Trump arrives in Milwaukee for RNC as country grapples with assassination attempt

Shock over the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump on Saturday scrambled the 2024 presidential race and prompted leaders on both sides to issue calls for unity, fearing rhetoric over the existential stakes of the election may have ushered in a new era of political violence.

Yet as an FBI investigation over the attack began in earnest, and congressional leaders demanded immediate accountability from the Secret Service, some Republicans and Democrats began pointing fingers at one another, casting blame and trading accusations of belligerence and political aggression that has prompted an historic number of physical threats against government officials.

The attempt on Trump’s life created whole new pressures on the Republican Party entering its national convention on Monday in Milwaukee, where a carefully choreographed show of partisan resistance against President Joe Biden’s administration will now face extraordinary scrutiny. Trump announced he would fly to Wisconsin on Sunday afternoon from his home in New Jersey, where he has been recovering since the attack, and his son posted video of the former president’s plane landing in the late afternoon.

How (and what) to watch at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee

“We’ve had a convention system that’s been in place for 50 years in which the conventions are low-drama events,” said Peter Kastor, chair of the History Department at Washington University in St. Louis. “Now we have a situation where we don’t know what these conventions are going to look like. We’ve known that for the Democrats for a few weeks now, given doubts over Biden’s age. But now we have a Republican convention where we don’t know which Donald Trump will show up.”

A lone shooter fired at Trump while he was addressing a political rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, on Saturday evening, grazing Trump’s head and slashing his ear with a single bullet before being killed by Secret Service snipers. One spectator at the rally was killed in the attack. Two people were injured.

The attempted assassin has been identified as Thomas Matthew Crooks, a 20-year-old registered Republican who has given one known donation to a Democratic group. Law enforcement officials say their initial investigation has uncovered that Crooks had explosives stored in his car and his home.

Trump sticks to plans to attend RNC Convention after shooting

Photo Appears to Capture Path of Bullet Used in Assassination Attempt

In a statement on his social media platform, Truth Social, on Sunday, Trump said he would “remain resilient in our Faith and Defiant in the face of Wickedness.”

“In this moment, it is more important than ever that we stand United, and show our True Character as Americans, remaining Strong and Determined, and not allowing Evil to Win,” Trump said.

The events also thrust new challenges on Biden, who denounced the killing, called Trump to offer support, scrapped his schedule and pulled down campaign advertising against his rival, attempting to display command amid an exceptional homeland security failure.

Biden said he had ordered the Secret Service to conduct a complete review of its security plans for the Republican convention this week, and to ensure that Trump has all the protection he needs going forward — assets he already should have as a former president and the Republican nominee. Biden spoke to the nation in a formal address from the Oval Office Sunday night.

‘We cannot, we must not, go down this road,’ Biden tells nation

“Unity is the most elusive goal of all, but nothing is as important as that right now: unity,” Biden said on Sunday, urging Americans not to jump to conclusions on the motive of the shooter until an investigation is concluded. “We’ll debate and we’ll disagree. That’s not going to change. But we’re not going to lose sight of who we are as Americans.”

ONLY SOME CALL FOR UNITY

Pennsylvania’s Democratic governor, Josh Shapiro, called for national unity on Sunday, ordering all flags in the state to fly at half-mast in honor of the civilian who died at the rally. And House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Republican from Louisiana, said, “we’ve got to turn the rhetoric down. We’ve got to turn the temperature down in this country.”

But several Republican lawmakers began asking how such an event could be allowed to happen — and who is to blame — while some Democrats noted political violence on the right, particularly on January 6, 2021, had contributed to an overall increase in tensions over several years.

“Today is not just some isolated incident,” Republican Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, a top contender for Trump’s vice presidential nominee, wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter. “The central premise of the Biden campaign is that President Donald Trump is an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs. That rhetoric led directly to President Trump’s attempted assassination.”

