MILWAUKEE—Former President Donald Trump and his running mate, Ohio Senator JD Vance, surprised the National Republican Convention with appearances Tuesday, though neither of them addressed the crowd. Nikki Haley, Trump’s longest rival in the 2024 presidential primary, also made an appearance to endorse Trump.
Here are 8 key takeaways from Day 2 of the Republican National Convention in Fiserve Forum.
1. The Haley Endorsement
“President Trump asked me to speak to this convention in the name of unity,” Haley said in an surprise appearance. “It was a gracious invitation, and I was happy to accept.”
She said her message to Trump’s critics is this: “You don’t have to agree with Trump 100% of the time to vote for him.”
“I haven’t always agreed with Trump, but we agree more often than we disagree,” Haley added. She mentioned many issues on which she agrees with the former president—among them, the border crisis, Israel, and keeping peace abroad.
“We agree that Democrats have moved so far to the left that they’re putting our freedoms in danger,” she added.
2. Steve Scalise’s Brush with Death
House Majority Leader Steve Scalise recalled his own brush with death seven years ago in remarks at the Republican National Convention on Tuesday night, just thee days after an assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump.
On June 14, 2017, while practicing in Alexandria, Va., for the annual congressional softball game, a gunman shot Scalise, seriously wounding the congressman. The gunman, who was killed by police, was later determined to be a supporter of left-wing Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt.
“I need to say something about Saturday’s attempt on President Trump’s life,” Scalise, R-La., told the convention crowd in Milwaukee’s Fiserve Forum.
“Many of you know I was the survivor of a politically motivated shooting in 2017,” the Louisiana lawmaker said. “Not many know that while I was fighting for my life, Donald Trump was one of the first to come and console my family in the hospital.”
He said that’s the kind of leader that America needs.
“That’s the kind of leader he is. Courageous under fire, compassionate toward others,” Scalise said.
He concluded the remarks by saying, “May Donald Trump continue to receive God’s blessing.”
3. ‘Thorough Investigation’
House Speaker Mike Johnson pledged Tuesday night that the House of Representatives would conduct an “immediate and thorough investigation” into security failures by the Secret Service prior to the assassination attempt Saturday evening on former President Donald Trump.
“We are united today as Americans in the wake of the assassination attempt on the life of Donald Trump,” Johnson said, speaking to the Republican National Convention. “Everyone, hear me clearly, and listen to me at home, and make no mistake. The House is conducting an immediate and thorough investigation of these tragic events.”
On Saturday, during a Trump campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, a gunman open fire. A bullet grazed Trump’s ear. The shooter killed one of the attendees at the rally and injured two others.
The House Oversight and Accountability Committee, which oversees the U.S. Secret Service, has already announced it would investigate what mistakes the agency made in its efforts to secure the rally.
Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle has said she would not resign.
“That work [of the investigation] has already begun,” Johnson said. “The American people deserve to know the truth, and we will ensure accountability. I promise you that. This has always been an important principle to us. We in the Republican Party are the law and order team. We always have been, and we always will be advocates for the rule of law.”
Toward the end of his remarks, Johnson added, “As President Trump raised his fist and gave a rallying cry on Saturday, now is our time to fight. And we will.”
4. Division, Exclusion, Indoctrination
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis blasted Democrats for their support of “diversity, equity, and inclusion” policies in schools, the military, and other institutions.
“They stand for DEI, which really means division, exclusion, and indoctrination, and it is wrong,” DeSantis said Tuesday at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee. “They mandated that you show proof of a COVID vaccine to go to a restaurant, but they oppose requiring proof of citizenship to cast a vote.”
DeSantis also asserted that Republicans support parents’ rights.
“We believe schools should educate, not indoctrinate,” DeSantis said. “We stand for parents rights, including universal school choice. We support law and order, not rioting and disorder.”
DeSantis unsuccessfully challenged former President Donald Trump for the 2024 Republican nomination, but dropped out of the race after finishing a distant second place in Iowa.
He quickly endorsed Trump upon dropping out, and insisted in his convention speech that President Joe Biden is not fit to run the country, referencing a 1990s comic movie “Weekend at Bernie’s” in which people are fooled into believing a corpse is alive.
“We need a commander-in-chief who can lead 24 hours a day and seven days a week. America cannot afford four more years of a ‘Weekend at Bernie’s’ presidency.”
He also talked about how much Democrats and Trump’s enemies have thrown at him.
“Donald Trump stands in their way and he stands up for America,” DeSantis said of his former rival. “Donald Trump has been demonized. He’s been sued. He’s been prosecuted and he nearly lost his life. We cannot let him down and we cannot let America down.”
