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Assassination attempt on Trump roils American politics on eve of GOP convention

Published

2 years ago

July 15, 2024

Assassination attempt on Trump roils American politics on eve of GOP convention

CHICAGO — A would-be assassin is plunging the already tense American political climate into full-blown hysteria as the chaos from bullets flying at former President Donald Trump’s political rally in a Pennsylvania field spread throughout the 2024 electoral landscape.

The historic moment of shocking political violence has put the country on edge heading into the Republican National Convention, which begins Monday in Milwaukee and has morphed from a routine political ritual into a landmark event for a deeply divided nation.

Bloodied from a bullet he said pierced his ear, Trump was rushed off the stage by Secret Service agents Saturday in Butler, Pa. “It is incredible that such an act can take place in our country,” Trump posted on social media soon after the incident.

Now, a political system that already was strained to the breaking point must grapple with the fallout from a rifle shot that came perilously close to killing the GOP presidential candidate. President Joe Biden, Trump’s Democratic opponent, condemned the violent act.

“We cannot allow for this to be happening, we cannot be like this,” said Biden, who for the last two-plus weeks has faced mounting calls to exit the 2024 race due to his age and who spoke with Trump after the shooting.

Trump called for national unity in a social media post early Sunday morning. “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,” he wrote.

That message was echoed by political leaders in both parties as prayers and message of support for Trump provided a rare bipartisan rallying cry.

Yet the horror of what happened to Trump also provoked deep anger and outrage, as shock quickly turned to blame, which began to fly before the shooter and any potential motive had been identified. The FBI identified early Sunday that 20-year-old Pennsylvania resident Thomas Matthew Crooks is the individual who fired at Trump.

Crooks killed one rallygoer and injured two others before being killed by the Secret Service.

Already seen as a persecuted figure by many in his party, Trump again was cast as a man whose critics will stop at nothing to keep him from public office.

Such sentiments seem certain to feature prominently at the convention this week as aggrieved supporters vent their frustrations among thousands of Trump’s faithful followers.

“First they tried to silence him. Then they tried to imprison him. Now they try to kill him,” Florida U.S. Rep. Cory Mills wrote on X.

A top Trump campaign aide and a leading candidate to be his running mate both said rhetoric from Biden and Democrats contributed to the climate that led to the shooting.

“Leftist activists, Democrat donors and now even (Biden) have made disgusting remarks and descriptions of shooting Donald Trump,” Trump senior adviser Chris LaCivita said on X. “It’s high time they be held accountable for it, the best way is through the ballot box.”

LaCivita seemed to be referring to comments Biden made to donors recently saying “it’s time to put Trump in a bullseye.”

Ohio U.S. Sen. J.D. Vance, who is speaking at the convention and on Trump’s short list of potential VP candidates, said Biden’s campaign has portrayed Trump as “an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs.”

“That rhetoric led directly to President Trump’s attempted assassination,” Vance added.

Other Republicans seized on those comments to criticize Biden.

U.S. Rep. Mike Collins shared Biden’s “bullseye” remarks on X and said “Joe Biden sent the orders.”

Democrats have long accused Trump of stoking political violence, from suggesting his supporters should treat rally protesters roughly to inciting the deadly mob that stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 to try and stop the certification of Biden’s victory.

Now the message is being thrown back at Trump’s opponents in the heat of an already explosive campaign that has seen a remarkable whiplash of events, from Trump’s 34 felony convictions to Biden’s disastrous debate performance and now the most high-profile political assassination attempt since a gunman shot President Ronald Reagan in 1981.

The fraught moment is rife with fears of more violence.

“This is not a normal election year and this incident will only escalate the tension in America,” said Jennifer Mercieca, a Texas A&M University professor of communications and journalism and author of a book on Trump’s rhetoric. “The fear is that this act of violence will trigger more suspicion between Americans and more acts of violence.”

Amid the heated rhetoric, some across the political spectrum are urging calm.

U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson said on the Today Show Sunday that “we’ve got to turn the temperature down in this country.”

