‘We must unite’: Biden condemns ‘sick’ shooting attack on Trump at election rally
Congressional leaders, ex-presidents decry violence, as Trump’s allies put blame on Democrats’ rhetoric and ‘far-left lunatics’; Musk ‘fully’ endorses Trump, suggests conspiracy
United States President Joe Biden on Sunday called the apparent assassination attempt on Donald Trump “sick,” as some of the former president’s acolytes blamed Democrats for inciting the attack.
“I’m grateful to hear that he’s safe and doing well,” Biden said in a written statement about his rival in the upcoming US presidential election. “There’s no place for this kind of violence in America. We must unite as one nation to condemn it.”
Biden was at a church in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, when shots rang out at Trump’s election rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, piercing the former president’s right ear. Three spectators were critically injured, one of whom has succumbed to their wounds.
After releasing a written statement, Biden left Delaware in his motorcade and headed to a local police department to speak on camera about the issue. He said he had been fully briefed on the attack, thanking the US Secret Service for its fast response.
Asked whether he thought the shooting was an assassination attempt, Biden said, “I have an opinion, but I don’t have all the facts.”
The assailant, who was killed on the spot by the Secret Service, has since been identified by law enforcement as 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks from Bethel Park, Pennsylvania. His motive is unclear, though CNN said records showed he was a registered Republican.
Biden, whose campaign has suspended political ads in the wake of the attack, later spoke to Trump by phone, the White House said, but it did not elaborate on the call.
US Attorney General Merrick Garland confirmed in a statement that his office’s National Security Division was investigating the shooting along with the FBI, the Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms Bureau, the US Attorney of Pennsylvania’s Western District, the Secret Service, and local law enforcement in Butler.
“We will not tolerate violence of any kind, and violence like this is an attack on our democracy,” said Garland. “The Justice Department will bring every available resource to bear to this investigation.”
Alejandro Mayorkas, who heads the US Department of Homeland Security, also said that “DHS and the Secret Service are working with law enforcement partners to respond to and investigate the shooting.”
“We condemn this violence in the strongest possible terms and commend the Secret Service for their swift action today. We are engaged with President Biden, former President Trump, and their campaigns, and are taking every possible measure to ensure their safety and security. Maintaining the security of the Presidential candidates and their campaign events is one of our Department’s most vital priorities,” said Mayorkas.
Trump, who was briefly hospitalized and whose campaign said he is fine, extended his condolences to the families of those who were hit. “It is incredible that such an act can take place in our Country,” he wrote on social media.
“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,” Trump said, adding: “GOD BLESS AMERICA!”
US Vice President Kamala Harris said in a statement that she and husband Doug Emhoff were praying for Trump, “his family, and all those who have been injured and impacted by this senseless shooting.”
“We must all condemn this abhorrent act and do our part to ensure that it does not lead to more violence,” she added.
Mike Johnson, the Republican speaker of the US House of Representatives and an ally of Trump’s, said: “This horrific act of political violence at a peaceful campaign rally has no place in this country and should be unanimously and forcefully condemned.”
Johnson’s counterpart, Democratic House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, said he was “thankful for the decisive law enforcement response.”
“America is a democracy,” said Jeffries. “Political violence of any kind is never acceptable.”
Former Democratic House speaker Rep. Nancy Pelosi — whose husband Paul was bludgeoned at their home in California by a hammer-wielding assailant in 2022 — said: “As one whose family has been the victim of political violence, I know firsthand that political violence of any kind has no place in our society.”
“I thank God that former President Trump is safe,” said Pelosi, adding her prayers for the safety of “all those in attendance at the former President’s rally.”
US Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a Democrat, said that he was “horrified by what happened at the Trump rally in Pennsylvania and relieved that former President Trump is safe.”
“Political violence has no place in our country,” he added.
The Senate majority leader, Republican Mitch McConnell, also said he was “grateful that President Trump appears to be fine after a despicable attack on a peaceful rally.”
“Violence has no place in our politics,” he said.
The messages of concern and relief were mixed with accusations that Biden was responsible and at least one call that the criminal cases against Trump be stopped.
Trump is awaiting numerous trials, including for his attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election — which he lost to Biden — that culminated in the January 6, 2021, armed insurrection at the US Capitol.
