Donald Trump vowed to end the wars in Ukraine and Gaza and free U.S. "hostages" as he accepted the presidential nomination at the Republican National Convention just days after an attempt on his life.
The 78-year-old Trump, wearing a bandage on his right ear injured in what the FBI says was an assassination attempt on the former president, also promised to revive a Cold War-era missile defense plan as he warned that the world was “teetering” on the brink of a third world war.
“War is now raging in Europe and the Middle East. This administration can’t come close to solving the problems,” Trump said in a 92-minute speech that closed out the four-day convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, a key swing state in the November 5 election.
Trump blamed the chaotic U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan under President Joe Biden, his Democratic opponent in the 2024, for emboldening Russian President Vladimir Putin to invade Ukraine.
Hans Noel, a political scientist at Georgetown University's Department of Government, told RFE/RL that Trump’s speech brought “nothing new” on his foreign policy outlook, with his view on supporting Ukraine's defense against the Russian invasion diametrically opposed to that of the Democrats.
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“I think the thing that came through the most is just the different framing of the war in Ukraine,” Noel said. “It's not framed as Russia invaded Ukraine and Ukraine would like our help to defend itself, but rather that Ukraine and Russia got themselves into a war and maybe we don't want to get involved ourselves.”
Nuclear Submarines
Trump painted his four years in office as one of relative international peace and stability with rivals Russia and China at bay.
The Republican nominee boasted that Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban even said that Russia and China were “afraid of him.” Orban flew to Florida to meet Trump on July 11 to discuss an end to the war in Ukraine following visits to Moscow and Beijing.
Trump said he would also free U.S. “hostages” without giving any details as to who and how.
The comments appeared to be a reference to the dozens of Americans detained abroad on trumped-up charges, several of whom are in Russia, including Alsu Kurmasheva, a veteran RFE/RL journalist who holds dual U.S.-Russian citizenship. The charges against Kurmasheva are reprisals for her work as a journalist , the broadcaster said.
The Biden administration has freed many Americans held abroad over the past three years through prisoner swaps and other means.
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Trump said that, if elected, he would revive former President Ronald Reagan’s plans to develop a space-based missile-defense system to protect the United States from long-range nuclear missiles. China and Russia have been developing their long-range conventional and nuclear weapons.
Trump claimed that technological advances made the project feasible. The United States abandoned the plan, nicknamed "Star Wars" by Reagan’s opponents, in the 1990s as the Cold War ended and relations with Moscow improved.
Trump’s nomination caps a remarkable political comeback for the former president, who was impeached twice while in office, convicted earlier this year of falsifying business records, and faces charges in three other cases, including conspiring to overturn the 2020 election. One of the cases involving Trump's handling of classified documents was recently dismissed but prosecutors have appealed.
Trump’s rebound from the assassination attempt comes as Biden, knocked off the campaign trail by COVID-19, faces rising calls from his own party to withdraw from the race.
Trump mentioned Biden only once in his speech amid news reports that the president could drop out of the race as early as this weekend. Instead, he focused his criticism on the "administration," which includes Vice President Kamala Harris, who many say could replace Biden atop the Democratic ticket.
Biden beat Trump in 2020, but there is growing fear in the Democratic party that the president cannot repeat that feat after his poor performance in a June 27 debate.
The 81-year-old Biden looked frail and confused and was incoherent at times during the debate against Trump, intensifying concerns about his physical and mental ability to serve another four years. In the weeks following the debate, Biden has rejected calls to leave the race, saying he can recover from the debate debacle and beat Trump.
However, leading Democrats have only stepped up their pressure. On the eve of Trump’s speech, Representative Adam Schiff (Democrat-California) called on the president to step aside, the most prominent lawmaker to publicly voice for change to the party ticket. Other powerful party members have this month privately urged Biden to leave the race, according to Axios.
The Democrats will hold their convention in Chicago on August 19-22.
The July 13 assassination attempt played a prominent role at the convention as Republicans leverage it to portray Trump as a “fighter” who was saved by “divine intervention.”
Trump began his speech by recounting the shooting in Butler, Pennsylvania, where he was speaking to supporters at a rally when the assassination attempt took place.
“I am not supposed to be here tonight,” he said as the now iconic images of a blood-stained Trump standing with his fist raised in the air and surrounded by a Secret Service detail flashed on the convention screens.
Trump, who opponents say expanded the boundaries of acceptable presidential discourse with consistent lies and derogatory labels for opponents, then segued into a call to lower the temperature of domestic political discussion.
“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,” he said.
He then presented himself as the biggest victim of the divisive political discourse, accusing the Democratic party of “weaponizing the justice system” to go after him and his family.
Trump spent considerable time during his speech discussing the domestic policies he would implement if elected.
He promised to curtail immigration, end electric vehicle mandates, increase U.S. oil and gas production, and cut taxes.