Donald J. Trump’s dramatic acceptance of his party’s nomination just days after a failed assassination attempt put an exclamation point on a triumphant week for a Republican Party that emerged from its convention confident and unified.
It was an evening of raw emotions, as Mr. Trump, for the first time on Thursday, recounted how a bullet “came within a quarter of an inch of taking my life.” Warning a rapt crowd that he would tell this tale only once because it was “too painful” to repeat, he spoke in a deliberate, almost meditative, cadence. He described being saved by providence and emerging “more determined than ever” to take back the White House.
The near-universal Republican embrace of Mr. Trump this week — after a deadly riot at the Capitol, an impeachment, four indictments and one criminal conviction since his last nomination — was all the more vivid because Democrats were tumbling further into turmoil over President Biden’s viability.
Trump being Trump, his remarks stretched past midnight on the East Coast, shattering his own record for the longest nominating speech. By the end, his meandering resembled the familiar grievances of his rallies. But nearly every ad-lib and scripted line was gobbled up by a party that has never seemed more in his grip.
Here are six takeaways from the consequential week of the Republican National Convention.
Trump recast himself. Then he relapsed.
It began with more restraint than red meat, at least by Trumpian standards.
“Just one time,” Mr. Trump said as he promised not to attack President Biden by name more than that. He soon lapsed. But the avoidance of his rival was not just a rhetorical tactic but a strategic imperative, given the uncertainty swirling around Mr. Biden.
Mr. Trump focused much of his speech — and his surrogates spent much of the week — hammering the themes animating his campaign, with or without Mr. Biden as his opponent.
Atop the list were inflation and immigration. Mr. Trump condemned an “invasion” and vowed the largest deportation operation in American history. If it sounded discordant with how he had started the night — “I am running to be president of all of America, not half of America” — such tension was not surprising.
Mr. Trump knows his veering off the teleprompter can be greeted better than his prepared remarks, like when he joked about “Hannibal Lecter” having people over for dinner. He soon indulged in some falsehoods about migrants sapping Social Security and repeated his 2020 election denialism.
The evening, and week, captured who Mr. Trump is: powerful and polarizing, prodigious and pugilistic. He also tried to reclaim the mantle of insurgency that fueled his only successful run, in 2016. “It’s time,” he declared, “for a change.”
A transformed party united behind Trump.
Mr. Trump’s speech wrapped up a four-day showcase of how thoroughly he has changed the party.
One moment stood out on Thursday: the seamless transition from the wrestler Hulk Hogan ripping off his shirt to reveal a Trump-Vance tank top (“Greatest tag team of my life,” Hogan thundered) to the evangelical leader Franklin Graham talking about how God had “spared” Mr. Trump. It was jarring and yet made perfect sense in the age of Trump.
Showmanship? Yes. A splash of social conservatism? Sure. And the former earned louder cheers than the latter.
From a Republican platform he muscled through to a musical playlist that sounded like the rally sets he personally curates, the Milwaukee gathering was a constant reminder of Mr. Trump’s control of the party.
That was the case before the assassination attempt. But delegates and elected officials said in interviews throughout the week that the shooting had hardened their resolve and cemented their belief in Mr. Trump as a candidate of destiny.
“I’m not supposed to be here tonight,” he said on Thursday.
“Yes, you are! Yes, you are!” the crowd shouted back spontaneously.
The main G.O.P. fear is overconfidence.
Many Republicans buzzing around Milwaukee could barely believe their party’s luck throughout a convention that began less than 48 hours after a bullet grazed Mr. Trump’s ear.
Before the delegates even gaveled in on Monday, a Trump-friendly federal judge threw out the former president’s classified documents case. On Tuesday, a Democratic senator, Robert Menendez of New Jersey, was found guilty of acting as a foreign agent. On Wednesday, Mr. Biden tested positive for Covid. By Thursday, reports swirled that Mr. Biden, facing mounting Democratic calls to step aside, might be coming to terms with that fate.
The mood at the convention was so ebullient that one of Mr. Trump’s lawyers, Alina Habba, could be spotted playing cornhole outside the arena. Each day, more delegates wore bandages on their ears in solidarity. Shouts of “Fight! Fight! Fight!” broke out all week, celebrating the scene of a wounded Mr. Trump pumping his fist in defiance.
