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Investigators continue to piece together evidence for a motive leading to the assassination attempt on former US president Donald Trump.
The shooting left a former fire chief dead and wounded two other people at the Pennsylvania rally, plus Trump, after the gunman’s bullet struck his ear.
Volunteer firefighter Corey Comperatore was killed while trying to protect his family from the bullets.
The gunman, named as Thomas Matthew Crooks, opened fire at the rally in Butler and was himself shot dead by snipers.
But there are now serious questions about police and Secret Service response to the incident.
The assassination attempt is also reframing Republican Trump’s bitter presidential contest against Democrat incumbent Joe Biden.
For the latest, we’re joined by Evening Standard deputy political editor Jitendra Joshi.
Plus, in part two, as Gareth Southgate’s pride of lions fly home after their 2-1 Euro 2024 loss to Spain in the Berlin final, we look at England’s Euros tournament highlights, with Evening Standard reporter Robert Dex.
Listen on the above player, Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you stream.
Here’s a fully automated transcript of today’s episode:
From London, this is The Standard Podcast, and I'm Mark Blunden.
Coming up on the show...
[AUDIO CLIP]
Dry your eyes, mate. Southgate's England did us proud at Euro 24, even without the silverware,
but first,
[AUDIO CLIP]
Investigators continue to piece together evidence for a motive, leading to the assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump.
The shooting left a former fire chief dead and wounded two other people at the Pennsylvania rally plus Trump after the gunman's bullet struck his ear.
The shooter, named as Thomas Matthew Crooks, opened fire at the rally in Butler and was himself shot dead by snipers.
But there are now serious questions about police and Secret Service response.
The incident is also reframing the bitter presidential contest against Joe Biden.
For the latest, we're joined by Evening Standard deputy political editor, Jitendra Joshi.
Jit, what's the latest you're reporting on Monday after Saturday's dramatic events? Any new details emerging today? And do we know anything further about the gunman?
Everyone's trying to pick over the pieces of what happened, trying to figure out any motivation for the 20-year-old shooter whose name has been confirmed by law enforcement, by the FBI.
So we know he's called Thomas Crooks.He was from a town in Pennsylvania, not all that far from the rally ground where the shooting occurred on Saturday evening.
Not a huge amount, though, he's known about why he might have done this.
There's a slightly contradictory picture emerging of his political beliefs, but it's clear that there's no sort of pattern of behavior, no big pattern of social media posts that the FBI can point to.
So that remains a little bit in the dark, although accounts are emerging of him as a bit of a misfit at school, who was, by some accounts, on the receiving end of some quite vicious bullying when he was at school.
And since then, he's been working as a sort of food assistant worker in a nursing home.
So that's as much as we know of the shooter.
The bigger question is ruling out a sort of wider plot, which the FBI say is not the indication that they're confident he was acting alone.
Ruling that out, the bigger questions then surround, questions about security.
How did this happen?
How did the shooter get so close?
When you attend these events in the States and elsewhere, you will see, you'll get used to seeing snipers on rooftops, police or other law enforcement agencies keeping a varied BDI from surrounding vantage points when these events are held outdoors and a quite sort of heavy security presence within the grounds and on the perimeters.
The Secret Service, despite its fearsome reputation as a model of bodyguard efficiency, is under a pretty painful spotlight now.
Why was this guy able to clamber onto a roof when in line of sight of the former president? Why was that area not part of the secure zone? And then the bigger questions beyond all of that, of course, are how does this affect the presidential race?
And of course, this is also against the backdrop of tragedy. Plus, there's huge political ramifications.
What can you tell us?
While Trump survived this incident, one person, a local firefighter named Corey Compertore, did die by all accounts while he was trying to protect his wife and daughters from the HALO bullets.
And two other people were seriously wounded, although the latest information is that those two men are going to pull through. So keeping that in mind, this was a very serious and indeed fatal incident.
We inevitably do have to consider the wider political consequences and not put too fine a point on it.
The imagery in particular that you've seen emerging from Saturday evening paints Donald Trump in a pretty heroic light.
He's there, seen with the stars and stripes billowing behind him, surrounded by the Secret Service agents, his arm, his fist up clenched in the air as he shouts, fight. You could not make this up.
