The second day of the Republican National Convention gets underway on Tuesday, with Republicans set to continue appealing to voters after former President Donald Trump was formally nominated as the GOP’s nominee for the 2024 presidential election.
At the party convention on Monday in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Trump also announced his running mate, Republican Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio, who has now been officially named Trump’s running mate.
The convention is proceeding in the shadow of an assassination attempt at a Trump rally in Butler, Pennsylvania over the weekend that left one campaign attendee dead and two seriously injured. Trump said Sunday that the attack had changed the focus of his convention speech, explaining in an interview with the Washington Examiner that he now sees the convention as “a chance to bring the whole country and even the whole world together.”
Watch USA TODAY Network’s live coverage of the 2024 Republican Convention.
JD Vance explains why he once called Trump ‘American Hitler’
In his first interview since becoming Donald Trump’s running mate, J.D. Vance explained Sunday night why he once called Trump “the American Hitler.”
In a letter to a friend in 2016, the Ohio senator wrote that he wasn’t sure whether Trump was “a cynical jerk like Nixon, who is less evil (and maybe even useful), or an American Hitler.”
Vance cleared up the doubts during an interview with Fox News’ Sean Hannity on Monday.
“I was skeptical of Donald Trump in 2016, but he’s been a great president and he’s changed my mind,” Vance said. “I think he’s changed the minds of a lot of Americans.”
—Savannah Kuchar
Did Trump speak last night?
Former President Donald Trump made his first public appearance since the shooting on Saturday. Cameras in the auditorium captured him walking down the hall to a seating area to watch the proceedings. Trump had a large bandage over his ear from injuries sustained in the assassination attempt.
Trump waved as the crowd cheered and a cover band played “So Caught Up in You.”
− David Jackson
Who is President Trump’s running mate, JD Vance?
J.D. Vance, 39, was a first-term senator from Ohio who rose to fame with the publication of his autobiography, “Hillbilly Elegy.”
Vance was first elected to the Senate in 2022 with no prior political experience, but he was widely known thanks to his best-selling book, “Hillbilly Elegy,” which was later made into a Netflix feature film and detailed his journey from an abusive childhood to earning a Yale Law School degree that opened the door to Silicon Valley.
Vance had previously criticized Trump, likening him to an opioid drug user and saying he could become “the American Hitler,” but changed his tune ahead of the 2022 Senate elections. Since then, he has become a staunch supporter of Trump, and is also close to one of Trump’s sons, Donald Trump Jr.
– Haley Bemiller and Riley Begin
Trump is officially nominated
On Monday, after formally clinching the nomination, Trump managed to add the word “presumptive” before “Republican nominee for president.”
Eric Trump delivered the delegates that officially gave Trump the victory.
“On behalf of my entire family and the 125 delegates from Florida, we nominate them all for the greatest president ever, Donald J. Trump, and I declare him the Republican nominee for President of the United States of America,” he said.
– Rebecca Morin, David Jackson, Brianne Pfannenstiel
