspect.
On Sunday, both Trump and President Joe Biden counseled calm and unity in a country whose a deep political divide has grown more pronounced during the presidential race.
“There is no place in America for this kind of violence, for any violence ever. Period. No exceptions,” he said. “We can’t allow this violence to be normalized.”
“The political rhetoric in this country has gotten very heated. It’s time to cool it down,” Biden said in a televised address from the Oval Office.
World leaders condemned the attack, with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer saying he was “appalled by the shocking scenes” and French President Emanuel Macron calling the assassination attempt “a tragedy for our democracies”.
Trump pumped his fist in the air several times on Sunday appearing to mouth the words “Fight! Fight! Fight!”, as he descended the stairs from his plane after arriving in Milwaukee, where he will accept his party’s formal nomination at the Republican National Convention on Thursday.
“This is a chance to bring the whole country, even the whole world, together. The speech will be a lot different, a lot different than it would’ve been two days ago,” Trump told the Washington Examiner.
“I want to try to unite our country,” the New York Post reported Trump saying during the same interview, conducted during the flight to Milwaukee. “But I don’t know if that’s possible. People are very divided.”
Biden, a Democrat, ordered an independent review of how the gunman, who was shot dead by agents moments after opening fire, could have taken up an elevated position so close to Trump, who as a former president has lifetime protection by the U.S. Secret Service.
Biden and Trump spoke to each other on Saturday night after the shooting.
The two are locked in a close election rematch, according to most opinion polls including by Reuters/Ipsos. The shooting on Saturday whipsawed discussion around the presidential campaign, which had been focused on whether Biden, 81, should drop out following a halting June 27 debate performance.
SUSPECT A NURSING HOME AIDE
The FBI identified Thomas Matthew Crooks of Bethel Park, Pennsylvania, as the suspect and said the shooting was being investigated as an attempted assassination.
FBI officials said on Sunday that the shooter acted alone.
The agency said it had yet to identify an ideology linked to the suspect or any indications of mental health issues or found any threatening language on the suspect’s social media accounts.
Crooks was a registered Republican, according to state voter records, and donated $15 to a Democratic political action committee when he was 17. At the time of the shooting, he was employed as a dietary aide at the Bethel Park Skilled Nursing and Rehabilitation Center, which said Crooks’ background check was clean.
The gun – an AR-style-5.56 caliber rifle – had been legally bought, said FBI officials, who believed it had been purchased by the suspect’s father.
The officials said “a suspicious device” was found in the suspect’s vehicle, which was inspected by bomb technicians and rendered safe.
The Secret Service denied accusations by some Trump supporters that it had rejected a campaign request for more security.
The shots on Saturday appeared to come from outside the area secured by the Secret Service, the agency said.
SPECTATOR KILLED PROTECTING FAMILY
The rally attendee killed on Saturday was identified by authorities as Corey Comperatore, 50, of Sarver, Pennsylvania. He died trying to protect his family from the hail of bullets, said Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro.
Two people wounded in the shooting were in a stable condition on Sunday. Pennsylvania State identified them as David Dutch, 57, of New Kensington, Pennsylvania and James Copenhaver, 74, of Moon Township, Pennsylvania.
The attack was the first shooting of a U.S. president or major party presidential candidate since the 1981 attempted assassination of Republican President Ronald Reagan.
(Reporting by Nathan Layne, Gabriella Borter and Soren Larson in Bethel Park, Pennsylvania; Additional reporting by Katharine Jackson, Sarah N. Lynch, Richard Cowan, Caitlin Webber, Nandita Bose, Ismail Shakil, Joseph Ax, Andrew Hay and Kanishka Singh; Writing by Frank McGurty, Scott Malone and Michelle Nichols; Editing by Lincoln Feast.)
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