7/14/24: BREAKING: Trump ASSASSINATION Plot Details REVEALED
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Hi, I'm Katie Lowe's and I'm Guillermo Diaz. And we're the hosts of Unpacking the Toolbox, the Scandal Rewatch podcast where we're talking about all the best moments of the show. Mesmerizing. But also we get to hang out with all of our old scandal friends like Bellamy Young, Scott Foley, Tony Goldwyn, Debbie Allen, Kerry Washington. Well, suit up, gladiators. Grab your big old glass of wine and prepare yourselves for even more behind the scenes stories with Unpacking the Toolbox podcast.

Listen to Unpacking the Toolbox on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Meet the real woman behind the tabloid headlines in a personal podcast that delves into the life of the notorious Tori Spelling as she takes us through the ups and downs of her sometimes glamorous, sometimes chaotic life in marriage. I just filed for divorce. Whoa. I said the words that I've said like in my head for like 16 years.

Listen to Misspelling on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Angie Martinez, and on my podcast, I like to talk to everyone from Hall of Fame athletes to iconic musicians about getting real on some of the complications and challenges of real life.

I had the best dad and I had the best memories and the greatest experience. And that's all I want for my kids as long as they can have that. Listen to Angie Martinez IRL on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey guys, have a lot of breaking news to bring you this morning. As you likely already know, and as soccer brought you yesterday, a would-be assassin,

attempted to take the life of President Trump at a rally in Pennsylvania, leading to horrifying scenes and one rally goer killed two others in critical condition. We have a lot of updates for you this morning that I wanted to bring to you, including statements from Trump statements from Biden. We now know who the shooter has been identified as.

We've got some photos and some, you know, reading the tea leaves of his political history, which is confused to say the least. So bring you all of those details. Also mounting questions about the state of security at this rally and how this individual was able to get these shots off, how he was able to come within inches of

of taking the former president's life. So I'm going to go through all of this. I want to start, though, at the beginning with what unfolded at the rally. Of course, this is disturbing. So just a warning before we get into any of this. I'm going to show you the full video. It's about a minute and 45 seconds. You can see the moment when former President Trump realizes that something is going on. You can see him duck. You can see the secret

service come in and take action. You can see President, former President Trump striking a defiant pose and telling the audience to fight, fight, fight. Let's take a listen to all of this. Take a look at what happened. What are you doing?

Ready?

we're good

Let me get my shoes. Let me get my shoes. I got you, sir. I got you, sir. Let me get my shoes. Hold that in your head. So we got to move to the box. Let me get my shoes. Okay. My shoes are in the bag. My shoes. It's out. Wait, wait, wait. I got my shoes.

So just an unbelievable image to watch there. And as you could see, you could see blood on one of his ears. We sense have indication from him. And by the way, some extraordinary images have come forward that I'll share with you in just a moment. But that a bullet did graze his ear.

That is what caused that blood that you see splattered across his face. He has been seen in public since then, walking unaided, and the officials are saying he is safe. But when you're talking about obviously grazing a bullet, grazing his ear,

You are talking about inches away from taking his life. And as I said, let me just show you this image that was captured by a, I believe this was a New York Times photographer, White House press corps colleague, Doug Mills. I don't know if you can see in this photograph, this that they have circled here, that is the bullet coming right at him.

This same photographer captured moments after this when Trump feels something on his ear and

And then a moment after that, and he looks at his hand and he sees blood. And then after that, that's when he gets down. But just look at that image capturing projectile, a bullet aimed right at the former president's head. Just absolutely astonishing. So, of course, immediate questions raised about how the hell this could happen. You have questions.

Trump has Secret Service protection. Everyone has to go through a magnetometer going into these rallies. So how was someone able to get in with a gun? Well, we now know the shooter was actually positioned outside of the rally area on a rooftop. And in fact, I'm going to show you this later in the segment.

There were people who saw him who were just outside the rally, locals who were standing nearby, who wanted to hear what the former president had to say, who saw this man walking through a field

climbing up on this roof bear crawling across the roof with a gun and we're trying to get anyone's attention possible um to to indicate you know there's this guy with a gun bear crawling on a roof this is an incredible security threat so he was spotted beforehand let me just show you a map of the the scene so you can get a sense of where the shooter was in relationship to trump

So you can see this is the approximate area of the stage, they say, where Trump was shot. This is the whole area is called the Butler Farm Showgrounds. This is a county that's just north of Allegheny County in Pennsylvania. So just north of Pittsburgh and this rooftop here.

