The Daily - The Attempted Assassination of Donald Trump

Episode Date: July 15, 2024

Today’s episode sets out what we know about the attempted assassination of former President Donald J. Trump at a rally in Pennsylvania on Saturday evening.Doug Mills, a photographer for The Times, recounts what it was like to witness the shooting, and Glenn Thrush, who covers gun violence for The Times, discusses the state of the investigation into the man who did it.Guest: Doug Mills, a photographer in the Washington bureau of The New York Times.Glenn Thrush, who reports on the Justice Department for The New York Times.Background reading: What we know about the assassination attempt against Donald J. Trump.A Times photographer who was feet away from Mr. Trump describes the shooting.The gunman appears to have acted alone, but his motives remain unclear.For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.

From The New York Times, I'm Sabrina Tavernisi, and this is The Daily. The nation is waking up to a new reality after former President Donald Trump was injured in an apparent assassination attempt. Gunshots ripping through a Pennsylvania campaign rally and carving their way into the history books. I heard pop pop. I think a lot of people in the crowd just thought it was fireworks going off. I knew immediately it was gunshots. And everybody's screaming drop and you can see the blood like splatter on his face and the Secret Service just barricades him.

And, you know, it was just like so scary. Today, senior law enforcement officials say the gunman was a 20-year-old man from Pennsylvania. A gunman was on the roof of a building several hundred feet from the lectern where Trump was speaking. What we know about the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump at a rally in Pennsylvania.

I just go back to this idea that something has been fundamentally changed. People are desperate for answers to figure out how this could have happened, how to prevent it. My colleague, photographer Doug Mills, recounts what it was like to witness the shooting. And reporter Glenn Thrush,

on the state of the investigation into the man who did it. It's Monday, July 15th. Oh, this is him. I have to reroute through this thing, though. Hold on. Doug? Hey, Sabrina. How are you? How are you? Still a little shaken up, actually.

Oh, I'm still a little shaken up, actually. Never thought I'd ever be in a situation like this or be part of a story like this. It's not something I ever dreamed of having happen in my career. And it shakes you up. I mean, it's pretty damn frightening. Doug Mills has been photographing presidents for over 40 years. I spoke to him on Saturday night, about four hours after the shooting. What's in your head right now? My first thought is obviously I am thankful that the former president is not more seriously injured than he is.

I'm saddened that other people lost their life. I mean, as much as I cover the president of the United States, whether it's former President Trump or President Biden or President Obama, all the way back to Reagan, it seems more and more intense and more and more divided and sadly scarier as the days grow on. And just having this happen in front of you and I'm sitting here in the car and I'm in a dark parking lot and I'm, you know, just hearing those gunshots. Where were you? How far from the former president were you? Where were you? How far from the former president were you? When the shots came from him, I was probably less than three feet from him, maybe four at the most, because I was right up against the stage and he was directly above me. Oh, my God. Doug, you yourself could have been hit.

Believe me, Serena, I when he was whisked off, I turned around and I saw people scattering and I thought, oh my God, I was right in the line. My heart was pounding through my chest and I was shaking and, you know, I was just like, I can't believe this happened. So tell me exactly what you saw through your camera lens, Doug. What were you looking at right before? And then what did you see exactly at the moment that it happened? I was focused on the former president as he was making his remarks. There was a huge flag, American flag above him flying. I was trying to do something that showed him on the podium and him with the flag up there. And I was in the right moment as far as concentrating and being right there so I could see him. And then the former president was making remarks. He was gesturing towards his right.

And when he put his hand out to gesture, there were these three or four loud pops, and I just kept taking pictures, and it all became a blur. I just kept my finger on the shutter. And then he grabbed his ear and then fell from behind the podium. I didn't see him behind the Trump sign. And I ran to the left to try and see what was going on.

And by that time, he was being covered by the Secret Service. And there was a lot of yelling and pushing and, you know, just them trying to protect him and getting over top of him. I'm positive I heard them say, sir, sir, sir. You know, and I think they were just trying to see how bad he was. He was hit. And after that, it was very chaotic. There was a lot of like, move back, get out of the way, move back. Did you know where the gunman was? No, I only knew that the pops came definitely from my left ear.

