Editorial 16.09.24
Monday’s American front pages are heavily dominated by the assassination attempt on former president Donald Trump whilst he was playing golf on Sunday. It’s the second assassination attempt Trump has faced in a matter of months.
‘Agents fire at suspect near Trump,’ highlights East Bay Times.
The front page of the East Bay Times reports on the second assassination attempt on the former US president. Donald Trump was the target Sunday of “what appears to be an attempted assassination” at his golf club in West Palm Beach, Florida, the FBI said, just nine weeks after the Republican presidential nominee survived another attempt on his life. The former president said he was safe and well, and authorities held a man in custody. U.S. Secret Service agents posted a few holes up from where Trump was playing noticed the muzzle of an AK-style rifle sticking through the shrubbery that lines the course, roughly 400 yards away. An agent fired and the gunman dropped the rifle and fled in an SUV, leaving the firearm behind along with two backpacks, a scope used for aiming and a GoPro camera, Palm Beach County Sheriff Ric Bradshaw said. The man was later taken into custody in a neighboring county.
‘Trump targeted on golf course,’ says the Washington Post.
The Washington Post says Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump was unharmed Sunday in what authorities are investigating as another potential assassination attempt, after a man pointed a rifle into a Florida golf course where the former president was playing. Police have detained a suspect whose name has not yet been released. Sunday’s incident occurred while Trump was golfing at his course in West Palm Beach, Fla.
‘Semiautomatic rifle left behind,’ says the Boston Globe.
Boston Globe says Donald Trump was playing golf Sunday afternoon in Florida when a Secret Service agent spotted a man with a rifle standing by a chain-link fence on the perimeter of the course, law enforcement officials said. Agents opened fire, and the man fled in a black Nissan but was eventually taken into custody, the officials said. Although Trump was safe and unharmed, the FBI said it was investigating the episode as an apparent attempted assassination, the second one against the former president in just over two months. Trump said in a statement: ‘There were gun shots in my vicinity, but before rumors start spiraling out of control, I wanted you to hear this first: I am safe and well!’
‘Specter of violence returns,’ Los Angeles Times says.
Los Angeles Times says a gunman’s ability to get within shooting distance of former President Trump on Sunday has again raised the specter of violence in the American political landscape, a development that analysts said is all too expected as Trump’s followers vowed it would make them even more determined to reelect him. Just two months after a would-be assassin’s bullet clipped Trump’s ear in Butler, Pa., the Secret Service fired shots at a man with an assault rifle who had hidden himself in foliage less than 500 yards from the former president. The motives of the suspect, identified by law enforcement sources as Ryan Wesley Routh, had not been revealed by late in the afternoon, but Trump followers immediately rallied around the former president. “FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT! TRUMP 2024,” wrote one supporter on Trump’s.