Rep. Mike Collins, a Republican serving Georgia’s 10th congressional district, posted an image of Biden calling Trump a threat to the nation and wrote, “they attempted to neutralize the threat.” GOP Rep. Matt Gaetz, of Florida, said Democrats have tried to impeach and imprison Trump, and “now, they have tried to assassinate him.” And GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia said that “Democrats wanted this to happen.”

Internally, Trump’s campaign leadership is attempting to soften the rhetoric of fellow Republicans, warning in a campaign memo that the campaign “will not tolerate dangerous rhetoric on social media.”

Andrew Rudalevige, a professor of government at Bowdoin College and author of “The New Imperial Presidency: Renewing Presidential Power after Watergate,” said that the prospect of a brokered Democratic convention — and the specter of political assassinations — raises “depressing echoes” of 1968, one of the most turbulent years in modern American politics.

“I think this week is an important one for framing whether polarization widens or narrows,” Rudalevige said. “It will be interesting to see how the various speakers at the RNC frame this. The former president will be a hero, of course — but will the claims of his martyrdom, now a little too close to concrete for comfort, remain front and center?”

Already, images that emerged from the attempted assassination — of Trump, bloodied, pumping his fist in defiance and vowing to fight on — have lionized the former president, become potent political symbols that will likely resonate throughout the convention.

“One of the results of this, I think, is to amplify how the Trump campaign has already been presenting him,” Kastor said, “that he’s strong and vigorous — he has stood down an assassination attempt, compared with Biden, who they have described as physically decrepit.”

IN WISCONSIN

On Sunday afternoon, downtown Milwaukee was eerily quiet, except for law enforcement officials in all black roaming the streets. Large barricades were up for blocks around the site of the convention, but thus far, security seemed consistent with past national conventions.

Delegates and guests didn’t see the attempted assassination changing much at the event.

“We don’t live in fear,” said Mary Erikson, an alternate from Jacksonville, Fla. Another alternate, Thomas Verdi of from DuVal County, Fla., said, “We have faith in God, not fear.”

Becky Hites, of San Marcos, Texas, said she was hardly surprised by the latest spate of violence.

“Until you start enforcing the law and having penalties, people will do crazy things,” she said.

Despite the president’s call for a comprehensive review of the Secret Service’s plan for security at the RNC, a Secret Service official in Milwaukee told reporters at a Sunday press conference that their current posture wouldn’t change.

“There have been no changes to our current operational security plans to this event,” the official said, noting that the Secret Service had worked for 18 months on the national special security event, the government’s highest-level security classification for a protective operation.

In a separate, rare briefing with reporters, the FBI said it had received over 2,000 tips related to the attack on Trump, which they are investigating as an attempted assassination and a potential act of domestic terrorism.

“At this point in the investigation, it appears that he was a lone actor, but we still have more investigation to go,” Robert Wells, executive assistant director of the FBI’s National Security Branch.

Anticipating political fallout, Biden and his team completely restructured their plans for the week, postponing his planned trip to Texas on Monday. Photos released by the White House on Sunday showed Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris receiving a briefing by their entire national security team in the Situation Room.

It is unclear if Biden’s team plans to restart campaign ads against the former president during such a pivotal political week — and if so, what form they will take.

“Empathy is Biden’s strength as a person and as a politician. But it is not going to satisfy those who will continue to want an aggressive approach,” Rudalevige said. “Team Biden can’t really attack Trump the person, at least for a while.”

Allies of the Trump campaign, for their part, did not stop campaigning Saturday evening.

Make America Great Again Inc., a super PAC supporting the former president, emailed supporters on Sunday stating that, “by the grace of God last night, President Trump survived a coward’s bullet, and before leaving the stage he roared, ‘Fight!’”

“So, we shall,” the super PAC continued. “We will fight by mobilizing the most epic political movement in history. We will fight by prosecuting the case against the worst president in American history, Joe Biden.”

McClatchy Chief Washington Correspondent reported from Washington, and Chief Congressional Correspondent David Lightman reported from Milwaukee.