I could hear it very loud. So I assume that's where they came from. And did that person continue to shoot? I thought I heard maybe two or three more shots. After the former president disappeared from your lens? Correct, yeah. And I don't know if that was the Secret Service shooting back at that point, but I did hear more than the first three or four.

I mean, they were very quick, which now that I look back, I was an idiot to be that close. But instincts just brought me closer to the stage to try and see what was going on. And then when they brought him up, I thought, oh, my God, he's okay, he's alive. And then he put his fist up, and then as he got closer to the steps, he kind of stopped with the agents. And I could tell the agents were trying to put their arms over him to shield him, and he was defying, and he just pumped his fist. What did you think when you saw Trump do that? You captured that moment.

What did you think when he did that? Oh, he was just so just pissed off, like defiant. That's all that I could think of is, God, he's mad as hell. He is really mad. You know, the image that you took of former President Trump pumping his fist in the air with the blood on his face, with the Secret Service all huddled around him, the one you referenced, this photo is in many ways already becoming really the iconic photo of this moment, defining the episode in history, really. Did you know immediately

that would be the case? I didn't, Sabrina. I didn't know what I, you know, because it was happening so fast. And at that point, my camera went from in my eye to lifting it up above me. And just because there were people in front of me that, you know, I just, I had no idea that it would be the image it is until I saw it on the camera afterwards when I was shaking and looking at my pictures thinking, oh my gosh, oh my gosh, you know, it brings chills to me. It is definitely an image that I'll think about when I close my eyes tonight to go to sleep at some wee hour in the morning. Doug, there's one photograph you took with a kind of blurred moving image, and it looks like it might actually be a bullet, a bullet streaking past the former president.

Can you talk about that photo? Is that actually one of the bullets? I never thought that I would have a picture of the bullet behind him. But after the event had happened and I'm looking through my camera at pictures that I'm going to send to the office and I said to the editor, Jennifer, listen, Jen, I'm sending you the sequence of when he was speaking, when the shots rang out. And please look at him closely because at that point, there were speculation that he was not shot. And I called Maggie, one of our reporters, and Maggie Haberman said, hey, Maggie, I definitely think he was shot because he looks to his right, he flinches, he grabs his ear, his hand has blood

on it at that point, and then he went down. So when I asked Jen, can you look at him closely, and Jen said, I will. And she literally texted me back a minute later and said, you won't believe this. We think there's a picture of the bullet flying behind the former president's head. And I said, what? And I'm getting chills now because I now that I've seen the picture and I am looking at the sequence because there's nothing there, nothing there, nothing there. And then it's right behind his head. And, well, of course, we haven't at this hour, 9.54 p.m., exactly confirmed that this is the image of the bullet that hurt him. But it certainly seems like it could be that you captured the exact moment that he got shot. It was, I mean, from what I can tell, it's definitely a bullet that was fired at him. Whether it hit him or not is um tbd i just don't know at this time like you said doug you said that when this shooting happened that your instinct was to keep your finger on the shutter and you know that's a pretty unique instinct it's a it's a

photographer instinct and i love that i'm assuming that's all kind of your accumulated experience over the decades. You referenced this earlier, but you've covered presidents for four decades. You've captured the most historic moments, probably present for more of the history in our country than any other journalist in Washington. How are you thinking about this event in the context of all of the others that you've been present for? Yeah, this is by far the most remarkable and sad situation that I've ever witnessed, you know, to see a person running for president of the United States, someone's trying to end their life. And, you know, as a photographer,

you hope that if you're there for that day, that you're able to do your job and then you're in the right place to do your job. And that's all I kept thinking, you know, was I was trying to run around the stage, trying to, you know, just to see, you know, how the former president was doing. And I hope I didn't blink. I hopefully captured what happened, and that's what my job is, to record history. And this is definitely one of those historic moments that sadly I was a part of,

