The Trump Shooting Aftermath

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It's Monday, July 15. Is that America breathing a sigh of relief or bracing for what's next? We start here.

C
He's got a gun.

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A nation recoils from an assassination attempt.

D
The shooter appears to have pointed the gun at that responding officer, who then fell.

B
As law enforcement reveal more about the gunman who tried to kill former President Donald Trump, questions remain about how we got here. Meanwhile, Trump has arrived in Milwaukee for what was supposed to be a celebration.

E
They see fate. Some of them even see the hand of God.

B
Will the Republican Party be reshaped in the wake of this deadly attack? And President Biden gives an address from the Oval Office.

F
Power to change. America should always rest in the hands of the people, not in the hands of would be assassins.

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But will a message of unity stoke divisions all its own at what feels like a dangerous moment for this country?

From ABC News, this is a special edition of start here. I'm Brad Milke.

Hey, good morning. Glad you're with us after what became a tragic, disturbing weekend.

Hello, Butler, and hello to Pennsylvania.

C
I'm thrilled to be back.

B
When former President Donald Trump took the stage for a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, he was at the local venue for farm shows there. So right behind where the stage was set up were some livestock barns, which, by the way, is where secret service snipers had taken up positions. Beyond those barns, there weren't really a whole lot of elevated positions nearby. There's a water tower off behind them, a small structure straight ahead. And then off to Trump's right about 400ft away, is an outcropping of buildings belonging to a local manufacturing facility. Well, it was on one of those roofs where a man had climbed up with a rifle and was taking aim at the former president. Take a look at what happened.

Before he could be stopped, gunshots rang out, as you've probably seen by now, or maybe you heard on our special edition yesterday, up to eight rounds sliced through the air toward Trump. I thought it was a firecracker, just like what Kennedy people thought was a firecracker.

C
Somebody yelled, get down. We got down. We got down and we huddled and we started praying.

B
Trump went down to the ground after being hit on the top of his right ear. When he arose surrounded by secret service agents, he had blood streaming across his face.

He ended up being more or less okay. The most immediate tragedy was that one Mandev, a former fire chief named Corey compretor, had been killed by those bullets as he tried to shield his family. Two other men were seriously wounded.

E
Corey was the very best of us. May his memory be a blessing.

B
And the implications go far beyond the initial dead and wounded here. The FBI says very clearly that this was an assassination attempt. In a country that has been plagued by violent rhetoric and then actual political violence will now the blood of one of this country's leading candidates has been spilled. So what kind of effect does that have on our candidates, our political parties and our nation? We're going to devote today's entire episode to this story. Let's start by getting some answers on this shooting itself. ABC senior investigative correspondent Aaron Ketersky drove straight out to Butler, Pa. When he heard about this shooting. He's there now. Aaron, what do we know about how this attack unfolded and who was behind it?

D
It happened just minutes after former President Trump took the stage at a political rally here in western Pennsylvania. And Brad, it was carried out by a 20 year old named Thomas Crooks, who has no criminal record, was not on the FBI's radar.

C
I mean, he would sit alone at lunch.

A
I mean, he was just an outcast. And you know how kids are nowadays.

D
So whose friends say he was kind of a loner.

A
I didn't have any interaction with him, but he was like a kid that was always alone. He was always bullied every day.

D
There is no immediate motive as to why he carried out this historic act of political violence, but that is the urgent priority for the FBI. There's no ties to terrorism or any radical groups, foreign or domestic. The FBI is confident, however. Brad, he acted alone.

B
I was about to say, is there like a history of anti Trump rhetoric, anything like that?

D
Aaron nothing like that. That we can tell a registered Republican. According to public records, a man with the same name gave $15 to a progressive group in January 2021, seemingly before he could even vote. So there's no real political history that the FBI has been looking at. So it remains unknown why he did this.

B
As far as weaponry, what did he have on him?

D
He had an AR style rifle, which is nothing, the rifle you'd choose for sharpshooting, but it can spray bullets.

G
I can confirm that the gun used in the shooting was an AR style 556 rifle, which was purchased legally.

D
And we're told by the secret Service that he fired off as many as eight shots.

