A failed attempt to assassinate former President Donald Trump on Saturday sent shockwaves through a presidential contest that, until last month, appeared to be little more than a rerun of what the country experienced in 2020 .
Trump was rushed off the stage at a Pennsylvania rally with a bloodied ear and a charge to his supporters to continue fighting. The FBI identified Thomas Matthew Crooks as the would-be assassin who climbed to the top of a building hundreds of feet away from Trump’s rally and opened fire, wounding the former president and killing a bystander before he was killed by Secret Service agents.
As information about what happened Saturday trickles out, it’s unclear what much of it means for the next four and a half months of campaigning.
Here are four of the biggest things to know about what happened this weekend.
Trump changed his mind
Trump told the Washington Examiner in a world-first exclusive interview he ripped up the “humdinger” of a speech he had planned to give at the Republican National Convention on Thursday in light of the attempt on his life.
The former president said his new speech is going to be a message of unity for the country.
“This is a chance to bring the whole country, even the whole world, together,” he said. “The speech will be a lot different, a lot different than it would’ve been two days ago.”
When he turned his head to look at a screen Saturday, the movement saved his life. The move was a rare one for Trump, who almost never turns away from his audiences. But the motion to look at the data he was showing the crowd was a crucial one.
“I rarely look away from the crowd,” he said. “Had I not done that in that moment, well, we would not be talking today, would we?”
The RNC is getting a shake-up
Trump’s message of unity was previewed with the RNC extending an invitation to former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley to speak at the event. The former Trump foe, who refused to bow out of the contest with Trump until March, was previously not scheduled to attend the event at all.
Plans for the RNC were already trending toward highlighting the unity of the party after cracks appeared last year when Trump fended off several challengers for the nomination. Two of those challengers, Gov. Doug Burgum (R-ND) and Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC), have been floated as finalists to be Trump's running mate, a decision he is expected to make as soon as Monday.
The party has also invited Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL), once Trump’s chief rival in the contest, to speak in Milwaukee after initially keeping him locked out of an appearance with a microphone.
Trump said Sunday he was planning to delay traveling to the RNC that is set to begin Monday in Milwaukee, but he decided he couldn’t “allow a ‘shooter,’ or potential assassin to force change to scheduling or anything else.”
Universal calls to turn the temperature down
President Joe Biden spoke from the Oval Office to address the nation and echo the calls that had been ringing out all weekend that the country needs to “lower the temperature in politics.”
“We cannot, we must not go down this road in America,” Biden said from behind the Resolute Desk. “We’ve traveled before throughout our history. Violence has never been the answer. There is no place in America for this kind of violence, for any violence ever. Period. No exceptions. We can’t allow this violence to be normalized.”
The demands to change the national conversation came thick and fast in the hours after the shooting.
Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA), who was in the area Saturday, warned that, unchecked, more political violence could continue.
"We can't assume that these kind of things can't happen again," Fetterman said . "We just have to turn down … the temperature on this. And this election is going to be the biggest kind of election in our lifetime, and we have months ahead of us."
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) warned that “we cannot go on like this as a society.”
Doubts linger about the Secret Service
Questions about the effectiveness of the Secret Service were flying around Saturday night into Sunday morning. There were reports the agency denied Trump additional protection days before he was nominated as his party’s candidate — accusations the agency denied .
But whether there were enough agents surrounding the president or not was a secondary concern for Johnson and Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-KY), who both put pressure on the agency to answer for the apparent failures Saturday.
“We need to know how an individual could be at that elevation that was seen by, apparently, bystanders on the ground,” Johnson said Sunday. “How could not that not be noticed by Secret Service? Lots more questions than answers this morning.”
The speaker’s TV appearance came after he vowed the night before Congress would investigate the agency.
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Comer also asked Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle to appear before his committee to answer questions about the assassination attempt.
Biden also announced there will be an independent review of the agency and its response.
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