On Thursday night, former President Donald Trump officially accepted the Republican Party’s presidential nomination for the third time.
The speech, delivered at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, lasted roughly one hour, 32 minutes, apparently the longest in American history.
It was the former president’s first public address since a gunman attempted to assassinate him at a Pennsylvania rally last Saturday. Following the incident, Trump said that he had re-written his speech and intended to focus on unity.
It was also Trump’s first speech since he named Sen. JD Vance of Ohio as his running mate. And it came as the candidacy of his chief opponent, President Joe Biden, appeared to be on its last legs.
The speech was long, at times rambling, and touched on much of the same themes of his previous campaign speeches.
Here are the 8 top takeaways from Trump’s Thursday night address.
1. Trump described the assassination attempt in painful detail
Still sporting the large ear bandage that he’s been wearing throughout the convention, Trump began his speech by addressing Saturday’s assassination attempt.
“I will tell you exactly what happened,” Trump said. “And you’ll never hear it from me a second time, because it’s actually too painful to tell.”
The audience fell dead silent as he described the attempt on his life in detail, describing the “loud whizzing sound” of the bullet grazing his ear.
“[I] felt something hit me really, really hard on my right ear, I said to myself … it can only be a bullet, and moved my right hand to my ear, brought it down. My hand was covered with blood.”— Donald Trump describes the moment he was shot pic.twitter.com/Ay2cue5EFd
— The Recount (@therecount) July 19, 2024
“My hand was covered with blood,” Trump said, describing what happened after he brought his hand to his ear. “Just absolutely blood all over the place.”
He went further into detail, saying the crowd was unmoving because they saw the blood and believed he might be dead.
“There’s an interesting statistic: The ears are the bloodiest part. If something happens with the ears, they bleed more than any other part of the body, for whatever reason,” Trump said. “So we learned something.”
2. He recognized Corey Comperatore, the man killed at the rally
On stage with Trump the whole time was the fire gear belonging to Corey Comperatore, the former firefighter chief who was killed by the assassin’s bullet at the Pennsylvania rally.
“But Cory — unfortunately we have to use the past tense — he was incredible,” Trump said. The former president added that he had called Comperatore’s wife Helen earlier on Thursday.
At one point, Trump walked away from the microphone and kissed Comperatore’s fire gear, which included a propped-up firefighter jacker and a helmet.
3. He also used the assassination attempt to his advantage
At the end of the day, Trump is still Trump.
As he wound down his discussion of the Pennsylvania rally, Trump turned toward the myriad legal cases he’s faced in the last several years.
“We must not criminalize dissent or demonize political disagreement, which is what’s been happening in our country lately at a level that nobody has ever seen before,” Trump said. “In that spirit, the Democrat Party should immediately stop weaponizing the justice system and labeling their political opponent as an enemy of democracy.”
He went on to tout Judge Aileen Cannon’s dismissal of the classified documents case against him, which is likely to be appealed.
“If Democrats want to unify our country, they should drop these partisan witch hunts, which I have been going through for approximately eight years,” Trump said.
4. Trump said that JD Vance, his new VP pick, is ‘going to be doing this for a long time’
Earlier this week, Trump selected Vance — one of the former president’s staunchest loyalists in the Senate — to be his running mate.
In his first public comments after that selection, Trump said he was “thrilled to have a new friend and partner fighting by my side.”
He also mentioned Vance’s wife, Usha, and focused heavily on the fact that they attended Yale Law School.
“It was an honor to select him. Great, great student at Yale. His wife was a great student at Yale. They met at Yale. These are two smart people,” Trump said. “So JD, you’re going to be doing this for a long time. Enjoy the ride.”
Vance, who turns 40 next month, is one of the youngest vice presidential nominees in American history. If Trump is elected, he’ll be just a heartbeat away from the presidency, and he’s well-positioned to be the GOP’s standard bearer in 2028.
5. Despite his ‘unity’ promises, the speech wasn’t that unifying
Trump promised a unity-focused speech.
Though his tone was notably more subdued than prior public appears, he made plenty of incendiary comments about his political rivals, declaring at one point that Democrats are “destroying our country.” And he continued to lie about the results of the 2020 election.
“We don’t have fierce people,” Trump said when discussing foreign wars. “We have people that are a lot less than fierce, except when it comes to cheating on elections and a couple of other things. Then they’re fierce.”
He also went directly after Biden.
“If you took the 10 worst presidents in the history of the United States — think of it, the 10 worst, added them up — they will not have done the damage that Biden has done,” Trump said. “Only gonna use the term once. Biden, I’m not going to use the name anymore. Just one time.”
6. Trump called for the firing of UAW President Shawn Fain, underscoring the GOP’s struggle to win over organized labor
Trump’s speech contained numerous appeals toward union members, arguing that “unions are suffering” as the result of illegal immigration.
At one point, he took a direct swipe at Shawn Fain, the president of the United Auto Workers, who has been harshly critical of Trump and endorsed Biden for president in January.
As he called for the elimination of Biden’s electrical vehicle requirements, arguing that the policy was driving manufacturing overseas, he said that the union “ought to be ashamed for allowing this to happen, and the leader of the United Auto Workers should be fired immediately.”
Electric vehicle policies have been at the heart of the GOP’s attempts to win over auto workers, including when the UAW went on strike last fall. While Fain and the UAW have raised concerns about electric vehicles, they have not wholly rejected Biden’s policies on the issues.
“The whole problem that we have is a guy like Shawn Fain blasting Donald Trump,” Vance, now Trump’s VP pick, told Business Insider in September. “At the very least, just shut your mouth, and take the support from wherever you can get it.”
As Trump’s speech continued, the UAW fired back, calling him a “scab and a billionaire.”
.@realDonaldTrump is a scab and a billionaire and that’s who he represents. We know which side we’re on. Not his.
— UAW (@UAW) July 19, 2024
7. Trump showed the chart he displayed on the day he was shot — arguing it may have saved his life
A major reason why Trump survived the assassination attempt last Saturday is because his head was turned to the side: He was pointed toward a chart produced by the Border Patrol that depicting illegal immigration in recent years.
Displaying it again roughly an hour into his speech, Trump described it as “the chart that saved my life.”
“Last time I put up that chart, I never really got to look at it,” Trump said. “But without that chart, I would not be here today.”
Donald Trump shows the border chart that he says saved his life from the bullet that hit him in the ear.The chart makes it clear that this crisis is Biden’s Border Invasion. pic.twitter.com/dmt4oIXKlB
— Media Research Center (@theMRC) July 19, 2024
8. It was the longest presidential nomination acceptance speech in recorded history
At 92 minutes, Trump’s speech on Thursday night appeared to be the longest ever delivered by a major party’s presidential nominee.
According to The American Presidency Project at the University of California, Santa Barbara, Trump exceeded a record he set himself in 2016, when he delivered a nomination speech lasting nearly one hour and 15 minutes.
Trump’s 2020 speech was similarly lengthy, lasting roughly one hour and 10 minutes.
By contrast, Biden’s 2020 acceptance speech lasted less than 25 minutes.
The post 8 takeaways from Trump’s RNC speech — the first since his attempted assassination appeared first on Business Insider.
