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Former President Donald Trump has completely rewritten his convention speech in light of the attempt to kill him and will call Thursday night for a new effort at national unity at the Republican National Convention. In an exclusive interview with the Washington Examiner a day after his right ear was grazed by a sniper’s bullet Saturday evening, Trump said he wanted to take advantage of a historic moment and draw the country together. “The speech I was going to give on Thursday was going to be a humdinger,” Trump said. “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,” he said. He has switched, Trump said, from a speech meant to excite his voter base to one that demonstrates his belief that the attempted assassination at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, has changed the election campaign entirely. Republicans and Democrats have acknowledged this in the aftermath of the shocking incident. Trump said people all across the country from different walks of life and different political views have called him. He noted that he was saved from death because he turned from the crowd to look at a screen showing data he was using in his speech. “That reality is just setting in,” Trump said. “I rarely look away from the crowd. Had I not done that in that moment, well, we would not be talking today, would we?” Talking as he boarded his plane in Bedminster, New Jersey, for Milwaukee, where the Republican National Convention started Monday and concludes Thursday, Trump said his speech on the final night will meet the moment that history demands. “It is a chance to bring the country together,” he said. “I was given that chance.” Early Sunday morning, Trump posted on Truth Social that it was “God alone who prevented the unthinkable from happening” and that he would “fear not.” Again, in talking to the Washington Examiner, he invoked God for his deliverance. “This is a chance to bring the whole country, even the whole world together,” he said. “The speech will be a lot different, a lot different than it would’ve been two days ago.” The Washington Examiner’s interview with Trump had been due to take place on his airplane on the return flight from the Pennsylvania rally to Bedminster, New Jersey. That arrangement put this reporter just feet from Trump when he was shot. Trump hailed Corey Comperatore, the former fire chief who was shot and killed at the rally, and two other supporters, David Dutch and James Copenhaver, who were wounded and are recovering at a local hospital. Trump said his decision to raise a fists when the Secret Service was leading him offstage was to let the people there know he was OK “and that America goes on, we go forward, that we are strong,” he said. Photographs of him holding his fist in the air, blood streaming across his face as Secret Service agents surround him, already have become iconic images of the 2024 election. If he speaks in Milwaukee of uniting the country, it would echo President Ronald Reagan, who, in 1981, projected strength as he, too, recovered from wounds (far graver than Trump’s) inflicted by a would-be assassin in Washington, D.C. Trump said when he stood up and saw the crowd had not moved, he needed to tell them that he and the country were going to be all right. “The energy coming from the people there in that moment, they just stood there. It’s hard to describe what that felt like, but I knew the world was looking. I knew that history would judge this, and I knew I had to let them know we are OK.” COPYRIGHT 2024 CREATORS.COM The post Trump Rewrites Republican Convention Speech to Focus on Unity, Not Biden appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Following the failed assassination attempt against him over the weekend, former President Trump wanted the messaging of the Republican National Convention to adopt a message that was more unifying for the country. Of course, the likes of MSNBC wouldn’t be happy with any Republican messaging but they particularly didn’t appreciate the messaging of Wednesday’s Night Three when signs reading “mass deportation now” were handed out. The liberal outlet was aghast despite the fact a near super majority of American voters supported it. “Rachel I think the story of this convention so far can actually be told in some measure through the signs that have been handed out. The campaign hands out signs every night and the messaging has changed somewhat,” report Jacob Soboroff explained to co-host Rachel Maddow. He held up a series of signs to show the progression of the unifying messages, getting a shocked exclamation from Maddow on the last one: SOBOROFF: So, “make America strong again,” one of the first ones to come out. “American oil from American soil,” theme of a previous evening and a little bit tonight. “Trump Vance,” when they announced the vice presidential pick. But tonight, the idea of issues that are going to unify the country sort of went out the window; “mass deportation now.” MADDOW: Oh my god. Wow. “In all seriousness, Rachel. It is part of the policy platform of this convention to create the largest deportation effort in American history. That’s verbatim,” he lamented.     