Trump Survives Deadly Assassination Attempt, Selects Running Mate

Meir Kass

At 6:02 p.m. last Saturday, former president Donald Trump took the stage at the fairgrounds in Butler, Pennsylvania. Waving at the cheering crowd, he settled into his regular rally speech under a scorching midsummer sun. Just a few minutes later, Trump pointed to a projection of a chart that showed a spike in illegal border crossings under President Joe Biden. “That chart’s a couple of months old,” Trump told the crowd. “And if you want to see something really sad—”

Gunfire erupted. Trump clutched his ear as dark-suited Secret Service agents dashed toward him. He dropped to the ground as the agents yelled, “Get down!” The thousands of rallygoers packed into the field in front of him moved as one, dropping down as silence spread across the grass, punctuated only by occasional screams.

Moments later, Trump stood as the Secret Service agents crowded around him, covering his body with their own. They tried to usher the former president offstage to his left as blood trickled from his ear. “Wait, wait, wait,” Trump said. He pumped his fist as the crowd cheered and seemed to mouth the word “fight” before agents hustled him down the stairs and to a waiting black SUV. Trump pumped his fist one more time before getting inside.

The shooter, identified as 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks of Bethel Park, Pennsylvania, was eliminated by a Secret Service sniper team who opened fire moments after the gunman got his first shots off. While Trump survived, the shooting was deadly: former fire chief Corey Comperatore was fatally wounded as he dove to protect his family when gunshots rang out. Two others were seriously hurt.

The Shooter: A Profile

Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, was interested in chess and coding and had recently received an associate degree in engineering science. High school classmates remembered him as an intelligent student with few friends, who never exhibited any glaring red flags. The nursing home where he had a job helping with meals said his work gave its staff no reason for concern.

In an era when other people his age put troves of personal information online, Crooks left few clues about who he was, what he believed, or why he decided to drive to a Trump rally in western Pennsylvania and attempt to assassinate the former president.

On Sunday, federal investigators said Crooks used an AR-15-style rifle purchased by his father to open fire from a rooftop outside the rally. The FBI is investigating the incident as a possible case of domestic terrorism, noting that Crooks had left behind explosive materials in the vehicle he drove to the event.

But many details of Crooks’s life and motives remain unclear. Federal authorities said he had no apparent history of mental health issues or previous threats and had not been on the radar of federal law enforcement. Investigators are scouring his online presence and working to gain access to his phone but have not found indications of strongly held political beliefs. Crooks was a registered Republican but had also donated to a progressive cause in 2021; his parents are registered as a Democrat and Libertarian.

Kevin P. Rojek, the FBI official in Pittsburgh leading the investigation, said Crooks is believed to have acted alone and that there were no additional public safety concerns.

Crooks grew up in the relatively affluent suburb of Bethel Park in the South Hills region of Pittsburgh, about an hour’s drive from the site of the rally. His parents are both licensed counselors, with his father working at a local behavioral health provider.

Crooks had been working as a dietary aide at Bethel Park Skilled Nursing and Rehabilitation Center. Marcie Grimm, the facility’s administrator, said the organization was shocked to learn of his involvement in the shooting, noting that he had “performed his job without concern and his background check was clean.” She declined to discuss further specifics of his employment, saying that center officials were cooperating with law enforcement investigators.

Dozens of FBI agents, analysts, and evidence technicians from multiple divisions have gathered to work on the case. The FBI has not found a manifesto, and Crooks had never been under FBI investigation, and he did not have an unusual online history for a 20-year-old man.

The messaging platform Discord said it had found an account apparently linked to the gunman, but the company said that “it was rarely utilized, and we have found no evidence that it was used to plan this incident or discuss his political views.”

Two former classmates who attended Bethel Park High School with Crooks said they had not noticed any obvious warning signs. One classmate said he had taken American history and government classes with Crooks, describing him as “incredibly intelligent” and “slightly right-leaning” in high school. Bradford recalled instances where classmates gave Crooks a hard time but was shocked to hear he had been identified as the shooter.

