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‘They all are triggering’: Congressional shooting survivor confronts another shocking act of violence

Updated Jul 13, 2024, 10:59pm EDT
politics
REUTERS/Brendan McDermid
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Rep. Trent Kelly was driving home from an event for National Guard spouses when a friend texted him the news that former President Donald Trump was involved in a shooting. Seven years earlier, he’d had a similar run-in with a gunman during a practice session for the annual congressional baseball game.

“They all are triggering,” the Mississippi Congressman told Semafor in a brief interview Saturday. “I’ve had a lot of experience in suppressing those things and kind of putting them in compartments I can pull out when I need to.”

In 2017, Kelly was at third base at a baseball field in Alexandria, Virginia, when a gunman shot six people, including Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La. He said he heard the blast of the first shot and the whizzing of the second and third and suggested, based on the proximity, that Trump may have heard the same sound.

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“It kind of makes a crack when it breaks a wind,” he said. “It’s hard to describe, but you know it when you hear it; you don’t want to hear it again.”

Trump indeed went on to describe a similar sensation in his first statement on Saturday after the assassination attempt, saying he “heard a whizzing sound, shots, and immediately felt the bullet ripping through the skin.” They both survived with a heavy dose of luck: In Kelly’s case, a chain link deflected gunfire at close range, in Trump’s case, the bullet grazed his ear.

Like a lot of lawmakers, Kelly blamed heightened political discourse for Trump’s shooting.

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“I’m sickened by all political violence, you know, I think that is a result of a lot of the political rhetoric that people on both sides take part of,” he said. “And unfortunately, when unstable people are out there and they hear this political rhetoric, they sometimes take that as a call to action.”

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A number of political leaders who condemned Saturday’s shooting, which took the life of one attendee and left two others in critical condition, tragically had relevant experience.

Scalise discussed his personal history on social media and in interviews on Saturday night, recalling how Trump had visited him after he was shot. Like Kelly, he pointed the finger at political attacks, and said “we’ve seen far-left lunatics act on violent rhetoric in the past.”

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Former Congresswoman Gabby Giffords, who narrowly survived a shooting at a district event, and her husband, Sen. Mark Kelly, each referenced their family’s experience in calling for an end to political violence.

Congresswoman and former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, whose husband Paul Pelosi was attacked and injured by a man with a hammer in 2022, referenced the incident in a statement. “As one whose family has been the victim of political violence, I know firsthand that political violence of any kind has no place in our society,” she wrote. “I thank God that former President Trump is safe.”

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Notable

  • Outside the US, world leaders condemned the shooting, while also sometimes raising fears about the state of American democracy.
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