MILWAUKEE – Five days after surviving an assassination attempt, former President Trump on Thursday will formally accept the GOP presidential nomination during the culminating moment of the 2024 Republican National Convention.
The shooting, at Trump’s rally Saturday in western Pennsylvania where one spectator was killed, along with the gunman, instantly impacted the tone and message of the convention, and altered the former president’s address.
The Trump campaign has said this week that the former president – following his brush with death – will use his speech to call for unity in the face of tragedy instead of criticizing his political adversaries.
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Former President Trump is seen with blood on his face surrounded by Secret Service agents as he is taken off the stage at a campaign event in Butler, Pennsylvania, July 13, 2024. Rebecca Droke/AFP via Getty Images (Rebecca Droke/AFP via Getty Images)
Trump, in an interview Sunday with the Washington Examiner, said “honestly, it’s going to be a whole different speech now.”
“It is a chance to bring the country together. I was given that chance,” he emphasized.
And in an email to supporters on the eve of his address, Trump said “I will lay out my vision to UNITE OUR COUNTRY AND MAKE IT GREATER THAN EVER BEFORE!”
The push for party unity was on display during the first three days of the convention, with former GOP presidential rivals Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida and former U.N. ambassador and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley – who battled Trump in a contentious primary season – delivered speeches from the podium in support of the former president.
Republicans are using the convention as a venue to reunite the party and energize delegates and activists ahead of the final stretch of the campaign in Trump’s 2024 election rematch with President Biden.
“This is obviously an opportunity to bring the country together,” Trump co-campaign manager Chris LaCivita said earlier this week. “But let’s not forget we’re in the middle of a campaign, and we have to win that campaign.”
Former President Donald Trump arrives to the Republican National Convention (RNC) at the Fiserv Forum in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on Wednesday, July 17, 2024. (David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Trump is also expected to hit a major theme of his 2024 campaign – strength – and contrast it with what he argues is Biden’s weakness.
Trump campaign senior adviser Jason Miller, in an interview on Fox News’ “Jesse Watters Primetime,” spotlighted the “strength and resilience from President Trump, especially only a few days after the assassination attempt.”
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Miller also noted that the “tone” and “approach” of the former president’s speech “is going to be notably different.”
“President Trump has spent much of the last several days dictating what he wants that speech to look like in real terms, saying ‘I want to say this and I want to go into the following,’” Miller noted.
The Biden campaign isn’t buying the Republicans’ unity message.
Biden principal deputy campaign manager Quentin Fulks told reporters this week that Trump and Republicans “will always choose big, greedy, anti-union extremists over the working men and women of America.”
Trump’s address to the roughly 2,400 delegates and thousands of other attendees packed inside Milwaukee’s Fiserv Arena, and the millions of Americans watching the GOP convention, also comes less than two months since he was convicted of 34 felony counts in the first criminal trial of a former or current president in the nation’s history.
Republican presidential nominee and former U.S. President Donald Trump applauds as Republican vice presidential nominee J.D. Vance gestures on Day 2 of the Republican National Convention (RNC), at the Fiserv Forum in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, U.S., July 16, 2024. (REUTERS/Elizabeth Frantz)
But weeks later, Biden severely stumbled with a disastrous debate performance against Trump, which has led to a rising chorus of calls from within the Democratic Party for the president to end his 2024 re-election bid and bow out of the race.
And now, in the wake of this past weekend’s assassination attempt, the presidential rematch has been further altered.
On the eve of the convention’s final day, Republican vice presidential nominee Sen. JD Vance, acknowledged that “as we meet tonight, we cannot forget that this evening could have been much different. Instead of a day of celebration, this could have been a day of heartache and mourning.”