“We need leaders of all parties, on both sides, to call that out and make sure that happens so that we can go forward and maintain our free society that we all are blessed to have,” Johnson said.

Former Democratic U.S. Rep. Rick Boucher told USA TODAY the shooting should be “a moment for national introspection about the level of vitriolic rhetoric that characterizes many campaigns.”

“Candidates and some aspects of the news media should take this opportunity to step back and consider how to express political differences in a more constructive and less threatening manner,” Boucher added.

Shannon Bow O’Brien, a University of Texas professor who focuses on American politics, the presidency and political history, said “this sort of political violence deserves to be treated seriously and not as a way to lob cheap shots.”

Yet after nearly paying the ultimate price for his political crusade, Trump has moved ever closer to martyr status and the anger stoked by his travails is especially raw now heading into the convention.

Among the prominent speakers at the RNC is media personality Tucker Carlson, who predicted that someone would try to kill Trump.

“If you begin with criticism, then you go to protest, then you go to impeachment, now you go to indictment and none of them work. What’s next? Graph it out, man. We’re speeding towards assassination, obviously,” Carlson said in an interview last year. “… They have decided — permanent Washington, both parties have decided — that there’s something about Trump that’s so threatening to them, they just can’t have him.”

A convention that already was expected to be extremely reverential of Trump could become something even more emotional and intense for the former president, who emerged from the shooting bloodied but defiant and rallying the party around him. Even before he was rushed off stage Saturday, Trump’s instinct was to project strength.

Surrounded by Secret Service officers, Trump raised his fist and yelled “Fight! Fight! Fight!”

Darren Samuelsohn contributed to this report

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How a Beer Hall Keeps Up With a World Cup Crowd

Published

6 hours ago

July 11, 2026

Press Room

The fans see the games, the crowds, the food and the beer. But behind every World Cup watch party is a team working long before kickoff and well after the final whistle. We go behind the scenes at a beer hall in Brooklyn to see what it takes to serve a room full of soccer fans on game day.

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With the white nationalist group Patriot Front, what you see is not what you get

Published

8 hours ago

July 11, 2026

Press Room

With the white nationalist group Patriot Front, what you see is not what you get

Members of the group Patriot Front ride the subway as a commuter looks on, in Washington, D.C., on July 4.

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Cheney Orr/Reuters

The sight of hundreds of masked men roaming the streets of Washington, D.C., on July Fourth weekend, wearing khakis, blue shirts and uniform patches, was chilling to some of the city’s residents.

For many Americans, it was the first they heard about Patriot Front, a white nationalist organization that was born out of the deadly 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Va. A now-viral Reuters photo prompted reflections on the experience of a lone African American woman who was photographed in a Metro subway car, surrounded by white supremacists.

The planned demonstration of force was timed to bring a fringe group of extremists into public view as the nation marked 250 years of its independence. Indeed, the stunt succeeded in earning the group media coverage across mainstream outlets, amplifying its brand and potential to reach new recruits. On this occasion, the members refrained from engaging in violence and property damage, projecting an image of law-abiding, orderly activism.

But those who are closely familiar with Patriot Front’s history and operations warn: Don’t believe what you see.

“That is not who they are in private,” said Len Kamdang, director of the Criminal Justice Project at the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. “Although they were on their best behavior [last] weekend, this is a dangerous group that commits acts of violence all over the country.”

Patriot Front’s history of violence and property damage

Kamdang’s organization sued members of Patriot Front for vandalizing a public mural dedicated to the tennis legend and Black activist Arthur Ashe in Richmond, Va., in 2021. Ashe, who was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 1985, was born in Richmond and his legacy is a continuing source of pride to members of that community.

“A couple of Patriot Front members showed up under cover of night and vandalized the mural,” Kamdang said. “They painted white stencils all over. … They literally tried to whitewash him and they put their symbols of hate all over — their stencils, their slogans. And all the while they were caught on video. And that video leaked using some of the most horrible language that you can imagine.”

