Former US President and leading presidential candidate Donald Trump was not the first right-wing statesman to be shot in an assassination attempt this year. Prime Minister Robert Fico of Slovakia was shot five times in his abdomen, arm, and chest, on 15 May in Nyitrabánya (Handlová), Slovakia, but has survived. Now, it has been unveiled that there is a connection between the two assassination attempts.
Thomas Matthew Crooks, the 20-year-old man who opened fire on President Trump, striking him in his ear with a semi-automatic rifle from a rooftop at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, had been studying the Fico incident prior to the crime of his own. This has been shared by an FBI special agent working on the case on Tuesday, 30 July. Crooks was also reading about other famous assassinations and assassination attemps in recent history, most notably, the one against US President John F. Kennedy by Lee Harvey Oswald in November 1963.
Previously, Prime Minister Fico himself compared the attempt on his life to that of former President Trump as well.
Georg Spöttle, a Hungarian security expert talked to the Hungarian cable channel HírTV about the new developments. He said:
‘The FBI has searched through the electronic devices of the assassin Matthew Crooks, and found a lot of footage of the assassination of US President John F. Kennedy. The available news articles, photos, and film recordings were all saved to his phone and his laptop. He has also looked up, for example, how far President Kennedy’s killer Lee Harvey Oswald was from his target when he shot at him from a book depository in Dallas, Texas…About 1,400 additional photos of weapons and explosives were also found…On top of that, he has also looked up more recent incidents.
Cellphone footage made by eyewitnesses of the assassination attempt on Robert Fico was stored on his phone as well.
Most likely, that is why he chose a smaller town instead of a big city like New York City or Los Angeles, since he could get a lot closer to Donald Trump this way. In other words, he has really educated himself through these videos and other available information about assassinations against presidents.’
President Donald Trump has already announced that he will be returning to Butler, Pennsylvania, where the horrific incident took place, for another campaign rally. The announcement was met with an overwhelming outpour of support on his social media accounts, with a post garnering over 236,000 likes and other reactions on Facebook alone.
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