Crooks was one of 20 students awarded a $500 prize for math and science that year. In April 2022, he appeared in a video on the school’s Facebook page, explaining coding to another student.

Law enforcement officials found materials for two explosive devices in Crooks’s car and believe they may have found a third at his residence.

On Sunday, a clue emerged as to how Crooks may have trained in the use of firearms. The Clairton Sportsmen’s Club, a wooded facility south of Pittsburgh that features a 200-yard rifle range, confirmed that Crooks had been a member.

Former FBI officials said the bureau’s behavioral analysis unit would try to build a profile of the gunman to understand his motivations. The FBI, which is running the investigation, will cast a wide net, interviewing friends and family members and searching for clues he might have left online or in a journal.

Lifeline for Biden

President Joe Biden had been coming under mounting pressure to withdraw from the 2024 presidential race following his disastrous debate performance, but those calls have evaporated since Trump’s attempted assassination.

Reports on Sunday said that Biden’s critics within the Democratic Party are “standing down” following the attempted killing, with the realization dawning that changing candidates at such a perilous time would do little to help them.

Appearing on CBS’s Face the Nation, journalist Robert Costa said that Democrats are now seeking both party and national unity in the wake of the attack.

“I’ve been speaking with some top Democrats,” Costa said. “They believe that those Democrats who have concerns about President Biden are now standing down politically, will back President Biden because of this fragile political moment. All of that talk about the debate faded almost instantly among my top Democratic sources as this unfolded. They say it’s time for the country to stick together, and that means Democrats sticking together as well.”

Prior to the attack, 20 congressional Democrats had called on Biden to withdraw from the race.

J.D. Vance for Vice President

On Monday, less than 48 hours after his attempted assassination, former president Donald Trump chose Senator JD Vance of Ohio as his running mate. A onetime fierce critic turned loyal ally, Vance is now the first millennial to join a major-party ticket at a time of concern about the advanced age of America’s political leaders.

“After lengthy deliberation and thought, and considering the tremendous talents of many others, I have decided that the person best suited to assume the position of vice president of the United States is Senator J.D. Vance of the Great State of Ohio,” Trump announced on his Truth Social platform as the Republican National Convention got underway in Milwaukee. Hours later, Vance and Trump formally received the party’s nomination.

The 39-year-old Vance rose to national fame with the 2016 publication of his memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy.” He was elected to the Senate in 2022 and has become one of the staunchest champions of the former president’s “Make America Great Again” agenda, particularly on trade, foreign policy, and immigration.

However, Vance is largely untested in national politics and is joining the Trump ticket at an extraordinary moment in American history.

Vance faced criticism in the wake of Trump’s attempted assassination for a social media post suggesting President Joe Biden was to blame for the violence. “The central premise of the Biden campaign is that President Donald Trump is an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs,” Vance wrote. “That rhetoric led directly to President Trump’s attempted assassination.”

Biden acknowledged on Monday that he made a mistake when he recently said he wants to put Trump in a “bullseye,” but defended himself, saying he didn’t mean to put Trump in “crosshairs” and that all he meant was that voters should focus on Trump and his policy stances.

The pick of Vance as Trump’s running mate is sure to energize Trump’s loyal base. Vance has become a fixture on the conservative media circuit and frequently spars with reporters on Capitol Hill, helping establish him as the kind of leader who could carry Trump’s mantle into the future, beginning with the next presidential election in 2028.

In his post announcing his pick, Trump said Vance “will be strongly focused on the people he fought so brilliantly for, the American workers and farmers in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio, Minnesota, and far beyond.” Several of those Midwestern states are expected to play a critical role in November’s election.

But Vance also had another advantage: his chemistry with Trump. Personal relationships are extremely important to the former president, and he and Vance have developed a strong rapport, speaking on the phone regularly. Trump has also complimented Vance’s looks, saying he reminded him of “a young Abraham Lincoln.”

