Whatever damn fool did this has just made the situation about a million times worse. I don’t give a shit who did this, it was the worst move you could have made at the worst time you could have made it.
And those of you jumping to immediate conspiracy theories need to stop and think about how much we tend to make fun of Republicans for doing literally the exact same thing. Us spending the next 3 days circlejerking each other off our own bullshit conspiracy theories isn’t gonna help the situation, its just gonna make us all look like a bunch of hypocrites. Wait a few days, get whatever info they are willing to give us, and then try to figure out what happened. If it still looks fake or like a false flag or whatever the fuck after that point, whatever. but for gods sake use some critical thinking to get there instead of jumping to conclusions with no info.
For what its worth, I am extremely anti-trump, I am scared shitless of what will happen should he win a second term. But dear god, please think about the way you all are acting, when you act like the same kind of psychopaths you claim to stand against it is not a good look. please consider that before you post.
You're absolutely right. However, they were going to find a reason regardless, since violence was always their end goal.
If it wasn't this idiot it would have been something else: Trump losing the election is any easy one. The "Boogaloo crowd" resorting to violence was inevitable -- the only thing that has changed is we can no longer pretend it's tomorrow's problem.
Seriously. The last 8 years have shown us that 99% of people are pretty rock solid of who they are voting for. Attempting to overthrow the government moves the needle 0.1%
I could not agree more. Aren’t we supposed to be the ones who care about democracy, about humanity, and about logic and reason?
Some innocent bystander died, and their family is going to sleep tonight without their loved one alive for the first time. Others are waiting anxiously in hospitals while their innocent loved ones are in critical condition. Fuck Trump, but no one deserves to have been killed or maimed for being at one of his rallies.
Yeah the conspiracies in this thread are cringe. Is it really such a stretch to think that a very hated individual was the target of a botched assassination? No, can't be! Must be a false flag!
Everyone needs to calm the fuck down. This was quite clearly real and not staged.
I'm no conspiracy guy... But goddam they sure did take their pick of pictures to release showing a bloody trump with fist up in front of a flag that just happened to be waving there. If nothing else, GOP and FOX will say the libs tried to kill Trump, not ' the assassin' tried, but the libs tried. And let the fundraising begin for the GOP
It was a political rally. Those are always done with flags. It was a political rally, there were a bunch of cameras running. Many of which were taking dozens if pictures every second; there wasn't even anything to release there, the media was the ones taking the video. Of course the most striking image would be the one to catch on, and from watching a video of it, that seems like the obvious moment to take.
It was some fast thinking and good political instinct (although bad survival instinct) to make a photo perfect pose while getting escorted out by secret service.
Should we continually be tolerant of the intolerance that wishes to do violence to us and/or destroy our democracy? I’m not advocating for assassination of anyone, but when something like this happens I’m not surprised, nor do I feel much sympathy for a rapist, fraudster, wife beater, advocate of overturning a legitimate election, child beater, person who dog whistles violence against people who don’t support him…etc.
Yeah, the worst thing is that he’s going to capitalize on this. He will make every effort to use it for his personal gain, and being as reactionary as he is I wouldn’t be surprised if he dog whistled his followers into some violence. I bet he’s glad he got shot. He’s going to milk it for everything it’s worth.
But one thing I am in complete agreement with is making everything a conspiracy. Damn it’s getting old. Epstein, Boeing, this… ridiculous.
I've never been to the US but these goings on concern all of us. Like it or not the US has a lot of influence. It's position on China, Russia, Climate Change, et cetera, will set the standard for half the globe.
Most people are treating this like Abraham Lincoln or Martin Luther King shooting, but it's not. These people were liked and generally seen as good.
This shooting is more akin to a Hitler shooting, which he had survived many, and was not liked. This is not a martyr situation and most are not going to change their feels for trump.
It fucking blows my mind people jump straight into, "well what if it's staged." What does that fucking solve? Questions about answering questions and those people act like they know something or they are more aware than the rest of the world when the big fucking picture is being missed and it is right in front of their fucking face. This only fuels repubs saying, "it was an assassination attempt by the left wing."
