MILWAUKEE — Donald Trump put the band back together Tuesday evening, with a steady stream of defeated Republican foes casting aside ill-will to praise the man whose domination of the party has never been more complete.
Part of the evening’s programming was a prime-time display of what has become a trope in political circles: If the Republican nominee calculates a one-time opponent or cast aside subordinate could again be useful to him, they are never totally out of his orbit — and they can return, in an instant.
Kellyanne Conway, a former senior Trump campaign and White House aide, told CQ Roll Call here on Tuesday that Saturday’s near-miss by a would-be assassin had changed Trump’s mindset.
“Anyone would be changed by being shot — and nearly worse,” Conway said before Tuesday’s convention session began. “But the [former] president, even before the tragic events in Butler, Pennsylvania, was on his way to unifying the party, if not the country,” Conway said, pointing to his reportedly civil exchange with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., during a recent meeting with Senate Republicans in Washington.
She also pointed to Trump’s backing on June 13 of former GOP Gov. Larry Hogan’s Senate bid in Maryland despite Hogan’s years of criticizing the party’s leader, saying: “So all of that is incredibly important and showing how Trump is unifying the party.”
Voters and political observers won’t know until his Thursday night acceptance speech whether or not being shot will produce, in the spirit of former President George H.W. Bush, a kind and gentler version of The Donald.
But what his backers say is a shift toward unity appeared to be reflected in a late invitation to his former ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, to address the convention in a coveted prime-time slot on Tuesday.
“My fellow Republicans. President Trump asked me to speak to this convention in the name of unity. It was a gracious invitation, and I was happy to accept,” said Haley, who entered the hall to a mix of cheers and boos. “I’ll start by making one thing perfectly clear: Donald Trump has my strong endorsement. Period.”
Trump joined most of the arena in standing and cheering that line, as Haley went on to cast the election as a “choice,” contending “a vote for Joe Biden is a vote for President Kamala Harris. … For the sake of our nation, we have to go with Donald Trump.” She delivered a message to GOP voters who are Trump-hesitant: “You don’t have to agree with Trump 100 percent of the time to vote for him. … We agree more often than we disagree.”
Haley’s appearance came after she ran a tough primary campaign against the former president before ending her campaign earlier this year. In one Today Show interview, Haley deemed Trump “unhinged” and “more diminished” than during his first White House bid in 2016.
In turn, Trump mocked her on social media and at campaign rallies, falsely asserting that her birth name was “Nimbra,” rather than Nimarata Nikki Randhawa; he also falsely contended the South Carolina-born Haley was ineligible to be president because she was the daughter of Indian immigrants.
Yet, here she was on stage, with Trump calculating that securing some GOP voters who preferred her in this year’s primaries could put him over the top in what polls suggest will be a close race with Biden. And she appeared to calculate there’s no political future without trying to rehabilitate herself with Trump’s base.
Former foes Trump in 2016 harshly mocked as “Lyin’ Ted” and “Lil’ Marco” — Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas and Marco Rubio of Florida — also praised the man who bested them in the GOP primary that year. So, too, was the 2024 GOP primary foe, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, whom Trump dubbed ‘Ron DeSantimonious.’”
Before launching into a bleak speech about what he called the dangers of illegal immigration and Democrats’ policies, Cruz let the arena know how he feels about Trump, who had just entered the Fiserv Forum: “God bless Donald J. Trump.” During the 2016 campaign, Trump poked fun at Cruz’s wife’s physical appearance and linked his father Rafael Cruz was linked to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
DeSantis also got right to it: “Our border was safer under the Trump administration and our country was respected when Donald Trump was our commander in chief,” warning the 81-year-old Biden is running a “Weekend At Bernie’s presidency.” His comments came a week after Biden hosted a NATO summit and amid a spate of public appearances as he tries to ward of an insurgency among Democrats who fear he cannot defeat Trump.
Rubio described the former president as a unique historical figure: “President Trump has not just transformed our party. He started a movement.” But as Rubio spoke near the session’s end, hailing Trump’s term in office, convention-goers could be heard heading out, congregating on the arena’s concourse, chatting as they headed into the warm Wisconsin night.
Former chief strategist Steve Bannon has entered then been ejected from Trump world multiple times — before returning when Trump needed his counsel. (Bannon is serving a prison sentence after being convicted on contempt of Congress charges.)
Asked what he made of so many former Trump rivals speaking Tuesday night, Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin said it shows “we’re a unified party.”
The féting of Trump was not limited to former Republican lawmakers or other figures who once sparred with him. His first White House chief of staff, Reince Priebus, on Tuesday night urged his fellow Wisconsinites to “stand with Donald Trump and we will help send him back to the White House.”
“When Donald Trump tells you that he’ll do something on the campaign trail … he will deliver when [back] in the Oval office,” he said. “As chief of staff, I saw him right the ship after eight years of failed Democratic policies.”
What Priebus left out, however, was his relatively short stint as Trump’s first West Wing top aide — he was dismissed on July 28, 2017, just over six months after Trump took office. His ouster came amid of a string of setbacks for the 45th president, including other high-level departures.
White House officials whispered to reporters during almost all of Priebus’ run as chief of staff that he sometimes irked the then-president, and could be on the way out. Trump “intuitively determined that it was time to do something differently, and I think he’s right,” Priebus told CNN the night of his West Wing departure.
But it was a former Trump 2024 GOP primary foe some called a “young Trump,” businessman Vivek Ramaswamy, delivered perhaps the line of the night, at least according to delegates’ reaction.
“A message to millennials, speaking as one myself. Yes, it’s true. Our government sold us a false bill of goods with the Iraq War and the 2008 financial crisis,” he said. “We 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.”
In perhaps the night’s biggest applause line, Ramaswamy warned migrants in the country illegally: “We will return you to your country of origin, not because you’re all bad people, but because you broke the law. And the United States of America was founded on the rule of law.”
Those in the arena rose in unison, waving Trump signs, some hooting and pumping their fists.
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