MILWAUKEE—Happy Friday! Thanks for sticking with us all week. We’ll be back to our regularly scheduled Dispatch Politics programming next week, but if you liked the daily updates, we’ll do them again next month in Chicago.

• Former President Donald Trump was not the only speaker to go off script during the final night of the Republican National Convention on Thursday. Retired professional wrestler Hulk Hogan began his speech with an extended ad-libbed riff. From the floor, one could see the text on the teleprompter moving up and down during his freestyle portion, as if the operator was trying to remind Hogan to read it. The riff, which saw him tear off his shirt to reveal a Trump-Vance 2024 tank top and included references to his wrestling career, made up almost half the nine-minute speech. We bet the guy on the floor wearing a “Hulkamania” shirt on the floor enjoyed that.
• Prior to Trump’s speech, a hype video played in Fiserv Forum that detailed Trump’s path to the presidency. It compared President Joe Biden’s approach to border security to The Andy Griffith Show’s comically incompetent deputy, Barney Fife, drawing a big laugh from attendees.
• Last night’s programming also featured multiple live musical interludes. At one point, a group of attendees on the floor began to dance in a conga line. “Join the Trump Train!” the woman at the front of the line said. 
• Overheard Thursday evening: Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, walking briskly into the Fiserv Forum, to someone in her entourage: “What was that bullsh-t?” Greene and her team of handlers had just gotten past a slight holdup near the side entrance to the arena, where convention volunteers were closely checking credentials.

• President Joe Biden is expected to make a “major announcement” regarding his status on the Democratic presidential ticket in the coming days, The Hill reported Thursday. Biden’s team has publicly pushed back on the story, but reports suggest the president is seriously considering whether to drop out more than three weeks after his disastrous debate performance and could leave the race as soon as this weekend. Biden weighs his future as he stays isolated at his Delaware home after being diagnosed with COVID on Wednesday. 
• Former President Barack Obama is reportedly casting doubt on Biden’s ability to defeat Trump this November in private conversations with allies, the Washington Post first reported Thursday. Obama’s concerns come as other prominent Democrats, including former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, have reportedly urged Biden directly to exit the race. 
• Democratic Sens. Jon Tester of Montana and Martin Heinrich of New Mexico, both running for reelection, called for Biden to step out of the race on Thursday and Friday morning, respectively. The duo are the second and third senators to join the growing list of congressional Democrats publicly pushing for a change to their party’s presidential ticket. While Heinrich is favored to win a third term, Tester faces an uphill battle against Republican challenger Tim Sheehy in deep-red Montana and has attempted to distance himself politically from the unpopular president. 

Donald Trump accepted his third consecutive Republican presidential nomination Thursday, and for the first time he’s the prohibitive November frontrunner, with Democratic efforts to push President Joe Biden out of the race sparking fresh uncertainty over exactly whom he’ll face this fall.

But if Trump’s circumstances are new, the former president appeared the same politician he’s always been while delivering a roughly 90-minute stemwinder to close out what has been an unusually unified Republican convention. After surviving an assassination attempt Saturday, the talk of the four-day gathering was that Trump was a transformed man who would deliver a speech that reflected his escape from death. Yet after a compelling opener, the address was slowly overtaken by, essentially, a Trump campaign rally, with its familiar hard-edged script.

To start, Trump recounted the harrowing details of a shooting during a campaign event in Pennsylvania that left one attendee dead and injured the former president’s ear—and expressed heartfelt gratitude for being alive and able to deliver his nomination acceptance address. Next, the former president listed the accomplishments of his White House administration, vowed to deliver a repeat performance if he defeats Biden, and aired his grievances. It was as though two entirely different speeches were smashed together: one captivating and emotional, the other combative and gratuitous. 

“I’m not supposed to be here tonight. Not supposed to be here,” Trump said from the stage of Fiserv Forum, prompting chants of “Yes, you are!” from the packed arena. “Thank you. But I’m not. And I’ll tell you. I stand before you in this arena only by the grace of almighty God.” 

It was about this moment that Trump stepped away from the podium and walked, stage right and to the rear, to a mannequin draped in the firefighting uniform and helmet of Corey Comperatore, the 50-year-old Pennsylvania rally-goer killed by a bullet meant for the former president. Trump kissed the helmet before returning to the podium and making an eloquent appeal to national unity. 

