The political iconography was instant and indelible. His face bloodied, his fist raised, Donald Trump stood defiant as Secret Service agents scrambled around him against the backdrop of the Stars and Stripes and a brilliant blue sky.
The apparent attempt to assassinate the former president at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania on Saturday shook the American political kaleidoscope once again. It cast a shadow over the Republican national convention, due to start in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on Monday – but potentially handed Trump and his allies a political opportunity.
Trump’s allies will probably praise Trump as a strongman who is quite literally bulletproof – and blame his opponents for the explosion of violence.
“Today is not just some isolated incident,” tweeted JD Vance, an Ohio senator widely tipped to be name as Trump’s running mate at the convention. “The central premise of the Biden campaign is that President Donald Trump is an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs. That rhetoric led directly to President Trump’s attempted assassination.”
Host city Milwaukee, in the battleground state of Wisconsin, has sudden historical resonance. It was here in 1912 that Theodore Roosevelt, a former president seeking to regain the White House, was the victim of a would-be assassination. The bullet was slowed by a steel case for his glasses and a manuscript of his 50-page speech, ultimately lodging in his chest. Roosevelt went on to deliver the speech while bleeding through his shirt.
Steve Schmidt, a former Republican strategist, wrote on X: “The political consequences of this assassination attempt will be immense, and they will benefit Donald Trump, who just responded to being shot in the exact same way that Teddy Roosevelt did.”
Even before Saturday’s shooting, the convention was set to be a coronation of Trump as Republicans’ presidential nominee, throwing in sharp relief the Democratic discord over Joe Biden’s viability as a candidate.
Republicans have nominated Trump for the presidency twice before. But in 2016 and even 2020 he faced critics inside his own party and was the underdog in the race for the White House. This time, however, Trump has the edge in opinion polls following Biden’s calamitous debate performance. And his takeover of the Republican party is complete.
Dissenters have been purged, losing their congressional seats to Trump allies or quietly fading into retirement. The Republican National Committee co-chair is Trump’s daughter-in-law Lara. This week Nikki Haley, who was Trump’s closest challenger in the Republican primary election, released the delegates she won so that they are free to support him at the convention.
Haley herself will not be there. Nor will Mike Pence, the former vice-president who was a key figure at the past two conventions. Nor will Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan, the Republican ticket that took on Democrat Barack Obama in the 2012 election.
But delegates will hear from Tucker Carlson, a broadcaster who promotes white nationalism; Franklin Graham, a Christian evangelical who has called Islam “wicked” and “evil”; Tom Homan, an immigration hardliner who has vowed to run the biggest deportation force in American history; Charlie Kirk, a far-right activist and election denier; and Vivek Ramaswamy, a biotech entrepreneur who wants to increase fossil fuel production. All are sure to play their part in the Trump show.
Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, said: “Trump’s coronation will for once put British ceremony to shame. You will see speaker after speaker, delegation after delegation, trying to top one another in their superlatives about the greatest president, not just in American history but in world history.”
Delegates will hear from Trump, 78, and ratify the Republican policy platform that he personally approved. They will be introduced to Trump’s vice-presidential running mate. They will hear speakers mock Biden as a weak, 81-year-old failure who is facing calls from fellow Democrats to exit the race.
Michael Steele, a former chairman of the Republican National Committee, said: “The Democrats have spent the last 10 days giving them soundbites to talk about. The Republicans are going to take four days and everything coming out of their mouths will be a reminder that Joe Biden is old, Democrats don’t want him, why should you?”
Republicans have been given a gift, Steele added. “Democrats are too stupid to realise what the gift is, and they keep giving it. Just shut the hell up, get behind the man like the Republicans have gotten behind their criminal and run the race. Because the American people are going to line up with Joe Biden if you give them a reason to do that.”
Convention delegates, numbering almost 2,400, are sure to approve a policy platform that ranks among the most extreme in American history. Echoing Trump talking points, it backs the mass deportation of undocumented immigrants, calls for an end to “the weaponisation of government” and demands election integrity – code for Trump’s false assertion that the 2020 election was stolen.
The 16-page platform is heavily influenced by Christian nationalism and shares significant ideological DNA with Project 2025, a 922-page plan from a conservative thinktank that outlines a dramatic expansion of presidential power and a plan to fire as many as 50,000 government workers to replace them with Trump loyalists.
Biden’s re-election campaign has worked to turn Project 2025 into an electoral liability for Trump, which may explain why last week he sought to distance himself from it. “I know nothing about Project 2025,” Trump posted on his social media website, adding that “some of the things they’re saying are absolutely ridiculous and abysmal”.
But both Russ Vought, the Republican National Convention’s platform committee’s policy director, and his deputy, Ed Martin, have strong connections to Project 2025. Both men have also previously taken a hard line against abortion rights.
