After Trump shooting, GOP called for unity. Do their words at RNC match their actions?

Since the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump on Saturday evening, Trump and Republicans have been pushing a message of unity for the country.

“I think it would be very bad if I got up and started going wild about how horrible everybody is, and how corrupt and crooked, even if it’s true,” Trump told reporters Sunday while traveling on his plane to Milwaukee.

At the Republican National Committee, a lot of speakers picked up on that theme. “He is bringing all of us together. I know all of you are angry but now is the time,” South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem told the convention. “You can’t win people over by arguing with them.”

Trump Republicans for years have been feisty and arguably argumentative, and many, including those attending the convention, questioned whether the unity message would survive the week.

Unity

North Carolina delegate Michele Woodhouse told McClatchy on Sunday afternoon that she was most interested in what her state’s Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson would say when he took the stage Monday night.

Robinson is a rising star in the Republican Party, known for his controversial speeches and social media posts attacking anyone from women to Black people to the LGBTQ community to Jews.

“He’s one who tends to be incredibly bombastic,” Woodhouse said. “What does he do?”

But when Robinson took the stage, his speech was subdued. He kept it under four minutes and told his Cinderella story. A story of growing up in a family of 12 with an abusive, alcoholic father and then struggling, himself, to make ends meet as a factory worker in Greensboro, North Carolina.

It wasn’t until he went viral on social media for a gun-rights speech he made at a city council meeting that the Republican Party took notice of him and he was elected, in 2020, as lieutenant governor.

“There is hope,” Robinson said in his convention speech. “And I’m proof. My wife and I never gave up. We kept our faith. We worked hard and made it through those tough times. Now I stand before you on the verge of becoming the first Black governor of North Carolina.”

Woodhouse said on Tuesday morning that Robinson’s speech was well-recieved by the RNC delegation.

“His message was not only about unity but prosperity,” Woodhouse said.

But Robinson’s speech was something of an outlier.

Division

One of the first convention speakers this week was Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., known for her incendiary rhetoric.

“For far too long the establishment has sold us out. They promised unity and delivered division,” she said. “They promised peace and brought war. They promised visibility and brought us transgender visibility on Easter Sunday.”

She insisted, “There are only two genders. … we won’t shy away from speaking that simple truth ever.”

International Day of Transgender Visibility is a day meant to honor transgender people and spotlight the discrimination they often face. It is held every year on March 31, which this year fell on Easter Sunday.

Others had the same tone. David Sacks, former chief executive officer of Yammer, a social networking company, told the convention Biden has been “gaslighting the entire country about his fitness to serve” and is engaged in a “demented policy that takes us to the brink of World War III.” He also called Biden “senile.”

Biden and Trump are four years apart in age, but Biden has faced far more criticism for being too old for a second term in office. In June, the opponents debated each other in Atlanta on CNN and Biden’s answers left people concerned after they trailed off and often seemed confounding.

That’s led to calls from Democrats for Biden to end his campaign, a conversation only stifled by the assassination attempt on Trump.

Sen. Ron Johnson, a Republican from Wisconsin, caught ire Monday night after calling Democrats “a clear and present danger to the country,” after promising unity.

Johnson told a PBS New Hour reporter that when he got on stage, the speech he intended to deliver prior to the Saturday night’s shooting was loaded on the teleprompter, instead of his revised speech.

Delegates were not as pointed as Monday night’s speakers, but they said they wouldn’t back down from the sort of comments they’ve been making for some time.

Take the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol. Trump has repeatedly sympathized with the rioters, saying he could pardon them.

“The January 6 people need to be pardoned. It was a setup,” said Bobbie Coleman, chairman of the Hardin County Republican Party, in Kentucky.

Jerry Rovner, a retired Naval officer from Pawleys island, S.C., was upset about diversity, equity and inclusion, which many companies and colleges use to attract and retain minority workers and students.

“It’s weakened all our lives,” he said. “People of color often don’t like such policies because “people think you’re there because you’re a woman or person of color.”

Finding unity

But Jason Simmons, chairman of the North Carolina Republican Party, said there are many things that unite all Americans.

“We want to be able to take care of our families,” Simmons said. “We want to be able to have safety and security. We want to be able to have economic opportunities. Those are things that are universal.”

He added that it’s easy to get caught up in the small details of what divides the two parties, but there’s so much that unites Americans and he said the convention gives them the opportunity to highlight those things.

But with mixed messages on unity, state Rep. Jarrod Lowery, an alternate delegate from North Carolina, weighed in on how both sides can come together before November.

“We’re no better than anybody else,” Lowery said. “We’re all people and if we could get back to that.”

Lowery said that leaders need to set the example that Republicans should not be looking at a Democrat as if they’re the enemy, or vice versa. He said everybody has the same basic needs.

“We’re all human,” Lowery said. “Everybody should be treated with a certain level of decency and respect, and I think that’s what everybody wants.”