The Republican primary race began 11 months ago with a debate at Milwaukee’s Fiserv Forum, the arena where Giannis Antetokounmpo’s Bucks play, the same venue where the Republican National Convention is being held this week. On August 22, eight candidates faced off against Donald Trump. They included former South Carolina governor and former UN ambassador Nikki Haley and Florida governor Ron DeSantis, considered the former president’s two main rivals. This Tuesday, at the same venue, Haley and DeSantis paid tribute to the party leader, the unanimously declared Republican nominee. Convention attendees criticized Haley at times, but applauded DeSantis.
Nikki Haley was initially not invited to the convention. She and Trump took their confrontation personally and the wounds have not fully healed. The former president wanted his rival to withdraw early from the primaries, but she refused. “I don’t feel any need to kiss the ring,” she said then. When she threw in the towel, she refrained from seeking votes for the New Yorker.
However, after the attack against Trump last Saturday, the former president’s campaign asked her to come to Milwaukee and she agreed. It was greeted with a mix of applause and boos when it came out. Trump stood up from his box to applaud, but that didn’t completely rid Haley of the whistles during her speech. “My Republican colleagues: President Trump invited me to speak at this convention on behalf of unity. It was a gracious invitation and I was pleased to accept it,” she began, as if justifying herself. And immediately she added: “I’ll start by making one thing very clear. Donald Trump has my strong support.”
In May, Haley said she would vote for Trump, but it was a secret announcement that she presented as a personal decision, without openly asking her followers to vote for the former president. Even after withdrawing from the presidential race, the Republican received hundreds of thousands of votes in the primaries, showing that a moderate segment of the Republican Party refused to associate with Trump. Her expressed support may overcome those reluctance, but the Biden campaign is trying to woo Haley’s voters and this Tuesday she released a statement recanting her criticism of the former president.
Nikki Haley during her speech at the Republican convention.Fresh Mike (Reuters)
Haley tried to attract the vote of moderates in her speech. “There are Americans who do not agree with Donald Trump 100% of the time. I have discovered something. My message to them is: You don’t have to agree with Donald Trump 100% of the time to vote for him: Be like me. I have not always agreed with him, but we agree more often than we disagree. We agree to keep America strong, we agree to keep America safe, we agree that the Democrats have moved so far to the left that they have threatened our freedoms,” she said.
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“I’m here because we have a country to save and a united Republican Party is essential to saving it,” said the former South Carolina governor, who added that the country is deeply divided, “whether on college campuses, or in a field like Butler, Pennsylvania,” referring to the site of the attack against Trump. And he appealed to moderate Republicans to turn to the moderate vote: “We must not only be a united party, but we must also expand our party.” “No president can solve all of our problems alone. We have to do it together,” he said.
He also reviewed his specialization, foreign policy, although with some basic logic. “A strong president does not start wars, a strong president stops them,” he said, after making sure of the fact that Vladimir Putin invaded Crimea during Barack Obama’s mandate and the whole of Ukraine during Biden’s reign, but did nothing with Trump in the White House. It was no coincidence.
After Haley, the governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, appeared on the scene, delivering an energetic and devastating speech against Joe Biden. He said that “the United States cannot afford four more years of This dead man is absolutely alive.” And he compared his own figure to the Republican nominee: “Donald Trump has been demonized, he’s been prosecuted, he’s been tried and nearly cost his life,” he said, adding, “We can’t let him down, and we can’t let America down.”
Ron DeSantis during his speech at the Republican convention.Fresh Mike (Reuters)
Trump repeatedly insulted DeSantis when the two competed. He gave him a derogatory nickname, called him rude; claimed he needed a personality transplant because he couldn’t even say his last name, and repeatedly mocked him. However, they later made peace, and convention attendees did not hesitate to cheer him on from the start.
The governor did not disappoint and touched on topics dearest to American radical conservatism, from the border to the pandemic, inflation, taxes and even electoral issues. He attacked “gender ideology” and the principles of diversity, equality and inclusion, which he blames for promoting “division, exclusion and indoctrination.” He said of the Democrats, “They can’t even define what a woman is.”
One of his most praised phrases is, “They require proof of a Covid vaccine to get into a restaurant, but they oppose requiring proof of citizenship to vote.” “Let’s send Joe Biden back to his basement and let’s send Donald Trump back to the White House,” has also been widely celebrated. And he ended his speech with the same words Trump said when he stood up after the assassination attempt on Saturday, as he called for the United States to follow Trump’s slogan of “Fight, Fight, Fight.”
Unit Image
Republicans project an image of unity that they want to contrast with the divisions of the Democrats around Biden. Another of those eight candidates, Vivek Ramaswamy, has also expressed his unconditional dedication to Trumpism once again this Tuesday, also calling for unity. “Trump is the president who will truly unite this country, not through empty words, but through action. Success is uniting. Excellence unites. “That’s who we are as Americans.” The entrepreneur has also appealed to young people and the black vote in his speech. “Our message to black Americans is this: We want for you what we want for all Americans: safe neighborhoods, clean streets, good jobs, a better life for your children, and a justice system that treats everyone equally, no matter the color of their skin or their political beliefs.
On Monday, the one who surrendered to Trump with a roar was Senator Tim Scott: “The devil came to Pennsylvania with a rifle, but the American lion stood up,” he said. And Doug Burgum, who has not yet spoken in the plenary session, is making his support for Trump clear in the hallways.
At Tuesday’s session, Texas Senator Ted Cruz and his Florida counterpart Marco Rubio, who were Trump’s rivals in the 2016 primaries, also sparred hard with the president, but the wounds have clearly healed. Rubio also appeared in the pool as a potential vice presidential candidate.
Donald Trump appeared triumphant once again at the convention with a bandage over his ear, shortly before being interrupted by those who were his two main rivals in the primaries. To boost the spirits of the attendees, the president took a new mass bath. He was preceded by new vice presidential candidate JD Vance.
Shortly after Trump arrived, a video against Joe Biden was broadcast on the big screen, criticizing his border policy but also showing some pauses and moments of lapses. The video linked immigration and crime, as Republicans have been doing without shame. Just in case, there were also some broadsides against Kamala Harris.
Three of the eight most anti-Trump candidates in that debate (Mike Pence, Chris Christie and Asa Hutchison) are banned from the Republican Party and are not in Milwaukee. Notable absences from the convention include Trump as the only living former Republican president, George W. Bush, his vice president, Dick Cheney, and Senator Mitt Romney, the party’s 2012 nominee, who when announcing his withdrawal last September called on Biden and Trump to make way for a new generation.
Police killed a man armed with knives
Police have sealed off the Republican convention and have stepped up their surveillance after Saturday’s attack against Trump. There are checkpoints everywhere, helicopters fly over the area and heavily armed police from various forces patrol the convention and its outskirts. There have been two serious incidents outside the protected perimeter in the first two days, in one of which police killed a man and in the other they arrested a man with a rifle.
Milwaukee Police Chief Jeffrey Norman said five Ohio police officers who were in Wisconsin for the convention shot and killed a man involved in a stabbing near the convention. According to Norman, the man shot by police had a knife in both hands and ignored police commands.
Separately, a man armed with an AK-47 rifle and wearing a ski mask was arrested Monday, the first day of the convention, near the Fiserv Forum, where the convention is being held, officials said Tuesday. The 21-year-old was arrested after U.S. Capitol Police and Homeland Security Investigations officers said he was acting suspiciously. Police found the weapon in his backpack, according to sources cited by the AP.
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