WHAT
- Former U.S. President Donald J. Trump was shot at a rally in PA.
TRUMPS STATEMENT
“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 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!”
WHAT WE THINK WE KNOW SO FAR
- gunman is dead
- Trump “is fine”
- one attendee is dead
- another attendee is in critical condition
News Sources
- CNN - Trump rushed off stage after shooting at Pennsylvania rally
- AP News - Live updates: Shooting at Trump rally is being investigated as assassination attempt, AP sources say
- The Hill - George W. Bush condemns ‘cowardly attack’ at Trump rally
- Warren Sharp (@SharpFootball) on Xitter - video interview with witness who tried to warn police before shooting happened
- Sky News - Gunshots reportedly fired at Donald Trump rally - as former president rushed off stage (Article confirms one rally attendee dead)
- Reuters - Biden says he is grateful to hear Trump is safe, has been briefed on shooting
- OAlexanderDK on Xitter - The shooter was on a roof approximately 125m or 400ft from where Trump was standing.
- JakeMRosen on Xitter - An emergency room doctor I spoke with tried to save someone’s life in the crowd
Do not advocate or celebrate violence, please. Comments advocating violence will be deleted and bans will be issued.
Also, please avoid promoting conspiracies. Discussing current events is fine but suggesting things like “it’s a false flag” without evidence is spreading a conspiracy.
A reminder, he incited people Jan 6th which resulted in deaths.
And his cult still defends the insurrectionists.
That’s not a justification for more violence, two wrongs don’t make a right. He was wrong for doing what he did and this is wrong as well. This is because political violence in it’s entirety is wrong. Jesus, do people not have principles anymore? Seeing all the supposedly moral people turn into Q anon level conspiracy theorists who condone violence is depressing.
The death of Hitler, sadam hussein, Bin laden and all the others who threatened the free world disagree.
But these are vastly different situations. For the record, all three of these individuals used political violence to achieve political aims, that’s one of the reasons why history doesn’t remember them fondly. The constantly killed people they didn’t like under the justification that it’s for the greater good or self defense. Saddam Hussien did that when he genocided the Kurds in Iraq and the invasion Kuwait, Hitler did that with the Holocaust and the invasion of Europe, and Bin Laden did that with 9/11 and the other terrorist attacks he launched.
Keep in mind, we actually have a justice system in this country that actually works. If we want Trump to face justice it has to go through the justice where he faces trial and is found guilty based on evidence… which has already happened btw for one of his crimes. That’s how justice is handled in a civil democracy. We can’t have randos going on self righteous terrorism crusades killing political candidates they don’t like. If someone tried assassinate Biden, would you being say the same? Probably not, and rightfully so, but the terrorist who tried to kill would be making similar justifications to what you’re trying to make right now. The very idea is wrong.
Donald Trump intentionally and maliciously mishandled an epidemic and allowed it to turn pandemic for his own stupid and shortsighted political gains. He then intentionally hindered national response.
And then he intentionally incited a literal insurrection. He has absolutely employed political violence.
I’m not here to defend him. He’s one of the worst of the presidents in our history. His list of horrendous acts goes far beyond his pandemic response and the insurrection, and it goes was past his presidency too. He’s truly awful. But with that being said, things like assassinations and terrorism should not become normalized as a legitimate way of achieving political means.
Hitler committted suicide. Any insight in how the other executions actually improved the world?
Millions of fascists were murdered to win WW2, are you saying we should’ve used strong debate language instead?
Tell me, should we have turned the other cheek during WWII? Two wrongs don’t make a right after all, right?
We didn’t join WWII because the Nazis were bad, we joined because Japan attacked Pearl Harbor and then Hitler declared war on the US.
Exactly, should’ve just turned the other cheek, right?
No, I’m just pointing out that your comparison is flawed. We didn’t know about the Holocaust until the war was almost over. The Soviets were the first to discover and liberate the camps back in 1944 (too bad they ended up having their own brutal camps) and the Americans liberated the first camp they discovered (Ohrdruf) in April 1945… the war in Europe was over in a month. That’s when the then general Eisenhower ordered the American soldiers to find the other camps, free the captives, and take pictures of everything they came across so Nazi crimes can be thoroughly documented and the American public can be made aware of them.
My point is that we didn’t intervene in the war because of what the Nazis were doing like you seem to imply, we intervened because we got attacked and declared war on.
How many deaths did it result in? Cause there is only one death on Jan 6 that has ever been attributed to Jan 6.
I don’t disagree that he incited the insurrection, but making false claims doesn’t help show that the left is the party of honesty.