Is the location of the suspected gunman's position. So what I've seen has indicated this is about 150 yards away, which may sound like a lot. But if you are a trained marksman is apparently not a very far distance. So just keep

incredibly fortunate that with whatever security lapses occurred here, that the president was not seriously injured. Horrifyingly, though, of course, you do have a rally goer who was killed and two others whose condition remains unknown, who was described as being in critical condition. Let me show you next some of the footage that has just emerged of people who were there at the rally.

before the shots ring out, who on the ground spotted this shooter, this would-be assassin,

And are screaming, he's got a gun, he's got a gun. And then you hear the chaos ensue as he begins to fire. Let me pull this video up for you so you can see what this was like on the ground. Just sheer chaos. Take a listen. He's got a gun! He's got a gun! He's got a gun!

So again, I know this is disturbing. This is what we know at this point. So you can hear them say he's got a gun. He's on the roof. They're screaming, trying to get someone's attention. And then you hear the shots ring out and we know what unfolds from there. So,

Since this event, we have a statement from former, we actually have a couple of statements from former President Trump. Let me go ahead and read you both of those and put this first one up on the screen.

He said on True Social, I want to thank the U.S. Secret Service and all of law enforcement for their rapid response on the shooting that just took place in Butler, Pennsylvania. Most importantly, I want to extend my condolences to the family of the person at the rally who was killed and also to the family of another person that was badly injured. It is incredible that such an act can take place in our country. Nothing is known at this time about the shooter who is now dead. We do have some details now that we can bring you. I was shot with a bullet.

that pierced the upper part of my right ear, I knew immediately that something was wrong in that I heard a whizzing sound, shots, and immediately felt the bullet ripping through the skin. Much bleeding took place. Very Trumpian turn of phrase. So I realized then what was happening. God bless America. His later statement I can bring to you as well. Let me go ahead and put this one up on the screen. This one occurred in,

uh after that one this one was from this morning he says thank you to everyone for your thoughts and prayers yesterday it was god alone who prevented the unthinkable from happening we will fear not but instead remain resilient in our faith and defiant in the face of wickedness our love goes out to the other victims and their families we pray for the recovery of those who were wounded and hold in our hearts the memory of the citizen who was so horribly killed

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.

I truly love our country and love you all and look forward to speaking to our great nation this week from Wisconsin, signed DJT. Referring there to the fact the RNC is hours at this point away from beginning. We have gotten word from the RNC and from the campaign. It will go on as planned. So no changes there. But obviously, I mean, just an insane thing.

moment in history, a horrifying one that has really shaken the entire nation. We also have the first video that was released by Trump's team of him walking unaided down from his plane. You can take a look at that.

So you can see just him walking down, no problem handling the stairs. And so this put out, you know, also as a statement of defiance and also just to show that he is

Okay, physically he is fine. Let's take a look now. President Biden put out an initial statement on Twitter and then he gave a short statement. He was at his beach house in Rehoboth, Delaware when this all occurred and gave some brief comments just condemning, as everyone else has, political violence. And we do know also a couple other things. His campaign has suspended their advertising in a show of...

the gravity of the situation. And we also know that former President Trump and current President Biden spoke yesterday evening. We don't have any details on that conversation, but let me give you a little bit of what current President Biden had to say yesterday evening. So we know now I have tried to get a hold of Donald. He's with his doctors. They apparently he's doing well. I plan on talking to him shortly, I hope.

when I get back to the telephone. Look, there's no place in America for this kind of violence. It's sick. It's sick.

It's one of the reasons why we have to unite this country. We cannot allow for this to be happening. We cannot be like this. We cannot condone this. And so I want to thank the Secret Service and all the agencies, including the state agencies that have engaged in making sure that the people who and we have more detail to come relative to other injured, other people may be injured in the audience. I don't have all that detail. We'll make that available to you. I may be able to.

come back a little later tonight, but we'll put out a statement if we don't, if I'm not able to give it, if it's not convenient for you all. But the bottom line is that the Trump rally, the rally that he should have been able to conduct it peacefully without any problem. But the idea, the idea that

that there's political violence or violence in America like this is just unheard of. It's just not appropriate. And everybody, everybody must condemn it. Everybody. I'll keep you informed. And if I am able to speak to Donald, I'll let you know that as well. But so far, it appears he's doing well. Number one. Number two, that there's thoroughly investigating what happened to anyone else in the audience. I have we have

some reports but not final reports and every agency the federal government i'll be and i'm going back to my phone to speak with the federal agencies that are being put together again to give me an updated briefing as anything happened they learned more in the last couple hours so thank you very much and i hope i get to speak to them tonight and i'll get back to you if i do okay