After alluding to 1954’s Operation Wetback, “a name that is so offence and racist I can’t – I'm not comfortable saying it on television,” Soboroff warned: “The program that’s being proposed the Trump administration would be far bigger than that, bigger than anything we’ve seen and bigger that anything in the first Trump term.” But while MSNBC was clutching their pearls and suggesting the Trump campaign was not living up to the promise of being unify with their “mass deportation now” messaging, a recent CBS News/YouGov poll showed it represented a large majority of registered voters, nearly a super majority. In June, polling found 62 percent were in favor of mass deportations of “all undocumented immigrants.” “That isn't purely partisan, it includes a third of Democrats,” CBS wrote. Adding: “A similarly sized majority would have local law enforcement try to identify those living in the U.S. illegally, and just under half support the idea of setting up large government detention centers to sort out which people ought to be deported.” It’s also worth noting that Soboroff’s immigration reporting was at the center of a $30 million defamation suit against MSNBC. The transcript is below. Click "expand" to read: MSNBC Republican National Convention July 18, 2024 10:35:56 p.m. Eastern (…) JACOB SOBOROFF: Rachel I think the story of this convention so far can actually be told in some measure through the signs that have been handed out. The campaign hands out signs every night and the messaging has changed somewhat. And I think that when we came in, in the wake of the assassination attempt on former President Trump. I’m just going to go through them with you. I’m going to hold them up. So, “make America strong again,” one of the first ones to come out. “American oil from American soil,” theme of a previous evening and a little bit tonight. “Trump Vance,” when they announced the vice presidential pick. But tonight, the idea of issues that are going to unify the country sort of went out the window; “mass deportation now.” RACHEL MADDOW: Oh my god. Wow. SOBOROFF: And I have shared this sign with some of my colleagues and I was actually going to give it back – because there is a woman, I'm not even joking, who said she wants to bring this home with her. I want to make sure I give it to her. Hold on for one second. Excuse me for one second. Ma'am, here is your sign, I promised I was going to give it back to you. Thank you. [Maddow lets out a snarky laugh] In all seriousness, Rachel. It is part of the policy platform of this convention to create the largest deportation effort in American history. That’s verbatim. And I know you, as a student of history, and forgive me to our viewers who might've heard me talk about this earlier in the evening, but for those tuning in at this late hour, I just I want to say, in 1954 after the Bracero Program where many Mexican guest workers were brought into this country, the Eisenhower administration deported, under an operation with a name that is so offence and racist I can’t – I'm not comfortable saying it on television, deported around 1 million Mexicans including some Mexican Americans. The program that’s being proposed the Trump administration would be far bigger than that, bigger than anything we’ve seen and bigger that anything in the first Trump term. And now, these are the issues that are coming up here. We heard from Peter Navarro tonight, who had a more rapturous, rousing ovation from anyone else I've heard, and said things like there’s blood on the hands of Alejandro Mayorkas. So, I heard Stephanie talking about it from the floor earlier. I just want to sort of throw may hat in the ring and say that the tone has changed considerably tonight (…)

As the Democratic ticket falls apart, the Media has been scrambling for a new derogatory plot to pin to the Republican Party. Unfortunately for NBC anchor and senior national correspondent Tom Llamas, his take at undermining the new vice presidential nominee backfired, highlighting the greater issues with Joe Biden. With a relatively unknown figure chosen as the running mate to former President Donald Trump, Sensor J.D. Vance (R-OH) was the new target for the Liberal Media. Hosts have criticized him, questioned his policies, their respective networks following suit. So when reporter Llamas attempted such a play, pointing out the supposedly hesitant nature Vance has had surrounding a VP debate, he thought he had a winning question. Danielle Alvarez, a spokesperson for the Trump campaign, however did more damage to the Biden Harris campaign than he could wish to do to the Republican one: LLAMAS: My first question to you is why has the campaign decided not to debate Vice President Kamala Harris? From our understanding the Vice President called JD Vance left a voicemail, then said let's do this, they spoke, and then the campaign put out a statement today saying you guys don't want to debate, why is that? ALVAREZ: Well first of all I would point out that President Trump did accept a debate on behalf of the Vice President with Fox News, and so Kamala Harris is certainly welcome to accept that debate. I would also point out the Biden camp and Democrats overall are in disarray. We have no idea who will be at the top of their ticket. There have been so many calls for Joe Biden to step down and so would it really be fair if Kamala ends up at the top of the ticket to accept a debate with a potential VP nominee that doesn't exist yet.     