MILWAUKEE — The assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump days ago may have prompted speakers at the Republican National Convention to rethink their rhetoric, but the party is redoubling its message on crime and public safety, which it sees as a winning issue.
Republicans used the second day of their convention here at the Fiserv Forum to promote the need to “Make America Safe Again.” The theme, scheduled the week before the RNC, has seemed to have only grown more salient for Republicans after a 20-year-old gunman opened fire during Trump’s Saturday campaign rally in Butler County, Pa., killing one and critically injuring two others.
While the shooting could very well end up becoming an inflection point in Trump’s re-election campaign, it’s unlikely to lead to differences in messaging on gun rights and related topics both at the RNC and in the three-and-a-half months until Election Day.
“I stand 1,000 percent convicted in the fact that the Republican Party will always stand for the Constitution and the Second Amendment and our right to bear arms,” Rep. Kat Cammack, R-Fla., told reporters Tuesday in Milwaukee. “One deranged individual who clearly needed help, he is not going to change the United States Constitution and our right as Americans to bear arms. Absolutely not.”
The point, though, was never really in question. Much attention has been paid to the Trump campaign’s effort to lower the political temperature this week and cast the assassination attempt as a moment for national unity.
“He has a tremendous opportunity to reset the discussion in America and be able to lead America forward from that horrific attempted assassination,” Wisconsin delegate Eric Toney, the district attorney for Fond du Lac County in the eastern part of the state and the GOP’s 2022 candidate for Wisconsin attorney general. “That’s a special opportunity for President Trump in a moment in history that we’ve seen so many people that are siloed.”
But there’s largely no expectation that the shooting will portend the arrival of new political positions or policies from the Trump campaign.
Throughout the primary and general election thus far, the campaign’s focus on personal and public safety has been consistent, Trump campaign senior adviser Chris LaCivita said during a Tuesday event. Largely, he said, the goal is “to put an emphasis back on actual criminal punishment.” He didn’t give any indication that officials would alter their course.
“I think it’s really important to keep in mind that people didn’t feel safe before Saturday, the average American person,” Katie Pointer Baney, the managing director of government affairs for the U.S. Concealed Carry Association, said in an interview, arguing that was due to illegal immigration, economic insecurity, “leniency” on the part of prosecutors and underinvestments in policing. “There has been a crime crisis really throughout the country for a couple years now.”
Law and order dominated the speakers’ agenda Tuesday night. Chants of “Back the Blue” filled the hall as delegates screamed their support for local law enforcement. But there was no mention of the pro-Trump rioters who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 and assaulted Capitol Police officers. Trump and his running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, have characterized rioters as patriots, questioned the conduct of prosecutors in their cases and said many of them should be pardoned.
House GOP leaders lamented President Joe Biden’s border policies and record on crime, and Republican Conference Chair Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., decried the prosecutors and judges they said are targeting Trump, who in May became the first former president to be convicted of a felony.
Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., touted the party’s standing as the “advocates for the rule of law,” while Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La., pledged to “lock down the border and yes, we will finish building the wall,” prompting chants of “build that wall!” from the crowd.
Scalise, who himself survived a shooting at a GOP congressional baseball game practice in June 2017, briefly told attendees about how Trump visited his family while the Louisiana Republican was hospitalized. He said in a brief interview earlier in the day that he decided to “tweak my speech a little bit at the end” to reflect Saturday’s events.
But asked whether the evening’s theme of safety would be changed at all by the shooting, he added: “In the end, I still think we’re going to be talking a lot about what we need to do to make our country more secure, and it’s a lot of the same things.”
The aftermath of the shooting can be felt both in the convention hall, where religious leaders have led Republican delegates, supporters and activists in giving thanks for Trump’s health, and within the security perimeter outside of it, where Secret Service and law enforcement have beefed up their personnel.
Going forward, Pointer Baney of the U.S. Concealed Carry Association said “there’s no doubt” public safety will be amplified as a campaign issue following Saturday’s shooting.
“People were concerned before; they’re going to be even more concerned now,” she added “Issues of crime and public safety … are going to be paramount for voters across the country.”
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