Just a week ago, everyone had a pretty good idea of what Donald Trump’s nomination acceptance speech tonight — his third — would be like: Just like his first two and just like the fiery oration he’s given many times. That the country is doing horribly (except for the four years he was in office), that we are beset by a crime wave and an invading army of dangerous immigrants, that the government is harming the public, that everything that Americans hold dear is under attack.
And only he has the way out. Only Trump knows the path out of darkness into the light. That Democrats are destroying the fabric of the nation.
But then Trump was shot and, but for a few centimeters, survived being assassinated on Saturday evening.
Since his bloody brush with death Trump has said that he has dumped his planned speech, telling the Washington Examiner: “The speech I was going to give on Thursday was going to be a humdinger. Had this not happened, this would’ve been one of the most incredible speeches.” Instead, “honestly, it’s going to be a whole different speech now. This is a chance to bring the whole country, even the whole world, together. The speech will be a lot different, a lot different than it would’ve been.”
He relayed the same message to the New York Post on his flight to Milwaukee: “I had all prepared an extremely tough speech, really good, all about the corrupt, horrible administration, but I threw it away. I want to try to unite our country. But I don’t know if that’s possible. People are very divided.”
On that same flight, Trump told the Washington Examiner: “I basically had a speech that was an unbelievable rip-roarer. It was brutal — really good, really tough. I threw it out. I think it would be very bad if I got up and started going wild about how horrible everybody is and how corrupt and crooked, even if it’s true. Had this not happened, we had a speech that was pretty well set that was extremely tough. Now, we have a speech that is more unifying.”
We will hear tonight where Trump comes down. Does he mean “unifying” in the traditional sense of the word or is he thinking that everyone should rally behind Trump instead of President Biden? His choice of J.D. Vance as a running mate, his most loyal acolyte in the Senate, is not a sign of reaching towards the middle, toward consensus. But maybe Vance was already selected before the shots rang out.
It was Trump who has been saying that his original speech has been tossed. We all know what he was going to deliver (and he’s explicitly said what it was). We will find out this evening what he thinks unity is like. He has succeeded for the past nine years by dividing, which he excels at.
Trump the unifier would be a new act for his third White House run. With Biden suffering dissension in the Democratic Party ranks (and now with a case of COVID) while Trump is riding a wave of support since his miraculous encounter with a bullet, maybe the ex-president will present a different face tonight.
We would hope so, but we are also realists that Trump is always Trump. He lied about having the 2020 election stolen from him; is he telling the truth of offering a different message? We have only a few hours to wait.