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U.S. presidential favourite Donald Trump, has narrowly survived an assassination attempt while speaking at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.

Donald J. Trump, 45th President of the United States, has narrowly survived an attempted assassination during a Saturday afternoon election rally in the city of Butler, Pennsylvania.

Trump had just begun his campaign speech when at approximately 6.15 p.m. multiple gunshots rang out. Video footage shows the former president grasping his ear and checking for blood before dropping to the ground.

Potentially shots fired at Trump at his rally in PA.

Later in the clip, when he is back on his feet, he has blood on his face. pic.twitter.com/hF5gbWPWRO

— jordan (@JordanUhl) July 13, 2024

Secret Service agents immediately rushed the stage to protect the Presidential frontrunner.

As Trump stood to his feet, blood could be seen on his right ear and cheek, and he was heard telling agents to “wait” before he raised a fist, defiantly shouting “fight!” to cheering crowds, before being escorted from the stage.

One attendee at the rally was shot and killed, and two more were critically injured.

The shooter was also killed by Secret Service agents.

This is the first assassination attempt on a U.S. president or presidential candidate since Ronald Reagan survived a gunshot to the chest on March 30, 1981, in Washington, D.C.

Mere seconds before Trump was shot, he could be seen turning his head to a different section of the crowd, a decision that likely spared his life, and that has prompted many social media users to credit divine intervention for the near miss.

The difference between life and death: an inch. You witnessed a miracle. pic.twitter.com/Gyc1EWozZh

— Caldron Pool (@CaldronPool) July 14, 2024

Several hours after the assassination attempt, the Republican presidential nominee posted the following statement on Truth Social:

I want to thank The United States Secret Service, and all of Law Enforcement, for their rapid response on the shooting that just took place in Butler, Pennsylvania. Most importantly, I want to extend my condolences to the family of the person at the Rally who was killed, and also to the family of another person that was badly injured. It is incredible that such an act can take place in our Country. Nothing is known at this time about the shooter, who is now dead. I was shot with a bullet that pierced the upper part of my right ear. I knew immediately that something was wrong in that I heard a whizzing sound, shots, and immediately felt the bullet ripping through the skin. Much bleeding took place, so I realized then what was happening. GOD BLESS AMERICA!

A remarkable photo captured by my former White House Press Corps colleague Doug Mills.

Zoom in right above President Trump’s shoulder and you’ll see a bullet flying in the air to the right of President Trump’s head following an attempted assassination. pic.twitter.com/FqmLBCytoW

— Haraz N. Ghanbari (@HarazGhanbari) July 14, 2024

The Identity of the Shooter

Little is yet known about the shooter, identified by the New York Post as Thomas Matthew Crooks of Bethel Park, Pennsylvania, who according to Secret Service fired a rifle from “an elevated position outside of the rally venue.”

The Post has also reported that Crooks had scaled the roof of a nearby industrial facility with an apparently clear line of sight to the event stage, and located approximately 120 metres from his target.

Shooter was about 150 yards from Trump on a rooftop with a direct line of sight to the stage.

It defies every security protocol ever written that this rooftop was not secured, and law enforcement personnel were not standing up there. pic.twitter.com/a1WfwMRZPA

— John Cardillo (@johncardillo) July 14, 2024

How the hell was such an obvious line of sight not secured? pic.twitter.com/JuUBBC8xHi

— Beff – e/acc (@BasedBeffJezos) July 14, 2024

The U.S. Secret Service is tasked with security at presidential campaign events, which includes locking down access to nearby rooftops.

Speculation still surrounds the glaring security failure.

One eyewitness interviewed by the BBC claims to have seen the shooter climbing the structure and notifying police who failed to take action.

“The guy army crawled up the building 50 feet from us… he had a rifle,” the witness explained.

“I’m standing there pointing at him for two to three minutes, and the Secret Service is looking at us.”

“Next thing you know, five shots rang out.”

“Secret Service blew his head off.”

“They crawled up on the roof and made sure he was dead.”

this BBC interview with a guy outside the security perimeter who claims he saw the shooter before he fired is absolutely wild pic.twitter.com/vJpKZTxSAe

— Warren Sharp (@SharpFootball) July 13, 2024

🚨 JUST NOW: Alleged moment of law enforcement standing over the deceased shooter. pic.twitter.com/JXJVKC6Zt2

— Brandon Tatum (@TheOfficerTatum) July 14, 2024

Federalist CEO Sean Davis reporting that Trump’s security detail “has been asking for beefed up protection and resources for weeks, but has been rebuffed time and again by Biden’s DHS [Department of Homeland Security].”