In many jurisdictions, law enforcement can seek additional hate crime charges or sentencing enhancements in cases where illegal acts appear to have been motivated by racial bias. But in this case, Kamdang said, Patriot Front members faced no criminal charges and their identities were only revealed when online activists later infiltrated the group and leaked internal records.

In another civil case, Patriot Front was ordered to pay almost $2.76 million to an African American musician whom they assaulted in Boston in 2022, at another July flash rally they staged. Despite a police detective concluding that the attack “appeared to be more likely than not motivated in whole or in part by Anti-Black bias,” nobody was criminally prosecuted.

Neo-Nazi ideology in patriotic colors

In 2020, Kristofer Goldsmith said that a fellow veteran invited him to partner up on infiltrating Patriot Front. Goldsmith, who later established the Task Force Butler Institute to recruit Army veterans to counter fascist groups through open source online research, was not closely familiar with the group at the time.

“Frankly, when my friend used the term ‘neo-Nazi,’ I thought he was using hyperbole,” Goldsmith said. “It wasn’t until I saw them doing things like debating the merits of national socialism versus fascism versus monarchy that I truly understood that neo-Nazi was not hyperbole, that these people actually praise Hitler. … These people have dedicated their lives to promoting white nationalist, fascist and genocidal ideology.”

Patriot Front’s founder, Thomas Rousseau, was formerly a leader of a group called Vanguard America, which was prominent in planning and a presence at the 2017 Unite the Right rally. That gathering, the largest public white nationalist event in generations, turned fatal when one extremist drove a car through a crowd of counterprotesters, killing Heather Heyer. Ultimately, Goldsmith said that rally further smeared public perception of the white nationalist movement as violent and un-American — lessons that Rousseau took to heart.

“Rousseau needed to rebrand Vanguard America,” Goldsmith said. “So he basically stole all of its assets, its digital assets … and made it into Patriot Front and literally painted everything in red, white and blue so that it would be more attractive.”

The group has also shown up at natural disaster sites, namely in Central Texas last summer, ostensibly to assist local residents. Goldsmith said these missions and the group’s outward aesthetic are meant to project an idea of patriotism and service. He said the group maintains a strict code of conduct. Among other things, they do not display swastikas or give Hitler salutes in public.

“The goal of their propaganda, of their public actions like this, is to beat MAGA and conservatives and Republicans into defending them and to saying, ‘I don’t see anything wrong with this group. They clearly love America,’” he said.

Patriot Front described as a “cult” and a “pyramid scheme”

The show of force in D.C. has raised questions about the group’s financing, and whether members’ travel was sponsored by outside individuals or groups. In fact, Goldsmith and Kamdang said that members of Patriot Front appear almost entirely to shoulder the cost of operations and Rousseau’s lifestyle. They said it’s most likely that those who traveled to D.C. had to cover their costs themselves.

“All of them funnel resources to the top,” Kamdang explained about the group’s general financial structure. “In order to be a Patriot Front member, you have to engage in acts of what they call ‘activism.’ And usually what that means is vandalism: putting up banners, spreading the slogans of hate all over the country. And in order to do that, they will have stickers, stencils, branding. All of that has to be approved from the top down, and all of it has to be purchased from the top down. So all the members who do this multiple times a month send cash to Thomas Rousseau for essentially stickers and stencils.”

Goldsmith said that from his time infiltrating the group, the costs could run up to hundreds of dollars a month per member. Kamdang, who said that attorneys are actively seeking to collect judgment in the settlement over the Arthur Ashe mural, noted that Rousseau appears not to hold any additional paying jobs.

“This seems to be what he’s doing full time,” Kamdang said. “So he appears to be being propped up full time by his members.”

Goldsmith likened the financial operation to a pyramid scheme. But he said even more substantial than the financial investment that Patriot Front members are required to make to retain membership is the control they give up over their time and personal choices.

