“This stuff is basically cooked up in a lab to incite further violence,” said one critic of comments made by Sen. J.D. Vance, Rep. Mike Collins, and other allies of Trump.

As federal law enforcement officials launched a full investigation into the shooting at presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s Pennsylvania rally on Saturday, journalists and political observers expressed fear that the act of violence would ramp up political division and turmoil in the United States ahead of the November elections.

Boston Globe reporter James Pindell was among the journalists at the rally who shared that Trump supporters “turned on the media”—a frequent target of Trump during his presidency—after the shooting.

“The crowd was angry,” he wrote. “Middle fingers were everywhere. They asked the press if they were happy and blamed the media. ‘You did this,’ they said to reporters.”

Allies of Trump including Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio), Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.), Rep. Mike Collins (R-Ga.), and former White House adviser Stephen Miller immediately placed blame with President Joe Biden, claiming the attack was the result of warnings that electing the former president to a second term would threaten democracy.

Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.) denounced Collins’ claim that Biden “sent the orders,” calling it “a continuation of the bullshit rhetoric that drives political violence.”

“A likely assassination attempt and gun violence on Trump is awful on many levels,” said Pocan. “Adding jet fuel to the political climate is unbecoming of a member of Congress.”

Trump, who spread baseless lies that the 2020 election was rigged against him and urged his supporters to riot at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021 as Congress was certifying the results, has said he would act as a dictator on “day one” of his potential presidency.

Dozens of people who worked in his administration helped to write Project 2025, a far-right political agenda aimed at consolidating power with the president and dismantling parts of the federal government, and he has named political opponents he aims to prosecute and pledged to deploy the military to stop political protests.

“One response to Trump’s attempted shooting (apparently by a registered Republican) we must NOT take is to stop framing the existential nature of this election,” said political organizer Aaron Regunberg. “The problem isn’t Democrats saying Trump is attacking our democracy—the problem is that he’s attacking our democracy.”

One audience member was killed and two were seriously injured after the gunman, identified as 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks of Bethel Park, Pennsylvania, fired several shots from a rooftop near Butler Farm Show, where the rally was held.

Trump was escorted off the stage after a bullet “pierced the upper part of his right ear,” The New York Timesreported. The Secret Service reported that Crooks had been killed after firing his weapon, and that officials found an AR-15-type semiautomatic rifle near his body.

Authorities did not identify a motive for the shooting.

Crooks was registered as a Republican in his hometown; records also showed that someone named Thomas Crooks donated $15 to a liberal voter turnout campaign called the Progressive Turnout Project in January 2021.

“This remains an active and ongoing investigation,” said the FBI in a statement Sunday, as law enforcement agents closed down all roads leading to the home of the suspect’s family in Bethel Park in the Pittsburgh area.

David Hogg, who survived the 2018 Parkland, Florida school shooting and co-founded March for Our Lives, said the gunman’s ability to fire at the president and kill an audience member while in the presence of Secret Service agents and police is the latest proof that people across the U.S. are vulnerable to gun violence due to a lack of strict gun control laws, which Republican lawmakers have long refused to pass.

“What happened today is unacceptable and what happens every day to kids who aren’t the president and don’t survive isn’t either,” said Hogg. “It’s insane we have such a major problem with gun violence in America that no one—not even a presidential candidate—is safe.”

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