but also I'm grateful that I didn't flinch and I didn't blink and I wasn't shot. So I'm grateful for that. Yes, you were our witness, Doug. Well, thank you, Sabrina. We'll be right back. Glenn, you've been reporting on the investigation into the shooting at President Trump's rally on Saturday. We're talking to you at 4.55 p.m. on Sunday. Before we get to the details of what's been found so far, what do we know about how Trump is doing, how he's been in the hours since the shooting? Remarkably well. While it was sort of shocking on television, you could see the blood

splatter across his cheek. It was an injury on his ear, but his injuries were relatively minimal. He was cleared at a local hospital, flew back to his golf resort at Bedminster in New Jersey, and has made it entirely clear that he doesn't have any intention to skip the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee this week. And do we know for sure it was a bullet that hit him? That's a little bit ambiguous. There were some reports that he was injured by flying glass from his teleprompter. But in a Truth Social post, he said he was shot by a bullet.

And in a conference call today with the FBI, they refused to address the issue at all. Got it. And what about the people in the crowd who were also hit? One man was killed. His name is Corey Comperatore, and he was apparently shielding his family from the gunfire. And in addition, two other bystanders were seriously injured, and they were taken to the hospital. So, Glenn, what is the picture that law enforcement has pieced together about what happened on Saturday? So, Glenn, what is the picture that law enforcement has pieced together about what happened on Saturday? Well, the FBI and Department of Justice are investigating this as an assassination attempt and also a potential incident of domestic terrorism.

And here's the picture that they've compiled. It started off as a regular Trump rally. Everything seemed to be in order. People were in a good mood. Trump started speaking at around 6 p.m., and roughly 10 minutes into his speech, Trump was talking about immigration. That's when a gunshot is heard. Trump stops mid-sentence, then he flinches.

Trump then clutched his ear, and you could see the splatter of blood across his cheeks. Then another two shots are quickly fired, and he ducks behind the podium. And almost immediately, this whole clutch of Secret Service agents surrounds Trump. And then you hear a burst of about five more shots. The crowd was completely disoriented.

Some people were sort of cheering. Other people started screaming. And you could see behind Trump that folks were responding to those people who had been injured. At some point, a Secret Service sniper shoots back and kills the shooter. We know from looking at footage that at this point he's lying dead on a rooftop about 400, 500 feet away from Trump. And some of the images show an AR-15 style semi-automatic rifle laying near his body. The Secret Service are still laying on top of Trump, shielding him. Then you hear a couple

of seconds later, shoot her down, shoot her down. And it's at that point that they start to move. The agents that surround him kind of in a shell slowly move him off stage. And the thing I found most extraordinary, having covered Trump on and off all these years, is how quickly, when he realized that he was physically okay, that he pivoted to a complete understanding of what the image was, what the moment meant politically. Right.

And there's just this extraordinary moment of defiance, where he balls his fists, and the crowd starts to chant chant USA, USA, USA. I just can't emphasize how extraordinary that was. And just like he had this instinct that this may have been a horrific event, but he was somehow seeing it as a political one. He was making use of it and really connecting with the people at the rally. Somebody who worked with Trump for many years said this to me a long time ago.

A lot of other politicians play the music. They can read the notes. Trump can hear the music. And that was one of those moments where he intuitively understood the moment, understood the image, understood the sound, and behaved in a way that maximized his position going forward. It was really, really something else. Okay, so on the shooter, it wasn't that he somehow passed through a security check or evaded a security check. He was just completely outside the zone that the Secret Service considered the zone of danger, right? the zone that the Secret Service considered the zone of danger, right? The shooter was completely outside the event, on a warehouse roof outside of where Trump was speaking. There's some reporting that he may have attempted to get in earlier, but part of the

complication here was that he wasn't actually within the perimeter of the event itself. Got it. And what is the Secret Service saying about why it was that that building, with an apparent clear shot of the podium, was outside the perimeter? Well, the Secret Service is an independent security agency that's responsible for the protection of the president and other senior American officials. Candidates get protection as well, but they don't operate in isolation. When they come to a town, they often coordinate with local law enforcement. Sometimes you'll see, for instance, state police sealing off highways when the motorcade comes through. Well, oftentimes, Secret Service will have control over the event itself, while local