Digging himself into an even deeper hole, Llamas proceeded with an even more ignorant take: LLAMAS: It wouldn’t be, and I’m just throwing this question out there, that Senator Vance is not ready or isn’t prepared or may be is afraid to debate with the Vice President? ALVAREZ: Absolutely not! Let us be exceptionally clear, the Trump-Vance ticket has a record of success. We know what a four years of a Trump administration. We have put out a platform. I encourage everyone to go to Donald J Trump.com/platform. To understand how President Trump will turn this country around. And this really is a race about contrast the contrast of President Trump's success and the contrast of Joe Biden's failure and weakness, and JD Vance is an exceptional VP pick but lets wait to see what the Democratic ticket looks like. It's getting late Llamas, take a seat. The transcript is below, click “expand” to read: NBC Decision 2024 7/17/2023 08:18:15 PM EST (...) TOM LLAMAS: I’m here on the campaign floor with Danielle Alvarez, she's a campaign spokesperson for the Trump campaign. My first question to you is why has the campaign decided not to debate Vice President Kamala Harris? From our understanding the Vice President called JD Vance left a voicemail, then said let's do this, they spoke, and then the campaign put out a statement today saying you guys don't want to debate, why is that? DANIELLE ALVAREZ: Well first of all I would point out that President Trump did accept a debate on behalf of the Vice President with Fox News, and so Kamala Harris is certainly welcome to accept that debate. I would also point out the Biden camp and Democrats overall are in disarray. We have no idea who will be at the top of their ticket. There have been so many calls for Joe Biden to step down and so would it really be fair if Kamala ends up at the top of the ticket to accept a debate with a potential VP nominee that doesn't exist yet. LLAMAS: It wouldn’t be, and I’m just throwing this question out there, that Senator Vance is not ready or isn’t prepared or may be is afraid to debate with the Vice President? ALVAREZ: Absolutely not! Let us be exceptionally clear, the Trump-Vance ticket has a record of success. We know what a four years of a Trump administration. We have put out a platform. I encourage everyone to go to Donald J Trump.com/platform. To understand how President Trump will turn this country around. And this really is a race about contrast the contrast of President Trump's success and the contrast of Joe Biden's failure and weakness, and JD Vance is an exceptional VP pick but lets wait to see what the Democratic ticket looks like.

The bitter leftists at MSNBC’s prime-time studio panel limited their initial reactions to Ohio Senator JD Vance’s vice presidential acceptance speech to stylistic observations. Additionally, there was some light grousing about Vance’s exclusion of such MSNBC content bait as abortion and Project 2025. Even racial bomb-thrower Joy Reid showed some initial restraint.  But not Alex Wagner, no sirree. Alex Wagner peered into the text of that speech until she found a white supremacy: .@JDVance1: I want to my family to rest in our Eastern Kentucky plot Alex Wagner: WHITE SUPREMACY REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE pic.twitter.com/SPO12sQjxR — Jorge Bonilla (@BonillaJL) July 18, 2024 ALEX WAGNER: One of the things that stuck out to me was when he started talking about what America is. He said, “America is not just an idea. It is a group of people with a shared history and a common future.” The thing about America is that it’s not a group of people with shared history, in fact, I think a lot of people would argue it’s quite the opposite. It's a lot of people with different histories, different heritages. CHRIS HAYES: His in-laws don't share that history. WAGNER: Exactly. And that's the other piece of it. He talked- he goes- he went on a long sort of…paragraph, at least, about this plot in eastern Kentucky where his seven or six generations of his family are buried. And his hope is that his wife and he are eventually laid to rest there, and their kids follow them. And I sort of understand the idea of sharing the burial plot, but it also- it reveals someone who believes that the history that the family should inherit, and indeed, the history that should be determinative in the story of the Vance family, is the history of the eastern Kentucky Vances, and not the Vances from San Diego, which is where his wife is from and from where her Indian parents are from. But in America, it doesn't have to be the white male lineage that defines the family history, that that branch of the tree supersedes all else. And I just think the construction of this notion reveals a lot about someone who fundamentally believes in the supremacy of whiteness and masculinity, and it’s couched in a sort of halcyon re-visitation of his roots, but it is actually really revealing about what he thinks matters, and who America is, and that America is a place for people with a shared Western background. And that is the idea of America. That is the nation of America that he wants to resurrect. Imagine being in the shoes of Joe Scarborough, watching this submoronic hot take after getting benched on Monday in furtherance of “lowering the temperature”. We may have just witnessed the first known case of Vance Derangement Syndrome on national television. How else to explain Wagner’s crazy transmutation of the desire to be buried alongside one’s family into “the supremacy of whiteness and masculinity”? Has the temperature been lowered to everyone’s satisfaction? “Unity” and “lowering the temperature” notwithstanding, Wagner’s unhinged rant leaves one thinking that Vance missed an opportunity to renew his epic blast at miserable cat ladies who want to make the rest of the country miserable.   

