GRAND RAPIDS, Michigan: Donald Trump held his first campaign rally on Saturday since he narrowly escaped an assassination attempt one week ago, mocking Democrats and at one point comparing former Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to a “dog.”
Trump, who called for national unity in a speech on Thursday as he accepted his party’s presidential nomination at the Republican National Convention, made no mention of that in his remarks before a raucous crowd of supporters in Grand Rapids.
He frequently mocked Democratic President Joe Biden as feeble. He derided senior Democrats, including Pelosi, for trying to persuade Biden to end his re-election bid.
Referring to Pelosi, Trump said: “She’s turned on him like a dog. She’s as crazy as a bed bug.”
The Trump campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment about Trump comparing Pelosi to a dog.
Fresh from his nominating convention where his takeover of the Republican Party was cemented, Trump appeared in Grand Rapids with his new vice presidential pick, Senator J.D. Vance from Ohio. They took the stage in their first campaign event together with the Republican Party unified behind them.
In contrast, it is no longer certain that President Joe Biden will be the Democratic Party’s nominee facing Trump in the Nov. 5 election.
Biden has faced calls from some senior Democrats to end his re-election bid after his poor debate performance last month raised concerns over whether he could beat Trump or complete another four-year term.
Trump attacked Democrats, saying they wanted to kick Biden off the ticket after he won their presidential nominating contest.
“They have a couple of problems. No. 1, they have no idea who their candidate is,” Trump said to laughter and jeers. “This guy goes and he gets the votes and now they want to take it away.”
“As you’re seeing, the Democrat Party is not the party of democracy. They’re really the enemies of democracy.”
He added: “And they keep saying, ‘He’s a threat to democracy.’ I’m saying, ‘What the hell did I do for democracy?’
Last week, I took a bullet for democracy.”
Trump referred to the assassination attempt several times on Saturday. “I hope I don’t have to go through that again. It was so horrible,” Trump said.
Opinion polls show a tight race between the Trump and Biden at a national level but Biden trailing Trump in the battleground states that will likely determine the winner.
Many Democrats fear he may not have a realistic path to victory and that the party needs a new candidate to take on Trump.
There was a heavy police presence at Trump’s rally in Grand Rapids on Saturday, with police on every street corner for several blocks.
US Secret Service officers were positioned on the top balconies in the Van Andel Arena, giving them a bird’s eye view of the crowd inside.
Bag searches for those entering the indoor arena earlier in the day were long and thorough, and the Secret Service sweep of the building took about an hour longer than usual.
The rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, last weekend was outdoors. At that event, the gunman was able to scale the roof of a building outside the Secret Service perimeter before opening fire on Trump, clipping his ear, killing a rally-goer and wounding several others.
The Secret Service, which is responsible for protecting Trump, declined to comment on security for the Grand Rapids event. An investigation is under way into the security failures at the Butler rally.
Trump gave a detailed account of his narrow brush with death in his convention speech on Thursday, telling the audience that he was only talking to them “by the grace of Almighty God.”
Trump’s former physician, Ronny Jackson, said on Saturday that the former president is recovering as expected from the gunshot wound to his right ear, but noted intermittent bleeding and said Trump may require a hearing exam.
The bullet fired by the would-be assassin
at the July 13 rally in Pennsylvania came “less than a quarter of an inch from entering his head,” said Jackson, a Republican congressman from Texas who had served as physician to Presidents Trump and Barack Obama.
Trump mocks Democrats in campaign rally, compares Pelosi to a dog
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Trump mocks Democrats in campaign rally, compares Pelosi to a dog
- Says the Democratic Party is being undemocratic for annointing Biden as its presidential nominee, only to try and yank it away from him
- With Biden's poll numbers falling after his debate debacle, Trump and his supporters want Biden to stay on in the race
Germany brushes off Musk calling Scholz a ‘fool’
A tight-lipped Scholz simply called it “not very friendly“
BERLIN: German officials on Friday brushed off tech billionaire Elon Musk labelling Olaf Scholz a “fool” on his social media platform X after the dramatic collapse of the chancellor’s coalition government.
In a comment Thursday above a post about the implosion of Scholz’s long-troubled coalition, the world’s richest man tweeted in German: “Olaf ist ein Narr” — “Olaf is a fool.”
Asked about Musk’s comment, government spokeswoman Christiane Hoffmann took a playful dig at the US tycoon, saying that “on X, you have Narrenfreiheit,” which translates to the freedom to act like a fool.
The word refers to revellers during Germany’s traditional carnival season, which starts next week, having the freedom to act without inhibitions.
Historically, the term echoes the notion of the “jester’s privilege” — the right of a court jester to mock those in power without being punished by the king.
Asked later about the comment, a tight-lipped Scholz simply called it “not very friendly,” adding that Internet companies are “not organs of state so I did not even pay it any attention.”
Musk strongly supported US election winner Donald Trump, and is now positioned to take up a role in his administration as a deputy tasked with restructuring government operations.
It is not the first time the Tesla boss has had run-ins with German officials online.
Last year he said Berlin-funded migrant rescue operations in the Mediterranean could be seen as an “invasion” of Italy, sparking a terse response from the German foreign ministry.
He has also expressed sympathy for some of the positions of Germany’s far-right AfD party, which has notched up a string of recent electoral successes and is riding high in the opinion polls.
