2024-07-14 03:43:25
Donald Trump is suspected of being shot at at a campaign event. All developments in the live blog.
4.30 am: Rep. Ronny Jackson (R-Texas) told Fox News that his nephew was grazed in the neck by a bullet at the Trump rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, VOA correspondent Steve Herman reports.
4.24 am: US President Joe Biden spoke personally with the Republican on the phone following the attack on his predecessor Donald Trump. The White House announced this without mentioning the content of the conversation. On Sunday, Biden will be informed by law enforcement authorities in the White House about the status of the investigation, it said.
4.25 am: What are the consequences of the assassination attempt on Donald Trump? “The mood in the country is already very tense,” reports t-online correspondent Bastian Brauns from the American capital Washington. There have long been fears that there could be a civil war. Some said that we should “expect the worst.” Some of the first statements by Republicans were worrying.
3.55 am: Despite the attack on their presidential candidate Donald Trump, the US Republicans want to hold the nominating convention in Milwaukee this week as planned. The party and Trump’s campaign team announced this in a joint statement. The Republicans will meet in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, for their nominating convention starting Monday to officially elect the 78-year-old as their presidential candidate.
3.10 am: According to the Secret Service, the suspected assassin fired several shots from an “elevated position” outside the Trump rally before U.S. Secret Service agents “neutralized” the shooter. “During former President Trump’s campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, on the evening of July 13 at approximately 6:15 p.m., a suspected shooter fired several shots at the stage from an elevated position outside the venue,” according to the Secret Service statement.
Videos on Platform X, apparently recorded by participants at the event, show a man lying lifeless on the roof of a kind of hall near the venue. A video from the event appears to show security snipers immediately opening fire from a roof behind Trump.
2.45 am: Presidential candidate Donald Trump has commented on the assassination attempt on him on social media. A bullet hit him in the upper part of his right ear. He does not yet know anything about the shooter. “I knew immediately that something was wrong because I heard a hissing sound, gunshots and immediately felt the bullet piercing the skin.” Trump continued: “It was bleeding profusely and that’s when I realized what was going on.”
2.31 am: Incumbent Joe Biden wants to speak to his predecessor personally as soon as possible. “I hope I can talk to him tonight,” Biden said in a statement made at short notice in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, where the Democrat was staying over the weekend.
2.24 am: The Secret Service and the local authorities in Pennsylvania are being criticized. A witness told the British TV station BBC that he had seen the shooter crawling onto the nearby roof minutes earlier and warned the police. But the officers did not react. Security expert Oliver Alexander writes on X: “I don’t understand how the Secret Service snipers didn’t see the attacker.”