Trump leaves RNC in his strongest position yet to win Pennsylvania and the White House

After the balloon curtain fell on a historic, and in some moments euphoric, four-day convention, former President Donald Trump left the stage in his strongest position yet to return to the Oval Office.

In an election so unprecedented the word seems to have lost its meaning, Trump had a week that could cement his return to power as he appears to be pulling ahead in a race that had been stubbornly tight for months.

To his supporters, who packed the Fiserv Forum in red, white, and blue, he was already a godlike figure. After a failed assassination attempt against him on Saturday, he nearly became a martyr, and his campaign hopes can extend his appeal through a softer tone — even as he continues to spread lies and mistruths and policies designed to appeal to the hard right.

Trump began his acceptance speech Thursday by recounting over 15 minutes the harrowing 90 seconds in Butler County, Pa., when an attempted assassin’s bullet narrowly missed him.

“I’m not supposed to be here tonight,” Trump told the crowd. They answered back, “Yes, you are.”

In a packed venue that felt like a megachurch, Trump said he wanted to deliver a message of “confidence, strength, and hope,” a rhetorical shift for a former president whose political rise has been fueled largely by tapping into populist anger.

“Division in our society must be healed. We must heal it quickly,” Trump said in a soft voice. “We rise together or we fall apart.”

But as the speech wore on, Trump returned to his more characteristically combative style — referring to former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi as “crazy” and warning about an “invasion” at the southern border. He recycled a line from his Wildwood rally in which he compared some of the migrants crossing the border to Hannibal Lecter, the fictional serial killer from The Silence of the Lambs. He called Washington, D.C., a “killing field.” His 90-minute speech contained more than 20 false claims according to CNN.

Just like his convention, Trump’s speech had often clashing messages of division and unity, portraits of tenderness and brute toughness. The convention took place less than two months after Trump became the first person ever elected president to be convicted of a felony — after he was found guilty on 34 counts in his New York hush money trial. His other legal cases related to his efforts to overturn the 2020 election remain pending.

Strength and survival were themes throughout the last four days, which didn’t just officially certify Trump as the nominee, it firmly established the GOP as his party and the Trump-Vance ticket as an unflinching vehicle for the MAGA movement.

As Trump supporters danced in Milwaukee, President Joe Biden was weathering the worst several weeks of his reelection bid, first giving a disastrous debate performance last month and now fighting off calls from within his party to drop out of the race. Biden would become the first sitting president since Lyndon Johnson in 1968 to forgo his party’s nomination if he heeds the pressure campaign, but he’d be doing so far later in the election cycle.

Along with the assassination attempt on Trump came GOP attempts to whitewash some of the ugly and violent rhetoric that Trump himself has promoted both before and after the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot.

Taken together, Trump leaves the convention in a far more elevated position than he was a week ago. But as he progresses into the late summer months of the campaign, several factors could determine whether his star continues to rise and whether Democrats have any chance of regaining momentum.

The roar that greeted Trump as he gave his acceptance speech Thursday night was an extraordinary political pinnacle for him considering just eight years ago heading into the Republican National Convention, his own party was still looking for last-ditch ways to get rid of him.

As recently as two years ago, Republicans in swing states like Pennsylvania were fractured, disappointed with midterm losses that many blamed on the former president.

This week featured a lineup of onetime critics bowing to Trump as he sat in a VIP section with gauze on his ear. In the seats, as the nights wore on, more supporters taped fake bandages to their ears and chanted, “fight! fight! fight!” anytime the Saturday shooting was mentioned — which was often.

The modern political convention has become a big boisterous party and a large advertisement for the campaign to celebrate the nominee but never in the history of American politics has one come so soon after an assassination attempt. It sent the fervor here into overdrive. But will it bring more voters to him?

A CBS poll released Thursday, one of the first since the assassination attempt, showed Trump up 5 percentage points nationally on Biden, his biggest lead yet and a 3-point improvement from July 3.

One of the most difficult things for Trump to overcome in this election has been expanding a relatively fixed base. He has relied on passionate but limited support from MAGA devotees, many of whom packed Milwaukee as delegates this week as they sported Trump socks and bedazzled Trump pins, buying Trump-branded Bibles, and showing off their Trump high-top sneakers and Trump tattoos.

When Trump turned his head an inch and escaped a bullet that could have killed him, it softened criticism of him, at least temporarily and particularly within his own party.

Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley’s appearance on stage was the clearest sign of party unity. What remains to be seen is whether Haley supporters who dislike Trump come around to him. A key focus of Biden’s campaign has been trying to appeal to moderate, never-Trumpers who backed Haley in the primary.

