It looked like he was stung by a bee, but Trump had been shot and it rattled through the world
Donald Trump looked momentarily stunned. As the third shot rang out, he clutched at his right ear as if he had been stung by a bee.
What happened next unfolded within seconds but will leave a permanent stain on American politics. It has rattled the country and will recast this bitter presidential election.
As the bullets flew, a wounded Trump quickly ducked down while Secret Service agents threw themselves on top of the former president. A bloodcurdling scream came from a woman in the crowd as she realised the full horror of what was unfolding.
The Trump fans sitting behind him dived down to save their lives but a bullet had already hit one of them in the head, killing him instantly. Two others were lying nearby, seriously wounded.
Another volley of shots rang out almost simultaneously, this time fired by police snipers. They had spotted the shooter firing from a white roof outside the rally venue where Trump was speaking near the rural Pennsylvanian town of Butler. They killed the would-be-assassin instantly.
Two black-clad men wearing body cameras and helmets and carrying assault rifles, jumped on to the Trump podium.
“Are we good?” one of the officers said.
“Shooter’s down,” another answered.
“We’re good to move.”
“Are we clear?”
“We’re clear!”
Some 30 seconds later, Trump was helped to his feet by the secret service, with the top half of his ear soaked in blood and streaks of it across his face. “Let me get my shoes on,” Trump said, as the agents lifted him.
“Hold that on your head,” an agent told him. “It’s bloody.”
“Sir, we’ve got to move to the cars,” another said.
Then, in an image that will become instantly iconic, a bloodied Trump pumped his right fist in defiance to the crowd which chanted “USA, USA”.
Trump appeared reluctant to leave the stage and kept pumping his fist as Secret Service agents struggled to push him towards safety.
“I was shot with a bullet that pierced the upper part of my right ear,” Trump posted later. “I knew immediately something was wrong in that I heard a whizzing sound, shots, and immediately felt a bullet ripping through the skin.
“Much bleeding took place; I realised then what was happening.”
In the confused hour after Trump had been rushed to safety, supporters flooded social media calling for people to pray for the former president amid initial uncertainty about his condition. Trump’s aides quickly announced that he was “fine”.
News of the assassination attempt swept the country, with people abandoning their lazy Saturday summer afternoon to rush online to hear the latest.
Joe Biden led a chorus of politicians on both sides of politics who condemned the shooting and expressed gratitude for the fact that Trump survived. “There’s no place in America for this kind of violence,” Biden said.
The Biden campaign attempted to lower the political temperature by placing a pause on the release of anti-Trump campaign material.
Biden also spoke to Trump in a rare moment of conciliation between the two political enemies.
Yet the bad blood between Republicans and Democrats still bubbled in the hours after the attack.
Trump campaign senior adviser Chris LaCivita responded to the shooting with a post on X, which he later deleted.
“Well of course they tried to keep him off the ballot, they tried to put him in jail and now you see this …” he wrote.
Senator JD Vance, considered a frontrunner to be Trump’s vice-presidential running mate, said: “Today is not just some isolated incident. The central premise of the Biden campaign is that president Donald Trump is an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs,” he said.
“That rhetoric led directly to president Trump’s attempted assassination.”
The assassination attempt, the first on a current or former president since a gunman shot Ronald Reagan outside the Washington Hilton in 1981, is likely to galvanise support for Trump, at least in the short term.
It comes at a time when Biden is fighting for his own political life, with pressure growing from senior Democrats for him to step aside as his party’s nominee for the coming election and usher in generational change.
Late on Sunday night (AEST), the deserted rally venue in Butler had flood lights illuminating the American flag while police cars were parked nearby, their lights still flashing.
It was a surreal sight, a reminder of how close the US came to revisiting the dark days of the 1960s when the Kennedy brothers, Jack and Robert, were shot dead.
Trump has survived an assassination attempt while Biden is facing potential political oblivion.
It has been a long time since American leadership seemed so fragile.
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The volley of bullets came out of a clear blue summer sky.