The FBI announced on Sunday that it was investigating “an alleged assassination attempt” targeting Donald Trump for the second time in two months, with the Republican candidate “safe and sound” and a suspect having been arrested.
In the context of a particularly tense presidential campaign some fifty days before the November 5 election, the former president, who was on the course of his golf club at home in Florida, is “safe and sound after shots were fired near him,” Steven Cheung, his campaign’s communications director, initially announced in two lines of a press release early this afternoon.
The 78-year-old billionaire and Republican tribune himself sent a text message to the press, via his spokespeople, assuring in capital letters that he was “FINE!”
“No one was hurt. Thank God.”
The Secret Service, the elite police force responsible for protecting presidents, former presidents and leading political figures, had also announced an investigation into the shootings, which took place “shortly before 2 p.m.” local time (6 p.m. GMT).
Several of its agents “opened fire on an armed man” who was near the edge of Donald Trump’s golf course, and an AK-47 rifle with a scope was found, along with two backpacks and video recording equipment, authorities said at a news conference.
The suspect fled in a black car, but a witness helped police identify the vehicle and authorities located it.
“We have someone in custody who is a potential suspect,” Palm Beach County Sheriff Ric Bradshaw said at the news conference.
But a Secret Service official, Rafael Barros, acknowledged to reporters that authorities were “not sure at this point that the individual could have fired on the agents.”
A fortiori, there is no evidence that the man arrested opened fire in the direction of the golf course where Donald Trump was playing. His motives are, moreover, currently unknown.
– Security fiasco –
The event comes in an already crazy campaign that saw the Republican candidate escape a first assassination attempt this summer, Democratic President Joe Biden throw in the towel and his vice-president Kamala Harris replace him at short notice.
Joe Biden and Kamala Harris said they were “relieved” that their opponent was “safe and sound.” According to a statement from the White House, the president and his vice president are “regularly kept informed by their teams.”
On July 13, the former president (2017-2021) who aspires to become president again was injured in the ear by gunfire that left one person dead and two injured in the audience at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania, one of the six or seven key presidential states in the northeast of the country.
Images of Donald Trump, blood streaming down his face and his fist raised, have been seen around the world and have shaken up the campaign for the November 5 election.
This security fiasco led to the resignation of the head of the Secret Service and the compulsory leave of at least five agents from this unit.
A week later, on July 21, under pressure from his own Democratic camp after a disastrous debate against Donald Trump, President Biden, 81, gave up running again and left the field to his vice-president Harris.
Since then, the campaign has taken a very acrimonious turn between the tempestuous New York businessman and his 59-year-old rival, a former prosecutor and senator from California who has benefited from real momentum since entering the race at the end of July.
Ms. Harris said on her X account that “violence has no place in America.”
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