Posting on X, Utah Republican Sen. Mike Lee called for “President Biden to immediately order that all federal criminal charges against President Trump be dropped, and to ask the governors of New York and Georgia to do the same.”
US Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio, once a fierce critic of Trump who has been touted as a possible running mate for the former president in the coming election, said that Sunday’s attack “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,” said Vance.
US Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, who was also briefly said to be considered as Trump’s vice presidential candidate, similarly claimed that “Democrats wanted this to happen.”
“They’ve wanted Trump gone for years and they’re prepared to do anything to make that happen,” said Greene, a well-known purveyor of conspiracy theories, sometimes with antisemitic overtones.
Rep. Steve Scalise, the number two House Republican, also laid the blame on Democrats, saying they had for weeks “been fueling ludicrous hysteria that Donald Trump winning reelection would be the end of democracy in America.”
“Clearly we’ve seen far-left lunatics act on violent rhetoric in the past,” said Scalise, who was shot in 2017 in an act of political violence. “This incendiary rhetoric must stop.”
Someone just tried to ASSASSINATE President Trump.
The Democrats and the media are to blame for every drop of blood spilled today.
For years and years, they’ve demonized him and his supporters.
Today, someone finally tried to take out the leader of our America First and the… pic.twitter.com/38cFXjQdwx
— Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene???????? (@RepMTG) July 13, 2024
Trump’s predecessors in the White House and his most recent challenger for the Republican nomination also issued statements.
“There is absolutely no place for political violence in our democracy,” said former Democratic president Barack Obama, Trump’s immediate predecessor. “[W]e should all be relieved that former President Trump wasn’t seriously hurt, and use this moment to recommit ourselves to civility and respect in our politics.”
George W. Bush, Obama’s Republican predecessor, said that he and his wife Laura were “grateful that President Trump is safe following the cowardly attack on his life. And we commend the men and women of the Secret Service for their speedy response.”
Nikki Haley, the Republican former governor of South Carolina who challenged Trump for the Republican nomination after serving as his ambassador to the United Nations, wrote on X that the shooting “should horrify every freedom-loving American.”
“Violence against presidential candidates should never be normalized,” wrote Haley. “We are lifting up Donald Trump, the entire Trump family and all in attendance in prayer.”
Meanwhile, billionaire investors Elon Musk and Bill Ackman, both of whom enjoy outsize social media followings, took the chance to endorse Trump, with Musk suggesting there was a wider conspiracy behind the shooting.
Musk, who owns X, formerly Twitter, and has a long-running flirtation with right-wing conspiracies — once appearing to endorse the theory that Jews run the world — wrote on the social media platform: “I fully endorse President Trump and hope for his rapid recovery.”
Later, responding to a user who expressed incredulity that a shooter was able to take aim at a former president, Musk wrote that the security detail had exhibited “[e]xtreme incompetence or it was deliberate.”
“Either way, the [Secret Service] leadership must resign,” wrote Musk.
Ackman, whose social media activism played a major role in the ouster of the presidents of Harvard and Penn universities over their response to campus anti-Israel protests, said in a long-winded post shortly after the shooting at Trump’s rally: “I am going to formally endorse Donald Trump.”
Ackman, whose post did not mention the shooting, said that he had made the decision “carefully, rationally, and by relying on as much empirical data as possible,” adding that the negative impressions of Trump were the stock and trade of “mainstream media.”
I fully endorse President Trump and hope for his rapid recovery pic.twitter.com/ZdxkF63EqF
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 13, 2024
Third-party candidates also chimed in.
Speaking on Fox News, independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., commended Trump’s “inspirational” conduct amid the shooting, when the former president defiantly pumped his fist while his security detail ushered him away.
Kennedy, whose own father was assassinated while running for president in 1968 — five years after the younger Kennedy’s uncle, then-sitting President John F. Kennedy, was assassinated — said he “hope[s] that President Biden reaches out to President Trump and offers him a podium somewhere with the two of these men and reassure the nation.”
Jill Stein, the far-left Green Party’s perennial candidate, stopped short of offering her own condemnation to the shooting, instead retweeting the comments of her campaign manager.
“What happened today is to be condemned,” wrote the campaign manager, Jason Call. “But so is all of the violence perpetrated by the imperialists and the war machine.”
