RNC day 2: Republicans pitch 'unity,’ blame Biden for 'border bloodbath'
On a night devoted to the theme “Make America Safe Once Again,” specifically from undocumented immigrants, Republicans toggled between recasting former President Donald Trump as unifier-in-chief and blaming President Biden for murders, assaults and rapes. This is Yahoo News' succinct wrap-up of day two of the RNC in Milwaukee. Here’s what you need to know:
🖼 Big picture
The second night of the GOP convention was a more scattershot affair than the first. Swing-state Senate candidates recited their stump speeches to a national audience; GOP House leaders bragged about “holding the line” against Biden despite their narrow majority. Ultimately, two main themes emerged, each in tension with the other: that Republicans think Democrats are to blame for a “border bloodbath” — and that a change in power will somehow lead to unity.
📌 Key takeaways
Humanizing Trump. Despite the fact that Trump has been in the public eye for decades — or perhaps because of it — he can seem more like a personality than a person. On Tuesday, two speakers who know him well — Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, his former White House press secretary, and RNC co-chair Lara Trump, his daughter-in-law — did their best to humanize the former president. Sanders recounted how Trump comforted her after comedians and cable news hosts called her “vile” and “unfit to be a mother”; Lara Trump described how Trump welcomed her into the family and offered steadfast support in times of need. “Maybe you got to see a side of Donald Trump on Saturday that you were not sure existed, until you saw it with your own eyes,” she said, referencing the assassination attempt against him in Butler, Pa. Notably, Sanders and Lara Trump spoke near the end of the night, in primetime — when the largest audience of swing voters was likely to be watching.
“Fight! Fight! Fight!” With those same voters in mind, Lara Trump also framed her father-in-law’s response to the recent attempt on his life — to stand up, raise his fist and shout, “Fight! Fight! Fight!” — as a message “not just for the audience at the rally, not just for his supporters, but for all America.” Donald Trump “knew how defining that moment would be for our country,” she said — a “symbol that no matter what, America will prevail.” But other speakers — especially those who came earlier in the night, when a more partisan audience was likely to be tuning in — saw it differently. “We’re watching the principles of faith, family and freedom that once defined our nation trampled underfoot by the radical left,” said House Speaker Mike Johnson. “As President Trump did when he raised his fist and gave a rallying cry Saturday, now is our time to fight — and we will.” Several others said essentially the same thing: that the fight was against other Americans, not with or for them.
"Unity" — but for whom? In the wake of Saturday’s shooting — and the sadness and sympathy it sparked across the political spectrum — Republicans have recast this week’s convention as a moment for “unity.” But what does unity actually mean in the midst of such a contentious campaign? Tuesday’s speakers clarified matters somewhat. Three of them — or technically four, if you include little-known candidate Perry Johnson — ran against Trump for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination. And on Tuesday, all of them preached a very specific kind of unity: Republican unity.
Haley does a 180. Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley was Trump’s most enduring primary challenger — and when she dropped out in March, she conspicuously withheld her endorsement. “The problem now is he is not the same person he was in 2016,” Haley said during her campaign. “He is unhinged. He is more diminished than he was.” She insisted that another Trump term would be "like suicide for our country.” Yet in Milwaukee, Haley started her speech by “making one thing perfectly clear: Donald Trump has my strong endorsement, period.” Claiming that “Democrats have moved so far to the left that they’re putting our freedoms in danger,” Haley went on to frame the election as a choice between an imperfect Republican and a catastrophic Democrat. “You don’t have to agree with Trump 100% of the time to vote for him,” she concluded. “I’m here tonight because we have a country to save, and a unified Republican Party is essential for saving her.”
Trump’s other former challengers are all-in, too. Unlike Haley, Florida Gov. DeSantis and businessman Vivek Ramaswamy, both of whom endorsed Trump long ago, barely acknowledged their own bids for the nomination, or the doubts and disagreements that inspired them. Instead, Trump’s former rivals treated GOP unity as a given — and then characterized any broader kind of togetherness as something to be imposed rather than nurtured. DeSantis boasted that in Florida, the “Democratic Party lies in ruins [and] the left is in retreat” — and vowed that “electing Donald Trump gives us a chance to do this all across America.” Ramaswamy waved away the idea that Trump could “unite this country” through “words” of reconciliation, claiming he would do it through “action” instead. “Success is unifying,” Ramaswamy said. “Excellence is unifying.”
