BREAKING: President Trump Shot

Michael Knowles
Good evening. I'm Michael Knowles. I'm very sorry to be joining you this Saturday evening. President Trump was giving a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. As you heard on that clip, what pretty clearly sounded like shots rang out. President Trump went down. Secret Service went down. When President Trump got back up, he had blood on the side of his face and what appears to have been blood on his ear. And then, like a legend, like a world historic figure, like a national leader, he gets up as Secret Service is trying to whisk him off the stage.

He turns to the microphone, he raises his fist in the air and he says, what couldn't be picked up on the mic, but it looked pretty clearly like fight, fight, fight, before Secret Service pulls him offstage.

We don't know much more than that. The Secret Service has released a statement.

The US Secret Service has implemented protective measures and the former president is safe.

This is now an active Secret Service investigation.

Further information will be released when available.

News networks on the scene have reported that Trump was injured, but have given no additional details.

You can all see, though, it's pretty clear he was injured because he has blood over the side of his face. The Trump campaign has released a statement. A Trump spokesman says that the former president, quote, thanks law enforcement and first responders for their quick action during this heinous act. And thank God the Trump campaign is reporting that Trump is fine. Obviously, he's not fine.

What sounded like shots rang out at the rally and Trump's face is bloodied. I hesitate to say that President Trump has been shot because we just don't really know the details. This is happening in real time. So I'm going with what the Trump campaign is saying, what the US Secret Service are saying. But in any case, there was clearly some violent incident at the Trump rally. Trump bloodied. And thank God the Trump campaign is saying he is fine, meaning it seems that he will recover, he'll survive. He's being checked out at a local medical facility.

The context around this, of course, is that the Republican National Convention is set to begin in Milwaukee on Monday.

The other context around this, of course, is that the Democratic Party is in a moment of crisis because Democrat elites have given up on the incumbent president, the presumptive nominee, Joe Biden. They're trying to oust him after a disastrous debate with Donald Trump just some weeks ago.

The other context around this, according to the news networks that are reporting on this, liberal news networks, of course, but I repeat myself, the journalists are shocked. They say they are shocked. This is so unexpected.

I don't know how they could possibly say with a straight face other than their sheer skill at mendacity and deception and dishonesty? I don't know how anyone could say with a straight face that something like this is unexpected. Six days ago, the new Republic, one of the most prestigious and established liberal magazines, ran a cover with Trumps face as Hitler. Trump with hitlers haircut, Trump with hitlers mustache. Big cover. American fascism, what it would look like. Heres what the new Republic wrote. We chose this cover image based on a well known 1932 Hitler campaign poster for a precise reason. Anyone transported back to 1932 Germany could very, very easily have explained away hitlers excesses and been persuaded that his critics were going overboard. Today, we at the new Republic think we can spend this election year in one of two ways. We can spend it debating whether Trump meets the nine or 17 points that define fascism. Or we can spend it saying hes damn close enough and wed better fight.

New Republic says we unreservedly choose the latter course.

Better fight. Now, what do they mean by fight?

When Trump says fight, fight, fight, hes saying defend yourself.

Pretty clearly. Hes got blood on his face because someone has attacked him.

When the new Republic says wed better fight, they say clearly what they mean. They say Trump is Hitler and anything goes, anything to stop him would therefore be justified. And it's not just the new republic. How many liberal journalists who are now crying crocodile tears? How could this ever have happened? How many of them have spent the last eight years saying Trump is Hitler, Trump's supporters are Nazis.

Our republic is at stake. Trump poses an existential threat to democracy.

Forget the journalists. Theyve all said that, President Biden and the Democrats. How many elected democrats have said Trump poses an existential threat to democracy? Our democracy will not survive if Trump gets reelected this year. Democracy is on the ballot. How many of them have said this? And then theyre so surprised when shots ring out at a Trump rally and the former president goes down, comes up, blood on his face.

Surprised?

Forget about what theyve said about Trump 2017. You remember, it seems so long ago now. Wasnt that long ago. A leftist shot up the congressional baseball game, nearly murdered Republican Congressman Steve Scalise. Just a couple years ago, a leftist traveled across the country to murder Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh in order to prevent the Dobbs decision from coming out, overruling Roe v. Wade.

Justice Kavanaugh is sitting on the Supreme Court because of the election of Donald Trump.

You don't need to imagine this stuff, to say nothing of all of the violent rhetoric that we've heard coming from elected Democrats and establishment media.

So they're all going to run away from it now. They're going to cry their crocodile tears.

Maybe they'll stand by it. What they've said, many of them will try to deny it. Don't let them say it's unexpected. This is entirely expected.

I truly hate to say that many of us have told you so here for months. What have we said? The only way that they can beat Trump is to kill him.

They can't. They've tried to prosecute him. That hasn't worked that well. They've tried to out poll him. That hasn't worked that well. They tried to beat him in a primary. That hasn't worked that well.

They've tried this, they've tried that. There's really not, they tried to debate them. They tried to do this, they tried to do that.

We've said, well, the only thing left they can do is kill them.

Presidents have been assassinated before.

How many presidents have been assassinated? Not that many, of course, but it happens. Four presidents in american history have been assassinated. Two presidents have been injured in assassination attempts. Can't think of any former presidents who have been assassinated. Another reason that Trump has now made it into the history books where he was already.

It doesnt change the campaign so much for those who have been paying attention.

When the Democrats have said, this is an existential battle for our republic, our very country is on the line, Trump is Hitler.

The ones who are paying attention and the ones who mean that they know what the stakes are. And when conservatives have said, hey, Democrats, how about you dial back the rhetoric a little bit? Multiple prominent Republicans have happily survived assassination attempts in recent years, and they're going to try to kill Trump.

This is the only way this story ends, is someone is going to try to kill Trump.

We knew what was going on. We knew what the stakes were. So this event doesn't change the stakes so much.

It just makes those stakes clearer to anyone who wasn't paying attention.

We're looking for more information for those who are just tuning in. Obviously, this is a breaking live broadcast. Could we just play that again? Butler, Pennsylvania. President Trump giving a rally to many, many supporters there. Don't forget that the presidential rallies have a security perimeter. And President Trump, not only because he's a party nominee, but also because he's a former president, has a Secret Service detail, pretty substantial Secret Service detail.

So the questions people are asking right now is what weapon was this?

What security failure happened to allow him to get it into that security perimeter. Was he outside of the security perimeter? Who is this shooter? We now have a report coming out from ABC News that the shooter has been confirmed dead.

We don't know that shooter's identity yet, but we have very happy news that President Trump is doing fine.

And we have very happy news that no one else is facing a threat because the shooter is dead. Here's the rally.

Do we have more? Do we have any more video of the.

For those who are just tuning in, let's please go back to the video of Trump actually going down.

Unknown
Take a look at what happened.

Michael Knowles
Are we good?

Shooters down. Are we good to move?

Clear. We're clear.

Unknown
Let me get my shoe. Let me get my shoes.

Michael Knowles
I got you, sir.

Unknown
Let me get my shoes.

Michael Knowles
Hold that in your head. It's bloody, so we gotta move to the bus.

Let me get my. Okay.

Unknown
Watch out.

Wait, wait.

USA. USA. USA. USA. USA. USA. USA.

Michael Knowles
More news is breaking on how this is all shaking out. President Trump, you can see him, he stands up, he says, no, hold on, hold on, hold on.

He mouthed something, though it's hard to hear it on the microphone. Looks like fight, fight. Fight puts his hand up, a fist up in the air, blood coming down the side of his face. Secret Service, escort him away.

We now have confirmation from the news channels, if we hope they're reliable, that the shooter is dead.

And very sadly, it looks that at least one attendee is also dead following gunfire. We don't know the identity of that attendee.

We don't know if more attendees are dead. It's now being reported that this is gunfire. So there was some confusion in the first moments. Was this, was it a firework? Was it something else that sounds like a gunfire, but is not the reason that anyone was even asking that is because there are typically such strong security perimeters at these events that it would seem unthinkable that someone could get a gun in there. But the reports are now coming out this was gunfire.

At least one attendee dead, and the shooter happily dead before he could do more damage than he already did. Very happily. President Trump seems to be okay.

The image of Trump standing there, defiant, blood coming down his face, composing himself. Fight. Fight. You can see him, obviously with more emotion than usual, but still in command of his speech, in his body, he says, fight. Fight. Fight.

He's taken off the stage. Finally, he acquiesces. Secret Service takes him off stage. You think the spirit of this guy, the courage of this guy, you don't know how many shooters are out there. You don't know if more bullets are gonna come flying. And he stands up, Secret Service trying to whisk him away, and he says, no, Im going to talk to the people here. Im going to reassure them. Im going to say, fight. Fight. Im going to compose myself so that I dont scare those in attendance. Other than the blood coming down my face, im going to show them, im okay. Im going to lead.

Now we can walk off stage.

It calls to mind one very clear historical incident. That was October 14, 1912, when a president, in many ways very similar to Donald Trump and who Donald Trump has said he takes inspiration from, Teddy Roosevelt, was shot.

There was an assassination attempt.

John Schrank tried to murder Teddy Roosevelt.

And happily, as it seems to be in this situation, he missed. And his famous words there, friends, I shall ask you to be as quiet as possible. I don't know whether you fully understand that I have just been shot, but it takes more than that to kill a bull moose.

History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme, as they say. This would appear to be one of those rhymes.

Roosevelt also famously ordered, after he was shot, he said, bring him to me.

Bring him to me. I want to see him. Don't hurt him.

Roosevelt says, I'm all right. I'm all right.

Real tough guy. Very important display of leadership at a crucial moment in history. We seem to see almost precisely the same sort of thing playing out right now.

At least one attendee dead, getting more updates by the minute.

We don't even really know the condition of Trump. All we have is the statement from the campaign, he's fine. He's being treated at a medical facility.

If he was shot, but it was a superficial shot, and that's what caused the blood.

If it was a ricochet or some shrapnel or who knows what. Or if as he went down, he was hit, or who knows if his wound is superficial and if he survives.

And if President Trump's opponents do not succeed at murdering him, as they clearly wish to do before the election, he could win every state.

This event does not change the stakes of the election.

A shooter trying to murder President Trump does not change the stakes of the election. It only clarifies it. And its going to clarify it. For a lot of people who have been told Trump is violent, the Trump supporters are violent. They pose an existential threat to our democracy.

And theyve heard that kind of stuff, not just from fringe people. Theyve heard that from the establishment media almost uniformly. Theyve heard that from Joe Biden. Theyve heard that from leading elected Democrats and those people who maybe havent been paying so much attention, theyre going to look at this, and theyre not going to be able to deny what theyre seeing with their own eyes.

Whos violent?

Whos threatening our republic?

Whos trying to murder a president?

Further details coming out now.

Youre seeing elected officials, obviously, many Republicans wishing the best for President Trump, praying for him.

One notable Democrat who has come out and made a statement is Josh Shapiro. He's a Democrat, governor of Pennsylvania, said violence targeted at any political party or political leader is absolutely unacceptable. It has no place in Pennsylvania or the United States. So obviously. Shapiro very close to the situation. It happened in his state.

Robert F. Kennedy junior, who is ostensibly running for President against Trump and Biden, has come out, asked Americans to pray for Trump. Now is the time for every American who loves our country to step back from the division, renounce all violence, and unite in prayer for President Trump and his family.

The republican national convention is set to kick off in about 36 hours. It's set to kick off on Monday fully. I mean, the Republican, many of the Republicans are already in Milwaukee. The convention is, in that sense, already underway.

But it formally kicks off 36 hours from now. Something like that. I'll be there.

Many, if not most major Republicans and conservatives and right wingers. We're talking activists, journalists, politicians.

They're going to be there, too.

The presidential nominee appears almost to have been murdered.

We're getting more confirmation, more reports in this time from Sky News that at least one rally attendee is dead. Sadly, we dont know really anything more about who that attendee is.

We dont even really know where the shot came from. Again, the secret service is saying this is an active investigation.

The reports are that the gunman is dead. Was there more than one gunman?

Where did the shots come from?

You can see Trumps face is bloodied on the right side.

It doesnt necessarily mean the shots came from that side. Doesnt necessarily mean that there arent more people out there.

Was this shooter acting alone? Was the shooter conspiring alone?

