C T Online Desk: Donald Trump won the formal nomination Monday as the Republican presidential candidate and picked a right-wing loyalist for his running mate, kicking off a triumphalist party convention in the wake of the weekend’s failed assassination attempt.
The Milwaukee gathering erupted into cheers as Trump announced 39-year-old Ohio Senator J.D. Vance as his vice presidential pick, rewarding a one-time harsh critic who has become one of his most uncompromising supporters.
“As Vice President, J.D. will continue to fight for our Constitution, stand with our Troops, and will do everything he can to help me MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN,” Trump posted on Truth Social.
The applause was even louder as the 78-year-old ex-president showed up to the convention in person hours later, his ear bandaged after the attempt on his life left him wounded.
He waved at the massed delegates and took his seat without speaking, just two days after surviving the shooting at a rally in Pennsylvania.
While Trump is increasingly confident of a shock return to the White House — despite multiple legal problems and two impeachments clouding his first term — President Joe Biden is reeling from weak polls and Democratic concerns over his health.
In the delegate count in Milwaukee, Eric Trump put his father over the threshold on behalf of the Florida delegation, calling him “the greatest president that ever lived.”
Vance will boost support from the right but offers less chance of expanding the ticket’s appeal to more moderate voters and women.
The standard-bearer for a new kind of populism that has come to the fore under Trump, Vance is also one of the least experienced VP picks in modern history.
But he embraces the ex-president’s isolationist, anti-immigration America First movement and is even further to the right than his new boss on some issues including abortion, where he embraces calls for federal legislation.
He initially made his name with the 2016 memoir “Hillbilly Elegy,” a best-selling account of his Appalachian family and modest Rust Belt upbringing that gave a voice to rural, working-class resentment in left-behind America.
