Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump prepares to leave after the second day of the Republican National Convention at the Fiserv Forum, Tuesday, July 16, 2024, in Milwaukee
| Photo Credit: AP

Taiwan “should pay” the United States for defence, U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump said in a wide-ranging interview that has cast doubt on the relationship between Washginton and Taipei should he be re-elected in November.

In an interview with Bloomberg Businessweek published on Tuesday, the former President was asked if he would defend self-ruled Taiwan from China, which claims the island as part of its territory.

“I think, Taiwan should pay us for defence,” he said, according to a transcript released by Bloomberg.

“You know, we’re no different than an insurance company. Taiwan doesn’t give us anything,” he added.

While Washington does not diplomatically recognise the island, it is a key partner and major weapons provider to Taipei.

United Nations:

Russia is prepared to work with any US president who is open to dialogue, its foreign minister said Wednesday.

“We will work with any American leader, we will remain ready to work with any US leader that the US people elect, and who will be willing to engage in equitable, mutually respectful dialogue,” Sergei Lavrov said at a UN press briefing.

He was answering a question about relations between Moscow and Washington if Donald Trump is reelected in November and defeats President Joe Biden.

Trump, the Republican candidate, said in May 2023 that he could end the war in Ukraine “in 24 hours” if he returns to the White House.

Trump is regularly attacked by Democrats as being too soft on Russia. He has often spoken admiringly of President Vladimir Putin, who has been charged with war crimes over the invasion of Ukraine.

“We worked with President Trump,” Lavrov said.

He said US sanctions were repeatedly imposed on Moscow while Trump was in power. However, “at that time dialogue was under way between us and Washington at the highest levels. Right now, there is no such dialogue.”

Asked about Trump’s running mate, Senator J.D. Vance, a fierce opponent of US aid to Ukraine, Lavrov praised his position.

“He’s in favor of peace, in favor of ending the assistance that’s been provided, and we can only welcome that, because that’s what we need — to stop pumping Ukraine full of weapons and then the war will end,” he said.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump is seen during the Republican National Convention on July 16, 2024, in Milwaukee.
| Photo Credit: AP

Analysis

Leaders, including many former critics and challengers, rallied behind Donald Trump on the second day of the Republican National Convention, several of them attributing to god his escape from an assassination attempt on July 13. Several of them cited the Bible, and suggested a divine plan in Mr. Trump’s leadership of the party. “I saw President Trump, a dear friend escape death by mere inches, and my thoughts immediately turned to the book of Isaiah..That says no weapon formed against you shall prosper,” Ben Carson, an African American leader who was an opponent of Mr. Trump in the 2016 primary and later a member of his Cabinet, said.

Two other primary opponents of Mr. Trump in 2016, Senators Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, and Arkansas Governor Sarah Sanders were also among those cited godly plans in Mr. Trump’s escape from death, which has become a key talking point among a section of his supporters, as is his show of courage in the aftermath. “The most repeated phrase in the Bible is, ‘do not be afraid ‘or ‘fear not.’ It appears 365 times in scripture,” said Mr. Carson.

Mr. Trump’s daughter-in-law and co-chair of the RNC, Lara Trump cited Proverbs to draw a stark contrast between the nominee and his opponents: “The wicked flee when no man pursues; But the righteous are bold as a lion.”

“It (Mr. Trump’s escape) reminds us that the life of every living thing and the breath of all mankind is in the hands of god..” said Mr. Rubio, thanking Mr. Trump for “transforming our party”. Mr. Rubio has travelled a long way from his stiff challenge to Mr. Trump in 2016.

Far from resisting the transformation of the party under Mr. Trump, both Senators are now among the loudest cheerleaders of it. Mr. Cruz, who was the last standing primary challenger to Mr. Trump in 2016, all the way until the Convention, was effusive in his praise for him this time. “I worked hand-in-hand with President Trump to reduce illegal immigration to this country to a 45-year low. We will do it again,” he said, blaming illegal immigrants for crimes in the U.S.

Indian origin leaders

Two people of Indian origin — former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley and Ohio businessman Vivek Ramaswamy — featured among the evening speakers, at the Convention of a party that is accused by its critics of fanning nativism among the country’s white population. Mr. Ramaswamy spoke on American identity, counting legal immigration as integral to it while arguing illegal immigration is in conflict with it. “America is built on the rule of law. You cannot enter this country by breaking the law.”

