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Top Democrat congressional Dems praise Biden for stepping aside but reject the 27 group approval supporting Harris.
Donald Trump’s campaign released an update on the former president’s health Saturday, one week after he survived an attempted assassination at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.
The memo, from Texas Rep. Ronny Jackson, who served as Trump’s White House physician, offers new details on the nature of the GOP nominee’s injuries and the treatment he received in the immediate aftermath of the attack.
According to Jackson, Trump sustained a gunshot wound to the right ear from a high-powered riffle that came “less than a quarter of an inch from entering his head, and struck the top of his right ear.”
The bullet track, he said, “produced a 2 cm wide wound that extended down to the cartilaginous surface of the ear. There was initially significant bleeding, followed by marked swelling of the entire upper ear.”
While the swelling has since resolved and the wound “is beginning to granulate and heal properly,” he said Trump is still experiencing intermittent bleeding, requiring the dressing that was on display at last week’s Republican National Convention. At Saturday’s rally, the white gauze on Trump’s ear was replaced by a skin-colored bandage.
“Given the broad and blunt nature of the wound itself, no sutures were required,” Jackson wrote.
Trump was initially treated by medical staff at Butler Memorial Hospital. According to Jackson, doctors “provided a thorough evaluation for additional injuries that included a CT of his head.”
Trump, he said, “will have further evaluations, including a comprehensive hearing exam, as needed. He will follow up with his primary care physician, as directed by the doctors that initially evaluated him,” he wrote.
“In summary, former President Trump is doing well, and he is recovering as expected from the gunshot wound sustained last Saturday afternoon,” he added.
The letter is the first official update about the former president’s condition since the night of the shooting.
Jackson, a staunch Trump supporter, said in the letter that, as Trump’s former doctor, he was deeply concerned about the former president’s wellbeing in the aftermath of the attack and met him in Bedminster, New Jersey, late Saturday after Trump returned from Pennsylvania “to personally check on him, and offer my assistance in any way possible.”
He said he has been with Trump since that time, evaluating and treating his wound daily. That includes traveling with him Saturday to Michigan, where the former president will hold his first rally since the shooting, joined by his newly named running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance.
Jackson appears to be licensed to practice medicine in Florida, according to a state health department database. Records from the American Board of Emergency Medicine show that Jackson does have a certification in Emergency Medicine, valid through the end of 2025.
A spokesperson for the congressman did not immediately provide a response and Trump campaign’s did not immediately respond to questions.
Last year, Trump’s campaign released a letter on President Joe Biden’s 81st birthday from Dr. Bruce A. Aronwald, a New Jersey physician, who said he had been the former president’s doctor since 2021.
Harris’s support rose only among twenty-seven Democrats who haven’t found closure while other are in disagreement. However, top Democrats donors have been fighting discussing the pac of donations fund that Biden collected. They want to break even what each one donated in order to take a decision later, if to support her or not. They agreed that they will claim back their donations money after hours of confusion that followed Biden’s withdrawal. Their position reflect the internal division amongst donors in what saw them consider being limited only to the Harris option as if they were forced to support her. The US President campaign office didn’t answer questions after being asked by CNN reporters.
Top Republicans to turn heat up on Secret Service chief over Trump shooting
The Director of Secret Service has a date with Republicans congressmen who are going to turn the heat up on the case of an assassination attempt of a President rather than a nomination. Failing security protocols, avoiding questions, and just giving one interview after the rally event happened in Butler, Pennsylvania. Top congress Republicans saw this as a desperate cancelation of the investigation of the assassination attempt on he former President.
Republican lawmakers are planning to return to Congress on Monday with the director of the Secret Service in their sights, as their frustration and anger grow over the agency’s response to an assassination attempt against Donald Trump.
First on the agenda will be a House committee hearing on Monday with Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle, which Speaker Mike Johnson said would make for “must-see TV” for Americans concerned about security lapses at the Pennsylvania rally.
“She’s got a lot to answer for. And these concerns are bipartisan,” Mr Johnson told CNN on Sunday.
Republicans, who control the House, have been unified in pushing Ms Cheatle to step down – or be fired – after a 20-year-old gunman was able to shoot the former president in the ear at the Butler, Pennsylvania, rally last Saturday. Many of the lawmakers confronted her at the Republican convention last week, releasing videos of them demanding answers.
Her agency is charged with providing protection to more than the president and his family, including former presidents, others in line to the White House and political candidates.
US media is reporting that Trump had sought additional security in the months leading up to the assassination attempt, but the agency had turned them down or been unable to fulfill the requests due to staffing shortages. CNN, BBC’s news partner, has reported that Trump’s security frustrations go back to two years ago.
