[🇺🇸] USA Election 2024

[Ghazi52]

‘Bullet for democracy’: Trump to return to site of rally shooting​

AFP
October 5, 2024

Former US President and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump looks on during a town hall event at the Crown Complex in Fayetteville, North Carolina on October 4. — AFP
https://whatsapp.com/channel/0029VaMc238IiRov8okfYy3n
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump will make a defiant return on Saturday to the small town in Pennsylvania where an assassin tried to shoot him dead during a rally attended by thousands of supporters.

The former president will appear alongside JD Vance, his running mate in the November election, as well as family members of those hurt in the July 13 attack, first responders and tech billionaire Elon Musk.

Trump has repeatedly insisted on returning to the site of the shooting, in which one man was killed and two attendees were wounded before the sniper was shot dead.

“Butler has become quite a famous place — it’s like a monument now,” the Republican candidate said at a recent rally in Milwaukee. Trump’s campaign said “he took a bullet for democracy” in Butler, and that he would speak behind protective glass on his return.

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[Ghazi52]

The former president was six minutes into a campaign speech in a scorching field and turning his head to look at a chart of immigration statistics, when eight shots rang out. Trump winced and grabbed his ear, ducking down behind his podium as Secret Service agents flooded the open-air stage.

Surrounded by bodyguards and with blood trickling across his face, Trump raised his fist and shouted “fight, fight, fight” to the crowd — providing his campaign with a now iconic image.

“The first thing I said is, ‘How many people are dead?’ Because, you know, we had a massive crowd. As far as the eye could see,” Trump said recently.

In fact, his first words, captured by the stage microphone, were “Let me get my shoes,” corroborated by witness Erin Autenreith, who was sitting in the first row.

There was shock across the political spectrum and President Joe Biden joined a host of world leaders in reaching out to Trump to wish him well.

The shooting prompted calls from all sides to lower the temperature of an overheated campaign — but the pause was short, and tensions simmered.

Though his ear was apparently grazed by one of the bullets fired by Thomas Crooks from an AR-15 type rifle, Trump emerged otherwise unscathed.

The Secret Service — charged with protecting presidents, candidates and foreign dignitaries — came in for withering criticism for failing to secure the building from where the shots were fired, just a few hundred feet away from the stage.

The attempt on the business mogul’s life was the first of a string of dramas that has shaken up the White House race, capped by Biden’s shock withdrawal and replacement by Vice President Kamala Harris as the Democratic candidate.

Then on September 15, a man was apprehended after being seen at Trump’s Florida golf course wielding a rifle and a GoPro camera in what the FBI said was a second assassination attempt.

 

[Ghazi52]

Some Trump followers have alleged wild conspiracy theories and, along with Trump, have argued that Democratic rhetoric about the former president being a threat to US democracy was effectively an incitement to violence.

Merchandise sellers at Trump rallies did not skip a beat, creating T-shirts and collectables marking his apparently miraculous escape.

The gunfire at Butler killed rallygoer Corey Comperatore, a fire chief who authorities said died protecting family members. Two other bystanders were hit, suffering injuries.

“We’re going to be there on Saturday. It’s going to be a really big event, and it’s going to be something. We’ll celebrate the life of Corey, I think. And I want to celebrate the two gentlemen that got hit really bad,” Trump said in Milwa

 

[Ghazi52]

US election polls: Who is ahead - Harris or Trump?​

the Visual Journalism and Data teams
BBC News

BBC
Voters in the US go to the polls on 5 November to elect their next president.

The election was initially a rematch of 2020 but it was upended in July when President Joe Biden ended his campaign and endorsed Vice-President Kamala Harris.

The big question now is - will America get its first woman president or a second Donald Trump term?

As election day approaches, we'll be keeping track of the polls and seeing what effect the campaign has on the race for the White House.

Harris has been ahead of Trump in the national polling averages since she entered the race at the end of July, as shown in the chart below with the latest figures rounded to the nearest whole number.

The two candidates went head to head in a televised debate in Pennsylvania on 10 September that just over 67 million people tuned in to watch.

 

[Ghazi52]

You can see those small changes in the poll tracker chart below, with the trend lines showing how the averages have changed and the dots showing the individual poll results for each candidate.

While these national polls are a useful guide as to how popular a candidate is across the country as a whole, they're not necessarily an accurate way to predict the result of the election.

That's because the US uses an electoral college system, in which each state is given a number of votes roughly in line with the size of its population. A total of 538 electoral college votes are up for grabs, so a candidate needs to hit 270 to win.

There are 50 states in the US but because most of them nearly always vote for the same party, in reality there are just a handful where both candidates stand a chance of winning. These are the places where the election will be won and lost and are known as battleground states or swing states.