Ms. Haley, whose primary challenge to Mr. Trump collapsed early on, made a turnaround by pledging her absolute endorsement of his candidacy. She said she was not in agreement with Mr. Trump on all issues but curiously bracketed her militarist, interventionist foreign policy doctrine with his largely non-interventionist one.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis who also made a short-lived attempt for nomination this time, fell behind Mr. Trump. Both Ms. Haley and Mr. DeSantis sought to keep their endorsement of Mr. Trump more as an opposition to the Democrats and the combination of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris on their ticket. In fact, Ms. Haley spent a considerable portion of her speech to portray the danger of Ms. Harris — whose mother was an Indian immigrant — ending up as President if Mr. Biden were to be elected again.

U.S. former President and 2024 Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump looks on at the conclusion of the second day of the 2024 Republican National Convention at the Fiserv Forum in Milwaukee, Wisconsin on July 16, 2024.
| Photo Credit: AFP

As questions swirl over how a would-be assassin managed to get anywhere near Donald Trump, some conservatives are blaming the Secret Service for hiring the women agents who threw themselves into the line of fire to protect the former president.

Women are too short, too weak — and in some cases, too overweight — to protect someone like Trump, according to people on the U.S. political right who accused the Secret Service of “woke” hiring practices they say nearly got the former president killed.

Several women can be seen among the black-suited, sunglass-clad agents racing to shield Trump with their bodies as the gunman opened fire at a rally in Pennsylvania on Saturday, before hustling him from the stage and into a waiting car and safety.

But they, along with their boss Kimberly Cheatle — only the second-ever woman director of the federal agency tasked with protecting presidents current, former and would-be — are now caught in the intense scrutiny over the nearly catastrophic attack.

“There should not be any women in the Secret Service. These are supposed to be the very best, and none of the very best at this job are women,” right-wing activist Matt Walsh wrote on X, in one typical post.

“I can’t imagine that a DEI hire from @pepsi would be a bad choice as the head of the Secret Service. #sarcasm,” tweeted Republican congressman Tim Burchett.

Also Read | Secret Service agrees to independent probe over Trump shooting

Mr. Burchett was referring to Ms. Cheatle’s previous job as director of global security for Pepsi — a post she held for several years before returning to the Secret Service, where she had previously spent nearly three decades.

With the phrase DEI — diversity, equity and inclusion — he was invoking one of the most popular conservative fronts in the culture wars: the so-called “wokeification” of the workplace as employers strive to diversify their hiring practices beyond white men.

The first women were sworn in as Secret Service agents in 1971. CBS News reported last year that the agency aims to have 30% women recruits by 2030.

“I’m very conscious … of making sure that we need to attract diverse candidates and ensure that we are developing and giving opportunities to everybody in our workforce, and particularly women,” Ms. Cheatle told CBS at the time.

The wildly popular conservative Libs of TikTok account cited that interview in a post also blaming hiring practices for the Trump shooting that has received more than 10 million views on X.

“The results of DEI. DEI got someone killed,” it read.

‘Secret Service A-team’

Diverse hiring practices accelerated in 2020 after the George Floyd killing forced America into a new reckoning over racism and inclusivity.

But they have seen a growing backlash from conservatives in recent months who complain they unfairly disadvantage white workers in general, and white men in particular.

None other than Ohio Senator J.D. Vance — Trump’s newly-announced running mate — has spearheaded a recent bill to do away with such efforts.

Also Read | Who is Usha Chilukuri Vance, Trump’s running mate J.D. Vance’s Indian-origin wife

“DEI is racism, plain and simple. It’s time to outlaw it nationwide, starting with the federal government,” he tweeted last month as the bill was introduced.

Such practices at the Secret Service faced scrutiny as recently as May, when Congress launched an investigation after a female agent in Vice President Kamala Harris’s detail reportedly got into an altercation with colleagues.

The incident raised concerns about this agent’s hiring, Kentucky Republican James Comer said in a letter to Ms. Cheatle — specifically, whether staff shortages “had led the agency to lower once stricter standards as a part of a diversity, equity and inclusion effort.”

The Secret Service did not immediately respond to questions from AFP.

