Trump campaign turns tables on Biden’s immediate attacks on Vance after VP pick
MILWAUKEE— The Trump campaign is pushing back after President Biden immediately took to social media to blast Trump’s newly chosen candidate for Vice President, Ohio Sen. JD Vance.
Shortly after Vance was announced as Trump’s candidate, the Biden campaign posted on X along with a fundraising link, “Here’s the deal about J.D. Vance. He talks a big game about working people. But now, he and Trump want to raise taxes on middle-class families while pushing more tax cuts for the rich.”
Trump 2024 Deputy Communications Director Caroline Sunshine took issue with that attack in an interview with Fox News Digital on Tuesday.
“I think that response, given the events that have transpired in this country where President Trump had an assassination attempt on his life, for the sitting U.S. president to be calling for anything other than unity, but instead using this opportunity to attack President Trump’s new vice presidential nominee, go after him on policy, it seems really out of touch, really in poor taste,” Sunshine said.
TRUMP ANNOUNCES OHIO SEN JD VANCE AS HIS 2024 RUNNING MATE
Sunshine continued, “It’s very clear that Joe Biden is not the person who can unify this country, as evidenced by that statement.”
Democrats wasted no time going after Vance, with many labeling the Ohio Republican as an “extremist.”
“Trump has selected far-right MAGA extremist JD Vance as his running mate. Vance is a 2020 election denier, supports a national abortion ban, and voted against IVF access,” Biden-Harris HQ, the Democrat’s official 2024 campaign account, posted on X after the announcement.
WHO IS TRUMP’S RUNNING MATE JD VANCE?
Conservatives on social media, including Trump adviser Stephen Miller, criticized Biden for the way the campaign is going after Vance.
“The staffers at Biden HQ are continuing to use wildly inflammatory rhetoric less than 2 days since an assassin nearly killed President Trump,” Miller wrote. “Will no one succeed in getting them to tamp down their rhetoric?
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Biden, in his address to the nation on Sunday, said, “Let’s remember here in America, our unity is the most elusive of all goals right now,” Biden said in an address to the nation on Sunday. “Nothing is more important for us now than standing together. We can do this.”
The Biden campaign pointed Fox News Digital to a comment on a press call Monday from spokesperson TJ Ducklo: “President Biden, Vice President Harris have never shied away from laying bare the stakes of this election. And that, in our view, is not at odds with the effort that both are leading to sort of restore civility to our politics, and to unite this country.”
Officer reported man at Trump rally with range-finder 30 mins before shots, source says
BETHEL PARK, Pa. – A local law enforcement officer spotted a suspicious man carrying a range-finder “in or just-outside” the venue before former President Donald Trump took the stage at his rally in Butler County, Pennsylvania on Saturday night, according to a law enforcement source.
The officer reported the sighting to state police, the source said. He took a photo, and there was a discussion about whether what he was carrying was a pair of binoculars to try and see the rally better.
A few minutes into Trump’s remarks, a would-be assassin identified as Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, opened fire, according to authorities.
FORMER SECRET SERVICE AGENT WARNS AGENCY ‘STRETCHED THIN’ WITH NEW RESPONSIBILITIES, LACK OF MANPOWER
He wounded the former president, killed a 50-year-old father of two and wounded two more spectators before a Secret Service counter-sniper neutralized the threat, according to authorities.
It was not immediately clear how long Crooks was on the roof, but sources say he was initially seen without the gun about 30 minutes before the attack.
State police did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the source’s version of events.
HERO TRUMP RALLY VICTIM COREY COMPERATORE DIED SHIELDING FAMILY AND ‘WOULD’VE DONE IT AGAIN,’ FRIEND SAYS
Several witnesses have also come forward in interviews and videos on social media claiming they reported seeing an armed man before the shooting started.
