In the early afternoon on Sunday, a suspected gunman got within several hundred yards of former President Donald Trump at his golf course in West Palm Beach, Florida. The suspect was shot at by a Secret Service agent, fled the scene in a black SUV, and was quickly apprehended by police. Over the next 24 hours, Trump and his allies unleashed a deluge of blame against Vice President Kamala Harris and Democrats for what the FBI said was being investigated as an assassination attempt against Trump, the second in just over two months.

As of Monday, the motive of the suspect, 58-year-old Ryan Wesley Routh, remained unclear. His social media history indicated that he voted for Trump in 2016 but turned against him later. Routh was critical of Trump’s Putin-friendly policy on Ukraine; in 2022, he’d gone on an unsuccessful quest to help recruit foreign fighters to join the battle against the Kremlin’s invasion. He also donated to a Democratic PAC in the 2020 election cycle. On Monday, authorities announced two federal gun charges against Routh, with additional charges possibly to come.

Whatever Routh’s motive may have been for allegedly targeting Trump with an AK-47-style rifle, law enforcement authorities have cited no evidence that his actions were connected to or caused by the rhetoric of top Democrats, who have long emphasized the rejection of political violence. But that has not stopped Trump and his allies from moving immediately to exploit the disturbing near-miss in Florida for political gain—just as they did after a gunman wounded Trump in a horrific attack at his July 13 campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.

Shortly after the news broke about the danger on Sunday, the Trump campaign sent out an email to supporters with a statement from Trump linking to his fundraising page and saying he was safe and well. “But there are people in this world who will do whatever it takes to stop us,” the Republican presidential candidate said in the statement. “I will Never Surrender!”

“He believed the rhetoric of Biden and Harris, and he acted on it,” Trump said, providing no evidence to support that claim. 

On Monday morning, Trump declared in an interview with Fox News Digital that Routh’s alleged actions were caused by President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, his 2024 opponent for the White House.

“He believed the rhetoric of Biden and Harris, and he acted on it,” Trump said, providing no evidence to support that claim. “Their rhetoric is causing me to be shot at, when I am the one who is going to save the country, and they are the ones that are destroying the country—both from the inside and out.” Trump added that Biden and Harris are “the enemy from within,” according to Fox News Digital. “They are the real threat.”

Biden and Harris both put out statements on Sunday expressing relief that Trump was unharmed and denouncing political violence. Biden also said that he had directed his team “to continue to ensure” adequate protection for Trump from the Secret Service.

Trump added to his partisan blame with a post on his Truth Social platform on Monday: “The Rhetoric, Lies, as exemplified by the false statements made by Comrade Kamala Harris during the rigged and highly partisan ABC Debate, and all of the ridiculous lawsuits specifically designed to inflict damage on Joe’s, then Kamala’s, Political Opponent, ME, has taken politics in our Country to a whole new level of Hatred, Abuse, and Distrust. Because of this Communist Left Rhetoric, the bullets are flying, and it will only get worse!”

Top surrogates piled on the partisan attack. Trump’s son, Donald Jr., railed on social media about telling “my 5 young children about [a] radical leftist trying to kill their grandfather.”

“The incitement to hatred and violence against President Trump by the media and leading Democrats needs to stop,” posted billionaire supporter Elon Musk, in response to Don Jr.’s comments.

Since the Trump shooting in Pennsylvania, the ex-president and his allies have carried out a sustained, coordinated effort to promote baseless conspiracy theories and smear Trump’s political opponents.

Longtime Trump advisor and right-wing media commentator Steve Cortes called his former boss “the most persecuted public figure in American history” and said that the danger to Trump’s life both in Pennsylvania and Florida was caused to a great extent by “the corporate media” disparaging the ex-president.

The deluge of partisan messaging adds a whole new layer to an ongoing effort to cast unfounded blame for violence on Biden, Harris and the Democrats. As I’ve been documenting in the two-plus months since the Trump shooting in Pennsylvania, the ex-president and his allies have carried out a sustained, coordinated effort to promote baseless conspiracy theories and smear Trump’s political opponents with such blame. Participants have included Trump’s running mate, JD Vance; his sons, Don Jr. and Eric Trump; his wife, Melania Trump; and a multitude of Republican congressional members, including Cory Mills, Eli Crane, Ryan Zinke, Marjorie Taylor Green, and Mike Collins.

This propaganda effort, as I first reported in early September, now also involves backers of Project 2025.