The left, who? What party?
https://www.factcheck.org/2021/11/how-many-died-as-a-result-of-capitol-riot/
Babbitt plus suicides, and other “natural” deaths.
On March 7, the District of Columbia’s Police and Firefighters’ Retirement and Relief Board declared that Metropolitan Police Officer Jeffrey Smith’s suicide in the days after the Jan. 6 riot was a line-of-duty death. The board concluded “that Officer Smith sustained a personal injury on January 6, 2021, while performing his duties and that his injury was the sole and direct cause of his death.
Why are you pretending like right-wing violence isn’t the literal leading domestic security threat?
Have you been living under a rock since 2016?
2016? It’s been since at least the 90s.
Well, yeah, I mean, we can go back a hundred years, conservatives will always be pushing violence and division whatever era you look at since they can’t hold power without it, I mostly mean it’s come out fully into the open since 2016. The mask dropped off completely and they’re no longer even pretending to be anything but the Confederacy 2.0.
Hey numbnuts, America doesn’t have a left and it’s the MAGA fascists that are the problem here
I know you have to say this, but holy shit do I disagree.
This person advocated significant violence and contributed to the deaths and loss of human rights of thousands. A good whack of the world would turn up hungover to work tomorrow after celebrating only a few inches over.
They don’t have to say that.
No better fuel for an extremist ideology then having a martyr. Trump isn’t the problem, it’s the millions who listen to him.
spreading a conspiracy
I know this is off-topic, but can we please go back to saying “conspiracy theory”? Conspiracy and conspiracy theories are not the same. There are actual conspiracies (a secret plan by a group to do something unlawful or harmful) , and there are theories of conspiracies. They should not be confused.
Why not? Isnt that what americans claim the second amendment is for?Prevent fascism?
Sic semper tyrannis.
How do the people get justice for a convicted criminal that’s above the law? Is there a reason why the constitution has an amendment for guns? Why are so many platforms against the constitution and against the need for correct course when apt?
Stop acting like corpo reddit admins and mods.
“Convicted criminal” who is “above the law?”
Seems like he was convicted, thus not above the law.
You keep him from being president by getting enough people to vote against him, or you accept the will of the people.
The 2nd Amendment was originally to make sure militias weren’t disarmed, in a time when militias were more relevant. Has nothing to do with political assassination.
Do you think a convicted criminal should be walking around free?
“no actual discussion allowed” got it
If the only way you can discuss an assassination is by advocating for additional violence and pushing lies, then I guess not?
pushing lies
How did you determine what was true in this situation and what was false? I am curious about your methodology.
True: confirmed information. False: unconfirmed information of a speculative nature. Do you see a specific issue you disagree with or are you just trying to argue?
You are just moving the problem around via definitions not actually saying what method you used to know exactly what happened yesterday.
All I asked is how you arrived at the truth. Did you see evidence that the general public didn’t? Because what I am seeing is you all are so absolutely certain you have literally compared it to Covid misinformation. Amazing, a 30 hour news event is so well understood you can compare our knowledge of it to the single most studied virus in human history months after a new variant had appeared.
It is not unreasonable how you were able to obtain information the rest of us apparently do not have and how you were able to eliminate all other alternatives so quickly.
You are limiting discussion to centrist viewpoints, centrism caters towards permissive attitudes towards fascism. You know this.
“hey guys don’t politicize an attempted political assassination”
Not really what I said at all. “Hey guys, don’t make stuff up, please rely on credible sources, and don’t advocate for violence”.
Or, in other words: follow the rules we’ve always had in place
Advocating for, or not advocating for, violence is a political stance. Many people defend Israel’s ongoing genocide and are not blocked from doing so. That doesn’t feel like the rules being consistently enforced. The people speculating on whether or not this is staged have access to the same information as everyone else, and in the spirit of true discourse, if it was seen to be false you could figure that out by discussion rather than censorship.
.
Should I start reporting every comment that doesn’t have sources? 😂😂
I don’t personally think it was staged, but be honest … it’s not like you delete every single comment that doesn’t have sources …
Lemmy users when they can’t advocate violence:
young_guy_straining.jpg
Advocating for violence to prevent a fascist from abolishing the democracy is the only acceptable violence. Sometimes a democracy has to be protected violently if it is too weak to protect itself. Trump allies always say its why they have the second amendment. Now that it is used against them they cry about it.
Everybody thinks their form of violence is the only acceptable violence.
The paradox of tolerance is only a paradox if you don’t believe in the social contract.
Beliefs that violate the social contract deserve no protection under it.