How did the shooter get in to the rally?

Were waiting for more updates.

President Barack Obama has just come out, made a statement. There is absolutely no place for political violence in our democracy. Although we don't yet know exactly what happened, we should all be relieved that former President Trump wasn't seriously hurt and use this moment to recommit ourselves to civility and respect in our politics. Michelle and I are wishing him a quick recovery.

Fine.

It's fine.

I don't like the downplaying of this from Barack Obama, I don't think that's appropriate at all. We should all be relieved that former President Trump wasnt seriously hurt. Excuse me, excuse me, Mister Obama, im glad that youre now condemning political violence. Thats good. After your party has been calling Trump Hitler for the past eight years, after your party has been downplaying the risk of violence from their own side and overhyping the risk, nearly nonexistent of political violence from the right. I'm glad that you're in general now condemning political violence.

We should all be relieved that former President Trump wasn't seriously injured. I think blood was pouring down the side of his face at a political rally. I think he went down in Secret Service, took out automatic weapons to make sure that more shots wouldn't be fired. I think it's pretty serious. I think it's pretty serious.

And so that was fat. That was a record, actually for Democrats downplaying political violence against a conservative.

The leftist attempted assassination and nearly successful assassination of Steve Scalise, republican congressman, that's been pretty successfully memory holed. You talk to conservatives and Republicans, they might remember it. You talk to Democrats, they probably don't even remember that.

Oh, I forgot. The attack on Senator Rand Paul.

Isn't that a neighborhood left wing neighbor? Break Senator Paul's ribs?

Then, of course, we recall the assassination attempt just a couple of years ago against Brett Kavanaugh. This after Chuck Schumer stood outside of a supposedly co equal branch of government, the Supreme Court, and said, we're coming for you, we're coming for you. You're going to feel the whirlwind.

Pretty inappropriate.

A rhetorical attack on the separation of powers and on the Supreme Court, and quite violent, especially when you consider that Supreme Court justices are appointed for life.

So to say, you're going to feel the whirlwind, we're going to whip up all these people. There was just a new report that the left is pouring $10 million or more into an effort to demonize the Supreme Court. Now, it's one thing to spend money to demonize an elected politician. Then you say, all right, now we're going to persuade people and you're going to kick them out of the ballot box. It doesn't make any sense for the Supreme Court. Supreme Court is not supposed to be party to electoral politics. So the only thing that that could do is to delegitimize the court and to increase threats of physical violence against the Supreme Court, the conservatives, specifically on the Supreme Court that has largely been memory hold, too. And now that was quick.

06:44 p.m. central time Barack Obama comes out. There is no place for political violence in our democracy. We should all be relieved the former President Trump wasnt seriously hurt.

Yeah, maybe not by your standards. Barack Obama, I guess itd be more serious if whoever this shooter was had succeeded at murdering him. That would be more serious. I think its pretty serious that the former president was injured, seems shot.

I think that's pretty serious. I think anytime a former president and party nominee is told to drop down by secret Service and comes up with blood on his face, I think it's pretty serious.

I'm glad, though, that he and Michelle are wishing him a quick recovery. Is Joe Biden going to make a statement? Can Joe Biden make a statement? Would he want to even if he could? Not sure. Haven't seen one yet. We're getting reports in now. There was a doctor in the crowd who attempted to save the rally. Attendee who was shot.

That's exactly where I heard him come from.

Unknown
What did you see, sir?

Michael Knowles
I heard the shots.

I thought it was firecrackers to begin with. Somebody over there was screaming, he's been shot. He's been shot. So I made my way over.

I said, I'm an emergency department physician, let me help you. The guy had spoken to, spun around, was jammed between the benches. He had a headshot here. There was lots of blood, and he had brain matter there. And so I got him.

There's a helicopter coming in to get him.

So I got people there really helpful. I got a. Was there only one person shot that you saw? Yeah, I did CPR, chest compressions, as well as a brief one.

So you heard that question at the end where other people shot as well. This would seem to be confirmation. We're talking about gunshots.

Very sad. We say a prayer for the attendee, at least one attendee who's died. Requiem eternam dona eis, domine, et lux perpetuado ceet e requiescat in pace nomini Patris at Filiat Spiritu Sancti. We hope that he's the only one who has been killed. He was not the target.

That guy, God rest his soul, he was not the target.

Donald Trump was the target.

And he ended up with blood on the side of his face.

Are we talking about inches away from a former president, the current leading presidential candidate in 2024 being murdered two days, less than two days before the republican national Convention?

How does anyone attend a Trump rally now?

I bet many people will. I would, but you'd have to think twice. You're taking your life in your hands.

That's part of the message here. That's part of the, well, I guess you'd call it terrorism.

Terrorism is when you target civilians for political ends.

At least one civilian was killed.

Its to send a message. If you support Trump, that could be you, too.

You hear it from the doctor. Mann was shot. He was trying to administer life saving first aid. There was brain matter on the ground.

Trump stands up, arm in the air, blunt on his face.

Fight, fight, fight. What's he thinking when he says fight, fight, fight?

He is thinking, not that I've spoken to him, but I don't think it takes much imagination. He is thinking, either I've been injured and could die or I've been injured and I might soon be injured. More shots firing out. No one knows who it is. No one knows where it's coming from. Is there another shooter? Is the shooter still alive? Is he going to get him?

This man is thinking, these might be my last words.

His last words are not to whimper or to cry or to yell or to scream.

It's to take charge, to say, fight, fight.

If one were given to sentimentality, it would be very difficult not to feel goosebumps at that demonstration of courage, personal courage and political courage.

President Trump, Im sorry. Elon Musk has just come out on his own platform on x and endorsed Trump.

I suspect youre going to see more of this in the coming days. He says, I fully endorse President Trump and hope for his rapid recovery.

Another presidential parallel here is to Ronald Reagan. Ronald Reagan was very nearly assassinated.

He was a sitting president at the time.

And obviously President Trump has taken a lot of inspiration from Reagan.

Reagan was taken to the hospital. This was in Washington.

He was reportedly quite angry when the surgeons cut off his suit. He said, this is a new suit. Dont cut it off. Of course, if youre taken in and youve been shot, especially if youre the sitting president of the United States, they dont unbutton your suit. They just cut it off. And then he turned, he was still joking.

He turned to the doctor, the surgeon, Doctor Giordano, I believe, and said, I hope youre a Republican.

And the doctor who was not a Republican, who was a Democrat, he said to Reagan, mister president today, were all Republicans.

I think youre going to see a lot of that.

The rabid partisan Democrats, the leftists who, Im sorry to say, wanted this to happen, the people who put the new Republic cover together just six days ago, calling Trump Hitler.

I dont know how else to interpret a cover that says american fascism. What it would look like Trump is Hitler.

We choose to fight. We're not going to just stand by and pretend this is an ordinary election.

We choose to call him Hitler and a fascist. I don't know how else to interpret that other than we want to murder Trump.

I don't know how any reasonable person could inter either. It means that the new Republic would not have wanted to murder Hitler.

No, Hitler, he is a bad egg. But we're going to take it easy with him. Hitler, the symbol of absolute evil in the modern world, either. That's what the new Republic's saying. I don't think that's what the new Republic is saying. I think they're saying we want to murder Trump. I think it's pretty clear. Many commentators at the time were rightly observing, this is going to get people killed.

A friend of mine, David Marcus, a reporter, writer, rather, columnist and journalist, I pointed out, I saw that cover. I said, you know, the left, theyre so dishonest, theyre so reckless, theyre so goofy. I said its such a goofy cover to pretend that Donald Trump is a fascist or something. Its absurd. And he pointed out wisely, he said, its not goofy. Its going to get people killed. I didnt think of the two as being mutually opposed, but he made a good point. And I think most reasonable people were thinking that that could get people killed. It has.

It has. Six days later.

And I dont mean to single at the new Republic.

Anyone, anyone who said Trump is Hitler, Trump poses an existential threat to our democracy.

We must stop Trump by any means necessary. Anyone who said that? Thats pretty much every journalist.

Its pretty much every elite left wing activist.

And thats President Biden. President Biden says Trump poses an existential threat.

Democracy is on the ballot. Our democracy is at stake, basically any permutation of it.

Hes been saying that for years now.

What did they expect would happen?

What did they, theres a lot of talk about President Trump being reckless with his rhetoric because, you know, Donald Trump says that he has big crowds at his rallies. He does, by the way, Trump is reckless with his rhetoric because Trump says he wants to deport illegal aliens and he wants to build a wall and he wants to make Mexico pay for it. Oh, how reckless.

Democrats say that Trump poses an existential threat to the democracy.

Democracy is on the ballot.

I don't think, build a wall, build a wall, make Mexico pay for it. I don't think that gets anyone killed.

This man is Hitler. This man is going to destroy our country and destroy our whole democracy. And by the way, did I tell you he's Hitler? That rhetoric does get people killed.

And of course, there's still no word from the White House.

Of course. Of course.

Is Joe Biden even awake?

That's not a cheap shot. The White House has said the man works between, what, the hours of ten and four?

Hes reliably working for 6 hours a day. Between the hours, well, its after four eastern time. Eastern time.

Does he even know?

There was a question that came in after Bidens disastrous debate defeat to President Trump when it became clear Democrats were going to have to try something new if they wanted to beat Trump in this race.

There was the question, what happens if the call comes in at two in the morning? What happens if theres some attack on America? There was an attack on America.

We all just saw it.

There was a major attack on America.

Someone just tried to murder the former president and the current leading presidential nominee.

You want to talk about an existential threat to our democracy, democracy being on the ballot?

Most people, according to every poll, most people want Trump to be the next president.

Some people dont want that to happen.

So theyre going to take away the ability of the people to vote for Donald Trump by taking away Donald Trumps life.

And you want to call Donald Trump an existential threat to the republic.

Now, what happened? What does this mean for the election? We don't know. I mean, this is happening in real time. Maybe when Joe Biden wakes up, he can make a statement. We see where the things stand when Reagan was shot.

Happily, the assassination didn't work, though it did permanently disable the White House press secretary and soft on crime activists successfully lobbied to get Reagan's attempted assassin released from prison.

Reagan won 49 out of 50 states.

When Reagan went up for reelection, he won 49 out of 50 states. The only state he didn't win was Mondale's home state of Minnesota. And I spoke to one of the men who ran Reagan's campaign in 84, and he said he thinks Reagan won that too, but they weren't going to push for all 50.

The White House has finally released a statement. That's nice statement from Joe Biden. I have been briefed on the shooting at Donald Trump's rally in Pennsylvania. I'm grateful to hear that he's safe and doing well. I'm praying for him and his family and for all those who are at the rally. As we await further information, Jill and I are grateful to the Secret Service for getting him to safety. There's no place for this kind of violence in America. We must unite as one nation and condemn it. Okay, condemn it then condemn everyone who's calling Trump Hitler. And condemn everyone who says that Trump is an existential threat to the country.

But then you'd have to condemn yourself, wouldn't you, mister President? Not that he wrote this. Obviously not.

Obviously not.

It's nice. How many words is that statement? Go back to the statement. How many words is that?

1234. It's three brief paragraphs. I can't even call it three brief paragraphs. First paragraph is one sentence.

Second paragraph is two sentences.

Third paragraph is three sentences. I'm glad. That's good. Thats good that the president of the United States was able to muster six. Not. He didnt that the presidents staffers were able to muster six sentences. What? 2 hours later, after his rival and predecessor appears to have been shot, at the very least was injured at a rally where shots were fired.

Thats good for those who were just tuning in.

President Trump was speaking in Butler, Pennsylvania. Shots rang out.

Trump went down. Secret Service went down.

Let's just play the clip for anyone who's just tuning in now.

Unknown
Take a look at what happened.

Michael Knowles
When you're ready. On you.

Unknown
Ready?

Michael Knowles
Move up. Move. Go.

Unknown
Hawkeye's here.

Unknown
Let me get my shoes. Let me get my shoes.

Michael Knowles
Got you, sir. I got you, sir.

Unknown
Let me get my shoes.

Michael Knowles
Hold that in your head. It's bloody, so we gotta move to the bus.

Let me get my shoes.

Unknown
Watch out.

Wait, wait.

Michael Knowles
More information is emerging now.

