Shots are fired at Donald Trump at a campaign event. The former president escapes with minor injuries. All developments in the live blog.
15:43: Following the assassination attempt on former US President Donald Trump at a campaign rally on Saturday, there are new details about the location from which the gunman fired at Trump with a rifle. According to information from the television station NBC News, the building from which the gunman fired had already been classified as a potential risk in advance.
The building whose roof the perpetrator used as a shooting position belongs to a glass research company and is located next to the Butler Farm Show venue in Butler, Pennsylvania. “Someone should have been on the roof or in the building to prevent the shooter from getting on the roof,” a source close to the Secret Service told NBC News.
13:58: A fundraiser for the victims of the attack launched by Trump’s finance director Meredith O’Rourke has already raised $3.6 million. 49,000 donations are said to have been received.
8.46 am: In a first interview after the attempted assassination of US presidential candidate Donald Trump, he said: “I shouldn’t be here, I should actually be dead.” According to a reporter from the “New York Post,” his ear is currently covered by a white bandage. Photos of this were not allowed to be taken.
Regarding the picture of the clenched fist shortly after the shooting, Trump said: “A lot of people say it’s the most iconic photo they’ve ever seen. They’re right. And that’s even though I didn’t die. Usually you have to die to make an iconic photo.” In the interview, Trump also described his interaction with his doctor at the local hospital. He said he had never seen anyone survive being shot by an AR-15 rifle. It was “a miracle.” Trump suffered a minor ear injury in the attack.
4.36 am: After the attempted assassination at a campaign event, Donald Trump also called for calm and unity. “This is an opportunity to bring the whole country, indeed the whole world, together,” Trump told the Washington Examiner newspaper. The incident had shaken him deeply. He only now understands what happened (“Reality is just setting in”). Trump survived the attack because he turned away from the crowd at the crucial moment. “I rarely turn away from the crowd. If I hadn’t done that at that moment, we wouldn’t be talking today, would we?”
Trump is to be officially nominated on Thursday at the Republican Party Convention in Wisconsin. When he arrives in Milwaukee, he raises his clenched fist in the air several times as he leaves the plane. “The speech will be completely different, completely different from two days ago,” he says, referring to his nomination speech.
2.12 am: US President Joe Biden has warned against violence in the US election campaign following the assassination attempt on his predecessor and opponent Donald Trump. “We will resolve our differences at the ballot box. That’s how we do it – at the ballot box, not with bullets,” Biden said in a rare address to the nation from the Oval Office in the White House. Read more here.
1.09 am: Just one day after the assassination attempt on Donald Trump, the former US president landed in the state of Wisconsin for the Republican Party convention. TV footage showed Trump’s plane on the runway near the city of Milwaukee, where the Republican nomination convention will be held starting Monday.
