Trump and Melania attend Al Smith dinner together as former president rips Harris’s no-show: Live

Donald Trump has tried to strike yet another hush money deal with adult film star Stormy Daniels in exchange for her silence ahead of the 2024 presidential election, according to a report.

The former president’s attorneys allegedly sent Daniels an offer where the amount she owed him over a defamation suit would be lowered if she agreed not to make “defamatory or disparaging statements” about him.

The details were revealed in a special report by MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, who obtained calls, documents and emails about the deal.

James Liddell reports for The Independent.

The rapper and activist Common will join vice presidential nominee Tim Walz on the campaign trail in Winston-Salem, North Carolina later today.

“Together, Governor Walz and Common will speak directly to North Carolinians about the power of their voice and their vote and encourage voters across the state to get to the polls and cast their vote ahead of the November 5th election,” the campaign said.

Common performed at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in August.

Walz is scheduled to appear at 6.30pm this evening as part of a swing through the battleground state that would be an important pick up for Democrats who haven’t carried North Carolina since 2008.

He will also campaign in Durham at 2.30pm.

If you thought that Donald Trump fawning over Bret Baier for his “tough but fair” interview with Kamala Harris would go some way to repairing the sometimes fractious nature of the relationship between Fox News and the former president, then apparently you would be wrong.

Just like on Sunday, hours after his hour-long interview with Maria Bartiromo on Sunday Morning Futures, Trump is back to bashing the Rupert Murdoch-owned network’s terrible habit of having guests who oppose him or who don’t sing his praises...

Here’s how the former president voiced his displeasure on Truth Social a few moments ago:

Why does Suzanne Scott of FoxNews keep putting on third rate “talking heads” like Jessica Tarlov, Richard Fowler, Patrick Murphy, “something” Wolf, Keisha Lance Bottoms, and other Radical Left Lunatics that lie, and make up statements, with Fox, rarely having any counter to their storytelling? It is so bad for winning the Most Important Election in the History of our Country. Likewise, not a moment goes by when I’m not looking at negative, false Ads that the other camp stuffs the Fox airwaves with. If I win and, I hope for the Country’s sake that I do, and this Radical Left Moron, Kamala, doesn’t get a chance to run the Country, it is DESPITE Fox, not because of them!

...no, really.

Apparently, Vladimir Putin ordering an invasion of Ukraine had nothing to do with it.

Just astonishing.

Acting Service Service Director Ronald Rowe has responded to the bipartisan Independent Review Panel convened by President Joe Biden to examine the working of the agency after the first assassination attempt against Donald Trump on July 13.

Rowe says the Secret Service respects the work of the panel and remains committed to addressing the failures that contributed to the events of that day in Butler, Pennsylvania, and is “not waiting to act”.

A statement from Rowe goes on to say:

We have already significantly improved our readiness, operational and organizational communications and implemented enhanced protective operations for the former president and other protectees. This includes making changes to better integrate with our state and local law enforcement partners and augmenting our protection with support from the U.S. Department of Defense and other agencies.

Additionally, we are developing a comprehensive plan aimed at driving a fundamental transformation within the Secret Service to ensure we are appropriately configured to execute our dual integrated mission of protection and complex investigations. This plan focuses on increasing and retaining the agency’s personnel, modernizing our technology, and building a training plan that is sustainable now and into the future. We acknowledge that July 13 did not occur because of a lack of resources, however, our enhanced protective model implemented after July 13 requires additional people, equipment, and asset capabilities. The agency is also working with Congress to increase the agency’s budget so that we can make this paradigm shift a reality and ensure that our people have the resources they need to successfully carry out the mission.

The U.S. Secret Service remains steadfast in our relentless focus on fulfilling our critical mission. I am immensely proud of the dedicated U.S. Secret Service workforce. The men and women of the U.S. Secret Service answer the call to protect our nation’s leaders and major candidates while operating in a heightened and increasingly dynamic threat environment.”

Minnesota Governor Tim Walz will appear on Comedy Central’s The Daily Show on Monday, October 21.

Kamala Harris’s running mate will sit down in the studio with Jon Stewart, with the episode airing that night at 11pm.

It will be the Democratic vice presidential nominee’s first appearance on the show.

The panel who reviewed the working of the Secret Service following the assassination attempt on Donald Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, on July 13 has the following recommendations:

• Having a unified command post at all large events where Secret Service and other law enforcement representatives are all physically in the same place
• Overhead surveillance for all outdoor events
• Security plans must include a way to mitigate line of site concerns out to 1,000 yards and who’s in charge at the event
• More training on how to get protectees out of dangerous scenarios

The panel said the agency also needs new, outside leadership and a renewed focus on its core protective mission while expressing skepticism that the agency should continue with the investigations it currently conducts. While the Secret Service is well known for what it does to protect presidents and other dignitaries, it also investigates financial crimes.

“In the Panel’s opinion, it is simply unacceptable for the Service to have anything less than a paramount focus on its protective mission, particularly while that protective mission function is presently suboptimal,” the report said.

The panel members were Mark Filip, deputy attorney general under President George W. Bush; David Mitchell, who served in numerous state and local law enforcement roles in Maryland and Delaware; Janet Napolitano, homeland security secretary under President Barack Obama; and Frances Fragos Townsend, Bush’s assistant for homeland security and counterterrorism.

The report published by the independent panel investigating the attempted assassination of Donald Trump at a Pennsylvania campaign rally delved into the culture of the Secret Service and painted a picture of an agency struggling to think critically about how it carries out its mission, especially when it comes to protecting Trump.

The panel said agency personnel operated under the assumption that they effectively had to “do more with less.” The report said the additional security measures taken to protect Trump after the Butler shooting should have been taken before.

“To be clear, the Panel did not identify any nefarious or malicious intent behind this phenomenon, but rather an overreliance on assigning personnel based on categories (former, candidate, nominee) instead of an individualized assessment of risk,” the panel wrote.

The panel also noted the “back-and-forth” between the Trump security detail and Secret Service headquarters regarding how many people were needed to protect him.

The panel also faulted some of the senior-level staff who were involved in the rally for what they called a “lack of ownership.” In one example, the panel said a senior agent on site who was tasked with coordinating communications didn’t walk around the rally site ahead of time and did not brief the state police counterpart before the rally about how communications would be managed.

It cited the relative inexperience of two specific agents who played a role in security for the July 13 rally. One was the site agent from Trump’s detail whose job it was to coordinate with the Pittsburgh field office on security planning for the rally. The panel said the agent graduated from the Secret Service academy in 2020, and had only been on the Trump detail since 2023. Before the Butler rally the agent had only done “minimal previous site advance work or site security planning.”

Another agent assigned to operate a drone detection system had only used the technology at two prior events.