Republican convention: Trump remains Trump – Republicans celebrate in Milwaukee

If you’ve heard one Trump speech, you’ve heard them all? No, this time it was going to be different. Just a few days after the assassination attempt on the Republican, the grand finale of the newly elected Republican presidential candidate at the Republican Party Convention was going to set a new tone. At least that’s what the 78-year-old’s campaign team said. But as special as the circumstances and setting in Milwaukee were – including balloons, appearances by ex-wrestler Hulk Hogan and musician Kid Rock – Donald Trump remains Donald Trump.

During his speech at the party convention, where Trump officially accepted the nomination as candidate for the November election, Trump again wore his white bandage on his ear. The gauze bandage has already found imitators in the audience. Even his wife Melania came, a rare appearance that ended with an awkward peck on the cheek. The Republicans in Milwaukee celebrated Trump frenetically for four days. The big appearance on the final evening of the party convention is not just any appearance. It is Trump’s first public speech since the assassination attempt at a campaign event in Pennsylvania, in which he was injured in the ear.

Trump talks about assassination

Trump describes what happened last weekend in Butler, where a gunman opened fire, killing one supporter and seriously injuring two others. “Blood was everywhere, and yet I felt very safe in a way because I had God on my side,” says the Republican. He will only tell the story once, it is too painful, he stresses. The deadly gun attack in the middle of the already heated US election campaign was an escalation, a turning point.

And Trump’s previous speakers in recent days – such as the chosen vice-candidate JD Vance – painted the following picture: Trump is brave, strong, a fighter. And: Trump is a man of political moderation in the face of horror. “One moment he can stand defiantly against an assassin and the next call for national healing,” said Vance. And Trump began his speech in this tone, reading from the teleprompter: “The discord and division in our society must be healed.” He wants to be a president for all of America.

Relapse into the old tone

But the longer the 78-year-old spoke, the less he stuck to the text. The lines on the prompter stopped while Trump improvised large parts of his speech. Trump painted – as usual – a picture of a gloomy America, a “nation in decline”. He indirectly referred to migrants as garbage. If you add up the ten worst presidents of the USA, they would not have caused the damage that the Democratic incumbent Joe Biden has caused. Crime in the USA is so high that the next Republican convention will take place in Venezuela if the Democrats win because it will be safer there, the ex-president prophesied. The rest of the world laughs at the USA. The solution: Trump.

Trump’s hour-and-a-half-long speech was hardly different from the long-winded speeches he gives at his campaign events. Anyone who thinks that the assassination has toned down the rhetoric is wrong. This was demonstrated not only by Trump’s speech, but also by the party convention in Milwaukee itself. Singer Kid Rock sang a song in which he shouted “Fight! Fight! Fight!” into the crowd. The audience roared back in unison – an oppressive atmosphere. These words, which Trump shouted after the assassination, were the motto of the huge party convention with tens of thousands of visitors anyway – they were shouted again and again.

Trump, the Savior

The spectacle looked like a scary fair in many ways: people with orange Trump wigs, Trump hats, Trump earrings, Trump shirts of course… Trump, Trump, Trump. And then there were the political messages of the party that Trump has completely under control: signs with the words “Mass deportations now”, speeches about the allegedly corrupt justice system, about lying media and the America First policy. It is a party that rallies around Trump without resistance. Even Trump’s former arch-rivals in the primary campaign, Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis, gave in and backed Trump in Milwaukee.

“We must return to Donald Trump if we want to keep our rights and the way of life we ​​have become accustomed to,” said delegate Shelley Cygan from the state of Nebraska when asked about the presidential candidate. Trump is trying to win voters by stoking fears – and it is working. There is an invasion at the US southern border, Trump warns. It is spreading “misery, crime, poverty, disease and destruction” in communities across the country. “Nobody has ever seen anything like this.” And then there is also “an international crisis the likes of which the world has rarely seen.” No one can believe what has happened.

Confident of victory in Milwaukee

At the party convention, the Republicans celebrated as if they had already won the election in November. The drunkenness of victory was not only due to the alcohol, which flowed in large quantities. Democrat Biden is a weak opponent after the disastrous TV debate. And the 81-year-old may not even be his party’s candidate for much longer – in the debate about his mental fitness, he has his back against the wall.

When the balloons traditionally float down from the ceiling at the end of the convention, Trump stands on the stage with his family and is cheered. In addition to Melania, even his daughter Ivanka, who has also been very scarce recently, has come. Trump smiles, waves, poses for the cameras. Shortly before, he kissed the fireman’s helmet of the man who was shot in the assassination attempt last week. According to US media, he gave the longest televised convention speech in US history. In doing so, he broke his own record.