How the assassination attempt on Trump unfolded
CNN
Former President Donald Trump’s rally speech in Butler, Pennsylvania, Saturday evening began just as it had at dozens of rallies previously – his attendees chanted “USA! USA!” and Trump clapped and pointed to faces in the crowd before taking the lectern.
Former President Donald Trump’s rally speech in Butler, Pennsylvania, Saturday evening began just as it had at dozens of rallies previously – his attendees chanted “USA! USA!” and Trump clapped and pointed to faces in the crowd before taking the lectern. About 150 yards to the north of the former president, a gunman was climbing onto the roof of a building outside the rally security perimeter. He had an AR-15 with him. Six minutes into the former president’s speech, the gunman took aim at Trump and squeezed the trigger. What happened next was as miraculous as it was historic. The gunman, later identified by the FBI as 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks, fired multiple shots, including one that Trump said skimmed his ear. Trump ducked to the ground. Five Secret Service agents rushed to the stage and covered the former president, as the pop-pop from another two additional bursts of gunfire rang out across the Butler Farm Show grounds. Forty-three seconds after the first shot was fired, a Secret Service agent said the shooter was down. Trump, his ear and face bloodied, was brought to his feet. He raised his fist in a defiant and iconic pose to his supporters to let them know he was OK before agents took him off the stage and into his SUV. At least three rally attendees were shot, one of whom was killed. The incident is being investigated as an assassination attempt. It is the first time since 1981, when John Hinckley Jr. tried to assassinate Ronald Reagan, that a current or former president has been shot at. It’s still too soon to determine what security failures may have occurred, such as how the shooter was able to get a clear line of sight to Trump.
The letter that Jona Hilario, a mother of two in Columbus, received this summer from the Ohio secretary of state’s office came as a surprise. It warned she could face a potential felony charge if she voted because, although she’s a registered voter, documents at the state’s motor vehicle department indicated she was not a US citizen.
With time ticking down until Election Day, public impressions of Kamala Harris and Donald Trump have not fully coalesced around any singular enduring news story or political issue, according to The Breakthrough, a CNN polling project that tracks what average Americans are actually hearing, reading and seeing about the presidential nominees.