For a brief moment last night, Americans saw Donald Trump try something new: Stick to a script. Addressing delegates at the Fiserv Forum in Milwaukee, the former presidentand freshly anointed Republican nomineeread slowly and dramatically from a teleprompter as he recounted his near-death experience in Butler, Pennsylvania.
Ill tell you exactly what happened, and youll never hear it from me a second time, because its actually too painful to tell, he said.
The details were bracing, but the delivery was oddly laboredas if Trump was speaking in a foreign language that he hadnt quite mastered.
Then, about 15 minutes into the speech, Trump veered from his scripted remarks. The teleprompter, which could be viewed from inside the convention hall, stopped rolling and Trump started riffing. He griped about his many indictments and the failed attempts to impeach him. He let slip a few of his favorite partisan epithetsCrazy Nancy Pelosi, Deface the Nation. Having returned to his usual derogatory styleand sounding much more natural as a resultTrump trained his attention on his opponent.
If you add up the 10 worst presidents, they wouldnt have done the damage that Biden has done, Trump said, but quickly caught himself. BidenIm not going to use that name anymore.
Trump had apparently broken a rule hed been given: According to my colleague Tim Alberta, the Republicans advisers had been boasting before the speech that Trump wouldnt even mention President Joe Bidens name. But he couldnt quite help himself.
The spectacle Thursday nightwhich also included appearances by the professional wrestler Hulk Hogan, the UFC star Dana White, and Kid Rock, who sang a Trumpified version of American Badasswas a fitting climax to a confused convention that spun wildly, like Trumps speech, between partisan culture war and appeals to national comity.
After Trumps attempted assassination last week, the campaign signaled that the candidate would reach for an unfamiliar mantle: national unifier. He had tossed his humdinger of a convention speech, he told The Washington Examiner, and would instead give one focused on bringing the country together. His campaign leaked that convention speakers were being told to tone down their rhetoric. The nation was rattled, desperate for comfort, and Trump was going to provide it.
He understands theres a moment, Chris LaCivita, Trumps campaign manager, said in Milwaukee earlier this week. If theres one person I know whos capable of meeting the moment its him.
This was not necessarily obvious to anyone who had followed Trumps political career up to this point, or watched his highly rated reality show, or read his books, or followed him on social media, or listened to him talk for more than 30 seconds. Trump, as a political phenomenon, has been defined by his divisivenessby the subversive thrill his supporters get when he says something so outrageous that it seems almost as if hes daring them to take offense.
But just as they were descending on Milwaukee to nominate him for the third election in a row, Trump supporters were told the politician they had fallen in love with was a new man. And that reinvention came with new marching orders.
Ahead of Trumps dramatic initial appearance in the Fiserv Forum on Monday evening, word spread on the convention floor that delegates should not yell Fight! Fight!the words Trump had famously shouted as Secret Service agents surrounded him in Pennsylvania. The candidates arrival on the floorhis first public appearance since the assassination attemptwas meant to be cathartic and inspiring, scored to Lee Greenwoods God Bless the USA. Not everyone obeyed their instructions, however. The result: Some of the delegates yelled Fight! Fight! Fight! while others countered with shouts of Love! Love! Love!
In certain moments this week, especially during the prime-time programming, you could hear the speakers adopt a more conciliatory tone. Nikki Haley spent the bulk of her remarks appealing to voters who disagree with Trump on some issues, as she does. And Marco Rubio tried to argue that there is absolutely nothing dangerous or divisive about putting Americans first.
In other moments, the efforts at magnanimity had a clunky, awkward feel. The beauty of life itself transcends all political hatred and divisions, said Kimberly Guilfoyle, Donald Trump Jr.s fiance, near the beginning of a speech that ended with her startling some attendees with loud howls of RISE UP! RISE UP!
Unsurprisingly, some supporters didnt bother with the softer, kinder Trumpism at all. Delegates waved signs that read MASS DEPORTATION NOW while the former Trump White House official Peter Navarro, just out of federal prison, delivered a bitter screed against the supposedly weaponized Biden Justice Department. Roger Stone granted interviews to right-wing media outlets while fans gathered to cheer him on. Laura Loomer chased CNNs Jake Tapper through the convention halls, demanding that he apologize for causing the assassination attempt.
The tension on display in Milwaukee was not factional. After eight years of political conquest, Trumps successful purging of disloyal Republicans had produced a convention free of intraparty sniping or angst. Republicans acknowledged that Trumps current lead in the polls, paired with the chaos in the Democratic Party, contributed to the optimism.
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You couldnt script the last two weeks any better, Kevin Cramer, a senator from North Dakota, said. Since the debate, its just been good news after good news after good news.
In conversations with delegates and GOP leaders, I could sometimes sense them straining to keep up with the campaigns sudden vibe shift. When I asked Representative Burgess Owens of Utah how hed reconciled Trumps promised new tone with his pledge last year to serve as retribution for his supporters, Owens pushed back: He never said hes gonna be the retribution, other than success will be his revenge.
Before Trumps speech, I heard several delegates try to explain the former presidents expected pivot as a natural consequence of the shooting. Its a different Trump, Karianne Lisonbee, a Utah delegate, told me, her voice breaking as she described his attempted assassination. I dont know how you could take a bullet and not be changed, Stephanie Gricius, another delegate, chimed in. This idea of a reinvented Trump had been circulating all week in Milwaukee. Jim Banks, a Republican congressman from Indiana who sat with Trump in the convention hall Tuesday night, told Politico that the candidate looked like a spiritually renewed man. The reality of it, as I sat next to him for an hour and a half, there were a number of references to faith and God, and he was very moved by those.
But by the time the balloons had fallen and Trump had left the stage, few in Milwaukee seemed to be talking about a new Trump.
Asked what he thought of Trumps jabs at Pelosi and Biden, Brian Turner, a delegate from Florida, seemed unbothered. You know what? He says things that other people will not say, Turner said. And we know thats President Trump. Their candidate was back to his old self. It must have felt like a relief.
Tim Alberta and Mark Leibovich contributed reporting.