A triumphant Donald Trump is poised to accept the Republican presidential nomination for a historic third straight time on Thursday just days after surviving an assassination attempt.
Leading in polls, Trump is set to grab the GOP mantle in his battle to win back the White House four years after losing to President Biden, despite recently being convicted of 34 felonies in the Manhattan hush money case.
The twice-impeached former president did a walk around on the stage at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee Wednesday afternoon in preparation for his marquee speech a day later.
Trump has made a remarkable and dramatic return to the GOP gathering after cheating death when a would-be assassin opened fire on him at a campaign rally Saturday.
His speech comes a day after Sen. J.D. Vance accepted the Republican nomination for vice president on Trump’s ticket, rounding out the team that will seek to take back the presidency from Democrats.
The youthful first-term Ohio senator framed himself as an oracle of America’s troubled small towns that he chronicled in the bestselling memoir “Hillbilly Elegy.”
Sporting an oversized bandage on his bloodied ear, Trump has vowed to call for national unity following the shooting that killed one of his supporters and wounded two others at a speech in western Pennsylvania.
Trump has said he abandoned previous plans for a trademark scorched-earth attack on Biden, whom he blames for engineering his myriad legal woes as well as dropping the ball on inflation and the southern border.
“Politically, the country’s a tinderbox right now,” Jason Miller, a top Trump adviser, told NBC News. “[We’ve] got to find a way to take down the temperature.”
The real-estate mogul and onetime reality TV star broke with bipartisan tradition by watching the first days of the RNC in person from his VIP box, flanked by relatives, allies and Vance, who was unveiled Monday after a TV-friendly selection process.
Trump watched with a calm smile as onetime bitter rivals Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis heaped praise on him Tuesday night as the unquestioned leader of the GOP.
The nomination acceptance speech caps a convention that could hardly have been a bigger success for Trump, who left the White House in disgrace after being widely blamed for inciting the Jan. 6, 2021 U.S. Capitol building riot, but rebuilt his dominant grip on the Republican Party with an unflinching focus on rallying his base of loyal supporters.
Trump has no vocal opposition whatsoever at this year’s convention.
Savvy political insiders and seasoned oddsmakers once called Trump a long shot to retake the GOP nod. Even after jawboning most Republicans to return to his side after his effort to overturn his election loss, Trump was still widely considered damaged political goods.
He made a series of shaky political choices in the 2022 midterms, an election in which a much-hyped Republican red wave mostly fizzled.
As recently as 18 months ago, Trump was still trailing an ascendant DeSantis in polls and faced what most friends and enemies alike considered daunting political and legal obstacles.
He was indicted on four criminal cases, including engineering the Jan. 6 attack, and was convicted by a Manhattan jury of falsifying documents to cover up hush money payments to porn star Stormy Daniels. Trump is appealing the verdict.
Despite the setbacks, Trump held strong and dominated what was once a crowded field of Republican primary challengers. He rebuffed calls to debate and slammed DeSantis in particular with a withering and unending string of attacks, and effectively killing off Haley’s candidacy with landslide win in her home state of South Carolina.
The victory party for Trump comes as President Biden is still struggling mightily with the fallout from his shaky performance in the historic early debate between the two men three weeks ago.
The debate debacle has sparked significant calls from Democrats for Biden, who was diagnosed with COVID on Wednesday, to step down from the race, but the 81-year-old incumbent insists he won’t do that.
Democrats gather at their own convention next month when they will make a final decision about whether to stick with Biden and to get their campaign against Trump back on track.
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