GOP nominates Trump for the third time, as he selects Vance as his running mate
MILWAUKEE — Two days after he survived an assassination attempt, former President Trump swept Monday to his third consecutive Republican nomination for the nation’s highest office — a momentous day on which he named Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance as his running mate and saw a federal judge throw out a criminal case against him in Florida.
The shooting at a Pennsylvania campaign rally had party loyalists reacting with new fervor about their determination to help Trump defeat President Biden, who has been trailing narrowly in most key polls. The former president planned to build on the enthusiasm by choosing Vance — one of his most outspoken supporters — as his No. 2.
“President Trump has one of the most dynamic, young leaders in the country” in Vance, Donald Trump Jr. said on the social media site X.
Saturday’s shocking violence remained the dominant topic at the gathering of 2,400 delegates, who opened their first Republican National Convention session Monday with a moment of silence to pray for the victims. The bullets apparently intended for Trump killed a father and severely wounded two other bystanders.
Delegates casting their votes on the convention floor repeatedly chanted “Fight! Fight! Fight!” — mimicking the words Trump shouted, while waving his fist, just moments after a bullet clipped his ear at the rally.
The four-day gathering in a state Biden narrowly won four years ago is scheduled to culminate Thursday with a speech by Trump, who has signaled that he intends to strike a more conciliatory tone, after years of aggressively putting down Biden and many other opponents.
“I want to try to unite our country, but I don’t know if that’s possible,” Trump told the New York Post.
Even before delegates settled in for their first session in Milwaukee, Trump got an unexpected boost, when a judge he appointed to the federal judiciary dismissed criminal charges against the former president.
In her ruling, Judge Aileen M. Cannon said special counsel Jack Smith had been improperly appointed in the classified documents case in Florida. Because Smith’s appointment to the post was not made by the president and approved by the Senate, the assignment violated the appointments clause of the Constitution, Cannon ruled.
Legal experts said Cannon’s ruling flew in the face of decades of legal precedent on the appointment of independent prosecutors. Smith was expected to appeal the ruling to keep alive charges that Trump held on to highly secret documents and then obstructed repeated efforts by the government to retrieve them.
FBI officials said they believe the shooter — who wounded two others and left one dead — acted alone. They said they are investigating the shooting as an assassination attempt, and they are also looking at it as a “potential domestic terrorism act.”
The decision added to a run of legal good fortune for the former president. On July 1, the Supreme Court ruled that former presidents have broad immunity for their official acts while in office.
Trump argued on social media that Cannon’s action “should be just the first step” toward dismissing all the cases against him, which include charges in both state and federal court that he tried to overturn the results of the 2020 election. A New York jury has already convicted him of 34 felony counts of violating a state law on corporate records, tied to hush money payments to onetime adult film actor Stormy Daniels.
“Let us come together to END all Weaponization of our Justice System,” Trump wrote on social media.
Trump arrived in Milwaukee Sunday, keeping the relatively low profile he has maintained since Saturday’s attack at a rally in Butler, Pa. A bullet fired by Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, tore through the top of Trump’s ear and sent him and spectators crouching for cover before marksmen killed the would-be assassin.
The former president pronounced himself “fine” before the end of the day Saturday.
By picking Vance, 39, Trump intended to keep the political world’s focus tightly fixed on the Republican gathering, as he accepts his nomination as the Republican standard-bearer.
“As Vice President, J.D. will continue to fight for our Constitution, stand with our Troops, and will do everything he can to help me MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social.
Vance has shown himself to be a politician who enjoys verbal combat. On the day Trump was shot, the Ohio Republican blamed Democrats.
“Today is not just some isolated incident,” he posted on X. “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.”
Alexandria Coronado, a delegate from the Virgin Islands who lived in California until 3½ years ago, called Vance “a great choice. I know both he and Donald Trump took bullets for this country,” she said, referring to Vance’s military service and the assassination attempt on Trump. “And I thank them for that. They are heroes.”
