Failed assassination attempt on Donald Trump. The Republican candidate moves into poll-position for the November election

Donald Trump, who is waiting for the Republican Convention today or tomorrow to designate him as the party's candidate for the American presidential elections that will take place in November, was shot. He was the target of an assassination set up by a so-called lone wolf, that is, a person who acts alone and who is very difficult to detect beforehand by Secret Service agents. Thomas Matthew Crooks, aged 20, premeditated the attack that took place at Trump's election rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. The November election was the first in which Crooks had the right to vote, but he chose to express it in a different way. With 7 bullets fired from a semi-automatic weapon, one of which pierced former US President Donald Trump's right ear, one killed a rally attendee and the others injured two other people in the hospital. The slain rally attendee was right in the gunman's firing line at former President Trump.

Basically, Donald Trump was going to have the fate of the rally participant. His luck, from the footage shown live by Fox News at the time of the rally, was that he turned half-way to the participants on the right, so the assassin could not shoot him directly in the head, but only pierced his right ear. The fact that Trump was attacked ends a 40-year period in which many assumed that the Secret Service's experience had greatly reduced the potential for such events, and this attack will have repercussions for the agency's work for years to come. respectively. Given the polarized state of politics in the United States, the initial shock of the assassination attempt will inevitably cause serious political ramifications.

Trump is seen as an invincible hero by his supporters and treated with an almost supernatural reverence at his rallies. His image as a fighter constantly attacked by his enemies will now be even more deeply rooted. In a moment of self-control after being hit, the former president made sure to create an iconic moment of defiance - raising his fist and shouting "fight, fight" at his supporters. These images will go down in history and enrich the mythology of Trump, along with the photo of him in the Atlanta jail and the footage of his return to the White House in 2020 after recovering well from the serious infection of Covid-19.

In other words, the attack was real, and not a bad stage designed to raise Trump in the preferences of the American electorate. The reality of the attack is also confirmed by the other victims at the scene, as well as by the killing of Thomas Matthew Crooks by a Secret Service sniper.

• Secret Service errors?

On the other hand, Donald Trump escaped a preventable assassination attempt. One of the participants in the rally, Ben Macer, claimed to the American media that he saw the bomber while he was moving on the roof, and another witness told the BBC that he saw the bomber as he was climbing a building with a semi-automatic weapon nearby and alerted the police and the Secret Service, but no one intervened.

He said: "I noticed the guy crawling around on the roof of the building. I called the cops and showed them the guy crawling on the roof who clearly had a rifle. The police officers didn't know what was going on. I think to myself, "Why is Trump still talking? Why didn't they take him off the stage?". I stood there pointing at that man for two, three minutes, the Secret Service people were looking at me, I was pointing at that roof, after which the shots were heard."

Questioned by the BBC journalists about these aspects, the witness claims that it is possible that the Secret Service snipers did not initially see Crooks on the roof of the building he had climbed, because he was hiding behind a wall that offered him some protection from the buildings around. In fact, from the images presented by Fox News, it can be seen that when the Secret Service sniper eliminates the assailant, he shoots from his feet, not from the classic position, in order to see Crooks better.

In view of these aspects, two former FBI agents expressed, for CNN, their surprise that the roof chosen by the bomber was not secured, taking into account that it was at most 150 meters from the stage from which the former american president Steve Moore, a former FBI special agent who spent two years as a sniper, told CNN the roof should have been guarded. Moore said, "The fact that somebody allowed that roof to be unmonitored, unguarded is an error in planning or execution." He said he expects "drastic changes" in security procedures as follow of the assassination attempt on Trump, including the expansion of perimeters and more careful security of election rally sites.

Another former FBI agent, Bobby Chacon, told CNN yesterday that he was surprised no one was guarding that roof: "That building is the closest building with a clear line of sight to where the scene was. I'm shocked the Secret Service didn't have someone on that roof."

It is strange that Thomas Matthew Crooks benefited from the policy promoted by Donald Trump regarding the purchase of weapons for self-defense, and the former American president fell victim to this very freedom of purchase offered to American citizens. The distance between life and death was tiny in the case of Trump, according to FBI agents quoted by CNN, and the role of the Secret Service was crucial in the moments that followed the wounding of the Republican presidential candidate. In fact, Donald Trump was quick to thank the Secret Service agents for their professionalism, perhaps mostly because they let him do their number after the assassination attempt, when he told fans and voters to keep fighting.

A fight that Trump conceived after the last presidential election lost to Joe Biden, when he was - as it appears from the documents of the US prosecutors - the mastermind of the actions by which MAGA sympathizers stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021, an action that resulted in 5 dead, 60 wounded and over 150 people indicted. The violence promoted by Trump since November 2020 was to be fatal for the former US president at the rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.

