Former US President Donald Trump has just been formally nominated as the Republican Party’s presidential candidate. Two days after the shooting that left him with minor injuries to his ear, the tycoon has received an overwhelming majority of votes from the delegates elected during the primary process, who met on Monday in Milwaukee (Wisconsin) on the occasion of the Republican National Convention.
Trump has reaffirmed himself as the leader of his party for the third consecutive time and, in light of polls that place him ahead of his rival, Joe Biden, in the national vote and in the six key states of these elections, he is the best positioned to become president after the elections of November 5. He will be accompanied on the ticket, as a candidate for vice president, by Senator JD Vance, as Trump announced this afternoon on his Truth Social platform.
The nearly 2,400 delegates – party members, activists and anonymous citizens from the country’s 50 states – elected during the primaries have confirmed the president’s nomination by roll call vote, in which a representative from each of the states, in alphabetical order, has read aloud the votes that each of the Republican candidates received in the primaries.
“Fight, fight, fight!” chanted the crowd at Fiserv Forum, the stadium where the National Convention began today, recalling the words Trump said after being shot on Saturday, causing minor injuries to his ear, while opening a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. The convention will continue until Thursday, when Trump will give a highly anticipated speech in which he will accept his party’s nomination.
The Republican convention, which runs through Thursday, has tight security measures following the assassination attempt
The event is taking place in exceptional conditions, two days after the attempted assassination of the tycoon. Until Thursday, security will be at maximum alert and, on instructions from the FBI, the Secret Service has cordoned off the area around the Fiserv Forum. All vehicles approaching the centre have been inspected and a pedestrian-only zone has been reserved to avoid incidents.
Some 50,000 people from all over the country have travelled to Milwaukee in the past week. Most of them supporters of the Republican tycoon, who they want to support after the attack. Trump will be showered with crowds on Thursday and will be crowned a hero after surviving the gunshot that grazed his ear, an image that, most analysts say, has brought him even closer to returning to the White House.
Trump will accept his party’s nomination on Thursday in a highly anticipated speech that he himself said in an interview with the Washington Examiner yesterday had been radically changed since the attack. But he is expected to speak earlier, as he plans to announce his running mate for November before Wednesday. Typically, the vice presidential candidate gives his speech to delegates at the convention on Wednesday, followed by the presidential candidate on Thursday.
From his speech, which was initially presented in his usual confrontational tone, a message is expected to call for national unity, as he has done in his public statements since he survived the attack, and as President Joe Biden also did yesterday in a message to the nation from the Oval Office. “The time has come to lower the temperature of the political debate,” Biden said, in a speech of about 6 minutes against “political violence,” and citing other recent events, such as the attack on the home of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, before the 2022 midterm legislative elections, in which a man attacked her husband Paul Pelosi with a hammer.
The president also asked Americans yesterday, in another speech hours earlier from the White House, not to speculate about the “motivations or affiliation” of Thomas Matthew Crook, the 20-year-old who missed shooting Trump on Saturday afternoon. And he announced an independent investigation to find out why there was a massive security failure, allowing the Secret Service to allow the attacker to shoot from a rooftop just 120 meters from the former president.
Biden also said he has ordered the Secret Service to review security measures for the Republican convention, for which no serious threat to people’s safety has been detected so far, the Republican National Committee reported yesterday, informed by the FBI.
Republicans will set the tone for the final stretch of the campaign at the convention
The days remaining before the convention will set the tone for Trump’s campaign, as well as for those close to him, in response to Saturday’s attack. Speeches will be given by members of his family, such as his son Donald Jr., members of the Republican Party, ordinary citizens and television stars such as Tucker Carlson, a former Fox News presenter and close to the former president’s orbit.
While the convention was taking place in Milwaukee, Trump announced through his platform, Truth Social, the name of his running mate for the November 5 elections. “After much deliberation, and taking into account the enormous talents of many others, I have decided that the most suitable person to assume the office of Vice President of the United States is Senator JD Vance, from the Great State of Ohio,” he announced, in the communicative style that he accustomed journalists to during his mandate: through social networks.
Source: www.lavanguardia.com
