Former President Trump will have bulletproof glass surrounding his podium for outdoor events going forward, a federal law enforcement source briefed on the planning told Fox News. 

Indoor events, meanwhile, will not involve the same level of protection, the source confirmed. 

The additional level of protection comes after an assassination attempt on the former president during a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania last month. 

The president was addressing the open-air crowd, just minutes into his speech, when a gunman fired at him from the rooftop of a nearby building. 

Trump managed to just barely turn his head and duck beneath the podium. A Secret Service member killed the gunman just seconds after he opened fire. 

Trump was struck in the ear but avoided serious injury. One spectator in the audience was killed and two others were injured. 

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The security failure has brought heavy scrutiny on the Secret Service, which had been responsible for coordinating with local law enforcement. 

The fury over the security lapse mounted after it was revealed that law enforcement had identified the gunman – later identified as 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks – as suspicious an hour before the rally began, but lost track of him. 

Republican presidential candidate and former U.S. President Donald Trump reacts as multiple shots rang out during a campaign rally at the Butler Farm Show in Butler, Pennsylvania on Saturday, July 13, 2024.  (REUTERS/Brendan McDermid)

Crooks was able to scale the roof of a building owned by AGR International Inc., a supplier of automation equipment for the glass and plastic packaging industry, and fire an estimated eight shots with an AR-15-style rifle. 

Crooks was able to scale the roof of a building owned by AGR International Inc., a supplier of automation equipment for the glass and plastic packaging industry, and fire an estimated eight shots with an AR-15 style rifle. 

Former President Trump held yet another hours-long press conference Thursday — his second this month — in an effort to draw a stark contrast between his candidacy, policies and campaign versus his opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, who has been dodging the media since becoming the Democratic presidential nominee. 

Trump held a press conference Thursday at his Bedminster, New Jersey property. The former president and Republican presidential nominee stood at the podium with groceries on display, and delivered remarks focused on the rising costs under the Biden-Harris administration. 

“Harris has just declared that tackling inflation will be a ‘Day One priority’ for her,” Trump said Thursday. “But Day One for Kamala was three and a half years ago.” 

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“Where has she been and why hasn’t she done it? Why hasn’t she done it?” 

Harris has been the Democratic presumptive presidential nominee for 25 days and has not held a press conference or a sit-down interview with the media. 

Trump said Harris’ campaign is “hiding” her, in a similar way he said the Biden campaign was “hiding” him. 

“They’re hiding her no different than him, because I believe she’s grossly incompetent,” Trump said. “And I don’t think that when people hear what she has to say, they’re going to buy it.” 

Sources in Trump’s political orbit tell Fox News that top advisers to the former president are quietly aiming to persuade him to tamp down the insults to Harris and the questioning of the vice president’s racial identity and instead focus on branding her an ultra-liberal and spotlighting her stance on the border, crime and inflation. 

But Trump, during the press conference Thursday, was asked about the “personal attacks” against Harris. 

“Because of what she’s done to the country, I’m very angry at her – that she had weaponized the justice system against me and other people. Very angry at her,” Trump said. “I think I’m entitled to personal attacks.” 

Trump added: “I don’t have a lot of respect for her. I don’t have a lot of respect for her intelligence. And I think she’d be a terrible president.” 

“I think it’s very important that we win,” he continued. “And whether the personal attacks are good or bad, I mean, she certainly attacks me personally.” 

Trump said Harris “actually called me weird… And she called JD and I weird. He’s not weird. He was a great student at Yale. He went to Ohio State, graduated in two years at the top of his class, and all of these different things.”

Trump pointed to Harris’ running mate Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, saying he is “a weird guy” and Harris is “weird in her policy.” 

“Who wouldn’t want to have strong borders?” Trump said. “Who doesn’t want to have lower taxes?” 

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“You know, all my life I’ve watched as politicians campaigned and I’ve always been on, you know, for the most part on the other side, on the side that these people are on and they always talked about, we’re going to reduce taxes — this is the only campaign I’ve ever heard where they’re saying, we’re going to increase your taxes,” Trump continued.

Trump stressed that the voters “don’t know who she is.” 

“She is a radical left socialist,” Trump said. “But beyond that, I mean, she’s way beyond socialism, who’s going to destroy our country and when they find out, I think you’re going to see something.”

