MILWAUKEE- One day after Donald Trump was formally nominated as the GOP’s 2024 presidential nominee and named Sen. JD Vance of Ohio as his running mate, Trump’s final rival during the presidential primaries takes center stage at the Republican National Convention.
Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, who served as U.N. ambassador in the Trump administration, will speak at the convention on Tuesday, multiple sources familiar with the decision confirmed to Fox News over the weekend.
As of last week, Haley wasn’t invited to speak at the convention and wasn’t planning on attending the four-day confab, which is being held in swing state, Wisconsin’s largest city.
But following Saturday’s attempted assassination attempt on Trump at a rally in western Pennsylvania, where the former president was visibly bloodied after a bullet grazed his ear and where one spectator was killed and two critically injured, the GOP quickly unified around their standard-bearer. And as part of that push for unity, Haley was invited to speak at the convention.
TRUMP ANNOUNCES JD VANCE AS HIS 2024 RUNNING MATE
Former President Donald Trump gestures with a bloodied face as multiple shots rang out during a campaign rally at the Butler Farm Show in Butler, Pennsylvania, U.S., July 13, 2024. (REUTERS/Brendan McDermid)
Haley launched her presidential campaign in February last year, becoming the first major candidate to challenge Trump, who had announced his candidacy three months earlier. She was the final rival to Trump, battling the former president in a contentious two-candidate showdown from the New Hampshire primary in late January through Super Tuesday in early March.
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Haley announced that she was suspending her White House campaign on March 6, the day after Trump swept 14 of 15 GOP nominating contests on Super Tuesday.
As she departed the race, Haley made it clear that she intended to keep speaking out. And Haley continued to grab up to 20% of the vote in Republican presidential primaries in the months after she dropped out.
Republican presidential candidate and former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley speaks as she announces she is suspending her campaign, in Charleston, South Carolina, March 6, 2024. (REUTERS/Brian Snyder)
In late May, in her first public comments since announcing the end of her 2024 campaign, Haley said she would vote for Trump.
Haley won a total of 97 delegates during the Republican presidential primaries. And last week, Haley released all of her delegates and urged them to support Trump.
Asked last week in an interview with Fox News’ Brian Kilmeade about Haley, Trump said “there was a lot of bad blood there, and she stayed too long.”
Pointing to another former nomination rival, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who left the race three days ahead of the New Hampshire primary, Trump said, “DeSantis left right after Iowa. She should have left right after Iowa.”
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Also in the spotlight on the second night of the convention, a handful of high-profile Republican Senate candidates will address GOP delegates from the podium of Milwaukee’s Fiserv Forum.
Thanks in part to a very favorable Senate electoral map, the GOP aims to win back the majority in the chamber that it lost in the 2020 election cycle.
Tuesday’s session follows Monday’s blockbuster developments.
Just ahead of his formal nomination during the convention’s presidential roll call, Trump announced his much anticipated choice for running mate.
With an eye toward the future of a Republican Party dominated by Trump and his legions of MAGA supporters, the former president added the 39-year-old Vance to the party’s national ticket.
Former President Trump’s choice for GOP running mate, Sen. JD Vance (R-OH) arrives on the first day of the Republican National Convention at the Fiserv Forum on July 15, 2024 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. (Win McNamee/Getty Images)
Trump will now share the ticket with one of his top supporters in the Senate and a one-time Trump critic who has transformed into a leading America First disciple.
Vance, a former venture capitalist and the author of the bestselling memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy,” before running for elective office, was one of a handful of Republicans considered top running mate contenders. That group also included North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum and Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida.
As Fox News reported, Rubio and Burgum received phone calls a couple of hours ahead of Trump’s announcement that they would not be named as the running mate.
And a well-placed source in Vance’s political orbit told Fox News that the senator wasn’t informed he was the running mate until 20 minutes before Trump unveiled his choice in a social media post on the Truth Social platform.