With the political winds at his back, Donald Trump is expected to use his first speech since surviving an assassination attempt on Thursday to plead for national unity.
Strategists see the Republican national convention speech, which will likely be seen by tens of millions of Americans on prime-time television, as a unique opportunity to redefine the former U.S. president as more palatable to moderate voters.
But critics remain skeptical that a Trump reset can last, citing supposed “pivots” from the past that were trumpeted by the media only for the septuagenarian to soon revert to dark, divisive and incendiary outbursts.
“That was a profound existential moment and I’m sure it impacted you in the short term, but you are who you are,” David Axelrod, said a former chief strategist for President Barack Obama. “He is not a unifier by habit or orientation.
“Perhaps while the race is going well, others can convince you that it is better to be quiet than noisy. But you never know what happens at two in the morning when he has his phone in his hand and an impulse in his head.”
In opinion polls, Trump is 11 percentage points ahead of where he was nationally in the 2020 race for the White House. He is riding a wave of sympathy and adulation after his right ear was wounded by a would-be assassin’s bullet at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania on Saturday.
Two days later, with his ear bandaged, Trump received a hero’s welcome of supporters cheering and waving signs at the convention in Milwaukee. Some echoed Trump’s initial response to “Fight! To fight! To fight!”
Speaker after speaker suggested that Trump’s life was spared by God’s providence so that he could continue a sacred mission for the nation. But they pushed back on early accusations that Democrats were to blame for the shooting.
Trump’s running mate, JD Vance, who on Saturday tweeted that Joe Biden’s campaign rhetoric “led directly” to the assassination attempt set a different tone in his convention speech Wednesday night.
“Now consider what they said. They said he was a tyrant. They said he must be detained at all costs. But how did he respond? He called for national unity, for national calm, literally right after a murderer almost took his life.”
He added: “He’s tough – he is – and he cares about people. He can challenge a murderer one moment and call for national healing the next. He is a beloved father and grandfather and, of course, a once-in-a-generation business leader.”
In another move aimed at softening Trump’s image, his granddaughter Kai Madison Trump made his debut on the political scene. “He calls me in the middle of the school day to ask how my golf game is going and tells me all about his,” she said. “Grandpa, you are a great inspiration and I love you. The media makes my grandfather seem like a very different person, but I know who he is.”
Some have changed their emphasis from “Make America Great Again” (Maga) to “Make America United Again.” Lara Trump, his daughter-in-law and co-chair of the Republican National Committee, told the convention on Tuesday that Americans should remember that “there are more things that unite us than divide us.”
In a nod to moderation, Trump invited his former Republican rival Nikki Haley to speak. She was greeted with applause and some boos, but quickly quelled the latter, giving Trump her full support. “You don’t have to agree with Trump 100% of the time to vote for him,” she said. “Believe me.”
The Republicans’ show of harmony offers a striking contrast to Democrats, who have spent weeks mired in intraparty tensions over whether Biden, 81, should abandon his re-election bid after an unhappy debate performance. A NBC News national poll found that only 33% of Democrats are satisfied with Biden as their party’s presidential candidate, compared to 71% of Republicans satisfied with Trump.
Speaking at an event in Milwaukee hosted by the Cook Political Report and the University of Chicago’s Institute of Politics, Republican pollster and strategist Tony Fabrício said, “Right now, the Democrats are the perfect circular firing squad, and even though they are the perfect circular firing squad, we have control of the field, and control of the field for us is doing exactly what we are doing. Running the messages we are running. The president doing what the president is doing.”
Trump’s near-death experience and resulting national attention present an opportunity as he formally accepts the party’s nomination to face Biden in a 2020 rematch. His wife Melania and daughter Ivanka, both largely missing from the campaign, are expected to attend .
Some Republicans hope Trump can recreate Ronald Reagan’s defiant optimism after he survived an assassination attempt in 1981, presenting himself as the unifier in chief. On Sunday, Trump told the New York Post that he intended to make scathing comments against Biden until the shooting caused him to disavow them.
Trump is believed to have reworked his comments with his speechwriter, Ross Worthington, since the shooting, according to a person close to Trump, and has discussed making it seem like he is still the president rather than just a candidate.
But at an event hosted by Axios website, Trump’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr, suggested that even if Trump changed to a gentler tone, his major political attacks would likely continue. “You can be nicer on the margins, but you still have to call out insanity when you see insanity,” Trump Jr. said when asked about more caustic language that alienates potential voters, for example, on transgender issues. “This is different, it’s not about tone.”
Trump Jr also said that while he believed Trump’s tone of unity would last until the vice-presidential debate, he expected Trump’s counterattack to be attacked by Biden, who recently urged the country to tone down political rhetoric in a televised speech. of the Oval Office.
“I think he will be tough when he needs to be. This will never change. He won’t just suffer an attack. My father will always be a fighter, that will never change, but he will do his best to moderate it. He will never stop being Trump when he is attacked, that is what makes him an effective leader, because he does not cower under fire – literally.”
At an event hosted by Georgetown University on the sidelines of the convention, Trump’s campaign co-chairman Chris LaCivita recognized that the message of unity would not come at the cost of victory in the November elections.
LaCivita said, “This is obviously an opportunity to unite our country. But let’s not forget that we are in the middle of a campaign. Our focus is to put everything back into the issues that are hurting everyday Americans and provide them with an answer to them.”
In fact, for all the talk of a softer, more inclusive Trump, he sat in a box in the convention hall alongside extremists like Tucker Carlsona broadcaster who promoted white nationalism and praised Vladimir Putin’s Russia, and Marjorie Taylor Greene, the representative who once advanced a conspiracy theory involving “Jewish space lasers.”
Many of the speeches in Milwaukee centered on the theme of law and order and infused with Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric, with speakers angrily denouncing Biden’s policies at the southern border and referring to an “invasion.” Delegates waved signs that read, “Mass deportation now” and shouted, “Drill, baby, drill!”
There are also some notable absences: former President George W. Bush, former Vice President Mike Pence and Senators Lisa Murkowski (Alaska), Susan Collins (Maine), Todd Young (Indiana), Mitt Romney (Utah) and Rand Paul (Kentucky) are all skipping the convention.
Kurt Bardela, a Democratic strategist, said: “The ‘new’ Trump is the Trump teleprompter. It comes out once every six months, stays for a few minutes and then disappears. He’s going to talk about unity and use all the jargon for one night, but let’s not play around: it’s an act.”
