As he basked in the glitz of the Republican National Convention’s closing night, Donald Trump’s bandaged ear served as a vivid reminder of his uncanny ability to turn adversity into triumph.
Multiple speakers in Milwaukee have suggested it was divine intervention that had saved him from assassination at the hands of a gunman in Pennsylvania last week, and the crowd roared as Trump declared: “I had God on my side.”
It was a night full of religious invocations, and TV evangelist Franklin Graham, one of the warm-up acts, set the tone by incorporating Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan into a prayer.
Trump himself projected an aura that was more grandfatherly than messianic.
“Together, we will launch a new era of safety, prosperity and freedom for citizens of every race, religion, color, and creed,” he vowed.
“The discord and division in our society must be healed.”
Call for healing
If the weekend shooting in Pennsylvania changed anything about the public image of Trump, it was to humanize him.
Many had envisaged a full-throttle response from the rambunctious billionaire — all righteous anger and defiance — but he confounded expectations in his first public remarks after the attack.
“I am running to be president for all of America, not half of America, because there is no victory in winning for half of America,” he said.
Trump has held members of his extended clan close all week and on Thursday shared the limelight with his daughter Ivanka and wife Melania, both of whom had been absent from the campaign.
The former first couple sat with Trump’s new running mate J.D. Vance and his son Donald Trump Jr, with Ivanka and son-in-law Jared Kushner in the row behind, alongside Trump’s younger daughter, Tiffany.
Trump’s rallies are typically filled with personal attacks on Joe Biden as the “worst president in history” and dark descriptions of a country doomed to economic collapse or even nuclear armageddon.
This speech was all that — but much more besides.
The former president and his aides had repeatedly said after Saturday’s shooting that he tore up his convention speech and would instead give a more unifying address.
His second son Eric had apparently missed the memo, as he ran through a laundry list of his father’s grievances in one of the most divisive speeches of the night.
‘Trumpmania’
Eric Trump led the crowd in a chant of “Fight! Fight! Fight!” — echoing Trump’s exhortation as he was ushered off the rally stage in Pennsylvania with gunshots reverberating from TV screens nationwide.
Trump himself encouraged the same chant — and he eventually reverted to his stump speech, accusing Democrats of destroying democracy and pursuing him with a corrupt “witch hunt” — but the vibe at the outset was conciliatory.
“As Americans, we are bound together by a single fate and a shared destiny. We rise together or we fall apart,” he said.
Many of the headlines will focus on Trump’s first detailed description of the terrifying moments of his brush with death on Saturday.
But it was also a night — in Trump’s own words — of “confidence, strength and unity.”
Trump turned to politics later in the speech, but the granular details of his policy platform were never the point.
The vibe throughout the night had remained focused on the dramatic, with another of the warm-up acts, celebrity wrestler Hulk Hogan, leading the crowd in chants of “USA! USA!”
Hogan — who was fired by World Wrestling Entertainment after the emergence of an old racial slur caught on tape — earned huge applause as he tore off a shirt emblazoned with the words “real American” to reveal a red sleeveless “Trump Vance” top.
“Let Trumpmania run wild, brother!” he boomed.
Trump looked tickled pink, grinning broadly, as Hogan called the ex-president “my hero” and “that gladiator” who was going to “straighten the country out for all the real Americans.”
