Trump’s Speech and Key Takeaways From The GOP Convention

After four days of rallying for President Trump, who had been shot just 48 hours before in a failed assassination attempt, what are the key takeaways from the Republican National Convention? The main one we can say is this: It looks like Trump is headed for an unprecedented landslide in November. But let’s see what else we can glean from the RNC 2024.

Trump finally took the stage in his first speech since the horrific attempt on his life. Somber and bandaged, the former president once again accepted the GOP presidential nomination in a speech describing in detail the assassination attempt that could have ended his life just five days earlier.

“I’m not supposed to be here tonight,” Trump told the packed convention hall as thousands of people listened in silence. “There was blood pouring everywhere, yet, in a certain way, I felt very safe because I had God on my side.”

Trump then went on to fullfill on toning down his usual bombastic rhetoric for a more of a message of unity.

“The discord and division in our society must be healed. As Americans, we are bound together by a single fate and a shared destiny,” Trump said from the stage in Milwaukee. “We rise together. Or we fall apart.”

“I am running to be president for all of America, not half of America, because there is no victory in winning for half of America,” he said.

For most politicians, such rhetoric would be standard – even trite. For Trump, it represented a remarkable tonal shift and capped four days of an intense image makeover by the party.

Key Takeaways From the Convention

How long we will see this “new” Donald Trump, who has emerged from the attempt on his life and the convention, remains to be seen. Other key takeaways from the RNC overall include the following.

VP Selection

The selection of JD Vance as Trump’s ultimate winner of his Veepstakes was a surprise to many. Will he help or hurt Trump? Vance, a 39-year-old former venture capitalist, and best-selling author, Vance is considered by many to be even more right-leaning than Trump; he signaled support for a national 15-week abortion ban during his 2022 Senate run and said he wouldn’t have certified the results of the 2020 election immediately if he had been vice president. Vance’s 2016 memoir Hillbilly Elegy, later made into a Hollywood film, about his hardscrabble upbringing, has earned him a reputation as someone who can help solidify Trump’s appeal among the working-class, rural white voters in middle America who helped Trump win the presidency in 2016.

Trump is gearing up to run against Harris – or anyone else

Trump made a point of referring to Biden by name just once during his speech and made no direct reference to Vice President Kamala Harris. That was a contrast to a typical Trump rally, where he invokes his Democratic rival’s name liberally to blame him for violent crime and other ills.

The reluctance to use their names underscored the degree to which the U.S. presidential race is now in flux. Trump campaign advisers are unsure whether he will face the 81-year-old Biden, Harris, or another candidate at the top of the Democratic Party ticket as Biden faces increasing pressure from within his party to drop out.

Others at the convention started to practice their attack on Harris. “I don’t see a pivot to Kamala Harris fixing their problem,” Senator Steve Daines of Montana, the chairman of Senate Republicans’ campaign arm, predicted in an interview.

The GOP is solidly unified behind Trump.

From the seamless transition from the wrestler Hulk Hogan ripping off his shirt to reveal a Trump-Vance tank top (“Greatest tag team of my life,” Hogan thundered) to the evangelical leader Franklin Graham talking about how God had “spared” Mr. Trump. It was clearer than ever that the GOP is now solidly the party of Trump.

When Mr. Trump won his first nomination in 2016, many Republicans were uneasy with his arrival and his “I alone can fix it” approach.

Eight years later, those dissenting voices are gone, defeated or converted. The convention was an almost uninterrupted celebration of Mr. Trump and the MAGA Movement.