Trump defended his attacks against Harris. 

“I just want to win for the country. Some people say, oh, why don’t you be nice? But they’re not nice to me,” he said. 
They want to put me in prison. You know, just so you understand. You know, they tell me I should be nice. They want to put me in prison. It’s never happened before in the history of our country. I did nothing wrong.” 

Trump was referring to his legal challenges–many cases have been thrown out or delayed. 

As for his campaign, Trump said he wished he didn’t have to run. 

“If our country were run by Democrats and it was run beautifully, where we were really being productive and everything else, I would have never done this,” Trump said. “I wouldn’t have done it if I thought I couldn’t have won. I think I can win, I think I can win easily once they’re exposed for what they are, which is, you know, radical left lunatics. And that’s what they are.” 

Trump said Harris is “going to ruin our country.” 

“And I just hope the people of our country, and I believe they are, because I see it already happening,” Trump said. “But I hope they are able to think for themselves, because if they think for themselves, if they look at the destruction that’s going to be caused by Kamala and this, this person from out of nowhere, he came out of nowhere, a state that I love that state, but a state that’s doing so poorly where he’s the one that signed to put tampons in boys bathrooms…signed a bill that boys bathrooms, all boys bathrooms in Minnesota will have tampons and what’s going on?” 

“What’s wrong with us? What’s wrong with us as a country?” Trump said. “So no, if we had somebody doing a phenomenal job, I would be extremely happy.” 

Trump said that even while he campaigns and hopes to win in November, what he wants is the country to do “really well” in the final months of Biden’s term, even though he said it “would make it probably a little bit harder to win.” 

“I hope the country does really well. It’s country first. I want our country to do great,” Trump said. “If they were great leaders, I would be the first to say they’re doing a fantastic job.”

BUTLER, PENNSYLVANIA – JULY 13: Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump is rushed offstage during a rally on July 13, 2024 in Butler, Pennsylvania. Butler County district attorney Richard Goldinger said the shooter is dead after injuring former U.S. President Donald Trump, killing one audience member and injuring another in the shooting. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images) (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

Meanwhile, Trump was asked why he felt God saved his life on July 13 after the assassination attempt at his Butler, Pa. rally. 

“That was a miracle,” Trump said. “God has something to do with it. It’s a miracle and God has something to do with it.” 

“Maybe it’s–we want to save the world,” he continued. “This world is going down.” 

Hours before Thursday’s news conference, the Harris campaign put out a mock email advisory titled “Donald Trump to Ramble Incoherently and Spread Dangerous Lies in Public, but at Different Home.”

US Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris (L) and Minnesota Governor and Democratics vice presidential candidate Tim Walz were slammed on social media for sharing a “cringe” video of themselves interviewing each other.  (RONDA CHURCHILL/AFP via Getty Images)

And Harris campaign spokesperson James Singer told Fox News that “Vice President Harris and Governor Walz are talking to voters, laying out a vision of the middle class, and letting Americans know they will fight for their freedoms.”

He argued that “Donald Trump can talk to whoever he wants, but he can’t explain away his toxic Project 2025 agenda, speak in coherent thoughts, or offer anything but insults and higher prices to the middle class.” 

Mayor Kyle Arganbright steered his dusty diesel truck through this ranching town, past the rodeo grounds and livestock auction, and pointed out the football field of the Valentine High School Badgers, whose roster once included a teenage Tim Walz. Next up: the quiet, tree-lined street where the Walz family once lived.

After Walz, the Minnesota governor, was named Vice President Kamala Harris’ running mate, reporters descended on his hometown of Valentine, population 2,600.

“Now I’m the local Tim Walz tour guide. Write that on the list of things I never thought I’d do,” Arganbright said with a laugh as a fishing rod, stretching from the back seat, rattled on his dashboard.

Harris and Walz come from vastly different worlds.

Harris is the biracial daughter of immigrants whose career was forged by the rough-and-tumble Democratic politics of the Bay Area — a place nationally synonymous with West Coast liberalism.

Walz is a white guy who spent formative years in Valentine, the remote seat of Cherry County, the nation’s top producer of beef cows.

Walz leans heavily on his upbringing, and during a campaign stop in Los Angeles this week, he even walked onstage to the John Mellencamp song “Small Town.”

