Utah RNC delegates: Trump assassination attempt has revved Republicans

The Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin kicks off on July 15, 2024. (Courtesy of Chayse Leavitt)

Chayse Leavitt, 18, said he was watching former President Donald Trump’s rally in Butler Pennsylvania live from his home in Smithfield on Saturday when he heard the gunfire.

Leavitt — the youngest member of Utah’s delegation in Milwaukee this week for the Republican National Convention — said he watched Trump put his hand to his ear and duck while Secret Service agents piled around him. 

“That’s when my heart just immediately sunk,” he told Utah News Dispatch in a phone call on Monday, adding that he and his family quickly realized “it was an assassination attempt. … We were all just shocked. We were like, ‘What just happened?’” 

But as soon as Trump stood, pumping his fist and appearing to shout the word “fight” to the crowd while blood dripped down his face, Leavitt said, “there was an energy and fire ignited inside of me that I’ve never felt before.”

“I’m more ready now to vote for President Trump than I was even earlier that day. I mean, I was in full support of (Trump) then, but I’m in even more support of (him) now, ” Leavitt said, describing Trump as “courageous” and “heroic.” 

Leavitt, attending the Republican National Convention as one of Utah’s alternate delegates, was one of four Utahns who spoke to the Dispatch from the convention Monday. All four said the shooting that’s being investigated as an assassination attempt on the former president’s life sparked a sober but even deeper fiery resolve in Republicans from Utah and across the country in support of Trump.

“There’s two sides of the coin,” said former Utah Rep. Kim Coleman, vice-chair and national committee woman-elect of the Utah Republican Party. She pointed to the “sobering” killing of Corey Comperatore, the former fire chief who was shot while shielding his family from gunfire, as well as a resolve that political violence “is not acceptable. Candidates should feel safe. The people should feel safe.” 

“There’s a lot of energy here,” said state Sen. Mike Kennedy, R-Alpine, a Utah delegate who is also fresh off the campaign trail after winning the Republican primary in the race for Utah’s 3rd Congressional District. “The delegates, they’re ready to fight with him. … He continues to push forward. And, frankly, the miraculous survival and the capacity he has to serve our country, it’s an exciting time.” 

Trump was officially nominated as the GOP presidential candidate on Monday night alongside his newly-announced running mate, Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance. In a roll call, all 40 of Utah’s delegates cast their votes for Trump, CBS News reported. 

“It has really revved up the patriotism here,” said Kim DelGrosso, of Highland, one of Utah’s delegates, her voice cracking with emotion when describing the moment RNC attendees began singing the national anthem. “I think that it really (drove) home that life is fragile.”

“This is a man that dodged a bullet” that was aimed at his head, DelGrosso said. “Let’s just face it, this is a headshot. And we’re not sitting here having to watch our nation explode over that. We are watching God’s hand.”

A ‘wake up call’ for unity — yet finger pointing persists

The Utah delegates said they look forward to hearing from Trump on Thursday, when he’s expected to give a speech aimed at uniting the nation after the shooting, which came at a time when political polarization has hit a fever pitch in the U.S. The former president told the Washington Examiner he scrapped his original speech planned for the convention and rewrote it in light of his assassination attempt. 

“It is a chance to bring the country together. I was given that chance,” he said, the outlet reported.

The shooting “really gives an opportunity for the country to unite,” Leavitt said. “Because it’s never OK when a political leader is shot, whether you’re a Republican or Democrat. … Political violence should not happen, and I think that’s something that people can unite around, and they can unite around President Trump’s optimistic message for the future.” 

President Joe Biden has also called for unity in the wake of the assassination attempt, saying “there is no place in America for this kind of violence or any violence for that matter.” His Democratic campaign also pulled television ads after the president urged Americans to “lower the temperature in our politics.”

But there’s a real question as to how long these calls for unity will last — or whether the shooting will indeed act as a wake up call to the state of U.S. politics. Peter Baker, chief White House correspondent for The New York Times who has covered the past five presidential elections, wrote in a Sunday analysis that the attempt on Trump’s life seems more “likely to tear America further apart” than it is to unite. 

“Within minutes of the shooting, the air was filled with anger, bitterness, suspicion and recrimination,” he wrote. “Fingers were pointed, conspiracy theories advanced and a country already bristling with animosity fractured even more.”

