In the wake of the attempted assassination of former U.S. President Donald Trump at a rally in Pennsylvania on Saturday (July 13), a range of American musicians have taken to social media to voice their support. Notably, Travis Tritt and John Rich both alleged that Trump’s political opponents were behind the shooting.
Tritt, the It’s A Great Day To Be Alive singer, shared a photo of the moment to X, saying, “We demand that this perpetrator be caught and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”
He continued: “Many of us have been predicting that the radical left would try to kill Trump before the election because they cannot defeat him any other way. This kind of attack cannot be ignored.”
Tritt closed out the post with the hashtag “#MAGA2024” - which stands for “Make America Great Again”, Trump’s campaign slogan.
Less than half an hour later, Tritt posted again, this time with a screenshot of a tweet from Joe Concha, a Fox News contributor, which read, “President Biden, July 8, 2024: ‘We’re done talking about the debate, it’s time to put Trump in a bullseye.’ Defend that. Go ahead. Try to defend that rhetoric after what we all just witnessed with Trump coming with a centimeter of being assassinated.”
In addition to the screenshot, Tritt wrote, “Comments like this from Joe Biden and others are what incited the attack on @realDonaldTrump today in Pennsylvania.”
In the same vein, Rich also posted a photo of the shooting to X, saying, “They couldn’t beat him in a fair contest, so they tried to kill him. BUT THEY MISSED.”
Later on, Rich shared one of President Joe Biden’s tweets from June 29, which said, “Donald Trump is a genuine threat to this nation. He's a threat to our freedom. He's a threat to our democracy. He's literally a threat to everything America stands for.”
Rich added his own commentary to the post, saying, “This is the type of rhetoric that gets people assassinated.”
He also used the incident to promote his new gospel-centric song REVELATION, sharing the link to X and saying, “It’s a spiritual battle.”
As NBC News reported, Trump’s shooter has since been identified by the FBI as 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks, who was killed at the scene by the Secret Service.