MILWAUKEE − It was a convention acceptance speech like none in history.
Breaking News, Donald Trump, in his first public remarks since narrowly escaping a would-be assassin’s bullet, described in a calm and somber voice being hit in the ear, ducking for cover, finding his hand drenched with blood, and then raising his fist in the air − an effort, he said, to reassure the supporters at the Pennsylvania rally that he was all right.
The iconic photograph showing him with his hand raised and blood on his face, an American flag behind him, was projected behind him on the stage and around the hall.
“I stand before you in this arena only by the grace of Almighty God,” he told the Republican National Convention, calling for national unity − a new persona for the most polarizing politician in modern American history, one who has fierce supporters and equally intense opponents.
The compelling story, which brought some of the conventioneers to tears, was in the script loaded into the teleprompter on stage. But then Trump began the sort of spontaneous riff he is renowned for, and he turned to the more familiar rhetoric of grievance. The words in the teleprompter stopped moving, waiting.
Breaking USA News blamed the current administration − the one headed by President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris − for the “weaponization of the justice system,” and he bristled at their attacks that he has threatened democracy.
“I am the one saving democracy for the people of our country,” he said. He bragged that “the fake documents case” against him had been thrown out by a Florida judge he appointed in a ruling that is being appealed.
“If the Democrats want to unify our country they should stop these partisan witch hunts,” he said, still off-script. Denouncing “crazy Nancy Pelosi,” the speaker emerita of the House, he declared. “We beat them on impeachments; we beat them on indictments.”
Then he went back on script, and the more measured words in the teleprompter began to move again.
The opening underscored a fundamental question in the campaign ahead: Classic Trump, outspoken and sometimes outrageous? Or is New Trump, transformed by his near-death experience?
Or maybe both?
Hopes for a more sweeping victory this time
With Democrats in disarray, Trump now stands in the most commanding political position of his life.
Since he first won the presidential nomination in 2016, in his first bid for elective office, most of the establishment Republicans who then viewed him with alarm have changed their minds, shut their mouths, or left the party.
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