Violence is rarely good for anything as we have seen it just now. It would be better even if this guy shot at Biden that’s how counterproductive it is.
Modern problems aren’t solved with blood but with marketing. You cannot kill an idea but you can ridicule it
You cannot just eradicate everyone who opposes you. China tried, Soviets too. Now they have something vastly better - troll farms.
Lol stfu, nobody cares about your fricked censorship
What peeves me is that the right are all clutching their pearls about anyone who says anything other than blind Trump sympathy. Don’t get me wrong, political violence is wrong. But, remember this:
When Paul Pelosi got his face bashed in with a hammer, the right made fun of it. Mocked him. Idk, man.
This is what is so frustrating.
Conservatives call for violence; Call for rising up; Literally calling themselves DOMESTIC TERRORISTS: Absolutely a nothing burger. Just a bunch of locker room talk. Relax that’s normal conservative speech.
Liberals blinking aggressively: WHY ARENT YOU MORE TOLERANT BE BETTER.
That shit was amazingly disgusting. And yeah, Trump gets no sympathy from me. But I won’t call for his death, either. I want him to live a very long time. In prison.
Alright, let’s get it out ahead of time, since I’m already seeing this:
It’s probably not staged. Trump reacts quickly - the fuck kind of timing you think that bloated potato has? To lift his hand to his ear just as the gunshot rings out? And the idea that the shooter grazed him on purpose is, likewise, absurd. The kind of risk that would entail, to just nick his ear?
Whether the shooter was insane or politically motivated, this is a real event.
I said this in another one of these threads- it is not at all outlandish to think that someone unhinged with a gun would see the threat of a fascist dictator and decide to do something about it.
Yeah, a 120 meter shot to graze does not exist. One inch to the right and he’s dead. With wind variables and stuff, the shooter who can reliably pull that off in one shot or volley does not exist.
Everyone keeps saying it can’t be staged because it was so close.
I just wanted to point out it can be both staged and a successful assassination if the end goal is to point the finger at the left and martyr a polarizing figure.
That’s not staged then. That’s just an inside job.
That’s the same thing …
Staged means they set it up like a movie shoot and nobody was ever in danger.
Thank you. And fuck the idiots spouting off with the “staged” nonsense. The time to believe something is staged is when you have evidence that it was.
People are obviously on high alert, considering how far Trump is willing to go given Jan 6th. From the Reichstag fire to the Russian apartment bombings, such events manufactured or actual have profound impact on public perception and action. Naomi Klein’s (not to be confused with the nut job Naomi Wolf) The Shock Doctrine details this well.
No sign this was a false flag, but holy fuck does it have terrible implications.
Trump’s entire persona is built on lies, it shouldn’t be a surprise that it’s many people’s first thought.
But it shouldn’t be. He shows no signs - cognitively speaking - of being capable of putting something like this together as a stage-managed event, and all of his past stage-managed events have been shitshows because he micromanages everything and he’s incompetent.
Genuinely infurating that the moment anything happens, NeoLibs will just start copying right-wing talking points.
Will or they did? Any examples?
If you check the modlog, before the Mods here started removing them, dozens of commenters said its a false flag, set up by trump.
Here’s a screenshot of it happening on PoliticalMemes. EDIT: Used the proper screenshot. https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/comment/9664605
And here’s some screenshots of the mod logs:
This isn’t getting into the ones on Mastodon and Twitter who also repeated the same Alex Jones level thinking.
EDIT: Weird how I gave proof, they move the goal posts. Give proof, move the goal posts. I’m starting to think they just want an excuse for their weird takes and Q-Anon thinking.
I love lemm.ee
Yhe mod log is available for all to see. You can even search by username.
Only one ban so far, I think I’m doing good!
Guy tries to overthrow the country, and people are worried that someone tried to kill him. What is wrong with this world. If people aren’t trying to kill him we have something to worried about.
The justice system failed to arrest and detain the suspect and keep him imprisoned until charged properly. This isn’t a failure of the people, it is a failure of the government.
We’re worried because of what will happen in retaliation.
True, unlike the packed supreme court, literal attempt at insurrection, already #1 terrorists in the USA according to the DHS and FBI…
Some countries deserve to have the government overthrown
If you’re planning to take out an aspiring despot, you better be damn sure of your shot
“Much bleeding took place”
The great recession, a global pandemic, and now a second American civil war. I want off this train.
Don’t forget the climate change!
Did you guys hear Richard Simmons died? So sad.
I think Death has some explaining to do.
I mean this is the world he wants, you can’t dog whistle people to take up arms against tyranny without a comfortable acceptance of the irony pool you are filling. Everyone will try to spin this to their political advantage but the truth is this is the level of political discourse the right has been driving towards.
