MILWAUKEE — Former President Donald Trump leads President Biden in key battleground states and now has a golden opportunity, his supporters say, to pull further ahead by connecting with independent and undecided voters with his speech Thursday to cap the Republican National Convention.
Mr. Trump has been welcomed like a champion by RNC delegates since his brush with death on Saturday when a gunman attempted to assassinate him at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania. Many at the convention say that the incident, along with the expected convention bounce, will heighten his trajectory in the race if he plays his cards right.
“The most important thing he could do is to reassure those who still have an open mind about him that he is not the monster that he’s being portrayed,” said Joe Neglia, 63, an Arizona delegate from Tempe.
Former Rep. Tim Huelskamp, who is a Kansas delegate, said a clue for what Mr. Trump will say is gleaned in how much Mr. Trump’s image has changed, becoming more of a sympathetic figure since he was nearly killed — a bullet grazing his ear when he turned his head just enough to escape a direct hit.
“Someone I know was not planning on voting for Trump and was actually going to write in Vivek [Ramaswamy]. But after he saw Trump’s response to the shooting, not what he said, but what he did, and how he responded, and how he stood back up and said, ‘Hey, I’m a real person. I’m going to fight on this and I’m going to go to the mat, I’m going to vote for Trump,’” Mr. Huelskamp said.
According to the Real Clear Politics average of recent national polls, Mr. Trump now leads Mr. Biden by 2.7 points in a head-to-head contest, a 2-point increase since early June.
The GOP convention delegates said Mr. Trump is guaranteed to win over undecided voters by just being himself when he gives his speech Thursday accepting the Republican nomination for president.
“Let Trump be Trump. That’s what’s gotten us here. That’s what has gotten us the W in the past, and that’s what is going to get us to W in the fall,” said Rufus Montgomery, 52, a delegate from Atlanta. “He needs to be who he is, and that’s what you’re going to see Thursday night.”
Contrasting the Trump and Biden records is the best way to go to convince fence-sitters before November, said Don Hammill, 69, a delegate from Dallas.
“He has to contrast the two, so you have to be able to show this is what it was, this is what it is now,” he said. “This is what we want to do and how we want to get back and move forward.”
• Kerry Picket can be reached at kpicket@washingtontimes.com.
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