RNC kicks off two days after rally shooting

Former colleagues from the Buffalo Township Volunteer Fire Department mourned the loss of Corey Comperatore, their former chief who was killed while protecting his daughters during the assassination attempt on Trump.

“He’s a man who would give the shirt off his back to anyone,” Craig Cirrinncione said. “He was a man of love,” he added.

Many questions need to be answered about how a shooter managed to get so close to Trump. NBC News’ Jay Gray reports from Butler, Pennsylvania, with the latest details on the investigation.

The Secret Service and local law enforcement officials said yesterday that there are no plans to change security measures at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee this week.

“We do not anticipate any changes to our operational security plans for this event,” said Secret Service RNC Coordinator Audrey Gibson-Cicchino.

Read the full story here.

King Charles of Great Britain wrote to Trump, Buckingham Palace confirmed today, without disclosing the details of the message.

Trump made a state visit to Britain in 2019 when he was president and met Charles’ mother, Queen Elizabeth II.

Recalling the “very surreal experience” that almost took his life, Trump said he was grateful to the Secret Service who took down the suspected shooter and protected him.

“I shouldn’t be here, I should be dead,” he told the New York Post yesterday, while wearing a large white bandage covering his right ear. “The doctor at the hospital said he had never seen anything like it, he called it a miracle,” he said.

Commenting on a photo taken after he stood up that showed him raising his fist, he said: “Normally you have to die to have an iconic photo.” Trump also explained why he asked for his shoes shortly after the shooting. “The officers hit me so hard that my shoes fell off and became tight,” he said.

Shortly afterward, as he was rushed to a car, Trump said, “I just wanted to keep talking, but I just got shot.”

He said he enjoyed getting a call from Biden, calling him “nice” and said the president was “very kind.”

Video has emerged showing Trump supporters watching the former president speak from a few hundred meters away, where they spotted a man crawling on the roof of a nearby building.

“There he is, right there,” a man is heard saying in a nearly minute-long video verified by NBC News.

This video is among other witness accounts that have emerged from the rally site showing that some rally attendees spotted the alleged shooter before he shot the former president.

“He’s lying down,” says a woman in the video. Another voice is heard calling “officer!”

Two people familiar with Secret Service operations told NBC News that the nearby roof was identified as a potential vulnerability days before the event.

BUTLER, Pa. — Two women who attended Trump’s rally from a neighboring property described what they called lax security measures beyond the event’s security perimeter.

Valerie Fennell and Deb Kuminkoski had tickets to go to the rally, but because of the heat and the large crowd, they decided to stay behind and watch from Fennell’s backyard, which overlooks the area where the rally was held.

Fennell’s backyard is in a grassy area between where the Trump crowd gathered and the AGR factory, where the shooter was perched on the roof of one of the buildings, about 150 yards away.

The shooter’s bullets passed over their heads toward Trump and his supporters as they watched the event, they said.

Read the full story here.

A Biden campaign official indicated that the campaign would return to cycle activities following his interview with NBC News tomorrow.

The official said that “both the DNC and the campaign will continue to draw the contrast between our positive vision for the future and the regressive agenda of Trump and the Republicans throughout the week.”