Trump has been one of the most polarizing and inflammatory characters in American politics. He has a “long history of encouraging violence,” Baker wrote. “He urged supporters to beat up protesters at rallies, cheered a Republican congressman for body-slamming a reporter, called for looters and shoplifters to be shot, made light of the attack on Mr. Pelosi and promised pardons to Jan. 6 rioters. When some of his supporters chanted ‘Hang Mike Pence!’ on Jan. 6, Mr. Trump told aides that maybe the vice president deserved it because he had defied efforts to overturn the 2020 election.”

Vance, two hours after the Saturday shooting, laid the blame at the Biden campaign’s feet in a post on X. 

“The central premise of the Biden campaign is that President Donald Trump is an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs,” Vance wrote. “That rhetoric led directly to President Trump’s attempted assassination.”

So while finger pointing persists even amid calls for unity, it’s not clear whether the shooting will force a time of introspection in the U.S. that will depolarize political rhetoric — at least long term. 

To Kennedy — a physician who based his congressional campaign on “healing” America — the shooter was clearly a “radical” who is not representative of everyday Americans. 

“It should be a wake up call, but it is not a reflection of most of the citizens of the U.S.,” he said. “The vast majority are peace loving people and believe that we should win on merits with these debates, we do not win with violence.” 

To DelGrosso, based on her experience at the Republican National Convention on Monday, she said there appears to be a “sincere” desire for introspection even within the Republican Party. She said she appreciated Melania Trump’s statement urging Americans to “not forget that different opinions, policy, and political games are inferior to love.” 

“If people could just kind of look inward and understand that it’s the hardening of our hearts, and it’s a softness that needs to start happening,” DelGrosso said. “I feel like people mistake being, you know, attacking and accusatory as being patriotic.”

She said some have questioned whether it would take another 9/11-scale event to “bring us together,” and the assassination attempt on Trump was likely a red flag “that we are not in the control that we think we are. We need a lot more people looking into people’s eyes and trying to have an understanding.” 

Utah’s divided Republican Party

All four Utah delegates who spoke with the Dispatch Monday were passionate Trump supporters — but they come from a state that has a complex past with the former president. 

In 2016, highly conservative Utah only sided with him with 45.5% of the vote, while 21.5% opted for a longshot third-party candidate, Evan McMullin, and 27.5% went with Democrat Hillary Clinton. In 2020, a larger majority voted for Trump (58.13%), while 37.65% chose Joe Biden. 

In local politics, it’s taken longer for Utahns to accept candidates that align themselves with Trump. This year’s Republican primary showed Utahns continue to balk at MAGA-style local candidates, opting to re-elect incumbent Gov. Spencer Cox instead of his challenger, Rep. Phil Lyman, who ran a MUGA (“Make Utah Great Again”) campaign. 

Both Leavitt and DelGrosso said they supported Lyman wholeheartedly. While they both embraced calls for unity Monday, they also expressed misgivings about Cox’s “Disagree Better” campaign, his yearlong effort as chairman of the National Association of Governors to discourage hyperpartisanship, polarization, tribalism and political hate. 

“I think he needs to take his own advice and maybe not say that he’s not going to vote for Trump,” DelGrosso said of Cox, noting the governor has said he hasn’t voted for Trump or other major presidential candidates since Mitt Romney’s campaign in 2012, opting for write-in candidates instead, and he continues to say he will not vote for Trump. 

“He is going to be who his party votes in, and so he can disagree better but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t support or vote for him,” DelGrosso said. 

To Kennedy, voting for a third-party candidate is a “wasted vote” in the U.S.’s two-party system, and it comes down to a binary choice between Trump and Biden. “With that vote, the question that I and others would have to ask is who’s going to preserve the constitution and who’s going to fight for the foundation of our country?” Trump, he said, is the clear choice. 

But as for calls for unity and whether Cox’s “Disagree Better” campaign has a role to play in the conversation around toning down political discourse, Kennedy said some form of “disagreeing better” is already in Utah’s DNA. 

“I appreciate Gov. Cox pointing out an inherent capacity that Utahns have to disagree better, and frankly we’re doing that so well naturally we just need to market it better so people across the country can see,” he said. 

Coleman said primary elections are always a “contest of ideas,” but now it’s time for Republicans to coalesce around the party and Trump.

“Calls to unify, calls for peaceful discourse and respect,” she said, “are always appropriate.”

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