UPDATED SUNDAY: Assassination attempt made at Pennsylvania Trump rally

National media sources were reporting late Saturday that an attempt was made on the life former President and current presidential hopeful Donald Trump at a Pennsylvania political rally.

Trump was swarmed by Secret Service agents and rushed off stage as shots were still sounding off during a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.

Based on footage from the scene, Trump was speaking one moment, then suddenly grabbed for his ear the next and ducked down behind his podium as the first of the Secret Service members dove toward him.

He arose, blood streaking face, surrounded by Secret Service members who hurried him offstage to safety. As they did, a visibly angry Trump raised his fist to the crowd, yelling “Fight. Fight. Fight!” as he was escorted away and rushed to nearby hospital, where he was treated and released later that same day.

A spokesperson for Trump told reporters, in the immediate aftermath, "President Trump thanks law enforcement and first responders for their quick action during this heinous act. He is fine and is being checked out at a local medical facility.”

Secret Service agents, apart from those who shielded trump with their own bodies, later shot and killed the alleged shooter, but not before he managed to get off eight rounds from the nearby rooftop where he set up, reports indicated.

In addition to the shot that nicked the ear of the former president, news channels were reporting that as many as two rallygoers were critically injured and another lie dead in the shooting.

Shooter Identified

By Sunday, all the major news networks were identifying the would-be assassin as Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, of Bethel Park, Pennsylvania, following an FBI press conference and several news reports that had already published in the Pittsburg Tribune-Review. 

The following is directly from their reports:

The gunman was immediately “neutralized” by the Secret Service, chief of FBI communications Anthony Guglielmi said.

Crooks used a semiautomatic rifle, three senior U.S. law enforcement officials said, based on what was found at the scene.  Investigators are looking into whether the gun used by the shooter belonged to his dad and had been purchased legally, according to two senior law enforcement officials.

Crooks is believed to have fired eight shots before he was taken down, said an official citing preliminary findings.

Multiple suspicious canisters or containers were found in Crooks’ vehicle but it’s unclear if they were functional as incendiary or explosive devices, two officials said.

Crooks' family is cooperating with investigators, but his motive remains unclear, officials said.

Bethel Park is a predominantly white, relatively well-to-do city in the southern reaches of greater Pittsburgh. The site of the rally, Butler, is about an hour’s drive north of Pittsburgh.

Unsuspected killer

Crooks graduated from Bethel Park High School in 2022. He was among more than a dozen students who received a National Math & Science Initiative Star Award that year, according to a story in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.

The reports then went on to interview several people who either grew up with, went to school with, lived nearby or worked around Crooks, all of whom expressed understandable shock that someone who would do such a thing might be someone they know.

His classmates described Crooks as a quiet kid, a typical loner, who had never been a politically vocal person. One even mentioned him being a target of harassment growing up, due mainly to him often dressing in hunting attire. Just one of the classmates interviewed, however, recalled anything of the sort.

They also reported that Crooks was a member of the Clairton Sportmen's Club in Pittsburgh, a facility that has various shooting ranges including a 200-yard rifle range as well as pistol ranges and indoor/outdoor archery ranges.

Club members were quick to denounce Crooks’ actions and separate themselves from the young man’s actions. 

Club president Bill Sellitto even issued a statement to reporters, saying the club “fully admonishes the senseless act of violence that occurred (Saturday)” and offered “its sincerest condolences to the Comperatore family and extends prayers to all of those injured including the former President.”

Crooks had worked as a dietary aide at the Bethel Park Skilled Nursing and Rehabilitation Center, according to national reports. Beyond their initial shock at learning one of their own was involved, center administrator Marcie Grimm was quoted in the reporting as saying Crooks “performed his job without concern” and that “his background check was clean.”

As they were actively cooperating in the law enforcement investigation, they couldn’t really offer much else, she told reporters Sunday.

The Pentagon confirmed Sunday that Crooks had no affiliation with the U.S. military, national reports said.

Pennsylvania voter records listed a Thomas Matthew Crooks with the same address and birth date as a registered Republican, reports said. 

But Federal Election Commission records showed that Crooks also appears to have made a $15 donation to the Progressive Turnout Project, a liberal PAC, on inauguration day in 2021, national media reported.