Trump might be the future dictator of the US but this is just far more ammunition for the very guns that just tried to kill him and this is lighter fluid.
This shit is fucking nuts and none of it is good for anyone stop fucking trying to pull the video apart and going, "see see, it's fake." It doesn't fucking matter because the damage is done.
I always like to say to conspiracy theorists. If COVID was started by China prove to me it wasn't started by the U.S.
Watch the video. This is a false flag and a lazy one at that. Dude stabbed himself in the ear with a pin, got a group hug on stage and started FIST PUMPING from inside a ring of special service. Head out, fist up, like "HERE I AM. IM NO COWARD". You know who does that? Actors. Who know the script and have rehearsed the scene.
Moon landing is fake.
Earth is flat.
9/11 was CGI.
My wife cheating on me was gen AI.
The blood on Trump's ear was an Instagram filter.
Nothing's real anymore.
God, you're so smart. You're just the smartest person, you know that? Everyone likes you for how smart you are. I'd like to start an applause for this hero, if everyone doesn't mind.
The amount of folks in here that seem to be okay with someone being assassinated is disgusting. This is not how sane people get things accomplished. Shameful.
I loathe Trump, but man, the hypocrisy in the air is stifling.
Ehh. On one hand, of course, and it’s not good for your psyche to revel in the idea of death.
Buuut, when the context of the discussion is global politics, human lives are put through the wood chipper by the thousands because of what does or doesn’t happen. So the scale of severity we’re working with is just different.
You're "own" isn't an own at all. Prayers are important. Especially for the now deceased shooter, his family and the victims (including Trump). Lots of callousness in this thread.
This was the worst possible outcome. Unless someone intends on finishing the job it may as well be his election now.
He'll spend the rest of the election telling people how strong he is, how Biden could not have survived and he'll use the attack to validate all his claims of Democrat corruption/Republican righteousness.
It seem like he was hit. Blood was on his right ear in one shot. Unclear if that's because he was hit there or if he touched it after touching something else bloody.
He was escorted away on foot with secret service.
Edit: reports that one bystander and the shooter are now dead.
Claims the suspect was a man named Mark Violets. (This ID may be wrong no official sources covering this)
Edit: his base is going to be insanely fired up now. I'm genuinely scared about what's going to happen now. I can see it already "the deep state tried to stop him and God saved Trump!" ugh.
Yeah this is not going to result in anything good. I keep thinking about what's happened after Robert Fico got shot, basically how it's being used as a confirmation of everything bad his supporters believe about his opponents and as a justification for further sliding into authoritarianism
Why were people Scared? Guns are SAFE! Guns are SO SAFE that they're trying to FORCE them into Schools! It would be INCREDIBLY FUCKED UP if the same people who RAN AWAY from the Guns want to FORCE OUR KIDS into that Situation EVERY DAY!
There were two dudes that didn't even know what was happening. Like one guy looked like he was the offensive head coach waiting for the referee/official to announce the reason for the flag on the play and the other guy was wondering if Slash from Guns N Roses was coming out.
So 3 shots fired (rest were more rapid, so looked like SS responding), 2 people died, only trump get out of it without any major issue. A grazed ear implies that he survived by mere centimeters.
Then when going to the car he is mouthing "fight, fight, fight". I'm sorry, but this is a very odd reaction for somebody that nearly died today.
He was trying to get people rioting on J6 (but that while succeeded, fortunately got stopped), he tried people to riot when he had criminal trial (didn't work at all), and now in the heat of the moment, he thought that was perfect time to try it again?
For sake of everyone I hope this will also be unsuccessful. I'm glad Democrats quickly condemned this (this is something we quite missed in 2017-2020 when similar events happened).
