GOP officially nominates coup attempt, convicted criminal Donald Trump for president

MILWAUKEE — Republicans on Monday officially nominated as their 2024 presidential candidate Donald Trump — a convicted felon who staged a coup to stay in power the last time he was in office and who survived an assassination attempt two days ago.

Trump, a native of New York City, opted to let the Florida delegation give him the delegates needed for a majority of the available total. During his first term as president, he moved his official residence to the state.

The announcement that all 125 state delegates would be cast for Trump – “Every single one of them!” — was made by his son Eric, and came just 17 minutes after Trump announced that Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance would be his running mate. It was followed by a brief break in roll call as the cover band played a shortened version of Kool & the Gang’s “Celebration.”

The 2024 nomination is Trump’s third in three election cycles and strengthens his continued grip on a party he had virtually nothing to do with until he began his run for president in June 2015.

In 2016, after Trump’s delegate count surpassed the threshold needed to secure his nomination at the GOP convention in Cleveland, the New York delegation cheered wildly as Frank Sinatra’s “New York, New York” played, while others on the convention floor gave polite applause or remained seated.

Four years later, as the COVID pandemic raged and state and local governments imposed limits on the number of people who could gather indoors, Trump had held his nominating convention at the White House, where he would not be subject to such rules and if he as many people as he wanted. The choice violated federal law and long-standing norms regarding the use of presidential resources for campaign purposes.

Trump effectively clinched this year’s nomination on March 12, having won all but two of the Republican primaries to date. Despite his attempt to overturn his 2020 election loss, which culminated in the violent attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, Trump defeated nearly a dozen candidates, including his own former vice president, Mike Pence.

However, the tone of the race was set early on. A year ago, in the same arena where Trump won the nomination on Monday, six of the eight presidential candidates on stage at the GOP’s first primary debate raised their hands when asked if they would continue to support Trump as a candidate even if he were convicted for a crime. .

At the time, Trump was facing four charges, two of which stem from his attempted coup, and nearly a hundred felonies. However, Republican Party primary voters largely accepted his false claim that all prosecutions were ordered by Democratic President Joe Biden to prevent him from running for office.

Even Trump’s most effective challenger, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, has never questioned the morality of Trump’s actions that led to the prosecutions, merely arguing that swing voters in a general election would not be so someone would vote.

A few weeks ago, Haley announced her support for Trump and encouraged her delegates and supporters to vote for him. Just days before the start of the convention, it was announced that she would be given a speaking role this week after being sidelined by Trump’s campaign for months.