RNC 2024 Day 2: Focus shifts to immigration after Trump makes entrance
Associated PressMILWAUKEE — Donald Trump was celebrated Tuesday at the Republican National Convention by former rivals who just months ago leveled harsh critiques about him, a show of unity that contrasts with the divisions increasingly ripping through the Democratic Party. Austin Weatherford, a spokesperson for the campaign, said in a statement, “Ambassador Haley said it best herself: someone who doesn’t respect our military, doesn’t know right from wrong, and ‘surrounds himself in chaos’ can’t be president.” Immigration was a key theme on Tuesday Several speakers spotlighted immigration, a key element of former Trump ’s political brand that helped endear him to the GOP base when he began his first campaign in 2015. Rep. Steve Scalise of Louisiana, the House majority leader, made that statement in his remarks, declaring, “Biden and Harris want illegals to vote now that they’ve opened up the border.” The convention’s programming has featured people the campaign has referred to as “everyday Americans.” On Tuesday, they included people who had lost loved ones to fentanyl overdoses or in violent crimes linked by authorities to immigrants in the U.S. illegally. His eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., said in an Axios interview outside the RNC that he spent three or four hours going through his father’s convention speech with him, “trying to de-escalate some of that rhetoric.” “I think it lasts,” the younger Trump said of the change in his father’s rhetoric. “He’s just standing in the way.” ___ AP AUDIO: Republican convention focuses on immigration a day after a bandaged Trump makes triumphant entrance AP correspondent Jennifer King reports the Republican National Convention continues in Milwaukee.