5. GOP Governors
Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders stirred the Milwaukee audience of the Republican National Convention on Tuesday night, as she touted GOP governors nationally and asserted that former President Donald Trump survived an assassination attempt by divine providence.
“Not even an assassin’s bullet could stop him. God almighty intervened because America is one nation under God, and he is certainly not finished with President Donald Trump,” she said, referring to the attempt on Trump’s life Saturday at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, north of Pittsburgh.
Sanders is a former Trump White House press secretary and the daughter of former Arkansas governor and presidential candidate Mike Huckabee.
Early in her remarks, she recalled her time as White House press secretary, and joked about President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden.
“I got the chance to take my four-year-old son Huck to ‘Bring Your Kid To Work Day,’ much like Jill now drags Joe to ‘Bring Your Husband To Work Day,’” Sanders quipped.
She also talked about the personal attacks she endured when she was Trump’s press secretary, often from other women.
“The Left doesn’t care about empowering women,” she said. “Biden and [Vice President Kamala] Harris can’t tell you what a woman is. But we have a president who believes in empowering every American and that our country is worth fighting for.”
With Biden in office, Sanders said, Republican governors had to take up Trump’s fight.
“For the last four years, Republican governors have been leading that fight, and doing what Joe Biden refuses to do,” she said. “We deployed the National Guard to the border. We cracked down on crime and drugs. We cut taxes to give hardworking Americans a break from Bidenflation. And we empowered Americans with universal school choice across the country.”
Trump was the first president in her lifetime “to take a hard line against China,” she said. “And I’m proud to be the first and only governor in the country to kick communist China off our farmland and out of my state.”
6. Vivek’s Message for Black Americans
Former GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy spoke directly to groups of Americans often considered liberal and Democratic: blacks, immigrants, millennials, and Gen Z.
Speaking to the Republican National Convention at the Fiserve Forum in Milwaukee, he said he wanted to deliver a message the media didn’t want these Americans to hear.
“Our message to black Americans is this: The media has tried to convince you for decades that Republicans don’t care about your neighborhoods, but we do,” entrepreneur-author Ramaswamy said. “We want for you what we want for every American: safe neighborhoods, clean streets, good jobs, a better life for your children, and a justice system that treats everyone equally, regardless of your skin color, and regardless of your political beliefs.”
He also addressed immigrants.
“Our message to every legal immigrant is this: You’re like my parents,” Ramaswamy said. “You deserve the opportunity to secure a better life for your children in America.”
“But our message to illegal immigrants is also this: We will return you to your country of origin, not because you’re all bad people, but because you broke the law, and the United States of America was founded on the rule of law,” he declared.
The former presidential candidate then turned to young Americans; namely, members of the millennial generation and Gen Z.
“Our message to millennials, speaking as one myself (yes, it’s true): Our government sold us a false bill of goods with the Iraq War and the 2008 financial crisis, bloating up our national debt that falls on our generation’s shoulders, telling us that if we took out college loans, we’d somehow get a head start on the American dream, when it hasn’t worked out that way,” Ramaswamy, 38, said.
Yet he also urged his fellow millennials, “We can’t just be cynical about our country because the United States of America is the last, best hope that we have, and we deserve a better class of politician, one that actually tells us the truth, even if it comes with some mean tweets from time to time.”
“Our message to Gen Z is this: You’re going to be the generation that actually saves this country,” Ramaswamy added.
“You want to be a rebel, you want to be a hippie, you want to stick it to the man?” he asked. “Show up on your college campus and try calling yourself a conservative. Say you want to get married, have kids, teach them to believe in God and pledge allegiance to our country.”
“Fear has been infectious in this country, but courage can be contagious, too,” the former candidate concluded. “That, too, is what it means to be an American.”
Ramaswamy also quipped, “I achieved the impossible, which is that most of you actually know how to say my name right.”
7. Carson Quotes Isaiah
Former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson referenced the Old Testament book of Isaiah when speaking about both Democratic lawfare and an assassination attempt against former President Donald Trump.
“It says, ‘No weapon formed against you shall prosper,’” Carson, a world-renowned former neurosurgeon, said Tuesday at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee.
“Let me tell you the weapons they tried to use: First, they tried to ruin his reputation, and he’s more popular now than ever,” said Carson, who ran against Trump for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016. Trump subsequently tapped him as HUD secretary.
“Then they tried to bankrupt him, and he’s got more money now than he had before,” Carson said to a roar of approval from the crowd. “Then they tried to put him in prison, and he’s freer and has made other people free with him.”