He did take one shouted question about whether this was an assassination attempt. He had demurred at the time. Now we have, you know, an official determination that it is being investigated as an assassination attempt. I know this seems obvious, but they want to wait and make sure and all those things to try not to speak out of turn, which, listen, when something like this unfolds,

Obviously, there is wild, rampant speculation. There are all sorts of things floating around online that are untrue. So, you know, sticking to the very specific details of what we actually know in a moment like this, I think, is, in fact, incredibly important. All right. So let's talk about what we do know, because at this point they have released information.

the name of the shooter. And we can have gleaned some details because, of course, everyone wants to know, OK, who is this person? We still don't know what a motive was. But this individual summed up some of the reporting that is out there. And this, you know, this is consistent with what New York Times and others are reporting, even though this is just some random guy on Twitter. He just happened to sum it up well.

So the shooter is Thomas Matthew Crooks.

He is a local Pennsylvania resident. He is 20 years old, just graduated from high school two years ago. So he donated 15 in terms of political activity. He has no social media profile that anyone has been able to turn up so far. I saw some speculations. He may have a discord, but none of that has has come up. We don't know what was going on there, if such a thing even exists.

donated $15 to act blue the day of Biden's inauguration when he was 17. That went to a some sort of progressive pack that says they're fighting to restore democracy. So very sort of, you know, standard liberal progressive type indications there. On the other hand, eight months later, he registered to vote as a Republican. One of the photos that has emerged, he's wearing a at

I think I believe of him at the when he is at the rally getting ready to shoot the president. He's wearing a T-shirt of a gun YouTuber wearing

Now what others are saying is that this gun YouTuber happens to be very apolitical, but certainly indications that he is the gun enthusiast. Reports are that he used an AR-15 rifle to commit this attempted assassination. And then this person says somehow the only 20 year old on earth without social media. So that's what we know at this point about the shooter. We also have a few images that I can bring you as well. So you can see this person

Oh, well, first, let me show you. Let me show you this. This is footage that has emerged of him opening fire. And let me put this up on the screen. There isn't a lot to it, but you can see him here in this part. And...

So you can just see him there on the roof. And then when the shots ring out, you know, the camera jolts and you can't see a lot more after that. But that just to give you a sense of his position and where he's

He was. So this has opened up, obviously, a whole hell of a lot of questions about how this was able to happen. And as I mentioned previously, a lot of questions about people who had seen him before and were trying to get the police's attention, trying to have something done. How was this allowed to unfold? Here are the photos that I was referencing before from the New York Post.

I also want to say there are a lot of photos and videos that are circulating online that are not Thomas Matthew Crooks. These are the only ones, these three that I've seen that have actually been verified of this individual, this would-be assassin who killed a rally goer, injured two others, and shot the former president of the United States. So those are the images that we have. One of the most stunning videos to come out was an eyewitness that I mentioned before who

who had, he lives locally. They wanted to come out. A Trump supporter wanted to hear what the former president had to say. And they spotted this individual with a gun, bear crawling up the roof, gave an interview to the BBC after this all unfolded. Let's take a listen to this and what he had to say.

Yeah, Carl, we've been talking to a number of people as they've been coming out of this horrific event. A lot of people very emotional, a lot of people very upset, as you can imagine, a lot of people very, very frightened. Greg was someone who was here. You weren't inside the event, but you were just outside. Tell us what you saw. So we had a party here all day. You can see behind us at the Brinkles Farm and Greenhouse here. We had a party.

And we all decided, hey, you know, when we hear Trump up there, we're going to walk up through the field, stand by the trees up there under the shade and listen to the rally. Right. We couldn't see him, but we could hear him. So we walked up and probably five to seven minutes of Trump speaking. I'm estimating here. I have no idea, you know, but we noticed the guy crawling down.

bear crawling up the roof of the building beside us, 50 feet away from us.

So we're standing there, you know, we're pointing at the guy crawling up the roof. And he had a gun, right? He had a rifle. We could clearly see him with a rifle. Absolutely. We're pointing at him. The police are down there running around on the ground. We're like, hey, man, there's a guy on the roof with a rifle. And the police were like, huh, what? You know, like they didn't know what was going on. You know, we're like, hey, right here on the roof. We can see him from right here. We see him. You know, he's crawling. Right.

And next thing you know, I'm like, I'm thinking to myself, I'm like, why is Trump still speaking? Why have they not pulled him off the stage? I'm standing there pointing at him for, you know, two or three minutes. Secret Service is looking at us from the top of the barn. I'm pointing at that roof, just standing there like this. And next thing you know, five shots ring out. So you're certain that the shots came from that guy on the roof? 100%. 100%. And he...

