Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico, who was almost killed in an assassination attempt earlier this year, said that Trump’s shooting was a “carbon copy” situation, while blaming the former US President’s political opponents for stoking the violent attack against him.
Fico – who was elected last year on a platform of Euroscepticism and ending military aid to Ukraine – was shot in the stomach multiple times by an alleged would-be assassin in May while shaking hands with supporters after a cabinet meeting. He was wounded in the hip, leg, and arm, his intestines were perforated a total of five times, and he almost died during hours of surgery.
In a statement on Facebook on Sunday, he said that the assassination attempt on former President Trump was like a “carbon copy”.
He claimed that hostile media creates “the urge to ‘sort out’ the unruly former president of the USA,” and that Trump’s opponents were partly culpable for the incident.
“Donald Trump’s political opponents are trying to imprison him, and when that fails, they agitate the public to the point that some loser grabs a weapon,” he said.
He added: “And now we will witness talk about the need for reconciliation, calm, and forgiveness…”
In the wake of his own shooting, Fico said that while he forgave the gunman and wouldn’t be pursuing him legally, he did blame the media for such incidents.
“On May 15th, an activist of the Slovak opposition tried to assassinate me…because of my political views”, Fico said in June, adding that the attacker was a “messenger of evil and political hatred” whose views were spawned by a “politically unsuccessful and frustrated opposition”.
Trump’s shooter, who was killed by Secret Service agents at the scene of the attack on Saturday, has since been identified as 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks – a kitchen worker native to the US State of Pennsylvania, where the shooting took place. Authorities are still investigating his motive.
While Crooks was found to be a registered Republican, it was also found that he had previously donated money to liberal campaign group ActBlue, making his exact political views unclear.
Investigators believe that Crooks opened fire at Trump with a rifle while the latter was on-stage at a campaign event addressing a crowd in Butler, Pennsylvania, leaving one audience member dead and two others critically injured.