G
We believe the weapon was purchased by his father, but we do not know specifically how he accessed the weapon and whether he took it without his father's knowledge.

D
As authorities started to investigate this shooter, who was not carrying any identification, he had to be identified, Brad. Through DNA and other biometric data, they did discover his car on scene at the rally in Butler. Inside, they found what were described to us as rudimentary possible explosives here in Bethel Park, Pennsylvania, about an hour or so away, closer to Pittsburgh, where he lived. They found similar rudimentary type possible explosives. And so they don't know what to quite make of that, but they sent these things to the FBI lab in Quantico for analysis.

B
Are they able to tell, like, was he posting about stuff? Was he taking in information from certain sources that gives us any sort of sense about what he was thinking in that day or the days leading up to it?

D
We don't know much. And the FBI has only said a few things about it at this time.

G
We have no indications of any mental health issues.

D
So far, they've been able to look into some of his text messages and gotten a preliminary look at some of his online history, and we continue to.

G
Look at all his social media accounts and look for any potential threatening language, but as of right now, we have not seen any.

D
But they have been able to tell that he consumed some disinformation, some conspiracy theories. What's not clear to authorities is whether any of that played a role in what occurred here in western Pennsylvania. So far, they found nothing specifically threatening and.

B
Okay, so that's all the motive stuff. Aaron, can we talk about the how of it all? Cause how did he get up onto this rooftop? Because there were reports that he was actually spotted. So how did police interact with him?

D
It appears there were eyewitnesses, you know, bystanders, who saw him try to scramble up on the roof and shouted for police.

H
Maybe about five people all around me on the fence line. The guy beside me all of a sudden says, this guy got a gun.

C
He's got a gun.

H
I look over at the AGR building, and there is a guy going prone, laying down on the.

On the AGR roof.

And I'm watching him shoot. I can see the smoke coming out his barrel of his gun.

D
It appears, according to the local sheriff, that police officers who were responsible for the, you know, outside the security perimeter where the secret Service is mainly focused on the protectee and the crowd inside, they scrambled somebody up there.

The. The shooter appears to have pointed the gun at that responding officer, who then fell. The shooter was able to fire. And only then did a us secret Service sharpshooter neutralize, as they put it, the gunman. And that is the first time we're told, Brad, that a secret Service sniper has ever shot and killed a would be assassin.

B
Wow. And a starkly different sort of picture than you might have in your mind of somebody setting up for hours beforehand with this AR style weapon. It really does sound like it was aim and fire very quickly. All right, Aaron Kotursky there in Pennsylvania, thank you so much.

D
Thank you, Brett.

B
Next up on start here. It was dangerous for anyone inside that rally, but had the dangers already expanded even further? The urgent security questions after the break.

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Now, as this week continues, you can imagine one of the most pressing questions will be, how did this happen? Members of Congress have already called for hearings about the US Secret Service's role in this event. President Biden says there will be an independent investigation into how this unfolded. And looming over it all is the fact that law enforcement had been warned that an event like this was not only possible, but perhaps even likely in the coming months. John Cohen is a former assistant secretary for counterterrorism at the Department of Homeland Security. He's also an ABC News contributor. John, can we start with that? Because going into Saturday, you had been telling people for weeks you'd never seen a threat environment quite like this. What do you mean by that?

C
Yeah, Brad, I mean, the events of the other day were disturbing. They were horrifying. But for those in law enforcement and who work in national security, they shouldn't be surprising.

Not just weeks, but for well over a year, law enforcement authorities have been concerned that as we got closer to the 2024 election, the potential for an act of political violence, attacks against others in our community who are associated with hot button political issues were likely. You know, in addition, law enforcement officials and election officials across the country have been working together to prepare and plan for those eventualities.

B
Why? What made the temperature so hot?

C
Well, you know, I will tell you what I've been briefing to law enforcement election officials over the past several months. We are, as a nation, in the midst of a threat environment. That's the most volatile, dynamic and complex I've seen in the 40 years that I've been involved in law enforcement and homeland security. We're a divided and angry nation, and that division in anger has become ingrained in our political discourse. A growing number of people believe that violence is an acceptable way to advance their ideological or political beliefs or to express their disagreement with the beliefs of others.