Agency spokesperson Anthony Guglielmi said in a statement that “in some instances where specific Secret Service specialized units or resources were not provided, the agency made modifications”. That included relying on state and local law enforcement.
Eric Trump, the former president’s son, said he had been calling for beefed up security throughout the campaign, as he blamed the Biden administration and Ms Cheatle on Sunday for the assassination attempt and argued there had been “no accountability” for the agency’s actions.
“She should be out of a job,” he told CNN News.
Speaking to CNN, Mr Johnson said that in addition to the House hearing, lawmakers on Monday would release more details about a bipartisan task force with subpoena authority charged with investigating the Secret Service’s response.
“The initial excuses that [Ms Cheatle] has given for the lapses that happened last Saturday are just unbelievable, so we’re going to get down to the bottom of it,” he said.
Senators, too, are preparing to dig in on the Secret Service.
Republican Senator Ron Johnson told CNN News on Sunday that he would soon release “preliminary” information from his own report investigating the attack.
The Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general is also looking the attack, which occurred after the Secret Service identified the gunman as suspicious some 20 minutes before he opened fire, lawmakers revealed this weekend.
Mr Johnson’s appearance on CNN came just a day after reports emerged that top officials at the Secret Service had denied some requests from Trump’s security team for additional resources in the two years leading up to the assassination attempt.
The report, first published in the Washington Post, said the agency had refused additional resources such as more agents and snipers because of a lack of resources and staffing shortages within the Secret Service.
Mr Johnson blamed the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) for failing to allocate more resources to the Secret Service, an agency that it oversees.
The Republican House speaker told CNN on Sunday that Congress had increased funding to DHS in recent years, but that DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas was responsible for ensuring the Secret Service had enough funds.
“Secretary Mayorkas is in charge of that agency. If he needed to allocate more resources to the Secret Service than that should have been done,” Mr Johnson said.
Mr Johnson added that he had spoken with Mr Mayorkas hours after the assassination attempt and that the DHS leader was unable to answer “basic questions”, including whether the gunman, Thomas Crooks, had used a drone to survey the outdoor rally area.
Law enforcement officials told US media on Saturday that Crooks had flown a drone above the site ahead of the shooting.
Trump has made several appearances since the incident, including at a rally in Grand Rapids, Michigan on Saturday, where he told the crowd that he “took a bullet for Democracy”.
His former White House physician, Dr Ronny Jackson, released a statement the same day saying the bullet created a 2cm-wide wound on Trump’s ear that was beginning to “heal properly”.
Five questions for Secret Service after Trump shooting
Several major questions have emerged for the US Secret Service to answer in the aftermath of the shooting of Donald Trump at a rally in Pennsylvania.
The FBI has taken on the role of lead investigator into the incident, during which one person was killed and two others critically injured – while Trump was wounded in the ear.
As the US demands answers, the Secret Service says it is working to discover “what happened, how it happened, and how we can prevent an incident like this from ever taking place again”.
Its chief, Kimberly Cheatle, has been summoned to testify before a committee of the US House of Representatives on 22 July.
Here are some of the questions that experts have started asking.
Why was gunman’s roof not secured in advance?
It remains unclear how suspected gunman Thomas Matthew Crooks got access to the roof of a building near the rally that was little more than 130m (430 ft) from Trump.
The rooftop was a known vulnerability before the event, according to NBC News, which cited two sources familiar with Secret Service operations.
“Someone should have been on the roof or securing the building so no one could get on the roof,” NBC quoted one of the sources as saying.
As well as the access question, it has been suggested that the line of sight from the rooftop to Trump’s podium area should have been blocked off.
Crooks should not have been able to get a direct sight of Trump, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas told ABC News on Monday.
Mr Mayorkas said officials would “really study the event independently, and make recommendations to the Secret Service and to me”.
Were warnings about the gunman passed on?
An eyewitness to the shooting told the BBC that he and others had “clearly” spotted Crooks crawling around on the roof with a rifle. They alerted police but the suspect continuing moving around for several minutes before firing shots and then being shot dead himself, the eyewitness said.
FBI special agent Kevin Rojek admitted it had been “surprising” that the attacker had been able to open fire.
The county sheriff has confirmed that Crooks was spotted by a local police officer, who was unable to stop him in time. Something that remains unclear is whether this information reached the agents around Trump.
Crooks was already on officials’ radar, according to a senior law enforcement official. They anonymously told CNN that officers thought he was acting suspiciously near the event magnetometers. This information was allegedly relayed to the Secret Service.
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