Trump and Vance spoke about 20 minutes before the announcement was made official, during which Trump formally offered him the job. The relationship between Vance and Trump has been symbiotic. Vance’s fame grew in tandem with Trump’s unlikely rise from a reality television star to Republican presidential nominee and eventually president. During the early stages of Trump’s political career, Vance cast him as “a total fraud,” “a moral disaster,” and even “America’s Hitler.”

However, Vance eventually shifted his tone. He said he was proved wrong by Trump’s performance in office and evolved into one of his most steadfast defenders. “I didn’t think he was going to be a good president,” Vance recently said. “He was a great president. And it’s one of the reasons why I’m working so hard to make sure he gets a second term.”

Vance was rewarded for his turnaround during his bid for an open Senate seat in 2022, during which he landed Trump’s coveted endorsement and rode it to victory in a crowded Republican primary and a general election hard fought by Democrats. He is close to Trump’s son Donald Jr.

“Listen, I’ve seen him on TV,” Donald Trump Jr. said of Vance, speaking from the convention floor. “I’ve seen him prosecute the case against the Democrats. No one’s more articulate than that. And I think his story, his background, really helps us in a lot of the places that you’re going to need from the Electoral College standpoint.”

Vance is now a Trump loyalist who has challenged the legitimacy of the criminal prosecutions and civil verdicts against Trump and questions the results of the 2020 election. He told ABC News in February that if he had been vice president on January 6, 2021, he would have told states where Trump disputed Biden wins “that we needed to have multiple slates of electors, and I think the US Congress should have fought over it from there.”

“That is the legitimate way to deal with an election that a lot of folks, including me, think had a lot of problems in 2020,” he said.

As far as Vance’s stance on Israel is concerned, he has echoed Trump’s call for Israel to “finish the job” against Hamas in the Gaza Strip, saying that ties between Israel and Saudi Arabia can only be established once Hamas is defeated in the Gaza Strip.

“Our goal in the Middle East should be to allow the Israelis to get to some good place with the Saudi Arabians and other Gulf Arab states. There is no way that we can do that unless the Israelis finish the job with Hamas,” he said in a May interview.

“If they can’t even do that, the attitude in the Middle East will be: ‘You can’t trust these guys, they’re not pursuing their own national security.’ So, we’ve got to let them finish this job, and I think hopefully, on the other end of it, get to a new era in the Middle East.”

A Bandaged Trump Attends the RNC

The Republican National Convention, being held at the Fiserv Forum in downtown Milwaukee, was energized Monday night as Donald Trump entered the arena with a bandage on his right ear. Speakers on Monday—the first day of the convention—spoke much about Trump’s strength and resilience after the shooting at his rally in Pennsylvania but managed to keep its primary focus on the economy.

Protests outside the convention by Democratic activists were mostly peaceful, although two demonstrators were arrested—one when they tried to climb a fence into a restricted area, and a second who was blocking traffic and did not move when officers repeatedly asked her to do so.

Speakers argued that Trump would fix inflation and bring back prosperity simply by returning to the White House as president. Virginia governor Glenn Youngkin lamented, “Tonight, America, the land of opportunity, just doesn’t feel like that anymore.”

Trump says he wants tariffs on trade partners and no taxes on tips. He would like to knock the corporate tax rate down a tick. The Republican platform also promises to “defeat” inflation and “quickly bring down all prices” in addition to pumping out more oil, natural gas, and coal. Trump says he would also scrap President Joe Biden’s policies to develop the market for electric vehicles and renewable energy.

 

Tuesday’s convention speeches shifted primarily to immigration. The official party platform would address illegal immigration in part with the “largest deportation program in American history.”

Nikki Haley was expected to speak Tuesday night. The former bitter Trump rival requested—and was granted—an opportunity to speak at the convention following Trump’s assassination attempt.

Thus far, the assassination attempt has given Trump a decisive edge over Biden in the November election. According to the latest model, Trump has a 75 percent chance of winning the presidency, with current electoral maps forecasting Trump winning 310 Electoral College votes and Joe Biden winning 228. Two hundred seventy Electoral College votes are needed to win.