But in response to the Comer letter, spokesman Anthony Guglielmi told U.S. media that Secret Service employees “are held to the highest professional standards… at no time has the agency lowered these standards.”

Ms. Cheatle has shrugged off calls for her resignation since the shooting, and the agency has agreed to cooperate with an independent review ordered by President Joe Biden.

Mr. Comer has also announced that Ms. Cheatle will appear before a congressional panel on July 22 for a hearing on the assassination attempt.

Mr. Biden — in whose detail Ms. Cheatle served when he was vice president — told NBC News on Monday that he feels “safe with the Secret Service,” though he agreed it was an “open question” whether they should have anticipated the shooting.

When Trump made his first public appearance after the shooting, at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee on Monday, he appeared to be surrounded by an all-male Secret Service detail.

“Now THIS is how you protect a President,” posted conservative commentator Rogan O’Handley on X.

“Trump gets the Secret Service A-team now.”

Former U.S. President and 2024 Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump attends the second day of the 2024 Republican National Convention at the Fiserv Forum in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, July 16, 2024.
| Photo Credit: AFP

Iran on Wednesday, July 17, 2024, rejected what it called “malicious” accusations by U.S. media implicating it in an attempt to kill former U.S. President Donald Trump.

Also read: From Lincoln to Trump: A long history of shootings in U.S. Presidential politics

Iran “strongly rejects any involvement in the recent armed attack against Trump,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kanani said, while Iran’s mission to the United Nations called accusations of a previous plot to kill the former president as “unsubstantiated and malicious”.

Earlier report from AP:

A threat on Donald Trump’s life from Iran prompted additional security in the days before Saturday’s campaign rally, but it was unrelated to the assassination attempt on the Republican presidential nominee, two U.S. officials said Tuesday, as law enforcement warned of the potential for more violence inspired by the shooting.

National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson said officials have been tracking Iranian threats against Mr. Trump administration officials for years, dating back to the last administration. Mr. Trump ordered the 2020 killing of Qassem Soleimani, who led the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Quds Force.

Former US President Donald Trump has picked JD Vance, a Republican senator, as his running mate for the 2024 presidential election. On his Truth Social platform, Trump said that after lengthy deliberation and thought, and “considering the tremendous talents of many others”, he decided Vance was best suited to assume the position of Vice President of the United States.

According to a source, the Republican nominee called the Ohio senator on Monday to offer him the vice presidential post just 20 minutes before making the announcement. The two met at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club on Saturday before the rally where Trump was shot at.

Vance and Trump share similar views on issues such as immigration and trade.

Why Trump chose JD Vance

Donald Trump, recently, spent months evaluating potential running mates, observing how they performed on TV, at fundraisers and rallies. Some contenders accompanied him to his criminal trial in New York, while others joined him at the debate last month. The debate was known for President Joe Biden’s poor performance, which led to calls for him to step down and let a younger candidate take his place.

Trump’s choice of JD Vance as his running mate is a strategic move to energise his loyal base. Vance has established himself as a leader who can carry Trump’s mantle into the future, thanks to his frequent appearances on the conservative media circuit and his willingness to spar with reporters on Capitol Hill.

In his announcement post, Trump praised Vance for his dedication to American workers and farmers, saying he “will be strongly focused on the people he fought so brilliantly for” in Midwestern states such as Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio, and Minnesota, as per AP.

Vance and Trump also regularly talk over the phone.

The former president has even complimented the senator’s looks, comparing him to a young Abraham Lincoln.

Vance was once a vocal critic of Donald Trump, labelling him “a total fraud,” an “idiot”, “a moral disaster”, and even “America’s Hitler.”

However, as Trump’s political fortunes soared, Vance’s perspective shifted dramatically. Despite his early scepticism, Vance later praised Trump’s presidency, crediting him with “delivering peace and prosperity.”

This change in stance led to Trump endorsing him during his 2022 Senate bid.

Now a steadfast Trump loyalist, Vance has actively defended him against criminal and civil charges and questioned the 2020 election results.

JD Vance, who has been named former US President Donald Trump’s running mate, stirred a controversy after he said that that UK under Labour might be the first “truly Islamist” country with nuclear weapons.

Vance said he had been discussing with a friend which country would be the first “truly Islamist country that will get a nuclear weapon”.

