Donald Trump appeared to be shot in the ear as shots were fired at the former president at a rally in Pennsylvania.
Trump grabbed at the side of his face and blood spattered across his cheek as several popping sounds were heard.
I’m tentatively here for it
I condemn this in the strongest possible terms. I may be a lefty, but I don’t believe assassinations solve anything. The people celebrating it or mad that the shooter “missed” are abhorrent.
Anarchists succeeded in assassinating Alexander II of Russia and William McKinley in the US but they just got replaced by other rulers from the same class. This is why you need to overthrow their whole class instead of just targeting individuals.
Who the hell benefits from this other than his fanatics? I wouldn’t be surprised if this turned out to be staged, and I’d be even less surprised if his supporters didn’t care it wasn’t real.
I don’t disagree with the underlying idea here
But I would also caution heavily against doubting the simplest explanation: some unwell person, possibly a fallen Trump fan (groyper types angry he supports Israel) or some delusional Biden fan, whatever, just someone mad because Trump does objectively suck shit. Someone who hated him is the most obvious and simplest explanation and should be the assumption unless or until convincing evidence otherwise comes out.
I don’t think it’s entirely out of the question that this was a CIA op, like the assassination of JFK probably was. Trump is treading on a lot of toes, after all- with the possibility of “peace with Russia” (not that I think he could succeed against the blob there), or the (also almost certainly unfounded) hysteria around “leaving NATO” (or extorting the other NATO members, anyways) as well as the fact that the Biden admin is absolutely guilty of a whole slew of crimes they don’t want getting dug up.
Either that, or it was an unwell person, someone who hated him- he’s a very hateable person TBH (though anyone with sense should understand, he’s just as vile as the rest of DC regardless of party affiliation and if anything refreshingly incompetent/not with a death wish for his country).
The most obvious explanation as you said should be the assumption- but that this happened after he met with Orban (who for all his faults has been genuinely trying to prevent WW3, meeting Zelensky/Putin/Xi and then getting rebuffed by Biden before meeting Trump) stinks to me.
I ain’t busting out the tinfoil hat just yet, because it’s entirely possible with all the fearmongering of making Trump the antithesis of freedom, that some unwell person might think they’re saving the world by attacking him, but so much of it feels… off. I can’t help but be suspicious. That said, I’ll withhold any final conclusions until experts can investigate and weigh in.
The right wing will be going hog wild for the next… forever… if this turns out to a clear cut assassination attempt as it now appears. Expect weaponization of the term “stochastic terrorism” against the democrat types. And, to an extent, they won’t be wrong. If you call a guy Hitler 2.0 you are kinda telling people to stop that guy. Of course they ddi the same thing with the 2020 election calling it stolen. If you truly believed there was a deep state coup, isn’t it logical to do something maybe like Jan 6? Right wingers are always better at the bad faith messaging though, so, I see absolutely nothing good coming from this. Maybe some good memes.
Unfortunately, I just heard the word going around that someone in the crowd died, so it does definitely appear at the very least real shots were going into the crowd. None of that has been verified, as far as I can tell, but I’m sure we’ll get all the details by tomorrow if not in the next few hours. It’s not looking good either way, sadly. You’re right that the right wing is going to use this for all the mileage it’ll get, stunt or not.
Someone who hated him is the most obvious and simplest explanation
yeah. i’m pretty sure it was someone who wanted to be a hero and thought they were going to save america by shooting trump
Same question. This news caught me off guard.
I’m wondering about the ‘staged’ explanation too. Points in favor of that I’ve come across from others or can think of:
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Who insists on stopping to do a fist pump to the crowd after being shot at? Yeah, he’s a narcissist, but still, wouldn’t fight or flight kick in and he’d want to get out of there?
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He has some history with fake wrestling, right? I’m not sure to what extent off-hand, but the fact he does means he’s not a stranger to “faking” things.
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The seeming lack of collateral damage if it was a real shooter. That someone would have the discipline of aim to only graze him, but not cause any other damage to anyone. I’m not sure on the logistics of this myself, but it’s something I heard that I’m paraphrasing from someone else.
I’d also add that his followers absolutely would not stop following him if it turned out he lied here. He could spit in their faces and they would applaud. He has nothing to lose from doing a stunt like this, in fact they might find it endearing.
Secret Service was heard saying “shooter is down” before Trump rose back up on stage. The multiple shots heard after Trump was first hit were most likely return fire from SS.
He is a narcissist, above any sense of self preservation. He has bragged about things he shouldn’t, said things he shouldn’t, done things he shouldn’t. All to brag.
Wrestling doesn’t make bullet sized holes on ears, doesn’t make bullets appear flying on new York times video footage, doesn’t make shots happen, doesn’t kill a spectator.
There was a collateral death. Allegedly one spectator. Shooter was a bad shot, that’s all.
When I wrote the other comment, I did not have any info on collateral damage and the reactions of the crowd in the clip I saw didn’t seem to suggest evidence of any. If there is indeed a death as a result, then certainly that point doesn’t hold.
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Probably some democrat or anarchist. Still, I would have loved to see the bastard shot.
Pray that it was a bog standard, bluemaga deranged liberal or never-Trumper.
Anyone else, like an anarchist, an anarcho-vaushist, a DSA meeting attender is going to get the left the entire mail fist of the state. And we won’t even have to wait for Trump. If the person was DSA or doing anarchist posting online Biden will happily expand targeting and criminalization of the left before he leaves office and Trump will expand it a bit more once he gets in office. At least if it’s a brainwormed and deranged liberal or never-Trump Russia-gater Republican the storm over this dies down faster and there’s less hay made of it and a real push to ascribe it to inexplicable mental illness that we can’t hope to understand at which point by the time Trump’s in office he’s probably not thinking about getting commies but about hurting Biden, Obama, the DNC, etc who would be behind putting him on trial as well as getting him shot. Of course either way there’s going to be red meat thrown out to the reactionaries and speculation that it was antifa BUT if it’s confirmed we’re in a world of shit.