We have experienced significant levels of violence in this country over the past several years that is fueled by a media and online ecosystem that is saturated with conspiracy theories and other online content that is placed there by foreign intelligence services, terrorist groups, violent extremist organizations, specifically for the purposes of inspiring, informing, and facilitating illegal actions and even violence. And then finally, what makes it even more complicated from a law enforcement perspective is that the language of extremism has now become ingrained in the language we use in our political discourse. We're actually seeing extremist organizations, terrorist groups, and those in the mainstream political environment often use the same language and express the same or similar beliefs. So all that together creates, in a sense, a perfect storm from the standpoint of threat.

B
Well, and, okay, so with all that as context, then knowing that the threat environment was like it is, knowing that you could have bad actors knowing that. Like, you look at aerial shots of this place, John, we talk about how, like, the sniper was on these roofs. There's half a dozen buildings or something. All their roofs are white. It's very easy to see something that is not supposed to be there. Was this a failure by the US Secret Service to prevent something like this?

C
I mean, I'm not ready yet to say that it's a failure. I will also say that I've had the fortune to work with the secret Service throughout my career. They are a really good organization that takes its mission seriously. But in watching as the events unfold and as we learn more about the events, what we will want answers to, and I'm sure that the secretary of homeland Security will want answers to, is, was there any intelligence out there that would have warranted a higher security posture?

Were the physical security preparations and activities that were put in place adequate based on the current threat environment? You know, one question I have is, you know, we've heard through reporting that the service and local police cleared those rooftops adjacent to the site of the event. Well, once a location is cleared, I it needs to be secured. And that is done by either placing law enforcement on that rooftop, for example, or by making sure that no one has access to that. Was that done? There are reports that members of the public identified a suspicious person, perhaps the suspect, as they were making their way to the rooftop, and those reports went to law enforcement. Question I have is, was that shared with those in the security bubble?

Did they modify their security operations according.

So those are the types of questions that I think people are going to ask. I think people, quite frankly, are also going to ask questions about the speed of the response, the base plan in an event such as this, that if a protectee comes under attack, you place them in a position of protection, but you get them out of the scene as quickly as possible.

B
You're talking about the agents who go on top of Trump and then whisk him out to the motorcade.

C
When you look at the videos of the shooting of President Reagan or Gerald Ford or even what we see in the movies that are often an accurate depiction, believe it or not, the idea is you immediately put the protectee into a safer position, but you get them out of there, you move them as quickly as possible away from the scene where the attack is taking place. You get them in their protected vehicle, their armored vehicle, and you get that vehicle out of the location. And in fact, these security plans that are typically put in place have multiple options. For how that can take place, whether it's the route that the agents will take to move to protect you out of the area and then the routes that the car will take to get out of the area. In watching the video, it just seemed things were moving pretty slowly.

B
Wow. Okay, so let's look ahead then. What can you imagine, I guess, happening with security for future events, whether it's the RNC which is happening today, or whether it's either of these candidates on the campaign trail? I mean, how does the secret service or government agencies, I mean, do they change their posture? What happens?

C
Well, the posture was already high when it came to the conventions and to security generally during this election cycle. In fact, yesterday the secret Service provided a rundown on the security measures they're putting in place.

A
This event is designated as a national special security event. So it is an 18 month process that involves all levels of government that are contributing to the operational security plans for this event.

C
The investigation into this specific attack and the evaluation of what further security measures are necessary will go hand in hand.

A
We are continuously monitoring information related to the event, so we're confident in the plans that we have and we're moving forward with those plans.

C
So as investigators learn more about the motive behind this attack that will help inform additional security measures. But, you know, at the end of the day, if I were in my old job, we would be having discussions right now about how to not only enhance security around the conventions, but how to enhance security more broadly as we get closer to the election.

What's important for people to understand is what happened on Saturday is not the beginning of political violence in this current threat environment, and it's not the end. We've been experiencing violence and other threat related activity for several years now. The tempo of that activity is increasing and we anticipate that the potential for physical attacks or targeted attacks will increase even more as we get closer to the election.

