Donald Trump appeared to be shot in the ear as shots were fired at the former president at a rally in Pennsylvania.
Trump grabbed at the side of his face and blood spattered across his cheek as several popping sounds were heard.
That bloodied ear is probably his red carpet right into the white house.
Yep, this just secured his victory. Replacing Biden won't even matter after this.
I don't know. How many people are actually going to make their voting decision based on this? Who was going to stay home or vote Biden, but is now voting for Trump?
There's also the factor of this happening 100+ days out from the election. I bet more people are going to forget this even happened by November than will have it be the event that decides their vote.
I have a feeling that this is only going to piss off MAGA fascists so much that they'll be open to using more violence to achieve their goals.
The left needs to start arming themselves and investing in community self-defense
This is exactly my thoughts. Not gonna lie, I wasn't expecting this news.
And the US clown show kicks into overdrive. The trapeze artists are flying doing all sorts of backflips while the jugglers are on a unicycle riding the high wire. It's going to be an entertaining rest of the year if nothing else.
I won't discount the possibility that it's staged, but this one doesn't ring that bell for me.
It's very possible that some liberal with a rifle and a dream thought he'd become a hero. Given the media coverage that Trump gets from the """left""", it's most likely that he's just the victim of someone who lost the mental health battle.
By all accounts, he had to have been actually injured based on the wound and the blood pattern. More than what a razor blade could do. As well, Trump would've needed to make the incision himself. It's extremely unlikely that he would've agreed to do something like this while he's already leading in the polls and doesn't need a stunt.
His reaction is also normal for someone who has just been grazed by a bullet. The first thing our body will do in an extreme situation is fill our brain with adrenaline, numbing pain. It's well documented that soldiers could be shot more than once in combat before fully realizing what's happened, this is even more true for grazes. An injury like this won't be fatal, and won't cause any long-term damage. His ear will get patched up, and he'll be back to normal with nothing but a scar and possible mental anguish.
And I'd like to close with a personal gripe, I'm seeing way too many people who aren't big into marksmanship not understanding why the shot missed. The head is a target the size of a cantaloupe, and a man like Trump never stops moving. From the noise of the rounds in the footage, I estimate a minimum distance of 150m. That is a damn difficult shot to make, of course it's going to miss. Then factor in that the shooter took (I counted but could be wrong) three shots. After that first round, it gets significantly harder to keep the rifle on target. The two follow-up shots might as well have been directed at random. Media has made so many people believe that hitting shots like that is easy, but it really isn't. Please stop with this one.
Exactly. Trump gains little and risks a lot by sketching it.
He instead can keep hoping Biden gets worse and worse till his defeat. Relatively safe and already leading.
Also, we literally have the corpse of the shooter in a roof.
All I'm seeing is people putting themselves into hysterics talking about it on social media, demanding that it has to be staged and his death would be an objectively good thing. And it's all just people who don't know what they're talking about, but refuse to ever shut up.
The right is going to retaliate for this eventually, but Trump getting off with only a minor injury was the best possible outcome of this. If the injury was serious or fatal, the fascist bandit armies would come out in droves. It would be worse for everyone. Remember a few years ago when the right kept doing terror attacks in progressive spaces? Imagine how much worse that would be if their dear leader was murdered on camera. Liberals really need to stop celebrating the idea of this attempted assassination, all it did was open a door that none of us should want to go through. This is a rallying cry for the right, this is a green light for violence. The far-right will use this event for years to come to justify murders and hate crimes.
I don't know, to some extent this take on it sounds like victim-blaming to me. Not that I'm saying you intend it that way, but like... "best possible outcome of this [because...] the fascist bandit armies would come out in droves [if he died]" seems like kind of a lose-lose situation for people to be in. If Trump is alive and kicking, he can win the presidency and continue to foment stochastic terrorism by riling up his base with more and more violent rhetoric, while also potentially instituting policies meant to harm his political faction opponents. If he's not, they commit terrorism on his behalf.
I know it doesn't all start and end with Trump (far from it and there's plenty to be said about how fascist and imperialist the US already is under Biden and previous presidents before him and Trump) but from the standpoint of the kind of base Trump is the center of gravity for, him further riling it up or being a martyr both seem like bad outcomes to me in different ways. The "far-right" doesn't need an excuse to do violence and already has been (I mean, the Jan 6 thing happened long before this). What they do need is power to be able to carry out what they want to do as more than random acts of terror and Trump represents a means of them getting that in some way. Though he is of course far from the only one in their circles willing to go there. He's just currently the most charismatic and the center of gravity for pushing it.