Saturday’s shooting poses a challenge for Biden. As president, he necessarily has called for calm and condemned violence. While showing deference to Trump following the assassination attempt, Biden can’t afford to stop campaigning, with only about 3½ months left until the final day of voting in November.
Biden appeared for an interview Monday night with Lester Holt, anchor of NBC’s “Nightly News,” his first since the attempt on his rival’s life.
The loudest voices of dissent in Milwaukee were kept far away from convention attendees. Protesters gathered in a park outside the convention’s security perimeter. Most of several hundred protesters came from local groups, who voiced support for abortion rights, immigrant rights and for an end to the war in Gaza.
They marched around the perimeter of the convention hall, in 90-degree heat, chanting “Hey-hey, ho-ho, Republicans have got to go” and “This is what democracy looks like.” Many carried Palestinian flags.
Inside the hall, the delegates also approved the party platform by a voice vote. Notably absent from this year’s 16-page policy document was language about placing greater limits on abortion and defining marriage as only between one man and one woman.
Though Trump appointed the Supreme Court justices who helped overturn Roe vs. Wade and previously boasted about that achievement, he has more recently tried to soft-pedal his view on the issue. The 2024 platform scrapped language opposing abortion outright and said the question should be left to the states.
It doesn’t matter which conservative playbook you consult. A second Trump term would mean federal war on California ideas.
Public opinion surveys have shown a solid majority of Americans want most abortions to be safe and legal, while the Republican Party establishment remains intent on outlawing the procedure in some or all cases.
Monday’s platform also went ahead without language that had been a bedrock of GOP policy for decades — opposing same-sex marriages.
Delegates expressed excitement about being in Milwaukee to support Trump.
Jeff Burns said he was looking forward to his first RNC gathering and to spending time with fellow conservatives — a rarity for a Bay Area GOP voter — and celebrating Trump being officially named the party’s 2024 nominee.
What’s more, as Burns flew to Milwaukee on Saturday, he was seated next to veteran GOP strategist Karl Rove. But then images of Trump recoiling from a would-be assassin’s bullet flashed across their seat-back monitors.
In an instant, he said, “the gravity of the world we live in and the extremism and the violence and the rhetoric for both parties” became front of mind.
What was supposed to be a joyous time had been “turned on its head,” he said. “I’m still trying to wrap my head around it.”
Biden warned of the risks of political violence in the U.S. after Saturday’s attempted assassination of former President Trump, saying, “It’s time to cool it down.”
Burns, 52, a Danville resident and chair of the Contra Costa Republican Party, said the images of a bloodied Trump defiantly pumping his fist have become iconic. Trump already excites his audiences, but Burns predicted his appearance at the convention will be electrifying.
“When he makes an appearance on the stage, even just a wave, it’s going to be like the Beatles,” he said, before the start of the event at Fiserv Forum, the arena that is the home of the NBA’s Milwaukee Bucks. He will be gathered with other delegates, as well as along with thousands of elected officials, donors, guests, reporters and others.
Given the number of high-profile potential targets, security around political conventions has always been heightened, but has intensified in the aftermath of the assassination attempt.
Convention planners had already been coordinating with 40 law enforcement agencies, Michael Whatley, chairman of the Republican National Committee, told Fox News on Sunday.
“The arena’s set, the security is here, and we feel very comfortable that we’re working with the Secret Service,” Whatley said, adding that there was “no place” in the nation’s politics for the “horrific” violence that unfolded Saturday.
But he added that the violence would not stop the convention and the delegates’ work.
“We are here in Milwaukee and the show is going to take place,” Whatley said. “It’s tremendously important for us as a country that the Republican Party is going to move forward. We are going to be strong. We are going to be resilient and certainly, President Trump is going to be strong and resilient.”
Mehta reported from Milwaukee and Rainey from Los Angeles. Times staff writer Noah Bierman in Washington contributed to this report.
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