B
All right, John Cohen, formerly of DHS, now an ABC News contributor. Thank you so much.

C
Always great to be with you, Brad.

B
All right, so we've been talking about the shooting itself, but political violence poses profound political questions. We will check in on how both parties are dealing with this as this special edition continues.

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So, of course, today the Republican National Convention is starting. By the end of this week, former President Trump will become the official republican nominee. But you just heard John Cohen say that political discourse is part of the problem right now. So what can we expect to hear? Is this a moment where the temperature can be lowered or raised? Let's go to ABC's Washington bureau chief Rick Klein in Milwaukee right now. Rick, is this RNC happening the way we were expecting it to this time last week, like it's still going on as planned?

E
The scene is shockingly normal inside the arena where I am right now, Brad, there's balloons up in the rafters. There's make America great against signs throughout. There's lots of great red, white and blue bunting. It looks like a traditional political convention. And we're told that the formal processes of the convention are intact. Nothing's going to change with the speakers, with the balloting for vice president, president and president, and the typical over the top moments and all the fun and the hats and all the crazy things you see at conventions. But then again, everything's changed. There's no way to have a convention like this in this news environment without recognizing the credibly wild news events and frankly, extremely sad moment for the country that occurred just days before the delegates arrive in Milwaukee and former President Trump arrives to accept the nomination. Again.

B
We are here to nominate a ticket.

D
And we're going to do it this week.

B
And folks will be hearing a very.

D
Consistent message all week about that.

B
And I don't expect that to change at all.

E
Things have changed so fundamentally that it's impossible to imagine that it won't infect almost every part of what's discussed on stage. Even if the speaking slots don't change, the speeches themselves will. And I think the tone is different at once, more somber and I think more expectant, even jubilant when it comes to republican prospects, given the way that those are events played out over the weekend.

B
Let's talk a little bit more about tone, because what is the kind of overall arching message from Republicans going to be in the wake of an assassination attempt of not just the former president, but their top candidate?

E
The view of Republicans, including the delegates here in Milwaukee writ large, is that we narrowly escaped an absolute tragedy.

B
I certainly feel more somber, but it's also a sense of resolve, of seriousness, of purpose of what we're doing and seeing that happend and recognizing how important it is and also encouraging people to ratchet back on the Trump hate.

E
But the way that we escaped it with the former president defiant, that fist raised with the blood on his face, it's an image that is going to be played on the screens throughout this week. It is going to be recounted and dramatized by speakers. It's going to be seen as a moment of leadership, of a bold political statement, and to the minds of many of the people here, a symptom of the political ills that I hope what's.

A
Meant for evil will be used for good. And it's God willing. And I think this can unify our country. I hope that needs unified.

E
There are some who I think are very irresponsibly saying that this is somehow President Biden and Democrats fault for demonizing Trump. But more than that, there is a sense of victimhood that many Republicans feel, that they feel like their viewpoints are not being taken seriously or being mocked by people, and that the idea of political violence stemming from that is something that they are eager to call out.

C
We heard Senator JD Vance in a tweet say this is not just some isolated incident. The central premise of the Biden campaign is that President Donald Trump is an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs.

E
To the extent that this shooting is seen as a symptom of some of the rhetoric on the left as opposed to some of the violent rhetoric on the right, that's something that they're going to embrace because it reinforces a worldview that, frankly, is very much in keeping with the Save the country from chaos message that Donald Trump and the MAGA movement hope to bring.

B
I'm also wondering, we talk so much about the divides in the Democratic Party right now. I mean, there are also sort of ideological concerns among Republicans about where they're heading. Independence. Does this unify sort of the right leaning half of this country and at this convention now?