So we mentioned the suspected shooter is dead.

An audience member is dead. We heard from a doctor, a medical professional who attempted to revive the rally goer unsuccessfully said the rally goer had been shot in the head and brain matter was available, or was visible, rather.

According to reports that are coming out now, another person from the rally is in critical condition. That's according to a Washington Post reporter citing the Butler county district attorney.

So what people are fearing now is that you're going to hear more of a trickle. Okay. Initially it was shots fired. We don't know if anyone was injured. Then shots fired. We don't know where the shooter is. Then it was shots fired.

President Trump is bloodied, but appears to be okay.

We have an eyewitness who's coming to us on Zoom right now. This is Mike Wright.

Mike, do I have you?

Mike Wright
Yeah, I sure do.

Michael Knowles
What'd you say?

Mike Wright
Well, so we gone to the Trump rally. We had vip sections, we were probably 20 to 30 yards from the stage.

President had been talking probably for about five minutes, and we heard three cracks suppressed. So almost like, you know, the snaps you throw on the ground. Yeah, so it was.

And then, you know, chaos kind of ensued for a little bit.

Earlier in the, the day, I seen a couple sharpshooters on the roof of a building I'd actually show my son. I said, hey, look, they're here to protect President Trump when he comes on stage.

And then after those three quick cracks, probably 4 seconds later, I saw those sharpshooters firing back toward a building that's adjacent from the fairgrounds, all at the same time.

So three shots, they start shooting back. Secret services on stage, you know, has Trump to the ground, then, you know, different. I don't know what. Elio came up on stage. Everyone was kind of panicking after that. There was some commotion from some bleachers to my left, probably about 30 yards to my left.

So from all my friends and family that were at the event, there was, in some pictures I saw. What I kind of summarized happened was the shooter was on the roof of a building called AGR, probably three to 500 yards away from the stage. It was not in the fairground area.

They were shooting through the bleachers towards the president.

And that would make sense because there was, I saw them actually carry two bodies out of the bleachers.

My friend was in the bleachers. One, he said the one lady was definitely deceased.

The other person wasn't sure because there was two life flight helicopters there.

The police sharpshooters on the roof of the building were shooting back toward where the shooter was.

So it all makes sense. It's almost like a big check mark, right? So like the, if Trump was here, I'm sorry, if the sharpshooters were here, the building where the shooter was at was here and the president was here. So in the stand, the bleachers were in the middle. So, you know, it seems like it would make sense that when he was shooting through the bleachers toward the president, he hit a few people, and then the police sharpshooters are shooting back at the building. I did see a picture of a deceased person on the rooftop of a building, too, which I would assume was a shooter.

Michael Knowles
So this would make a lot of sense. The big question even I saw, a lot of the reports hesitated to say it was even gunfire because it didn't make any sense that there would be gunfire at a rally of any presidential nominee, but certainly of a former president. The US Secret Service, as you mentioned, there are sharpshooters on the building. They lock these areas down quite well.

So it didn't make sense. It would make sense, however, if the shooter was outside the perimeter, as you appear to have seen, so you heard suppressed fire.

Presumably this was a pretty serious shooter. This wouldn't have just been some wacko with a pistol or something. If he's firing from that far away, he's able to do that kind of damage. There's blood on the president's face. We still don't know all of the circumstances around it. Obviously, the photo that has now, it's an overused word, but it certainly applies here, has become iconic, is of the top of President Trump's ear, quite bloodied, and then some blood on the side of his face.

It's unclear if the president was shot or if it was shrapnel or if. We just have no idea really yet.

But in any case, if a shooter is able to fire through the bleachers from that kind of a distance and bloody up a president, this was not just a random, haphazard act of violence. This would seem to have been something that was well coordinated.

Mike Wright
I mean, it would had to been for him to get up on that building and kind of thinking about it now, if the shooter was three to 500 yards away from me, there's a chance that the. I didn't hear the.

I just heard the crack of the bullet, not the actual sound of the round, the rifle going off, but the first three shots had definitely heard the crack, the crack of the bullets kind of going past. And because the bullets would have probably went, I don't know, maybe ten yards in front of me with the trajectory.

But the.

The sharpshooters for sure was suppressed. But, yeah, for him to get up on that building, on that rooftop, yeah, it would have had to been planned. Preston, as far as the president. That's all right, real quick. So as far as, like, the president's face, I originally thought, you know, when they stood him up, after a couple minutes, he gave a thumbs up and he was. He was not happy.

I told my wife, I said, they tackled him so quick, he could have hit his head off the ground, off the podium.

Michael Knowles
I guess that was my first reaction as well. And it might well have been the case. I mean, I suppose the shooter could have hit him and if so, happily, it would have just hit him off to the side. He does appear pretty, uh, bloodied up in any case. So, uh, you know, uh, if you're a us secret service, you know, you're, you're not going to be gentle in trying to protect the president as a man is firing multiple rounds to, to murder him.

Uh, we just don't know. I mean, the reports are just totally unclear right now as to what exactly happened. What, what, what was the reaction in the crowd?

Mike Wright
You know, for the first, for the first five to 10 seconds, it's like surreal, right?

The first three shots, you know, is it the sound system? Is it. What is it fireworks? And then when I saw the, the sharpshooters shooting back, we, we got the kids and everyone down to the ground.

It probably took the crowd, I would say, 15, 20 seconds to really grasp, like, what happened. You know, the secret service is down. There's people with rifles on stage. There's commotion in the stands with people screaming.

You knew pretty quick what was going on. Not, maybe not the details. We had initially thought that the shooter was in the stands, right? But that's not the case.

Michael Knowles
Did people then just flee the rally or did they sort of drop, you know, lock in place or.

Mike Wright
We walked in place probably for, what, four or five minutes, and then they, they evacuated. They had everyone get out. It was very orderly.

There wasn't any, it was, you know, a lot of people were upset, but it wasn't like people stampeding over each other. In fact, there was a complete stranger in front of me. He said, hey, put your two little kids between you and I so we can get out of here, just in case something else happened. Everything was very civil. They had the crowd barricade around the vip section, and within that three or four minutes, they removed the barricade. They evacuated pretty quick.

Michael Knowles
Well, yeah. I'm glad to hear that you're safe. I'm glad to hear that people around you are safe.

We will pray for the person, well, for the deceased and for the person who's critically injured, according to reports from the Washington Post.

And we all pray for President Trump. His campaign says he's okay.

Mike Wright
Well, my wife, actually, she does the anesthesia. She's friends with the anesthesiologist at the hospital they took him to. And he was thumbs up in everyone when they took him into the hospital, so I assume he's doing fine.

Michael Knowles
There's a line from Teddy Roosevelt when they, there was an assassination attempt on him in 1912.

He said, you may not know this, but I've been shot. But it takes more than that to kill a bull moose. Takes more than whatever happened to Trump to kill a bull moose. Mike, thank you so much for, thank you President Biden is now making a statement.

We turn to him.

We don't have him. We don't have him. All right. He is making a statement. His staffers presumably released six brief sentences as they were rousing the president. Now, what, 2 hours later, but President Biden appears to be making a live statement. We will get that to you as quickly as possible.

I'm seeing a post on x from Newsweek.

Newsweek. MAGA responds with outrage after Donald Trump injured at Pennsylvania rally.

Jim Treacher reposted that. So I suppose it could be, I hope that it would be some doctored image, some kind of meme. This is the Republicans pounce par excellence.

You know, the phenomenon of Republicans pounce. Democrats do something horrible.

Republicans observe that, notice it, criticize it, and then the headline is, Republicans pounce. They don't talk about the Democrats doing something horrible.

This would be, I think, the most extreme example of that phenomenon ever.

MAGA responds with outrage after Donald Trump injured at Pennsylvania rally. Oh, that's the story.

That's the story. That's the headline. Did you know MAGA responded with outrage?

Oh, hey, hey, Johnny. Anything happened in the news yesterday?

Oh, yes. Yeah, actually, Michael, something did. Mager responded with outrage. Oh, what did they respond with outrage at? Oh, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. It just, you know, it was just outrage. Yes. Someone tried to murder Trump and there were shots fired and someone was killed at a Trump rally by the shooter, but they responded with outrage. So were waiting now on the president speaking.

Do we have it? Do we have the president?

We have it. Here he is.

Joe Biden
Ive been thoroughly briefed by all the agencies in the federal government as to the situation based on what we know. Now, I have tried to get ahold of Donald. He's with his doctors.

Apparently he's doing well. I plan on talking to him shortly, I hope, when I get back to the telephone. Look, there's no place in America for this kind of violence. It's sick. It's sick. It's one of the reasons why we have to unite this country. We cannot allow for this to be happening. We cannot be like this. We cannot condone this. And so I want to thank the Secret Service and all the agencies, including the state agencies that have been engaged in making sure that the people who, and we have more detail to come relative to other injured, other people maybe injured in the audience. I don't have all that detail. We'll make that available to you. I may be able to come back a little later tonight, but we'll put out a statement if we don't, if I'm not able to get, if it's not convenient for you all. But the bottom line is that the Trump rally is a rally that he should have been able to be conducted peacefully and without any problem. But the idea, the idea that there's political violence or violence in America like this is just unheard of. It's just not appropriate. And everybody, everybody must condemn it. Everybody. I'll keep you informed. And if I am able to speak to Donald, I'll, I'll let you know that as well. But so far it appears he's doing well, number one. Number two, that they're thoroughly investigating what happened to anyone else in the audience. I have, we have some reports, but not final reports. And every agency in the federal government, I'll be, and I'm going back to my phone to speak with the federal agencies that are being put together again to give me an updated briefing.

Has anything happened? They learned anymore in the last couple hours. So thank you very much and I hope I get to speak to them tonight and I'll get back to you if I do. Okay.

Unknown
Mister President, do you think it was an assassination attempt?

Joe Biden
I don't.

Michael Knowles
Where's his answer? I want his answer.

Was this an assassination attempt?

He doesn't answer.

I see his mouth moving, but I don't see any, I don't see any answers. If he gave an answer, my apologies. We'll try to get it unheard of. It's unheard of that there would be political violence. Is there? A leftist tried to murder Supreme Court Justice Kavanaugh two years ago.

It's unheard of. How many years ago was it that another leftist tried to murder Steve Scalise?

That was about six, seven years ago.

How long ago was it when leftists tried to successfully roughed up and who knows, maybe tried to kill Senator Paul?

Not that long. I don't think it's unheard of at all. I think it's increasingly frequent and I think the violence is coming almost exclusively from the left.

And do you know why that is?

Because we haven't united this country. Whose responsibility is it to unite this country? That's what he says. That's what Biden says. Listen, this is ridiculous. We have to unite this country. And whose job is that, mister president? Whose job is that?

That's your job, to unite the country. So how have you done? What have you done to unite the country?

Were you uniting the country when you launched your presidential campaign on a lie that Donald Trump called nazis? Find people in Charlottesville a lie that you continue to peddle, even though it has been debunked again and again by left wing sources. Just a couple of weeks ago by Snopes, was that you uniting the country? You called Trump a Nazi by association. You said he at least condones and encourages nazis. Complete lie. That was you uniting people when you said Donald Trump poses a threat to our very democracy, that our democracy is at stake and on the ballot.

That was you uniting the country.

Where's the uniting?

Was it uniting the country when, following your lead, your flaks in the political apparatus and in the establishment media, but I repeat myself, called Trump Hitler 24/7 is that uniting the country? Golly.

There appears to have been an assassination attempt on Donald Trump at a rally. One rallygoer, at least, was murdered.

Another one is in critical condition as of now.

Because why?

If democracy is on the ballot, if Donald Trump is Hitler, if Donald Trump surrounds himself with the very fine people, the Nazis, all these lies that you've told, it makes perfect sense, doesn't it?

You've got to unite this country, right? You're the president, you haven't united the country. You've done everything you can to divide it, and now you issue a brief statement.

Whoopsie Daisy.

Yikes. This is bad, huh?

Why won't Trump take my call? I guess cause he's talking to the doctors. Cause he's bleeding from the right side of his face. Cause someone shot up his rally.

There's an eyewitness who is telling BBC that he informed the police and secret Service about a mandev on a roof with a rifle.

Here's the clip.

You weren't inside the event?

