The Republican National Convention begins this week, with delegates and officials descending on Wisconsin amid the tumult that follows an attempted murder on saturday on former President Donald Trump as he prepares to become the GOP’s official candidate.
The quadrennial event comes not only as Trump leads a party in lockstep with him, but also as Democrats push back against The Viability of President Joe Biden and whether they would replace him as their candidate.
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Here’s the latest news:
The director of the U.S. Secret Service says she is confident in the plan to secure the Republican National Convention, which begins Monday following the attempted assassination of presidential candidate Donald Trump.
Kim Cheatle said in a statement Monday that the security plans for the event are “designed to be flexible.”
“The Secret Service will continually adjust our operations as necessary to ensure the highest level of security,” she said.
Cheatle says the plan will be modified as necessary to ensure the continued safety of Milwaukee event attendees.
A man shot Trump from a rooftop at a rally in Pennsylvania on Saturday. Trump is recovering and will attend the convention. President Joe Biden ordered a national security review of the incident over the weekend.
King Charles III has written a letter to Donald Trump following the attempted assassination at a rally in Pennsylvania, Buckingham Palace said.
The palace has not released the contents of the monarch’s private message, which was sent via the British Embassy in Washington, DC, on Sunday.
The message follows an appeal from British Prime Minister Keir Starmer to Trump on Sunday, who condemned the violence, expressed his condolences to the victims and their families and wished a speedy recovery for the former president and those injured.
Donald Trump spent much of Sunday on the phone with friends, newscasters and local and foreign officials, the day after he was wounded in an assassination attempt.
Ohio pastor Darrell Scott, a longtime Trump ally, said Trump was “in a great mood” when they spoke Sunday morning, hours after the shooting.
“He was great, as always. He didn’t even make a big deal out of it,” Scott said. “He actually tried to downplay it a little bit by asking how I was doing.”
Former RNC Chairman Reince Priebus, who also served as Trump’s White House chief of staff, told ABC’s “This Week” that Trump was “grateful for the miracle of what happened in his case. … A quarter inch the other way and we’re clearly talking about something very different this morning.”
Tony Perkins, one of the Republican Party’s most influential Christian conservatives, has been bracing for a showdown with convention organizers over his dismay at the way the RNC platform committee shut down debate on Monday, all but erasing objections to the Trump campaign’s push to soften language on abortion.
The assassination attempt changed everything, Perkins told The Associated Press after a prayer service in a Milwaukee suburb Sunday night.
“We live in a violent society. And we run the risk of becoming desensitized to it. And when we become desensitized to it, we get more of it,” Perkins said. “I hope and pray that in many ways it’s a wake-up call.”
“So, as a result, I am stepping back from pushing the issue on the platform,” he added. “More division would not be healthy.”
Perkins called social media a “contagion” for toxic rhetoric spread by people who feel they are not being heard by their government or leaders, and attributed the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol in part to the idea of overheated online anger.
“We have to stop,” he said.
And as he thanked God during the service for Trump’s survival, Perkins told more than 100 people at the church in Pewaukee, “Lord, I believe our nation is in such a volatile time that yesterday could have torn this nation in two.”
The 20 year old man who tried to kill Former President Donald Trump first came to the attention of police at Saturday’s rally when onlookers spotted him acting strangely outside the campaign event. The tip sparked a frantic search, but officers were unable to find him before he climbed onto a roof, where he opened fire.
In the wake of the shooting that left a bystander dead, investigators are looking for clues about what might have prompted Thomas Matthew Crooks of Bethel Park, Pennsylvania, to carry out the shocking attack. The FBI said they were investigating it as a possible act of domestic terrorismbut the lack of a clear ideological motive in the man who was shot dead by Secret Service gave conspiracy theories the opportunity to flourish.
The FBI said it believes Crooks, who had bomb material in the car he drove to the rally, acted alone. Investigators have found no threatening comments on social media accounts or ideological views that would help explain what led him to target Trump.
Crooks graduated from Bethel Park High School in 2022. His senior year, Crooks was among the students to receive an award in math and science, according to a Tribune review story from back then.
He auditioned for the school’s shooting team but was rejected because he couldn’t shoot well, said Frederick Mach, the team’s current captain who was a few years behind Crooks in school.
Jason Kohler, who said he went to the same high school but did not share classes with Crooks, said Crooks was bullied at school and sat alone during lunch. Other students made fun of the clothes he wore, including hunting gear, Kohler said.
Former President Donald Trump told The Washington Examiner that he rewrote the speech he was scheduled to deliver Thursday at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee after being targeted an attempted murder at his meeting on Saturday.
“The speech I was supposed to give on Thursday was going to be a blast,” he told the news channel in an article posted Sunday night.
In the interview, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee says he will now call for a new effort at national unity, noting that people with different political views have called him.
“This is an opportunity to bring the whole country, even the whole world, together. The speech will be very different, very different from two days ago,” he said.
Trump also recalled the moment a bullet pierced the upper part of his right ear. He said he was saved from death because he turned away from the crowd and looked at a screen showing a graph he was referring to.
“That reality is just now starting to sink in,” he told the news outlet as he boarded his plane to Milwaukee in Bedminster, New Jersey. “I rarely look away from the crowd. If I hadn’t done that at that moment, well, we wouldn’t be here today, right?”