Martin has advocated for a national ban without exceptions for rape or incest and entertained the idea of imprisoning women and their doctors. He once said: “If you ban abortion in Louisiana, is a doctor who has an abortion breaking the law? Yes. Should he be punished? Yes – I think that seems obvious. What is the punishment? Not sure yet. Could be criminal, could be a jail sentence, I suppose.”
The platform committee is packed with other anti-abortion extremists including David Barton, a Christian nationalist who has called the separation of church and state a “myth”, Kimberly Guilfoyle, fiancee of Donald Trump Jr; Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council; and Chad Connelly, a former chairman of the South Carolina Republican party who has described abortion as “murder of an innocent child”.
Weighing the political risks, Trump intervened to ensure that, for the first time in 40 years, the party platform omits the explicit basis for a national abortion ban, leaving the policy to state governments instead. But the compromise remains fragile: if dissenting voices are raised at the convention, it will fuel Democrats’ argument that Republicans’ true intentions are as extreme as ever.
Emilia Rowland, national press secretary of the Democratic National Committee, said: “The reality is that Trump literally put architects of Project 2025 in charge of the Republican platform, and the result is not only the most extreme platform in GOP history but one containing lie after lie after lie.
“The American people know that Trump wants a nationwide abortion ban and they know the only thing standing in the way of Trump’s terrifying second-term agenda is re-electing President Biden and Vice-President Harris in November.”
Delegates will also formally designate the presidential ticket: Trump and his yet-to-be-named running mate. The leading contender is Vance, followed by the North Dakota governor, Doug Burgum, and Florida senator Marco Rubio. All three are expected to address delegates along with the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, who challenged Trump for the nomination and later endorsed him.
To critics, the vice-presidential pick is irrelevant. Steele, a broadcaster and former lieutenant governor of Maryland, said: “To be honest, I couldn’t care less who his running mate is. It is a mindless zombified politician who has given up his soul to Donald Trump for the chance that Donald Trump will smile at him and pat him on the head.
“It doesn’t matter to me. It will be an unprincipled individual. That’s all I know. They could take a stick figure and stand it next to Donald Trump. Folks in that hall would applaud it, lap it up, nominate it and call it vice-president.”
Trump family members will also address the convention, organisers announced on Saturday. The former president’s sons, Donald Trump Jr and Eric Trump, will both have speaking slots, along with their partners Kimberly Guilfoyle and Lara Trump. The former first lady Melania Trump is expected in Milwaukee but she is not listed among the speakers. She has been notably absent from the 2024 campaign – a stark contrast to the first lady Jill Biden’s prominent role at her husband’s side.
Trump’s campaign has outlined daily messaging with themes that riff on his signature “Make America great again” slogan. Monday’s theme is economics: “Make America wealthy once again.” Trump has outlined an agenda of sweeping tariffs and accelerated production of oil and gas, even though it already hit a record under Biden.
On Tuesday the theme is immigration and crime: “Make America safe once again.” Trump and Republicans believe the border debate is among their strongest issues. They have arranged speeches for the family members of people killed, allegedly by undocumented immigrants, as part of Trump’s broader attempts to blame crime on border policies.
Wednesday will be national security day: “Make America strong once again.” Delegates and the viewing audience can expect to hear arguments that Biden is a “weak” and “failed” commander-in-chief and head of state. This is the day, typically, that the vice-presidential nominee addresses the convention.
Thursday will culminate with Trump himself: “Make America great once again.”
His speech accepting the party nomination will be watched closely for the tension between red meat for the base and outreach to swing state votes. His 2016 address included the memorable line “I alone can fix it” and drew comparisons with the trappings of fascist rallies.
Frank Luntz, a political consultant and pollster, said: “The question is whether he goes 80% Maga, 90% Maga or 100% Maga. They would be best off with low-fat milk rather than the 2%, because 2% just goes overboard. He has four days of unchallenged, uninterrupted messaging, and there’s usually a bounce.
“He’s going into his convention so strong and with curiosity over who his VP candidate is going to be. If they have discipline and they can exercise it then their their lead will grow. But there’s only so many votes available among the undecideds.”
Protesters are expected but will not be permitted inside the security zone established around the convention arena by the Secret Service. Principles First, which describes itself as a nationwide grassroots movement of pro-democracy, anti-Trump conservatives, is holding a rally on Wednesday with Steele among the speakers.
The Democratic National Committee is also holding events in Milwaukee, promising daily press conferences, counter-programming and voter engagement in the Democratic stronghold. But the Republican mood inside the arena is likely to be triumphant, lavishing praise on Trump as a great survivor while hammering Democrats over their uncertainty about Biden.
Monika McDermott, a political science professor, at Fordham University in New York, said: “That’s a winning point for the Republicans after the debate and they’re going to continue to run with it. The Democratic party has been showing such cracks in their support behind President Biden at this point that it would be smart to stick a crowbar in there to make those cracks larger.”