Unknown
Nope. But you were just outside? Tell us what. Yes or so, we had a party here all day. You can see behind us, Brinkels farm in greenhouse here. We had a party and we all decided, hey, you know, when we hear Trump up there, we're going to walk up through the field, stand by the trees up there under the shade and watch the rain, listen to the rally, right? We couldn't see him, but we could hear him.

So we walked up and probably five to seven minutes of Trump speaking, I'm estimating here, I have no idea, you know, but we noticed a guy crawling army, you know, bear crawling up the roof of the building beside us, 50ft away from us. So we're standing there, you know, we're pointing, we're pointing at the guy crawling up the roof. And he had a gun, right? He had a rifle. We can clearly see him with a rifle? Absolutely.

We're pointing at him. The police are down there running around on the ground. We're like, hey, man, this guy on the roof with a rifle. And the police were like, huh?

Joe Biden
What?

Unknown
You know, like. Like they didn't know what was going on. You know, we're like, hey, right here on the roof, we can see him from right here. We see him, he's crawling.

And next thing you know, I'm like. I'm thinking to myself, I'm like, why is Trump still speaking? Why have they not pulled him off the stage? I'm standing there pointing at him for, you know, two or three minutes. Secret Service is looking at us from the top of the barn. I'm pointing at that roof, just standing there like this, and next thing you know, five shots ring out. So you're certain that the shots came.

Michael Knowles
From that guy on the.

Unknown
100%. 100%.

Michael Knowles
And he was up there for a couple of minutes?

Unknown
He was up there for a couple of minutes? Absolutely. At least three to four minutes. And you were telling police from the secret Service? We were telling the police. We were pointing at him for the secret Service, who were looking at us from the top of the barn. They were looking at us the whole time. When we stand about that tree, binoculars.

Probably not, because the roof, the way the slope went, he was behind where they could see. But. But why is there not secret service on all of these roofs here? I mean, this is not a big place.

Michael Knowles
Did you see, I mean, obviously everyone.

Unknown
When the shooting started, everyone was very panicked.

Michael Knowles
Did you see what happened to him at all?

Unknown
Oh, yeah, they blew his head off.

Unknown
Okay, sorry.

Unknown
Secret Service blew his head off.

Unknown
Okay, just be careful because we don't quite know who's watching. But you, you're pretty sure they shot the guy?

Unknown
Absolutely. Hundred percent. Yep. You saw that happen? Yep. Yep.

Michael Knowles
Okay.

Unknown
Yep.

Unknown
And did you see them go up.

Unknown
To him afterwards or they. Yeah, they crawled up on the roof. They had their guns pointed out and make sure he was dead. He was dead. And that was it. It was over.

It's incredibly shocking. Guy was on the roof right there. You can see the white roof right there. Did you get a look at him?

Michael Knowles
Could you?

Unknown
I know. Other than he was in muted colors, tan type clothing, we saw the rifle flinging around as he was trying to crawl. I mean, we saw the rifle 100%.

Michael Knowles
I mean, do you know about guns?

Unknown
Do you know what kind of weapon it was? Oh, I absolutely know about guns.

Michael Knowles
For sure. Yeah.

Unknown
I mean, there is a rifle of some sort. I wouldn't know, you know, I wasn't close enough to read the label on it.

It was a rifle of some sort. Yeah, absolutely.

Michael Knowles
So what do you.

Unknown
How do you process what you've just seen?

I don't know what to say, man. I'll tell you is, you know, if I. If I walked up close to there with anything that can. Secret Service considered a problem, I wouldn't be standing here talking to you right now. But I don't know why a guy who we're standing there pointing out the police and Secret Service is crawling up the roof.

Yes. Right there by that tree.

We were outside security permit. But my question is, there's only a few buildings around here. Why is Secret Service not on every building here?

Michael Knowles
There's a whole bunch of questions.

Unknown
I think they're gonna come.

Unknown
There's a whole bunch of questions.

Unknown
Yeah.

Unknown
Yes. She was right in front of me. She kept going back and forth right in front of me. Yes.

Unknown
Tell us about her.

Unknown
I mean, nice horse. Nice. This lady running with a flag seemed very, you know, patriotic.

Unknown
But what's the significance of her?

Unknown
No, she's just. He asked me if I saw a horse.

Michael Knowles
Okay.

Unknown
Okay.

Unknown
All right.

Michael Knowles
Well, listen, I'm sorry you had to witness that. It was a terrible thing, and you.

Unknown
Should stay safe with your family, and thanks for yourself.

Michael Knowles
So lots of questions here. How could this have happened? And this apparent eyewitness raises a big point. He says, why warrant secret Service on every building here? So this is not a big place. And that's true. This took place in Butler, Pennsylvania. Butler is outside of Pittsburgh. So it's in western Pennsylvania. The population of Butler in 2022, year of our lord, was 13,176 people. We're talking about a small town here.

So if the shooter was on a building outside of the security perimeter, it's a major question.

Why wasn't that? How many big buildings are there? What kind of building was this?

And then you add on top of that the question, okay, if this guy said to police, and then you can't hear at the beginning, he says, I told police, there's a guy with a rifle on that building.

So if we believe this man at all, if he is credible and who knows, this is just being brought to us by the BBC.

He at first says, I talked to police. I said, there's a rifle there.

And then some minutes later, he says, why is Trump still speaking? There's a guy. They need to pull him off stage. The question is one, were the police informed of this? Was there a failure of police, local police two.

Was secret Service informed you here? By the end of his interview, he says, I'm telling police. I'm telling Secret Service. Well, that's different. Did he tell police or did he tell us? Secret Service?

If its us secret service, then theres a real question. Why, even if its police, secret Service were all over that place, why did someone not say pull the president?

Did someone report, theres a guy with a rifle on the roof and they chose not to pull the president?

Was the president shot? Was he injured when he was tackled by secret service?

That remains unclear. We spoke earlier to, to a rally attendee who said that as he saw it, the gunman was on a building outside of the security perimeter, shooting through the bleachers, which is how at least two people were seriously injured. One person at least has died. The other remains for now, as we see in critical condition through the bleachers, aiming at the president.

Was the president shot or was the president injured as he went down? You can see when the shots ring out, President Trump reaches for his right ear. So he reaches for the sight of the blood. When he comes back up after Secret Service pull him back up, he's bleeding pretty clearly. It looks like the injury is most clearly on his upper part of his right ear. And then there's some blood on his cheek as well.

The fact that he reaches for his ear before Secret Service tackles him as the shots ring out would lead some people to conclude perhaps he was hit with something, either was grazed by a bullet or was hit with some kind of shrapnel or something. That's unclear. That might be a coincidence. Might be that he was reaching for his ear because the shots were loud or something. And then coincidentally he comes back up with Secret Service.

Let's play it again from the top. I just want to take another look at it again.

You see? Okay, so there's trump in the MAGa hat. He's speaking, shots ring out, he hits his ear, the same ear.

It's totally unclear from the video. This is why I know a lot of people have been reporting on social media, Trump is shot, Trump is shot. I have refrained from that kind of language for now because we just don't know. And unlike the establishment media, we here at the daily wire try to be responsible and only work with the facts and what we've got, what we do know for a fact is that there was a shooter at Trump's rally in Pennsylvania. He fired multiple shots into the crowd. One rally attendee is dead. One has been left in critical condition.

Trump is bloodied on the face, escorted out by secret service, but not before he gets up.

He gets up there. Secret Service is trying to pull him out. He puts his fist up in the air, as if not only to say he's okay, but he says something else. He says, fight, fight, fight. He doesn't know if these are the last words he's going to say.

He's escorted out. We have an image of the dead shooter.

As far as I know, we still don't know the identity of the shooter. A lot of good that image does me. They blur the image because he's dead. Okay.

We have pretty serious looking employees of the us federal government taking down that shooter. This is not, you know, just a kind of local security operation. Obviously, were talking about a former president of the United States, current nominee as Mike Wright we were talking to earlier, who was an eyewitness at the rally, told us the Secret Service had gunmen posted, ready to take down any potential threat. So when the shots rang out, shots fired back, ostensibly from US Secret Service. There you see two guys in camo wielding presumably fully automatic weapons, then standing over the dead shooter. Shooter dead. We don't know anything about him.

We know he's a man. We know he brought guns. We don't know how this wasn't caught before it happened. At least we have one rallygoer who says, hey, I saw him climbing up. I told police nothing was done.

We saw a statement from the president.

Live updates Trump camp. Still saying the president is fine.

President Biden says he might speak later.

We'll see if he does. He said he might not speak later, but he'll at least have a statement.

Six sentences from President Biden.

I said earlier in this broadcast, this extraordinarily dramatic event does not change the stakes in the election.

What it does is clarify the stakes in the election. And another thing that clarifies here, Trump goes down after shots ring out. He's got blood coming down from his ear and his face. He stands up, stands up like a man, won't let the Secret Service pull him offstage, even though another bullet might come flying. Stands up like a man, fixes his clothing, lifts his fist in the air and says, fight, fight, fight.

Then and only then does he allow Secret Service to whisk him offstage. Another bullet could have flown right into him at any second.

He doesn't care.

He's going to lead. He's going to stand like a mandehead. Then what we find out on the other side of this election is that a couple hours later, President Biden finds his way down the corridor, is able to make a statement.

Shirt unbuttoned, no tie, says nothing.

Says, oh, yeah, I tried calling Donald, but, you know, I guess, guess he's at the doctor right now on account of all the gunshots and the blood on his face.

But maybe I'll talk to him later. And anyway, you know, this is bad. This shouldnt happen. Its really bad. Its unthinkable. Its unthinkable, unimaginable.

You started your presidential campaign lying about him, saying he called nazis fine people. And youve consistently said that President Trump poses an existential threat to our entire government and our country.

And youve spent years calling his supporters insurrectionists.

And your supporters continue, including six days ago in a cover story on the new Republic, call him Hitler and depict him as Hitler. We've got reporting from the daily wire that Trump is in the hospital and in stable condition.

We have a statement now from Kamala Harris.

I hope her statement will give us something forward to look to in the future, something that could be unburdened by what has been. But here's what she says. I have been briefed on the shooting at former president, President Trump's event. Former PR. You know, lady, I'm amazed she didn't call him, you know, the last guy or whatever the liberals like calling him. Former President Trump's event in Pennsylvania. Doug and I are relieved that he's not seriously injured.

We're praying for him, his family, and all those who have been injured and impacted by this senseless shooting. Senseless shooting. You called him Hitler, lady.

Senseless shooting. What's the, I don't know. Here's the sense of it to me, again, I don't, the conclusion that this shooter drew is erroneous, but it's an erroneous conclusion, namely, I should go shoot Donald Trump based on a false premise. But the logic, from the false premise to I'm gonna go murder President Trump, the logic actually makes a lot of sense because you people have been calling him Hitler and an existential threat to the democracy. That's why. That's why he did it. That's not senseless. There's a lot of good sense in that. Based on a false premise that you irresponsibly have been peddling for years. Senseless, disgusting, disgusting statement from Kamala Harris. We're grateful to the United States Secret Service first responders and local authorities for their immediate action.

Violence such as this has no place in our nation. We must condemn this abhorrent act and do our part to ensure that it does not lead to more violence.

Yeah, that's a good idea. Totally senseless. Huh? How about 1 second of introspection from the democrats?

1 introspection. Hmm. Maybe if we call this guy Hitler and say he's gonna overthrow our democracy and he's the greatest threat we've ever faced in this country, worse than when the White House got burned down in 1812, maybe someone might try to kill him.

Maybe just two. Maybe. I bet you take a breath before your snarky comments and your obfuscation and your prevarication.

Disgusting. Absolutely disgusting.

Like many conservatives, I'm generally in control of my emotions a little bit more than maybe some of our opponents. Twice now, though, I've felt a little blood boil up in me.

Kamala Harris, disgusting statement. Senseless.

That's a senseless statement is what that is.

And when I first saw the clip, of course, I think a lot of people felt their blood boil. There's a line from another former president when he was in office that came to me immediately when I saw this, this footage of the culmination of years of calling Trump the grave threat to our entire country, the end of democracy. Adolf Hitler 2.0.

Now bullets fly. The president shows up, blood on half his face.

That image fills me, at least, and I think a lot of us, with a quietenhouse, unyielding anger.