Presidential peril

Trump’s assassination attempt marks the sixth unsuccessful attempt made on life of the man serving in the nation’s highest office. 

The last assassination attempt on a president, or a presidential hopeful, with real consequences was in 1981, when John Hinckley Jr, a disturbed individual obsessed with actress Jodie Foster, then a teenager who had just starred in Taxi Driver, shot at point-blank range at the presidential entourage at the Hilton hotel in Washington.

Hinckley Jr, who wanted to get Foster's attention, managed to hit Reagan, but also wounded a police officer and a Secret Service agent, leaving White House press secretary James Brady in a wheelchair.

Before Reagon in1981, there was the attempt on Gerald Ford’s life in 1975, Harry Truman in 1950, and Franklin Roosevelt in 1933.

Theodore Roosevelt was also shot while campaigning for re-election in 1912. Like Trump, he was campaigning for a return to the White House, having been voted out previously. He was about to give a speech in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, when he was shot, which incidentally, is where the Republican National Convention kicks off Monday.

The final attempt of the life of a president in our list, or depending on perspective, the very first such attempt ever, came in 1835 with Andrew Jackson. 

Richard Lawrence, an introverted house painter, walked up to President Jackson as he exited the capitol building following a funeral service held there for a member of Congress. There, he methodically pulled a pistol, cocked it, aimed and fired it point blank into Jackson, all to no avail—twice, no less, and twice two separate guns misfired on both counts—before Davy Crockett, of all people, who was attending the same funeral, saw what was happening and wrestled the assailant to the ground, pinning there until officials could arrive.

Lawrence was famously prosecuted by Jackson’s appointee for Attorney General, none other than Francis Scott Key, the writer of our National Anthem. Although Jackson already had clothes picked out to attend the man’s hanging, Key took a different course when it was clear that Lawrence was not competent to stand trial.

He had him committed to an asylum for life, where he eventually died a few years later. Despite this, Jackson never forgave Key for what he considered a personal slight, and many say, Jackson went to his own grave always suspecting that his political rivals had paid off Lawrence to do away with him and then act crazy.

Modern miracles

Incidentally, in subsequent tests of the two pistols that misfired the day Lawrence tried to use them on Jackson, the guns fired true every time, both back then and in modern times, leading many to speculate that sheer Providence was the only way to account for how Jackson ever walked away from the attempted killing. 

Many have already made similar speculations about the attempt on Trump’s life Saturday.

As we saw repeated time and again over the weekend by the more conservative news sources, “How else could you explain the shooter getting off eight rounds and only managing to graze Trump with one of them?”

After all, Trump, at 6-foot-3, is the third tallest president to ever serve the United States, just an inch shorter than Abraham Lincoln (who was assassinated in office while attending a play with his wife), and a half-inch shorter Lyndon Johnson (who assumed the presidency upon John Kennedy’s assassination in Dallas).  

Such height should have made him a ready target to even an amateur shooter, ballistic and security analysts conjectured overnight Saturday on the news channels, especially considering the rooftop perch Crooks chose offered him clear sight from only about the distance of football field away from where Trump leaned on his podium. 

Plus, he managed to fire his weapon eight times before he was ultimately taken out by the Secret Service, the FBI reported.

Eight times, while aiming at a rather large man who was basically standing still, all from a distance of about 120 yards.

Others injured

Whatever the reason Trump walked away, bloodied but not gravely wounded, from Saturday’s rally, one fact was certain: Others were not so fortunate.

Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro on Sunday identified the man killed atb the previous day’s rally as Corey Comperatore, 50, who was there with his family, a longtime friend told reporters. When shots rang out, he threw himself over his family members — and was fatally shot.

Once more, the national reports, this one attributed to the Associated Press:

Comperatore, of Sarver, Pennsylvania, had two daughters — Allyson, 27, and Kaylee, 24 — and was “definitely a family man,” his longtime friend, Jeff Lowers, 63, told reportters. 

Comperatore and Lowers were volunteer firefighters, and Lowers said Comperatore’s quick instincts appeared to come into play during the shooting. Lowers said he learned about that account from Comperatore’s wife, Helen.

