Someone fired gunshots at the Republican candidate on 13 July 2024, during an electoral rally near Butler, Pennsylvania. Donald Trump was injured in his upper right ear. Overwhelmed by Secret Service agents, he nonetheless stood up and raised his fist in the air. The shooter, a 20-year-old man named Thomas Matthew Crooks, was identified immediately while the weapon used in this attack – an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle – was revealed only two days later. The motive of this attack is unclear.

These are facts. Now come the assumptions.

Your writer is not a supporter of conspiracy theories, just for clarity. But this doesn’t mean he’d omit hard questions that are begging to ask.

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Donald Trump is by no doubt a coward person and there are numerous documented examples in this regard (avoidance of military service during the Vietnam War, reluctance to confront authoritarian leaders, to name a few). He would play a courageous person only if he knew for sure that he was no longer in danger. So, he stood up and raised a fist shortly after the shots had been fired: he knew there were no threats.

Under existing protocols, the Secret Service would immediately remove the client from the scene of the crime, no matter whether the threat was over or not. But the agents who rushed to Trump put him back on his feet and let him expose his bloody face to the public (and cameras).

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Another question is how did the Secret Service know there was no second shooter around and the ex-president was safe after a sniper took down the 20-year-old boy? What if Crooks wasn’t acting alone? Then, the name of the presumed shooter was circulated almost instantly but the type of the weapon used in this attack remained a mystery for several days.