Chris LaCivita, a leader of the Trump campaign, declared on Thursday that the convention had gone “flawlessly.” Republican complacency seemed like the gravest concern, as polls poured in showing blue states like Minnesota and Virginia newly competitive.
“It’s good to have swagger,” warned Brian Kemp, the Republican governor of Georgia, a key battleground state. “But also we’ve got to not be overconfident.”
Republicans practiced their Kamala Harris attacks.
Ever since the debate, Republicans have publicly pilloried Mr. Biden while privately rooting for the wounded president to hang on. But as a week of Democratic pressure piled up, some Republicans began to realize that a 2020 rematch was far less certain.
“I don’t see a pivot to Kamala Harris fixing their problem,” Senator Steve Daines of Montana, the chairman of Senate Republicans’ campaign arm, predicted in an interview.
The possibility of that switch meant that the convention programming was relatively light on swipes about Mr. Biden’s age. Instead, Republicans tried out new lines of attack against Vice President Kamala Harris, who is seen as the likeliest Biden replacement.
Mr. LaCivita said Thursday that if Ms. Harris were the nominee, the Trump campaign would tag her as the administration’s “border czar.” In addition to the familiar talk about Mr. Biden’s ineffectiveness on inflation and immigration — along with accusations of infirmity — there were ideological broadsides against Ms. Harris.
“You’re asking me if I’m nervous about Kamala Harris?” Senator Marco Rubio, Republican of Florida, said with a big grin on Thursday when asked by The New York Times about the prospect that Mr. Trump could face her. “Is that like a real question? Or is that a — listen, I don’t have anything against her, but she’s like a real, full-blown left-winger.”
Mr. Rubio went on: “Joe Biden was kind of like the figurehead of a shadow government of left-wing liberals. She’s the real deal.”
The convention tried to put Trump in a softer light.
The gathering was the debut of Grandpa Trump.
Republicans rolled out a gauzier series of vignettes of a kindly and candy-distributing candidate who calls his grandchildren to check on their golf game — sometimes in the middle of the school day. At times, Mr. Trump watched on Thursday with a grandchild in his lap.
One of his granddaughters, Kai Trump, took the stage on Wednesday to explicitly tell viewers that she was there “to share the side of my grandpa that people don’t often see.”
It wasn’t subtle. It also wasn’t clear if it would work.
All conventions seek to sand off rougher edges, but Mr. Trump is a uniquely coarse case. He was convicted of 34 felonies this spring. He faces two — possibly three — more criminal trials. He has campaigned openly on “retribution.” Yet more than one speaker waved off any defects as simply “mean tweets.”
Millions of voters, of course, have been drawn to Mr. Trump’s bombast and his promises to blow up a system that isn’t working for them. This bulldozer approach, of course, has repelled many Americans, especially suburban women.
Some Trump supporters hoped the convention’s timing would mean more people would see him in a new light and be open to the soft-focus portrayal.
The question of a convention held in the wake of a horrific shooting: Could Mr. Trump keep his base but also build out a big-tent message?
The MAGA movement is here to stay.
When Mr. Trump won his first nomination in 2016, many Republicans were uneasy with his arrival and his “I alone can fix it” approach.
Eight years later, those dissenting voices are gone, defeated or converted. The convention was an almost uninterrupted celebration of Mr. Trump and Trumpism.
But it was the selection of Senator J.D. Vance of Ohio as his running mate that solidified the degree to which the Make America Great Again movement would outlast the man.
A next-generation MAGA parade won big applause, including figures like Vivek Ramaswamy, Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida and Tucker Carlson, the former Fox News host. This was most definitely not the party that nominated George W. Bush and his “compassionate conservatism,” John McCain and Mitt Romney.
It was, after all, Mr. Trump’s third straight nomination — a historic string of dominance. The last Republican nominated three times was Richard M. Nixon — and that was not consecutively. No one has done it in a row since Franklin D. Roosevelt.
All of which meant that Mr. Trump’s imprint was everywhere — not just on red hats but also on books of Trump poetry and mug-shot T-shirts.
Mr. Carlson, who has become a key amplifier of America First nationalism, beamed about the “divine intervention” that saved Mr. Trump and turned the Milwaukee gathering into a celebration of something beyond the campaign at hand.
“I have never been to a more fun convention,” Mr. Carlson said. “Or a convention with better vibes.”
The post Six Takeaways From the Republican Convention appeared first on New York Times.
