This article was originally published by Connor O’Keeffe at The Mises Institute.
On Saturday evening, former president and 2024 frontrunner Donald Trump survived an attempted assassination at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. The attack was utterly shocking, not only because a would-be assassin was able to get so close to Trump with a rifle but because of how close he was to success.
The rally started off like any other. After his long walkout to the song “Proud to Be an American,” the former president began speaking just after 6:05 p.m. EDT. Four minutes later, at 6:09 p.m., people listening to the speech from just outside the venue began filming a man crawling on the roof of a glass factory. They frantically tried to alert nearby police officers.
It appears that officers did respond to the cries from rallygoers that there was a man on the roof. However, being close to the building, officers reportedly could not see what the onlookers were yelling about. One officer climbed onto the roof and found twenty-year-old Matthew Crooks lying down, pointing his rifle at him. Unable to draw his weapon, the officer retreated back down the ladder.
Roughly a minute before, at 6:10 p.m., Trump requested a chart of immigration trends be displayed on the venue’s two large video screens. As the shooter confronted the police officer on the glass factory roof, Trump used the chart to highlight how immigration took off after he left office. At 6:11:27 p.m., after the officer had retreated, onlookers began screaming, “He’s got a gun,” as Crooks lined up his shot. At exactly 6:11:33 p.m., Trump turned his head to look at the chart on the screen. Three-tenths of a second later, Crooks fired a shot that hit the former president in the right ear. Had Trump not turned his head, the same
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