MILWAUKEE \u2014 Former GOP presidential contenders Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis put their bitter feuds with Donald Trump behind them Tuesday night, taking the stage at the Republican National Convention to make the case that he is the only competent choice to lead the country for the next four years.<\/p>\n
It was a moment of triumph for Trump, who has expressed a new desire to unite the fractured country after Saturday\u2019s attempt on his life, coming on the heels of a long campaign in which he has done little to broaden his appeal beyond his loyal MAGA base. The former president lost his 2020 reelection effort in part because his slashing rhetoric and punishing asides alienated broad swaths of suburban Republican women and independents. Some of those voters backed Haley, Trump\u2019s former United Nations ambassador as she tried to wrest the nomination from her former boss. And they continued to cast protest votes against Trump by voting for her in primaries even after she dropped out.<\/p>\n
In her warmly received remarks on Tuesday night, Haley spoke directly to those Republican voters who wanted to move on from Trump. She said Trump had \u201cgraciously\u201d asked her to speak to the convention \u201cin the name of unity\u201d and that she wanted to make it clear, for the first time, that he had her full endorsement. During her campaign, Haley argued Trump was too focused on his own grievances and vendettas to lead the country.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe should acknowledge that there are some Americans who don\u2019t agree with Donald Trump one hundred percent of the time, I happen to know some of them and I want to speak to them tonight,\u201d Haley said. \u201cMy message to them is simple: you don\u2019t have to agree with Trump 100 percent of the time to vote for him. Take it from me.\u201d<\/p>\n
Haley noted that she and Trump agree on keeping America safe and \u201cthat Democrats have moved so far to the left that they\u2019re putting our freedoms in danger.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m here tonight because we have a country to save and a unified Republican Party is essential for saving her,\u201d Haley said. \u201cFor the sake of our nation, we have to go with Donald Trump,\u201d she said, drawing a smile from the former president who was looking on from his VIP box in the audience.<\/p>\n
President Biden\u2019s reelection campaign immediately tried to undercut Haley\u2019s speech by noting her harsh past criticism of Trump. \u201cAmbassador Haley said it best herself: someone who doesn\u2019t respect our military, doesn\u2019t know right from wrong, and \u2018surrounds himself in chaos\u2019 can\u2019t be president,\u201d Austin Weatherford, Biden\u2019s national Republican engagement director, said in a statement.<\/p>\n
DeSantis focused far less than Haley on making an explicit case for Trump, turning back instead to many familiar lines from his former Trump speech. He slashed at Biden\u2019s mental acuity and ability to lead the country for four more years, arguing that America \u201cneeds a commander in chief who can lead 24 hours a day, seven days a week.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAmerica cannot afford four more years of a \u2018Weekend at Bernie\u2019s\u2019 presidency,\u201d he said, suggesting that Biden is not carrying out his duties and is instead being propped up by aides. DeSantis ended his remarks by launching a \u201cFight!\u201d chant \u2014 alluding to the words Trump mouthed with his fist raisedduring the frenzied moments after the gunman carried out an assassination attempt Saturday at his rally in Butler, Pa.<\/p>\n
Trump also got an assist Tuesday night from Vivek Ramaswamy, who ran against Trump in the GOP primary, who highlighted his youth and his parents\u2019 immigrant backgrounds. In his speech, urged legal immigrants to get behind the Republican Party\u2019s message of opportunity and made an overt appeal to younger voters who are struggling in this economy, telling them not to be cynical about politics.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe deserve a better class of politician, one who actually tells us the truth, even if it comes with some mean tweets from time to time,\u201d he said, making the case for Trump.<\/p>\n
The other focus of Tuesday night\u2019s proceedings were the speeches from GOP candidates in the most closely fought Senate races. They included Dave McCormick of Pennsylvania, Eric Hovde of Wisconsin, Bernie Moreno of Ohio, Kari Lake of Arizona and Sam Brown of Nevada, who addressed delegates on behalf of Trump and to boost their own candidacies.<\/p>\n
On a night where the theme was making America \u201csafe again,\u201d some of them echoed Trump\u2019s misleading refrain that violent crime has soared on Biden\u2019s watch \u2014 it has dropped \u2014 and that undocumented immigrants have made America less safe, even though there is little evidence to support that claim. Just three days after the lone 20-year-old gunman opened fire on Trump,, several of them also touched in their speeches on what they described on Trump\u2019s strength and resilience.<\/p>\n
McCormick, who was at the rally where Trump was shot, spoke of witnessing those events firsthand, praising Trump\u2019s \u201cremarkable strength and resolve in a terrifying, terrifying and unpredictable moment.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe president rose brilliantly to the challenge. But what a sad, sad and frightening day for the families of those who were injured or lost and for our great country,\u201d McCormick said. He accused Biden and Democrats of making Americans feel less safe undocumented immigrants have entered the country and illegal drugs have \u201cpoured\u201d across the border, he argued. While border crossings rose at the start of Biden\u2019s presidency, they\u2019ve dropped more recently after changes in policy.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy friends, the choice this November is clear it\u2019s a choice between strength and weakness,\u201d McCormick said, \u201ca choice between America\u2019s greatness or its sad, disgraceful decline.\u201d<\/p>\n
