He accepted the party’s presidential nomination at the Republican National Convention.
In his speech accepting the Republican presidential nomination at the Republican National Convention, Donald Trump detailed the assassination attempt against him and then laid out a wide-ranging populist policy agenda, with a focus on immigration.
The 78-year-old former president, known for his bombastic and aggressive rhetoric, began his acceptance speech with a softer, highly personal message drawn directly from his own experience with close encounters with death.
As the crowd listened in silence, Trump explained that he was standing on stage in Butler, Pennsylvania, when he turned his head to look at a graph on display and felt something hit his ear. He put his hand to his head and immediately saw that it was covered in blood.
“If I hadn’t moved my head at the last moment, the assassin’s bullet would have been perfectly on target,” Trump said, “and I wouldn’t be here tonight. We wouldn’t be together.”
Trump’s speech, at just under 93 minutes, was the longest convention speech in modern history and marked the climax and conclusion of four days of massive Republican pep rallies that drew thousands of conservative activists and elected officials to the battleground state of Wisconsin.
Sensing a political opportunity after his near-death experience, the former president has taken a new stance that he hopes will help generate further momentum in an election that is tilting in his favor.
“The divisions and discord in our society must be healed. They must be healed quickly. As Americans, we are bound by one destiny, one common destiny. We will rise together, or we will fall apart,” said Trump, wearing a large white bandage over his right ear to hide the wound he sustained in Saturday’s shooting.
“I’m running for president not for half of America, but for all of America, because winning for half of America is not winning.”
While speaking in a calmer tone than his usual rallies, Trump outlined a policy-driven agenda that promised to be the largest deportation operation in U.S. history.
Trump has repeatedly accused people crossing the US-Mexico border illegally of plotting an “invasion” and has hinted at new trade tariffs and an “America First” foreign policy.
In a grand promise to end inflation, Trump said “Republicans have a plan to bring energy prices down very rapidly,” but offered no details beyond saying he would “dig, dig, dig” and “cut taxes.”
Trump again suggested Democrats stole the 2020 election that he lost despite a series of federal and state investigations that proved there was no systemic fraud, and suggested “we should not criminalize dissent or demonize political difference” despite his long-standing call for the prosecution of his opponents.
Trump did not mention abortion rights, an issue that has vexed Republicans since the U.S. Supreme Court struck down federally guaranteed abortion rights two years ago.
Trump appointed three of the six justices who overturned Roe v. Wade and often takes credit for the decision at rallies, saying states should have the right to set their own abortion laws.
He also made no mention of the riot at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, when his supporters tried to stop the certification of his defeat to Democrat Joe Biden. Trump has previously referred to those jailed in the riot as “hostages.”
In fact, Trump rarely mentioned President Biden, often referring only to “the current administration.”
After the speech, Biden campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon said, “It was Donald Trump who destroyed our economy, disenfranchised us and ruined middle-class families. Now he comes to the presidency with an even more radical vision of where he wants to take this country.”
Melania Trump and Ivanka Trump attended the Republican National Convention on Thursday in an unusual appearance in support of former President Donald Trump’s third presidential bid.
The former first lady and the former president’s eldest daughter have barely been on the campaign trail this year, in contrast to Trump’s 2016 and 2020 campaigns, when they played larger roles. Neither has given any speaking appearances.
release date: Radio News Hub