After broad references to the legal cases against Trump, Carson referred to the assassination attempt on the former president Saturday at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, north of Pittsburgh.
“Then, last weekend they tried to kill him, and there he is, over there, alive and well,” Carson said to the former president in the audience.
Carson had harsh words for the legacy media and for big government.
“The free press, a pillar of any free society, has abused the public trust and resorted to lies, deception, and disinformation,” Carson said, adding: “Our government has been no better, shredding our Constitution and upending the rule of law. We have a wide-open border, a broken education system, and chaos breaking out around the world. ”
But he pointed to his own life’s story as evidence about “unlimited opportunity” in America.
“In no other country could a poor inner-city kid, raised by a single mom, make it to an Ivy League school, then to medical school, become a successful neurosurgeon, run for president, and eventually become a member of the president’s Cabinet.”
8. Trump’s Daughter-in-Law
Lara Trump told delegates and others in the audience at the Republican National Convention that she initially had prepared a “very different speech” than the one she delivered Tuesday night.
The daughter-in-law of former President Donald Trump and co-chairman of the Republican National Committee shared the shock of the assassination attempt on husband Eric Trump’s father late Saturday afternoon.
“Our family has faced our fair share of death threats,” she said.
“None of that prepares you as a daughter-in-law to watch in real time someone try to kill a person you love,” she said. “None of that prepares you as a mother to quickly reach for the remote and turn your young children away from the screen so that they’re not witness to something that scars the memory of their grandpa for the rest of their lives.”
She was thankful for “prayers and well-wishes” in the 72 hours since.
“If Donald Trump has shown us anything, it’s that when it feels impossible to keep going, those are the times we must keep going.”
9. Haley Praises Trump on National Security
Despite finishing a distant second in the Republican presidential primaries, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley told the crowd at the Republican National Convention on Tuesday night: “Donald Trump has my strong endorsement, period.”
“I had a front row seat to his national security policies. We sure could use those again,” said Haley, also a former U.S ambassador to the U.N. “When Barack Obama was president, [Russian President] Vladimir Putin invaded Crimea. With Joe Biden as president, Putin invaded all of Ukraine. When Donald Trump was president, Putin invaded nothing. No invasions, no wars. That was no accident. Putin didn’t attack Ukraine because he knew Donald Trump was tough. A strong president doesn’t start wars. A strong president prevents wars.”
Trump’s former U.N. ambassador also said that the Biden administration has been weak in the Middle East, in seeking to reenter the Iranian nuclear agreement and pressuring Israel in its war with Hamas.
Haley challenged Trump for the 2024 presidential nomination and was the only other GOP candidate to win a primary—in both the District of Columbia and the state of Vermont. She lost her home state of South Carolina to Trump.
During her convention remarks, Haley returned to a long-standing campaign theme, which she said was backed up by Biden’s disastrous debate performance against Trump in June.
“For more than a year, I said a vote for Joe Biden is a vote for President Kamala Harris,” Haley said. “After seeing the debate, everyone knows that’s true. If we have four more years of Biden or a single day of Harris, our country will be badly worse off. For the sake of our country, we have to go with Donald Trump.”
Haley noted that Biden had put Harris in charge of the southern border, which has been in crisis since.
“Kamala Harris had one job—fix the border,” Haley said. “Now, imagine her in charge of the entire country.”
10. Rubio’s Tribute to Slain Fireman
Sen. Marco Rubio paid tribute to the former fire chief killed Saturday afternoon in the assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump in remarks Tuesday at the Republican National Convention.
Corey Comperatore, a former fire chief in Buffalo Township in Pennsylvania, was killed at the Trump rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. He was attending the rally with his family. A bullet grazed Trump’s right ear.
Comperatore was the father of two daughters and a vocal supporter of Trump.
“He was a former fire chief, a loving husband. He was described as the best dad a girl could ever ask for,” Rubio said in Milwaukee at the quadrennial GOP convention.
“As a man of God who loved Jesus fiercely, and looked after members of his church, Cory was one of the millions of everyday Americans who make our country great,” the Florida senator continued. “He wasn’t rich. He wasn’t famous. The only reason we know his name and story now is because, last Saturday, he shielded his wife and daughter from an assassin’s bullet, and lost his life the way he lived it: A hero.”
Rubio was reportedly a finalist to be Trump’s vice presidential running mate. However, Trump announced Monday that he had instead chosen one of Rubio’s Senate Republican colleagues, Vance.