In an effort to humanize Trump, House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) reflected on how Trump came to his side to support him after he was wounded in a politically motivated shooting in 2017.<\/p>\n
\u201cNot many know that while I was fighting for my life, Donald Trump was one of the first to come console my family at the hospital,\u201d he said. \u201cThat\u2019s the kind of leader he is. Courageous, under fire. Compassionate toward others.\u201d<\/p>\n
Trump\u2019s campaign has a clear opportunity to draw in new voters who were alarmed by Biden\u2019s faltering debate performance last month. The former president leads the president nationally by more than two points, according to a Washington Post average of public polls, up from a less than one point pre-debate lead in the same polls. Trump also leads Biden in many of the closely contested states that are playing host to this year\u2019s key Senate races. But Republican Senate contenders have continued to trail their Democratic opponents in those states, making it difficult to determine how much Trump is lifting their candidacies.<\/p>\n
A softer tone from Trump in the wake of the shooting could draw in more of those voters, helping GOP Senate candidates balance their appeals to voters who adore Trump and those who loathe him. The former president\u2019s daughter-in-law Lara Trump \u2014 the RNC co-chair who has expressed her desire to bridge the divide with voters who dislike Trump\u2019s tone \u2014 will headline Tuesday night\u2019s gathering.<\/p>\n
Trump\u2019s advisers have said that they are looking to lower the temperature this week. But in a deeply polarized nation, rhetorical shifts alone may not be enough to change voters\u2019 minds.<\/p>\n
RNC Chairman Michael Whatley told reporters during a roundtable hosted by Bloomberg News late Tuesday afternoon in Milwaukee that the Republican Party is \u201cunited, frankly, like we\u2019ve not seen in generations\u201d and that having Haley and DeSantis speaking on Trump\u2019s behalf is an important effort to draw in more voters to support the GOP ticket.<\/p>\n
Whatley said that recent polls have shown that Republicans are far more enthusiastic about their nominee than Democrats: \u201cWe want to talk about unifying the country,\u201d Whatley said. \u201cAnd I think that that\u2019s really where the president wants to go, particularly coming out of Saturday.\u201d<\/p>\n
When pressed on how Trump is heeding Haley\u2019s advice to reach out to the voters who backed the former South Carolina governor, Lara Trump, the former president\u2019s daughter-in-law and RNC co-chair, argued at the Bloomberg event that it would be inauthentic for him to shift his message.<\/p>\n
\u201cDonald Trump is never going to change who he is,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd I think that that\u2019s something that some people love about him and some people don\u2019t love about him and I understand that. \u2026 So in terms of him doing something differently, I think it would be very inauthentic of him to do that. But I think it\u2019s up to us as a campaign and as the RNC to reach out to some of those voters and say, \u2018Hey, listen, at the end of the day, you don\u2019t have to love the way he says everything. But look at how this affects your life.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
The former president made an emotional entrance to the convention late Monday night, joining members of his family to watch some of the speeches from the \u201ceveryday Americans\u201d who the Republican National Committee invited to address the crowd. Trump\u2019s team is thinking about how to weave the effect of the shooting into the campaign\u2019s message without making it the focus of the contest, Trump campaign senior adviser Chris LaCivita told reporters Tuesday morning.<\/p>\n
Trump intends to meet the moment in the aftermath of Saturday\u2019s events, but the central premise of the campaign is still to \u201cfire the incumbent,\u201d LaCivita said. He said he was thrilled to read that Biden wants to make the race more about policy, because he views that as Trump\u2019s advantage in the months ahead.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo the extent we can have a discussion about inflation and crime \u2026 that\u2019s what we want,\u201d LaCivita said. \u201cBecause we know that\u2019s tactically going to favor us.\u201d<\/p>\n
Meryl Kornfield, Marianne LeVine, Annah Aschbrenner, Scott Clement and Isaac Arnsdorf contributed to this report.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
MILWAUKEE \u2014 Former GOP presidential contenders Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis put their bitter feuds with Donald Trump behind them Tuesday night, taking the stage at the Republican National Convention to make the case that he is the only competent choice to lead the country for the next four years. It was a moment of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":6171,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6170","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6170","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6170"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6170\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6171"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6170"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6170"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6170"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}