Trump praises Secret Service after apparent assassination attempt
Trump is speaking about the apparent assassination attempt, praising the Secret Service. Of the first he says, “the agent did a fantastic job there was no question”. Of the second he repeats a claim that “maybe God wants me to be president”. He is talking in detail about the first attempt.
He falsely claims that both of the alleged gunmen were of the “radical left”.
Ryan Wesley Routh, the man suspected of carrying out a second assassination attempt on Donald Trump, has undergone shifting political convictions that elude partisan definition.
Although records show the 58-year-old former roofing contractor making small financial donations to Democratic candidates in recent years, Routh has acknowledged voting for Trump in his 2016 election before subsequently embarking on a ideological odyssey the aims of which appear incoherent and confused.
Thomas Matthew Crooks was killed after firing shots at Trump. His motivation remains unclear.
Key events
This blog is now closing – thanks for following along. Here is our latest story on the apparent Trump assassination attempt:
More now on the Teamsters union, via Reuters:
The 1.3 million-member Teamsters union could decide who to endorse in the 2024 US presidential election as early as Wednesday after members met Democratic candidate Kamala Harris on Monday, Teamsters President Sean O’Brien said.
Union representatives met her Republican rival Donald Trump in January. “We can’t kick this can down the road,” O’Brien told reporters after meeting with Harris for nearly an hour.
Most major unions have endorsed Harris, including the United Auto Workers union. The AFL-CIO, which represents 60 unions and 12.5 million workers, endorsed Harris in July. The Teamsters are one of the country’s largest unions.
O’Brien spoke to the Republican National Convention in July, but also criticised Trump for suggesting that workers who go on strike could be fired.
The union will present the results of polling of its members to the executive board on Wednesday.
Asked if the union could opt not to make an endorsement, O’Brien said: “We are going to look at any and all options. … We need to make sure we make the right decision.”
Ronald Rowe Jr, acting director of the Secret Service, said that once an agent detected the suspect in the second apparent assassination attempt of Donald Trump armed with a rifle, he discharged his firearm before the suspect fled. ‘He did not fire or get off any shots at our agent,’ Rowe said. ‘With reports of gunfire, the former president’s close protection detail immediately evacuated the president to a safe location.’ Rowe also told reporters that Trump was ‘out of sight of the gunman’ during his unscheduled visit to the golf club:
FBI agent Jeffrey B Veltri said in a press conference in Florida that the man suspected in the second apparent assassination attempt of Donald Trump was “in the vicinity” of the Trump International golf course “roughly 12 hours” before he was engaged by the US Secret Service. Here is that clip:
Facebook owner Meta said on Monday it was banning RT, Rossiya Segodnya and other Russian state media networks, alleging the outlets used deceptive tactics to carry out influence operations while evading detection on the social media company’s platforms.
“After careful consideration, we expanded our ongoing enforcement against Russian state media outlets. Rossiya Segodnya, RT and other related entities are now banned from our apps globally for foreign interference activity,” the company said in a written statement.
On Friday, US secretary of state Antony Blinken announced new sanctions against the Russian state-backed media company, formerly known as Russia Today, after new information gleaned from the outfit’s employees showed it was “functioning like a de facto arm of Russia’s intelligence apparatus”.
“Today, we’re exposing how Russia deploys similar tactics around the world,” Blinken said. “Russian weaponization of disinformation to subvert and polarize free and open societies extends to every part of the world.”
The Russian government in 2023 established a new unit in RT with “cyber operational capabilities and ties to Russian intelligence”, Blinken claimed, with the goal of spreading Russian influence in countries around the world through information operations, covert influence and military procurement.
State troopers have been deployed to schools in Springfield, Ohio, following false claims about immigrants repeated by Trump and JD Vance.
The state’s governor has said that he sees the troopers there “for the foreseeable future”.
On Monday Harris met with the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, a labor union of white and blue-collar workers with 1.3 million members, in Washington.
She’s as hoping to win their endorsement, but it wasn’t immediately forthcoming.
The vice president was scheduled Tuesday to campaign in swing-state Pennsylvania and planned later in the week to speak in Washington, Michigan and Wisconsin.
Republican Florida governor Ron De Santis has spoken more about his announcement yesterday that Florida will conduct its own investigation into the apparent assassination attempt on Trump in the state on Sunday. In an interview on Fox news, De Santis questioned the impartiality of the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) and US Department of Justice (DoJ).