As to who benefits, by surviving Trump benefits. By trying to kill him any true believer, institution loving person who’s full Russia-gate BlueAnon pilled and convinced Trump is literally the second coming of Hitler and will turn 95% great and good USA into nightmare bad USA overnight. One needs look no further than online discourse on twitter, reddit, lemmy world, etc to see plenty of deranged liberals panicking over the state of the race with everyone aware Biden is senile, talking amongst each other about Russiagate hoaxes, how he’s Putin’s puppet, believing NATO is great and that Trump will destroy it, believing in all kinds of other cope nonsense. It’s not hard to see a true-believer in that who got lost in the sauce picking up a gun and fancying themselves a patriot to take him out.
My only counter is that Trump and his supporters already believe Biden and Dems are in a cabal with communists. If it was some anarchist, he’d still blame Biden as equally; if it were a Dem, he’d blame communists as equally. To Trump and his cronies, it’s all the same. No matter who wins, or who fired those shots, they’ll squeeze harder on us.
Yeah but that’s just red meat. When they say communists normally they mean standard liberal democrats. If it was actually an “antifa” type person it will be different in response from the government that it will mobilize at all levels against the left. Whereas if it’s a liberal the mainstream media and FBI aren’t going to call them a communist, they’ll say mentally ill or whatever the standard take is and slowly it’ll fade away.
Makes sense.
They are starting to identify the shooter. So far, the shooter is about 20 and is from Pennsylvania, according to five senior U.S. law enforcement officials briefed on the matter.
It will be interesting to see if the shooter ends up being a blue maga with an intense manifesto.
Edit.
Apparently the shooter is a republican. 😮
And the US clown show kicks into overdrive. The trapeze artists are flying doing all sorts of backflips while the jugglers are on a unicycle riding the high wire. It’s going to be an entertaining rest of the year if nothing else.
He does not look good. His head lurched forward and his hat flew off when he got hit.
To be fair, he looks pretty good for an old man who just got shot. Didn’t even break character. Watching in slow motion it looks like the bullet meant for his head only grazed his ear. He’s gonna be fine.
Did lose a portion of his ear, but it probably was fast enough that adrenaline took over.
Will have to see what his follow up response is.
Bullet could have just grazed his ear, hate to say this but he’s probably fine
There’s another image of him where you can clearly see the wound and yeah it’s literally just grazed his ear. Unfortunate but it is probably not going to kill him.
No it didn’t. That still is from when he got back up and his hat is in his hand.
My bad, thanks for the info. I was watching a low quality broadcast, thought him going down was him collapsing.
One of the agents did hand his hat back to him though judging from the close up shots. I guess he likes his hat.
holy shit lmao
That bloodied ear is probably his red carpet right into the white house.
Yep, this just secured his victory. Replacing Biden won’t even matter after this.
I don’t know. How many people are actually going to make their voting decision based on this? Who was going to stay home or vote Biden, but is now voting for Trump?
There’s also the factor of this happening 100+ days out from the election. I bet more people are going to forget this even happened by November than will have it be the event that decides their vote.
Why’d the fucker miss? Several shots. SMH
American snipers struggle to hit targets that are not brown children
This is why range time is important
Shame they missed
Eh, I don’t think it really matters. The president of the US would have ended up being some imperialist lunatic either way.
Can’t pretend the world wouldn’t be better off, but he’s always been more of a symptom than a cause.
staged
i don’t think so
suspicious
surely it is
Next debate Biden should put some bottle caps on his shoes and occasionally stomp to see what happens.
Browsing reactionary spaces, seems they’re trying to brew the theory that the secret service purposefully let this happen, or though sheer incompetence. Wait a week and they’ll start saying the secret service was compromised by Biden.
I haven’t seen this take yet. However, what I do see is some chuds saying that the guy is probably from Antifa and some others rallying for a “purge”. This is going to be a wild year.
I saw some ex-cia guy making that same argument. The idea of a US president thinking the CIA is out to kill him is pretty funny.
privatize the secret service !!!
with a photo like this I can’t believe this wasn’t staged
A professional photographer took a professional photo? Say it ain’t so!
I honestly don’t think it is. You wouldn’t risk killing your guy for a false flag.
As if intelligence agencies haven’t trained terrorist groups for suicidal attacks in the past
I think Yogthos is not using “your guy” to talk about the perpetrator but about Trump. There is no way someone would try to stage a false flag by making someone shoot at a person’s ear with a sniper rifle at a distance of 150 m. As Yogthos implies, you have a bigger chance of killing your guy than actually succeeding.
Edit: Without an optic on his rifle, on top of all.
right, that’s where I was going with it
shoot at a person’s ear with a sniper rifle at a distance of 150 m
I honestly couldn’t even see the bullet wound
You mean this bullet wound? Part of his helix is gone. You can see very well where did the bullet hit.
I sincerely can’t… I can only see what appears to be blood smeared all over his intact ear
Camera crews had like 20s between the shots and these images. Plenty of time to get oats initial shock and take images.
If there is one person stupid enough to fistpump and make himself an easier target at a moment like this it’s Trump.
Adrenaline is one helluva drug.
I know that because this is his induction to the white house we want to think that this was somehow staged, but we have to look at the facts and use reason. Whatever the gunman’s motives might have been they were 100% trying to headshot Trump. And almost succeeded at that.
footage of the shot, shots are fired at around 8 minutes.
He looks alright after he gets up, just a little dazed. Doubt he’ll die from this. Could even have been staged, but I recommend waiting for more info before speculating too hard.
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