“I describe it as a cult, not to be offensive, but because it is like Rousseau needs to have complete control of all of his members,” Goldsmith said. “[The group] requires its members to give up all of their lives, all of their relationships. All of their priorities in life need to be focused towards growing the organization or continuing the organization [and] enriching its leadership. So, it’s costly.”

NPR reached out to Patriot Front for comment. The group did not respond by deadline.

Goldsmith also noted that Rousseau often gives lengthy speeches that members are expected to listen to, via online platforms.

To Kamdang, the publicity that Patriot Front earned through the group’s D.C. stunt presents a danger: It amplified a presentation of the group that was deliberately crafted to make Patriot Front appear orderly and patriotic.

“I think the reason why it got a lot of attention is because Patriot Front was very careful in their language,” he said. “They try to mask their replacement theory, the white supremacy and in ‘Americana’ terms and patriotism. But that is not who these guys are.”

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Graham Platner makes it official in Maine, submitting paperwork to leave Senate race

Published

18 hours ago

July 10, 2026

Press Room

Graham Platner makes it official in Maine, submitting paperwork to leave Senate race

Now-former Democratic Senate candidate Graham Platner speaks at his primary election night event on June 9 in Blue Hill, Maine. Platner officially dropped out of the race July 10 following rape allegations from a former romantic partner that he denies.

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Graham Platner, Maine’s Democratic nominee for Senate, is officially out of the race.

The Maine Secretary of State said Platner filed the necessary paperwork to withdraw his candidacy two days after he announced he planned to do so following an accusation of rape by a former romantic partner. Platner denies the allegation.

The Maine Democratic Party has until July 27 to pick Platner’s replacement.

In his withdrawal notice, Platner said “people are desperate for change” and that’s why they voted “for a new kind of politics” by making him the Democratic nominee. He expressed gratitude for those who supported his campaign and said that he will continue to fight for “the movement we have built together and the future we believe in.”

He ended his notice with a strong statement aligned with the progressive platform.

“F*ck ICE. Free Palestine. Up the Hearts.”

Platner announced his plan to withdraw from the race in an 11-minute video he posted to social media on July 8. He said he had no choice but to suspend his campaign, citing it was no longer viable financially.

“We are going to lose our ability to fundraise. We are going to lose our ability to access voter data. We are going to lose all of the things that any campaign needs on the basic level simply to function,” he said.

Platner added that dropping out was not an admission of guilt. Rather, the decision, he said, is to keep the progressive movement in Maine alive to defeat Republican Sen. Susan Collins in November. Platner blamed the “political establishment” for his downfall and argued the goal was to force him out of the race.

“We built a campaign. We engaged in electoral politics. We motivated people. We banded together. We did it the way that we were told we are supposed to make change and we won. And now they are not going to let us have it. Not if it’s me,” he said.

Many powerful Democrats and progressives, including Sen. Bernie Sanders, an independent, urged Platner to step down.

Platner has had to answer to a waterfall of scandals since he launched his Senate bid. Despite those, he ran away with the nomination in the June 9 primary, securing more than 150,000 votes — more than any other Democratic Senate candidate in Maine’s history.

Platner ran on a progressive platform centered on affordability, universal health care and getting corporate money and influence out of politics. During his campaign, he generated an undeniable amount of enthusiasm, something the Maine Democratic Party will have to harness if it hopes to beat Collins in the general election.

Multiple people have already launched campaigns to replace Platner, including former state Sen. Troy Jackson and former CDC official Nirav Shah, who both ran unsuccessful bids for governor.

Platner called on the replacement process to reflect “the Mainers who on June 9 turned out and showed that they are desperate for a different kind of politics.”

“We were asking for real democracy, and we did it the right way. And we won. But now the ball is in the court of the Democratic establishment,” he added.

The Maine Democratic Party said that it intends to hold a new nominating convention where around 600 delegates will select Platner’s successor. Candidates have until July 15 to declare their intent to seek the nomination and gather signatures from at least 8 of Maine’s 16 counties. Party leadership added they will make the nomination process public and transparent.