DeSantis was once considered Trump’s top rival in the Republican presidential primary, but a bungled presidential run meant DeSantis left the race after the Iowa caucus in January, and has since voiced his support for Trump.
He told Fox on Monday night, “We have an interest, I think, in vindicating the truth about where this guy came from, what his motivations were. The people of our state deserve that. I don’t think it’s in the best interests of our country to say that agencies like the FBI and DOJ, which are trying to prosecute Trump in south Florida – they’re on appeal at the 11th circuit trying to reinstate an indictment that had been dismissed – that they’re the best people to turn around and, one: give us the truth about this defendant but also to prosecute the case where they don’t have strong jurisdictional claims.”
He repeated Trump campaign messaging seeking to blame Democrats for “rhetoric” they say fuelled an assassination attempt in July, and an apparent second attempt on Sunday.
Trump is expected return to the campaign trail on Tuesday for a town hall in Flint, Michigan, and has appearances later in the week in New York, Washington and North Carolina.
Trump says the political climate currently “is nasty” and “if I don’t win it’s only going to get worse”.
He talks about Biden’s call with him earlier today, saying “he couldn’t have been nicer” and repeats claims that Biden, who chose to drop out of the race, was unfairly treated.
He refers, falsely, to Harris as a “Marxist Communist president”.
The space’s host then pivots to cryptocurrency, saying that it appears to him that Trump has become a “crypto bro”.
This event, extraordinarily for a presidential candidate, is actually the launch of his sons’ crypto platform.
Trump praises Secret Service after apparent assassination attempt
Trump is speaking about the apparent assassination attempt, praising the Secret Service. Of the first he says, “the agent did a fantastic job there was no question”. Of the second he repeats a claim that “maybe God wants me to be president”. He is talking in detail about the first attempt.
He falsely claims that both of the alleged gunmen were of the “radical left”.
Ryan Wesley Routh, the man suspected of carrying out a second assassination attempt on Donald Trump, has undergone shifting political convictions that elude partisan definition.
Although records show the 58-year-old former roofing contractor making small financial donations to Democratic candidates in recent years, Routh has acknowledged voting for Trump in his 2016 election before subsequently embarking on a ideological odyssey the aims of which appear incoherent and confused.
Thomas Matthew Crooks was killed after firing shots at Trump. His motivation remains unclear.
In the meantime, a new Suffolk/USA TODAY poll from Pennsylvania, a swing state with a whopping 19 electoral college votes, shows Harris three points ahead of Trump statewide among likely voters.
Polling expert Nate Silver said on X it was, “Likely an important poll for the model. Few high-quality polls of PA lately and Harris +3 here”:
Suffolk/USA TODAY PA Likely Voter Polls
Statewide and 2 BW Counties:Statewide – KH 49, DT 46, Others 1, Und 5
Erie – KH 48, DT 44, Others 3, Und 5
Northampton – KH 50, DT 45, Others 1, Und 4All 3 polls show huge gender advantage for KH
KH winning Northampton Hispanics 60-25
— David Paleologos (@davidpaleologos) September 16, 2024
Trump has started to stream an event live on X. He is set to speak from Florida about cryptocurrency for the launch of his sons’ crypto platform. It is unclear how much that might have changed since the apparent assassination attempt. We will bring you anything relevant from the event.
JD Vance, Trump’s running mate, has published a 1200 word post on X/Twitter, the platform once known for its 140 character limit.
In it, he echoes Trump campaign rhetoric seeking to blame Harris and her campaign for Sunday’s apparent assassination attempt against Trump. There is no evidence of this. Harris, her campaign, her running mate Tim Walz and the Biden administration have repeatedly condemned political violence.
Earlier, Trump sought to blame the president and vice-president for the shooting, because they have criticized him as a threat to democracy following his attempt to overturn the 2020 election result.
On 6 January 2021, Trump incited an attack on Congress now linked to nine deaths, including law enforcement suicides and the shooting by a police officer of Ashley Babbitt, who Trump voters widely claim as a martyr.
Vance in his post seeks to draw parallels between the suspect in Sunday’s shooting and the Democratic party leadership. You can read more about the muddled politics of the suspect in Sunday’s shooting here.
Vance calls on people to “reject censorship”, insinuating that there are those whose political dissent is being silenced.
Vance ends by saying, “The logic of censorship leads directly to one place, for there is only one way to permanently silence a human being” – he then uses violent rhetoric to describe a person being killed.