During the presidential debate on ABC News on Sept. 10, watched by 67 million people, Trump reiterated baseless blame for the shooting at his rally in Butler.  “I probably took a bullet to the head because of the things that they say about me,” he inveighed, pointing at Harris. “They talk about democracy, I’m a threat to democracy—they’re the threat to democracy.”

These efforts may be intended in part to distract from Trump’s own incitement of violence. He has used the tactics of stochastic terrorism, as national security experts call the method, for many years. This has continued apace with his incessant demagoguery on the campaign trail against migrant “invaders.” Most recently that has included the Haitian immigrant community in Springfield, Ohio—falsely smeared by Trump, Vance, and their allies for supposedly stealing and eating other residents’ pets. Schools and government offices in Springfield have since been under siege with bomb scares and other threats of violence.

Several threat assessment and law enforcement leaders have told me since this summer that Trump’s incitement is a top concern when it comes to potential political violence during the election season. According to these sources, the rhetoric from Trump and his allies about the assassination attempt in Pennsylvania—and now with the apparent close call in Florida—is deepening that danger.

In the two-plus weeks since a gunman opened fire at Donald Trump’s campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, some details have emerged about the catastrophic security failure. The 20-year-old perpetrator, who wounded the former president and three people in the crowd, killing one, was on authorities’ radar for more than 90 minutes before he attacked. He eluded law enforcement agents at the rally site, eventually reaching an unsecured rooftop about 150 yards from where Trump spoke. He fired at least eight rounds from an AR-15 before being killed by a Secret Service counter-sniper.

Major questions remain about the disaster as three federal investigations move forward. In the meantime, Trump allies continue trying to exploit the assassination attempt politically, whether by raising unfounded conspiracy theories about the Biden administration or attacking FBI leaders, as Trump himself long has done.

Rep. Ryan Zinke of Montana, a former Secretary of the Interior under Trump, suggested on Fox News on Monday that the security failure may have resulted from some sort of government plot. “We know there was incompetence,” he said, “but was this incompetence willful and knowing? Did you willingly and knowing [sic] put the president in a position by atrophying the security and allowing this to happen?” Zinke gave no evidence, but speculated emphatically, “that brings it from assassination attempt into the area of a plot—big difference between an attempt and a plot.”

Appearing on Fox News on Sunday, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis blasted the FBI over its investigation of the shooting. Fox host Maria Bartiromo set him up by insisting that FBI Director Christopher Wray had “tried to throw doubt” on Trump being shot when Wray testified before Congress last week that investigators were still determining whether the ex-president had been hit on his ear by a bullet or shrapnel. (The FBI soon clarified that it was either a bullet or a fragment of one.)

“I think these agencies have lost the trust of the American people,” DeSantis responded. “Go back to the Las Vegas shooter: We never learned a thing about him.” (Hundreds of pages of FBI documents and a lengthy investigative report on the case are publicly available.) He continued: “Now you have the FBI director casting doubt what we saw on TV live, that President Trump was shot in his ear. These agencies are failing the American people. They lack the credibility.”

Conspiracy theories from both the political right and left have run rampant since the horrific shooting on July 13. But while some Democratic voters have baselessly speculated that the violence was somehow staged to benefit Trump, few if any leaders on the left have gone there. (The closest was an aide to major Democratic donor Reid Hoffman who later apologized.)

Numerous high-profile Trump allies, however, immediately began accusing Democrats—without any evidence—of orchestrating the shooting. They included Congress members Marjorie Taylor Greene and Mike Collins of Georgia, and Trump’s sons Donald Jr. and Eric. Bartiromo also played host to Eric Trump when he claimed that Democrats “would stop at absolutely nothing” and had intended to have his father murdered: “I’ve said on this show before I wouldn’t be surprised if they tried something even worse, alluding to exactly what happened, and I was right.” (And it was on the radio show of a former Fox host, Megyn Kelly, where Don Jr. said Trump’s political foes were “now trying to kill him.”)

During the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, which began just two days after the shooting, various speakers used Trump’s brush with death to declare his survival and candidacy nothing short of a divine miracle. The sweeping visual backdrop for Trump’s acceptance speech played to the theme of martyrdom, showcasing the iconic news photo of Trump bloodied and defiant in the moments after the attack.   

Threat assessment and law enforcement leaders told me after the assassination attempt that partisan exploitation of the bloodshed will fuel political violence—already a serious concern ahead of the election—by exacerbating “a really big plot point” for extremist groups.

