MILWAUKEE — The economy was the focus of the first night of the Republican National Convention, but it was Donald Trump’s first public appearance since the attempted assassination at his rally Saturday that stole the show.
Electricity pulsed through Fiserv Forum when Trump, wearing a large white bandage over his right ear, entered the venue. The crowd erupted into raucous cheers as Lee Greenwood performed “God Bless the U.S.A.” — a song played at every Trump rally — in a moment that made a number of people in the crowd, including the former president’s son Don Jr. emotional.
Trump did not make any remarks, other than mouthing “thank you” to attendees, before settling into a box seat next to Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, whom he announced as his running mate earlier in the afternoon, and Rep. Byron Donalds, R-Fla. Imitating Trump’s remarks after he was shot and stood back up, rally attendees shouted, “Fight! Fight! Fight!"
Most speakers stuck to the night’s theme — “Make America Wealthy Again” — but interspersed through the night were mentions of the shooting and rhetoric that, at times, contradicted Trump’s own calls for unity.
High inflation, and what the speakers said was the lackluster economy under President Joe Biden, was a key talking point throughout the night.
“Many families today are having that same experience,” said North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, speaking of his experience growing up poor. “Grocery prices have skyrocketed, and gas has nearly doubled in North Carolina factories.”
A subdued tone from Robinson, who is running for governor, was particularly notable because he is well-known for pugilistic speeches sometimes laced with violent remarks, including one this month when he said, “Some folks need killing.”
The theme of inflation and Biden’s economy — even as inflation has cooled and the unemployment rate remains low — has been a consistent target throughout a campaign that was rocked Saturday night when a 20-year-old gunman took aim at Trump during a rally in Pennsylvania, narrowly missing shooting him in the head but bloodying his ear in the process. The gunman, who was killed by law enforcement, killed a rallygoer and injured two others.
After the shooting, Trump said he rewrote his convention speech to put a greater point of emphasis on the theme of unity and the need to turn down the heat on the type of political rhetoric that has marked much of the election to date.
The fallout of an attempted assassination on the Republican nominee for president has been felt at the convention, but on the first night it was not a main theme. The Trump campaign strategically picked which speakers would discuss the issue to prevent it from coming up in every speech, and it came in just a handful Monday night.
“On Saturday, the devil came to Pennsylvania holding a rifle,” Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., said. “But the American lion got back up on his feet and he roared!”
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., said: “Unfortunately, this is also a somber moment for our nation. Two days ago, evil came for the man we admire and love so much. I think God that his hand was on President Trump.”
But the convention wasn’t all about unifying the country; there was still plenty of red meat for the base that went after Democrats and other groups of people.
Greene, for example, also went after transgender rights. Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., the night’s second speaker, also gave a fiery speech about what he saw as the failing of the “Democratic agenda.”
“Today’s Democratic agenda — their policies — are a clear and present danger to America,” Johnson said. “They have abandoned the hard-working middle class. But with President Trump … those forgotten Americans are forgotten no more.”
Johnson later told PBS that the wrong speech was loaded into the teleprompter, not the one he intended to give. A Johnson spokesperson told NBC News the speech was supposed to begin by noting that the convention was meeting “at a somber moment in history” and saying Americans “should all heed President Trump’s call for unity, strength, and determination.”
“It also did not have ‘Today’s Democratic Party is a clear and present danger to America,’” the spokesperson said.
Technology investor David Sacks began adding torque to the evening, jabbing at Democrats “in disarray” who he said had spent time “gaslighting the country” about Biden’s fitness and blaming the party for turning the once “beautiful city” of San Francisco “into a cesspool of crime.”
Charlie Kirk, an outspoken Trump ally, urged Republicans to “fire the Biden-Harris regime.”
“Our current state of slow-motion national decline is a choice,” he said.
Moments later, Trump, in a recorded video, railed against Democrats, whom he accused of cheating in elections.
“Frankly, it’s the only thing they do well,” Trump said.
There were lighter moments, though. As the convention programming wrapped up, a pastor who was delivering the benediction took the stage with a Trump impersonation so strong that Trump himself laughed.
The headliner of the evening was Teamsters President Sean O’Brien. Though he did not endorse Trump, he called him a “tough S.O.B.” O’Brien has backed Democrats in recent presidential elections but has not endorsed this cycle. O’Brien was the first Teamsters president to address the GOP convention.
He called on the party to shed its opposition to unions and praised Vance and Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., for their overtures to organized labor.
“We need corporate welfare reform,” he said. “Under our current system, massive companies like Amazon, Uber, Lyft and Walmart … offer no real health care, no retirement benefits, no paid leave, relying on the funded public assistance, and who foots the bill? The individual taxpayer.”
Some conservatives weren’t huge fans of the speech. Inside the convention hall, a man near the media area shouted at O’Brien repeatedly during his speech.
In the events leading up to the convention’s opening night, focusing on turning down the temperature was a major theme in the ballrooms and event spaces around downtown Milwaukee, where many groups started hosting convention-themed events.
Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts opened up his speech at the think tank’s “Policy Fest” with a clear reference, possibly in jest, to the need for less overheated political rhetoric.
“How many of you are ready to very steadily, calmly, peacefully, take our country back?” he said. Earlier this month, however, he said the country was on the precipice of a “second American Revolution.”
Soon after Roberts’ remarks, right-wing commentator Tucker Carlson, who is scheduled to speak at the convention later this week, took the stage to describe the assassination attempt against Trump as part of a “spiritual battle.”
“There is no logical way to understand what we are seeing now in technical terms. … These are not political divides,” he said. “There are forces, and they’re very obvious. Now they’ve decided for whatever reason to take off the mask. [Their] only goal is chaos, violence, destruction.”
Carlson, who later sat near Trump and Vance in their private box Monday night, went further, saying Trump’s opponents “don’t care, obviously at all, that our country’s being colonized.”
“They want the power to kill,” he said, specifically mentioning a bloodlust for war. “That’s it.”