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https://www.politifact.com/article/2024/jul/19/trump-fact-check-2024-rnc/

Former President Donald Trump closed the Republican National Convention by accepting the presidential nomination and offering a speech that began somber and turned combative.

First, he recounted surviving an assassination attempt five days earlier in Butler, Pennsylvania.

"You’ll never hear it from me again a second time because it’s too painful to tell," Trump told a hushed audience. "I stand before you in this arena only by the grace of Almighty God."

When Trump said, "I'm not supposed to be here tonight," the audience chanted, "Yes you are. Yes you are." Onstage, Trump kissed the firefighter’s uniform of Corey Comperatore, whom Trump’s would-be assassin killed.

After about 20 minutes, Trump’s speech shifted. He countered Democrats’ claims that he endangers democracy, praised the federal judge who dismissed the classified documents case against him and called the legal charges "partisan witch hunts."

Though he criticized the policies of his opponent, Democratic President Joe Biden, Trump said he’d avoid naming him.

Trump occasionally offered conciliatory notes, but more often repeated questionable assertions we’ve repeatedly fact-checked. Here are some.

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A Marine who stormed the U.S. Capitol and apparently flashed a Nazi salute in front of the building was sentenced on Friday to nearly five years in prison.

Tyler Bradley Dykes, of South Carolina, was an active-duty Marine when he grabbed a police riot shield from the hands of two police officers and used it to push his way through police lines during the attack by the mob of then-President Donald Trump’s supporters on Jan. 6, 2021.

Dykes, who pleaded guilty in April to assault charges, previously was convicted of a crime stemming from the 2017 white nationalist Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. Dykes was transferred to federal custody in 2023 after he served a six-month sentence in a state prison.

U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell sentenced Dykes, who’s 26, to four years and nine months of imprisonment, the Justice Department said.

Federal prosecutors had recommended a prison sentence of five years and three months for Dykes.

“He directly contributed to some of the most extreme violence on the Capitol’s east front,” prosecutors wrote.

Dykes’ attorneys requested a two-year prison sentence. They said Dykes knows his actions on Jan. 6 were “illegal, indefensible and intolerable.”

“Tyler hates his involvement in the Capitol riot,” his lawyers wrote. “He takes complete responsibility for his actions. Tyler apologizes for those actions.”

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https://www.axios.com/2024/07/19/trump-republican-national-convention-live-updates

Former President Trump took the stage with a bandaged ear only days after surviving an attempted assassination in Pennsylvania to accept the GOP presidential nomination at the Republican National Convention Thursday night. He left it after roughly 90 minutes of a mostly familiar stump speech.

Why it matters: While his speech — widely viewed as a test of his plea for unity — began on a personal tone, it soon returned to Trumpian talking points, misleading statements and lies.

Trump has received a week of relatively positive press while his Democratic opponent President Biden faces mounting calls from his party to exit the race.
The former president described the assassination attempt at the top of his speech, saying that it's the only time he'll talk about it, "because it's too painful to tell."

State of play: He focused primarily on foreign policy, the economy and immigration.

At on point, he described a "massive invasion at our southern border" and a planet "teetering on edge of World War III," a likely reference to the conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza that have begun since his successor took office.

The big picture: The GOP tried to appear as a unified front this week, with many of Trump's onetime presidential rivals appearing as campaign surrogates. Democrats have been in disarray over the top of their ticket.


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https://www.bbc.com/news/videos/cldy39vpv4qo

Several supporters of former President Donald Trump wore bandages on their ears to the third night of the Republican National Convention (RNC) in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Members of the RNC's Arizona delegation said they were wearing the bandages as a sign of solidarity with the former president after he survived an assassination attempt.

One supporter said she had bandaged her own ear to help Mr Trump "set a new fashion statement" and to let him know "how much we love him".

Mr Trump has appeared at the convention wearing a bandage after he was shot in the ear while he was speaking at a Pennsylvania rally on Saturday.

The former president is due to deliver a speech at the convention on Thursday, when he is expected to be confirmed as the Republican Party's 2024 presidential nominee.

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https://apnews.com/article/sheila-jackson-lee-died-b2de57de41d39053a7648b16438eb009

Longtime U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee of Texas, who helped lead federal efforts to protect women from domestic violence and recognize Juneteenth as a national holiday, has died. She was 74.

