As much as he and his campaign might like to believe it—and in fact tried to promote it—no one tried to assassinate Donald Trump over the weekend. At a rally in Reno, Nevada, on Saturday there was a scuffle in the crowd while Trump spoke; Secret Service agents rushed the candidate at the podium and hustled him off stage. He returned a short time later. A few minutes after, his social media director Dan Scavino tweeted that the nominee survived an assassination attempt.
Wrong!
His son, Donald Trump, Jr. retweeted Scavino’s post.
Wrong!
Here's what really happened:
The Secret Service apprehended the man who prompted the incident. He was interviewed and quickly released.
According to the Secret Service, the incident started when an unidentified individual shouted “gun.” No weapon was found on the scene.
The man the Secret Service talked to is Austyn Crites, and he told the Guardian’s Paul Lewis that he is a Republican voting for the GOP this year, but not Trump.
Crites said held a sign that said “Republicans against Trump.” He was terrified by the crowd’s reaction to him. “I was in survival mode,” he said. “I knew I could die at that moment.”
He told Lewis that “Someone grabbed his testicles and had his neck was in a chokehold.”
Grabbed his … ? Sounds very Trumpian.
U.S. history is littered with real attempts—successful and not—on the lives of presidents and each time those events have sent the country into spasms of grief and support for the office holder. What happened on Saturday, on the other hand, is just a story Trump and his campaign officials are trying to pedal hoping for the same benefits. Predictably, the only world in which there would be an upside to even suggesting there’d been assassination attempt on a presidential nominee’s life is in Trump’s.