Watch A Bulgarian Politician Escape An Assassination Attempt On Live TV

Here in the U.S., we freak out — a.k.a. tweet snarky comments — when our politicians misspeak ever so slightly. Imagine what our reaction would be to a man jumping on stage while President Obama was giving a speech on TV, and tried to kill him right then and there with a gun. Such was the scene in Bulgaria earlier today.

A man leapt on stage and put a gun to the head of the leader of Bulgaria’s ethnic Turkish party before security guards wrestled him to the ground during a televised conference on Saturday…Ahmed Dogan, the leader of the Movement for Rights and Freedoms (MRF) escaped unscathed, and it was not immediately clear why the attacker targeted him at the party congress in central Sofia.

Television footage showed the man jumping out of the audience brandishing the gun which he pointed at Dogan’s head. Security guards pulled him to the ground and he was repeatedly beaten and kicked by conference delegates. Police said they arrested the attacker, a 25-year-old from the Black Sea town of Burgas, who was also carrying two knives.

Interior Minister Tsvetan Tsvetanov said the attacker tried to fire two shots but “the gun misfired.” (Via)

Dogan doesn’t immediately react in the most graceful way possible (you wouldn’t either if a guy who looks like a James Bond villain’s henchman appeared out of nowhere with a gun), but he recovers quickly, and after a split second spent staring down the would-be assassin, Dogan tries to slap the man’s gun away, before security swarms the stage. And kicks the crap out of Andrei Konstantin (that’s what I’ve named him). But we all know the real reason why the gun misfired: Andrei forgot his catchphrase, “Hope you like the Whack Sea.” No quip, no dice.

(Via Reddit)

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