Unbowed by assassin’s bullet, Trump delivers heartfelt appeal to make America one again 

Donald Trump, the billionaire maelstrom who roiled America’s elite and empowered its working class, accepted his third straight GOP presidential nomination Thursday night by vowing to unite a country rife with division, insecurity and the pain of stubborn inflation. 

Trump sported a bandaged ear, a visible reminder that an assassins’s bullet nearly killed him five days earlier. But his personal and at times melancholy tone reflected a man changed by a harrowing brush with death, an incident he said was “too painful to tell.” But one more time.

“The discord and division in our society must be healed. As Americans, we are bound together by a single fate and a shared destiny. We rise together. Or we fall apart,” he told an adoring audience in Milwaukee, the largest city in the battleground of Wisconsin. 

“I am running to be president for ALL of America, not half of America, because there is no victory in winning for half of America,” he declared.

Trump brought a raucous arena to silence as he retold the story of how he survived the shooting Saturday evening in Butler, Pa.

“I’m not supposed to be here,” he said. “… I stand before you in this arena only by the grace of God.”

He praised the Secret Service agents who covered him during a hail of bullets and the “beautiful crowd” who did not stampede in panic. 

“I felt very safe because I had God on my side,” he said.

In a poignant tribute by the 45th president, Trump departed from his podium and walked to kiss a display of the helmet and jacket of Fire Chief Corey Compartore, who died shielding his family from bullets at the rally. 

“There is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for another,” he said, quoting a famous phrase from the Christian Gospel. 

Trump made a personal appeal for Democrats to stop their use of lawfare to attack him and his family and to focus instead on policy debates. 

“This election should be about the issues facing our country and how to make America successful, safe, free and great again,” he said. “In an age when our politics too often divide us, now is the time to remember that we are all fellow citizens – we are one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all." 

Trump also laid out a clear and concise agenda to “rescue our nation from failed leadership.”

“It is time for a change,” he said. “We simply cannot sustain four more years of this administration.”

In detail, Trump offered his prescription for some of America’s biggest woes – from the border crisis to inflated prices, he promised a new round of tax cuts, including making the tips of servers tax-free.  

“I will end the devastating Inflation crisis immediately, bring down interest rates and lower the cost of energy. We will DRILL, BABY, DRILL, which will lead to a large-scale decline in prices,” he said to applause. 

“I will end the Illegal Immigration crisis by closing our border and finishing the wall, most of which I have already built,” he also said. 

But time and again Trump sounded a tone of conciliation, hoping he could begin a process of making a divided America one again. 

“To every citizen, whether you are young or old, man or woman, Democrat, Republican, or Independent, black or white, Asian or Hispanic, I extend to you a hand of loyalty and friendship,” he said.