Attempted Assassination of Former President Donald Trump

Last Saturday, former President Donald Trump survived an assassin’s bullet with only a centimeter to spare. The last such attempt on the life of a president or presidential nominee was in 1981, when John Hinkley Jr. put a bullet in the side of newly-elected President Ronald Reagan. Tragically, Corey Comperatore, a fireman present at the Saturday rally, was fatally shot as he covered his wife and daughters, protecting them from the bullets aimed at the former president.

The attempted assassination in Butler County, PA, this last weekend has raised many questions: questions about how a man with an AR weapon made it onto an unguarded roof 150 yards away with a clear line of fire to the former president. The FBI and the Secret Service have declined to hold a public press conference since the shooting, giving rise to calls for transparency and more information. After a private Senate briefing from the FBI, two sources familiar with the Senate briefing reported to ABC News that the gunman was photographed as a suspicious person 62 minutes before he opened fire, and snipers had spotted him 10 minutes before the former president took the stage (20 minutes before the first shots rang out). Yet the Secret Service did nothing about it. Republicans have called for the Director of the Secret Service, Kimberly Cheatle, to step down. Ms. Cheatle says she’s not going anywhere.

The RNC: Republicans Present a Unified Front

The Republican National Convention kicked off Monday in Milwaukee, WI. Even left-leaning pundits had to give the RNC credit for presenting not only a unified vision and a unified party but also for putting on a well-produced show. In this convention, Republicans came off as a patriotic, fun-loving, big tent party, a sort of All-American Party. Even Republicans who have been vocal against former president Trump, including challengers such as Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley, took to the stage to voice their complete support for his candidacy. Speeches by Trump’s sons, daughters-in-law and granddaughter sought to show a lovable and human side of “Grandpa Trump.”

As the former president walked into the RNC on Monday with a white pillow bandage over his right ear, his demeanor at first seemed different—subdued. The former president began his speech with a detailed and gripping account of the shooting. He said it would be the first and the last time he ever spoke of it. “I’m not supposed to be here tonight. I'm not supposed to be here,” he told the crowd at the Fiserv Forum in Milwaukee. After the crowd chanted back, “Yes, you are,” Trump shook his head. “Thank you,” he said, “but I’m not.” “I stand before you in this arena only by the grace of Almighty God.”

He offered a message of optimism and unity: “The discord and division in our society must be healed… As Americans, we are bound together by a single fate and a shared destiny. We rise together. Or we fall apart.” “I’m here tonight to lay out a vision for the whole nation. To every citizen... I extend to you a hand of loyalty and of friendship. Together, we will lead America to new heights of greatness like the world has never seen before.” “I am running to be president for all of America, not half of America, because there is no victory in winning for half of America.”

Former President Trump asked the crowd at the RNC to observe a moment of silence for Corey Comperatore, and he offered a moving eulogy for this man who, in shielding his family from death, paid the ultimate price.

Encouragingly, some noted an atypical gravity—perhaps humility—in Donald Trump’s tone, bearing, and approach, as if last week’s tragedy were being redeemed to bring about greater awareness of human finitude and a greater appreciation of God and the need for peace and unity amidst these turbulent times.

After the first half hour of the speech, the former president began to deviate from the script. These trails are familiar to those who have heard the former president speak at length, and they more closely resembled what you might expect to find at a Trump rally, albeit more calm and less partisan. At over 90 minutes, it came in as the longest convention speech from a major political party in modern political history.

A Divided Democrat Party

The Democrat party seems to be in near chaos. Following President Biden’s disastrous debate performance three weeks ago Thursday night, hardly has a day gone by without either a new gaffe from President Biden, a renewed effort by party elites to oust him from the 2024 Democrat ticket, or an interparty disagreement about all of the above. But President Biden has dug in hard, saying that the debate was a one-off bad night and that he is staying in the race to the finish.

The public was told on Thursday that President Biden has COVID, so he is off the campaign trail and at home in Delaware with his wife. There are (again) reports that he could drop out of the race by this Sunday. Over thirty elected Democrats have said they think President Biden should bow out of the election, with eight more joining the chorus Friday morning. But as of Friday morning, President Biden’s campaign staff says he plans to return to campaigning next week.

If President Biden were to drop out, he would likely not endorse Vice-President Kamala Harris, leaving the Democrat National Convention beginning on August 19 an open convention, meaning that all delegates would be unbound and the Democrat party leaders would try to put together a from-scratch presidential ticket that the party delegates would then vote on. Ousting Joe Biden, a democratically nominated candidate, would be an ironic move from a party that has tired the ears of many Americans with their apocalyptic claims that MAGA Republicans want to end democracy.

Other News

• Trump Picks his Vice-President: On Monday, former President Trump selected the newly elected junior Senator from Ohio, J.D. Vance, as his vice-president for the 2024 Republican ticket. Mr. Vance came from a broken family affected by his parents’ use of drugs and alcohol, rose above his circumstances to attend Yale Law School, wrote a best-selling book, and became a United States Senator at the age of 38.
• Drone Strike on Tel Aviv: Houthi militia in Yemen claimed responsibility for a drone attack on Tel Aviv this Friday, the first such attack on Israel’s center of commerce since the start of the war last October.
• CrowdStrike Outage: Banks, media companies, airlines, and emergency services have been greatly affected or ground to a halt after CrowdStrike, a significant cybersecurity software provider, released a system update with a major bug. As a result, Windows computers and tablets crashed all over the world. Experts say it’s likely the largest glitch ever. “It's the biggest case in history. We’ve never had a worldwide workstation outage like this,” says Mikko Hyppönen, the chief research officer at cybersecurity company WithSecure. As of Friday morning, more than 27,000 flights worldwide were delayed, and 2,800 were canceled by midmorning Friday, leaving over 1,300 flights canceled.
• The Bob Menendez Indictment: Bob Menendez, D-NJ, has spent over 50 years in politics, including as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. On Wednesday, a jury in the Southern District of New York found Mr. Menendez guilty of 16 federal charges, including bribery, fraud, acting as a foreign agent, conspiracy, obstruction of justice, and corruption. Government prosecutors say that Menendez received hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes in the form of cash, a Mercedes-Benz, mortgage payments and gold bars. In exchange for the bribes, prosecutors said Menendez helped secure millions of dollars in US aid for Egypt and used his powerful position in Congress to benefit New Jersey businessmen as well as the government of Qatar.
• Dismissal of the Classified Documents Case: On Monday, Judge Aileen Cannon dismissed the classified documents case that the government has been prosecuting against former President Trump, citing the unconstitutional appointment of Special Counsel Jack Smith. Legal experts had said that this case would be the hardest for Trump to fight, making its dismissal very good news for the former president.