Trump pivots to Harris attack as Secret Service boss grilled on rally shooting: Live

With Joe Biden’s stunning announcement that he would not seek re-election nearly one month after his troubling debate performance against Donald Trump, Vice President Kamala Harris has emerged as a surprisingly strong potential challenger to the ex-president.

“I am honored to have the President’s endorsement and my intention is to earn and win this nomination,” she wrote Sunday in a statement shortly after Biden announced he was passing the torch.

“Over the past year, I have traveled across the country, talking with Americans about the clear choice in this momentous election. And that is what I will continue to do in the days and weeks ahead. I will do everything in my power to unite the Democratic Party—and unite our nation—to defeat Donald Trump and his extreme Project 2025 agenda.”

Harris — the first woman, the first African-American and the first person of Asian descent to serve in the nation’s second-highest office — has been dogged by dismal approval ratings and a policy portfolio that has seen her take on politically tricky issues, like the root causes of an immigration crisis that’s brought hundreds of thousands to the US in recent years.

But she has also spent the last three years building a profile on the world stage, most recently at last month’s Ukraine peace talks in Switzerland.

She’s also become the administration’s most prominent messenger on reproductive freedom in the wake of the Supreme Court’s Dobbs ruling, which marked the end of a half-century-old federal right to an abortion.

Harris’s “reproductive freedom tour” has taken her to events across the country where she has barnstormed events packed with female and minority voters.

Secret Service director Kimberly Cheatle will appear before the House Oversight Committee today to answer questions about the security failings that led to Trump’s shooting in Butler, Pennsylvania, nine days ago.

Expect lots of grandstanding from hysterical Republicans.

Meanwhile, here’s Trump saying he was not briefed by the service about the suspect in advance of the attack during an interview he and JD Vance conducted with Jesse Watters of Fox over the weekend.

Donald Trump has slammed Joe Biden after the president announced he will drop out of the 2024 race for the White House on Sunday and already pivoted to criticising Vice President Kamala Harris in his latest attack ad after Biden nominated her as his successor.

The storm around the president had been brewing ever since his disastrous performance at the first presidential debate in Atlanta a month ago, which sent his party into panic mode and prompted a wave of Democratic lawmakers, strategists, donors and pundits to call on the 81-year-old to bow out and make way for a younger nominee.

Now that he has done, the Republican persidential contender wrote in a post on Truth Social that Biden “was not fit to run for president, and is certainly not fit to serve.”

He added: “We will suffer greatly because of his presidency, but we will remedy the damage he has done very quickly.”

Trump’s running mate JD Vance called on Biden to resign from the White House too.

The Trump campaign’s first anti-Kamala attack ad, entitled “Paid the Price”, accuses Harris of being “in on” the alleged cover-up of the president’s apparent cognitive decline, the Veep having claimed that Biden was “tireless” and in “good shape” in interviews.

“Look what she got done: a border invasion, runaway inflation, the American Dream dead,” the ad states.

It is set to run in the key swing states of Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, and Pennsylvania, according to the campaign.

You can see it here, if you must.

He noted that he has “done some stuff personally in the past,” adding that “I’m not planning on doing that this time, and that includes not endorsing either of the candidates.”

While declining to endorse Trump, Zuckerberg told Bloomberg that “seeing Donald Trump get up after getting shot in the face and pump his fist in the air with the American flag is one of the most badass things I’ve ever seen in my life.”

Fresh from his election victory in 2016, then president-elect Donald Trump broke decades of US protocol by speaking directly with Taiwanese president Tsai Ing-wen. It was the first call of its kind since the 1979 diplomatic shift when Washington formally recognised the Chinese government and severed official ties with Taiwan.

Trump hinted at the time that the US might reconsider its commitment to the One-China Policy, through which it accepts that the administration in Beijing is the only official Chinese government, and acknowledges China’s claim of sovereignty over Taiwan.

But just as quickly as this call rattled the international community and the geopolitical balance of the Pacific region, there came an abrupt backtrack. In a subsequent call with Xi Jinping, Trump reassured the Chinese president that he was committed to maintaining the existing US policy after all.

This kind of inconsistency on thorny foreign policy issues characterised much of Trump’s first presidency, and Taiwan was given a worrying reminder of the episode this week when the Republican, pitching to be voted back into the White House this November, was asked whether he would defend the island in the event of an invasion from Beijing.

Shweta Sharma has the story.

Don’t fall for it,” was the stern warning from Whoopi Goldberg on Thursday. Talking on her chat show, The View, the Democrat-supporting actor was addressing the number of emotional speeches made by family members at last week’s Republican National Convention (RNC).

As Donald Trump accepted his third GOP nomination for president, he was joined by members of his family, as well as that of the family of his running mate, JD Vance. He spoke of unity as the glamorous “eyes and teeth” crowd jostled for position behind him. For a moment, you’d be forgiven for thinking it was an episode of Succession.

“I know his grandchild was up on the thing and they’re trying to humanise [Trump] and change your idea about who this guy is,” Goldberg told viewers. “Don’t fall for that.”

The day before, on Wednesday, Kai Trump, daughter of Donald Trump Jr, had taken to the stage to make an emotional speech. Wearing a bridal white dress, the 17-year-old told an adoring audience that she was speaking in order to “show a side of my grandpa that people often don’t see”.

“The media makes my grandpa seem like a different person, but I know him for who he is. He is caring and loving,” she said, as sweet as apple pie.

Read more from Zoë Beaty.

“It’s a good thing to get along not a bad thing. I used to tell him, ‘why don’t you do something else?’ All he wants to do is buy nuclear weapons and make them,” Trump said of the North Korean leader. “I said, ‘just relax, chill.’ He got enough. He got so much nuclear weapons.”

Before he was Donald Trump’s 2024 running mate, JD Vance was known, at least in the State Department, for grilling nominees with a questionnaire about LGBTQ+ rights, Pride flags, diversity and inclusion, and other so-called “woke” issues,” part of a series of holds he placed on Biden nominees that delayed the confirmation of more than 30 diplomats to senior positions until this April.

“The publics of many of our allies, and those countries we seek to build stronger relationships with, have traditional Christian, Jewish, Muslim, or Hindu moral values,” reads one section of the questionnaire, which was obtained by The Washington Post. “If confirmed, how would you explain to them what the United States’ promoting ‘human rights for LGBTQ people’ would look like in their country?”

Another asks potenital nominees how they respond to a 2021 Biden administration directive allowing the State Department to fly the LGBTQ+ Pride flag over US embassies, after the Trump administration forbid the practice.

“Where, if anywhere, do you believe it is not appropriate to ‘celebrate and prominently support local and regional Pride celebrations’?” Vance asked.

More details in our full story.

Donald Trump’s running mate JD Vance joined the former president on the campaign trail in Michigan on Saturday, 20 July.

Vance accused Kamala Harris of accomplishing little during her time in the White House as Joe Biden’s vice president.

“What the hell have you done other than collect a check?” Vance asked during his speech, prompting the audience to burst into applause.

Trump introduced Vance as his vice president pick during the Republican National Convention last week, where he officially became the Republican presidential nominee.