Former President Donald Trump appeared at the July 15-18 Republican National Convention in Milwaukee last night after being nominated during the day as the Republican candidate for President in 2024. He appeared together with his family and with Senator J.D. Vance (Ohio), whom he appointed as his candidate for Vice President.
Trump appeared with a bandage on his ear, a reminder of how close he came to losing his life from the shooting. He was unusually calm and collected, almost serene, as he appeared to an adoring crowd. After the assassination attempt, one of the first things he announced was that he was going to tear up his prepared acceptance speech for July 16, which he described as a “rip-roaring speech,” and rewrite an entirely new speech with a focus on unity, as he said, “in the country and in the world.” He had also given instructions to the other speakers at the convention that they also must tone down their rhetoric, according to an agreement he had made with President Biden in a brief phone call after the shooting. This will be the tenor of his speech, which was confirmed by his son Eric in an interview at the convention, and who either has seen a draft or had discussed it with his father.
That mantra was also followed by most of the speakers, as far as can be determined. The focus of the first day of debate was on the economy, and speakers pulled no punches with the failure of the Biden Administration in that arena, yet without the usual vitriol. The only noticeable exception was the speech by Senator Ron Johnson from Wisconsin, who described the Democratic Party as “a clear and present danger.” Of note, Johnson apologized for the speech, claiming that this original speech had been loaded into his teleprompter by mistake, and he didn’t know how to change it, once it appeared. He then released what he said was his rewritten speech, which did not contain any vitriol.
Also of interest was the first speech ever at a Republican Convention by the head of the Teamsters Union, Sean O’Brien. O’Brien’s message was that the Teamsters don’t belong to any one party and expressed his gratitude for the opportunity to speak in Milwaukee. It was a very pro-worker and pro-union speech, attacking corporate greed, which would have probably even have dismayed a few “liberal” Democrats, were he to give it at a Democratic Convention. But the speech was well-received and no doubt indicates how Trump will be approaching American workers during the campaign.
The choice of J.D. Vance as vice president, while indicating an obvious close “chemistry” between the two, may also have taken note of this orientation, as Vance, who came from a somewhat dysfunctional family in Middletown, an industrial town in southwest Ohio that had become a part of the Midwest Rust Belt, has also, during his short Senate career, been attuned to the needs of the working class in Ohio. When a February 2023 train wreck spread dangerous chemicals into the air around East Palestine, Ohio, southeast of Cleveland, Vance fielded the issue, attacking the corporate greed of the railroad companies for not dealing appropriately with the matter. The changed tenor of the campaign and of Trump’s appearance was met with surprise by a number of the liberal journalists attending the convention.
The Republican platform seems to have also eliminated some otherwise controversial clauses, no longer defining “marriage” as only between a man and a woman and watering down its previously hard stance on abortion.