On Monday, the FBI announced that the shooter, Thomas Matthew Crooks, had begun buying gun-related items and bomb-making materials more than a year before the attack. He took firearms training courses and did online research into mass shootings, assassination attempts, and various potential targets. He planned carefully and “made significant efforts to conceal his activities,” said Kevin Rojek, the FBI special agent in charge in Pittsburgh.

According to the Wall Street Journal, FBI investigators have interviewed more than 450 people, including dozens of Crooks’ coworkers, family members, and former classmates. The FBI reiterated that it has found no evidence indicating he was driven by partisanship or political ideology. As I reported five days after the attack, barring some extraordinary revelation to come, Crooks is more likely to fit a different pattern of motive, a murkier one shared by many of his predecessors.

Top image: clockwise from top: Donald Trump, Jr., Ron DeSantis, Ryan Zinke, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Eric Trump, Maria Bartiromo and Mike Collins. Credits: Mother Jones illustration; James Manning/PA Wire/ZUMA; Paul Hennessy/SOPA Images/ZUMA; Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call/ ZUMA (3); Pat A. Robinson/ZUMA; Prensa Internacional/ZUMA

One certainty about the assassination attempt two weeks ago on former President Donald Trump is that rampant conspiracy theories about it will endure—probably forever. The fascination with spectacular, if highly improbable explanations long predates social media. Yet it resonates now with the Trump shooter’s documented search for information about the JFK assassination, which has sustained a cottage industry of books, movies, and other content for more than half a century.

Wild claims about everything from Trump staging the attack to the Biden White House orchestrating it began spreading online just hours after the fateful campaign rally on July 13 in Butler, Pennsylvania. Gunfire from a rooftop approximately 150 yards from the stage wounded Trump and three supporters in the crowd, one fatally. The tectonic event shook the 2024 presidential race and is the focus of sweeping investigations by the FBI, Homeland Security, and Congress, and has already prompted the resignation of the Secret Service director. But setting aside any outlandish assertions from both the political right and left about what happened, some key questions continue to loom since the horrific attack.

Was Trump actually hit by a bullet?

Unclear. The ex-president and his top allies maintain that he was, but when FBI Director Christopher Wray testified before Congress on Wednesday about the ongoing investigation, he responded to one inquiry saying, “With respect to former President Trump, there’s some question about whether or not it’s a bullet or shrapnel that hit his ear.” [Update, July 26, 9 p.m. ET: The FBI said in a statement late Friday that it determined Trump was struck by “a bullet, whether whole or fragmented into smaller pieces.”]

The attack is no less consequential either way, but this is a signifcant detail and not just another baseless conspiracy theory, even if GOP House Speaker Mike Johnson insists otherwise. As national security expert Juliette Kayyem noted, “Wray, known for exact phrasing and being careful, didn’t say this on accident.” The specificity of how Trump was wounded is important for public transparency and a full forensic accounting of the attack, relevant to rigorous assessment of the security failures (more on that below), the protective response by Secret Service agents, and the nature of Trump’s injury and his recovery.

It also pertains to how the Trump campaign has used the assassination attempt politically. When Trump was nominated at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee five days later, his brush with death was a major theme. Large images of the iconic news photo of him being pulled from the rally stage, his fist in the air and face streaked with blood, provided a backdrop on the main stage. Multiple speakers referred to his survival as the result of divine intervention. Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina and others lionized Trump, literally, and declared his survival and candidacy nothing short of a holy miracle.

In his acceptance speech, Trump, his right ear still bandaged, gave a dramatic, graphic account. “I said to myself, ‘Wow, what was that? It can only be a bullet.’” He said he brought his hand down from his ear “covered with blood, just absolutely blood all over the place.” He then emphasized, “There was blood pouring everywhere, and yet in a certain way I felt very safe because I had God on my side.”

Trump has released no official medical records from after the shooting, nor has there been any public account from the doctors who first treated him at Butler Memorial Hospital. Rep. Ronny Jackson of Texas, a Trump ally who served as his White House physician, released a memo a week after the shooting describing a bullet wound, but Jackson’s strident partisan role and track record as a doctor raise questions about his credibility.

An analysis published Thursday by the New York Times suggests that Trump’s ear was indeed grazed by a bullet, the first of eight reportedly fired by the gunman. The Times also reported that FBI investigators are seeking to interview Trump directly. Given the swirl of confusion and speculation about his injury, it seems all the more curious that he and his campaign haven’t provided further information.