“Maybe it’s Iran, maybe Pakistan kind of counts, and then we sort of decided maybe it’s actually the UK since Labour just took over,” he said last week at a conference for UK Conservatives last week.

Britain’s Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner, meanwhile, played down Vance’s comments, saying he had a history of making “fruity” remarks.

Britain would work with whoever won November’s US presidential election, Angela Rayner said, adding that “I don’t recognise that characterisation”.

“We’re interested in governing on behalf of Britain, and also working with our international allies,” she said.

In one of his first interviews after being named the Vice Presidential pick, Vance also branded China the biggest threat to America, underscoring the likely hawkish stance of their administration toward Beijing if elected.

The Ohio Senator made the remarks in an interview with Fox News’ Sean Hannity on Monday. When asked about the war in Ukraine, Vance said Trump would negotiate with Moscow and Kyiv to “bring this thing to a rapid close so America can focus on the real issue, which is China.”

“That’s the biggest threat to our country and we are completely distracted from it,” he said

Vance, 39, was tapped by Trump days after a failed assassination attempt on the former president upended what had already been a chaotic presidential contest.

Milwaukee:

A homeless black man, armed with two knives near a Republican Party National Convention site in Wisconsin, was shot dead by police officers from Ohio on Tuesday.

According to the police, the man, identified by relatives as 43-year-old Samuel Sharpe, was armed with a knife in each hand. The situation escalated when Sharpe charged at an unarmed individual, prompting the officers to open fire. Two knives were recovered from the scene.

“Someone’s life was in danger,” Milwaukee police chief Jeffrey Norman said during a press conference. “These officers, who were not from this area, took it upon themselves to act and save someone’s life today.”

The incident occurred amidst heightened security in Milwaukee, with thousands of officers from various jurisdictions present to ensure the safety of the Republican National Convention, which started on Monday and is set to conclude on Thursday.

The shooting, however, has sparked outrage among Milwaukee residents, who questioned the necessity of out-of-state officers patrolling their neighbourhood, which is located over a kilometre away from the convention site. Many locals gathered at the scene, voicing their anger and planning a nighttime vigil to honour Sharpe.

“They came into our community and shot down our family right here at a public park,” said Linda Sharpe, Samuel’s cousin. “What are you doing in our city, shooting people down?”

Linda Sharpe described her cousin Samuel as a long-time resident of a tent encampment situated across the street from King Park, where the shooting took place. This encampment is a known fixture in the neighbourhood, which hosts several social service clinics and a shelter. Residents believe that Milwaukee police officers, familiar with the local homeless population, might have been able to de-escalate the situation more effectively.

Norman explained that a group of 13 Columbus officers, part of a bicycle patrol, were in their designated area when they noticed the altercation involving Sharpe. They approached the scene and repeatedly commanded Sharpe to drop his weapons, but he ignored their orders and moved towards the unarmed individual, prompting the officers to fire.

The Milwaukee County Medical Examiner’s Office has scheduled an autopsy for Wednesday and further investigation into the shooting is underway. 

Washington:

Conspiracy theories about the assassination attempt on Donald Trump received tens of millions of views on X, researchers said Tuesday, highlighting the potential for extreme falsehoods to go viral on the Elon Musk-owned platform.

The social media site, formerly named Twitter, was flooded with unsubstantiated claims soon after the shooting Saturday at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, which left one spectator dead and a bloodied Trump injured in the ear.

Those included unfounded assertions that the assassination attempt had been “staged” or an “inside job,” while fingers were pointed at imaginary culprits such as Jews and the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad.

The conspiracy theories were viewed over 215 million times on X, the watchdog Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) said after analyzing a sample of 100 popular posts.

A majority of the posts did not carry a “Community Note,” a crowd-sourced moderation tool that Musk has promoted as the way for users to add context to the tweets, CCDH added.

In the first 24 hours alone, unsubstantiated narratives around the incident amassed more than 100 million views on X, according to the nonprofit research group Institute for Strategic Dialogue.

X did not respond to a request for comment.

Internet hoaxers also falsely identified several people as the shooter — including Italian sports journalist Marco Violi, anti-Trump protester Maxwell Yearick and comedian Sam Hyde, AFP’s fact-checkers reported.