“Just because someone is on a roof doesn’t mean the [counter-sniper] guys can just open fire,” said Bill Gage, an expert on active shooter response who retired from the Secret Service after 13 years with the agency, including 6 ½ as a member of the counter assault team. “They operate under Graham v Connor use of force rules. They would have had to perceive a threat.”
Eventually, however, Crooks made it up onto the roof with DPMS AR-15 5.56 rifle, which authorities recovered at the scene. It had been purchased legally by his father more than a decade ago, according to law enforcement sources.
PENNSYLVANIA TRUMP RALLY SHOOTING SUSPECT PICTURED AFTER DEADLY ASSASSINATION ATTEMPT
Butler County Sheriff Michael Slupe said in interviews with local media that a county deputy confronted Crooks moments before the shooting but ducked for cover when he peered above the edge of the roof and the killer turned the gun on him.
“The officer had both hands up on the roof to get up onto the roof, [and] never made it because the shooter had turned towards the officer, and rightfully and smartfully, the officer let go,” he told KDKA-TV.
Security outside the Secret Service’s secured perimeter is typically handled by state and local law enforcement.
TRUMP ASSASSINATION ATTEMPT SHINES LIGHT ON RALLY SECURITY
The FBI announced earlier Monday that it had broken into Crooks’ phone and was examining the device for evidence.
Authorities were also still in search of a motive. They said it appeared that Crooks had acted as a lone wolf, but the investigation was ongoing.
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Nearly 100 people, including witnesses and members of law enforcement, had been interviewed as of Monday afternoon.
Who is Usha Vance, the wife of Trump’s vice president pick JD Vance?
Usha Vance, the wife of Ohio Sen. JD Vance was thrust into the national spotlight after former President Donald Trump chose her husband as his running mate Monday.
Usha Vance, née Chilukuri, born in 1986, was raised in San Diego, California, and attended Yale Law School, where she met the future Ohio senator, according to a report from the New York Times.
“We were friends, and I liked that he was very diligent,” she told NBC News about how she met her husband in a 2017 interview. “He would show up at 9 a.m. appointments that I would set up for us to start working on the brief together.”
TRUMP ANNOUNCES OHIO SEN JD VANCE AS HIS 2024 RUNNING MATE
“The thing that I remember most about Usha is just how completely forward and comfortable with herself she was,” the Ohio senator said of his wife during the interview. “(She was) so defensive about the things that she really cared about.”
Before law school, Vance received a bachelor’s degree in history from Yale and a master’s in Philosophy from the University of Cambridge.
The pair married in 2014 and have three children together: sons, Ewan, 6, and Vivek, 4, and a daughter, Mirabel, 2.
Vance completed multiple clerkships after her graduation from Yale, according to an Axios report, including for Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts and for Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh when he was serving on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.
FOX NEWS LEARNS BURGUM, RUBIO, INFORMED AHEAD OF VANCE ANNOUNCEMENT THEY WOULDN’T BE NAMED RUNNING MATE
She would later work for Munger, Tolles & Olson, a California law firm that described its culture as “radically progressive,” the report notes.
Vance has also worked to defend the University of California against allegations it violated Title IX and the Walt Disney Company against claims of copyright infringement.
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The wife and mother of three has in the past expressed skepticism of the possibility that her husband could be Trump’s vice presidential pick, telling Fox News last month such a decision would change the couple’s lives.
“I’m not raring to change anything about our lives right now,” she said while noting she is “open” to whatever happens.
Biden reveals what he said to Trump on phone call after assassination attempt
President Biden revealed that his phone call with former President Donald Trump was “very cordial” after the assassination attempt on Saturday.
“I told him how concerned I was and wanted to make sure I knew how he was actually doing,” Biden told NBC’s Lester Holt during an interview on Monday night. “He sounded good. He said he was fine, and he thanked me for calling.”
“I told him he was literally in the prayers of Jill and me, and his whole family was weathering this,” Biden added.