So that's, in essence, what he had to say. And of course, listen, I'm no security expert. I don't know what goes into planning for an event like this, planning for the protection of a president and former president. But of course, you have to ask if random individuals, this guy, people who were at the rally, who I showed you the video earlier, were screaming, he's got a gun, he's on the roof. If they were able to spot this threat with a gun,

Why was the rally allowed to continue? Why was, how did this unfold? How did such a stunning security failure unfold?

Notably, law enforcement gave a press conference yesterday evening. Notably, there was no representative from the Secret Service there. The Secret Service has come under fire, by the way, from all sorts of directions recently about their competence. We'll reserve judgment. We're working to book a security expert, by the way, for the full show tomorrow to talk through some of these things to get an expert perspective on what could have gone wrong and whether it is possible to fully investigate

prevent these sorts of threats on the life of the former president, current presidential candidate from occurring. So we'll save some expert analysis from that. But very noteworthy, the Secret Service was not represented at that press conference and also noteworthy what the FBI representative had to say, indicating that they were surprised that this shooter was able to get so many shots off. Let's listen in part to what they had to say.

from what you can break on it sounds like law enforcement only knew he was up there until shots were fired is that what you're hearing so that that is the assessment this time that so are you surprised that a sniper was able to fire off a handful of shots at the former president i mean again we're still still working through

the security apparatus that the Secret Service had in place, what potentially happened. There's going to be a long investigation into exactly what took place and how the individual was able to get access to the location, what type of weapon he had, all that. It is really days, weeks, and months of investigation. It is surprising.

But again, to get the truth, all the details of that will come out later in investigation. Again, the Secret Service really needs to answer that question.

They conduct the initial site survey. They do the initial security assessments and determine where the different security locations should be, and they're the ones who are in charge of securing the scene. We, along with other state and local assets, are there to support the Secret Service and their mission.

So a lot that's very noteworthy about that answer. First of all, him saying, yes, I am surprised that this sniper was able to get this many shots off to come within inches of killing former President Trump to kill a rally goer to injure two others. Yes, I'm surprised by that. Number two, when asked, how was this area not within the secure perimeter, given that it's a

an ideal vantage point to perpetrate such an attack. He says, that's really on the Secret Service.

They need to answer those questions. We're there to support along with local law enforcement, but this is really their show. And which of course begs the question, okay, well, why isn't there a representative of the Secret Service there to answer these questions? I think that in and of itself is noteworthy. So there's going to be a lot more that we learn today. This is an extraordinary, extraordinary situation. And

And, you know, I think these security questions are going to be some of the huge topics of conversation over the coming days, weeks and months. As I said before, we're headed into the RNC this week. Of course, this is a time of great tumult on the Democratic side of the equation with President Biden facing all of these calls for him to drop out of the race, given his level of decline and incapacity. So his response is,

being very, very closely monitored and continuing high level of political tension in the country and an incredibly tumultuous and fraught political environment overall. So it's the very latest that we have for you this morning. If anything major breaks today, we'll bring that to you as well. Otherwise, Sagar and I will both be

in the studio tomorrow to break down every single thing that we know and are working hard to, you know, bring on experts and such to fill out the show as well. So thank you guys, as always, for trusting us with this kind of coverage. And we will see you all very soon.

Hi, I'm Katie Lowes. And I'm Guillermo Diaz. And we're the hosts of Unpacking the Toolbox, the Scandal Rewatch podcast where we're talking about all the best moments of the show. Mesmerizing. But also, we get to hang out with all of our old Scandal friends like Bellamy Young, Scott Foley, Tony Goldwyn, Debbie Allen, Kerry Washington. Well, suit up, gladiators. Grab your big old glass of wine and prepare yourselves for an even more behind-the-scenes Scandal.

stories with Unpacking the Toolbox. Listen to Unpacking the Toolbox on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Meet the real woman behind the tabloid headlines in a personal podcast that delves into the life of the notorious Tori Spelling as she takes us through the ups and downs of her sometimes glamorous, sometimes chaotic life in marriage. I just filed for divorce. Whoa. I said the words that I've said like in my head for like 16 years.

Listen to Misspelling on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Angie Martinez, and on my podcast, I like to talk to everyone from Hall of Fame athletes to iconic musicians about getting real on some of the complications and challenges of real life.

I had the best dad and I had the best memories and the greatest experience. And that's all I want for my kids as long as they can have that. Listen to Angie Martinez IRL on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.