Federal investigators have identified the shooter, who was killed on the scene, as Thomas Matthew Crooks of Pennsylvania.

In the immediate aftermath of the shooting, several social media users voiced confusion as they scrambled to obtain accurate information in what appeared to be a sea of false or misleading posts, which rapidly gained traction.

The trend illustrates the ability of falsehoods to mutate into viral political discourse on tech platforms including X, which now offer fewer guardrails as they scale back content moderation.

Researchers say some clout-chasing accounts on the platform have a financial motive to post sensational falsehoods, as X’s ad revenue-sharing program incentivizes extreme content designed to boost engagement.

“In the marketplace of disinformation — which is effectively what a lot of social media platforms have now been reduced to, a marketplace for lies — extreme content is your currency,” said Imran Ahmed, chief executive and founder of CCDH.

“The algorithms take the most outlandish content and amplify it exponentially until the entire digital world is flooded with conspiracism, disinformation and hate.”

Researchers have warned about a possible firehose of disinformation in the run up to the November election, which will take place in a deeply polarized political climate in the United States.

“Already, at an early stage in the US electoral cycle, we can see flashing warning signs that social media in the weeks and months ahead will be increasingly chaotic and rife with disinformation,” Ahmed said.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Washington:

President Joe Biden promised Black voters on Tuesday that he was “all in” to seek reelection on Nov. 5 and assailed Donald Trump’s record as president, in his first political speech since his Republican rival’s attempted assassination.

Biden was greeted by chants of “four more years” as he spoke to the NAACP’s annual convention in Las Vegas, a major gathering of Black voters.

Biden said he was grateful that Trump was not seriously hurt at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania on Saturday but roundly criticized him on a variety of fronts including his handling of the economy during the coronavirus pandemic.

“Let me say it again because Trump is lying like hell about it – Black unemployment hit a record low under the Biden-Harris administration,” Biden said.

He scolded Trump for initially contending that former President Barack Obama was not an American citizen and for his reference to “Black jobs” at the Trump-Biden debate on June 27.

“I am all in,” said Biden.

The attempt on Trump’s life on Saturday prompted the Biden campaign to pull its television ads, call off verbal attacks on the former president and focus instead on a message of unity.

“Our politics got too heated,” said Biden.

The campaign’s strategy previously was to focus on tough criticism of Trump as a threat to U.S. democracy and to highlight his failure to admit his 2020 election loss and his felony convictions.

Now, it is trying to calibrate a less pugilistic message that still strikes a stark comparison between the two candidates.

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the oldest and largest U.S. civil rights organization, represents a key constituency for the Democratic Party. While Black voters turned out heavily for Biden in 2020, polls have shown waning support for him from the constituency in this election.

“People are concerned about the price of gas, price of bread, but they’re also concerned with their growing knowledge around Project 2025,” Derrick Johnson, the NAACP president, told Reuters on Monday, referring to a set of conservative policy proposals that have become a lighting rod for Trump critics.

On Sunday, Biden used the formal setting of the White House Oval Office to ask Americans to lower the political temperature, recommit themselves to resolving their differences peacefully. He said the Nov. 5 presidential election will be a “time of testing.”

In an interview with NBC News, Biden said on Monday it was a mistake for him to use the term “bullseye” in reference to Trump during a recent donor campaign call.

The president postponed a trip to Texas on Monday, where he was expected to speak on the 60th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act at the Lyndon B. Johnson presidential library.

White House officials hope the Trump assassination attempt will ease pressure on Biden to step aside as his Democratic Party’s candidate in response to concerns about his mental acuity and stamina to govern for another four-year term.

At the end of his remarks in Las Vegas, Biden addressed the criticism that he is too old for the job.

“Hopefully today I’ve demonstrated a little bit of wisdom. Here’s what I do know. I know how to tell the truth. I know right from wrong. I know how to do this job. And I know the good Lord hasn’t brought us this far to leave us now. We have more work to do,” he said.

On Wednesday, Biden is scheduled to speak to Latino leaders at the UnidosUS Annual Conference also in Las Vegas.

Meanwhile, Trump and Republicans are gathered in Milwaukee for the party’s nominating convention that kicked off Monday with the selection of U.S. Senator J.D. Vance as Trump’s running mate.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)