Lillie Conley, her chief of staff, confirmed that Jackson Lee, who had pancreatic cancer, died in Houston Friday night with her family around her.

The Democrat had represented her Houston-based district and the nation’s fourth-largest city since 1995. She had previously had breast cancer and announced the pancreatic cancer diagnosis on June 2.

“The road ahead will not be easy, but I stand in faith that God will strengthen me,” Jackson Lee said in a statement then.

Bishop James Dixon, a longtime friend in Houston who visited Jackson Lee earlier this week, said he will remember her as a fighter.

“She was just a rare, rare jewel of a person who relentlessly gave everything she had to make sure others had what they needed. That was Sheila,” he said.

Jackson Lee had just been elected to the Houston district once represented by Barbara Jordan, the first Black woman elected to Congress from a Southern state since Reconstruction, when she was immediately placed on the high-profile House Judiciary Committee in 1995.

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https://apnews.com/article/political-violence-trump-biden-pelosi-assassination-c4423ed88df6f4b3557aa11e798f855d
WASHINGTON (AP) — The leader of a conservative think tank on Thursday misrepresented partisan differences in political violence in the United States, wrongly suggesting that people associated with left-wing causes commit more violence than those on the right.
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HERITAGE FOUNDATION PRESIDENT KEVIN ROBERTS: “Most political violence in the last 25 years has been initiated by the left.”

THE FACTS: Roberts’ remarks came in response to questions about comments earlier this month in which he said the country was in the midst of “the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.”

He told reporters Thursday that he considers himself a historian of the American Revolution and that his comments about a second revolution were a reference to “ambitious policy plans” that Republicans have should former President Donald Trump win the 2024 election. Roberts’ organization has proposed a sweeping overhaul of the federal government known as Project 2025.

Roberts said his comments about political violence were meant to be seen in the historical context.

A deeper look at the available evidence, however, shows that right-wing groups have committed more acts of political violence in recent U.S. history.

Two years ago a team of researchers from four universities examined court records and other data relating to 3,500 extremists active in the U.S. between 1948 and 2022. The individuals were split into three groups — left wing, right wing and relating to Islamic extremism. While some in the database had committed violent acts, others had raised money for extremist groups, volunteered or spoken out in favor of them.

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Thomas's classmate is interviewed.
Thomas regularly mocked his classmates for supporting trump
https://nypost.com/2024/07/17/us-news/thomas-matthew-crooks-mocked-classmate-for-supporting-trump-in-2016-he-did-not-like-our-politicians/
Would-be assassin Thomas Matthew Crooks mocked classmate for supporting Trump in 2016: ‘He did not like our politicians’

Would-be Donald Trump assassin Thomas Crooks became “smug and arrogant” in class whenever students talked politics — and questioned why a classmate would support Trump, according to a former classmate.

“He just did not like politicians, especially with the choices that we had,” said Vincent Taormina, who went to high school with Crooks in 2016 when Trump, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders were all in the presidential race.

“He did not like our politicians,” Taormina told Fox News Digital, recalling how Crooks once mocked him and insinuated he was “stupid” for supporting Trump

“I brought up the fact that I’m Hispanic and, you know, I’m for Trump. And he said, ‘Well, you’re Hispanic, so shouldn’t you hate Trump?'” Taormina said, recounting an English class discussion where Crooks came after him.

“No. He’s great. He was a great president. He [Crooks] called me stupid — or insinuated that I was stupid,” Taormina said.


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https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c84985w0w8vo
A teenage boy followed a 15-year-old girl for 45 minutes around a town centre before he stabbed her to death.
The boy has admitted killing Holly Newton (in Hexham, Northumberland), but denies he intended to harm her.
Jurors were told Holly was stabbed "many, many times" in an alleyway next to a pizza shop in January 2023.
The 17-year-old defendant, who was 16 at the time and cannot be identified, admitted manslaughter but denies murder.
Opening the trial, prosecutor David Brooke KC said the boy did "not dispute being responsible for stabbing Holly to death", but claimed his "mind went blank" during the attack.
Holly was stabbed in an alley at 5pm on 27 January 2023.
Her alleged murderer, who was known to her, had been "careful not to be seen" as he followed her for 45 minutes before the attack.
Passers-by and staff from the pizza shop heard Holly's screams and pulled the youth "forcibly" off her as he was "still stabbing her" with a kitchen knife he had brought from home.
Holly was taken to [hospital] but declared dead soon after, while the defendant was arrested at the scene.
She had 36 injuries, including 12 stab wounds and 19 caused by the slashing of a knife which broke during the attack.
The prosecutor said the assault lasted for at least a minute during which the "angry" boy stabbed Holly "many, many times".
His "intention was obvious", jurors were told.
The youth also denies wounding another teenage boy who was injured while trying to rescue Holly, the court heard, but has admitted illegal possession of a knife.
Mr Brooke told jurors the "violent death of a child" was "obviously shocking" and would "naturally arouse strong emotion".

