Former President Donald Trump opened his speech to the Republican National Convention Thursday night accepting the party's presidential nomination by revisiting his brush with death just days earlier in an assassination attempt.
He then called for unity before attacking the Democrats.
"If I had not moved my head at that very last instant, the assassin's bullet would have perfectly hit its mark," Trump told the crowd at the convention in Milwaukee. "And I would not be here tonight. We would not be together."
The experience moved him to call for unity, he told the Republicans.
"The discord and division in our society must be healed," Trump said in his 93-minute speech, the longest nomination address in modern history.
"As Americans, we are bound together by a single fate and a shared destiny," he added. "We rise together. Or we fall apart."
Trump emphasized: "I am running to be president for all of America, not half of America, because there is no victory in winning for half of America."
He then went on to baselessly claim again that the election he lost last time around was "rigged" by the Democrats, and to rail about the "invasion" of undocumented immigrants whom he vowed promised to eject from the nation in a massive deportation.
He indicated he would launch major new tariffs as part of his continued "America First" vision. And he vowed to "end the horrible with Russia and Ukraine," but didn't say how he planned to accomplish that.
Trump completely avoided mentioning the hot-button topic of abortion rights after choosing as his running mate J.D. Vance, who two years ago said he supported a national abortion ban.
Trump told the Washington Examiner in an interview following the assassination attempt last Saturday in Butler, Pa., that he scrapped an earlier "humdinger" of a speech he had written attacking Biden to focus instead on "unity."
"Had this not happened, this would've been one of the most incredible speeches" aimed mostly at the policies of President Joe Biden. "Honestly, it's going to be a whole different speech now."
The speech is a "chance to bring the country together. I was given that chance," he said.
Trump's address amid the hoopla of the convention came as serious questions remained about his current opponent. Pressure continued to increase on President Biden to step out of the campaign in the wake of his troubling debate performance against Trump.
