Former US President Donald Trump is set to address the Republican National Convention (RNC) as the party’s standard-bearer, just five days after surviving an assassination attempt.
Thursday night’s speech will cap a convention that has served as a reminder of how Trump’s populist, boxing politics have transformed the Republican Party.
But surrogates say Trump will embrace a more unified message after Saturday’s attack, when he was shot in the ear by a gunman.
Trump said he rewrote his speech after surviving the incident at a Pennsylvania rally. His family and close associates repeatedly called the incident an act of God, which Trump and his Republican National Convention supporters narrowly missed, and argued that the president had changed dramatically.
“I think we’re going to see a slightly different version of Donald Trump tonight, a slightly softer version of him than some people in the country have seen in the past,” Lara Trump, a Republican National Committee co-chairwoman and Trump’s daughter-in-law, told CBS News on Thursday.
“I don’t think he could have come back from what he went through on Saturday, a near-death experience essentially, and not be in shock,” she said.
Donald Trump Jr. echoed the sentiment.
“He will be tough when he has to be. We’ve seen that. He’s never going to change,” the former president’s eldest son said at an event on the Axios news site. “But I think there will be something. I think there will be major events that will change people forever.”
Political analysts have questioned what Trump’s more unifying message would actually look like and to whom it would apply.
President Trump said in an interview with the Washington Exarch this week that the attacks were an opportunity to “unite the country, even the world,” but he and his supporters also mixed messages of resistance.
Sen. J.D. Vance, who was recently announced as President Trump’s running mate, said immediately after the shooting that an investigation by President Joe Biden’s campaign led to an assassination attempt, but he has since changed his tune.
RNC attendees used Trump’s rallying cry, “Fight, fight, fight,” in the immediate aftermath of the attack, as a rallying cry. Wearing ear bandages like Trump has become a symbol of solidarity.
Continuing the theme, President Trump will be introduced on Thursday by Ultimate Fighting Championship President and CEO Dana White and former professional wrestler Hulk Hogan.
At the convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Al Jazeera’s Patty Culhan reported that the party’s policies, heavily influenced by Trump, have yet to reflect the promised change in tone.
“He is expected to say he will unite the country, but the party’s platform is very divisive,” she said.
The plan includes pledges to deport millions of illegal immigrants, reinstate a travel ban on some Muslim-majority countries, close the federal Department of Education and slash school funding based on race and gender.
The party’s platform also promised to “hold accountable those who misuse the power of government to wrongfully prosecute political opponents,” an apparent reference to Trump’s conviction in a New York court in May on charges related to hush money payments to adult film stars, as well as two other criminal trials involving his attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, which Trump lost to Biden.
The Democratic Party is divided
Trump has had a string of political victories in recent weeks, but Thursday’s speech came after that.
On Monday, a Florida judge dismissed a federal lawsuit over allegations that the president hid and hoarded classified documents after leaving the White House, after the Supreme Court ruled that the president enjoys broader immunity from prosecution than previously defined.
Even within the Democratic Party, opinions on Biden’s candidacy are increasingly divided after last month’s weak debate.
On Thursday, US media reported that several high-ranking Democratic figures, including former President Barack Obama and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, were pressuring Biden to reconsider his candidacy.
The news came hours after the White House announced Biden had tested positive for COVID-19 while campaigning in Las Vegas on Wednesday.