A darker, more divisive tone. Monday’s program featured a diverse lineup talking about kitchen-table economic issues like gas and grocery prices; it was all rather “business as usual.” In contrast, Tuesday’s immigration theme — “Make America Safe Once Again” — was an invitation to indulge in darker, more divisive rhetoric. Prior to primetime, Tuesday’s main talking point was that America is experiencing a “plague of crime,” as former police officer Randy Sutton put it — and that an “endless tsunami of illegal aliens” are now making the country “more dangerous than ever before.” Politicians such as Sen. Ted Cruz blamed Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris for inviting an “invasion on our southern border,” alleging that “every day, Americans are dying — murdered, assaulted, raped by illegal immigrants that the Democrats have released.” Victims’ family members took the stage to blame Biden and Harris’s policies for killing their loved ones. In the crowd, rank-and-file Republicans held signs that read “Biden’s Border Bloodbath.” “How did we get here?” Cruz asked. “It happened because Democrats cynically decided they wanted votes from illegals more than they wanted to protect our children.”
Reality check on crime. Individuals will always break the law, some gruesomely so. But statistics tell a more accurate story than anecdotes. In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic triggered a 30% spike in the U.S. homicide rate; violent crime went up 5% overall. Since then, however, crime rates have been falling. According to numbers released last month by the FBI, violent crime from January to March dropped 15.2% compared to the corresponding period in 2023, while murders fell 26.4% and reported rapes fell by 25.7%. The same goes for property crime (down 15.1%), burglaries (down 16.7%) and motor vehicle theft (down 17.3%). “It’s plausible that this will be, by far, the largest one-year decline in American history,” Jeff Asher, a criminal justice analyst, recently told CNN. The U.S. has now reverted to its long-term, pre-pandemic trend of falling crime and could soon “go below it,” according to John Roman, a criminologist at the University of Chicago.
Scapegoating "illegals." As for immigrants, numerous studies have shown that undocumented immigration does not increase violent crime; overall, immigrants are less likely to be incarcerated than native-born Americans, according to the Brennan Center for Justice. And contrary to Cruz’s claim, only U.S. citizens are allowed to vote in federal elections. No Democrats have tried to change that law.
Ending on uplift. Back in primetime, Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida — who challenged Trump for the GOP in 2016 and was one of his VP finalists this time around — delivered the strongest speech of the night when he paid tribute to Corey Comperatore, a 50-year-old Pennsylvanian who was killed in the attack on Trump. “The only reason why we know his name and story now is because, last Saturday, he shielded his wife and daughter from an assassin's bullet and lost his life the way he lived it: a hero,” Rubio said of the former firefighter. “These are the Americans who wear the red hats and wait for hours under a blazing sun to hear Trump speak. What they want, what they ask for, is not hateful or extreme.”
🗣️ Tuesday’s notable speakers
Senate candidate Kari Lake of Arizona
Governor and Senate candidate Jim Justice of West Virginia
Senate candidate Sam Brown of Nevada
House Republican Conference Chair Elise Stefanik
House Majority Whip Tom Emmer
House Majority Leader Steve Scalise
House Speaker Mike Johnson
Businessman and former presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy
Reality TV star Savannah Chrisley
Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas
Former United Nations Ambassador and South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley
Floria Gov. Ron DeSantis
Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas
Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders of Arkansas
Former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Dr. Ben Carson
Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida
RNC Co-Chair Lara Trump
🗓 What’s happening Wednesday
The day’s theme will be "Make America Strong Once Again." Speakers will address foreign policy issues such as Iran, China and the wars between Israel and Hamas and Russia and Ukraine. JD Vance will deliver his first speech as Trump’s running mate.
📖 Political terms you should know
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Republicans say Biden's America is awash in immigrant-driven crime. What do the data say? “One after another, Republican leaders painted a dire picture of America from the Republican National Convention stage in Milwaukee on Tuesday.” [Los Angeles Times]
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Republicans hail Donald Trump and embrace his running mate JD Vance in convention's opening night. “Delegates cheered wildly as Trump appeared onscreen backstage and then emerged, visibly emotional, as Lee Greenwood sang ‘God Bless the USA.’” [Associated Press]