Real, I'm real angry, real angry, because some of us predicted this and we were right.

And usually when I say, I hate to say I told you so, I don't actually hate to say I told you so, I actually like it this time. I really hate to say I told you so.

Call this whatever you want to call this.

Call this terrible, tragic, evil, awful, un american, anti democratic, call it whatever you want, don't call it unexpected, and don't call it senseless. Kamala Harris, don't call it senseless.

There is a great deal of sense, there is a great deal of logic in the attempt to murder Trump and apparently the successful killing of at least one of his supporters at a rally.

It is the logic that you have been teeing up for years based on false premises, that hes Hitler and that hes going to destroy the whole government and the whole country.

Dont tell me its unexpected. Dont tell me that its senseless. Please.

Getting more updates here.

A source familiar with President Trumps security detail is telling the federalist that the former and future presidents detail has been asking for beefed up protection and resources for weeks, but has been rebuffed time and again. By President Bidens, Department of Homeland Security.

The Department of Homeland Security oversees Secret Service protective detail and the DHS. According to this report that is developing from the federalist, they were not responsive to those requests for more resources.

So this really complicates matters because this was obviously a particularly perilous time for President Trump. And it was particularly perilous because the attempts to destroy his campaign have not worked.

Bad press about him hasnt worked. His poll numbers remained strong and better than Biden most of the time.

The attempts to prosecute him havent really worked. You know, they got him on some fake crime in New York, but it doesnt really matter. It didnt move the poll numbers and then the other prosecutions have been delayed. So that didnt really work. Thats why President Biden proposed the debate a couple weeks ago. That was a complete disaster. And the logic behind the debate was, shoot, I got to do something because I'm losing to Trump. If Biden hadn't been losing to Trump, he wouldn't have had to debate. He wouldn't have had to show his neck. But he did. And he proposed all sorts of radical new rules that I suspect the Democrats thought the Trump campaign would either shoot down or try to negotiate. And then they could say, Trump's a chicken, he doesn't want to debate. Trump accepted all of the crazy new rules. The debate's not going to be run by the commission on presidential Debates. It's going to be televised on CNN, a left wing news channel. He agrees to it. There are going to be commercial breaks. He agrees to it.

Could have been helpful for Biden. Theres going to be no studio audience. Could have been helpful for Biden because Trump does very well with the crowd, obviously.

Were talking about a major Trump rally. Trump agrees to it. And the debate was a complete disaster for Biden.

They cant figure out a way to get him out. So thats it. Theyre out of options.

Im not the only one who said at some point someones going to try to murder Trump because they have no other way to beat him.

They tried to get Biden out of the race. Biden doesnt want to leave the race.

And the people who would replace Biden, Kamala Harris, Gavin Newsom, Pete Buttigieg, whatever. Give me a break. None of them can beat Trump.

So the Democrats are caught between Iraq and a hard place. If they can even oust Biden, which I dont think they can.

So thats it. Theres nothing left.

As we have been saying for months, it was a particularly perilous moment. And now, if this report coming from the federalist is true, that the Trump campaign had been wisely, reasonably asking for beefed up security protections for weeks, and the Biden administration says no, and then shots ring out. At least one dead Trump with blood all over the side of his face.

I'm not even going to articulate the anxieties that that raises for people that is so, so ghastly.

Not even going to articulate it.

We have a new angle of the shooting.

So we've been playing this clip head on of President Trump in Pennsylvania.

Here's the.

I hope it sheds some more light on what happened. Here's a different angle.

Unknown
And look what happened to our country, probably 20 million people.

And, you know, that's a little bit old. That chart, that chart's a couple of months old. And if you want to really see something that said, take a look at what happened.

Michael Knowles
It doesn't shed much more light on it other than you get a sense of the space.

So we spoke earlier with Mike Wright, who was an attendee at the rally. He was in the vip section, so he's relatively closer to the stage.

And you can see the bleachers.

You can also see this is a small town.

When you watch these rallies on tv, you have no idea. Is this in a stadium?

Is this in a big city? No, it's not. There are very few buildings, really anywhere around here.

Some bleachers. I mean, we're talking about a town of about 12,000 people in rural western Pennsylvania outside of Pittsburgh.

And so, according to one eyewitness that we spoke with, the shots were fired from a building through the bleachers at the president.

Then US Secret Service, in the words of one eyewitness, blew the guys head off, but not before that shooter had killed a rally attendee, critically injured another, and bloodied the president's face. Somehow that story, well, the whole story is developing.

The question about whether or not the Trump campaign had been asking for increased security from the Biden administration in recent weeks and been rebuffed, that story is also developing, and that sheds a really dark light, a dark light, a contradiction in terms, something of a paradox on what just happened.

Elon Musk now is tweeting out that clip of an eyewitness saying that he informed police in secret Service about a suspicious man on the roof with a rifle.

Elon is calling for the head of the Secret Service and the leader of Trumps security detail to resign.

Trump, of course, the top trending news on, well, on x, where im pulling for the latest, it tends to be the best in terms of breaking news, but trending all over the establishment, news outlets, not giving us much new information.

The latest that we're seeing is that the Secret Service is investigating the shooting as an assassination attempt. Gee, you don't say you heard there. The president was asked at the end, is this an assassination attempt?

We're unable to hear his answer or his non answer.

Trump comes up, says, wait, wait, youre seeing some Republicans and Democrats coming out and condemning the violence. Its good.

Trump appears to still be in the hospital.

More eyewitnesses coming out now.

Chuck Schumer has come out. Hes made a statement. He said hes horrified by what happened and was relieved that Trump is safe. Political violence has no place in our country. This is the same Chuck Schumer who stood outside the Supreme Court and said, we're coming for you, Kavanaugh. We're coming for you, Gorsuch. You're going to reap the whirlwind to Supreme Court justices who are appointed for life.

The only way to get rid of a Supreme Court justice is to persuade him to step down or to kill him.

And that's exactly what one leftist tried to do just a couple years ago across the whole country tried to kill him. Luckily, he was apprehended before he could go into Justice Kavanaugh's home where his family sleeps, to murder the justice and who knows, maybe the whole family.

So that's the same Chuck Schumer. We're coming for you, Kavanaugh. We're coming for you, Gorsuch.

Attacking a co equal branch of government as the, now he's the Democrat Senate majority leader.

Political violence has no place in our country. That's nice. Nice to hear that. Now, according to the Secret Service, the secret service has implemented protective measures. The former president is safe and they'll give us more info when they've got it. Okay.

Okay.

Venue obviously abandoned, although we're hearing from eyewitnesses that apparently the evacuation was handled in a pretty orderly fashion.

Latest update. Here we go. President Trump has just posted on truth social.

I want to thank the United States Secret Service and all of law enforcement for their rapid response on the shooting that just took place in Butler, Pennsylvania. Most importantly, I want to extend my condolences to the family of the person at the rally who was killed and also to the family of another person that was badly injured. It is incredible that such an act can take place in our country. Nothing is known at this time about the shooter who is now dead. I was shot with a bullet that pierced my upper part of my right ear. So this is now confirmation from President Trump.

The former president and the leading Republican, the nominee of the party has been shot.

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 my skin. Much bleeding took place. So I realized that what than what was happening. God bless America.

1 cm difference and Trump is dead.

One according to President Trump. I want to pull it up just to confirm that it's not, you never know on social media. Truth social. Donald Trump. I want to see it on his feed myself.

Im being told its real. I dont. I want to see it for myself.

Truthsocial.com realdonaldtrump there it is.

The president now confirming, President Trump now confirming he was shot in the ear.

Ive been cautious in how Im reporting this because theres so much that, so much information thats flying around.

We now have confirmation from the man himself.

Trump was shot in the head.

And happily, happily, I guess you would say that happily, he was shot in the part of his head thats just kind of protruding just a little bit, hit his ear.

Half a centimeter difference.

He's dead.

This close.

This close. They were, thank God. Thank God.

The cosmos and all of history is finally tuned according to God's providence.

So this is the way the story goes.

Thank God the president was shot in his head and they only got his ear.

Blood on his face. One if you've ever fired a gun, if you have any familiarity with firearms, were talking about a considerable distance because the shot was fired according to reports outside of the venue.

Donald Trump being alive and stable versus Donald Trump being dead on a stage in Pennsylvania was the difference of a breath of a hair, pull of the trigger, of the way the shooter's blood was pumping at that precise moment. You're talking about no distance, virtually no distance between Donald Trump shot, gets up, says stop, wait, wait, wait. Knowing that another shot could be coming fist up in the air, fight, fight. Because these could be his last words.

Walks off the stage, aided by Secret Service and President Trump dead on the ground in Pennsylvania.

I'm speechless.

I'm never really speechless.

I'm just, I'm momentarily speechless.

What that would have meant for the country.

It's happened before.

Presidents have been assassinated before. Presidential candidates have been assassinated before. Never before have you had a president who, a former president, presidential candidate assassinated this close. And you could tell the reason that I suspected he was shot was when I saw that picture.

As the eyewitness we talked to, he then made me think, okay, well, maybe it was just the blood on his face was from when he was tackled by Secret Service. But when you look at the picture closely, you can see that his ear looks particularly bad. He's here, right? Right by the skull.

Makes you think of Kennedy.

And the other reason I suspected he was shot, though I didn't want to really say it before it was confirmed, now confirmed by Trump.

The shot rang out, he grabbed his ear, then secret Service tackled him. So it could not be the case that Secret Service caused the injury, unless it were just some shocking coincidence.

So we now have confirmation. Anyone tuning in? Just now, Trump.

Well, a class act, really. First says, before you even know, I was reading that live to you, I didnt know if Trump was shot or nothing.

Listen to how he phrases it.

First he thanks law enforcement, then he wants to, he extends condolences to the family of this rally goer, the supporter who was murdered for supporting Trump, and then to the family of the other person who was badly injured and who I hope survives.

He says, it is incredible that such an act can take place in our country.

Nothing is known about this. So then he addresses, don't worry, the shooter is dead, but we don't know about him.

And then, and only then, does he get to, oh, by the way, I was shot. This is, this is pure Teddy Roosevelt. This is pure bull moose. Hey, hey, hey.

1912. Hey, hey, hey. Some of you don't know I've just been shot, but it takes more than that to kill a bull moose.

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.

We have another witness who is speaking, spoke to CNN. Here he is.

He or she.

Joseph
I'm here with Joseph mine. He was sitting, actually, behind Donald Trump in the bleachers today when this all unfolded. He, I'm going to let him share exactly what he saw. It was a very harrowing moment that he, he was there for. Can you please tell us what happened, Joseph?

Unknown
Yeah, the Trump I was attending the rally.

It seemed initially like firecrackers went off.

It was a little, it was very confusing initially because, you know, I knew it was gunfire, but I couldn't quite tell where it was coming from. It's not like it was coming from behind the bleachers. And the man in the bleachers kind of to the right of me in the bleachers, took a gunshot wound to the head, was killed. And another woman, I don't know exactly where she was in the bleacher. I think she was either behind me or to the right of me. She got around in the.

She got hit in the forearm in hand, it looked like, but it just. She was one. She wasn't killed.

Joseph
Can I ask you how you're feeling? Obviously, you just witnessed something terrible happen.

A lot of chaos was in the room. How exactly are you feeling right now, Joseph?

Unknown
You know, it's something you don't expect. You know, it's a bolt out of the blue, so it's very shocking. It's just, I think a lot of people in the crowd just thought it was fireworks going off. I knew immediately it was gunshots. I, you know, I knew they were close. Then when I saw someone get hit and go down, that's why I knew was probably serious.

You know, it's a lot of confusion. It's just massive confusion. You know, throughout the event, I saw Donald Trump get hit.

It looked like he had looked, you know, he was either. I haven't. I was running my camera at the time, but it looked like he was just turning to the. He was turning his head to the side. It looked like he got grazed in the right ear with a bullet.

I kind of saw that go on. And then I looked down. I saw that the man, you know, died. And the bleachers, it was just complete pandemonium. Like every, you know, there was a bit of a delay, like, there was a lot of confusion. But immediately, you know, it seemed like more gunfire erupted. I couldn't figure out where that was coming from. And then, you know, there was a state policeman there, a, I believe a SWAT team, you know, showed up relatively quickly. They jumped the side. There was a fence. It was next to the bleachers. They jumped the bleachers and started clearing the bleachers. And then I helped carry the body of the man down out of the bleachers, and they took him to a tent behind the bleachers. We put a towel over his head, but he's deceased.