Is there any clearer picture yet of the shooter’s motive?

No. Wray this week again reiterated the lack of any clear motive, even after extensive FBI investigation. That could still change, but it would be extraordinary, to say the least, to go from no indication of a motive two weeks after an event of this magnitude to a clear one. As I reported last week, the deceased perpetrator, 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks, appears to have left behind little indication of any political views or his mindset ahead of the attack, according to the FBI and a flurry of media reporting. He was a registered Republican voter, but also made a small donation to a liberal political group and came from a mixed political household.

This lack of a motive is particularly important in light of all the conspiracy theories and partisan exploitation that have filled the void. Indeed, there is a distinct possibility we may never have a clear picture of what drove Crooks, who also searched online, according to investigators, for information about President Biden’s appearances, the Democratic National Convention, and “major depression disorder.”

Ultimately, a thorough investigation of this case may show, as with many assassination attempts in modern history, that political ideology was not a driving factor. It is quite plausible that Crooks was suicidal and wanted to go out in a blaze of infamy, an act that has grown more common among disturbed and desperate young men, as I discussed with threat assessment experts last week. (For more on this: my book on preventing mass shootings, Trigger Points, examines the history and complexity of motives among many perpetrators, including those who target high-profile public figures.)

What explains the catastrophic failures with security?

The public has very little idea thus far. The shooting stands as a disaster of stunning proportions for the Secret Service, whose director, Kimberly Cheatle, resigned this week under intense bipartisan pressure.

The overarching question of the security failure already encompasses a long and troubling list of specific issues: How could the Secret Service not secure a rooftop that was within shooting range and had clear sight lines to Trump? How could the attacker have flown a drone over the rally location just two hours before Trump took the stage? Why was Trump allowed to keep speaking at the podium even after the Secret Service and its law enforcement partners were aware of Crooks’ suspicious behavior, and then even after counter-snipers had him in their sights?

Those are just scratching the surface.

“I’m not going to get into specifics of the day,” Cheatle said during a congressional hearing this week, citing an ongoing investigation. “There was a plan in place to provide overwatch, and we are still looking into responsibilities.”

Voluminous official tomes and many books are sure to be written in the months and years ahead on this epic fiasco.

Will Trump world continue to weaponize the shooting politically?

Almost as surely as the sun rises in the east. In the immediate aftermath, many Trump allies fired off partisan blame—without any evidence—and they haven’t stopped since. The rhetoric has come from Trump supporters in Congress including Rep. Mike Collins (“Joe Biden sent the orders”) and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (“They tried to murder President Trump”), and from Trump’s sons Eric (“I said that the Democrats would stop at absolutely nothing”) and Don Jr. (“They’re now trying to kill him”). Not to mention from the man who would become Trump’s running mate two days later, Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio, who said Biden’s campaign rhetoric “led directly” to the attack.

But they absolutely should stop. This stewing narrative is not only false but seriously dangerous: Threat assessment and law enforcement leaders told me it is fueling potential violence, already a heightened concern heading into the November election. As one source told me, “They’re piling on the idea that the opposition is so out to get Trump that they even tried to kill him, and therefore retaliation is justified. Only a small number of people might take violent action on this, but you don’t need much for things to get worse.” As another put it: “Extremist groups will take advantage of anything that fits into their narrative and this is a really big plot point for them.”

It is an accelerant on Trump’s continuing campaign of political incitement, aimed at migrants, the FBI and DOJ, judges, prosecutors, Democratic officials, journalists, and the many others he has long targeted. The fundamental premise of it all is that he is the alleged victim of a grand political conspiracy to take him down and steal the presidency from him, which is framed as a supposed Democratic or “deep state” plot. It is now being weaponized to whip up outrage by the same folks who are behind Project 2025. And in Trump’s telling, the ultimate target is not him but rather the Americans who support him: “They’re coming after you,” as he ominously puts it.

Meanwhile, Trump has kept up the steady incitement in recent weeks, including in his long, demagogic RNC speech—although this grim dimension of his campaign has gotten far less media attention than it deserves. As I wrote just a couple of weeks before the assassination attempt: “The question now isn’t about whether Trump will continue to stoke political violence in this way through the election. It’s about when and to what extremes he might do so, and how much more that will boost the odds of further violence to come.”