Okay, I’ve gotten over my initial shock of this. Clearly this shouldn’t have happened but this is the same guy who said his VP should be hanged, and he himself has called for political violence against his enemies many, many times
I am glad that decent politicians are condemning this attack, as they should. But I think it makes sense to put this incident in perspective, Trump has promoted and supported political violence himself many times before this, including on Jan 6th
Ugh, how many times has this happened already? People were getting spooked by the heritage foundation yucky shit and now they’ll get distracted by this nonsense
I’m afraid of the unhinged violence Trump will use this for in the future. His supporters will have every justification in their mind to do whatever they want to anyone who disagrees with them.
Yup. While it wasn't a good decision on the shooter's part (as the GOP will be fired up even more now), I also cannot find any sympathy for Trump in this. I hope he got scared shitless.
It’s because that human shaped walking mist of piss farts has never done an honest thing in his life. Don’t be so shocked that people will not believe this either. Right out of the gate there’s things that make it incredibly suspicious.
Please let the shooter be a white dude. If he is any minority group they're gonna be the first to get the supreme Court treatment when he takes power, which seems inevitable now.
That's because another time traveler was sent by the bad guys to stop him. But then another time traveler was sent to stop that dude. But he tripped up the first time traveler by accident. So the good guys sent another time traveler to stop their own man from messing up the original time traveler. But then the bad guys sent a time traveler, but he failed to materialize. So they tried again, but this dude actually caused the previous dude not to materialize. So they sent another to a more remote location, but his car broke down before he could make it. So they spent a lot of time training someone to fix ancient cars, but then when that dude arrived he nerded out too hard because the car they got was really cool. So they sent another, but this one was stopped by another traveler from the good guys. Turned out these dudes knew each other and played both sides to escape their distopian world and live in the past to grow old together.
About 10 minutes ago Wolf Blitzer was on a phone call interview with someone (I did not get the name), who was apparently sitting in the from row and this person claimed they though a General, some member of Trump's entourage, possibly another speaker at the event... he claimed they were shot in the head.
For those thinking this is staged, listen to the audio carefully. You can hear the impact of the bullets landing near the podium before you hear the sound of the bullet being fired. You can hear a distinct click just before each pop; because bullets typically travel faster than sound, this is accurate to what you would actually hear if you were being shot at. This seems like a detail that Trump's team would be too incompetent to have thought to account for.
They sound nothing like bullet impacts on anything.
It sounds tinny due to the audio being equalized for a speech in a large open noisy area.
The report that you hear afterward is the echo, the report, of the gunshot, as the sound is in a fairly large open area and it bounces/echoes through the environment.
This confirms that it is real gunshots, not bb guns as some people who have evidently never listened to footage of gunshots are claiming.
You may be right, but that final shot throws me off. It sounds like a different caliber round, and there's no click that comes before it, which makes me think the last shot was fired at the shooter by somebody else, instead of at the podium.
It wouldn't have to have been too far. Ever been to a baseball game and notice the delay between seeing the swing and hearing the crack of the bat from the stands? If you're seated behind the outfield, there's easily a longer delay in that scenario than what we can hear in the clip.
It sounds like roughly a quarter of a second between the click and the pop, so I imagine the shooter was less than a hundred yards away.
The final shot we hear also sounds like it came from a different gun, and there's no preceding click sound before it. That leads me to believe that shots at Trump were probably from somebody in the crowd, and security or another bystander fired one shot into the shooter. But that's just my hunch right now.
Shooter has been identified as Thomas Matthew Crooks. Some sources say he was affiliated with some anti-fascist group, and other places are saying he was a registered Republican.
Very much sounds like gunfire in the clip CNN is currently playing on repeat, it sounds like the report from fairly distant shots at least a few times as the audio seems to re equalize after he gets pulled down by Secret Service.
CNN had a reporter on scene, showing basically the area for the crowd, then an open area, then a highway or road of some kind, then with a maybe 20 or 30 story building in the background; she indicated basically possible gunshots from that direction.
This would have been basically to Trump's right, by the position he was facing, maybe 70 or 80 degrees to the right of the direction the podium faced.
As best I can tell, it looks like he initially got winged around his right ear? Then more shots are heard and he goes down and is tackled by Secret Service agents.
