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A bloodied Donald Trump was rushed from a campaign rally stage to a hospital after an assassination attempt in Pennsylvania.
Several gunshots could be heard minutes after Trump began speaking to supporters late on Saturday afternoon at the Butler Farm showground.
The former president grabbed his right ear, then ducked to the ground behind a lectern as his Secret Service detail swarmed him and lifted him from the ground before guiding him off the stage. Screams filled the crowd and blood could be seen running down the right side of Trump’s face and ear as he raised his fist to supporters. The site was evacuated and declared a crime scene.
Trump later called on America to “stand united”, thanked God for preventing the “unthinkable from happening” and said he would remain “defiant in the face of wickedness”.
Secret Service agents killed the suspected shooter, who was outside the security perimeter according to law enforcement officials. A spectator was killed, and two others were critically injured.
The FBI has identified the gunman as 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks, from Pennsylvania.
He appeared to have been perched on a rooftop with an AR-style rifle, according to law enforcement.
In a statement on Truth Social several hours later, Trump said that he was “shot with a bullet that pierced the upper part of my right ear”. He added: “I knew immediately that something was wrong in that I heard a whizzing sound, shots, and immediately felt the bullet ripping through the skin.”
A Trump campaign spokesperson said that the former president was “fine” and had been treated at a nearby medical facility.
President Joe Biden, speaking to the public from Delaware, said that “there’s no place in America for this kind of violence”.
“We cannot allow for this to be happening,” he added. “We cannot be like this. We cannot condone this.”
The president later spoke with Trump by phone, according to the White House. Trump has now returned to his home in New Jersey.
Mr Biden and vice-president Kamala Harris received a briefing from administration officials and federal law enforcement before returning to Washington DC late on Saturday.
One rally attendee, who identified himself as an ER physician and appeared to have blood smeared across his T-shirt, told CBS News that he heard people shouting that “someone had been shot”. He said he tried to save someone who was jammed between the benches.
Another Trump supporter, Erin Autenreith, told CBS that she was in the front row and heard four “boom, boom, booms” and “immediately thought fireworks”.
She said Secret Service swarmed the stage and “the guys with the guns said ‘Lift him.’ So they lifted him clear up, and Trump said, ‘I got to get my shoes on.’
“He looked OK to me but I saw a little bit of blood right here,” she added, pointing to the side of her face.
Eduardo Vargas said he had been sitting about 15ft behind Trump when he heard the first shot.
“I saw half the people around me start crying,” he told The New York Times. “And I started crying. I couldn’t stop crying... I thought I just saw the president get killed in front of my face.”
Another man told BBC News that he tried to alert Secret Service agents to a rifle-wielding man he spotted “bear-crawling” on the roof of a nearby building before gunshots rang through the crowd.
“I’m standing there pointing at him for two to three minutes,” he said. “Secret Service is looking at us from the top of the barn, I’m pointing at the roof... and next thing you know, five shots rang out.”
Current and former Democratic and Republican lawmakers, including former presidents Barack Obama and George W Bush, joined a chorus of officials condemning “political violence” and sending well-wishes to the former president and his family.
Several officials who survived recent shootings, including House majority leader Steve Scalise who was shot in 2017 during a congressional baseball game, and former congresswoman Gabby Giffords who experienced a severe brain injury when she survived an assassination attempt in 2011, joined calls urging Americans to denounce acts of political violence.
Former House speaker Nancy Pelosi, whose husband survived a blow to the head from a conspiracy theorist who broke into the family’s home in 2022, said that “as one whose family has been the victim of political violence, I know first hand 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,” she said.
UK prime minister Sir Keir Starmer said he was “appalled by the shocking scenes at President Trump’s rally”, adding: “We send him and his family our best wishes.”
The attack – in the city of Butler, home to about 13,000 people and roughly an hour northeast of Pittsburgh – occurred just two days before the start of the Republican National Convention in Wisconsin, where Trump is expected to receive the party’s nomination for president.
His nomination marks the third consecutive time that he will lead the Republican Party against a Democratic candidate for the presidency.
The convention will proceed as scheduled, according to campaign officials.
The last attempt on an American president’s life was in 1981, when John Hinckley Jr fired six gunshots at Ronald Reagan, striking him and three others in an attack that sent Reagan to the emergency room with internal bleeding, a punctured lung and a broken rib. White House press secretary James Brady and two other law enforcement agents were wounded. Brady suffered brain damage and was permanently disabled. His death in 2014 was ultimately ruled as a homicide.
