Trump tells Christians they ‘won’t have to’ vote again after election as ex-president slams FBI: Live updates

The FBI on Friday confirmed an assassin shot Trump in the ear earlier this month after the agency’s director suggested earlier this week the wound might’ve come from shrapnel.

“We accept their apology,” Trump said, to jeers from the crowd at the Turning Point Believers Summit in West Palm Beach, Florida.

“It just never ends with these people,” Trump said elsewhere in the speech. “They raid Mar-a-Lago. They do things, so bad, so bad.

“Israel was just attacked, very severely attacked,” Trump said on Saturday afternoon.

Trump appeared to put the blame on the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, which has denied any role in the attack.

“They have to respect, they cannot do this,” Trump said. “What they did just now with that attack is terrible … And so to all, God bless everybody. This is so serious, they have to respect our country. This would never have happened with us, and we just cannot let it continue. So we just wish them all a lot of luck.”

Trump opened his remarks at The Bitcoin Conference in Nashville, Tennessee with a joke about the Secret Service taking some extra time before allowing him to go on stage.

“So Secret Service just told me, ‘sir, would like a little more time’. I said, ‘you take all the time you want. You can take two hours, three hours, to hell with the people that have been waiting out here’,” he said.

“I WILL CONTINUE TO DO OUTDOOR RALLIES, AND SECRET SERVICE HAS AGREED TO SUBSTANTIALLY STEP UP THEIR OPERATION,” the former president wrote. “THEY ARE VERY CAPABLE OF DOING SO. NO ONE CAN EVER BE ALLOWED TO STOP OR IMPEDE FREE SPEECH OR GATHERING!!!”

In 2021, Donald Trump’s now-appointed running mate told said the US was run by “a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable too.”

When asked by Piers Morgan if Mr Trump and Mr Vance have to be more careful about the language they’re using towards Ms Harris now she is at the top of the party ticket, Ms Mace replied: “I just watched Kamala Harris give a speech where she called every single Republican an extremist and was spouting off lies and conspiracy theories about our party.”

James Singer, a spokesperson for the Harris campaign, said in a statement on Saturday that “When Vice President Harris says this election is about freedom she means it.”

“Our democracy is under assault by criminal Donald Trump: After the last election Trump lost, he sent a mob to overturn the results,” he added.

“This campaign, he has promised violence if he loses, the end of our elections if he wins, and the termination of the Constitution to empower him to be a dictator to enact his dangerous Project 2025 agenda on America,” Singer said. “Donald Trump wants to take America backward, to a politics of hate, chaos, and fear – this November America will unite around Vice President Kamala Harris to stop him.”

Donald Trump said he plans to hold another rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, after a gunman fired an AR-15-style rifle at the former president moments after he stepped on stage in the town on July 13.

In an all-caps message on his Truth Social on Friday, Trump said he will be “going back” for “a big and beautiful rally” to honor a rally attendee who was fatally shot and two others who were critically injured during the assassination attempt.

“WHAT A DAY IT WILL BE — FIGHT, FIGHT, FIGHT! STAY TUNED FOR DETAILS,” he wrote.

“What struck former President Trump in the ear was a bullet, whether whole or fragmented into smaller pieces, fired from the deceased subject’s rifle,” the bureau said in a statement.

Trump quickly replied in a post on his Twitter clone, Truth Social, writing, “I assume that’s the best apology that we’ll get from Director Wray, but it is fully accepted!”

Ballistics experts surveyed by The Independent say it is impossible to know exactly what happened without further investigation — and increased transparency from Trump.

Trump and his campaign have declined to provide any official information about his injuries, have not released any of his medical records, and have not authorized the doctors who treated him to speak publicly.