It was an unnatural spectacle, like watching a dog walk on its hind legs: a convention hall full of feisty Republicans suddenly talking about playing nice with Democrats.
The message came directly from the top. After surviving an assassination attempt, Donald J. Trump said he had rewritten the speech he plans to give in Milwaukee on Thursday, apparently toning it down. “UNITE AMERICA!” he instructed on Truth Social.
When his daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, spoke on Tuesday night, she started off by saying: “I actually had a very different speech that I was prepared to give up here tonight. That all changed at 6:11 on Saturday evening.”
Her husband, Eric Trump, said on CNN that “I think politics needs to be done with a lot more respect, and a lot more love.”
So much for retribution.
Mr. Trump’s party scrambled to pivot to kumbaya, but this was not a posture that came easily to them. And the set design was all wrong. The halls of the convention center were covered with quotations from Mr. Trump (“THEY’RE NOT AFTER ME, THEY’RE AFTER YOU … I’M JUST STANDING IN THE WAY.”) and pictures of his scowling face.
“Of course, a lot of this stuff and signs you see were planned before the weekend,” explained Senator Tommy Tuberville, Republican of Alabama, as he stepped into an elevator headed for the ground floor of the convention hall on Monday afternoon. “Anyway, I talked to the president this morning, about 7 o’clock, and he was really upbeat, he talked about the bullet grazing the top of his ear.”
So everybody is just going to get along now? “Well,” said Mr. Tuberville, “just depends on how both sides act.”
Down on the floor of the hall on Tuesday evening, a Montana delegate lined up to take a selfie with Representative Nancy Mace, Republican of South Carolina. “You’re such a fighter,” the delegate gushed to Ms. Mace.
But now Ms. Mace was ready for the unity. “The vibe is great, and everybody is positive,” she said. She even claimed to have torn up her own “kind of incendiary” speech, just as Mr. Trump and his daughter-in-law had torn up theirs. In her new remarks, Ms. Mace said, “I don’t even mention Biden, so how’s that?”
Asked if she was going to be nicer to Democrats, she said: “I’m always nice to everybody. Unless you lie to me. Or bring some bullshit in a committee hearing.”
Maybe this unity thing was going to be harder than it seemed.
Hogan Gidley, a former aide in the Trump White House, bounced around in a pinstriped Ralph Lauren suit and white tennis shoes on Tuesday (“I was so taken by the Ralph Lauren Wimbledon photos,” he said of his get-up.) He said Mr. Trump was a “flat-out gangster” who nonetheless had “done a masterful job so far making sure to bring down the temperature and discuss unity.”
But how long could all the glorious unity possibly last?
Bernie Moreno, a candidate for Senate from Ohio, was skeptical. “Ten years,” he said, sarcastically, before launching into a diatribe about “the lunatics on the left.”
Just then, he stepped aside to make room for Gov. Jim Justice of West Virginia, who was walking by, pulling a wagon carrying his 60-pound bulldog, Babydog. He took the stage and talked about how America would become “totally unhinged” if President Biden were re-elected.
The right-wing activist Laura Loomer surveyed the scene on the floor. “This week was very sobering,” she said, stoically. So she was ready for the unity, then? “Well, look, I don’t want to be nice to demons,” she said.
A 38-year-old delegate from Washington State named Matt Bumala stood on the floor with a Sharpie, squiggling “Vance” onto the Trump 2024 sign he was holding. Mr. Bumala felt that the shooting had proved “they are after him, there’s truth to that,” but said that it was now time for “people to wake up and unite.”
Mr. Trump walked onto the floor of the convention center on Tuesday night to the Romantics song “What I Like About You.” A video montage showing footage of Mr. Biden at the beach, tripping up stairs and falling off his bike played for all to see.
The audience lapped it up.
Another one of Mr. Trump’s old White House aides, Matt Schlapp, said he was curious to see if the former president “decides to re-tailor his speech in kind of a more noble way.”
But he added: “I personally love when he does all the trash-talking and everything, ’cause it’s honest. It’s how we all feel.”
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