MILWAUKEE — Donald Trump formally accepted the Republican presidential nomination Thursday night in a speech heavy with references to last week’s shooting survivor and extended by cheer lines and riffs — only to cap the long-awaited moment that came after the shock. and dramatic campaign.
Trump, the first major-party presidential candidate to be convicted of murder, took the stage days after the 20-year-old gunman. almost killed During a rally in Pennsylvania, he cut his right ear with a bullet and left it bleeding. He wore a white square bandage over his wounded ear throughout the convention, with some attendees donning theirs in solidarity during the week-long event.
“Let me begin this evening by thanking the American people for the love and support you have shown since the assassination attempt at my rally on Saturday,” Trump said at the start of his 93-minute speech. “As you already know, the assassin’s bullet came within a quarter of an inch of taking my life.”
The shooter wounded two others and killed rally attendee Corey Comperatore, a former fire chief from the area. During his speech, Trump remembered him with a minute of silence. Comperatore’s fire jacket and helmet were on display during his speech, and Trump called him a “good guy” to cheers and went to kiss his gear.
Although Trump is known for his outspoken public statements and social media posts, he has made highly-scheduled convention appearances in the past. That’s how Thursday’s speech began, but he quickly digressed to thank the speakers and attendees at length, and then drew the crowd for asides, impressions and sometimes hard-to-follow digressions.
His written speech could have come from any number of Republicans, but Trump’s speech resembled his usual smile at rallies — a style unchanged after he and his allies talked all week about how the shooting had changed him.
Still, the speechwriting process was overturned at the last minute by an assassination attempt that dominated the opening sections of Trump’s remarks.
“I said to myself, ‘Wow, what was that – it can only be a bullet’ – and I put my right hand to my ear, and I brought it down, and there was blood in my hand,” Trump told the quiet, emotional crowd after the bullet hit him in the ear during the rally. moment, television cameras approached the participants who were wiping tears from their faces. “I immediately understood that it was very serious, we were attacked and I fell to the ground with one movement.”
Trump thought he was dizzy a little while ago.
“The amazing thing is that if I hadn’t moved my head at the last moment before the shooting, the killer’s bullet would have been full,” he said. “And I won’t be with you tonight.”
An assassination attempt just days before the Republican convention left organizers and Trump aides scrambling to figure out how to host the long-planned party after the near-tragedy. In a hurried 48 hours before the convention began, Trump’s aides not only rewrote Trump’s speech, but also sent messages to other convention speakers to tone down some of his remarks.
Trump mentioned President Joe Biden by name just once, more than 40 times during his acceptance speech for the 2020 Republican nomination.
After about 20 minutes, the event gave new weight to Trump’s appeal when the conversation turned to his campaign highlights. “We are united tonight more than ever,” he said.
Before turning to politics, Trump defended himself against what was the dominant theme of the 2024 campaign before Biden’s age, and one assassin’s bullet dramatically changed the terms of the race: his legal troubles.
Trump had faced four separate indictments, two federal and two state, but those legal challenges have eased dramatically in recent weeks and sentencing has been delayed since his conviction. accusations In New York, a US Supreme Court decision Presidential immunity and dismissal by a Trump-appointed federal judge in Florida over the handling and storage of classified documents after he left the White House in 2020.
Trump and his supporters have long claimed, without evidence, that they have “weaponized” the justice system, blaming Biden and the Democrats for his legal troubles. He claimed his opponents were “using Covid to cheat” in the 2020 election and linked the court cases to widespread calls to temper political rhetoric after the shooting.
In his speech to Congress, Trump said: “We should not criminalize dissent or demonize political dissent.” “In this spirit, the Democratic Party should immediately stop weaponizing the justice system and painting its political opponents as enemies of democracy, especially when this is not true. In fact, I am the one who saved democracy for the people of our country.”
Trump used the second half of his speech to highlight his deep policy differences with Biden, from immigration to energy policy to the economy.
“I will immediately end the devastating inflationary crisis, lower interest rates and lower the cost of energy. We will drill, baby, drill, and this will lead to a large-scale drop in prices.”
Trump talked broadly about his policy priorities, but his speech skipped over the top policy priorities over the years, including tax cuts, immigration, foreign policy and the economy. He focused on the high inflation rate that plagued Biden for most of his time in office.
“We have an inflationary crisis that is making life unaffordable, destroying incomes for working and low-income families, and crushing our people, just crushing them,” he said.
Inflation has cooled in recent months and 15 million more jobs were created under Biden than during the Trump administration. But rising prices and other issues mean the economy remains one of Republicans’ most effective lines of attack.
Trump said the nation had an “illegal immigration crisis” and vowed to “launch the largest deportation crackdown in the history of our country” while citing examples of undocumented migrants committing crimes. During his time in office, Trump implemented the “stay in Mexico” policy, which requires asylum seekers to remain in Mexico while awaiting an immigration hearing. After a legal battle, Biden ended the policy and Trump said he would bring it back.
The former president has also long advocated a more isolationist foreign policy platform that limits America’s footprint in other parts of the world. It’s part of his “America First” agenda, which focuses on spending more at home and sending fewer taxpayer dollars abroad.
“Right now there is war in Europe and the Middle East, there is the specter of growing conflict over Taiwan, Korea, the Philippines and all of Asia, and our planet is on the brink of World War III,” Trump said.
Democrats evaluated the elections not just as the next presidential contest, but as a struggle for the future of democracy. They argued that Trump’s return to the White House would dramatically transform US institutions as he seeks to replace longtime apolitical federal employees with political allies and expand his presidential powers.
“He failed to mention the pain and cruelty he inflicted on American women by overturning Roe v Wade,” Biden campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon said in a statement. “He could not talk about the plan to take over the civil service and pardon the January 6 rebels.”
And Trump’s speech came amid efforts by Democrats to sideline Biden poor discussion performance and several gaffes drew a bright spotlight on the current president’s age and skills.
Trump evaluated the elections as a course correction.
“With the right leadership, every disaster we’re enduring now will be fixed and it will be fixed very, very quickly,” he said.