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Pelosi privately told Biden polls show he cannot win and will take down the House; Biden responded with defensiveness
https://www.cnn.com/2024/07/17/politics/nancy-pelosi-biden-conversation/index.html
Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi privately told President Joe Biden in a recent conversation that polling shows that the president cannot defeat Donald Trump and that Biden could destroy Democrats’ chances of winning the House in November if he continues seeking a second term, according to four sources briefed on the call.

The president responded by pushing back, telling Pelosi he has seen polls that indicate he can win, one source said. Another one of the sources described Biden as getting defensive about the polls. At one point, Pelosi asked Mike Donilon, Biden’s longtime adviser, to get on the line to talk over the data.

This phone call would mark the second known conversation between the California lawmaker and Biden since the president’s disastrous debate on June 27. While the exact date of the conversation was not clear, one source described it as being within the last week. Pelosi and Biden also spoke in early July.

None of the sources indicated whether Pelosi told Biden in this conversation that she believes the president should drop out of the 2024 race.

Pelosi has spent the weeks following the debate listening to concerns from her colleagues. Pelosi made waves when she said in an interview last week: “It’s up to the president to decide if he is going to run. We’re all encouraging him to make that decision because time is running short.”

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'We're close to the end': Biden world braces for the possibility that the president steps aside
As Trump is about to accept his third consecutive GOP nomination for president, Biden is off the campaign trail with Covid.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/rcna162494

July 18, 2024, 1:12 PM EDT
By Natasha Korecki, Carol E. Lee and Monica Alba
WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden’s political world is collapsing. Top allies have either publicly or privately called on him to step aside. Major donations have fallen off a cliff. Grassroots fundraising is not keeping up with the demands of a campaign that needs to aggressively scale up three months before the presidential election. Members of his own re-election effort have already declared he has no path to victory.

Since a disastrous debate in Atlanta upended the trajectory of his campaign three weeks ago, Biden has again and again attempted to dig in, bucking efforts to dislodge him from power.

But there is now a palpable sense that the ground has shifted underneath him, according to five people with knowledge of the situation, even among some of the president’s most defiant internal backers who now believe the writing is on the wall.

“We’re close to the end,” a person close to Biden said.


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A wave of IT outages swept across the globe Friday morning, sending airports, airlines, banks and other institutions into a screeching halt as some Microsoft-based computers ceased to work.

CrowdStrike -- an American cybersecurity technology firm that provides cloud workload protection, threat intelligence and cyberattack response services -- said the outage, which sparked chaos for many, was not a cyberattack. Instead, there was an issue with software and a fix had been deployed.

"CrowdStrike is actively working with customers impacted by a defect found in a single content update for Windows hosts. Mac and Linux hosts are not impacted. This is not a security incident or cyberattack. The issue has been identified, isolated and a fix has been deployed," said Crowdstrike CEO George Kurtz on social media Friday morning. "We refer customers to the support portal for the latest updates and will continue to provide complete and continuous updates on our website. We further recommend organizations ensure they’re communicating with CrowdStrike representatives through official channels. Our team is fully mobilized to ensure the security and stability of CrowdStrike customers."

American Airlines, United and Delta asked the FAA for global ground stop on all flights, according to an alert from the FAA on Friday morning and, as of 6:25 a.m. ET, at least 540 flights in the U.S. have been cancelled.

“Earlier this morning, a technical issue with a vendor impacted multiple carriers, including American. As of 5 a.m. ET, we have been able to safely re-establish our operation. We apologize to our customers for the inconvenience," the statement read.

