MILWAUKEE — The day after former President Donald Trump was targeted in an attempted assassination, Illinois Republicans converging on Milwaukee ahead of this week’s Republican National Convention said the alarming event will only serve to unite the GOP going into the November election.
The most serious assassination attempt on a president or presidential candidate in decades also caused some members of the Illinois delegation to recognize the polarized state of American politics. While many of the GOP delegates solely blamed Democrats, others called for a stop to the toxic war of words from members of both political parties and said the bombast needs to be toned down if there’s ever going to be any prospect for the country to see any cohesion.
“We have to, as elected officials, be very careful of the rhetoric that we’re using. Words have meaning,” state Sen. Terri Bryant, a Republican from Murphysboro and an at-large delegate, said of Republicans and Democrats. “And so, in this, I think that you may find some folks taking a step back to try to find a better way to get their message out without being incendiary.”
Dozens of Illinois Republicans crossed the Illinois-Wisconsin state line in recent days for the RNC in Milwaukee, joining members of the GOP from across the nation as they are expected to nominate Trump on Thursday. As Republicans prepared for the first in-person political convention in eight years, Trump’s rally in Pennsylvania on Saturday was marred by a gunman who shot at Trump, apparently grazing his ear. One spectator was killed and two others critically wounded. The gunman was killed after the shooting.
The Illinois GOP arrives in Milwaukee with a new state party chairman, Kathy Salvi of Mundelein, who was selected on Friday.
In taking the reins, Salvi had signified the need for a fresh start for a political party that has been mostly irrelevant in Illinois state politics in recent years. The Illinois Republican Party has struggled to appeal to suburban moderates who’ve shown a reluctance or outright refusal to support Trump and also been turned off by the state GOP’s more hardline stances that have been more attractive to conservative voters in mostly rural swaths of Illinois.
While the progress of uniting Republican voters in Illinois remains to be seen, delegate Aaron Del Mar, who dropped out of the running for Illinois GOP chairman before Friday’s vote, said Sunday that the shooting at the Trump rally has only intensified the unity among the party on a national level.
“I think that we were ahead to begin with. I think this even moves us further ahead,” said Del Mar, who ran unsuccessfully for lieutenant governor in 2022. “Everyone … criticizes President Trump for all of his rhetoric. About immigration, about crime, about these issues. But nobody ever calls the Democrats on their rhetoric. Nobody ever says, ‘Hey, maybe that’s not such a hot idea to be so incendiary … regarding Donald Trump.’”
Democratic President Joe Biden, Trump’s presumptive challenger in the Nov. 5 election, said in a statement on social media on Saturday night that he was “grateful” to hear Trump was “safe and doing well.” Biden has faced calls from members of his own party in the last few weeks to withdraw from the race after a stumbling debate against Trump.
In light of the shooting, Demetra DeMonte, the Republican National Committeewoman for Illinois, predicts Trump will win the election in a landslide.
“Last night, the world saw, (who) I believe, is the bravest man, the most resilient man in the world. After being nearly killed, by the grace of God he was not killed, he stood up defiant, ‘I’m here. Follow me.’ And when he did that what did everyone else say? Did they say negative things? No. Because the Republican Party’s not negative,” said DeMonte, who is also a vice-chair of the RNC.
DeMonte predicted that not only would Trump win but that Republicans would see success up and down the ticket.
“We’re going to pick up the Senate. We’re going to hold on to the House with bigger numbers,” DeMonte said. “I think going into the convention, I think people are even more pumped.”
Outgoing Illinois GOP Chairman Don Tracy of Springfield called the fact that Trump was only grazed by a bullet as “a divine intervention that saved the day” and said the shooting “ups the stakes.”
“I think it shows why it’s so important to unify the country after the election, no matter what happens. There’s just way too much polarization. And it will, certainly, I think, electrify the convention when Trump shows up having survived such a narrow miss,” said Tracy.
Tracy also agreed with Bryant that overcoming polarization is the responsibility of both parties, not just Democrats.
“The people have got to fight for the election of their candidate in elections,” Tracy said. “But then after the election is over, they need to accept and rally around the flag, the flag of the United States of America, and support whoever is the president, whether it’s the Democrat president or the Republican president.”
Tracy’s comment came despite the fact that the state GOP under his leadership has promoted “election integrity” efforts featuring people who falsely maintain that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump and who assisted efforts to challenge the results in court, which were rejected.
Richard Lawrence, a delegate who used to serve on the Aurora City Council, acknowledged while many Democrats and Republicans already have likely made up their minds about who they’ll vote for, he thinks the shooting will prove to draw independent voters toward Trump.
“As we watch the Democrats implode and fight amongst themselves, and who should be on their ticket, who shouldn’t be on their ticket, I think that you’re going to see a real unification of the Republicans and the independents,” Lawrence said. “I really believe that people look at this and go ‘this just isn’t right.’ We have to change course from where we’re at here today.”
“You can’t even have a conversation. You cannot have opposing views. It always seems to be if you disagree with someone on the left, right away it’s a conflict,” Lawrence said.
The convention runs Monday through Thursday with nightly programming occurring mostly between 6 and 10 p.m. from the Fiserv Forum, the home of the NBA’s Milwaukee Bucks. The Illinois delegation will gather for morning breakfast organizing sessions at a hotel outside Milwaukee. It is among 56 state and territory delegations with a total of nearly 2,500 delegates who will formally nominate Trump and learn of his selection of a running mate.
Meanwhile, at a Sunday afternoon news conference, the U.S. Secret Service said it was not making any changes to its security operations in the wake of Saturday’s shooting.
“We are confident of the security plans in place and we are ready to go,” said Audrey Gibson-Cicchino, the Secret Service’s coordinator for the GOP convention. “We’re not anticipating any changes to our operational security plans for this event.”
About 150 people also attended a Sunday afternoon vigil for Trump at Zeidler Union Square, a park just south of the convention site. One attendee strummed a few pro-Trump songs on his guitar, notably singing MAGA (a nod to Trump’s popular Make American Great Again slogan) to the tune of the song “YMCA” by the Village People.
The vigil was organized by Turning Point America to “pray, register, and chase the vote” and drew convention delegates, attendees and Milwaukeeans. The vigil saw religious leaders, Turning Point speakers and members of the general public lead the crowd in prayer in the park’s shade.
It began with several pastors sharing their prayers for Trump and the country, with one calling the attack on Trump a “demonic attack.” A member of Turning Point said that “freedom had been threatened in a way it hadn’t before and that they must fight to protect the future of America.”
Most of those at the vigil said they were shocked when they first heard news of the shooting and attributed Trump’s escape from the shooter to God’s grace.
Peter Christos, 20, said he was watching the live stream of the rally from his house in Chicago and felt really confused about what happened.
“There’s no reason to be ashamed of supporting Trump anymore. He literally took a bullet for us,” Christos said.
Others offered anti-violence messages into a microphone. They prayed for a fast recovery for the former president.
“We thank God he’s OK, that he’s up and fighting,” said Marty Calderon, a pastor in Milwaukee.
Tribune reporter Nell Salzman and freelance reporter Malavika Ramakrishnan contributed.
