Trump to take RNC stage for first speech since assassination attempt

Former United States President Donald Trump is set to take the stage at the Republican National Convention (RNC), where he will deliver a speech as the party’s standard bearer just five days after surviving an assassination attempt.

The address on Thursday night will cap a convention that has largely been a reminder of how Trump’s brand of populist, pugilistic politics has transformed the Republican Party.

But surrogates have said Trump will embrace a more unifying message in the wake of Saturday’s attack, in which he was grazed in the ear by a gunman’s bullet.

Trump has said he rewrote his speech after surviving the incident at a Pennsylvania campaign rally. His family and close allies have maintained the president has been profoundly changed as Trump and his supporters at the RNC have repeatedly referred to the near-miss as an act of God.

“I think you may see a bit of a different version of Donald Trump tonight, perhaps a bit softer version than maybe some of the people at home have seen in the past,” Republican National Committee co-chair and Trump’s daughter-in-law Lara Trump told CBS News on Thursday.

“I don’t think you can go through what he went through on Saturday, really a near-death experience, and not come out on the other side impacted,” she said.

Donald Trump Jr echoed the sentiment.

“He’s going to be tough when he has to be. We’ve seen that. He’s never gonna change,” the former president’s eldest son said at an event for the Axios news site. “But I think there will be something. I think these are momentous occasions that change people permanently.”

Political observers have questioned what a more unifying message from Trump will actually look like and to whom it will apply.

While Trump told the Washington Examiner this week that the attack is a “chance to bring the whole country, even the whole world, together”, he and his supporters have also mixed their message with one of defiance.

Trump’s recently announced running mate, Senator JD Vance, said shortly after the shooting that the rhetoric from President Joe Biden’s campaign had led to the assassination attempt although he has since veered away from the claim.

Attendees at the RNC have seized on Trump’s yelled appeal in the moment after the attack with “fight, fight, fight” becoming a rallying cry. Wearing a bandage over an ear like Trump has become a symbol of solidarity.

In a continuation of the theme, Trump will also be introduced by Ultimate Fighting Championship President and CEO Dana White and former professional wrestler Hulk Hogan on Thursday.

Reporting from the convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Al Jazeera’s Patty Culhane said the party’s platform, which has been heavily influenced by Trump, has yet to reflect the promised change in tone.

“He is expected to say he’s going to unify the country, but the platform – what the party says they’re going to run on – is deeply divisive,” she said.

It includes promises to expel millions of undocumented immigrants, reinstate travel bans on some Muslim majority countries, close the federal Department of Education and cut funding to schools depending on how they teach about race and gender.

The party’s platform also pledges to “hold accountable those who have misused the power of government to unjustly prosecute their political opponents”, which appears to be a reference to Trump’s conviction in a New York court in May on charges related to hush money payments made to an adult film star as well his two other criminal trials related to efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, which Trump lost to Biden.

Democrats divided

Thursday’s speech comes after a string of political victories for Trump in recent weeks.

On Monday, a judge in Florida threw out a federal case related to his hiding and hoarding of classified documents after he left the White House. That came after the Supreme Court ruled that US presidents enjoy broader immunity from prosecution than previously defined.

Democrats have also become increasingly divided over the viability of Biden’s candidacy after a weak debate performance last month.

On Thursday, US media reported that several top Democrats, including former President Barack Obama and former Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi, have put pressure on Biden to reconsider his run.

That news came just hours after the White House announced Biden had tested positive for COVID-19 while campaigning in Las Vegas on Wednesday.