Not disagreeing with you, but they would eventually turn to violence inevitably. Either through "legal" means as reactionaries restructure the government under Trump and his supporters, or through continued terrorism in areas or periods where he isn't in power. It doesn't matter if he'd gotten assassinated or if there had never been an attempt. His fanatics are convinced they're in a holy war, and they look for any shared of evidence - real or imagined - to support that bias.
I'd wager you're more annoyed at the hypocrisy of liberals wanting Trump dead than them simply wanting him dead, because I can guarantee his fash followers are going to do violence and terror regardless of any attempt, its success, or its failure.
This is exactly what I am seeing in Reddit with people throwing the accusation that the shooter is from "Antifa" and also calling for a purge. These chuds only need a small excuse to start murdering people and justify the dehumanization of any group of people that they are told to hate.
Exactly. They've been screeching about this decades before Trump, insisting the US is some Christian fascist paradise being besieged by an international cabal of communists. Every Trumpite politician I see yammers on about "the left" in every negative thing that happens. Trump didn't need to get shot at for them to start marching with torches at Charlottesville, or to start attacking city infrastructure to target minorities, or to push state governments and courts to adopt more and more aggressive reactionary legislation. Yes, this will be their rallying cry, their "proof", but with how much pressure reactionaries have been putting on citizens, it was only a matter of time until someone pushed back and gave them the excuse they wanted.
American snipers struggle to hit targets that are not brown children
Next debate Biden should put some bottle caps on his shoes and occasionally stomp to see what happens.
It gets crazier! The shooter was registered as a Republican voter. Never in my life have I expected a republican to do this against Trump out of all people LOL
https://apnews.com/article/trump-vp-vance-rubio-7c7ba6b99b5f38d2d840ed95b2fdc3e5 AP reports the gunman was killed and an attendee was killed. If we get reasonable answers for who they were it's safe to say it wasn't staged.
Fucking practice better if you're gonna do this. Shesh you only get one attempt...
Browsing reactionary spaces, seems they're trying to brew the theory that the secret service purposefully let this happen, or though sheer incompetence. Wait a week and they'll start saying the secret service was compromised by Biden.
I haven't seen this take yet. However, what I do see is some chuds saying that the guy is probably from Antifa and some others rallying for a "purge". This is going to be a wild year.
I saw some ex-cia guy making that same argument. The idea of a US president thinking the CIA is out to kill him is pretty funny.
I know that because this is his induction to the white house we want to think that this was somehow staged, but we have to look at the facts and use reason. Whatever the gunman's motives might have been they were 100% trying to headshot Trump. And almost succeeded at that.
- Show
with a photo like this I can't believe this wasn't staged
I honestly don't think it is. You wouldn't risk killing your guy for a false flag.
As if intelligence agencies haven't trained terrorist groups for suicidal attacks in the past
I think Yogthos is not using "your guy" to talk about the perpetrator but about Trump. There is no way someone would try to stage a false flag by making someone shoot at a person's ear with a sniper rifle at a distance of 150 m. As Yogthos implies, you have a bigger chance of killing your guy than actually succeeding.
Edit: Without an optic on his rifle, on top of all.
shoot at a person’s ear with a sniper rifle at a distance of 150 m
I honestly couldn't even see the bullet wound
You mean this bullet wound? Part of his helix is gone. You can see very well where did the bullet hit.
ShowI sincerely can't... I can only see what appears to be blood smeared all over his intact ear
ShowOnce again, his ear's helix becomes discontinued in the two portions where the bullet impacted (of course, the two wounds from where he's bleeding).
ShowSearch for illustrations of parts of the external ear on your search engine of choice and you will see that the helix is a fold that has continuity from the helical crus all the way to the lobule.
Camera crews had like 20s between the shots and these images. Plenty of time to get oats initial shock and take images.
If there is one person stupid enough to fistpump and make himself an easier target at a moment like this it's Trump.
A professional photographer took a professional photo? Say it ain't so!
He does not look good.
Nevermind, apparently it grazed him and took off a part of his ear.
ShowNo it didn't. That still is from when he got back up and his hat is in his hand.
https://files.catbox.moe/0j3whm.mp4
My bad, thanks for the info. I was watching a low quality broadcast, thought him going down was him collapsing.
One of the agents did hand his hat back to him though judging from the close up shots. I guess he likes his hat.
Bullet could have just grazed his ear, hate to say this but he’s probably fine
There's another image of him where you can clearly see the wound and yeah it's literally just grazed his ear. Unfortunate but it is probably not going to kill him.
To be fair, he looks pretty good for an old man who just got shot. Didn't even break character. Watching in slow motion it looks like the bullet meant for his head only grazed his ear. He's gonna be fine.
Did lose a portion of his ear, but it probably was fast enough that adrenaline took over.
Will have to see what his follow up response is.