MILWAUKEE — Republicans on Monday officially nominated as their 2024 presidential nominee Donald Trump ― a convicted felon who attempted a coup to remain in power the last time he held office and who survived an assassination attempt two days ago.
A native of New York City, Trump chose to have the delegation from Florida give him the delegates necessary for a majority of the total available. He moved his official residence to the state during his first term as president.
The announcement that all 125 of the state’s delegates would be cast for Trump ― “Every single one of them!” ― was made by his son Eric, and came just 17 minutes after Trump’s announcement that Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance would be his running mate. It was followed by a brief break in the roll call of states as the cover band played an abridged version of Kool & the Gang’s “Celebration.”
The 2024 nomination is Trump’s third in three election cycles and cements his continued hold on a party he had almost nothing to do with until he began his run for president in June 2015.
In 2016, after Trump’s delegate count passed the threshold needed to secure his nomination at the GOP convention in Cleveland, the New York delegation had cheered wildly as Frank Sinatra’s “New York, New York” played while others on the convention floor offered polite applause or remained seated.
Four years later, as the COVID pandemic raged and state and local governments imposed limits on the number of people who could congregate indoors, Trump had staged his nominating convention at the White House, where he would not be subject to such rules and could have as many people as he wanted. The choice flouted federal law and longstanding norms regarding the use of presidential resources for campaign purposes.
Trump effectively clinched this year’s nomination on March 12 after winning all but two of the Republican primary contests to that point. Despite his attempt to overturn his 2020 election loss that culminated with the violent assault on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, Trump defeated nearly a dozen candidates running, including his own former vice president, Mike Pence.
The tone of the race, though, was set early on. A year ago in the same arena where Trump won the nomination on Monday, six of the eight presidential contenders onstage at the first GOP primary debate raised their hands when asked if they would continue to support Trump as nominee even if he was convicted of a felony.
At the time, Trump was facing four indictments, two stemming from his coup attempt, and nearly 100 felony counts. GOP primary voters, though, largely accepted his false claim that all of the prosecutions were being ordered by Democratic President Joe Biden to prevent him from running.
Even Trump’s most effective challenger, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, never challenged the morality of Trump’s actions leading to the prosecutions but merely argued that swing voters in a general election would not vote for such a person.
Several weeks ago, Haley announced she was endorsing Trump and encouraged her delegates and supporters to vote for him. It was announced just days before the start of the convention that she would get a speaking role this week after being frozen out by Trump’s campaign for months.