Last night there was a shooting that is now being investigated as an assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump. Let that sink in. It's a truly staggering moment in an already unprecedented election. But if you're just catching up, here's what happened.

This is a big crowd. This is a big, big, beautiful crowd.

Trump had just taken the stage at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, just north of Pittsburgh. And just a few minutes into his speech, around 615 pm Eastern, there were a series of loud pops.

Take a look at what happened.

Trump stops speaking and grabs his right ear. Almost immediately, he drops to the ground. Secret Service agents rush the podium. They climb on top of him. After about a minute, the agents stand up with Trump. They're trying to shield him from view, but you can clearly see bright red blood pouring down his face. The crowd cheers as he stands up and you can see Trump trying to push through the agent's arms so he can raise his fist in the air. He's actually able to poke his head out and unleashes a few defiant yells at the crowd to show he's okay. Secret Service then rushed Trump into a van and it sped off to a nearby medical center. Trump escaped with his life, but this was a deadly attack. The Secret Service said at least one rallygoer was killed, two others were injured. They said agents neutralized the suspected shooter, who had opened fire from an elevated position outside the protective rally zone. A few hours later, Trump wrote on social media that he was shot in the upper part of his right ear, that a bullet ripped through the skin. Trump allies quickly sent out messages of concern and President Joe Biden addressed the nation from outside Wilmington, Delaware, joining in a chorus of lawmakers from both sides of the aisle saying that political violence is not the answer.

The bottom line is that the Trump rally was a rally that he should have been able to be conducted peacefully without any problem. But the idea, the idea that there's political violence or violence in America like this is just unheard of. It's just not appropriate. And everybody, everybody must condemn it. Everybody.

There are many, many more questions about the suspected shooter, their motivations, and the apparent failure in security preparations that CNN will be following closely in the days ahead. But a senior republican official tell CNN that the Republican National Convention will open up as planned on Monday in Milwaukee. And the official platform the party will be considering could have a big impact on all Americans if Trump wins back the White House. My guest is CNN politics reporter Elena Treen. We spoke last week before the rally today, what that platform actually says and how it differs from a much more radical right wing blueprint built by Trump allies. From CNN, this is one thing. I'm David Rind. So, Elena, amid all this drama surrounding President Joe Biden and the Democratic Party, it dawns on me that the Republican National Convention gets underway this week in Milwaukee. There's no question about whether Donald Trump is the guy at the top of that ticket, despite his criminal conviction and other felony charges. So I want to explore the actual policy, like what this version of the Republican Party stands for and what that might mean for Americans if Trump wins the White House.

So tell me, what exactly is this party's platform?

Well, David, first of all, I just want to state how the convention is really going to be a Trump coronation. And what I find really interesting about it this year is that Donald Trump, a tv producer at heart, is finally getting the type of production that he's been craving. And I think, you know, look back at 2016, the first time Donald Trump accepted the nomination, he was still facing a lot of resistance from within the party.

If you love our country and love your children as much as I know that you do, stand and speak and vote your conscience. Vote for candidates up and down the ticket who you trust to defend our freedom.

Kind of punctuated by Texas senator Ted Cruz, who took the stage and refused endorse Trump, telling the delegates to vote your conscience.

I don't think I remember that.

I appreciate the enthusiasm of the New York delegation.

And in 2020, a lot of Donald Trump's big plans were squandered due to the pandemic. So this year, it really is going to be the Trump show. And with that comes a platform that really reflects him and his branding. And so what I find really notable about this platform is how different it is from the years past. And parts of it really read like a Trump rally, which isn't totally surprising, given that Trump himself helped edit it and even wrote some of it. Now, just to walk you through some of the most notable parts of it that I found to be the most.

Interesting, I will not cut one penny from Social Security or Medicare, and I will not raise the retirement age by one.

It abandons long held positions on abortion and same sex marriage, while also embracing new plans for mass deportations of millions of undocumented immigrants. As part of the platform for the republican party, Joe Biden wants to be.

The president for illegal aliens, but I will be the president for law abiding Americans of every background, every walk of life.

It proposes ending the education department it calls to Deportez, quote, pro hamas radicals. It calls to build a great iron dome over the country and end the weaponization of the Department of Justice. Now, there's a bunch of other things in there, including ending the electric vehicle.

