You can listen to the Front on your smart speaker every morning to hear the latest episode. Just say play the news from the Australian. From the Australian, here's what's on the Front. I'm Claire Harvey. It's Monday, July fifteenth.
The said, take a look at what happened.
An unforgettable moment in American politics. A gunman shoots Donald Trump and kills the spectator at a rally in Pennsylvania. Trump's right ear was grazed by a bullet apparently fired by a twenty year old man who had climbed on top of a building, reportedly armed with a high powered automatic weapon. Secret Service shot the man dead as attendees rushed to help the spectator who'd been shot dead. Here, a witness in a blood drenched USA T shirt speaks to CBS News.
I said, I'm an Emerging Department physician. Let me help you. The guy had spun around, was jammed between the benches. We had a headshot. Here, there's lots of blood and here brainmatter.
On Monday, Republicans gather to endorse Trump as their candidate at the National Convention in Milwaukee, as global condemnation of the attack is led by Joe Biden.
It's sick. It's sick.
It's one of the reason we have to unite this country.
You cannot allow for this to be happening weekly.
Live now at the Australian dot com dot au we have video, graphics, explainers and analysis and in just a moment I'm joined from the United States by our foreign editor Greg Sheridan, who says Trump's courage under fire changes everything. Shots ring out at a rally in Pennsylvania where Donald Trump is speaking to supporters. Secret Service agents pounced shoots down. The former president and presidential candidate is whisked from the podium, blood splashed across his face. He lifts his fist to
the crowd, bold and defiant. There would be assassin Twenty year old Thomas Matthew Crooks laised dead on a rooftop more than two hundred and fifty meters away. One rally attendee killed, a couple more critically injured. I discussed that stunning scene with The Australian's Foreign editor Greg Sheridan. He's in the US ahead of the Republican National Convention happening in Wisconsin this week. I'm sure you haven't spent much time imagining what it would look like if Donald Trump
was ever in mortal danger. But he responded in a very defiant and strong way, didn't he?
He certainly did, And I think that will be the iconic out of all this. When Ronald Reagan was shot, he famously said to Nancy Reagan, Honey, I forgot to duck. You know, Roosevelt was my favorite president of all time. Teddy Roosevelt, friend, I want to.
Ask, is American who is destroyed for social and industrial justice.
He was shot while he was delivering a speech when he was running as bull moose Independent after it left the presidency, and the bullet lodged in his breastplace. There was a book or something that prevented it from going through and killing him, but it did cause him pretty bad bleeding, and he told the audience he had been shot, but that wasn't enough to stop a bull mouse and even just speech, and then went to hospital.
Secret Service personnel neutralized the shooter, who has now deceased. The Secret Service spokesperson goes on to say that one spectator was killed, two spectators two spectators were critically injured so badly hurt One.
Of the most moving parts of the video of Trump being shot, apparently in the ear on stage in the rally was the actions of the Secret Service agent Greg They rushed towards him and then they got him up once they understood that the shooter had been neutralized, and put their bodies around him and their heads around his head to shield him from a bullet.
You know, we really saw the best of America there.
Didn't We absolutely you could see under there that they're wearing best, thank god they are. But they fellanks around the person they're protecting, so that the next bullet that goes towards the person they're protecting them. And in fact, this happened in Ronald Reagan ship.
A fu silat of shots fired a close range.
The President has hits, then thrown into his car by an agent, a press secretary wounded in the head, a secret serviceman and a policeman wounded, a gunman captured.
One of the secret agents rushed in front of the president and was shot. And now he recovered, but he was shot. He took a bullet for the president, and if Reagan in another bullet, I would think that Reagan would have been killed. So these folks. They rushed towards danger, and they make a shield out of their own bodies.
Of course, the most famous presidential shootings are Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy. Those two presidents did not survive their injuries.
But every moment of in Lincoln's case, the description of that instance and in Kennedy's case, the video that we've all seen a billion times is seed into our memories, isn't it.
This is the latest information we have from Dallas. I will repeat with the greatest regrets, two priests who are with rether than Kennedy saying he has died of bullet wars.
That certainly is this is a and terrible situation. And you know, we can't yet completely apportioned blame or anything.
But you know, people accuse Trumps in temperate language. But I've been here in the United States this last week, got ten days, and every day the New York Times, the liberal media are full of the idea that Trump is the devil in Karnate, that he is an existential threat to democracy, that a Maria cannot survive a Trump victory, that this is the end of times and everything, and you can just about imagine some idiot getting the idea that well, wouldn't have been good if someone had assassinated
Hitler the four he took power, And the truth is Trump's first term was a bit chaotic, but there was nothing undemocratic about and he lost the election. The courts overruled his objections to the election. Is perfectly entitled to make legal objections to the way the vote was counted.
The courts ruled against him in all occasions, and no injury was done to American democracy, Whereas I think the Democrats now far outdone Trump in the way they've been willing to rip up American institutions and destroy American norms. You know, one of the view that these prosecutions of Trump are a great, tesque, abusive process. They're intensely politicized prosecutions. Now Trump engages in very intemperate rhetoric too, sure does.
But the comby our liberal left of American politics has fostered an fear of hysteria and irrational alarmism about the idea of what might happen if Trump wins the election.