“The discord and division in our society must be healed. We must heal it quickly. As Americans, we are bound together by a single fate and a shared destiny. We rise together. Or we fall apart,” Trump said. “I am running to be president for all of America, not half of America, because there is no victory in winning for half of America.”

“In an age when our politics too often divide us, now is the time to remember that we are all fellow citizens,” Trump continued. “I am here tonight to lay out a vision for the whole nation. To every citizen, whether you’re a young or old, man or woman, Democrat, Republican or independent, black or white, Asian or Hispanic, I extend to you a hand of loyalty and of friendship. Together, we will lead America to new heights of greatness like the world has never seen before.”

And then, Trump talked not about what he would do to turn down the temperature and foster national unity, but what his political opponents should do.

“We must not criminalize dissent or demonize political disagreement, which is what’s been happening in our country lately, at a level that nobody has ever seen before,” Trump said. “In that spirit, the Democrat party should immediately stop weaponizing the justice system and labeling their political opponent as an enemy of democracy. Especially since that is not true. In fact, I am the one saving democracy for the people of our country.”

Trump proceeded to mention “Crazy Nancy Pelosi,” referring to the Democratic congresswoman from California and former speaker of the House; recalled an episode of “Deface the Nation,” his nickname for the CBS News Sunday public affairs show Face the Nation; and alluded to unfounded claims he has made, consistently, since losing to Biden in 2020, that the election was stolen.

“We had that horrible, horrible result that we’ll never let happen again. The election result. We’re never going to let that happen again. They used COVID to cheat. We’re never going to let it happen again,” the former president said.

The Biden campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon responded with a lengthy indictment of Trump’s speech. “Tonight, Donald Trump rambled on for well over an hour,” she said in a statement. “He sought to find problems with America, not to provide solutions.” 

Less than 24 hours after Trump accepted the nomination, his lead over Biden stood at 3 percentage points nationally and 4.3 points in the key swing states. Those two margins are substantial, having steadily grown in the weeks after the president’s disastrous debate performance. Top Democrats are responding by calling, in ever greater numbers, for Biden to exit the race, concluding that voters’ concerns about the president’s age and infirmities can not be reversed or overcome.

Where just days ago it was thought the effort to replace Biden atop the Democratic ticket was dead, speculation is increasing by the day that he could exit the race in the coming weeks or sooner, making way for Vice President Kamala Harris or another standard bearer to be nominated at the party’s Chicago convention in late August.

The morning after J.D. Vance delivered his vice presidential nomination speech at the Republican National Convention, he spoke at a breakfast to a few hundred social conservatives gathered at The Pfister hotel in Milwaukee, where he addressed charges that social conservatives have been sidelined by Donald Trump’s Republican party. 

“There has been a lot of grumbling in the past few weeks that the Republican Party of now and the Republican Party of the future is not going to be a place that’s welcoming to social conservatives,” Vance told those gathered at Faith and Freedom Coalition prayer breakfast. “From the bottom of my heart, I want to say that is not true. Social conservatives have a seat at this table, and they always will, so long as I have any influence in this party, and President Trump, I know agrees.”

In so many words, Vance proceeded to make the argument that Trump was engaging in a prudential and incrementalist strategy: 

“One of the great virtues of his approach to politics—that his critics will slander in every which way—but President Trump is uniquely capable and aware of politics being the art of the possible. What can we accomplish in the here and now? How do we advance the ball one yard before we advance it 10 yards before we advance it to a touchdown? And so I’d ask my social conservative friends, as you see the administration unfold, as you see the campaign unfold, remember that this is a guy who delivered for social conservatives more than any president in my 39 years of life. I think he deserves a little bit of grace, and he deserves a little bit of trust, and I hope that we will all provide that to him. I certainly know that as his running mate, I will.”

But there’s plenty of evidence that the 2024 Republican National Convention sidelined social conservatism in general and the pro-life cause in particular. The pro-life plank of the platform was changed for the first time in 40 years so it more closely reflected Donald Trump’s views. On the first night of the convention, a primetime speaking slot was handed to “SlutWalk” leader Amber Rose, who recently and publicly praised “satanists” because they help women “get abortions in southern states.” Vance himself did not mention the right to life, or make any allusion to protecting the unborn, in his nomination speech Wednesday night. Nor did Trump take time to spare a thought for the unborn in his meandering 90-minute speech on Thursday night. 