But Pennsylvania State Treasurer Stacy Garrity, a Republican up for reelection in November, argued the assassination attempt has softened the skeptics.

“Gosh, six to nine months ago people were still trying to have one foot on his side and one foot on the other,” Garrity said, noting some politicians had been reluctant to openly support or campaign with Trump for fear it could cost them in swing areas.

“Instead of hiding their support, now everybody’s coming out,” she said.

Softening Trump’s brash image was another theme of the convention. It featured speakers who talked about his compassion, like his 17-year-old granddaughter, Kai Trump, and his former press secretary, Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders.

At the same time, speakers invoked the iconic image of him after the shooting, fist raised, to champion his toughness. Pennsylvania GOP Senate candidate Dave McCormick framed the race as one about strength vs. weakness.

Each morning at their preconvention breakfast, Pennsylvania delegates were reminded over scrambled eggs and danish how important their state is.

“Pennsylvania plus one,” delegation chair Jim Worthington told them on Monday. “That’s what I’m hearing from inside the Trump campaign.”

The state has become a must-win for the Biden campaign, as well. Biden views the blue wall states of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan as his best and perhaps only hope of staying in the White House.

Polling from before the assassination attempt but after the debate showed Trump up 3 points on Biden in Pennsylvania, still within the survey’s margin of error.

Democrats in the crucial state are scrambling to persuade voters of the risks of a second Trump presidency, even as they strike a careful tone in the wake of the shooting.

“I don’t want to see him hurt, but I also don’t want to see him be king,” State Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta (D., Philadelphia) said Tuesday at a news conference in Philadelphia at a Harris-Biden campaign office meant to provide a rebuttal to the RNC.

While Trump was slow to unveil a ground game in Pennsylvania and has so far held fewer events than Biden has, Republican delegates, several of whom were at the rally in Western Pennsylvania, said they have a grassroots mobilization that Biden, who voters overwhelmingly think is too old to be president, could struggle to engender.

“I think every Republican in Pennsylvania is more energized because you have in some cases in this group, people who were there, who were shot at,” said Michael McMullen, a delegate from Pittsburgh who was at the rally. “We’re fired up. The energy is unbelievable.”

Picking Sen. JD Vance, an Ohio Republican, as his running mate was also a clear sign of Trump’s focus on the blue wall states, which border Vance’s home state. Shortly after announcing Vance, Trump said the vice presidential nominee would be “living in Pennsylvania for the next four months.”

In his prime time speech Wednesday night, Vance highlighted his working-class upbringing in a town that looks a lot like the postindustrial places where Trump won big in 2016, but that shifted toward Biden in 2020.

“To the people of Middletown, Ohio, and all the forgotten communities in Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Ohio, and every corner of our nation,” Vance said, “I promise you this — I will be a vice president who never forgets where he came from.”

But by picking Vance, Trump is also doubling down on Trumpism and the conservative movement he leads, which could alienate more moderate voters.

“He wasn’t anyone’s first, second, or maybe even third choice,” said U.S. Rep. Dan Meuser, a longtime Trump ally whose Pennsylvania district stretches from Berks County to the New York border. “But I think he’s gonna carry the president’s message, not exactly the same way, but I think he’ll be very articulate and effective at expressing what America First means, what conservatism means, what MAGA means.”

Trump’s pick does little to signal a home for more socially moderate or independent voters. The convention was light on specific policy platforms but included some extreme moments, particularly on immigration.

People in the crowd waved “mass deportation now!” signs on Wednesday night and Trump’s former immigration adviser Thomas Homan warned undocumented people: “You’d better start packing now.”

Following the assassination attempt, members of both parties have said the conversation should shift from personal attacks to policy debate.

And while four days of convention programming and speakers included scant mention of abortion, the party’s stance on abortion remains out of step with most voters. Vance’s Senate campaign website had included a promise to end abortion until this week when he was chosen as Trump’s running mate.

Vice President Kamala Harris pointed to abortion Thursday as she sought to rebut the notion that the Republican ticket could offer a message of unity to a divided country.

“In recent days, they’ve been trying to portray themselves as the party of ‘unity.’ But here’s the thing. If you claim to stand for unity, you need to do more than just use the word,” Harris said at a campaign event in North Carolina.

“You cannot claim you stand for unity if you are pushing an agenda that deprives whole groups of Americans basic freedoms, opportunity and dignity. You cannot claim you stand for unity if you are intent on taking reproductive freedoms from the people of America and the women of America.”

The Trump campaign declined this week to commit Vance to a vice presidential debate with Harris, contending that it’s unknown who the Democratic nominee for vice president will be until the party’s August convention and that Harris could wind up as the presidential nominee instead.