But here in Cherry County — where former President Trump won 87% of the vote in 2020 — the presence of a hometown boy on the Democratic ticket is, well, a little awkward.

Asked if Walz might flip many votes, Arganbright chuckled.

“Um, no,” he said.

Arganbright, a fifth-generation Valentinian, said most voters here are Republicans with a leave-me-alone libertarian bent.

“If Tim Walz came back, I bet someone would buy him a beer if they saw him and say, ‘Hey, welcome home, man,’” he said. “People are very accommodating. But they’re not going to give up on their principles to impress somebody.”

Arganbright would not say whom he will be voting for — but said it might be a hint of his party preference that he once interned for Nebraska-born former Vice President Dick Cheney and that one of his young nephews had a show steer named Donald.

With Harris tapping Walz and Trump picking as his running mate Ohio Sen. JD Vance — whose bestselling “Hillbilly Elegy” chronicled his impoverished upbringing in the Rust Belt and Appalachia — the race has become, in part, a contest of rural bona fides.

Though the Trump campaign branded Walz “a West Coast wannabe,” Democrats are betting Walz will help them broaden their appeal in overwhelmingly white swaths of rural America, where the party has been trying to claw back voters after two decades of steep losses.

The country’s urban-rural political divide — evident even in California, where conservative northern counties have long talked of seceding to form their own State of Jefferson— has only grown wider since Trump was elected in 2016.

The Niobrara River bridge on the Cowboy Trail, a hiking and biking path along a former railroad track in Valentine.

(Hailey Branson-Potts / Los Angeles Times)

For urban Democrats, “it’s as if rural America has become a throwaway, and that lack of interest morphed into enormous resentment after Trump was elected,” said Lisa Pruitt, a professor at the UC Davis School of Law and president-elect of the Rural Sociological Society.

During the 2022 midterm elections, 69% of rural voters cast ballots for Republicans, compared with 29% supporting Democrats, according to the Pew Research Center. Among urban voters, 68% supported Democrats and 30% backed Republicans.

Randy Adkins, a political scientist at the University of Nebraska Omaha, said he does not see places like Nebraska suddenly going blue.

“What we’re seeing in the polls right now is there’s a little bit of movement toward Harris, but people made hard decisions and they made them a long time ago,” he said.

A building under construction along the newly refurbished Main Street in Valentine.

(Hailey Branson-Potts / Los Angeles Times)

Still, there is palpable excitement among rural Democratic organizers, who say they have long been overlooked by their national party.

Jane Kleeb, chair of the Nebraska Democratic Party, said in an email that Harris “has absolutely expanded the map beyond swing states with Tim Walz” and that “we do not have to hand him a briefing book on rural issues, because he has lived our experiences.”

Among Democrats’ many identity-based Zoom fundraising calls that have raised millions — including “White Dudes for Harris” — was an event last week called “Rural Folks for Harris.” It drew about 6,000 listeners across 48 states and raised $22,000.

In Valentine, there were no visible yard signs for Harris or Trump this week. At the Cherry County Rodeo, people donned cowboy hats, not MAGA caps.

The rodeo clown wondered aloud if one cowboy in a green shirt had actually “gone green” and had an electric pickup truck in the parking lot. It was a wink-wink joke in this far-flung town with no electric vehicle chargers, where such vehicles are seen not only as impractical — it is 130 miles to the nearest Walmart — but as a whiff of liberalism.

Arganbright — whose 7-year-old daughter rode a sheep bareback for just over two seconds in the rodeo’s mutton-bustin’ contest — is amused by the sudden, if fleeting, national interest that Walz’s selection has brought to Valentine. He hopes to use the spotlight to highlight positive things, like the just-finished, multimillion-dollar overhaul of Main Street.

But, he said, there are pressing issues here in vast Cherry County, where the population has dropped nearly 11% since 2000, to roughly 5,500 residents. Residents have struggled with high inflation, job losses as agricultural work becomes more mechanized, and a lack of child care and affordable housing.

As for people’s views of the federal government? One of the best examples, he said, of how “federal policies aren’t taken great locally” is the federally established time zone line, which, until the late 1960s, ran along Main Street, splitting Valentine between Mountain and Central time.

