After a failed assassination attempt on Saturday, Donald Trump said he was ripping up his Republican National Convention speech and starting over. He wanted to put down his old lines of division and promote a new tone of unity.
But if that was the case, Trump seemed to ditch that new speech too, live onstage, and return to many of his familiar, dark themes for over 90 minutes.
As the teleprompter paused Thursday, waiting for him to pick up his new tone wherever he last left it, Trump summoned his standard spirit, recycled many of his same lines and delivered a speech that was vintage Trump.
Speaking for the first time since he was shot at, Trump did detail what he had been thinking about on that day and in some of the days since. He paid respect to the Trump fan, Corey Comperatore, who was killed on Saturday, kissing the former fireman’s helmet onstage.
But in the same address where he warned that “the discord and division in our society must be healed, and it must be healed quickly,” he blamed Democrats for “destroying our country.”
He referred to the former speaker of the House as “Crazy Nancy Pelosi.” He claimed that Democrats “used COVID to cheat” in the 2020 election. And he said America was facing an “invasion” of immigrants coming to the United States illegally.
Although the speech marked the third time Trump accepted the GOP nomination, it was the first time he is actually well-positioned to win the presidency. And as he addressed an enraptured Republican crowd in front of a computer-generated White House, Trump seemed to know he could say anything he wanted. So he did.
The former president rambled about his usual litany of complaints — about Democrats, about the media, about union workers, about the 2020 election, even about “the China virus.” For much of the first 30 minutes of his speech, he thanked his celebrity friends for coming to the RNC. For the next hour, he went on- and off-script to carp about everything plaguing America and Donald Trump, personally.
It was a quintessentially Trumpian speech, delivered to a crowd that’s fully embraced his MAGA model of Republicanism since his first 2016 convention. What it was not was a new version of Trump, at least on the whole.
At times, when he was on the teleprompter, Trump did seem to strike a slightly different tone. It’s just that, all of those prepared remarks were overshadowed by his off-the-cuff remarks that padded out — and dominated — an already long speech.
At one point, Trump almost tried to spark a race war.
“Do you know who’s taking the jobs, the jobs that are created?” Trump asked. He nonsensically claimed that “107%” of jobs are being “taken by illegal aliens.”
“And you know who is being hurt the most by millions of people pouring into our country? The Black population and the Hispanic population,” he said.
At another point, he said the convention’s presence in Wisconsin was a naked attempt to buy the state’s votes.
“Wisconsin, we’re spending over $250 million here creating jobs,” Trump said with a smile. “I hope you remember that in November. I’m trying to buy your vote.”
But not everything he said was tongue in cheek. In some of Trump’s gloomier moments, he vowed to execute a historic deportation effort. He bragged about the Taliban calling him “your excellency” and getting Kim Jong Un’s endorsement. He called Washington, D.C., a “horrible killing field.” And he called the 2020 election “ridiculous.”
Without directly name-checking his opponent, Trump seized on the Democratic Party’s nomination meltdown by reveling in his own good fortune. At one point, he even celebrated Judge Aileen Cannon for dropping the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case on Monday.
But perhaps the most memorable moment of the speech was when he offered his account of Saturday’s assassination attempt.
As he gave a play-by-play description of his brush with a bullet, Trump leaned into the stated belief of many of his allies that he was saved by divine intervention.
“I’m not supposed to be here today,” he said, leading the crowd to chant, “Yes, you are.”
“Thank you, but I’m not,” he responded. “And I’ll tell you, I stand before you in this arena only by the grace of Almighty God.”
The retelling left an impression on the delegates in the crowd. “I was crying. I was feeling it deep within my core,” said Jessica Davidson, an Oregon delegate. “I was chanting, ‘Yes, you are,’ along with everybody because I feel like Heavenly Father needed him to be here for our country, and that’s why he saved him from near death.”
But Trump also pinned his survival on a chart detailing border crossings under his administration, which he turned his head to look at on Saturday, causing him to literally dodge a bullet.
“The numbers were somewhat amazing,” he said, staring at the chart that he said saved his life.
Just after midnight — as soon as the speech rambled to a close, the balloons descended and the family stepped onto the stage — delegates ran to get close to the stage and see the Trumps. Almost every single delegation started making moves to take their signs, with delegates climbing the poles to pass the signs over to their group.
Delegates issued rave reviews in keeping with the Trump adoration apparent throughout the convention. Georgia delegate Ricardo Bravo commended Trump’s “very powerful” speech because the former president “didn’t compromise.” Another delegate, Clay Young — who was sporting an anti-abortion pin — lauded the address as “good and calm and directed,” adding that Trump “wrapped it up very well.”
When they adjourned, a few delegates remained chanting, “One more day.”
Trump seemed to agree. For the 20 minutes after his speech, he stayed onstage alongside his family as the band wound down and the crowd leaked out, occasionally applauding or waving to someone in the crowd, basking in a now-familiar moment of adulation before he finally walked out.
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Riley Rogerson, Oriana González and Reese Gorman are reporters at NOTUS. Ben T.N. Mause is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow.
Oriana, Reese and Ben contributing reporting from Milwaukee.