Donald Trump tells rally attendees he’s ‘not going to be nice,’ days after Joe Biden drops out

Former President Donald Trump rejected calls to turn down the temperature in his first campaign rally since President Joe Biden withdrew from the 2024 election.

The Republican Party nominee said there was pressure for him “to be nice” following the failed assassination attempt on July 13 when a bullet narrowly missed his head and injured the top part of his right ear.

But with Trump’s 81-year-old opponent dropping out and endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris, who quickly received the backing of prominent Democrats and party delegates, the former president told supporters he couldn’t afford to strike a more moderate tone.

“You know, I was supposed to be nice. They say something happened to me when I got shot, I became nice,” Trump said at the Wednesday rally in Charlotte, North Carolina. “When you’re dealing with these people — they’re very dangerous people — when you’re dealing with them you can’t be too nice, you really can’t be. So, if you don’t mind, I’m not going to be nice, is that OK?”

The crowd roared in approval.

Did shooting change Trump’s tone?

National publications had reported — and Republican politicians, including Utah Gov. Spencer Cox, had expressed hope — that Trump’s close brush with death could potentially change his combative approach to politics.

Sources close to Trump even used words like “serene,” “spiritual” and “existential” to describe the change that had come over the former president, who appeared visibly calmer than normal at the Republican National Convention, Politico reported.

“People have been trying to ask him to do this for years, and he’s never said things like he said in the past week,” Cox said during last week’s PBS news conference, referring to Trump’s, and his wife Melania’s, statements following the assassination attempt and his speech at the RNC.

The day after the assassination attempt, after prayer and “contemplation,” Cox reversed his longtime position on Trump, writing a private letter of support before publicly endorsing him in the belief that the former president would be a more unifying figure than in the past.

“My commitment to him was that I would help him try to lower the temperature in this country, and I sincerely hope — from what I’ve heard from people around him — that he’s committed to that,” Cox said at his monthly press conference last Friday.

Cox communicated his change of heart to the GOP presidential nominee in a personal, hand-delivered letter, the Deseret News first reported hours before the Friday press conference where he clarified the extent of his support. Cox said he would vote for Trump for the first time in November, after writing in candidates in the 2016 and 2020 general elections.

Thursday’s New York Times/Siena College poll found that Trump’s strong lead in a Trump-Biden rematch appeared to narrow with Harris now likely to top the Democratic ticket. The poll found Trump ahead of Harris by 1 percentage point, compared to his 6-percentage-point lead against Biden in the previous poll.