In April, leading Democrat lawmakers introduced legislation that would strip Secret Service protection from convicted felons, in a bill that was squarely aimed at former President Trump.

The Biden administration has repeatedly denied Secret Service protection to Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who is currently polling third behind Trump and Biden, despite the agency determining that he is at an elevated “risk for adverse attention”.

President Biden and the Media Respond

An hour and a half after the attempted assassination, President Joe Biden released a statement, saying he is “grateful to hear that [Donald Trump] is safe and doing well”.

“I’m praying for him and his family and for all those who were at the rally, as we await further information,” he added.

“There’s no place for this kind of violence in America. We must unite as one nation to condemn it.”

During a subsequent press briefing, Biden stopped short of calling the shooting an assassination, saying “I have an opinion but I don’t have any facts”.

At the time, multiple news outlets were reporting that the shooting was being investigated as an attempted assassination.

Biden declines to call it what it was: an assassination attempt. pic.twitter.com/gruAazUSTH

— Techno Fog (@Techno_Fog) July 14, 2024

In the wake of Saturday afternoon’s events, America’s national media mostly avoided mention of Trump’s attempted assassination and instead chose headlines that depicted Trump as ill or clumsy.

According to CNN, ‘Secret Service rushes Trump off stage after he falls at rally’. In another headline, the outlet wrote, Trump injured in incident at rally’.

Both NBC News and USA Today depicted the gunshots as “loud noises”, publishing articles entitled ‘Secret Service rushes Trump off stage after popping noises heard at his Pennsylvania rally’ and ‘Trump removed from stage by Secret Service after loud noises startles former president, crowd’ respectively.

In one of its headlines, the New York Times left the impression that the shooting might have resulted from a quarrel among Trump supporters, writing, ‘Suspect Killed and One Dead in Shooting at Trump Rally’.

For its part, Newsweek used the incident to frame Trump supporters as the guilty party: ‘MAGA responds with outrage after Donald Trump injured at Pennsylvania rally’.

Most of the partisan headlines have since apparently been scrubbed from the internet.

The Rhetoric Behind Trump’s Assassination Attempt

While U.S. lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have condemned the attempted assassination of Donald Trump, many critics have pointed to the Trump-is-Hitler rhetoric commonplace in the American media since Trump’s first term in office.

J.D. Vance, a top contender for Trump’s Vice President pick, wrote, “Today is not just some isolated incident. The central premise of the Biden campaign is that President Donald Trump is an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs.”

“That rhetoric led directly to President Trump’s attempted assassination.”

Commentator and cartoonist Scott Adams opined that “The Biden campaign is pausing its ad campaign that was obviously designed to get Trump assassinated.”

“The Fine People Hoax probably just killed one spectator, injured another, and almost ended Trump,” he added, in reference to the factually incorrect claim that the former president called neo-Nazis and white supremacists “very fine people” in 2017.

Others posted screenshots of President Biden’s September blood-red-backdrop speech in 2022 in which he referred to his political opponents as “MAGA extremists” and “fascists”.

Still others pointed to a front page of The New Republic magazine, published just a week ago, that visually depicted Donald Trump as Adolf Hitler, and calling for Americans to “fight” what they labelled Trump’s “American fascism”.

We chose the cover image, based on a well-known 1932 Hitler campaign poster, for a precise reason: that anyone transported back to 1932 Germany could very, very easily have explained away Herr Hitler’s excesses and been persuaded that his critics were going overboard. After all,… pic.twitter.com/x79Rkh86O1

— The New Republic (@newrepublic) July 7, 2024

More humorously, The Babylon Bee published a satirical piece under the title, ‘Party That Called Trump “Hitler” For 8 Years Shocked As Someone Tries To Assassinate Him’.

Australian news site Caldron Pool shared a compilation video of Democrat leaders calling for violence against Republicans.

What did they think would happen? pic.twitter.com/W5JIsIexTM

— Caldron Pool (@CaldronPool) July 13, 2024

Editorial Note: The Canberra Declaration team urges all Australians to pray for Donald Trump and his family and for the United States in this difficult hour.