Former President Donald Trump suggested without evidence Wednesday that Iran may have been responsible for two assassination attempts on him this year, saying foreign leaders had opposed his stance on tariffs.
Authorities have not made any public statements to support the claim that either of the would-be assassins — in July in Butler, Pennsylvania, and this month near Trump’s Florida home — had the support of foreign agents or anyone else. Trump has linked the two incidents to a separate hack of his campaign that the U.S. intelligence agencies claim that was carried out by Iran.
“There have been two attempts on my life — that we know of,” Trump, the GOP presidential candidate, said during a campaign rally in Mint Hill, North Carolina. “And they may or may not involve — but they probably do — Iran, but I really don’t know.”
Trump also aired his theory on X on Wednesday, saying, “Big threats on my life from Iran. Entire U.S. military watching and waiting. Iran has already made moves that didn’t work out, but they’ll try again.”
Trump campaign officials told USA Today: statement on Tuesday evening that “President Trump was briefed earlier today by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence regarding real and specific threats from Iran that they intend to kill him in order to destabilize and create chaos in the United States.”
USA Today also reports that a spokesman for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, or ODNI, confirmed that the briefing took place but did not provide details about its content.
During an appearance in North Carolina, Trump thanked members of Congress from both parties for approving more funding for the U.S. Secret Service, but added that if he were president and a foreign country threatened a presidential candidate, he would respond in the strongest possible terms.
“So thank you to everyone in Congress,” he said. “But if I were president, I would tell the country that is making the threat, in this case Iran, that if you do anything to harm this person, we will blow your major cities and this country to smithereens. We will blow them to smithereens.”
The shooter in the Pennsylvania shooting, Thomas Crooks, was killed by law enforcement officers at the scene. In the second case, in Florida, Ryan Wesley Routh he was charged on Tuesday with the assassination attempt on Trump.
In an hour-long speech that also touched on economic issues, Trump said he has been targeted by foreign governments because of his plans to expand tariffs, or taxes, on imported goods.
“I’m putting tariffs on your competition from abroad, all these foreign countries that have cheated us, that have stolen all your businesses and all your jobs years ago and destroyed your businesses,” he said. “That’s why people in countries want to kill me. They’re not happy with me. That’s — that’s risky business. That’s why they want to kill me.”
Trump also said would set a 15% tax rate for companies that manufacture their goods domestically. That low rate, combined with tariffs on foreign goods, would boost U.S. manufacturing, including furniture, which was once a substantial industry in North Carolina, he said.
Tariffs typically lead to higher prices, which has been a consumer nightmare since 2020.
Harris in Pennsylvania
Democratic Vice Presidential candidate Kamala Harris painted a more sanguine picture of the current and future U.S. economy in her speech on the economy in Pittsburgh on Wednesday.
Harris admitted that prices are still too high.
“You know it and I know it,” she said, according to the pool report.
Harris said her economic priorities are focused on the middle class, which she contrasted with what she described as Trump’s favoritism toward wealthy people.
She said she would encourage innovation by supporting research into a range of technologies, from biomanufacturing to artificial intelligence and blockchain, and added that her approach to the presidency would include experimenting with different strategies.
“As president, I will stand on my core values of integrity, dignity and opportunity,” she said. “And I promise to be pragmatic in my approach. I will engage in what Franklin Roosevelt called bold, persistent experimentation.”
Immigration Blamed by Republican Party
Trump and his vice presidential candidate, Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance, applied their nativist immigration positions to economy-focused speeches in their campaign speeches Wednesday. Both said immigrants in the country illegally were responsible for depressing employment and wages among native-born workers.
“Jobs are going to illegal immigrants who came to our country illegally,” Trump said in North Carolina. “Our black population across the country, our Latino population, are losing their jobs. They are American citizens, they are losing their jobs.”
In a telephone interview Wednesday in which he praised the decision by the International Brotherhood of Teamsters not to endorse the Republican Party’s presidential candidate and an internal electronic poll that showed a majority of members supported the Republican Party’s candidacy, Vance said unions have long sought to protect American workers from immigrants.
“The American labor movement has always recognized that illegal labor is driving down the wages of American workers,” Vance said in the interview. “These are people competing with American citizens and legal residents for important jobs and driving down their own wages.”
Vance said, without citing a source, that all of the net job growth under Harris and President Joe Biden went to foreign workers, including “25 million” immigrants who are in the country illegally.
Official estimates put the number of immigrants in the country without permission at about 11 million, less than half of what Vance claims.
A GOP campaign spokesman did not respond substantively when asked about the source of Vance’s claim that all of the job growth under Biden was due to foreign-born workers.
Trump returns to Butler
Trump said on Wednesday would go back to ButlerPennsylvania, the site of the first assassination attempt on him. The former president suffered an ear injury in the shooting that killed one rallygoer and wounded two others.
“We’ll come back and finish our speech,” he said in North Carolina.
Two-party US Senate Interim Report The report, released Wednesday, found that the U.S. Secret Service failed to adequately plan security for the outdoor rally and made communication errors that allowed the shooter to fire shots at the former president.
The report was commissioned by U.S. Senators Gary Peters, Democrat of Michigan; Republican Rand Paul of Kentucky; Democrat Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut; and Republican Ron Johnson of Wisconsin. They are the chairmen and ranking members of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee and the committee’s subcommittee on investigations.