Joseph
You were telling me before when we were chatting briefly that you never had a chance to make it to a Trump rally, that this was your first time.

Would you feel safe coming back to another Trump rally?

Unknown
Yeah, you know, it's a very random event that happens. You know, I feel safe generally, where I go in the country, you know, I think the problem is we have a very, everyone seems very angry. And, you know, it makes you kind of, you know, I'll go to a Trump rally again, but I'll think twice.

You know, you definitely want to have your head on this, Will. It just seems like there's a lot of angry people out there. And I'm not shocked that this happened.

I'm shocked that I was sitting there and it happened next to me. Obviously, don't you never anticipate that to happen? But, you know, it's, it's just horrible. You know, we shouldn't be at a level of political discourse in this country where this is going on. It feels like it's 1960 am.

You know, it's just, it's horrible.

Joseph
Can you describe for me, Joseph, what happened after you saw the shots? And I remember, I mean, I was there as well. Secret Service was screaming for everyone to get down. They quickly tried to clear the area.

I'm just curious what that process was like for you in the, in the aftermath.

Unknown
Very confusing. Like I said, I think everyone was in the bleachers. Knew it was initially confusing. When the gunshots erupted, half, I think the crowd thought it was fireworks. I think someone thought they were playing a joke. And, you know, the people were close to the people that got injured and killed. You obviously knew it wasn't a joke. And it was, it seemed like there was a push pull in the crowd. And that is one half of the crowd on the far end of the rally thought it was some type of weird joke. The other half of the crowd knew it wasn't, was trying to push or impress upon the rest of the crowd that this is serious. And I think everyone got the idea very quickly that it was a dangerous situation and everyone just started hitting the deck. And, you know, kudos to the Secret Service. You know, again, you know, when you're in these situations, a second feels like it's an hour. But it seemed like authorities were there very quickly.

It just seemed to me, like I said, I was sitting there. It seemed like the rounds came from behind and they got this, they hit the gentleman in the head. You know, he got a gunshot wound to the head, and the other lady was injured. And then I saw Trump, President Trump, you know, get hit. And it looked like his right ear. But it seemed initially everyone was like half the crowd was in shock and the other half thought it was some type of weird joke. And it just, it took, it took a bit for everyone to get a good understanding of what was going on.

Joseph
You mentioned that you had spoken with the person who ended up falling, I believe you said, or he's with his whole family.

Unknown
No, his family watched it happen.

So they were in the bleachers when he got hit and he went down. I think they were trying to figure out what was going on. They were screaming for help.

The body was, they put a towel over, over the man's head. The body was removed from the bleachers. Then the police came back, you know, right after and tried to move the family. But they were all in shock. They didn't quite, they weren't processing what was going on.

The man was definitely, he was dead the minute he was hit. I mean, it was something that reminded me of the Zapruder film from Kennedy. I mean, it was, it was, his head snapped and that was it. And I caught it out of the corner of my eye and, you know, and then there was just pandemonium.

And again, you know, it's Pennsylvania. You don't, you know, you're out in rural Pennsylvania. You don't really anticipate this is going to happen, but it happened.

Joseph
You mentioned, and I'm sorry, I know this is very emotional for you as well.

You mentioned that, you know, this was your first Trump rally.

How are you feeling about the election now? What are you hoping to see moving forward?

Michael Knowles
Forward?

Joseph
We've already seen a lot of statements of support from across the aisle come in for the former president. I can tell you, too, from our sources that they say that Donald Trump is okay, that he is at a local facility being treated.

But I would love just your view on, I know you came here today to support the man that, you know, the former president. I'm curious how you think about this now. I know it's a hard question given the chaos that we're currently in and the adrenaline that we're both feeling right now. But if you can share any of.

Unknown
That insight solidifies my support. I, you know, I understand, you know, people under, people believe that Trump's, well, they know he's bombastic. They don't really like him. He's a very polarizing figure. He has an abrasive personality. But I truly believe he has the best interests of the country at heart. And, you know, you make a point. You know, the man's a billionaire. He could be sitting in the, like you said, you were sitting at the rally joking about it. He's like, I could be sitting in the mediterranean yacht joining my life. But I'm not. I'm trying to help run the country.

It puts in perspective. There's a real cost for that. I mean, there's some people that really want him dead.

And to me, this is just ridiculous. Like, you know, we have a lot of political violence in this country. It comes from all, you know, it's not so much from the right, it comes from everywhere. It just needs to stop.

Yeah. JFK at RFK, you've had Martin Luther King. Now you're going to attempt the life of Reagan, and now you have an attempted assassination of Trump. It's just ridiculous. And it just, you know, I don't think it's a gun problem. I don't think it's a violence problem. I think there's a lot of angry people that just have too much interest in politics. And it's a zero sum game to them.

You know, politics shouldn't be a zero sum game where someone, every, someone wins everything and someone loses everything.

I think this is a result of that.

People came today, were very happy. They were here to support Trump. But when you talk to people in the crowd, theres a tenseness.

They dont want to, they dont want to talk to family members about politics because it just gets too angry.

So I dont know what to tell you, but this needs to stop.

Joseph
Thank you so much, Joseph.

Michael Knowles
Were getting some reports in. I am not willing to run with them yet. On the shooter, on at least a visual of the shooter. Were still waiting for some confirmation on that. Theres also a photo emerging of what might well be the bullet flying through the presidents ear.

This is now making the rounds.

Trump himself is confirming he was shot in the earth.

This part to me, well, to all of us, I guess, makes this the gravity of this much more real.

You heard from that witness who says he was sitting right by the person who was killed, instantly killed. Another woman was severely injured, and the shots ring out. But you heard from another eyewitness who said, I don't know if Trump was actually shot, he might have just been injured when the Secret Service tackled him.

Maybe it was that bullets rang out and its so awful and its terrible, and its now a threat to anyone who shows up to support President Trump. And its obviously its terrorism and its an intimidation attempt to Trumps supporters. And thats horrific enough in itself, but one might conclude, but they still cant get Trump. The security is too good.

Trump wasnt ever really in danger.

He was almost assassinated.

Had the bullet gone 1 cm over, he would be dead right now.

He was shot in his ear, bleeding very clearly. From the top of the ear, right by his skull, by the grace of God, is Donald Trump alive?

And not only this then sheds so much more light, it makes the scene so much more dramatic and incredibly courageous. He stands up, they don't know.

He doesn't know if another bullet's going to come.

And you see him so raw and so real and blunt, puts his fist in the air and he says, fight, fight, fight.

Fist in the air. Tough.

Escorted off by Secret Service.

Someone showed up to the Trump rally.

We dont know for certain who he is yet to murder Trump.

That in itself is shocking.

He almost succeeded.

He got within a hairs distance of succeeding.

That is more shocking.

This must have been a pretty good shot to fire from outside the security perimeter, through the bleachers, killing a poor rally attendee, severely injuring another one, and getting the president. You see the photo there by his ear, just all ripped up right by blood pouring down the side of his head, right down to his mouth.

Had the shooter breathed a little bit differently, Trump would be dead.

The former president and current republican nominee and leading candidate for president, period, in 2024, would be dead. On a stage in Pennsylvania.

We have a statement from Nancy Pelosi, former speaker of the House Democrat. As one whose family has been the victim of political violence, I know firsthand that political violence of any kind has no place in our society. I thank God that former President Trump is safe. As we learn more details about this horrifying incident, let us pray that all those in attendance at the former president's rally today are unharmed. Obviously, she didn't see the coverage, that they were harmed and the president was harmed, obviously, and very, very, very nearly killed. Trump was as near to being murdered as it is possible to be.

Secret Service has just issued a statement, got a copy of it here.

During former President Trump's campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, on the evening of July 13, at approximately 06:15 p.m. a, suspected shooter fired multiple shots toward the stage from an elevated position outside of the rally venue. US Secret Service personnel neutralized to the shooter, who is now deceased. US Secret Service quickly responded with protective measures and the former president is safe and being evaluated. One spectator was killed, two spectators were critically injured. So this is some new information. We initially were told only one person had been confirmed to have been killed. Then we heard one person killed, one in critical condition. Now we're hearing one spectator killed too. Critically injured. The incident is currently under investigation and the Secret Service has formally notified the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

As the trickle has come in, you can see, you can see in the shot how close that bullet was to Trump's skull.

You can just see, I mean, you see the blood pouring down his ears and the side of his face and onto his face, up to his lips that you're seeing. It seems now every half hour or so, another person seems to have been injured, or one person now confirmed dead. In addition to the shooter, a rally goer confirmed dead, then one critically injured, and then another critically injured. So we hope, we pray that no more will be, will be found.

Political cartoons making the rounds now.

One really?

Well, I guess it's just what I was talking about for the first 15 minutes or so of this broadcast.

The New Republic, the new Republic cover story that was published six days ago. This is one of the most prestigious established left wing magazines.

This will go down in infamy.

A picture of Trump as Hitler, Hitler Haircut, Hitler Mustache, american fascism. The new Republic with a bunch of word salad gobbledygook about how Trump will destroy the republic. And so theyre going to fight and hes Hitler. And what is the insinuation? The insinuation is obviously, if you merely oppose someone politically, if you merely think, okay, so and so is, you know, he's got a bad economic policy or something, but, you know, all that, he's a fine guy, then the audience is not impelled to go murder that person.

If you hear all this person's really bad for the country. If you hear even, you know, this person supports some awful, say something, you know, abortion or something. This person supports policies that actually do lead to a lot of death. Even that does not lead to assassinating a top politician.

But when you hear so and so is Hitler, so and so is the actual symbolic expression of pure evil, for whom there is absolutely nothing that would not be justified to stop him. Thats, thats a whole other story.

For those who are just tuning in now, we have a full clip of President Trump speaking and then being shot.

Unknown
And look what happened to our country.

Probably 20 million people.

And, you know, that's a little bit old. That chart. That chart's a couple of months old. And if you want to really see something that said, take a look at what happened.

Take a look at what happened.

Michael Knowles
Are we good?

Shooters down. Are we good to move?

We're clear.

Unknown
Let me get my shoe. Let me get my shoes.

Michael Knowles
I got you, sir.

Unknown
Let me get my shoes.

Michael Knowles
Hold that in your head.

So we got, gotta get, move to the bus.

Let me get my, okay, watch it.

Unknown
Let me chill. Watch out.

Michael Knowles
So the clip now, knowing that President Trump was, in fact, shot and knew that he had been shot, seems all that more courageous when he's saying, you hear him to the Secret Service, wait, wait. Stop taking me offstage. Wait.

I need to address the people who looks at them. Fight. Fight, fight, fight.

If I'm going to die, you remember, you fight, fight. You don't be demoralized. You don't let them win.

This was it.

They finally took their shot at Trump.

We don't know very much about the alleged shooter.

We're trying to confirm some of that information now.

This was going to happen. This was going to happen when the sitting president launches his campaign about how you called Nazis fine people a lie, when you say, when the sitting president says that you are an existential threat to the democracy and democracy is on the ballot and your supporters are insurrectionists, and when the most prestigious liberal outlets call you Hitler, say you're bringing american fascism, and insinuate, if not stayed outright, that anything would be justified to stop you.

This was going to happen, and it did happen.

They took their shot. The culmination of all of that is a bulletin a breath away from the president's skull. It hit him in the head. It hit him in his ear, ripped through his ear, in President Trump's own words, a breath away from his skull that would have killed him. This close. This close.

Obviously, a lot of public figures are reacting now. There's a UFC fight going on. President Trump is very close with UFC.

UFC seems to support President Trump. So this news breaks during a UFC fight. We have one of the fighters reacting to it live, live at this sporting event.

Hey, I heard, I heard they just tried to whack my boy Trump. I'm glad that man's okay. Long live Trump. Let's go, baby. Trump, 2024.

Kenvillette's here for Evan Elder.

It's an amazing reaction in the sense that, you know, this guy is a fighter.

They're at this sporting event, so it's all fun, it's high energy, it's entertainment, and then you get this shocking, this horrifying news.

