The Republican Convention Featured Speeches from Trumps Presidential Rivals

One by one, Donald Trump’s defeated rivals for the 2024 Republican nomination took the stage to sing his praises at the party’s convention on Tuesday night. From his box just above the convention floor, Trump smiled at times as he watched his former opponents Nikki Haley, Ron DeSantis, and Vivek Ramaswamy voice their full support for his candidacy. If there were any doubts that this was Trump’s party, Tuesday’s programming put them to rest. “I’ll start by making one thing perfectly clear: Donald Trump has my strong endorsement, period,” said Ms Haley, the former UN Ambassador who posed the strongest challenge to Trump earlier this year. Haley, who served as the governor of South Carolina and Trump’s ambassador to the United Nations, rattled off what she saw as Trump’s foreign policy accomplishments. “When Donald Trump was president, Putin did nothing. No invasions. No wars. That was no accident. Putin didn’t attack Ukraine because he knew Donald Trump was tough. A strong president doesn’t start wars. A strong president prevents wars,” she said, receiving loud applause. She said Trump had asked her to speak at the event in Milwaukee in the name of “unity”. “For the sake of our nation we have to go with Donald Trump,” she told the crowd. Ms Haley said in May that she would vote for the former president, but her headline speech on Tuesday was her most direct endorsement of the Republican nominee yet. And when she declared her endorsement, Trump stood and clapped. DeSantis also immediately made it clear that he was backing Trump. “Let’s send Joe Biden back to his basement and let’s send Donald Trump back to the White House,” he said. Neither Haley nor DeSantis initially had speaking slots at the convention, but they were added after the attempt on Trump’s life on Saturday as Republicans sought to project unity. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cnd0gn6nel6o

Regarding JD Vance: It was an easy choice for President Donald Trump: he could choose as his running mate someone who merely understood his platform, and the new GOP platform—dedicated to “the forgotten men and women of America.” Or he could choose someone who’s lived it…The fact is, Vance didn’t change; he came full circle. After detours to Yale, Silicon Valley, and some Washington, D.C., think tanks—where he was praised for his literary insights—he came home again. Returning as an older version of himself, Vance was focused and dedicated to the plight of his people. And willing to do more than just write about them. He entered the political arena to fight for them. He will now represent the people he so loves and cares about on the biggest and most important stage in the world: the national American political stage. In one of the most consequential elections of our lifetimes.

Among the swirling unanswered questions about what drove a 20-year-old Pennsylvania man to very nearly kill the former and potentially future president last weekend, focus has turned to the parents of the would-be assassin — both of whom are licensed professional counselors, according to the Pennsylvania Social Work Board. Matthew Brian Crooks and Mary Elizabeth Crooks, residents of Bethel Park, Penn., hold active licenses as professional social workers. Records from the Pennsylvania Licensing Verification Service indicate that both have been licensed since 2002, with Mary obtaining her license in February and Matthew in March of that year. Their licenses remain valid until February 2025.

Records indicate that Crooks, an administrator at a local nursing home, was a registered Republican voter, although too young to vote in the last election, though he is also recorded as having given a single small donation to a Democrat-aligned group. A neighbor told local reporters that there have been pro-Trump signs on display in the yard of his family’s home. Beyond that, details on Crooks and his family have so far been elusive. Unlike many gunmen who have carried out attacks on schools, nightclubs and businesses, Crooks did not appear to leave a trail of clues into his mindset on social media, nor did he leave any apparent manifesto.

After the man identified by law enforcement as Thomas Matthew Crooks shot at Donald Trump from a roof just outside the security perimeter at a rally in Butler, Penn. on Saturday, the FBI has said it completed the search of his home, where he lived with his parents, as well as his car and at least one phone. A motive remains unclear. Their home in Bethel Park Pennsylvania is pictured below.