RNC 2024 live: Trump ends longest speech in convention history with kiss from Melania

A law enforcement official told the outlet that the only other recent activity on the gunman’s phone was texts from his parents, asking about his whereabouts. The texts from Crooks’ parents started at about 1pm and continued during the afternoon, according to the report.

To attorney Ty Cobb, who served as Donald Trump’s White House counsel during the ex-president’s first year in office, this week’s four-day GOP nominating pageant was, for the party’s purposes, “executed well.” Republicans have never appeared more unified, and their messaging is clear, Cobb said Friday morning.

“Sadly though, and obviously, it is mostly theater,” Cobb told The Independent. “Trump is an empty soul. He doesn’t stand for anything but pure ambition. There is no principle at all.”

And they were already preparing the talking points, as Eric Garcia reports.

Donald Trump’s would-be assassin Thomas Matthew Crooks appears to have scoped out the site of the former president’s campaign rally six days before he went to the Butler, Pennsylania, event and opened fire, according to a report.

The FBI provided an update on the shooting investigation to Senate and House lawmakers on Wednesday, revealing new details about the 20-year-old gunman’s actions prior to the shooting.

Sources told CNN that Crooks’ online search history revealed he had looked up information on Ethan Crumbley, the school shooter who killed four students at Oxford High School in Michigan in 2021. A screenshot of Crumbley’s arrest photo was also found on Crooks’ personal cellphone, the outlet reported.

The Secret Service said it was “appalled” by “disparaging” and “disgusting” attacks on women who serve as agents in response to the string of sexist comments from people online criticizing the agency’s failure to prevent the Trump rally shooting.

In the week after a gunman opened fire at a Trump rally in Pennslyvania, killing one person and injuring three others including the former president, some notable right-wingers have accused women in the Secret Service of failing to do their job.

Ariana Baio has the story.

John Bowden filed this report from the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee.

Napoleon had the island of Saint Helena, Leon Trotsky had various spots across Turkey, Norway, and Mexico. These days political exiles from the UK all appear to end up in a far more desolate place: The Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Among the crowds of US political bigwigs, state delegates, and zealous supporters of Donald Trump, several familiar British faces have appeared – usually with the prefix “former” before their job title – to rub shoulders with the GOP elite.

At the 2024 convention, where Trump officially accepted the Republican presidential nomination and selected JD Vance as his running mate, a roll call of infamous names from across the pond dropped by to pay their respects.

On Donald Trump’s convention speech, Jon Sopel writes:

The political unity that he is offering is very much on his terms: you can have political unity and America will come together – but only if you stop persecuting me; if you stop the prosecutions. It will only happen once you realise that I am the true champion of democracy, not its destroyer. In other words, can we all forget about 6 January, please?

“This is the first good thing that‘s happened to Democrats in the last three weeks,” David Axelrod said on CNN. “This really reminded everyone why Donald Trump is fundamentally unpopular outside this room.”