Mandate, and I will keep men out of women's sports. Can you imagine? Can you imagine even having to say that?

So all of this very key to what Donald Trump himself has been saying on the campaign trail for the last several months in the lead up to November.

Yeah, it seems like all kind of red meat, Trump based stuff, but what should we make about the softening of this language around abortion? Like, I thought this was the party that worked for decades to overturn Roe v. Wade, and now you're saying they don't want to go even further? Like a national abortion ban or something like that?

Yeah, there is no mention of a national abortion ban in this platform. And I will say past platforms going back decades for the Republican Party have always included some sort of line about a national ban. And so this actually took that out. And it's only mentioned, abortion is only mentioned once in this entire platform.

Once.

Wow. But look, it kind of reflects the fine line that Trump has struggled to walk himself. Now, just from my reporting and my conversations with Donald Trump and the people he talks to, he really changes his rhetoric on this depending on who he's talking to. So in some conversations, he will take credit for being the one who was responsible for the Dobbs ruling.

Many people have asked me what my position is on abortion and abortion rights, especially since I was proudly the person responsible for the ending of something that all legal scholars, both sides, wanted and in fact, demanded be ended. Roe v. Wade. They wanted it.

But in other occasions, he also says that the issue is a political loser. And he believes that personally, and he says this both privately and publicly, that republicans need to win elections. And so this platform itself really reflects Trump's sort of dodge on the issue.

Many states will be different. Many will have a different number of weeks, or some will have more conservative than others, and that's what they will be. At the end of the day, this is all about the will of the people.

It leaves the issue to the states. And like I said, it does not mention a national abortion ban, which had been in past platforms.

They basically had, in some cases, gay bans. I don't want that. I'm still aware about. They had other things that are ridiculous.

Another interesting part as well, kind of tied to this, is that the platform removes the language from 2016 condemning the Supreme Court's 2015 decision granting same sex couples the right to marry. Now, the new language in this platform actually does not weigh in, really, on same sex marriage at all. And so definitely a softening of what we've seen the Republican Party platform include in the past. But I will say we have seen more of this extreme language in another document, a much longer and more far reaching one called Project 2025.

So, Lana, before the break, you mentioned this project 2025. And honestly, I've been seeing it a lot over social media, like, the last couple of weeks. But for those who don't follow, like, the ins and outs of this, like, political chatter, super closely, can you just explain what is Project 2025?

So Project 2025 is essentially a blueprint crafted by Trump's allies to radically reshape the federal government and american life should Donald Trump or another conservative republican president be elected in the future. So they argue that this is for any conservative who could become president, but much of it is geared directly toward Donald Trump. Now, the lead architect behind Project 2025 is the Heritage foundation, which I should note is a sponsor of the convention. They created this 900 page playbook. 900 pages did not mess that up. It is a massive document, and it essentially wants to fill the executive branch with thousands of Trump loyalists and reorient many of its agency's missions around conservative ideals.

Donald Trump is once again denying any knowledge of what's called Project 2025, the conservative playbook that potentially could radically change America.

What's interesting and why you've probably seen it, like you said in the past couple of days, is that Trump on social media recently claimed that he knows nothing about Project 2025 and essentially saying parts of it are ridiculous.

A statement on true social he said, I know nothing about Project 2025. I have no idea who is behind it. I disagree with some of the things they're saying, and some of the things they're saying are absolutely, absolutely ridiculous and abysmal. Anything they do, I wish them luck, but I have nothing to do with.

Them, obviously, again, but the plan actually includes many policy priorities that are aligned with those of the former president, especially as they relate to cracking down on immigration and purging the federal bureaucracy by making it easier to dismiss civil servants and career officials, something both Donald Trump and this plan embraces. But it also does include several controversial proposals that Trump has not discussed, including banning pornography, reversing federal approval of the abortion pill mifepristone, excluding the morning after pill and men's contraceptions from the Affordable Care act, and making it harder for transgender adults to transition. Now, his campaign has been trying to distance themselves from this as well over the past several months, saying that any policy that does not come directly from the campaign is not a reflection of the former president. But many of Donald Trump's fiercest allies, including several people who served in his former administration, people like Stephen Miller, Mark Meadows, John McEntee, Russ Vought, all of them are partners on this project. And there are also some of these people that I just mentioned are people many in Donald Trump's world and inner circle believe will have some sort of role in a second administration.