The one rational part of the fear about Donald Trump is, of course, the January sixth disorder at the Capital. Greg we saw their Trump speak to a crowd, members of which crowd then subsequently went to the Capitol and stormed it.
Several people have gone to jail over their conduct on that day.
If there was going to be sort of armed disorder in this campaign, Americans might have thought it would come from those kinds of people, from proud boys or maga Trump fans. It hasn't, as far as we know, come from that side of politics. What does that say about the atmosphere that we're in.
Well, January sixth was not only spaceful, and I thought Trump sections on the day were atly disgraceful. But even here you've got to try to keep in touch with the facts. Trump, in his speech, which was emotionally inciting, actually say march peacefully. He did use the word peacefully. I heard it, I reported it, I saw it. I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard today. So you can't just kind of say that
that didn't happen. The Capitol police were wildly understaffed. These vandals who stormed into the Capitol buildings. That was grotesque, thoroughly deserves to be condemned. It was not a civil war. It was a demonstration which became violent, And of course there were hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of demonstrations that became violent over the next few months in the Black
Lives and defund the Police demonstrations. Now none of those rendered Joe Biden morally responsible for the people who lost their lives. And there is just a grotesque double standard in which the absolutely condemnable and horrible things that Trump says are presented as though they were a statement at Dolf Hitler, which they weren't.
Coming up what an attempted assassination means for gun control in America and for the presidential race. Today is The Australian's sixtieth birthday. We're celebrating by doing what we do best, bringing our subscribers up to the minute news analysis and deep reporting. Join us at the Australian dot com dot ayu and we'll be back after the break. Greg There reports that the shooter was using an AR fifteen semi automatic weapon, which is the gun of choice for mass
shootings in the United States. Donald Trump has said in recent months that mass shootings are not a gun problem, that they're more of a mental health problem.
These people are mentally ill, and we have to study that also, because you know it's them. They pull the trigger. The gun doesn't pull the trigger, They pull the trigger.
He's promised the National Rifle Association that if elected, no one will lay a finger on their firearms. He's also promised to undo some Biden gun restrictions if he's re elected.
If the Biden regime gets four more years, they are coming for your guns, one hundred percent certain. Crooked Joe has a forty year record of trying to rip firearms out of the hands of law abiding citizens. He's always wanted.
To do that.
Do you have the feeling, Greg that this very hot issue of gun control in America, will the conversation be touched by this incident or not?
No? I wouldn't think so, not at all. I think overall the incident will probably would be very, very helpful to Trump electorally and politically. The iconic of give intell but Trump defiant taking a bullet for America. Sometimes people don't even think of Trump really as a human being. But the truth is, if this bullet had been a quarter of an inch closer to him, he would now be dead, and the sheer shock of that would render most people paralyzed. So Trump often seems like he's full
of bluster and where's the substance? But Trump was in possession of he knew what he was doing, and he wanted to make a gesture of defiance. I think this would be tremendously beneficial to politically. Now, my own view of gun control is the Americans of bananas on gun control. But you know, you might say the Democrats are in favorite gun control, the Republicans aren't, but the Democrats never
make a serious effort at it. You know, Urbata was president for eight years and for a number of those years he controlled the Senate and the House of Representatives, and nothing of any consequence happened on gun control.
So how do we think this will change the calculus, if at all, for the Democrats? Greg We now have Trump in a moment of mortal danger, presenting himself bravely a contrast to Joe Biden's image of frailty and confusion. Does this make it more urgent for the Democrats to persuade Joe Biden to step aside?
I think it does, Claire. So look, I only give away a recorded quote here which will come to haunt me of what I'm suggesting doesn't take place. But I find it very hard to see how Joe Biden can
continue in a long run as a Democratic candidate. The American system is very powerful, and it kind of runs itself to some extent, but you do need a presidential leadership, and Audrow Wilson famously in about nineteen nineteen had a stroke and at another two years of its term to run and his white friend things while he was more or less incapacitated. America can do that, but it's not the right way to run. And if you do do that,
you don't furnt up the sick reelection. I just don't see how Biden can possibly continue on as the Democratic candidate, although you know, we live in an age of infinite impossibilities. The other thing is, I don't know if the New York Times and CNN and we'll be able to talk about Trump in exactly the same way as they have been doing the last couple of years, when we could
go through a litany of things. Hillary Clinton paid for Dossia, which was completely alleging collusion between Russian intelligence agencies and Trump. Absolute hoax, complete belooning. Hunter Biden's laptop turned up before the last election, full of incriminating evidence about him, including a lot of evidence of criminal activity and very embarrassing
stuff about his dad. Biden and his son both denied that the tape was real, and the Biden campaign got fifty one former intelligence chiefs to say it looked like Russian disinformation, which turned out to be completely untrue. It was one hundred percent of authentic laptop of Hunter Biden. So those fifty one intelligence chiefs just trashed the reputation
of the which they had been involved in leading. And then now Biden is asking the whole of the world not to believe what it saw with its own eyes in the debate.
When I'm in a fix the taxes, for example, we had one thousand tillionaires in an antic.
And in fact, I think the Democrats have been much better serve to have little mini primary and select one of their good state governors and a red hot new vice president, something like that.
Greg Sheridan is The Australian's Foreign editor. We'll have live updates from the Republican National Convention and all the other flashpoints in American politics as today unfolds live at the Australian dot Com dot a