And so with the same enthusiasm and almost levity, I heard they tried to whack my boy Trump. While I support Trump, and I think that's going to be the opinion of a lot of people now, the question remains. It's 817 here central time, 917 eastern time.

Will President Trump make a statement? You know, we've seen his statement from truth social, and it was written in very trumpian diction. So I actually, I believe the Trump campaign which says he's fine. I believe that that was President Trump tweeting or posting rather on truth social.

But the question will be, will we see President Trump tonight? Will we hear from President Trump tonight? We briefly heard from President Biden, gave a very quick statement and said basically nothing, showed up, looked haggard and didnt have a tie on, and then shuffled off the stage.

Will we hear from president, will we hear again from the president? He said we might hear President Biden, we might hear again from him later tonight. He issued a 6th sentence statement.

Or more importantly, will we hear from President Trump? I think a lot of people want to be reassured that Trump is okay. You see it in his own words on truth social, I think, myself included, most people believe that that is him.

But if he is able, I mean, look, the man was just shot through the ear.

Will he speak tonight?

The Biden campaign has announced it will pull all tv ads against Trump. Good. Yeah, of course, as of now, this campaign is overdevelop. It's over unless they succeed at murdering him, which they might try to do again.

The Democrats were already in a crisis.

Now they're openly talking about replacing their nominee. Well, that discussion has left the news.

Never really thought they were going to succeed at replacing their nominee. If they did, it would be with Kamala Harris or would harris. They were all asking, would Kamala Harris poll better? Would Gavin Newsom poll better against Trump? Well, as I've been saying all night, the stakes of the campaign haven't changed.

But the stakes have become clearer, a lot clearer to a lot of people who maybe haven't been paying the most attention. It's still early in the season. You know, we're still in July.

We still have August, September, October. Then we don't vote until November.

People who might start paying attention now are going to see, when they look at Biden, theyre going to see a weak candidate, which is why his poll numbers have been falling.

And when they look at Trump, theyre going to see a man who was almost assassinated, very, very close to having been assassinated. Were getting a report now that the presidentpresident Trumps motorcade has just left the hospital.

So he was treated, seems to be alive and well.

We don't know anything about his injury. You know, he had a bullet fly through his ear.

And even after that, stood up, addressed the crowd.

It's just, he's the new Teddy Roosevelt. I mean, that image, I never used that word iconic referring to icons. I think it's just so overused.

But that photo of Trump standing there, this fist up, blood coming down. His face is fist up, tough, defiant.

That is utterly iconic. There are a few different shots of it that is iconic. So we now have some footage of US Secret Service countersnipers firing back at the alleged shooter.

Unknown
And, you know, that's a little bit old. That chart, that chart's a couple of months old. And if you want to really see something that said, take a look at what happened.

Michael Knowles
So it does give you a little bit of a better picture. You can see Trump is hit on his right side of his face. Now the US Secret Service, the countersnipers are there on the right side. Where are they firing? It looks as though theyre still firing to Trumps. Right.

Theyre firing back.

So I suppose the shot would have come from that side. Still, from the right side, you can see the only place where theres blood is from the right side of Trumps face is his head is turned anyway to the right.

Thats where they get him. This raises another point. Trumps moving.

He gesticulates as he speaks.

A lot of politicians stand totally still.

Had Trump moved his head in just a slightly different direction, hed be dead.

Just the little tick of turning his head just slightly could have saved his life.

We're getting a statement now from Bill Clinton.

Getting a lot of statements coming in.

I'm getting some updates from our friend Jeremy God King here at the daily Wire, who's following the statements coming in. He observes that Tim Cook, the CEO of Apple, has made a stronger statement condemning this than President Joe Biden.

Tim Cook of Apple says, I pray for President Trump's rapid recovery. My thoughts are with him. The other victims and the Trump family has strongly condemned this violence. You're now getting stronger condemnation of the attempted and very nearly successful assassination of Donald Trump from the leader of Apple, a technology company, than you are from the supposed leader of the United States, Joe Biden.

Absolutely pathetic, disgusting displays from much of the Democrat leadership.

Now we are getting a statement coming from Bill Clinton.

Bill Clinton has come out. Violence has no place in America, especially in our political process. Hillary and I are thankful that President Trump is safe, heartbroken for all those affected by the attack at today's rally in Pennsylvania, and grateful for the swift action of the US Secret Service. Okay, have we seen a statement from Hillary yet?

Or is this it? This is supposed to suffice?

I haven't seen one. At least Trump's motorcade has left the hospital. I take it we have some footage of that now.

The thing is so striking is what a small town. This is, you know, you see two or three buildings of any size really at all. This is a small town.

And where was he treated? I don't think he was treated in Butler, Pennsylvania. He's probably assuming he was treated somewhere, maybe. Who knows? Who knows? I don't have confirmation of where it was. We know that the biggest town nearby is Pittsburgh, but even Pittsburgh's not a really big town. You know, this was a real rural part of Pennsylvania.

Raises all sorts of questions. How could this have happened?

Was this a failure of the police of Secret Service? It seemed to be some failure occurred.

Not the guys. You know, the guys on the stage seemed to have taken good care, but how does this happen? And then we heard from a reported eyewitness who said, yeah, I saw a guy with a rifle getting up there in a building, and I reported it to police.

He went on to say he reported it to Secret Service and they didn't pull Trump from the stage. They didn't do anything about it.

Raises a lot of questions.

A lot of questions.

We are now, we're now waiting to see if President Trump himself will speak. Obviously, he's just left the hospital.

We don't know where he's staying. We don't know where his airplane is. We don't know if he even plans to give a speech. The statement we have gotten from Trump is the statement from truth social. I'll pull it up here for those who are just tuning in.

It's a really, really beautiful statement, he says.

This was posted at 07:42 p.m. that would be central time. So not long ago.

I want to thank the United States Secret Service and all of law enforcement for their rapid response in the shooting that just took place in Butler, Pennsylvania. More importantly, most importantly, I want to extend my condolences to the family of the person at the rally who was killed and also to the family of another person who was badly injured. We now know, or at least we're getting reports, that there have been two people who have been critically injured.

President Trump obviously did not know that, or perhaps that hadn't even been reported at the time. It is incredible that such an act can take place in our country. 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.

That's the most recent statement that we're getting from Trump. For those of you also just tuning in, we have the clip.

Unknown
Take a look at what happened.

Michael Knowles
Are we good?

Shooters down. Are we good to move?

We're clear.

Unknown
Let me get my shoe. Let me get my shoes.

Let me get my shoes. Hold on. Your head is bloody, sir.

Michael Knowles
We gotta move to the bus.

The last time we saw anything like this was the Reagan administration, when President Reagan was shot in DC.

Jeremy reminds me, President Reagan didn't even know he'd been shot until he was halfway to the hospital.

So then when he got to the hospital, he was joking around with the doctors and happily he survived.

The other incident, a little earlier than the Reagan assassination attempt that comes to mind is the successful assassination attempt of RFK. Not RFK junior, who's running for president this cycle, but his father, Robert F. Kennedy, brother of JFK. Another incident coming to mind.

1968, a lot of eerie similarities. 1968, you had a man named Robert F. Kennedy running for president, and you were heading into, you had a very volatile democratic convention that year, country ripping itself apart, and the Democrat presidential candidate, Robert F. Kennedy, was murdered.

Then you think, okay, this is the brother of the president who had been murdered just years prior, John F. Kennedy. And the image is eerie.

When Kennedy was assassinated, which was also televised, you saw the Mandev have his head blown off from some distance, obviously not a particularly secured area.

And here, also from a distance, you would have seen a recreation of Kennedy's assassination in Dallas. You would have seen almost precisely that recreation in Butler, Pennsylvania.

Had the shooter breathed a little differently, had he moved his arm a little differently, had Trump moved his head a little differently, gesticulated a little differently at that precise point in his speech, were now getting the statement that I just read to you. I wont read it again. Its the same statement that came out on truth social has been texted to, I dont know. Ive received the text.

Ive donated to the Trump campaign and I donated in. I'm kind of a cheapskate when it comes to politicians, but I donated after the conviction.

You know, they're trying to convict President Trump of these bogus charges in New York. They thought that's how they'd take him out of the race. I thought it was so deeply unjust that I gave the biggest political contribution of my life. Anyway, I say that all as preface to explain that. As a result, I get the updates from the Trump campaign via text. And the Trump campaign has just texted out, not a fundraising appeal, which is usually what comes from this account? No fundraising appeal anywhere here, just all caps. This is a message from Donald Trump and then the statement that I just read to you from truth social. So I guess this is lending a little more credence to the notion that Trump actually wrote this himself from the hospital.

Other reasons to believe. Again, I'm not saying that no one can imitate the president's diction and writing style. The capitalizations and diction that weve come to expect from President Trump is what you see in this statement as posted to his account on truth social. It now has come out to all Trump supporters who have signed up their phones or donated, and that is to thank law enforcement, to express condolences to the family of those who were killed and injured at his rally, to give a little update on the shoot, condemned this as a matter of american politics, to point out that nothings known about the shooter and then to confirm that he was, in fact shot.

He was shot, so he knew immediately what was happening. This would be a distinction between what happened to President Reagan when he was nearly assassinated and President Trump. Reagan didnt really seem to know what was happening. Trump says he knew immediately.

Makes this assassination attempt closer to, to the assassination attempt against Teddy Roosevelt back in 1912. He knew immediately what was going on. And so having known immediately, obviously he knew immediately, he reached up for his ear before the secret Service took him down. He heard the shots. He felt his ear be partially blown away. He felt the blood. So he obviously knew what was happening. The Secret Service kept him down on the stage for a considerable amount of time.

Then they finally get him up, wondering, are there more shots coming?

Sir, we've got to get you off stage. And he says, wait, wait, wait.

Turns to the crowd, says, fight, fight, fight.

President's motorcade left the hospital somewhat, probably 1015 minutes ago. Now we're getting, let's see, we're getting a headline from deadline, a headline, this is an older, from earlier, obviously, in the day. This is an article, I'm going to beat Trump.

Defiant Biden tells donors and Jeffrey Katzenberg he's done talking about debate. Disaster will not exit the race. So this article came out July 8. It is now July 13. This July 8 came out 12:15 p.m. biden says. And you'll see why I'm reading this article in just a moment.

I have one job, and that's to beat Donald Trump. I'm absolutely certain I'm the best person to be able to do that, Biden said to his reelection national finance committee in what was described as a forceful presentation that sounded like the Biden that I used to know, having repeatedly said over the past week that the live face off on CNN was Trump with a bad night, the president of the United States today added, so were done talking about the debate. Its time to put Trump in a bullseye.

That is, President Joe Biden quoted, how many days ago? Five days ago. Five.

Ill give you a little context. Six days ago, the new Republic, one of the most prestigious left wing magazines, runs a cover story, american fascism, President Trump as Hitler. And they even explain their choice of COVID And they insinuate if they don't state it outright that they'd do anything to stop Trump in the same way that they would do anything to stop Hitler.

Doesn't just stop at tv ads. But then President Biden said, a day after the new Republic aired their now infamous cover, calling Trump Hitler, President Trump tells deadline five days ago, we're done talking about the debate. It's time to put Trump in a bullseye. And then Trump gives, or Biden, rather gives, a weak nothing statement from the White House. He issues a statement almost certainly just written by some staff, six sentences, mealy mouth, nothing. And then he showed up without a tie, just sauntered in, said nothing.

There were words coming out of his mouth. I guess he didn't really convey very much. Said, I tried to call Donald. I guess he's in the hospital because he got his ear shot off by a would be assassin. But I'll try to talk to him later anyway. And, you know, so anyway, maybe I'll come to you later on.

Where did this violence come from? This political violence has no place in America. Five days ago he says, we're done talking about the debate. It's time to put Trump in a bullseye. Well, they did. They did. They succeeded at that. That's one thing that Biden's been effective at. Maybe the only thing Biden's been effective at.

It's senseless.

That's what Kamala Harris said. Joe Biden. I don't understand how this could happen in America. You don't understand Kamala Harris. It's senseless. How is it senseless?

Do we have a little retrospective on how the democrat liberal media establishment has been discussing President Trump?

Of course it's, Trump is a nazi.