Trump’s rhetoric almost lead to Pelosi getting killed. Trump’s rhetoric got people killed on Jan 6th. Republicans have been posting images with crosshairs of their opponents for years, and now they are surprised that shit is turning violent…
I did some cyberstalking (someone actually built a whole ass family tree on Ancestry already, which was my source to look up the other info). Just a reminder, please don’t dox or post any publicly identifiable info on here.
The alleged shooter did donate to a liberal group in 2021, age 17, before he was registered to vote. Rumors of this being another person are likely inaccurate, as the donor has the correct name and zip code listed.
The alleged shooter is a registered Republican. Some have theorized he did this as a “stop Trump” sort of thing to vote in PA’s closed primaries. His father is a registered libertarian and his mother is a registered democrat. His sister is a registered libertarian.
I imagine we will have more info on his background and motivation in the coming days and weeks. It’s possible that he could have any kind of political alignment. A lot of young men can get radicalized between 17 and 20.
It’s just as possible he started having major depression and hearing voices with that age range.
Very true, it’s a pretty typical age for schizophrenia to develop in men
I just man… ya know like… don’t fucking care anymore, I just dont
I’m so over politics in America. This shit is terrifying. People trying to overthrow elections, seniors that are too old to lead, voter suppression, people stuck in disinformation bubbles, and now assassins. Meanwhile, the rich just get richer, and “middle class” life just gets harder and harder.
I have dual citizenship with an EU nation from birth, and this week had made me start to dust off those childhood documents and look into the details of relocating.
Ooo, which one of us you looking at joining?
Good for you. Bye.
Promise you’ll leave too?
I can’t wait for Trump to turn pro-gun control.
I bet there will be a retaliatory attack on his Biden
at least. and Kamala just because she’s a black woman.
I doubt it. Something like this already happened before in 2017. A deranged Bernie supporter went to a congressional baseball game and tried to shoot as many Republicans as he could. He ended up killing 6 people. However, despite that, there were no reactionary shootings. It was an isolated incident. I think this will be the same, or at least I hope.
You do realize the Las Vegas shooting was literally like 3 months later, right?
We literally have no idea what Stephen Paddock’s motivation was. The Las Vegas shooting was not a reaction to the congressional shooting
Read your first sentence, then read your second sentence. Then do it again a few more times, and then ask yourself why I would listen to anything you say?
There’s nothing wrong with what I said. You can’t give criminals motives nor can you give different crimes connections based on your personal opinions. The matter of fact here is that despite numerous investigations, we still don’t know why the Las Vegas shooter did what he did. If evidences surfaces that he was indeed motivated and inspired by the congressional shooting that happened shortly prior then we can establish such a connection, but until that happens we can’t.
Please don’t repeat the names of mass shooters.
I disagree, I think their names should be known and their crimes studied. We can’t erase what they did, nor should we. We have to discuss and research these fucked up individuals otherwise how are we going to come up with a solution for the root cause of the issue?
Study them, yes. But that doesn’t require making their names and faces commonplace. Most research is done without broadcasting people’s names and faces to the world. Heck - when I was doing analysis for HHS I wasn’t given anybody’s name or picture at all.
Some of these killers are seeking fame and attention, and by giving it to them we encourage others.
That is a fair point, I’ll keep that in mind.
I mean, the right is already committing violence against its enemies, the media just fails to report it as what it is. Instead it’s “lone wolves” and “mental health problems”. Rittenhouse literally shot people on camera and got away with it “because skateboard”.
Daniel Perry murdered someone after driving his car into a crowd and was pardoned because Abbott agreed with his politics.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Garrett_Foster
The right is perfectly fine with violence that supports them.
The fact that he claimed self-defense really goes to show how far the MAGA attitude of being “victimized” goes. Literally plows his car into a crowd of people and then claims self-defense when shooting someone.
I bet Trump is perversely happy he got shot. He can be a Real Brave Man, now. How much attention it gets him. How much more clout he believes he will get because he will weasel some political capital out of it. Heaven help us if the shooter was liberal, this man is fine with dog whistling violence and more than a few of his followers are itching to engage in it. It won’t matter one whit how many people have been killed or hurt by right wingers.
They even managed to get a triumphant picture out of it. The Secret Service is surrounding him, he’s bloody but holding his fist high, and the American flag is perfectly framed in the background. This shit is going to pump his polling numbers. All he has to do is put whatever fake nationalist bullshit he wants over that picture for 30 seconds and it’s an instant ad in battleground states.