E
Yeah, I think that this is a more united and more MAGA party than it's been, was at either of the previous two conventions. Very telling. The Nikki Haley, probably the closest and most bitter rival that Donald Trump had in the primaries, the person who actually won at least one state and I wouldn't say came close, but gave Donald Trump the biggest sweat and very famously broke with Trump and said, I could never support him. Well, guess what? She's going to show up. She's going to speak here. And that itself is a major statement. We're going to see Ron DeSantis, we're going to see people like Marco Rubio and JD Vance emerge. One of the two of them could easily be the vice presidential running mate that Trump chooses. Both of them were very harsh Trump critics. Ted Cruz will be speaking again. He's not going to be saying, vote your conscience like he did in 2016. He is a full fledged member of the, of the MAGA army. And almost everyone here in Milwaukee is. And there are some holdouts that found slots as delegates for Haley or someone else, but that is the distinct, distinct minority. This is Donald Trump's party. And actually, we may see him now at the peak of his powers inside the party, even with his legal cases and his legal woes starting to fade away.

That adds to the sense of kind of invincibility that people see around Donald Trump this week in Milwaukee.

B
Well, and last question for you, Rick. Cause I sort of look to you for, like, helping me understand what all this means.

When you look at Trump himself and, like, whether this was a superficial wound, this was still a wound, it was still a brush with death.

How does he emerge from that, like, as far as his campaign? Does that affect now how he spends the rest of his time campaigning and maybe how America can see him overall?

E
Trump will be unchastened and defiant. He views this as a scare. But think about all of the close calls he's had. Not necessarily close calls with his life, but close calls with legal jeopardy, close calls with his businesses going bankrupt and financial jeopardy, his marriages falling apart or coming together, the scandals that he's survived. He has survived.

There's been a lucky streak that has run through his life. And I don't think that Donald Trump or the delegates that have gathered to celebrate him view it as luck. They view it as something more than that. They see fate. Some of them even see the hand of God. And I think that's the piece. Donald Trump's not a particularly religious man, but there is almost a religious feel to the zeal around which he is seen by so many Republicans, including those who were gathered for his convention.

B
Yeah, that's a fascinating sort of way to look at it as the next chapter and sort of what tone this campaign takes from now on. All right, Rick Klein there in Milwaukee room where the balloons will fall at some point. Thank you so much.

E
Thank you, Brad.

B
The other question, of course, that's transfixing the political world right now is what does this mean for President Biden? Because think about it, this is not just someone who's a candidate. It's not just a candidate who is facing real questions from his own party about his ability to campaign, but he's also the current president of the United States. He is leading a country as it reconciles with political violence. Well, last night it was in that capacity that President Biden gave an address from the Oval Office. Let's quickly break it down with ABC's White House correspondent Mary Alice Parks. Mary Alice, what was the message here from the president?

A
Yeah, this was a rare Oval office address, only the third in Biden's presidency. And the message was really about restoring the soul of the nation, as the president likes to say. I mean, right off the bat, he talked about how we can bitterly disagree over our politics in this country. But we have to find a way at the end of the day, to remember that we are neighbors and we are friends, and most importantly, we are fellow Americans.

F
A former president was shot, 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.

A
I mean, I really took it, Brad, as a call to action for all of us to find a way to do better, to find a way to lower the tax temperature of our political discourse.

F
You know, the political record in this country has gotten very heated. It's time to cool it down.

We all have a responsibility to do that.

A
It was interesting to me, Brad, that he also included this horrific assassination attempt in a growing list of political violence that the country has seen and experienced. Unfortunately, over the last few years, whether.

F
With members of Congress of both parties being targeted and shot, I or a violent mob attacking the Capitol on January 6, or 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 the sitting governor, or an attempted assassination on Donald Trump. There is no place in America for this kind of violence.

C
Really.

A
His message was that this has been a terrifying, growing trend, and we have to find a way to stop it.

B
Well, and you mentioned that kind of list of other acts of political violence. That stuck out to me as well, Mayor Alice, because it made me remember, and I think this might have been the president's intention. I don't know. It made me remember that in the past, President Trump had made light of some of these acts of political violence. And she's against building a wall at our border, even though she has a wall around her house, which obviously didn't do a very good job. I mean, is this President Biden? He's acting as president. He's in the oval. Right. Very much official duties. But is there also a political message from candidate Biden that he wants Americans to hear, or what do you think?