Mike Wright
Time again, let's deal with Hitler.

Michael Knowles
Ok. I don't think it's hyperbolic to say that. I mean, that is Mussolini Hitler like language. Trump's affinity for Hitler was always covered under an umbrella of his stupidity.

Unknown
Echoing Hitler's words.

Michael Knowles
Listen to this. Well, Hitler was duly elected. While echoing the hateful rhetoric of Adolf Hitler that echoes Hitler. That's the kind of language Hitler used in Mein Kampf about Verman and Hitler and Mussulin. That's a horrifying clip. That's a fascist clip, just going full on Hitler from Hitler's Germany. We just need to say for the record that the term vermin was really effectively used by Adolf Hitler. Echoed dictators like Hitler with language evoking authoritarian figures like Adolf Hitler and Adolf Hitler. Donald Trump parroted the autocratic language of Adolf Hitler. Talk about the brilliance of Hitler's generals correctly. Yes.

Let me ask you something.

If you could stop Hitler, like fully adult, Hitler had already been the leader of Germany. Then let's say he got ousted for a little and he's about to come back and you could stop Hitler, would you kill Hitler?

Everyone would kill Hitler.

That's the point.

In the common language in the world of symbols that we all interact with, Hitler represents absolute evil.

Hitler represents the kind of evil that justifies in the popular consciousness.

Anything to stop.

So much so that every few years we have a debate over whether or not you'd go back in time and kill baby Hitler.

Remember, there was a moment, actually, during the 2016 campaign when some joker reporters were asking about whether candidates would kill baby Hitler.

And Jeb Bush said, oh, I'd kill that baby Hitler. Then, actually, Ben Shapiro of Daily Wire fame got in trouble because he was speaking at a pro life rally. He said, I wouldn't kill baby Hitler. I know you always want to kill Hitler, but maybe Hitler is a baby. Think we should be killing babies? So it was kind of, it was a final coda to this silly debate. But it's a silly debate that tells you something about our language.

To call someone Hitler is to say, you must be destroyed by any means necessary. Murdering you would be justified. That's what it means to call someone Hitler.

All of the liberals have called Trump Hitler.

The electeds, the journalists, the activists, not just the fringe ones. The tippy tippy top, the anchors, the heads on all the big networks, Hillary Clinton, all the big politicians, theyve all done it.

And now you hear, when they make statements at all, there are more than a few sentences.

You hear vague platitudes about violence, and then youre going to hear the passing of the buck. Oh, this is so senseless. Where would this come from? It's unthinkable.

It makes a lot of sense, actually.

It's hideous.

The sense that it makes, derives from false premises that I reject, that sensible people reject, people who recognize Trump isn't Hitler.

But they're false premises that you have advanced, the false premises that your followers have followed.

And now that one shooter in Pennsylvania followed to its fullest extent by attempting and very attempting to, and very nearly succeeding at killing Donald Trump. There's a statement now from Congressman Alexandria Ocasio Cortez who says there is no place for political violence, including the horrific incident we just witnessed in Pennsylvania. It is absolutely unacceptable and must be denounced in the strongest terms. My heart goes out to all the victims, and I wish the former president a speedy recovery.

You were seeing a stronger statement being made by AOC than by the White House.

Stronger statement being made by AOC, the fringe lunatic leader of the squad, than you were seeing being made by the president, Joe Biden or Vice President Kamala Harris.

Kamala Harris statement in particular was totally disgraceful. Totally disgraceful. Completely unacceptable.

To call it senseless.

Joe Biden's wasn't much better.

I don't know if Joe Biden was awake while he was giving that statement.

I can't imagine he actually wrote it.

Trumps statement was extraordinarily tactful. He didnt even get to the point of telling people that he had been shot until more than halfway through it.

He talked about the shooting.

Amazing the way hes focusing on others.

Thank you to law enforcement.

Condolences to the family of the person who was killed and those who were injured.

A statement then on how awful this act is in our country. Don't forget this happened to him.

They blew off a piece of his ear. They nearly blew off his skull.

But still, just the political statement that this could happen in our country.

Then on the shooter. The shooter's dead. Nothing's known.

Then and only then, I was shot with a bullet that pierced the upper part of my right ear. I knew immediately that something was wrong. He knew it happened. And then he concludes, God bless America. Without question, the best, most human, most courageous statement, most politically responsible statement made by anybody so far came from Trump.

Came from Trump, came from the guy who was shot and nearly killed.

We're not even talking about. I know this is almost frivolous to say.

It's not that he was shot in his leg, it's not that he was shot in the finger or something.

He was shot in his ear.

He was shot a whisper away from them blowing this guy's brains out. Okay.

It was a pretty good shot, pretty close.

By the grace of God, it didn't quite succeed, but it was as close as it possibly could have been to the entire world. Watching the leading, a former american president and the leading candidate for president in 2024 murdered on stage.

We're still waiting on confirmation of the identity of the shooter.

Other networks, I think, are irresponsible with the way they're speaking. We're trying to be as cautious as we can and bring you only the facts.

There is some talk and rumor over who the shooter is, what his motivations might have been, but we're still waiting on some confirmation.

Fight, fight, fight.

For those of you who are just tuning in, I know that people are coming, coming in and out. There are many people in the country who might not even know that this has happened yet.

We have footage of it. The short story is that President Trump was addressing a crowd in Butler, Pennsylvania.

And during his speech, shots rang out from outside the speech venue, outside of the security perimeter, killing one rally attendee, critically injuring at least two others. Now, according to reports, and hitting the president in the ear. We have the footage when you're ready. On you ready? Move up. Move. Go.

Unknown
Hawkeye.

Michael Knowles
You ready?

Are we good?

Shooters down. Are we good to move?

We're clear.

Unknown
Let me get my shoes.

Michael Knowles
Hold on. Your head is bloody, so we gotta get, move to the box.

Let me get my. Okay.

Unknown
Watch out.

Said do I.

Michael Knowles
Law enforcement has told CB's News that the alleged shooter was firing from about 200 to 300 yards away. So we're talking about a football field away from Trump on the stage. He was not within the security perimeter, but it's raising all sorts of questions.

How did the police headed Secret Service not spot this, not stop this? This was a, this is a small town. You know, this is a town of about 12,000 people when there isnt a rally going on in it.

Now, there are going to be a lot of questions for the Secret Service, a lot of questions for police coming up, especially on top of reports. The federalist is reporting that the Trump campaign has been asking for increased protection in recent weeks. So who do they ask for that? Trump as a former president, is entitled to secret service protection. Hes the nominee of the Republican Party, so they should probably boost his Secret Service a little bit. But in recent weeks, with the collapse of the Biden campaign, with the crisis in the Democrat party calls for a new nominee, the disastrous debate for Biden, Trumps continued elevation in the polls. Obviously, things are getting a little bit more perilous for Trump.

Everything that his opponents have tried to do to stop him from becoming the next president have failed. So some of us have observed that the only thing left for them to do is to kill him.

It doesnt take a brain surgeon, it doesnt take a genius to understand that this could have happened, especially while the Democrats are saying Trump poses an existential threat to democracy and Trump is the next hitler and insinuating that they could take him out by any means necessary.

So at this perilous moment, according to this report from the federalist, the Trump campaign asks for more Secret Service.

Well, that means they have to ask the Department of Homeland security. Department of Homeland Security is run by Alejandro Mayorkas for Joe Biden.

So if that report is accurate, there are going to be a lot of questions.

Did the Biden administration intentionally deprive President Trump of secret service, of security at a time when his life was in danger?

You couple that with Joe Biden, his entire administration melting down five days ago, then speaking to donors, saying, it's a little spooky. One of my lights just went out. And with everything that's going on, it gives you a little startle, doesn't it?

Joe Biden talking to deadline just five days ago, saying it's time to put Trump in a bullseye, his words, not mine, being reported by deadline. That's not exactly a right wing outlet.

It's a Hollywood outlet.

Five days ago, one day after the new Republic calls Trump Hitler, american fascism, you know, we got to fight, fight, fight.

Not fight, fight, fight a defense. Fight, fight on offense. Take this man out, insinuating by any means necessary.

Now, according to Philip Wegman, senior advisor for the Trump campaign, is telling him that Trump remains, quote, in a very good mood, that he is resolved to continue this convention and that there are no plans to deviate on anything that was planned.

Beautiful to be expected, of course, from President Trump.

The man who after being shot in the ear, stands up, blood coming down his face, tells Secret Service, no, wait, I'm not leaving.

Puts his hand up in the air to lead, tell people this might be his last words, telling them to fight on.

Of course hes saying that. Keep the convention going because this is the context that a lot of people are not aware of. The Republican National Convention is set to kick off in earnest in about, I dont know at this point, what, 2020, 5 hours or something?

28, 29 hours.

Im going to be there, assuming the convention goes on. And were getting word from Phil Wegman, whos a good reporter, whos talking to the Trump campaign, saying things are going on as planned.

So I guess its going on as planned. I guess ill be there.

For those of you who have not seen it and are just tuning in now, heres the video. Heres what happened in Pennsylvania.

Unknown
Take a look at what happened.

Michael Knowles
When you're ready. On you ready? Move up. Move. Go.

Unknown
Hawkeye's here.

Michael Knowles
Move it to the spare.

Unknown
Get ready.

Michael Knowles
We ready?

Are we good?

Shooters down. Are we good to move?

Unknown
Clear.

Michael Knowles
Move. We're clear.

Come on.

Unknown
Let me get my shoe. Let me get my shoes.

Let me get my shoes.

Michael Knowles
Hold that in your head.

So we got to move to the bus.

Let me get my shoes.

Unknown
Watch out.

Michael Knowles
Many more questions than answers we have right now.

We do not have confirmation on the shooters identity, on his motivations, on what happens now.

President Biden said that he might speak to Trump, he might come back later. We just dont know. President Trump has issued a statement.

I suspect this will be his statement for the night. The fact that this was posted by him to truth social, that it was texted out to his supporters, myself included, the fact that its now approaching 10:00 eastern time.

We dont have any indication that President Trump is going to be addressing anyone tonight. I mean, presumably hes still suffering injuries from having been shot in the year and very nearly assassinated. What we do know, President Trump has been shot.

He is stable.

He is alive.

One rallygoer, one supporter of his has been killed, has been murdered.

At least two are in critical condition.

We know that this has occurred after weeks and weeks and months and months of calling Trump Hitler, of saying hes a threat not just to this policy or that policy, but to our very democracy. This was the theme of the Biden campaign. We're told he's like Hitler and anything would be justified to take him down.

That's the setup. And so this conclusion, for those of us who've been paying any attention, for anyone with even a modicum of common sense, this was, of course, going to be the conclusion. Lots of questions for Secret Service, lots of questions for Joe Biden, for the irresponsibility of his rhetoric, for his campaign as it stands right now.

As for President Trump, an amazing, an amazing display of political courage, personal courage and political courage. An amazing display. Ive never seen anything like it.

To be shot that close to your skull, to be shot in the head that close to your skull, to go down, to get up, to know youve been shot, to say, wait to your Secret Service. As you're waiting, you don't know if another bullet is going to come. Look at the crowd. These could be his last words. He utters, fight, fight to be taken away to give a statement, to reassure people, to focus first on others.

And the most important thing to say is to thank God that this wasn't worse. This could have been as awful as this was. This could have been much, much worse.

By the grace of God, one little turn of the head, one little breath, one little hair turn from the shooter. His heart beating a little differently when he pulled the trigger.

President Trump it wouldnt have hit the ear, would have gone half a centimeter over, and the country would look very, very different. It does look different now, or rather, I should say it looks clearer, the stakes of the election clearer.

Thats all from me for tonight. If anything dramatically changes over the next hour or two, its left in this evening ill, I'll address it, and I'm sure everyone will be addressing it. But one suspects that this story continues tomorrow, and especially on Monday, with the beginning of the Republican National Convention for a republican party that for now, despite the best efforts of this shooter still has its nominee. We still have our former president. We still have, I hope, God willing, our future president. I'm Michael Knowles for the Daily wire.

See you on Monday.

BREAKING: President Trump Shot

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1. Opening Remarks

2. Details of the Incident

3. Political Reactions

4. Analysis of the Situation

5. Concluding Thoughts

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