First flight with Israelis evacuated from Amsterdam lands in Tel Aviv
- The plane that arrived in Tel Aviv had passengers evacuated from Amsterdam
TEL AVIV: The first flight carrying Israelis evacuated from Amsterdam after violent clashes following a football match there landed on Friday at Ben Gurion International Airport, the Israel Airports Authority said.
“The plane that arrived in Tel Aviv now has passengers evacuated from Amsterdam,” Liza Dvir, spokeswoman for the airport authority told AFP.
India’s Modi rejects calls to restore Kashmir’s partial autonomy
- Modi revoked partial autonomy in 2019 and split the state into the two federally administered territories of Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh
- Jammu and Kashmir held its first local election in a decade this year, newly-elected lawmakers passed resolution this week seeking restoration
NEW DELHI: Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi strongly backed his government’s contentious 2019 decision to revoke the partial autonomy of Jammu and Kashmir, days after the territory’s newly elected lawmakers sought its restoration.
“Only the constitution of Babasaheb Ambedkar will operate in Kashmir... No power in the world can restore Article 370 (partial autonomy) in Kashmir,” Modi said, referring to one of the founding fathers of the Indian constitution.
Modi was speaking at a state election rally in the western state of Maharashtra, where Ambedkar was from.
Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government revoked partial autonomy in 2019 and split the state into the two federally administered territories of Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh — a move that was opposed by many political groups in the Himalayan region.
Jammu and Kashmir held its first local election in a decade in September and October and the newly-elected lawmakers passed a resolution this week seeking the restoration.
Jammu and Kashmir’s ruling National Conference party had promised in its election manifesto that it would restore the partial autonomy, although the power to do so lies with Modi’s federal government.
Jammu and Kashmir’s new lawmakers can legislate on local issues like other Indian states, except matters regarding public order and policing. They will also need the approval of the federally-appointed administrator on all policy decisions that have financial implications.
Under the system of partial autonomy, Kashmir had its own constitution and the freedom to make laws on all issues except foreign affairs, defense and communications.
The troubled region, where separatist militants have fought security forces since 1989, is India’s only Muslim-majority territory.
It has been at the center of a territorial dispute with Pakistan since the neighbors gained independence from British colonial rule in 1947.
Kashmir is claimed in full but ruled in part by both India and Pakistan, which have fought two of their three wars over the region.
Kyiv says Russia has returned bodies of 563 soldiers
- The exchange of prisoners and bodies of killed military personnel remains one of the few areas of cooperation
- The announcement represents one of the largest repatriations of killed Ukrainian servicemen
KYIV: Ukraine said on Friday it had received the bodies of 563 soldiers from Russian authorities, mainly troops that had died in combat in the eastern Donetsk region.
The exchange of prisoners and bodies of killed military personnel remains one of the few areas of cooperation between Moscow and Kyiv since Russia invaded in 2022.
“The bodies of 563 fallen Ukrainian defenders were returned to Ukraine,” the Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War said in a statement on social media.
The announcement represents one of the largest repatriations of killed Ukrainian servicemen since the beginning of the war.
The statement said that 320 of the remains were returned from the Donetsk region and that 89 of the soldiers had been killed near Bakhmut, a town captured by Russia in May last year after a costly battle.
Another 154 of the bodies were returned from morgues inside Russia, the statement added.
Neither Russia nor Ukraine publicly disclose how many military personnel have been killed fighting.
Russia sentences soldiers who massacred Ukraine family to life in prison
- The court in Rostov-on-Don sentenced the two men to life in prison for mass murder “motivated by political, ideological, racial, national or religious hatred“
- The incident triggered uproar in Ukraine
MOSCOW: A Russian court sentenced two soldiers to life in prison for the massacre of a family of nine people in their home in occupied Ukraine, state media reported on Friday.
Russian prosecutors said in October 2023, the two Russian soldiers, Anton Sopov and Stanislav Rau, entered the home of the Kapkanets family in the city of Volnovakha with guns equipped with silencers.
They then shot all nine family members who lived there, including two children aged five and nine.
The southern district military court in Rostov-on-Don sentenced the two men to life in prison for mass murder “motivated by political, ideological, racial, national or religious hatred,” the state-run TASS news agency reported, citing an unnamed law enforcement source.
The incident triggered uproar in Ukraine.
Kyiv alleged at the time that the Russian soldiers had murdered the family in their sleep after they refused to move out of their home to allow Russian soldiers to live there.
“The occupiers killed the Kapkanets family, who were celebrating a birthday and refused to give up their home,” Ukraine’s human rights ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets said a day after the murder.
Russian forces seized the city of Volnovakha in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region at the start of their full-scale military offensive.
It was virtually destroyed by Russian artillery strikes.
Russian soldiers have been accused of multiple instances of killing civilians in Ukrainian towns and cities they have occupied since February 2022.
Moscow has always denied targeting civilians and tried to claim reports of atrocities at places like Bucha were fake, despite widespread evidence from multiple independent sources.
The arrest and sentencing in this case is a rare example of Russia admitting to a crime committed by its troops in Ukraine.
State media did not say what prosecutors determined the reason for the attack was.
TASS suggested it could have been a “domestic dispute,” while both the independent Radio Free Europe and Kommersant business outlets said it could have been linked to a dispute over obtaining vodka.
The trial was held in secret.
The independent Radio Free Europe outlet reported the Rau, 28, and Sopov, 21 were mercenaries for the Wagner paramilitary before joining Russia’s official army.
They had both received state awards a few months before the mass murder, it said.