Holt’s wide-ranging interview touched on a number of topics about Biden’s troubled run for president in November and the way that the assassination attempt on Trump at his Pennsylvania rally changed the election.
BIDEN DEFIANT ABOUT PUSH TO OUST HIM FROM TICKET, REVEALS THOUGHTS ON TRUMP’S VP PICK
But Holt first focused on Biden’s own actions following the news of what had happened: Biden was in Delaware on a planned vacation when the attack happened, and he immediately canceled his plans and returned to the White House to address the nation. He announced within hours that he had spoken with Trump on the phone, which Trump praised his rival for reaching out to him.
“[My] first reaction was, oh my God, this is, oh, there’s so much violence now,” Biden told Holt. “I mean, the whole notion that there is this – there’s not place at all for violence in politics in America. None. Zero.”
STATE DEPT: WORLD HAS ‘QUESTIONS ABOUT OUR DEMOCRACY’ AFTER TRUMP SHOOTING, US MUST ‘RESPOND AS A NATION’
“We’ve reached the point where it’s become too commonplace, not assassinations, but to talk about, for example, you know, the Jan. 6 attack on the capitol,” Biden continued. “I got in this race early on in 2020 – for the 2020 race. I wasn’t going to run again because I had lost my son. I didn’t feel … and I watched what happened in Charlottesville, Virginia.”
“It was folks coming out of the woods with torches, carrying swastikas, singing the same Nazi bile, accompanied by the Klan,” he added. “A young woman was killed, and I was a bystander, and the president – then president – was asked, what do you think? He said, ‘there are very fine people on both sides.’”
TRUMP NOW HAS GOLDEN OPPORTUNITY TO FUNDAMENTALLY CHANGE 2024 RACE
“No excuse,” Biden reiterated. “Zero.”
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Holt reminded Biden that during a call with Democrats he said that they needed to put Trump “in the bull’s-eye”. Biden immediately clarified that he meant that the party must focus on Trump’s issues and shortcomings, and he regretted using the term, saying “it was a mistake to use” that language.
Don Jr dismisses MSNBC reporter in testy interview: ‘You couldn’t wait with your lies’
Donald Trump Jr. told an MSNBC reporter to “get out of here” during a tense on-air exchange at the Republican National Convention Monday after he was asked about the former president’s immigration policies.
Trump Jr. and his brother Eric were approached for an interview by MSNBC’s Jacob Soboroff on the floor of the RNC convention in Milwaukee, Wisc., where their father, former President Trump, officially became the GOP nominee just two days after surviving an assassination attempt.
Trump Jr., touted his father’s accomplishments during his four years in office before rejecting Soboroffs’ question about former President Trump being “a divisive figure.” Trump Jr. blamed the media for creating “divisiveness” around him.
RNC LIVE UPDATES: DONALD TRUMP REVEALS JD VANCE AS RUNNING MATE
“They lied about Russia, Russia collusion, they said he was a traitor, they went after him in every which way possible,” Trump Jr. said. “If the media actually starts being an honest broker, talking about the things that he did, the prosperity he brought, the peace deals that he signed around the world rather than the disaster that we’re living right now, I think you’d do everyone in the country a big favor.”
The exchange turned heated when Soboroff, who wrote the book “Separated: Inside an American Tragedy,” asked whether the former president was planning to impose family separations for a “second” time as part of his immigration policy if elected president and denied Trump Jr.’s assertions that it happened under the Obama administration.
“It’s MSDNC, so I expect nothing less from you clowns, even today,” Trump Jr. fired back, adopting the nickname often invoked by his father for the left-leaning network.
“Even 48 hours later, you couldn’t wait, you couldn’t wait with your lies and with your nonsense, so just get out of here,” he continued, waving away the reporter while turning his attention back to the convention stage.
The eldest Trump son has never been one to shy away from contentious exchanges with the media. In 2019, he famously sparred with ‘The View’ co-hosts, calling out Joy Behar for wearing blackface to prove that “we’ve all done things that we regret” when asked about controversial moments in his father’s past.