“Being a volunteer fireman, no matter what you’re doing, when the whistle goes off and the monitor goes off, you go and do what you need to do,” Lowers said. “We never considered ourselves a hero. But yesterday, he definitely was.”

At the rally, Dr. James Sweetland, an emergency room physician who was at the event, rushed to help Comperatore after he was shot. He said Comperatore was lying in a pool of blood, and two people helped lift him onto a bench so he could give CPR. Someone else put pressure on Comperatore’s wound above his ear. But Sweetland said there was no pulse. Two Pennsylvania State troopers helped lift Comperatore onto a stretcher.

Two more men were also injured at the rally and received care at Allegheny General Hospital in Pittsburgh.

The Pennsylvania State Police identified the wounded as David Dutch, 57, of New Kensington, Pennsylvania, and James Copenhaver, 74, of Moon Township, Pennsylvania. A hospital spokesperson said Sunday afternoon that both were in critical but stable condition, AP reported.

Polarized politics

As a precautionary measure, current President Joe Biden left his Maryland home, where he was spending the weekend with his family, to return to Washington D.C. late Saturday, upon hearing about the attempt on Trump’s life. 

He was reportedly attempting to reach the wounded former president enroute.

Biden and Trump have been staunch rivals since before they went head-to-head for the nation’s highest office, yet even after meeting defeat at polls last election, Trump refused to fade away quietly. 

He’s been a staunch and extremely vocal critic of the current administration at every turn, and though both faced challengers as candidates in their respective primaries last March, both won their contests handily. 

Still, neither man had officially been named his party’s candidate for President yet, as of Sunday night. 

The Republicans National Convention, where Trump is a likely shoe-in as his party’s nominee, takes place this week, July 15-19, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The biggest news from that event will likely be who he chooses as his running mate.

The Democratic National Convention happens a month later, Aug. 19-22, in Chicago, Illinois. The big news there will be if the party opts to go with Biden once more or alter course and choose someone else.

Apart from those who oppose him entirely for his politics, Biden has fallen under scrutiny of late as being too old for the job, his tendency ramble in public speeches not helping him in the slightest.

Plus, after Saturday’s assassination attempt on Trump, many were already blaming the intense political polarization in Washington, D.C., as the guiding force behind the shooter’s hand Saturday, and Biden’s political ads on all local channels around Pittsburg, as a shocked public returned home from the Trump rally Saturday, ads which call support for Trump “an attack on our very democracy” certainly did not help either.

To be clear, however, Biden did address the nation Sunday, denouncing actions taken by the lone gunman at the Saturday rally. The following was excerpted from USA Today’s report on that address from the White House:

“Thankfully, former (President) Trump is not seriously injured,” Biden said. “I spoke to him last night. I’m grateful he’s doing well, and Jill and I keep him and his family in our prayers.” 

The president also spoke more broadly about the outbreak of violence at the rally, condemning the (Crooks’) actions.

“A former president was shot,” Biden said. “An American citizen killed while simply exercising his freedom to support the candidate of his choosing. We cannot, we must not, go down this road in America. We’ve traveled it before throughout our history. Violence has never been the answer.”

Biden also drew comparisons to a wide number of politically motivated instances of violence over the last several years, including the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. capitol in 2021 and a kidnapping attempt on Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. 

“Whether it’s with members of Congress in both parties being targeted and shot, or a violent mob attacking the Capitol on Jan. 6, or a brutal attack on the spouse of former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, or information and intimidation on election officials, or the kidnapping plot against a sitting governor, or an attempted assassination on Donald Trump, there is no place in America for this kind of violence” Biden said. “For any violence, ever. Period, no exceptions. We cannot allow for this kind of violence to be normalized.” 

He also emphasized the role that Americans play in preserving peace and democracy, urging voters to settle their disagreements at the ballot box in November. 

“Disagreement is inevitable in American democracy,” Biden said. “It’s part of human nature, but politics must never be a literal battlefield, and God forbit, a killing field. I believe politics ought to be an arena for peaceful debate, to pursue justice, to make decisions guided by the Declaration of Independence and our Constitution. We stand for an America not of extremism and fury, but of decency and grace.”

More information will no doubt develop in coming days. Watch for it here, as new information becomes available.  g days. Watch for later this week, as new information becomes available.