A prominent Russian state media figure has compared the apparent assassination attempt on Donald Trump in Pennsylvania on Saturday to the killing of former President John F. Kennedy as federal and local authorities plough on with investigations into the shooting of the Republican presidential frontrunner.
“When all other options for getting rid of an inconvenient president have been exhausted, good old Lee Harvey Oswald is brought in,” Margarita Simonyan, the head of Russia’s state-run RT outlet, said in a statement published on social media on Sunday.
Lee Harvey Oswald was charged with assassinating President John F. Kennedy in November 1963 before he himself was killed by a member of the public days later.
“Watching America is like watching a TV series where the writers have long since run out of imagination and they repeat themselves from episode to episode, but you have already become accustomed to the characters,” Simonyan said in a post to messaging app Telegram.
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Trump was attending a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, on Saturday, when he was shot in his right ear at around 6:15 p.m. local time. He was rushed from the scene and released from hospital late on Saturday night. Trump’s campaign team said the former president still intends to travel to Milwaukee for the Republican National Convention, which gets underway on Monday.
Security agents quickly surrounded Trump, who was seen with his face covered in blood and repeatedly calling on the crowd to “fight” as he was escorted off the stage.
One attendee of the rally was killed and two others were injured, authorities said. The FBI identified the “subject involved in the assassination attempt of former President Donald Trump” as 20 year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks. He was killed at the scene, the Secret Service said.
The FBI is leading the investigation into the former president’s shooting, working alongside the Secret Service. Pennsylvania State Police is heading the investigation into the shooting of the other victims, said Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro.
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Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson, Maria Zakharova, said that U.S. funding for Ukraine’s war effort against Russia would be better used to “finance the American police and other services that are supposed to ensure law and order inside the U.S.”
Calling Kyiv’s government a “terrorist structure,” Zakharova said Washington “must take stock of its policy of inciting hatred towards political opponents, countries and people, sponsoring terrorism.”
“The bell is already tolling for Washington!” she added.
Referencing a surge of popularity for Republican former President Ronald Reagan after he survived an assassination attempt in 1981, Russian state news commentator Vladimir Kornilov separately said in a social media post: “It seems to me that now no one can stop Trump from winning the election. Except for a better marksman, of course!”
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said Moscow “has always condemned and we resolutely condemn any manifestations of violence during the political struggle,” according to remarks reported by state news agency Tass on Sunday.
“After numerous attempts to remove candidate Trump from the political arena, first using legal instruments, courts, the prosecutor’s office, attempts to politically discredit and compromise the candidate, it was obvious to all outside observers that his life was in danger,” Peskov said.
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