Its possible he may have just been winged, possible he took more rounds and it was not visible... he did get back up, apparently he got rushed to a motorcade and is presumably headed toward a hospital.
It seems to me to be astonishingly unlikely that a or multiple shooters could possibly have made these shots from inside the crowd without being basically murdered by them.
Update: Wolf is now interviewing someone who was apparently in the front row, and this person claims he saw or thought a General(?), one of Trump's entourage, was shot in the head.
This is extremely not good.
Update 2: Welp, apparently the shooter was inside the crowd, and he did get killed by the crowd.
Update 3: Wolf interviewing another attendee who claims two different calibers and directional sources of gunshots, they seem to think it is some kind of law enforcement shooting at the shooter.
Update 4: Shooter was apparently killed outside the event perimeter, by counter sniper fire according to whoever Wolf is talking to now. Apparently shooter was on some kind of single story building akin to a stable, though this is being described as preliminary and not definitive.
Ever noticed that every time the republicans look like they are doomed, immediately something progressively more implausible happens that swings the vote? And that it's usually fake or blown out of proportion by media?
This looks like just the most recent of a long list of ridiculous but effective marketing operations like the pizza gate.
Well, this likely cements Trump's win. It also sidelines the media pressure on Biden to step down. Trump gets a huge bump; Biden hits an iceberg. We are fucked.
I'm not sure why you're getting down-voted. Between the Immunity verdict and Project 2025, that's a very real possibility. Did people not see the first attempt on January 6th?
It's very sad to see people condoning this. I'm far from a Trump supporter, but this is unacceptable. If this was Biden being shot at, you'd all be saying "typical right wing, gun-toting nutjobs."
Plus what you fail to understand is that Trump being shot at is just further securing his presidency, and anyone who was previously on the fence will now be more inclined to vote for the person who was "shot at for his beliefs."
Works fine for me, try again. Also I suggest muting it after you hear the gunshots, there's some terrified screaming that put me on edge. (There's a few more gunshots fired more quickly after the first set, but other than that they sound the same.)
I don't think this will change much. Biden's response might. But politically, identity politics outweigh martyrdom in US. The right will get rightier and the left leftier. Most likely outcome IMO is emboldened like-actors on either side. Undecided voters could react maybe, but are they really that keyed in to be undecided in the first place?
Anyone got insights to a right-wing forum and what they’re saying? Blaming the libs? Advocating for violence? What conspiracies are they putting together?
Wouldnt it be crazy if trump had some life changing moment being shot and tries to turn his shit around. Totally not going to happrn, but the slim possibility is there.
I don't think this is will actually make Trump a martyr. The right has been minimizing their own violence so much, (Jan 6th, The attack on Pelosi, the Michigan state reps they sent death threats to, the Uvaldi School Massacre, the countless people Nazis stab or shoot every year) that they aren't going to easily be able to turn the public perception to believing that "THIS IS BEYOND THE PALE".
Even on 4chan's Nazi channel /pol/ a plurality of people are saying it's fake.
Strange. Crowd is packed right behind him and yet none of them seemed to have been hit. Guess they might just be blocked to the camera, other than that one dude squatting over the huddle being very helpful.
You can see some of the crowd looking in that direction, so that seems believable. They should probably work on their general survival instincts though, they're just meercatting off screen.
That image is not high enough quality to say that.
There is a noticably bloody area in is right upper earlobe that could be a chunk taken out by basically a 5.56 round, but again, its too crappy to be definitive.
Also this twitter poster claiming it is a bb gun is a fucking moron.
BB Guns do not have have an echoing report after the initial shot, as is easily audible from the shots that occur after the audio re equalizes when Trump goes down from the podium.
The audio sounds tinny and poppy because it is equalized for human voice in a large outdoor environment. A BB gun would not be audible whatsoever.
Biden can't withdraw from the race now. It will make him look guilt by association.
Edit: that was not well articulated. I don't claim Biden or the government organised this. Simply dump would exploit it to claim it as proof if Biden did stop running now.