Former South Carolina Gov.\u00a0Nikki Haley, in her speech to the Republican National Convention on Tuesday, cheered America\u2019s\u00a0\u201cincredible ability to self-correct.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Haley, so recently a political rival and fierce critic of former President\u00a0Donald Trump, might have been talking about herself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On the\u00a0second night\u00a0of the convention in Milwaukee, less than 24 hours after a top union leader denounced corporate America in the same hall, Haley executed a stark about-face, pledging her support to Trump and asking others who had expressed similar concerns about his potential return to power to consider the alternative: President Joe Biden. Other speakers, such as Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Republican National Committee co-chair Lara Trump and grief-stricken parents telling their own families\u2019 agonizing stories, offered more poignant messages as the GOP and Trump\u2019s campaign tried again to sand off the former president\u2019s rough edges.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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\u201cI will start by making one thing perfectly clear: Donald Trump has my strong endorsement. Period,\u201d Haley said at the beginning of her speech \u2013 dispelling any remaining suggestions to the contrary and, in the moment, warming up a crowd that had greeted her coolly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Haley\u2019s speech, delivered a night after Trump was formally nominated, firmly closed the door on whatever remains of the dissent that hung over parts of the 2024 GOP primary campaign. But if she was trying to thread a needle, backing Trump the candidate without endorsing all his ideas, she was the exception.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The other speakers were unanimously loyal to the former president, describing him as a self-sacrificial leader who, while in office, took America to its greatest heights only to see his work undone by Biden\u2019s feckless presidency. Former foes lined up to sing Trump\u2019s praises, admit the error of their ways and tell voters that the halcyon days of Trump\u2019s first term would seem mild compared with the promise of another.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Here are five takeaways from the second night of the Republican convention:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Haley took the stage, at the invitation of Trump, to a mix of cheers and jeers. She quickly set about to win over the faithful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
First, she offered a full endorsement and then, nodding to their occasionally nasty, if one-sided, primary fight, issued a \u201csimple\u201d message.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cYou don\u2019t have agree with Donald Trump 100% of the time to vote for him,\u201d Haley said. \u201cTake it from me.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the 2024 primary, Haley consistently scored above 20% among GOP voters \u2013 and won two contests \u2013 underscoring Trump\u2019s lingering issues with moderate, suburban Republicans. On Tuesday, Haley said she was speaking to them \u2013 the fence-sitters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cFor the sake of our nation, we have to go with Donald Trump,\u201d Haley said, a little before telling delegates, \u201cI\u2019m here tonight because we have a country to save.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She also took repeated jabs at Vice President Kamala Harris, a crowd-pleasing venture, and spoke, with gusto, about Trump\u2019s foreign policy chops and cheered his worldview.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Haley would know, of course, having served as Trump\u2019s ambassador to the United Nations for two years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Her takeaway from that time? \u201cHe appreciated advice and input,\u201d she said Tuesday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
See which RNC speaker Van Jones says ‘gave the speech of the night’<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It was not only Haley who used the occasion to ask for a kind of forgiveness from Trump and the Republican base.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Other onetime rivals, such as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, whose primary campaign fizzled out shortly after voting began, also kissed Trump\u2019s ring. They includedVivek Ramaswamy, former Housing and Urban Development secretary Ben Carson, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio (whose 2016 run opposing Trump was endorsed by Haley) and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cDonald Trump is the president who will actually unite this country,\u201d Ramaswamy said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Cruz, who told a similar audience to \u201cvote your conscience\u201d at the 2016 RNC, focused most of his remarks on the \u201cliteral invasion\u201d of undocumented migrants at the southern border and, as he put it, on speaking up for young women who had been victimized by those immigrants.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