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Politics Price Controls Are Still Stupid A second Biden administration seems set on reviving the favorite economic trick of the bad old ’70s. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images) The Republicans are in the midst of their convention, cutting capers and showing off the assorted rascalities they wish to perpetrate if the American people pass them the baton in November. There is no shortage of reporting on it, not least in The American Conservative’s own pages—we’ve covered the bare facts in copious detail, and rendered commentary on the good and the troubling in the GOP’s current trajectory. (Be sure to keep reading our breaking hits at the State of the Union blog and our reporting on the main site—and, of course, subscribe!) There has been no shortage of drama at Milwaukee, following the attempt on the former President Donald Trump’s life and the Ohioan Sen. J.D. Vance’s selection as his running mate, sealing the apparent supremacy of America-First conservatism in the GOP. As the antics at Milwaukee are under way, it is worth looking ahead to the assorted rascalities President Joe Biden’s Democrats wish to perpetrate if they win. Plenty of these are old news: codifying Roe; raising corporate taxes; continuing the Albrightian orgy of foreign adventurism, whatever the expenses or dangers. (Interestingly, the “green” platform plank has taken the rhetorical back seat—an apparent tacit recognition of the expensive failure of “green” policies in America and the wipeout of green movements in European elections this year. Let it never be said the Democrats are wholly insensible to political reality!)  There are, however, some fresh new pieces of thinkery coming from the left side of the aisle. Biden has referred to two in particular in recent appearances: an attack on medical debt and an attack on rent hikes. The medical debt scheme is, as yet, shadowy and undefined; thanks to the Anglo-American legal tradition, outright debt forgiveness is a tricky proposition in the eyes of the courts, which is why the great crusade against student-loan balances has been qualified down to a few exhibition bouts with marginal cases. The rent control scheme, however, has hove into clearer view thanks to the industry of the Washington Post, which is back in the amanuensis’s seat after a brief, embarrassing stint in the anti-Biden panickers’ choir. The administration plans to implement a 5-percent rent increase cap on landlords with more than 50 existing units—existing only, so as not to discourage building. Much as we may privately welcome the return of the feel-bad ’70s in certain respects, economic policy isn’t one. Price controls generally and rent controls specifically have been tried many, many times and found wanting, which is why your average national politico is shy about suggesting they might work now. (See the hesitation that attended the former Prime Minister Rishi Sunak in last year’s suggested revival of that Heath-era bogey, “voluntary” price controls.) Housing prices are determined by a few discrete factors: overall inflation, interest rates, and supply. Inflation is down, although prices are still much higher than they were three years ago; interest rates remain relatively high, and probably will for the foreseeable future; supply is artificially squeezed, mainly by regulation and zoning restrictions.  Capping rents addresses only symptoms, and it addresses them in a way that aggravates the other underlying problems by reducing the capital available to landlords for development. (Landlords, dislikable as they are as a class, also suffer the effects of inflation and high interest rates, and tend to raise rents to cover their own costs rather than out of premeditated villainy.) It might be argued that it might work as a temporary measure in tandem with a massive state-subsidized development program to get around the pinch on available capital, but that would again set the money supply on the inflationary slide. Painful as it may be—especially for a liberal administration like Biden’s, which believes in government by brain trust—nobody has found a better method for dealing with housing shortages than letting the market rip. The housing crisis of post-War Britain ran practically unabated for nearly 30 years until the brain trusts of several governments declared defeat and handed things over at last to the builders.  In his first term, Biden has, time and again, cast himself as a transformational president, particularly as a new FDR. This is sometimes pathetic—the failed rural broadband plan was clearly modeled on rural electrification. It is sometimes very dangerous—our foreign policy (down to the effort to frame Ukraine as the UK, complete with a lend-lease program and a tinpot Churchill) is a tribute act to the Second World War. While we have our own reservations about the New Deal and the Rooseveltian settlement, there is at least a touch of grandeur there to emulate. In his second term, it looks as if he intends to reenact a far shabbier chapter of history—the desperate last gasps of the postwar arrangement. Biden may not be able to remember the recent past, but that doesn’t mean the rest of us have to pretend it hasn’t happened. The post Price Controls Are Still Stupid appeared first on The American Conservative.