A
I think if there is a political message, and I think it is important to underscore that it was not a political speech. This was very much Biden in his role as commander in chief, which really has been the only capacity that he has been in since this assassination attempt. I mean, he immediately rushed back to the White House. House. He put his campaign on hold. They pulled campaign ads. He is focused, rightly so, of course, on being the commander in chief. He's had briefings in the situation room.

F
I'm instructed that this investigation be thorough and swift, and the investigators will have every resource they need to get this done.

A
I think that he feels, of course, it is important in his role as commander in chief to reassure Americans who are nervous at this time.

F
The power to change America should always rest in the hands of the people, not in the hands of a would be assassin.

A
Attempted political assassinations are not something we see in America, not something we should see in America. And I think that was, of course, you know, the message from this president. But to get to your question, Brad, if there is a political message in there from his remarks, it's that we're not gonna blame one side or one party that we have seen political violence motivated across the political spectrum. And, yes, I think in a lot of ways, it was a challenge to Republicans to think about ways that they've responded in the past to moments of political violence. And, you know, it is going to be a tricky time for the president to turn to being a candidate again and turn to the campaign trail again, because, of course, central to the president's campaign is a message that the former president is a threat to democracy. I mean, we've heard him say that, and I don't have any indications from the campaign they're going to stop saying that they think it's wrong when he talks about wanting to pardon people who stormed the Capitol on January 6. President Biden got into this race because he was horrified about what he saw at Charlottesville. But he's going to have to find a way and especially reckon with people in his party who are calling on him to stop using language about whether Trump is an authoritarian figure, for example. I think that this is going to be a moment of reflection for all political candidates, the president included.

B
Yeah. Yeah, it is an interesting challenge. And lastly, Mary Ellis. I mean, I'm thinking about the rest of the Democratic Party right now. Does this reshape, I don't know if you're able to look ahead like this at this point, but does this reshape how the party deals with Biden? Because literally up until the second those gunshots rang out, it looked like Democrats were getting closer and closer to publicly begging Biden to step aside. Does that change? If you're worried about what this moment does to the broader themes of the election?

A
Oh, 100%, you're exactly right. I was actually on world News from the White House north lawn talking, talking about that, talking about the division of the Democratic Party, the calls the president was trying to make to get House Democrats on board, how some of those calls had gotten tense and contentious. And it's amazing in the worst way, amazing how that feels like the world has changed, right? That the campaign has changed. That feels far away. I talked to one democratic staffer who actually works for one of those democratic House members who had called for the president to step aside. He acknowledged that there was momentum in the party to call on the president publicly to step aside, that that is frozen, that it will be very hard for those members who do still believe that he probably should not lead their party. It would be very hard for them to find an appropriate time to start that sort of drumbeat again, and they likely won't.

This one source acknowledged to me that this probably sort of ended that conversation, at least for right now.

And, you know, and it is a reminder that there was only about 20 members of Congress who had publicly come out. You know, it is relatively a small number. We know that many more behind the scenes have expressed their panic. But I do think that when we've been talking so much about unity in one little way, the unity will be just within the democratic party, too.

B
Yeah, but I mean, if that line of thinking is correct, that shows you just how earth moving this was. I mean, obviously, when we're talking about the assassination of a former us president, one of the leading candidates, that is huge all in itself. But to think it's so big that it could also define who ends up running in this race, I mean, that is just shows you how seismic this moment was and what, frankly, Americans priorities are going to be as we sort of reel from this as a nation. All right, Mary Alice Parks, our White House correspondent, thank you so much.

A
Thanks, Bradley.

C
All right.

B
That will do it for this special edition of start here. Obviously a ton happening this morning, so keep it tuned today to all of ABC's platforms. And by the way, the Republican National Convention starts tonight. That will air on ABC every night starting tonight at 10:00 p.m. eastern. A lot more to see on ABC News live, of course. I'm Brad Milke. See you tomorrow.

I
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The Trump Shooting Aftermath

Primary Topic

Episode Summary

Main Takeaways

Episode Chapters

1: The Immediate Aftermath

2: Security Failures

3: Political Reactions

4: Broader Implications

Actionable Advice

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