And I do want to just tout, my colleague Steve Contorno did this brilliant internal review of this 900 page agenda, and he found that at least 140 people who worked in the Trump administration had had a hand in this project.

Yeah. So it seems like that would really strain credulity that Trump, like, has no idea what this is or who's involved with it. Like, he obviously knows these people.

He does. And many of these people he talks to still on a regular basis. But again, this isn't something that was crafted by Donald Trump's own internal policy team on his campaign. This is something that is been created by the Heritage foundation. But again, there's so much of this that does reflect what Donald Trump himself is pushing for, but he is not putting his stamp of approval on the entire thing.

Well, yeah, I was gonna say they insist it's not endorsed by the Trump campaign. But, like, is there a world where Trump takes office next year and looks at this 900 pages and can pick out specific blueprints or guidelines or policies that he likes and then can implement in short order?

Oh, absolutely. I mean, that's the whole point of this project. This because, well, there's a couple reasons. One is that they want this to be the official transition document that Donald Trump uses if he is elected. So, one, it's also to help fill his administration with people that they've already been vetting and interviewing. And then the other part of this is, of course, enacting some of this policy. And again, the Heritage foundation has said that they believe this is for any conservative Republican who could take office next and sit in the Oval Office. But this is very much geared toward Donald Trump. But again, there are parts of it that are not things that Donald Trump agrees with.

Well, so even as the Republicans get ready to kind of dominate the airwaves this week, obviously the Biden drama is still very much front and center in Washington and beyond. So how is team Trump kind of thinking about this? Will he or won't he? Of Biden running or not?

Well, it's actually been fascinating to watch, because ever since the debate, Donald Trump has been really trying to let Joe Biden be the story. And that is a deliberate effort, I am told by his advisors on their part to keep the hand wringing within the democratic party front and center. Now, you know, when I talk to his team, it's been interesting because they are trying to figure out what's going to happen as much as the rest of the world is. They are watching this like the rest of America, and they have no idea what could happen if Joe Biden were to ultimately step aside. When I talk to them, they actually want Joe Biden to continue to be the candidate they have planned for months. I mean, their entire campaign, down to the modeling, the massive data operation that they have created, the millions of dollars they have spent on ads, all of that has been geared toward beating Joe Biden.

I imagine they like drawing the contrast of having the energetic Trump against a candidate in Biden who they see as weak and frail. And the idea of somebody coming in who maybe has more pep in their step would be a blow to them.

Exactly. But I will also say at the same time, I mean, Donald Trump is entering one of the most marquee periods of his campaign with this convention. He has yet to announce his vice presidential pick, and he wants those to dominate headlines as well. And so this has been a struggle behind the scenes to see what can grasp the public's attention, keep the media focused on the news that Donald Trump wants them to be focused on, while also letting them continue to watch the criticism being aimed at Joe Biden from people within his own party. So it's been an interesting juggling act. And I will say the convention is going to be him accepting the nomination. He'll be giving a speech, but most of it is a formality. He had gotten the delegates months ago, but also everyone in the party is really, even those who have criticized him in the past are really lining up behind him and want to show this united front.

Like you said, he's going to have a full week of a Trump show at the convention. Are you going to be in Milwaukee?

I will be. I'll be there for the whole thing.

I'll see you there. Thank you, Elena. Appreciate it.

Thank you.

One thing is a production of CNN audio. This episode was produced by Paulo Ortiz and me, David Rindenhouse. Our senior producer is Fez Jamil. Our supervising producer is Greg Peppers. Matt Dempsey is our production manager. Dan Dzula is our technical director. And Steve Lichtie is the executive producer of CNN audio. We get support from Hailey Thomas, Alex Manasseri, Robert Mathers, John Dianora, Lanny Steinhardt, Jamis Andres, Nicole Pessarou, and Lisa Namirau. Special thanks to Katie Hinman. Well be back on Wednesday from the RNC. Ill talk to you then.