The FBI says it is working to identify the shooter and figure out the motive
The gunman used a rifle and fired from an elevated position outside of the rally, the Secret Service said
A still shot TiM editor pulled from the assassination attempt video. As soon as I saw the above image, I was reminded of a similar one from World War II – the Iwo Jima Memorial.
THE STORY OF IWO JIMA
On the morning of February 19, 1945, the 4th and 5th Marine Divisions invaded Iwo Jima after an ineffective 72-hour bombardment. The 28th Regiment of the 5th Division, was ordered to capture Mount Suribachi. They reached the base of the mountain on the afternoon of February 21 and, by nightfall the next day, had almost completely surrounded it. On the morning of February 23, Marines of Company E, 2nd Battalion, started the tortuous climb up the rough terrain to the top. At about 10:30 am men all over the island were thrilled by the sight of a small American flag flying from atop Mount Suribachi. That afternoon, when the slopes were clear of enemy resistance, a second, larger flag was raised in the same location.
WHY THE SILENCE ABOUT WHO THE TRUMP SHOOTER WAS
Here’s what we know so far.
Despite the allegedly tight security, an assassin was able to take position on the rooftop of a building outside the perimeter of the Trump campaign event. He fired numerous shots, wounding the former president in the right ear. The other shots that also missed killed one spectator and gravely wounded two others, presumably in the stands behind Trump and the stage.
An eyewitness, who was interviewed by the BBC, claimed, “Shooter was bear crawling across a roof, just outside the venue, with a rifle in his hands. Eyewitness and his friends were screaming at the police and Secret Service for 2 to 3 minutes.” “No one did anything,” he reiterated.
The shooter was allegedly killed by the Secret Service agents. You can see his body sprawled above on that rooftop.
Here’s what Trump said on his Truth Social after the shooting:
“Nothing is known at this time about the shooter, who is now dead. I was shot with a bullet that pierced the upper part of my right ear. 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. GOD BLESS AMERICA!”
Why is “nothing known” about the shooter so long after he was shot? Why is no one talking to the media about it? Are we going to have another “Grassy Knoll” case here? (like the JFK assassination in 1963 which is still shrouded in mystery 61 years later).
Meanwhile, some of the Republicans whose tongues the cat didn’t get are venting.
“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,” GOP Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia wrote on X, formerly Twitter.
I agree. And there will be hell to pay for this. This could be the spark that ignites a larger explosion, especially coming on the eve of the Republican National Convention (which starts Monday), in which Trump is supposed to be officially nominated as the Republican Presidential candidate.
In the end, Trump will only emerge stronger and more defiant. And Biden and his handlers will have to put a sock in it and hide from the enraged public like mice in a hole. At least for a while.
UPDATE JULY 14, 2024 (from RT.COM)
‘Eliminate Him’: A look at the violent rhetoric against Donald Trump from the left
Before he was shot at a campaign rally, former US President Donald Trump faced a barrage of threats from the Left
While the attempted assassination of Donald Trump has been roundly condemned by his political opponents, liberal politicians and pundits have – implicitly and explicitly – called for his death before.
Trump narrowly avoided death at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, on Saturday, when an assassin’s bullet apparently clipped his ear as it whizzed past his head. The shooter – named by the FBI as 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks – killed one spectator at the rally and wounded two others before he was shot dead by Secret Service agents.
US President Joe Biden decried the attempt on Trump’s life, declaring that “there’s no place for this kind of violence in America.” Ever since Trump won the 2016 election, however, he has faced a steady stream of threats from members of Biden’s party and their allies in the media.
Off with his head
Hollywood celebrities reacted with outrage to Trump’s shock defeat of Hillary Clinton in 2016. 80s pop icon Madonna spoke of wanting to “blow up the White House;” actor and activist Peter Fonda called for the president’s youngest son, Barron, to be “put in a cage with pedophiles;” and comedienne Kathy Griffin grabbed headlines when she posed for a photoshoot holding a mockup of Trump’s bloodied and severed head.
Addressing the audience at Britain’s Glastonbury Festival in 2018, Johnny Depp wondered “when was the last time an actor assassinated a president?,” adding “maybe it’s time.” This reference to the assassination of Abraham Lincoln was echoed by Broadway star Carole Cook several months later, when she asked a photographer “where’s John Wilkes Booth when you need him?”
Take him out
Speaking to MSNBC after Trump formally announced his presidential campaign last year, Representative Dan Goldman declared that his fellow New Yorker cannot be allowed to “see public office again.”
“He is not only unfit, he is destructive to our democracy, and he has to be, he has to be eliminated,” Goldman proclaimed.
While Goldman later apologized for his choice of words, he is not the only Democrat lawmaker to apparently threaten Trump’s life. Michigan State Representative Cynthia Johnson was stripped of her committee assignments in 2020 when she warned Trump and his “trumpers” to “walk lightly,” or else her “soldiers” would “make them pay.”
Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi used similar rhetoric last week when she declared that the upcoming presidential election “is not a normal election,” and that Trump “must be stopped. He cannot be president.”
Two weeks before the shooting, BBC reporter David Aaronovitch wrote on X that if he were President “Biden, I’d hurry up and have Trump murdered on the basis that he is a threat to America’s security.” On Sunday morning, Aaronovitch said that he had deleted the tweet, claiming that his words were “clearly satirical.”
A threat to democrac
Biden’s response to Saturday’s shooting was one of unequivocal condemnation. The US president, who will face off against Trump in this November’s election, said that he was “praying for” his political opponent, and that “we must unite as one nation to condemn” political violence.
In a post on social media less than a month earlier, however, Biden’s team described Trump as “a genuine threat to this nation.”
“He’s a threat to our freedom. He’s a threat to our democracy. He’s literally a threat to everything America stands for,”they posted on the president’s social media accounts.
While Biden has never explicitly wished physical harm on his opponent, at least one would-be assassin has used similar words to justify his plans to kill Trump. 77-year-old Thomas Welnicki was arrested for phoning US Capitol Police in 2020 threatening to “take down” then-President Trump. His lawyer later told prosecutors in New York that Welnicki was distraught at “the threats to our democracy posed by former President Trump.”
Stripped of protection
Had Mississippi Rep. Bennie Thompson got his way, Trump would have had no Secret Service protection at Saturday’s rally. Earlier this year, Thompson proposed legislation that would strip this protection from former presidents convicted of felonies, as Trump was in May. The act was explicitly tailored to target Trump, Thompson’s office said, explaining that the former president’s criminal charges “have created a new exigency that Congress must address.”
Immediately following Saturday’s shooting, one of Thompson’s staffers wrote on Facebook that the shooter should “get some shooting lessons so you don’t miss next time.” She deleted the post – which Mississippi Republicans called “despicable” – shortly afterwards.
Truth in Media 
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