So far very few details have emerged about the person the Secret Service shot outside the White House. According to the AP: The shooting took place near 17th street and Pennsylvania avenue just blocks from the White House, according to two sources with knowledge of the situation. Law enforcement officials were still trying to determine the suspect’s motive. The suspect was transferred to a local hospital, and the District of Columbia fire department said the man suffered serious or possibly critical injuries. Authorities were investigating whether the individual has a history of mental illness. Trump considers blocking American citizens from re-entering US Trump is reportedly considering new immigration restrictions that would allow the US to temporarily block American citizens or legal permanent residents from returning to the US if authorities believe the individual could have coronavirus, according to the New York Times. The president’s previous Covid travel restrictions have exempted American and legal permanent residents. A draft of the proposal reviewed by the newspaper says that that the government could block a citizen or legal resident from crossing the border if an official “reasonably believes that the individual either may have been exposed to or is infected with the communicable disease”. It’s unclear how long the ban could extend. Omar Jadwat, of the ACLU, responded: Barring American citizens from the United States is unconstitutional. The Trump administration has rolled out one border ban after another — most recently on children and asylum seekers — using Covid-19 as an excuse, while failing abysmally to get the virus under control in the United States. The rumored order would be another grave error in a year that has already seen far too many.” We were less than three minutes in with the president holding court on one of his favourite subjects – mail-in voting – when pandemonium broke out. A Secret Service agent – grey suit, shaved head, earpiece with squiggly wire – leaned in and spoke quietly to Donald Trump, asking to step outside. “Excuse me?” asked the president. Surprised, he turned, stopped, looked askance for a moment, then followed the agent out of the White House briefing room at a leisurely pace. But he left behind a storm of clicking cameras, reporters speaking into phones in different languages and general uproar. The doors of the briefing room were locked. Outside, a police officer wearing body armour held a firearm. Others walked purposefully on the driveway. In this year of unbearable drama and trauma, what now? There were few answers amid the commotion. Then, after about 10 minutes that felt like an eternity, with TV reporters still in full flow, Trump returned to the podium. He explained that the Secret Service had shot a suspect outside the White House grounds, and the suspect had been taken to hospital. “You were surprised,” he said. “I was surprised also. I think it’s pretty unusual.” The typical structure of the press briefing broke down as questions were hurled from all sides and one correspondent carried on loudly reporting into a phone. “Are you rattled?” someone asked. Trump replied: “I don’t know. Do I seem rattled? The world’s always been a dangerous place. You look back on the centuries, it’s always been a dangerous place.” In a sedate, sometimes hard-to-hear monotone, he was soon back to business as usual, which included insulting “Sleepy Joe Biden” and accusing Barack Obama of treason. Which was reassuring. Almost. Trump’s press conference has ended after a series of falsehoods and misleading claims. At one point he compared the Covid-19 crisis to the “the great pandemic” of 1917, saying it was a “terrible thing” that “probably ended the Second World War, all the soldiers were sick”. The pandemic occurred in 1918, and World War II ended in 1945. The Guardian’s David Smith asked the president: “If 160,000 people had died on President Obama’s watch, do you think you would have called for his resignation?” Trump responded, “No I wouldn’t have done that. I think it’s been amazing what we’ve been able to do. If we didn’t close up our country, we’d have 1.5 to 2m people already dead. We’ve called it right. Now we don’t have to close it ... If I would’ve listened to a lot of people, we would’ve kept it open.” The president insisted the US has done an “extraordinary job”. Fact check: The US government’s own public health expert has admitted that more lives would have been saved if the US had adopted social distancing restrictions earlier. Throughout the pandemic, Trump has strongly resisted efforts to put in place federal restrictions to slow the spread of the virus, has pushed states to reopen and has expressed sympathy to rightwing protests against lockdowns. Additionally, the US is the only affluent nation, to have suffered a sustained and severe outbreak for more than four months, as the New York Times recently noted. From the Guardian’s recent coverage, the US is also failing to report vital information on Covid-19 that could help track the spread of the disease and prevent the deaths of tens of thousands of Americans, according to one analysis: Secret Service has confirmed there was a shooting, but has not provided any more information: During the press conference, Trump noted that when he was forced to leave the podium earlier, he saw a Fox News report saying there were “two shots in rapid succession”: Trump has once again made confusing and contradictory remarks about healthcare coverage for people with pre-existing conditions. He said he would be pushing an “executive order” to protect people with pre-existing conditions, even though they are already covered under Obamacare, which the Trump administration is trying to dismantle. Asked why an “executive order” is needed for a protection already in place (which he is trying to remove), Trump responded that it’s “just a double safety net”. He said he wanted Republicans to be known as protecting people with pre-existing conditions: “It’s a signal to people.” Trump is now saying he would likely delay the G7 summit until “after the election ... we we have a little bit more time to think about it”. He also says he would “certainly” invite Vladimir Putin to G7: The president dodged a question asking him to explain his previous remark that his opponent, Joe Biden, would “hurt God”. The president responded with a reference to Bernie Sanders and generic criticisms of Biden on taxes. Asked for more information on the possible shooting incident outside the White House, Trump said he didn’t have any details to share about a possible suspect, adding, “I don’t think anything was breached. They were relatively far away.” Fact check: Trump"s falsehoods on Covid-19 testing The press conference is back on, with Trump spreading blatant falsehoods about the state of the Covid-19 crisis in the US, while repeatedly using his racist “China virus” label. He continues to downplay the crisis here, saying the reason the US is seeing major surges is due to the fact that “We are so far ahead of testing ... If we have much smaller testing, we’d have fewer [cases]. ... It’s a great record to have. No other country is close.” In reality, the increases in cases in the US are outpacing the test increases. When Trump was called out on this in a viral interview recently, he stumbled to respond to questions about rising deaths and hospitalizations. The president also just shared false information about India’s testing, downplaying the nation’s capacity. Fact check: Trump spreads unsubstantiated claims on mail-in voting Before he abruptly left his press conference, Trump made numerous misleading and unsubstantiated claims attacking mail-in voting. Trump was citing reports about absentee ballot applications that had inaccurate information in Virginia, but those applications were not ballots and they were sent by a private organization, not the government. Trump was falsely suggesting that this was a reflection of the dangers of mail-in voting, adding, “We don’t want to have a rigged election. He also said, “When you have this mail-in voting, it’s something that can be easily attacked by foreign countries and by frankly Democrats and Republicans. It’s something to think about seriously.” As AP noted in a recent fact check, it’s false to suggest that measures aren’t in place to confirm a voter’s identity or prevent fraud with mail ballots. Ballots typically require voters to provide identifying information such as a birth date or Social Security or driver’s license number. In most states, voters also sign the back of the envelope, which is then verified with the signature on their registrations. Washington’s secretary of state, Kim Wyman, a Republican, recently told NPR: “Election officials spend a great deal of our time building in security measures. The idea that people could print millions of ballots either within the country or external to the country, just on its face, is not going to pass muster with an election official.” Trump says there was a "shooting" outside White House More details on the president’s sudden departure. The president said: “It was a shooting outside of the White House... I’d like to thank the Secret Service for doing their always quick and very effective work... Somebody’s been taken to the hospital.” He added, “You were surprised. I was surprised also. I think it’s pretty unusual.” He said he understands the suspect was armed. “It might not have had anything to do with me.” Asked about the location, Trump said: “It was outside of the premises.”