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Trump Jr. shared a photo of his bloodied father on Saturday with his fist in the air moments after the attempt on the former president’s life.
“He’ll never stop fighting to Save America,” he wrote alongside the photo.
The Saturday shooting at Trump’s rally in western Pennsylvania – where one spectator was killed and two more critically injured, while a bullet grazed his ear – has altered the tone and raised the stakes of the convention.
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The Trump campaign says that the former president – following his brush with death – at the convention will call for unity in the face of tragedy instead of criticizing his political adversaries.
FBI successfully gains access to cellphone of Trump’s would-be assassin
The FBI announced they have successfully gained access to the phone belonging to Thomas Matthew Crooks, the would-be assassin who opened fire on former President Trump at his rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, on Saturday.
“FBI technical specialists successfully gained access to Thomas Matthew Crooks’ phone, and they continue to analyze his electronic devices,” the agency wrote in a press release.
Law enforcement sources with knowledge of the situation tell Fox News the weapon Crooks used, a DPMS AR-15 5.56, is now at the FBI’s forensic labs in Quantico, Virginia, along with his phone, laptop and at least one Improvised Explosive Device from his car.
The FBI finished its search of Crooks’ home and vehicle. A little more than a dozen guns were found in the home. Crooks’ family is still cooperating with the FBI, Fox News has confirmed.
ASSASSINATION ATTEMPT ON TRUMP AT PENNSYLVANIA RALLY LEAVES 2 HURT, 2 DEAD, INCLUDING SHOOTER
House Homeland Security Chair Mark Green, R-Tenn., and Ranking Member Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., spoke with FBI Executive Assistant Director Robert Wells on Monday.
A committee spokesperson issued a statement to Fox News on where the investigation stands and what is happening next.
“The FBI is focused on the gunman, his motive, any potential associations, building a timeline of events, and related matters, while the Secret Service is conducting a separate review of its security protocol. Chairman Green is pleased to know the FBI has so far conducted nearly 100 interviews, and has access to the gunman’s phone. Chairman Green was assured by EAD Wells that the FBI intends to be transparent with Congress during its investigation. Chairman Green intends to schedule a site visit, if possible, once the scene has been processed, and looks forward to being briefed by USSS as soon as possible, as do Committee Members.” – House Homeland Security Committee Spokesperson
The FBI said it conducted nearly 100 interviews of law enforcement personnel, event attendees and other witnesses. It has also received hundreds of digital media tips, which include photos and videos taken at the scene.
The agency began its investigation into Crooks and the shooting shortly after the Saturday attack. Agents went to Crooks’ home and the home of his parents on Sunday and Monday. They are investigating the incident as an assassination attempt and possible domestic terrorism.
Trump broke his silence on the assassination attempt on Monday, saying he is alive “by luck or by God.”
“I’m not supposed to be here, I’m supposed to be dead,” Trump told the New York Post. “I’m supposed to be dead.”
“The doctor at the hospital said he never saw anything like this, he called it a miracle,” Trump also told the newspaper onboard his private plane while heading to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, for this week’s Republican National Convention. “By luck or by God, many people are saying it’s by God I’m still here.”
WHO WAS THOMAS MATTHEW CROOKS? WHAT WE KNOW ABOUT TRUMP’S ATTEMPTED ASSASSIN
Trump told the Post that had he not turned his head slightly to the right to read a chart on illegal immigration, the bullet that grazed him would have been fatal.
REPUBLICAN CONVENTION GETS UNDERWAY 2 DAYS AFTER TRUMP SURVIVED AN ASSASSINATION ATTEMPT
He described the Secret Service agents who rushed at him as “linebackers,” mentioning another one eliminated the gunman with “one shot right between the eyes.”
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“They did a fantastic job,” he told the Post. “It’s surreal for all of us.”