The FAA told air traffic controllers to tell airborne pilots that airlines are currently experiencing communication issues.

https://abcnews.go.com/US/american-airlines-issues-global-ground-stop-flights/story?id=112092372

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Two Scoops, Two Coups

https://www.yahoo.com/news/republicans-lay-groundwork-deny-2024-023008536.html

MILWAUKEE — Four years ago, Republicans sought to throw out the 2020 presidential election results and disenfranchise millions of Americans based on false allegations of widespread voter fraud, fueling a violent riot at the U.S. Capitol.

Now, despite Trump’s triumphant return to the top of the Republican Party, and polling that shows him positioned to retake the White House, Republicans are making election fraud a running theme at this week’s Republican National Convention in Milwaukee.

And there’s one group the GOP is stoking fears about more than any other ahead of the November election: illegal immigrants.

“We cannot allow the many millions of illegal aliens they allowed to cross our borders, harm our citizens, or disrupt our elections. We will not allow it,” House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), who led the legal effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election results, said in a speech on Tuesday.

Other top Republicans were even more explicit about a supposed plot by Democrats to flood the country with illegal voters.

“Democrats cynically decided they wanted votes from illegals more than they wanted to protect our children,” Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) said in his own remarks Tuesday night.

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https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2024/07/trump-rnc-republican-convention-mood-vibe-unity.html

Republicans Feel Invincible Right Now
Donald Trump has never enjoyed an RNC like this one.

The 2024 Republican National Convention is a happy place. That’s unusual. In recent cycles, whether the nominee has been John McCain, Mitt Romney, or Donald Trump, there have always been substantial pockets of discontent within the arena.

The sunny vibe is especially unusual because the now-official party nominee was shot in the ear on Saturday, coming literally within an inch of his life. What could explain the way delegates and other conventiongoers so quickly moved beyond that trauma and pivoted to joy?

The only way to put it is that Republicans are feeling invincible.

Trump was already leading the election before Joe Biden’s catastrophic debate performance kicked off an ongoing multiweek spectacle of the Democratic Party’s destroying itself in the broad light of day. Trump was then leading by more. Then he survived an assassination attempt. If possible, he is now likely leading by even more. Republicans are riding a euphoria they have never quite experienced during Trump’s time in politics. It’s unusual. They can’t help but speculate about divine intervention.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwQjew4TBCUHey /pol/, I've been chewing over the recent attempt on Trump and got thinking about his past rallies. Is it possible that despite tight security, there’s always been one critical vulnerability left unguarded at each event? What if this pattern allowed the recent incident to occur?

I'm calling on all anons to dig into footage from past Trump rallies. Let’s analyze and see if there’s a trend of overlooked security gaps that could potentially allow a lunatic to slip through. If you’ve got access to videos, expert analyses, or even insider info on rally security setups, this could be big.

Let’s compile our findings and see if there’s more to the story. Could this have been an overlooked flaw all along? Time to put on our detective hats and find out. Any contributions or insights are welcome.

TL;DR: Need help examining past Trump rally security for consistent lapses. Let’s uncover the truth together.

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A masked man armed with an AK-47 and a full magazine of ammunition was reportedly arrested blocks away from the Republican National Convention on Monday night. Homeland Security investigators and Capitol police saw the man approaching near the RNC permitter, blocks from the Fiserv Forum in Milwaukee, a federal law enforcement source told Fox News. The man was wearing a ski mask and hauling a tactical bag containing the weapon and a full magazine, the outlet reported.

Milwaukee Police confirmed the report to The Associated Press and said the 21-year-old man was arrested and charges are pending against him.

U.S. Capitol Police spotted the man around 1 p.m. Monday “looking suspicious, wearing a ski mask and a large tactical backpack in the street,” police said in a statement. Capitol police stopped him and determined he had a concealed gun without a concealed-carry permit, police told AP.

The arrest comes after the attempted assassination on former President Trump on Saturday, which led to increased security at the RNC. Authorities said Thomas Crooks tried to shoot Trump with an AR-15. He killed one rallygoer in Butler, Pennsylvania, before a counter-sniper fatally shot him.

On Tuesday, police fatally shot a man blocks away from the convention perimeter, near 14th and Vliets streets in Milwaukee. Witnesses said two men were fighting in King Park and one pulled a knife.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/masked-man-with-ak-47-and-full-magazine-arrested-outside-rnc-reports/ar-BB1q766L