Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., said there are elements of the Democratic Party that Republicans will never, and should never, unify with.
“If you are far left, Trump is the end of your world. There is not going to be a compromise,” he said. “I do not object to opposition to people who genuinely believe in an alternative world.”
In the wake of major tragedies, there are generally calls to put politics aside for the greater good of the country.
After the shooting, Trump rewrote his convention speech, reportedly with a gentler tone. Trump’s campaign said he involved in taking the first version — which it said was a more traditional convention address — and reworking it into something more “powerful.”
“I can tell you that President Trump has dictated the speech, and it’s powerful,” said Jason Miller, a campaign senior adviser.
Miller said that he “did not want to get too far ahead of the president” but that the reworked speech will talk about the attempted assassination and the need to be resilient “in our faith” and “in the face of wickedness.”
“But, also, we need to unite America. And this is — we need to come together at a time like this,” he added. “We’ll have serious issues. President Trump is definitely going to talk about the issues that are hurting people in this country right now.”
“Politically the country is a tinderbox right now,” Miller said. “We got to find a way to take down the temperature.”
Hours before Miller’s comments, Trump posted on social media a picture comparing him holding up his fist in the moments after the assassination attempt to one of Biden tripping on a flight of stairs. It underscores the difficulty Trump has at times fighting the long-held base instinct to attack political enemies, even as he himself has called for a tone change.
It’s those moments that have Democrats rolling their eyes at the idea that Trump, one of the most pugilistic politicians in modern American politics, actually intends to do any sort of unifying. The Democratic National Committee sent out a news release Wednesday highlighting several examples of people at the convention trashing the Democratic Party.
“Hate, anger, revenge, and retribution are among the oldest of ideas — and they don’t bring our country together — they tear it apart,” DNC Rapid Response Director Alex Floyd said. “At a time when America should be unified around what connects us rather than divides us, the GOP is using their convention to do the opposite.”
In his speech Wednesday night accepting the nomination for vice president, Ohio Sen. JD Vance leaned into the ideas of broader unity as called on by Trump in the days after the assassination attempt.
“I want to respond to his call for unity myself,” Vance said. We have a big tent in this party — on everything from national security to economic policy. But my message to Republicans is: We love this country, and we are united to win.”
“That’s the Republican Party of the next four years: united in our love for America, and committed to free speech and the open exchange of ideas,” he added.
Alex Triantafilou, the chair of the Ohio GOP, said the party’s unity is more intense than it has been in past presidential election cycles.
“Everybody’s on board here. I’ve not seen it quite this united, really, in many years,” Triantafilou said. “Donald Trump had the party united for the four years he was president. That got underreported, in my opinion.”
There are some who agree with Trump’s stated goal to try to unify the country. Ginger Howard, a convention delegate from Georgia, said that the Republican Party has never been more unified but that it goes beyond that.
“I think as a country, the president is the president of everyone,” she said. “He will not just be the president to the Republicans, Democrats or independents; he will be for every American. And that’s what I am seeing here. America First.”
Christopher Tomlinson, an RNC delegate and member of the Maryland House of Delegates, said he hopes unity messages from Trump expands the party.
“Unity is brining in not just the full-blown, full right-wing, MAGA wing, but also bringing in the moderates, which I think we saw with Nikki Haley,” he said. “Maybe your more traditional Republicans. To me, that’s unity.”
Florida state Rep. Danny Perez, a convention delegate, said he views the idea of unity not as about agreeing on every issue but rather as about finding common ground as Americans.
“President Trump’s call for unity isn’t about asking everyone to agree on every policy issue,” he said. “He is asking us to remember that the ties that bind us are greater than the categories that divide us.”
After Trump was convicted on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records, he blasted Democrats and blamed them for his legal woes, at times vowing revenge.
Last month, just over a week after his conviction, he said, “Sometimes revenge can be justified.”
Perez said he believes Trump is now more focused on “unity, not retribution.”
Asked about the idea of retribution, Howard said, “We are focused on uniting the country.”
Talking about the idea of unity, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis pointed to Democrats’ calling for Biden to step aside amid questions about his mental acuity.
DeSantis joked that he is unified with Democrats who are defending Biden.
“In the spirit of unity, Joe Biden has my full support to run at the top of the Democratic ticket,” he said at the Southern States Fest held in conjunction with the convention.
In a sign of intraparty unity, Trump had both DeSantis and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, his two biggest primary rivals, speak at the convention. His team sent a message to delegates on the floor of the convention not to boo them.
Those attending the convention see olive branches like those, on top of Trump’s picking as his running mate Vance, a former anti-Trump politician as examples of his trying to be a unifier.
“I think Nikki Haley … being able to speak last night,” said Perry Balcom, attending the convention from North Bend, Washington. “Even JD Vance is [his] vice president pick. JD Vance was very against Trump, I guess anti-Trumper.”
Brina Sanft, a convention attendee from Seattle, said she did not appreciate the few boos Haley got Tuesday night.
“I heard a few boos, and I’m like, ‘That’s not uniting. We are not uniting anybody when we do that,'” she said. “We need to really come together.”
Others at the convention flatly reject the idea of any semblance of unity with Democrats.
Florida state Rep. Randy Fine, a delegate who endorsed Trump over his home state governor, DeSantis, was blunt in his reluctance when CBS News asked him about Biden’s own call for unity after the attempted assassination.
“He can take his unity and shove it up his a–,” Fine responded.
