By Bill Wilson
Just days after surviving a near-deadly assassination attempt, former President Donald Trump kicked off the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee Monday night by selecting a vice president who was once a vocal critic of his in 2016 and extending an invitation to a union chief to speak at the convention.
The devastating events of last Saturday are still reverberating through the nation, as Americans grapple with the chilling reality that less than an inch of space prevented former President Trump from death or grave injury over the weekend. Thankfully, Trump emerged from the horrific shooting unscathed except for a grazed ear and kicked off the Republican National Convention less than 48 hours after surviving the attack.
While prominent Democrats and their allies in the mainstream media have used Saturday’s assassination attempt to do everything from attack the Second Amendment to blame Trump himself for the attempt on his life, Trump appears to be focused on unifying Americans regardless of identity politics, something the left is failing miserably to do.
In a grave example of misinformation, President Joe Biden appeared to double down on at least partially blaming Trump for Saturday’s horrific shooting in an interview with NBC’s Lester Holt. Biden appeared to blame Trump for incendiary rhetoric, bringing up an utterly out of context statement Trump made about a “bloodbath” for the auto-industry if he lost the election. Trump did in fact use the word “bloodbath” at a March rally to describe the situation if he loses in November, but Trump was speaking about the U.S. auto industry becoming a “bloodbath” if he loses, nothing else. Biden however, apparently had either not been briefed and corrected on the bloodbath statement or did not care that it was out of context because he told Lester Holt that Trump, “talks about bloodbath if he loses”.
While the left is busy blaming Trump for finding himself in the crosshairs of an assassin, Trump appears to be forging ahead, focused on building a strong coalition of working-class voters this November and embodying a unity message the left is not.
First, Trump announced Ohio Senator J.D. Vance as his running mate from a shortlist that included Florida Senator Marco Rubio and others. Vance, a 39-year-old self-made man from a modest background and the author of “Hillbilly Elegy” was highly critical of Trump eight years ago during the 2016 election. However, Vance now says Trump ended up being a great president and he believes his judgement was partially clouded by the mainstream media’s attacks on Trump back in 2016.
In a Fox News interview after being announced, Vance responded to Sean Hannity’s probing questions about negative statements he made about Trump back in 2016. “I don’t hide from that, I was certainly skeptical of Donald Trump in 2016”, Vance told Hannity. “But president Trump was a great president, and he changed my mind. I think he changed the minds of a lot of Americans, because again he delivered that peace and prosperity.” While left-wing pundits like to claim Trump relentlessly criticizes or punishes those who disagree with him, Trump bypassed other vice-presidential picks in favor of a man whose opinion of the former president changed significantly over the past eight years. That’s not the move of someone with a fragile ego, in fact it is quite the opposite.
Then there was Monday’s closing speech at the Republican National Convention, which came from an unlikely source in the form of Teamsters president Sean O’Brien. O’Brien seized on the opportunity to rail against big business and declared that the Teamsters are, “here to say we are not beholden to anyone or any party”.
In his address to the RNC, the first to come from a Teamsters president in the organization’s history, O’Brien declared, “we will create an agenda and work with a bipartisan coalition, ready to accomplish something real for the American worker. And I don’t care about getting criticized.”
While not endorsing Trump, O’Brien congratulated Trump for being willing to listen to other points of view. “President Trump is a candidate who is not afraid of hearing from new, loud and often critical voices”, O’Brien said. “And I think we all can agree, whether people like him or they don’t like him, in light of what happened to him on Saturday, he has proven to be one tough S.O.B.”
For years now, a series of worrying polls have put Democrats on notice that Trump is making significant inroads with groups Democrats have long depended upon, including independents working-class whites, minorities and young people. Days after surviving a vile attack on his life, Trump is embodying unity in a way that goes far beyond words. Through his actions – nominating a vice president who was once highly critical of him, inviting the Teamsters to speak at the RNC, and consistently reaching out to groups Democrats believe belong to them alone – Trump is standing up for a unified middle-class, regardless of labels.
Bill Wilson is the former President of Americans for Limited Government.
