Is the Trump we’re going to see a changed man? Or will he revert back to factory settings within a few days, weeks, or months?
Milwaukee — Whatever else happens at this Republican convention, it will probably be remembered as “the one right after Donald Trump came within about an inch of being assassinated.” That’s a shocking, traumatic, life-altering experience for anyone.
“I’m not supposed to be here, I’m supposed to be dead,” he told the New York Post’s Michael Goodwin in an interview Sunday. He said on Truth Social, “It was God alone who prevented the unthinkable from happening.”
In an interview with the Washington Examiner’s Salena Zito, Trump said, “That reality is just setting in. I rarely look away from the crowd. Had I not done that in that moment, well, we would not be talking today, would we?”
Trump told Zito he had scrapped the speech he originally intended to deliver, and “it’s going to be a whole different speech now.”
Trump sounds . . . humbled? Less braggadocio and bombast, and more appreciative of just being alive? This morning, Trump told an audience here, “God was with me. That’s what they call a close call. That was an amazing, horrible thing. An amazing thing. In many ways it changes your viewpoint on life and you appreciate God more.”
You’re forgiven if you’re skeptical. Trump’s a 78-year-old man, and we’ve already seen him revert to form on Truth Social — perhaps most clearly in a post spiking the football after U.S. district judge Aileen M. Cannon dismissed the documents case against Trump, what many legal scholars considered the strongest criminal case against the former president:
This dismissal of the Lawless Indictment in Florida should be just the first step, followed quickly by the dismissal of ALL the Witch Hunts — The January 6th Hoax in Washington, D.C., the Manhattan D.A.’s Zombie Case, the New York A.G. Scam, Fake Claims about a woman I never met (a decades old photo in a line with her then husband does not count), and the Georgia “Perfect” Phone Call charges. The Democrat Justice Department coordinated ALL of these Political Attacks, which are an Election Interference conspiracy against Joe Biden’s Political Opponent, ME. . . .”
The insistence that inconvenient facts are a hoax, the victimhood, the random capitalization — yup, there’s the old Trump we remember.
But . . . there are a few signals that the Trump we will hear Thursday night isn’t quite the Trump we’re used to seeing and hearing.
When he entered Fiserv Forum Monday night, looking like Vincent van Gogh with a bandaged ear, it wasn’t the usual effusive, grinning Trump. He looked serious, almost somber. Some said he was “locked in.” But by Trump standards, he was subdued — and why wouldn’t he be? He’s just had a brush with mortality.
And when Trump entered the arena Tuesday and Wednesday night, he was similarly subdued.
Pursuing the presidency is never a game, but there were times Trump treated it as a lark. In a 2017 interview with Reuters, Trump lamented, “This is more work than in my previous life. I thought it would be easier.” Around the same time he whined, “Nobody knew that health care could be so complicated,” which indicated he had barely glanced at the issue’s policies before becoming president.
What can the pursuit of the presidency cost you? Apparently, your life, if the U.S. Secret Service slips up again and the next aspiring assassin has better aim. Trump’s desire to be president again means that there’s always going to be some small risk that some nut out there decides to take a shot at him. The selection of J. D. Vance, a running mate who isn’t even 40 yet, suggests a man thinking a great deal about who will run his movement when he’s no longer around.
There’s little reason to think that Trump will have an Ebenezer Scrooge–like change of heart, and showcase a new personality — “kinder and gentler,” to use a phrase from the 1988 Republican convention. On the other hand, exceptionally few of us have had a bullet tear through our ear cartilage, about an inch away from our skill and brain. To come so close to death must leave a mark on a man in some way.
So that’s the biggest question of this convention: Is the Trump we’re going to see a changed man? Or will he revert back to factory settings within a few days, weeks, or months?