Trump Assassination Attempt (2024)

On the evening of July 13, 2024, Thomas Matthew Crooks, a 20-year-old from Bethel Park, Pennsylvania, climbed onto a rooftop roughly 130 meters from a campaign rally stage in Butler, Pennsylvania, and opened fire with a semi-automatic rifle at former President Donald Trump. A bullet grazed Trump's right ear. One attendee, Corey Comperatore, was killed while shielding his family; two others were critically wounded. Crooks was shot and killed by a Secret Service counter-sniper seconds after firing.

The images of Trump raising a fist with blood on his face and ear, surrounded by Secret Service agents, became among the most widely circulated photographs in recent American political history. The shooting immediately raised questions about Secret Service protocols: Crooks had been flagged as suspicious by law enforcement on the ground more than an hour before he fired, yet was not apprehended. A subsequent Senate investigation found a cascade of communication and security failures at multiple levels.

The Butler shooting occurred less than four months before the November 2024 election, which Trump won. A second alleged attempt followed in September 2024 at Trump's golf course in West Palm Beach, Florida, when Ryan Wesley Routh was apprehended with a rifle before establishing a clear line of sight. Trump became the first major presidential candidate since Robert F. Kennedy in 1968 to be the target of political violence during an active campaign.