Max Thornberry of the Washington Examiner highlights multiple ways in which Saturday’s shooting at a Donald Trump rally have affected the presidential campaign.
Trump told the Washington Examiner in a world-first exclusive interview he ripped up the “humdinger” of a speech he had planned to give at the Republican National Convention on Thursday in light of the attempt on his life.
The former president said his new speech is going to be a message of unity for the country.
“This is a chance to bring the whole country, even the whole world, together,” he said. “The speech will be a lot different, a lot different than it would’ve been two days ago.”
When he turned his head to look at a screen on Saturday, the movement saved his life. The move was a rare one for Trump, who almost never turns away from his audiences. But the motion to look at the data he was showing the crowd was a crucial one.
“I rarely look away from the crowd,” he said. “Had I not done that in that moment, well, we would not be talking today, would we?”
Trump’s message of unity was previewed with the RNC extending an invitation to former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley to speak at the event. The former Trump foe, who refused to bow out of the contest with her former boss until March, was previously not scheduled to attend the event at all. …
… President Joe Biden spoke from the Oval Office to address the nation and echo the calls that had been ringing out all weekend that the country needs to “lower the temperature in politics.”
“We cannot, we must not go down this road in America,” Biden said in a speech from behind the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office. “We’ve traveled before throughout our history. Violence has never been the answer. There is no place in America for this kind of violence, for any violence ever. Period. No exceptions. We can’t allow this violence to be normalized.”
The demands to change the national conversation came thick and fast in the hours after the shooting.
