MILWAUKEE — Five days after dodging an assassin’s bullet, Donald J. Trump pledged Thursday night to unite a divided America in a rambling speech with moments of humility and boasts, gratitude and grievance, and ultimately the familiar vilification of political foes, media and migrants.
His speech accepting the Republican presidential nomination opened with a dramatic, if calmly delivered, account of being grazed by a bullet that clipped his right ear, telling rapt delegates that the difference between life and death was a quarter inch.
“I’m not supposed to be here tonight,” Trump said. “I’m not supposed to be here.”
“Yes, you are,” the delegates chanted. “Yes, you are.”
In a 90-minute speech that did not end until after midnight on the East Coast, Trump addressed issues that Connecticut delegates had hoped the former president would emphasize, most notably inflation.
Catherine Ernsky of Naugatuck, a member of the Republican State Central Committee, said four years of inflation under President Joe Biden made her newly enthusiastic about Trump.
“I was never a Trumper. I was never ‘Trump or go home.’ However, now I am. I can honestly say I am,” Ernsky said. “When I go to the store, it costs me more to feed my family. It costs me more to fill up my gas tank. It’s too much. You cannot continue the way we are right now.”
Trump agreed.
“Inflation has been a killer,” he said. “On day one, we’ll drive down prices.”
Trump said he would address inflation by easing the drilling of oil and natural gas, one of his first-day priorities. Others were closing the border and withdrawing the Biden administration’s timetable for greatly increasing the sales of electric vehicles to ease air pollution.
“I’m right with him as far as closing the border,” Ernsky said. “I think everything stems from that — jobs, safety. Everything stems from that. I think we really do need to bring America back to what it was.”
Ed Cady of Roxbury, a candidate for the Connecticut House of Representatives, said he opposed any EV mandate. That has been a GOP talking point in Connecticut since a legislative committee rejected regulations that would have called for a phase out of new gas-powered vehicles.
Others had hoped Trump would stress unity, perhaps showing a softer side after facing death.
“I would like to hear about his experience and whether he thinks he’s changed and what way he’s changed,” said Rojia Afshar of Farmington. “I’d like to see who Donald Trump is now versus before the shooting.”
“I feel like he is a different person now,” said state Rep. Cara Pavalock-D’Amato, R-Bristol. “You can see it in his face. You can see it in his mannerisms. He’s just different, probably has a different perspective on life.”
And Trump delivered on the hopes for unity, for a while.
“The discord and division in our society must be healed. We must heal it quickly,” Trump said. “As Americans, we are bound together by a single fate and a shared destiny. We rise together, or we fall apart.”
He said nothing about the assault on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, when his supporters tried to stop the certification of Biden’s election.
“I am running to be president for all of America, not half of America,” Trump said. “So with faith and devotion, I proudly accept your nomination.”
Before Trump began, Steven R. Mullins of West Haven had said that would be a sentiment he was eager to hear, “a good unifying message.”
“I want us to look forward with the intention of bettering the country for everyone,” said Mullins, the only Black member of the delegation. “Because Trump isn’t just working for Republicans, he’s also working for adversaries who are voting against him. He’s working for all Americans, regardless of race, regardless of religion, regardless of sexual orientation, regardless of gender. He wants everyone to have money in their pocket.”
Trump strayed from the unity line.
He demanded Democrats stop “labeling their political opponent as an enemy of democracy” and then pivoted to criticize Democrats like former U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, even though his campaign aides said the speech wouldn’t mention Biden by name.
“I’m only going to use the name once,” Trump said about Biden. “The damage that he’s done to this country is unthinkable.”
Delegates did not expect Trump to give up on punching back at opponents, but several wondered if he would show how the shooting affected him.
Tucker Carlson, one of the speakers who preceded Trump to the stage, said, “I think it changed him.”
Biden said in a statement wrapped around a fundraising appeal that Trump is unchanged.
“It was the same Trump that we know, just on a different night,” Biden said. “He said that he would bring unity. Meanwhile, he stoked the fears of hatred and division.”
Trump said the migrants coming across the border were criminals and terrorists. Without naming him, Trump said a foreign leader was emptying his nation’s prisons and sending criminals to the U.S. Other countries are doing the same, he said.
“They are taking their criminals and putting them in our country,” he said.
As is typical rally fare, Trump ranted against the criminal charges he faces and the subpoenas served on his adult children, a point also made by previous speakers Thursday night, including his son, Eric.
Former first lady Melania Trump and the president’s daughter, Ivanka, watched from the Trump family’s box. Neither had been present on the three previous nights.
Trump accepted the nomination little more than a month after a New York jury convicted him on 34 felonies related to the alleged hush payments made to a porn star. He said he is a victim.
The former president made clear he still refuses to accept his defeat in 2020 and repeated falsehoods about the election being stolen.
“We had that horrible, horrible result that we’ll never let happen again,” Trump said. “[Democrats] used COVID to cheat. We’re never going to let that happen again.”
CT Mirror staff writer Lisa Hagen contributed to this story from Washington, D.C.