The former Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley will address the party’s convention on Tuesday, as Donald Trump looks to consolidate the support of her primary voters in his rematch against Joe Biden in November.
Haley, who dropped out of the presidential race in March, offered some sharp criticism of Trump during her campaign, but she has since indicated that she will support the former president in November. Her appearance at the convention, which was a last-minute addition to the schedule, offers Trump the chance to present a united Republican front as Democrats clash over Biden’s candidacy.
Haley’s speech comes after Republicans opened their nominating convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on a high-energy note. Trump began the convention on Monday with the announcement that the Ohio senator JD Vance would serve as his running mate, ending months of heated speculation over who would join the former president at the top of the ticket. After formally winning the nomination in the afternoon, Trump brought convention-goers to their feet when he made a surprise appearance at Fiserv Forum on Monday evening.
In his first public appearance since the assassination attempt against him on Saturday, Trump appeared at the convention with a bandage over his ear, which was injured in the attack. Multiple speakers who addressed the convention on Monday expressed deep gratitude that Trump survived the shooting, which left one rally attender and the suspected gunman dead.
Related: Trump appears with bandaged ear at Republican national convention
“Two days ago, evil came for the man we admire and love so much,” the hard-right congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene told convention attendees. “I thank God that his hand was on President Trump.”
On Tuesday, Republicans are expected to focus their attention on crime and immigration, as the theme of the day will be “Make America Safe Once Again”. Immigration has become a rallying cry for Republicans, with Trump and his allies repeatedly and falsely accusing Biden of supporting “open borders”.
Trump has previously called for the deportation of 15 to 20 million undocumented immigrants if he wins re-election, and Vance voiced his own support for mass deportation in an interview with the Fox News host Sean Hannity on Monday.
“We have to deport people,” Vance told Hannity. “We have to deport people who broke our laws who came in here. And I think we need to start with the violent criminals.”
While Republicans rally, Biden and his Democratic allies are resuming some campaign communications after suspending their planned anti-Trump ads in response to the assassination attempt. At a press conference in Milwaukee on Tuesday, Biden campaign officials said that the assassination attempt against Trump would not change their messaging strategy moving forward.
“The president and the vice-president have been very clear on their vision when it comes to the agenda that they want to put forward for Americans. Our campaign has been talking about that for months,” said Quentin Fulks, principal deputy campaign manager for the Biden campaign. “And we’re going to continue to draw the contrast of what that work actually means and what it means for the lives of those American people.”
Biden himself echoed that message in an NBC News interview with Lester Holt that aired on Monday evening. Even as 19 congressional Democrats have called on Biden to drop out of the race following his disastrous debate performance last month, the president made a case for his re-election while acknowledging it was a “mistake” to say during a recent donor call that Trump should be the party’s “bullseye” right now.
“I meant focus on him. Focus on what he’s doing. Focus on – on his – on his policies. Focus on the number of lies he told in the debate,” Biden said. “I’m not the guy that said I want to be a dictator on day one. I’m not the guy that refused to accept the outcome of the election. I’m not the guy who said that I wouldn’t accept the outcome of this election automatically. You can’t only love your country when you win.”
As of now, it seems like Biden still needs to sell more voters on that message. National polls show a neck-and-neck race between Biden and Trump, and Biden appears to be in trouble in several states he won in 2020.
Despite those warning signs, Fulks insisted that the Democratic national committee would move forward with its earlier plan to nominate Biden via a virtual roll call vote before its convention in Chicago next month. Democrats initially proposed the virtual roll call because of a ballot deadline of 7 August in Ohio, but state legislators passed a bill to address that issue. Still, Biden’s team is undeterred.
“We have moved forward. We instituted this before they had a fix, and we’re going to continue on that path,” Fulks said.
The New Jersey senator Cory Booker traveled to Milwaukee for the press conference to express his robust support for the president’s agenda, and he appeared to grow frustrated as he listed the many policy differences between Biden and Trump.
“We know what we have. And so all of our jobs is to simply tell the truth,” Booker said. “In this moment in our democracy, please vote for decency and kindness and empathy and grace. Those are the best American values.”
