Even before details of what happened at Donald Trump‘s campaign rally on Saturday in Butler, Pennsylvania, began to emerge, Republicans and allies of the former president rushed to circulate a photo of him bloodied with his fist in the air.
Trump was hurried off the rally stage on Saturday evening after apparent gunshots rang out. Images and video captured at the event show Trump with blood coming from his face as he raised a fist in the air.
The Secret Service confirmed “an incident” happened during the rally and that Trump “is safe,” a spokesperson said in a post on X. One attendee was killed, as was the shooter, the Butler County district attorney told The Associated Press.
GOP members immediately began sharing photos of the bloodied former president pumping his fist in the air, some using it as an opportunity to tout conspiracy theories and stoke political tensions.
“Someone just tried to ASSASSINATE President Trump,” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) said on X. “The Democrats and the media are to blame for every drop of blood spilled today. For years and years, they’ve demonized him and his supporters. Today, someone finally tried to take out the leader of our America First and the greatest President of all time.”
“Praying for President Trump,” Speaker Mike Johnson wrote on X.
“I have no doubt that this cowardly attempt to assassinate our nominee will further galvanize the American people in support of Donald J. Trump,” Rep. Rich McCormick (R-Ga.) wrote on X.
“We will overcome and DEFEAT EVIL! NEVER SURRENDER!” Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) wrote on X.
“He’ll never stop fighting to Save America,” Donald Trump Jr. wrote on X alongside the photo.
“God protected President Trump,” Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) said in a post on X accompanying the photo. Rubio is also reportedly on Trump’s shortlist for vice president.
Former Fox News host Tucker Carlson posted the photo to X and pinned the post to the top of his account. In May, Carlson said Trump “will win the election if he’s not killed first.”
The National Republican Senatorial Committee also posted the photo to X without a caption.
“I have been under fire many times,” wrote Retired Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg, who served as the chief of staff to Trump’s National Security Council, on X. “It reveals your real character — when the President stood up with blood streaming and fist pumped and said ‘fight,’ it revealed his.”
Some are already predicting that the photo will soon be mythologized.
Simone Ledeen, a former Department of Defense official under Trump, told POLITICO that the “iconic photos of him being beamed across the world show the true American spirit.”
“The Biden camp and its supporters’ steady drumbeat of incendiary language has primed the pump to assassinate a presidential candidate,” Ledeen wrote in a text to POLITICO.
Ian Bremmer, president of Eurasia Group, wrote on X that the photo of the bloodied president would be “in every headline tomorrow.” And Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute, said the photo will be the “defining image of the 2024 elections.”
Meredith McGraw, Natalie Allison, Matt Berg, Kelly Garrity and Giselle Ruhiyyih Ewing contributed to this report.