He said it took the government too long to fix it — although some bars are said to have benefited by opening on the west side of town, where they could stay open an hour later.

Bud Pettigrew, with wife Angie at the 2020 Democratic Iowa caucuses, attended Valentine High School with Tim Walz and is a former Nebraska Democratic Party official.

(Melanie Mason / Los Angeles Times)

Bud Pettigrew, who attended Valentine High School with Walz and is a former Nebraska Democratic Party official, said he’s heard mixed reactions in the Cornhusker State to the vice presidential nod.

“The people who are Democrats or open-minded independents are all thrilled about Tim,” said Pettigrew, former Marine and high school teacher. “The MAGA-type Republicans, they don’t care. He’s just another liberal. Once you move away, you don’t count anymore. You hear this a lot from rural people.”

Pettigrew, 63, was a senior when Walz was a freshman quarterback on the junior varsity team. Pettigrew saw in Walz “a pretty tough kid who had some ability.”

Walz’s father was the school superintendent, and Pettigrew remembers him fighting for a school bond — not an easy feat in a fiscally conservative town — to replace the 1897 schoolhouse said to be haunted by the ghost of a student who died after someone poisoned her clarinet reed.

Pettigrew is planning to vote for Harris and Walz.

Darlene Meyer, who owns the Plains Trading Company bookstore on Main Street, said she “was frightened” when she learned Harris was running — not because she dislikes her, but because she figured too many conservatives would refuse to vote for her because she’s a woman, because she’s Black and Asian American, and because she’s from California.

“How many strikes can you have against you?” she said. Walz, she added, was a smart choice.

Meyer is a registered Republican but not a party-line voter. She does not like Trump and said it was frustrating that he politicized masks during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown.

Meyer, a septuagenarian and longtime nurse, still requires masks in the bookstore, a 1914 building with poor ventilation. A few people have spit on the floor in protest. Others boycotted.

Still, Meyer tries to avoid discussing politics.

“There’s plenty else to talk about. The weather. Grasshoppers.”

The quiet main drag in Butte, Neb., where Walz moved with his family when he was a teenager.

(Hailey Branson-Potts / Los Angeles Times)

When he was a sophomore, Walz moved with his family 100 miles east to the farm town of Butte to be near relatives after his father was diagnosed with lung cancer. His dad died when he was 19.

Butte, which had a population of around 500 back then, has shrunk to about half that size. Butte High School — from which Walz graduated in 1982 among a class of 25 students — closed years ago. A fading mural downtown reads: “Save the Rural Schools.”

A Trump 2024 flag flies alongside the American flag next to the Butte Community Center.

Walz’s mother, Darlene, still lives in town, and some residents said that while they don’t agree with her son’s politics, they try not to talk about it because they don’t want to hurt her feelings.

Richard Meadows, from left, Dorothy Boes and Francine Meadows are friends of Tim Walz’s mom, Darlene, in Butte, Neb.

(Hailey Branson-Potts / Los Angeles Times)

Dorothy Boes, a retired special education teacher who lives just over the South Dakota line, goes to church in Butte and is in a women’s coffee group with Darlene Walz.

Boes does not like the way Trump “talks about and bad-mouths women” and was outraged by the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection. She worries about more potential violence.

“I just feel like he’s not going to go quietly into the night if he doesn’t win,” she said.

Boes, 77, does not know much about Walz’s political record. But she knows that he comes back to Butte often to take care of his mom and that he frequently brings her to Minnesota.

“Those are good, positive things, and, in my heart, I feel that he deserves a chance. And so does she,” Boes said of Walz and Harris. Boes is a longtime Republican who voted twice for Trump — but is undecided this year.

Richard Meadows, an 81-year-old “die-hard Democrat” who mows Darlene’s lawn, said he and his wife “coexist” peacefully with their Republican neighbors in Butte.

But Meadows — who has a chest-length white beard and worked for years as a professional St. Nick — knows who’s getting his vote.

“Santa Claus is gonna vote for Tim and Kamala.”

As for Valentine? Its post office gets inundated with packages every February by romantics who want a holiday-themed postmark. But the town is not named for St. Valentine.

It is named for Edward K. Valentine, a Union soldier during the Civil War and a congressman.

He was a Republican.