DeSantis also applauded Trump, but mostly used his time to warn against reelecting Biden, whom he described as a \u201ctool for a leftist agenda.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cAmerica,\u201d the Florida governor insisted, \u201ccannot afford four more years of a \u2018Weekend at Bernie\u2019s\u2019 presidency.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie long ago evolved from a top Trump ally to one of the former president\u2019s most vocal Republican critics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On Tuesday, just as a night of RNC speeches filled with calls for unity got underway, he dropped a bombshell op-ed in The New York Times, calling Trump\u2019s early attempts to \u201crein in some of the worst rhetorical impulses\u201d in their party \u201cless than promising.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIt is not enough for this to be only a momentary call for unity,\u201d Christie wrote. \u201cThis change has to go beyond this week, next month and the November elections to be a real transformational shift. Otherwise, all we are left with is just another fleeting political moment.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Others, on the convention floor and outside the venue, have preached unity and rapprochement. Not just within the Republican Party, they insisted, but across the board, among an increasingly sick and angry body politic. The heinous attempt on Trump\u2019s life this past weekend in Pennsylvania, Republicans agreed, meant it was time for everyone to turn down the temperature.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That memo reached many of the night\u2019s speakers \u2013 but not all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Kari Lake, the hard-line conservative candidate for Senate in Arizona, falsely claimed that her Democratic opponent, Rep. Ruben Gallego, \u201cvoted to let the millions of people who poured into our country illegally cast a ballot in this upcoming election.\u201d She also attacked the media, per usual, for lying \u201cabout everything.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Republican Eric Hovde, who is running for Senate here in Wisconsin, embraced a similar theme, accusing the media of \u201cdividing us.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe bottom line to why we are here,\u201d said West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice, another Senate candidate, \u201cthe bottom line to every single thing that\u2019s going on in this great country today is one thing: We become totally unhinged if Donald Trump is not elected in November.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Several Republican candidates in key House and Senate races made their own cases Tuesday night \u2014 with a range of approaches, from Lake\u2019s combative words to Pennsylvania Senate contender Dave McCormick\u2019s call for unity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
House Republican Majority Leader Steve Scalise, in a battle to keep his party\u2019s narrow majority, used six words, over and over, to make his point: \u201cPresident Trump and the Republican majority \u2026\u201d None of what he said after, Scalise implied, would matter if the first two parts weren\u2019t secured.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Lake began her speech by calling out what she called \u201cthe fake news\u201d and \u201cdisastrous Democrat policies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Hovde followed up Lake by continuing to blame news organizations for national divisions, saying that the media has to \u201cstop dividing us.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe need to heal this country from the division that the left has brought,\u201d he said in his speech.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
McCormick, meanwhile, talked of being in the front row Saturday at Trump\u2019s Butler, Pennsylvania, rally, where a gunman attempted to assassinate the former president.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In an interview with CNN\u2019s Kaitlan Collins afterward, McCormick said Americans need to \u201cmake sure that we\u2019re not talking in ways that dehumanizes people and ultimately contributes to an environment where violence is going to happen.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Collins then asked about Lake\u2019s comments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI\u2019m only worried about myself. I wasn\u2019t watching anybody else,\u201d McCormick said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Matt Gaetz trolls Kevin McCarthy during RNC interview<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Lara Trump, the former president\u2019s daughter-in-law and co-chair of the national party, closed out the festivities with a tribute to the nominee and the makings of an olive branch to Trump-curious Democrats and independents.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cYou didn\u2019t have to love everything he tweeted,\u201d she said of the former president, \u201cbut you cannot deny you were better off when Donald Trump was in office.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Her address was also a reprise of sorts of the 2016 GOP convention, when Trump\u2019s children all gave speeches attesting to their father\u2019s good humor and self-sacrifice. She accused Democrats of trying to fear-monger about a second Trump term, an implicit reference to concerns over the Heritage Foundation-led \u201cProject 2025\u201d manifesto.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And she spoke, emotionally, about the attempt on her father-in-law\u2019s life this past weekend. The scene had emotionally scarred her and her children, Lara Trump said, but also brought out the best in America, which came together in horror over the shooting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cMaybe you got to see a side of Donald Trump on Saturday,\u201d she said of his triumphal response to the would-be assassin\u2019s near-miss, \u201cthat you didn\u2019t know existed until you saw it with your own eyes.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cHe is a lion,\u201d she said. \u201cHe is bold, he is strong, he is fearless \u2013 and he is exactly what this country needs right now.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Former South Carolina Gov.\u00a0Nikki Haley, in her speech to the Republican National Convention on Tuesday, cheered America\u2019s\u00a0\u201cincredible ability to self-correct.\u201d Haley, so recently a political rival and fierce critic of former President\u00a0Donald Trump, might have been talking about herself. On the\u00a0second night\u00a0of the convention in Milwaukee, less than 24 hours after a top union leader […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":7357,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43,45],"tags":[2008,105],"class_list":{"0":"post-7356","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"category-top-stories","9":"tag-trump","10":"tag-us"},"yoast_head":"\n