His image makers could not have come up with a more fitting portrayal of the candidate that they want to see fight the election in November.
It's exactly what Trump sees himself as being about. He's about strength. He's about leadership. He's about making America great again, against what he sees as the weakness and the backtracking of less strong leaders such as Joe Biden. This is in his own portrayal.
And it paints Joe Biden in a slightly awkward spot, given the president's own rhetoric in the last few days. And considerable questions over the police and Secret Service response.
The fact is, he should never have been there. That's the big security lapse here. And when he was spotted, and by then it was too late, of course, the shots rang out.
But the Secret Service snipers then acted very, very quickly at that point. But clearly they should never have had to respond.
That situation should never have arisen, so that's the big question in terms of logistics.
And then also how the Secret Service agents on stage themselves responded, there seemed to be not panic, panic is too strong a word, but certainly potentially an element of confusion as they try to figure out how best to get him to safety.
At one point, Donald Trump, his shoes appear to have slipped off and he's demanding he get his shoes back.
And then when he manages to get up and that image that we've been discussing, when he manages to show his face to the crowd, in a sense, that should never have been allowed to happen, actually.
The Secret Service's job in that situation is not to let the candidate grandstand. It is, however embarrassing it might be for the person they're protecting, to get him out of there as quickly as possible and not expose himself any further to danger.
Do you think we'll see a change of tone now in the presidential campaigns?
Right. I mean, this is the biggest question of all, of course, leaving aside the immediacy of where things play out politically.
Where does America go as a country after 20 plus years of this rising hatred in the body of politics? Can this fever finally be lulled?
Donald Trump himself, quite interestingly, has come out overnight in our time with an interview to a newspaper, The Washington Examiner, where he says exactly that, that he means to dial things down now.
But he had a speech ready to go on Thursday at the Republican convention, where he's going to be crowned as the Republican nominee in November.
The convention ends its four days of pageantry. It's normally a big sort of political circus. Actually now, it's sent into a much more somber, a much more serious event.
So there are two big key decisions to be made by Donald Trump.
One, which could happen on Monday night possibly, is who is he going to pick for vice president to run alongside him?
And secondly, what tone does he adopt when he closes the convention, when he gives his big speech at the end?
He's saying now that actually, when he initially was going to go after Joe Biden, he was going to point out all the differences and rile up the base.
Now, because of what's happened, he's saying it's going to be a message of unity. It's going to be a message of healing.
This is coming from Donald Trump. He's not known for unity and healing, so let's see how that one plays out.
But equally, Joe Biden himself is saying much the same, even as the left-handed is kind of finding out and find out.
I blame the game, the leaders themselves, the top of the tickets are saying, no, let's dial down this rhetoric.
Let's go to the ads.
Coming up, England's Pride of Lions fly home after that dramatic 2-1 loss to Spain in the Euro 2024 final. Why they gave us a tournament to remember.
Why not hit follow on this podcast in the meantime to give us a rating.
Welcome back.
Sunday, towards the night of the Euros final and the streets of London emptied as we packed into living rooms and pubs with hearts full of hope against the might of Spain.
That's fans at the Wembley Box Park venue celebrating Cole Palmer's awesome 73rd minute equaliser.
But while in the end it was not to be, even the cynics can take heart that Euro 2024 offered a touch of unity as we all wheeled on Gareth Southgate's squad to do the impossible.
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They might not be jetting home to the victor's welcome, but they're certainly still heroes in our book.
So after the heartbreak of being beaten in a Euros final for the second time in three years comes the analysis with Evening Standard reporter Robert Dex.
Rob, there was so much hope. What went wrong in your opinion?
It is a team game. A good team will always be a good player, in my opinion. And you don't like to pick on anyone.
You know, you win and you lose as a team, but something was clearly up with Harry Kane. Either they weren't playing the way that suits him or he was injured, something wasn't quite right.
And so, therefore, I think a lot of the criticism analysis, call it what you like, and I'm sure Gareth Southgate probably thinks of it as criticism, will come into why he played in and why he played in for so long in so many games when he clearly wasn't firing on all cylinders.
I mean, I haven't said that. I still think he scored about three goals, didn't he? But yeah, he didn't look with it for a man who'd scored, God knows how many goals for Bayern Munich this season, and maybe that's the problem.