Despite the attack that targeted him, Donald Trump posted a message on his Truth Social platform yesterday saying: "It was only God who prevented the unthinkable from happening. We will not fear, we are resilient. At this time, it is more important than ever that we stand together and show our true American character by remaining strong and determined and not letting evil win."

• Republicans call the FBI and Secret Service directors to Congress for hearings

The attack on Trump unpleasantly surprised the Democratic opponent Joe Biden, the current president of the USA, who declared: "There is no place in America for this kind of violence. We cannot allow these things, we cannot be like this, we cannot condone these acts. The idea that there could be acts of political violence of this kind is inconceivable. Everyone must condemn this act. It is one of the reasons why we have to unite this country."

Additionally, Biden called Trump to make sure he was OK, suspended campaign meetings for a few days, and announced that he would temporarily suspend the airing of his campaign videos.

For her part, US Vice President Kamala Harris said: "Such an act of violence should not take place in our nation. We must all condemn this disgusting act and do our part to ensure that we reduce the violence."

Representatives of the Republican Party in the US Congress requested the establishment of a commission to investigate what happened and how the FBI and Secret Service acted to prevent such a situation. House Speaker Mike Johnson said in a post on the official X Network page that he would conduct a "full investigation" into the attack: "The American people deserve to know the truth. We will request the Director of the Secret Service, Kimberly Cheatle, and other designated officials from DHS and the FBI to appear before our committees as soon as possible."

Saturday's attack will have an impact on security plans for the Republican National Convention, scheduled to begin this evening in Milwaukee, an event where Donald Trump will also participate and in which he will be named the Republican candidate in the US presidential elections from November.

His campaign advisers, quoted by CNN, said: "President Trump looks forward to joining everyone in Milwaukee as our convention nominates him to become the 47th President of the United States."

It is certain that the attack in which he was the main target victim will bring Donald Trump more percentages than his Democratic opponent, Joe Biden, percentages that will join those won after the televised debate with the current American president in which the Republican candidate came out the winner . Historical data tells us that the former American president Ronald Reagan, following the assassination attempt of which he fell victim in 1981, won the sympathy of the American electorate, registering an increase of 22%. So, logically, it would be that former President Donald Trump would also register a small electoral benefit following the tragic events that had saturday in pennsylvania.

• World leaders - messages of support for Donald Trump

Following the assassination attempt on the former American president, world leaders took a stand and condemned the tragic event.

Chinese President Xi Jinping said his country was concerned about the assassination attempt on former President Trump, while NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said: "I am shocked by the assassination attempt on former President Trump. I wish him a speedy recovery and my thoughts are with those affected. I condemn this attack. Political violence has no place in our democracies."

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz described the attack on Trump as "horrible" and said that "such acts of violence threaten democracy".

French President Emmanuel Macron said the assassination attempt on Trump was a tragedy for democracy, while Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, said "political violence has no place in a democracy."

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said: "Such violence has no justification and does not occur anywhere in the world. Violence should never prevail."

In a first reaction from the Kremlin, Maria Zakharova, spokeswoman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation, said that the US should "take stock of its policies of inciting hatred against political opponents, countries and peoples" and stated that the money that the Americans send to Zelenski could be used to fund the police and secret services to ensure law and order in the US.

For his part, Dmitry Peskov, the spokesman of President Vladimir Putin, said that he did not believe that the current US administration was responsible for Saturday's assassination attempt on US presidential candidate Donald Trump, but noted that the current White House leadership created an atmosphere that provoked the attack.

Dimitri Peskov stated: "After numerous attempts to eliminate candidate Trump from the political scene using primarily all legal instruments - courts, prosecutors, attempts to discredit politics - it is obvious to all external observers that his life is in danger. (...) We do not believe at all that the attempt was organized by the current power. But the atmosphere around candidate Trump caused what America is facing today."

Italian Prime Minister Giogia Meloni also criticized the use of violence on the political stage, expressing his hope that in the coming months of the American election campaign "dialogue and responsibility will prevail over hatred and violence."

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also condemned the assassination attempt on Donald Trump, while Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Taiwan President William Lai (Lai Ching-te) said that "political violence of any form is not never acceptable in our democracies".

The attack across the ocean did not go unnoticed in Romania either, and political leaders expressed their opinion about it.

President Klaus Iohannis wrote in a message posted on the X network: "I am appalled by the attack on former President Trump at his campaign rally. I wish him a speedy and complete recovery. Violence and aggression are not the attributes of any democracy."

For his part, the President of the Senate, Nicolae Ciucă, said that "the attack on Donald Trump is an attack on freedom of expression and assembly", while Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu declared that "regardless of political or ideological differences, resorting to violence is never justified or acceptable".