Even before a crowd of social conservatives, Vance did not mention the unborn, nor did the evangelical Speaker of the House Mike Johnson when he addressed the same breakfast. Both men preferred to focus their remarks on how God protected Donald Trump from assassination last Saturday in Butler, Pennsylvania. Although Arizona Senate candidate Kari Lake flip-flopped this spring to become functionally pro-choice, she was also welcomed as a speaker at the Faith and Freedom Coalition event where she spoke, among other topics, about the awfulness of the mainstream media.

Major pro-life organizations have long supported a strategy of prudential incrementalism toward ending elective abortion. Vance himself only hinted at that strategy on Thursday morning—and it’s an argument he failed to articulate when he recently indicated on Meet the Press that he supports access to the abortion drug mifepristone. “I haven’t really had a chance to talk to him about that, but I’m sure I’ll be able to do that,” Faith and Freedom Coalition Chairman Ralph Reed told Dispatch Politics when asked about Vance’s comments about supporting access to the abortion pill. “I’ll have that conversation with him in private.”

“I don’t have any reservations at all about where J.D. Vance is on the life issue,” Reed said when asked if he was disappointed Vance didn’t mention the right to life in his RNC speech. “He’s 100 percent pro-life. He’s a Roman Catholic convert. He’s serious in his faith. He’s been a reliable pro-life vote in the Senate. He’ll be a pro-life vice president.”

A well-run convention of any size is a logistical miracle. Venues, lodging, security, programming, entertainment, even making sure you’ve got the right lights on—there are countless ways for things to go wrong, so it’s remarkable when most everything seems to go right. To achieve this with a national political convention under any circumstances would be impressive, but it’s particularly so when the party’s presidential nominee was shot less than 48 hours before it begins.

By this measure, Republicans scored a resounding success in Milwaukee. “This has been a pretty awesome convention,” said Michael Whatley, chairman of the Republican National Committee, as the evening festivities began Thursday. And it wasn’t just typical bluster from a party chairman. From entering the security perimeter to the balloon drop at the end of Donald Trump’s speech, nearly everything at the RNC went off without a hitch, even after months of shakeup and turmoil in committee leadership. 

There were no protracted fights over the platform or delegate rules on the floor. No one addressing the convention (with a couple of notable exceptions) veered far off script, and each night’s slate of speakers hewed to a cohesive theme. Protests outside the security perimeter were minimal and not disruptive. Reporters had fairly easy access to the convention floor. There were plenty of food and drink options inside the security perimeter as well as just outside it.

Milwaukee appeared well-equipped to handle the thousands of delegates, activists, donors, vendors, and journalists who descended here. The host city’s geography was a big help, with the scenic Milwaukee River running through downtown serving as a natural barrier on one side of the security perimeter; police boats patrolled the waterway throughout the week. The three main venues—the Fiserv Forum, the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Panther Arena, and the Baird Center convention facility—were right next to each other and easy to walk between. Despite the added security challenges following last Saturday’s assassination attempt on Trump, the increase in police personnel, composed of local and state departments from the surrounding region, seemed to make things like security checkpoints and sweeps run more smoothly. 

And inside Fiserv, the convention was a well-produced, entertaining event that not only showed a unified Republican party but also a GOP seeming to have fun together for the first time in years. There was palpable relief at Trump’s survival, a sense of giddiness at the Democrats’ struggles to decide whether to keep President Joe Biden on the ticket, and enthusiastic receptions for the motley crew of celebrities on hand—from Tucker Carlson and Hulk Hogan to Lee Greenwood and Amber Rose—along with political heavy hitters such as House speaker Mike Johnson and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.

It’s not always clear what an expertly run convention bodes for a party, and a lot can still happen between now and Election Day. But throw a triumphant week in Milwaukee on the pile of reasons for Republicans to feel great about the race.

“LET TRUMP-A-MANIA RUN WILD, BROTHER! LET TRUMP-A-MANIA RULE AGAIN! LET TRUMP-A-MANIA MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”

— Retired professional wrestler Hulk Hogan firing up the crowd during the final night of the RNC in Milwaukee, July 18, 2024.