Shots are fired at Donald Trump at a campaign event. The former president escapes with minor injuries. All developments in the live blog.
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.
Trump said he had initially considered postponing his trip by two days because of the events. But he decided “that I cannot allow a ‘shooter’ or a potential assassin to force a change in schedule or anything else.”
21:50: The FBI has given the all-clear: the suspected shooter acted alone and there are no other threats to security, says a representative of the US Federal Police. The incident is classified as a domestic terrorist attack and an attempted assassination. The FBI is investigating the social media accounts of the 20-year-old who was killed. However, there is no evidence of an ideology or mental illness on the part of the suspected assassin. The weapon was purchased legally, presumably from the suspect’s father. Bomb experts also found a suspicious device in the suspected perpetrator’s car, which has now been taken to the laboratory for further examination.
21.40: The two people who were seriously injured in the attempted assassination of Donald Trump are in a stable condition, according to police in Pennsylvania. A man in the audience died in the shooting at a campaign rally.
21:33: Shortly before the fatal shooting at Donald Trump’s campaign rally, a police officer is said to have confronted the attacker on the roof. This is reported by the news agency Associated Press (AP). The officer is said to have climbed onto the roof, was threatened with a gun by the attacker and then fled the roof again.
The perpetrator immediately opened fire in Trump’s direction. Shortly afterwards, he was shot dead by Secret Service agents.