Politics The Teamsters’ RNC Speech Represents the GOP’s Past—and Its Future The plight of American truckers is an opportunity for the new working-class Republican coalition. Credit: ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS/AFP via Getty Images After a weekend when the world was shaken by the attempted assassination of the former (and perhaps soon to be re-elected) President Donald Trump, yet another historical event took place at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee on Monday evening, where Trump—bandaged and having shown the world what kind of guts he has in the face of this attempt on his life—was himself a smiling witness.  For the first time ever, the leader of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, Sean O’Brien, was invited to address the RNC. This has caused some consternation on the part of the commentariat, left and right, whom O’Brien himself invoked on stage as a reason to accept Trump’s invitation to speak.Though we often associate organized labor with the Democrats, it wasn’t always thus. The Teamsters, at one time, were the most powerful labor union in America; at the height of their power, under the leadership of Jimmy Hoffa, they supported the Republican Party, at least all the way back to 1960 in the run between Richard Nixon and JFK. This is, perhaps, an explanation of why the Kennedy clan spent years dragging Hoffa into court, and also of Nixon’s pardon of Hoffa in 1971 after a five-year stretch in prison.Hoffa, having grown up in a single-parent home after his father’s death and working full time from the age of 14, was an outsider in the labor movement; he was not an ideologue, and rejected the relationships with communism and socialism that leaders of other major unions were engaged in.1960 and 2024, however, are many worlds apart, and O’Brien rules over a much smaller kingdom. The Teamsters only represent approximately 5 percent of truckers in America, and it has been 44 years since the party of labor, under Jimmy Carter, passed the Motor Carrier Act of 1980, the consequences of which have devastated membership in the Teamsters and led to a severe reduction in truckers’ wages over the last four decades.Trucking has a lot of problems, and O’Brien is to be commended for appearing in Milwaukee, and particularly for one of his comments: “I will always speak for America and the American Worker, both union, and non union.”I have been a non-union trucker for 27 years of my adult life, across 4 different countries, including the United States, where I have put miles down in every one of the lower 48. I have some suggestions for the incoming administration—it is seems obvious now that the Dems are done—and hopefully O’Brien would agree with me about the import of the problems my suggestions seek to address. O’Brien repeatedly invokes the “American Worker”; does Mr. O’Brien understand that immigrant groups are constantly abused in the trucking industry, often by their homeboys who are already here? Does he understand that Eastern European gangsters are actively operating in the freight brokerage market, and are now holding American companies at ransom to have their loads delivered? Should America’s trucking industry be used as an ATM for those in other countries to extract value, and thus reduce the share of the pie for American workers, while illegally holding loads of valuable product hostage? O’Brien is a smart guy, and though he barely mentioned immigration or the influx of illegal migrants into the American labor market, surely he understands what is going on here. I quote his speech once again: “Never forget, American workers own this nation. We are not renters. We are not tenants. But the corporate elite treat us like squatters, and that is a crime we’ve got to fix.” I couldn’t agree more, and I hope that O’Brien works closely with President Trump and Vice President Vance to put an end to the use of foreign indentured servants on the roads in America, who not only undercut Americans wages, but also put the rest of the motoring public at great risk. The Teamsters, God bless ‘em, have, like myself, been at odds with corporate lobby groups like the American Trucking Association, who have for many decades now propagated a myth of a truck driver shortage, which has mostly been used to convince politicians that soaking the taxpayer for their truck driving schools is a solution to a retention problem that often sees large trucking firms go through nearly 100 percent of their employees annually. The Republican Party, however, has a long history of listening to such groups as the ATA, rather than truckers themselves, and being more than happy to shovel taxpayer dollars at businesses who are unwilling to fix their own labor problems. O’Brien again: “We need trade policies that put American Workers first. We need corporate welfare reform.”Once again, O’Brien and I are simpatico, as corporate welfare has been the “solution” to a problem created by the Motor Carrier Act of 1980. This “solution” has itself created many more problems—from the imposition of the surveillance state onto truckers to “nuclear verdicts” which have forced the insurance industry into a corner and made it ever more difficult for trucking companies to insure themselves and to the above mentioned reliance on foreign indentured servants to move our freight. No wonder many truckers give up on the business and look for greener pastures. The Republican Party is often associated with a pro-business platform, yet they often decry state assistance for private enterprise. With the rise of pro-worker populism in the party, as evidenced by the actions of Missouri’s Sen. Josh Hawley and the addition of Vance to Trump’s ticket, perhaps the Republicans can have some circumspection on the policies they have supported for so long—policies that have seen the taxpayer finance the further erosion of the wage floor and job conditions for one of America’s archetypal blue collar jobs. Maybe the Republicans can even bring themselves to end a wage disparity that keeps truckers from being paid the overtime that nearly every other worker in America enjoys and help put more money in the pockets of millions of American families. “Teamsters for Trump” is not without precedent in history, and perhaps the Teamsters, among other advocates for truckers like the Owner Operator/Independent Drivers Association, can work with the Trump administration to make a better future for all truckers in America, their families, and the nation. The post The Teamsters’ RNC Speech Represents the GOP’s Past—and Its Future appeared first on The American Conservative.