Since a 20-year-old gunman opened fire more than a week ago at former President Donald Trump’s campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, the FBI has conducted hundreds of interviews and scrutinized the deceased perpetrator’s background and activity—only to find that his motive for the attack thus far remains a mystery. He was a registered Republican voter, but as threat assessment experts confirmed to me, the shooting likely was not driven by partisanship or political ideology. (That’s the case with many assassination attempts in modern history, as I chronicled in my book on threat assessment.) The experts I spoke with also warned that partisan exploitation of the assassination attempt is fueling rising danger for political violence.

None of that has stopped Trump’s sons Eric and Donald Jr. from fanning the flames. Speaking on Fox News on Sunday, Eric Trump reiterated the partisan blame leveled by various MAGA supporters—without any evidence—immediately after the shooting. “I said that the Democrats would stop at absolutely nothing,” he told Maria Bartiromo, angrily reciting a litany of alleged political persecutions against his father. “I’ve said on this show before I wouldn’t be surprised if they tried something even worse, alluding to exactly what happened, and I was right.”

Donald Trump Jr. has also continued to push this narrative. “They’re trying to jail their political opponents. They’re now trying to kill him,” he said on the Megyn Kelly Show during the Republican National Convention, rattling off grievances similar to those from his brother. (In the interview, Don Jr. also said repeatedly that his father, whose ear was grazed by a bullet, was “shot in the face.”)

This continuing vilification adds to what law enforcement and threat assessment sources have told me is a paramount risk headed toward the election: potential bloodshed stemming from Donald Trump’s long-running campaign of incitement, including his message that he is supposedly the victim of a sweeping conspiracy by his political opponents. That core Trump narrative has now been supercharged by the assassination attempt, in which three attendees also were shot, one fatally. As I reported last week:

“Trump people were already mobilizing around the phony message of ‘we’re going to get screwed again by a rigged election,’” one threat expert told me, “and now they’re piling on the idea that the opposition is so out to get Trump that they even tried to kill him, and therefore retaliation is justified. Only a small number of people might take violent action on this, but you don’t need much for things to get worse.”

“Extremist groups will take advantage of anything that fits into their narrative and this is a really big plot point for them,” said another threat assessment expert. An intelligence bulletin from the FBI and DHS sent earlier this week to law enforcement throughout the country warned of potential “follow-on or retaliatory attacks.”

Notably, Don Jr. has participated in his father’s long-running political incitement also by spreading provocative memes and conspiracy theories on social media, and by mocking violence against Trump’s political adversaries. These tactics are part of the method of stochastic terrorism long used by Trump as president and after he left office, as I’ve documented ever since the runup to the January 6 insurrection.

Perhaps most infamously, Don Jr. ridiculed the home invasion and vicious attack on Nancy Pelosi’s husband, Paul, right before the 2022 midterm elections. Among other memes, he shared a photo of a “Halloween costume” that featured men’s underwear and a hammer, references to a baseless gay-sex conspiracy theory about the intruder and the weapon he used to bash Paul Pelosi’s skull. Since the assassination attempt, Don Jr. has posted a derisive meme targeting Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg and another appearing to suggest that the shooter was related to Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts.  

An Arizona man was charged this month for allegedly threatening on a MAGA website to shoot FBI agents. He had an AR-15, a pistol, a pump-action shotgun, and thousands of rounds of ammunition.

Demonizing partisan rhetoric and rampant conspiracy theories about the assassination attempt—the latter also from the political left—are feeding into a volatile atmosphere that former President Trump himself has done much to foment. His continuing broadsides against the Justice Department and FBI have led to further menace and violent plots from his extremist supporters. A grand jury this month indicted a Georgia man for allegedly posting threats to murder FBI Director Christopher Wray. Also this month, an Arizona man was charged for allegedly threatening on a MAGA website to shoot FBI agents indiscriminately. Investigators found he had an AR-15, a pistol, a pump-action shotgun, and more than 5,000 rounds of ammunition.

Trump’s relentless talk of a migrant “invasion” also has heightened concerns about political violence among security experts. In recent weeks, the ex-president has continued his theme of disparaging migrants as “terrorists” and “mental patients,” declaring again that they are “poisoning our country.”

This demagoguery marked the finale of the GOP convention last week when Trump gave a rambling, grievance-laden speech that lasted more than an hour and a half. He depicted an America under siege from bloodthirsty rapists and murderers “pouring into our country,” likening these alleged hordes to the fictional cannibalistic serial killer, “the late, great Hannibal Lecter.” In case his renewed message of American carnage wasn’t clear enough, he warned: “Bad things are going to happen.”