law enforcement is tasked with controlling things outside of the perimeter. That appears to have been what happened in Pennsylvania. There were four counter-sniper teams on Saturday, two Secret Service and two local. And the building outside the perimeter would typically have been under the purview of local law enforcement. Got it. So basically, Secret Service was taking care of security inside the lines of that perimeter, and local law enforcement was taking care of the security outside those lines. And that's where the shooter was shooting from, outside the lines. Do we know what happened with local law enforcement there? How this shooter getting to the top of a roof ended

up kind of falling through the cracks for them? Nobody's quite sure, but the speed with which this happened seems to have been an important dynamic. It wasn't like this guy was camped out for hours. It appears that he scrambled up onto the roof of the warehouse, moving rather quickly, and planted himself and then fired. So there wasn't a lot of time for law enforcement to react, apparently. And what do we know so far about the shooter? What have investigators learned? His name is Thomas Matthew Crooks. He is 20 years old. He's from Bethel Park, Pennsylvania, which is about 40 miles from the scene of the shooting. He was generally regarded in school as a quiet, intelligent guy,

and he'd been working as a dietary aide at a local nursing home. And investigators told us that he was interested in chess and that he had recently taken up computer coding. And what did the authorities say about his motive? They don't know. That is the big question. The public record is very scant. He is a registered Republican. This would have been his first presidential election voting. And it appears that he gave $15, according to some reports, to a group that generally identifies

as liberal. But mostly, I would say, investigators are exasperated by the lack of any kind of directionality in terms of what his motivation or political beliefs have been. He has, for instance, not written any kind of a political manifesto, and there aren't even a trail of social media posts to fall back on. They're really hoping that once they are able to breach his cell phone, that that will unlock a trove of information that will point them in the right direction. But he really is an enigmatic character right now. Do authorities think his attack was highly planned? And is there any indication that more attacks were planned? Nobody really knows. The gun that he used was purchased by his father. Authorities are not clear whether or not

his father gave it to him, lent it to him, or if he took it from his father. But they don't believe his father bought it on his behalf. What they did find were some explosive devices. There were apparently some canisters found in the car that he had been driving, which served the purpose of delaying the investigation for hours and hours yesterday as the bomb squad removed and deactivated these devices. And a law enforcement official told me that there was also a suspicious device found at his residence.

So he clearly had some knowledge of both firearms and explosives, but they aren't sure where he picked it up and what he intended to do. So this, of course, as you know, is the first time in about 40 years that a current or former president has been wounded in an assassination attempt. Ronald Reagan, of course, was shot in 1981. What fundamentally went wrong here? Is there any way to see this other than as a colossal failure by the Secret Service? I think this is going to be regarded as one of the darkest days in the history of the Secret Service. Now, all of us who have covered the

White House have traveled with agents, tremendously high level of professionalism. And the job is difficult bordering on impossible at times. But allowing someone to have a clear firing line to a major presidential candidate in the middle of this kind of highly polarized environment is frankly inconceivable. And I think the other law enforcement agencies, including the FBI and folks at the Department of Justice, were fairly unvarnished in private in their criticism of the way that the Secret Service planned this. So there are a lot of unanswered questions, and some lawmakers have called for there to be a significant investigation of this, and the House Oversight Committee will call the head of

the Secret Service to testify over the next couple of weeks. What has Trump said since the shooting? He's been relatively muted. I think one of the really amazing moments and something which has been kind of overlooked, Joe Biden called up Donald Trump and they seem to have had a civil exchange. I think it was this very, very rare and brief moment of comity in this campaign, which is just suffused with negativity and hostility. And then Trump called for national unity, and he's basically kind of kept up that vibe for the past 24 hours. But in his signature defiant way, he wrote in a text message to supporters, I will never surrender. And on Truth Social, he called for his supporters to stand united

and not to allow, quote, evil to win. But he really seems to be towing the line between his typical bombast and adopting a tone which is a little more conciliatory at a moment when Americans of all political stripes are extremely uneasy and many are just frankly terrified. And what have been the other reactions to this assassination attempt? What's been happening in Washington? What have the people been saying? Democrats and administration officials have called for unity, essentially saying that this was not just an attack on Trump, but an attack on democracy. Look, there's no place in America for this kind of violence.

