Combative Biden refuses to debate Trump again before DNC amid plot to oust him: Live

California Democrat Rep Adam Schiff — who is running for the state’s vacant Senate seat — warned donors in the Hamptons on Saturday of a wipeout for the party if President Joe Biden remains in the race as the nominee at the top of the ticket, The New York Times reports.

Citing two sources with direct knowledge of Schiff’s remarks, the outlet reports the congressman as saying not only would the party lose the White House, but most likely the Senate and any opportunity to take back the House of Representatives.

“I think if he is our nominee, I think we lose,” Schiff at the fundraiser, a person with access to a transcription of a recording of the event told the Times. “And we may very, very well lose the Senate and lose our chance to take back the House.”

There are private concerns within the Democratic Party about the prospects for down-ballot candidates if Biden remains in the race, but few are voicing their fears in public. There had been a small but growing number of people calling for him to step aside but that has dropped off in the days since the attempt on the life of Republican nominee Donald Trump.

Biden insists he will remain the party’s nominee.

A bipartisan resolution honoring former fire department chief Corey Comperatore who was killed while shielding his family during the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, was introduced in the House of Representatives yesterday by Florida Representatives Jared Moskowitz (D) and Matt Gaetz (R).

A hard truth about the events that shape us, our daily lives, and our society:

Sometimes, it’s all about chance, about circumstances falling in one direction and not another, about interventions in the nick of time or missteps that allow for disruption.

Sometimes history can come down to inches.

CLAIM: A law enforcement sniper assigned to former President Donald Trump’s rally Saturday in Butler, Penn., says the head of the Secret Service ordered him not to shoot the suspect accused of attempting to assassinate Trump.

AP’S ASSESSMENT: False. Snipers killed the suspected shooter moments after he opened fire on the former president, bloodying Trump’s ear, killing one rally attendee and injuring two. The Secret Service and the Butler Police Department say they have no agents, officers or employees with the name of the person claiming to be the sharpshooter.

THE FACTS: Following Saturday’s attempt on Trump’s life, a poster on the online message board 4chan wrote that they were a sniper assigned to the rally, and that they can be seen in a photo of two law enforcement officers on the roof at the rally.

“My name is Jonathan Willis,” the poster wrote. “I came here to inform the public that I had the assassin in my sights for at least 3 minutes, but the head of the secret service refused to give the order to take out the perp. 100% the top brass prevented me from killing the assassin before he took the shots at president Trump,” the post claimed.

But there is no agent or officer by the name of Jonathan Willis working for the Secret Service or the Butler police, and no internet records of such an officer could be located.

A spokesman for the Secret Service said snipers are trained and instructed to act whenever they see a threat, and do not await instructions before taking a shot to neutralize a suspect. He said he couldn’t discuss the specifics of agency communication or the details of the ongoing investigation but said the post was false.

Witnesses at the rally alerted law enforcement to the suspect, identified as Thomas Matthew Crooks, after they saw him perched atop a nearby roof. A local law enforcement officer climbed to the roof and found Crooks, who pointed the rifle at the officer. The officer retreated down the ladder, and the gunman quickly fired toward Trump, the officials said. That’s when U.S. Secret Service gunmen shot him, officials have said.

New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has angrily called for the retirement of an anonymous Democratic lawmaker who said the party is resigned to a Trump victory in November.

“We’ve all resigned ourselves to a second Trump presidency,” an unnamed senior House Democrat told Axios on Sunday, a day after the president survived as attempted assassination.

“If you’re a ‘senior Democrat’ that feels this way, you should absolutely retire and make space for true leadership that refuses to resign themselves to fascism,” AOC responded on X.

“This kind of leadership is functionally useless to the American people,” she continued. “Retire.”

In a leaked video of Donald Trump’s call with Robert F Kennedy Jr, the former president describes the bullet that grazed his ear as being like “the world’s largest mosquito”.

RFK Jr has since apologized for the leak, posting on X: “When President Trump called me I was taping with an in-house videographer. I should have ordered the videographer to stop recording immediately. I am mortified that this was posted. I apologize to the president.”

Shahana Yasmin, Justin Rohrlich and Alisha Rahaman Sarkar have this on the gunman who opened fire on Trump at the weekend.

The father of the 20-year-old would-be Trump assassin Thomas Matthew Crooks was previously identified by the former president’s campaign team as one of the voters in his area most likely to respond favorably to pro-gun messaging.

That’s according to confidential data obtained by the UK’s Channel 4 News, which said 53-year-old Matthew Crooks– who legally purchased the AR-15 rifle used by his son to fire at the Republican – was covertly profiled by the Trump team in 2016 as “a strong Republican, likely gun owner and ‘hunter.’”

The campaign’s private database analyzed 6.7m people in the Keystone State, a crucial battleground in the race for president, listing Crooks Sr, a registered Libertarian, as among the top 20 prospects of 19,000 residents in the Pittsburgh suburb of Bethel Park, Channel 4 reported.

He scored highly “across a range of gun-related [data] models,” according to the outlet, and was flagged by the Trump team as a voter “who could be susceptible to political messages about gun-rights.”