Maybe we're just feeling that actually these people have all played loads of football and they were all exhausted.
But equally, you know, it's not like the Spanish players haven't had full calendars as well, so I don't know.
It depends if you're a glass half full or a glass half empty person, doesn't it?
Glass half full?
Well, in that case, we've done really, really well to get to a final, especially considering how badly we started and missing some key personnel.
You know, I thought Luke Shaw was really good last night and he barely played.
That's just about your first full game, wasn't it?
So we've done really, really well with a striker that isn't 100%, missing a key defender.
A lot of very young kids who've never really played before for England.
Your Cole Palmer's, you're Kobbie Mainoos and all that sort of thing.
And considering, you know, we started with Trent Alexander-Arnold in midfield and changed halfway through it.
You know, so there's all kinds of stuff going on.
So in that case, with a glass half full, it's a brilliant job getting us to the final. And considering how Spain looked in some of the games, you know, I don't think they embarrassed us.
I think first half, we kept them pretty tight leash. But then whether we switched off or whether they got a rocket up them at half time, they came out and scored that goal. They deserve to win.
And Cole Palmer, what a hero, what a strike. Yeah, I mean, you have to think he's going to play a bigger and bigger part.
You know, he's not started, has he? He's coming on as a substitute.
And you know, I'm sure they would say, look, he's a great impact substitute.
You know, he's skillful and all this and he's brave and he's got a bit of flair to him. But you've got to think the demand will be for him to start.
The problem might be that they have an embarrassment of riches in midfield.
And we get back to that situation we've had before where a very, very good player maybe has to be left out because there's three or four also very, very good players in similar positions.
But we'll see, I mean, that's one for the future.
What's your appraisal of Gareth Southgate's leadership?
Whether you praise or bury Gareth Southgate, whether you think he's far too conservative or whether you think he's a genius for Dragon Institute finals on the trot, you can't argue he's done a brilliant job in the wider view, if you like.
You know, the teams seem happy. They seem to get on. They seem to play. They seem to be a team.
And international teams aren't always teams, if that makes sense, in that, you know, you hear stories about them sitting in separate camps, depending what club they play for and that kind of thing.
So he seems to have made a team out of a squad that don't spend that much time together and don't play together that often.
And that's, you know, a definite achievement. So he needs to be congratulated on that.
And you would hope if he goes, whoever comes after him can sort of keep that going.
And your tournament highlights?
The two things spring to mind.
I mean, Ollie Watkins' goal in the, you know, the last minute before we thought, oh God, we're off to extra time and who knows what that will bring.
Brilliant goal, brilliant finish.
And it was great that, yeah, after so much criticism, this was, you know, a couple of substitutes that Southgate had made, came on, made a difference, won the game, got us to the final.
Yeah, that was a brilliant goal that will, you know, fans will remember for a long time.
Jude Bellingham's overhead kick, which sort of seemed to reset the whole progress in that we'd sort of stuttered and stumbled our way through and suddenly they found a way to win a game and move on.
And last night, you know, Cole Palmer's goal squared the game.
I'm sure everyone thought what I thought, which was, do you know what? Maybe it's possible, there was what, about 20 minutes left or something at that point.
So yeah, just fantastic. And just getting to the final, you know.
So we've had two finals for the men's team, obviously the Lionesses won the Euros, brilliant game.
I'm old enough not to take success for granted.
I can remember when England would puff and puff, struggle and go out in the second round if they made it out of the group.
So yeah, I mean, the whole thing's just been brilliant, been a great tournament.
You know, Germany seems to have done it really well.
I've really enjoyed a lot of the other teams.
The Georgians, the people that people didn't expect, the smaller teams. And I think that is something to watch out for.
Slovenia, Slovakia, Serbia, Georgia, these people that I suppose we sometimes condescend to as smaller teams, smaller countries, they've been absolutely brilliant.
So maybe the big four or five that win everything and get in every final might get broken up sometime soon.
We might see a new entry that would be worth looking forward to.
Thank you.
There's much more on these stories in the Evening Standard newspaper and online at standard.co.uk.
We're back on Tuesday at 4pm.