It's sick. It's sick. President Biden made it very clear in a couple of appearances over the weekend that he condemned the violence. We cannot allow for this to be happening. We cannot be like this. We cannot condone this. And said that this kind of reaction, regardless of your political stance, was completely unacceptable. Republicans had a wider range of reactions. There were some in the party who took a measured approach.

Everyone needs to turn the rhetoric down. Like from Speaker of the House Mike Johnson. You have political opposition and political opponents, but we're all Americans and we have to treat one another with dignity and respect. But you also heard some Republicans taking a far different approach. You had people like Mike Collins, a kind of a firebrand Republican from Georgia, writing on social media that Joe Biden sent the orders to shoot Donald Trump. Wow. Obviously, there's no evidence for that. I do believe that Joe Biden is responsible for the shooting today.

And you had Lauren Boebert from Colorado in a television interview saying Joe Biden is responsible for the shooting. Everyone who has called him a fascist, everyone who has called him a threat to democracy, who said that he should be... Essentially saying that it was democratic rhetoric that caused this. Again, there's been no evidence whatsoever yet that the shooter was motivated by that kind of rhetoric. But that was a common Republican talking point that you saw emerging to say that using all of this description of Trump as an existential threat to democracy had somehow whipped up people to enact violent acts.

Okay, so there are some cross currents of rhetoric here in the aftermath of the shooting. And we see some signs of unity, but it seems undeniable that this is a very fraught political moment. It seems undeniable that this is a very fraught political moment. How a call on Sunday, they reiterated that the threat level is really high. For months, they've been telling us that they're worried about shootings spawning copycats. And also, outside of violence, it's this wave of misinformation that tends to accompany these big events that can also create a bad cycle. People get whipped up, and that in turn incites more violence. So I think there is a level of tremendous uncertainty,

and political conventions, as we have seen in years past, are a gathering point for all kinds of folks, mostly people who are engaged in peaceful protests, but it's also been catalytic for individuals who want to create all kinds of problems. I think if there is a silver lining, it is that this near miss, this near national catastrophe has alerted law enforcement agencies, particularly the Secret Service, to up their vigilance to the highest possible level. So to a certain extent, like a near miss of an airliner potentially crashing, it might have the positive impact of having people pay more attention at a time of what appears to be maximum danger. Glenn, what happens now?

I mean, you mentioned political conventions. The Republican National Convention is starting on Monday. Do we have any idea of how that event will play out, given what just happened? How this changes things? Well, first and foremost, I think you're going to see a level of security at both conventions. That's unprecedented. In terms of the political impact, that's a little harder to predict.

This presents Donald Trump with an enormous opportunity to reset his image. But it's an entirely unpredictable political environment, and the situation could change. I think its greatest meaning, its most resonant meaning, is that our politics is changing and moving into a darker and more dangerous place. And the question is, are we entering an age where political violence becomes commonplace, or is this a moment where we realize collectively that this is not the future we can accept? And what happens in the next few days is going to be quite important to help give

an answer to that. Indeed. Glenn, thank you. Thank you. We'll be right back. Here's what else you should know today. On Saturday, Israel conducted a major airstrike in the southern Gaza Strip that it said targeted Hamas's top military commander, who was allegedly one of the architects of the October 7th attack on Israel. Gazan health authorities said that at least 90 people died in the assault. But by Sunday night, it was not clear whether the commander targeted in the strike, Mohamed Daif, was among them. Today's episode was produced by Rob Zipko, Shannon Lin, Lindsay Garrison, and Stella Tan,

with help from Carlos Prieto. It was edited by Patricia Willans, with help from Paige Cowett. Fact-checked by Susan Lee. Contains original music by Marian Lozano, Diane Wong, Sophia Landman, and Pat McCusker. And was engineered by Alyssa Moxley. Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsberg of Wonderly. Special thanks to Beth Flynn, Simon Levian, and Jessica Metzger.

That's it for The Daily. I'm Sabrina Tavernisi. See you tomorrow.