Transcript of Donald Trump makes first appearance since assassination attempt | BBC News

Hours after he was formerly picked as the Republican Party's nominee, and only two days after a gunman attempted to kill him, Donald Trump has appeared at the Republican Convention. Walking onto stage with a prominent white bandage on his right ear, Mr. Trump greeted supporters with the fist pumps that he used moments after the failed assassination attempt on Saturday. The audience chanted back the words that he uttered after the attack. Republican lawmakers and activists, as you can hear there, gave a rapturous welcome to the former President as he took his place next to his running mate, JD Vance, whose candidacy was also announced at the event. The Trump campaign team calls the pair the most unifying and competitive ticket in political history. Well, our chief presenter, Katrina Perry, and senior North America correspondent, Anthony Zercher, have been at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee.

It was electric when Donald Trump came in. I think the crowd would have been perfectly happy just to sit there and watch Donald Trump for an hour on the Jumbotron. But it was just you could tell that everything was building up to this moment because they wanted to see the man, and to have him here was a cathartic moment for all of his fans.

Of course, he had a large bandage on his right ear where that bullet grazed him on Saturday. But nevertheless, he walked out through that tunnel, walked up the stairs, sitting just a couple of rows below us here from our BBC News sky box, and sitting beside JD Vance.

Sitting beside JD Vance, his pick as a vice president on Chauvigny make. Also, the speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, was there next to him. Byron Donald, a congressman from Florida who has been very effective in his praise for Donald Trump, and then members of the family as well. You could see by the people who were around Donald Trump exactly the emphasis that they were trying to put here in Republican unity.

The crowd just absolutely in adoration, weren't they? I mean, everyone trying to get a photo as he walked through, trying to touch him with a very close secret service detail around him.

Just watching the people who were speaking on the stage after that, they would get generally polite applaud, sometimes a little bit more. But then when there would be a cut to Donald Trump on the Jumbo, the crowd would go nuts again. It was just this outpouring of emotion and support for the former President after what he went through just two days ago.

Anthony Zircher there speaking to Katrina Perry. Let's bring in our correspondent in Washington, David Willets, who is also watching proceedings. David, thanks for joining us. It struck me, appearing on stage with that bandage on his ear, that Trump was also projecting a sense of human frailty that he does not normally like to project about himself.

I think that's absolutely right, Tega. You know what? We saw a completely different Donald Trump tonight. Vulnerable, almost humbled, you might say, by the events, the terrible events that took place on Saturday afternoon. He said that he feels lucky to be alive, and he has also said that he is considering watering down the speech that he is due to give on Thursday in formal recognition of him receiving the nomination for the Republican candidacy for President. It was due to be, as he put it, a humdinger of a speech attacking his rival, Joe Biden. Instead, the indications are he intends to use more conciliatory language. We will wait to see what that consists of, Ty.

Yeah, indeed, we will. The other big news line of the event was the choice of JD Vance as his running mate, a man with a very interesting backstory, but perhaps most interesting, a one-time severe critic of Donald Trump. Surely you could argue that opens the door to all sorts of democratic campaign material featuring those critical words.

You'd certainly have thought so, wouldn't you? It's an almost unmissable opportunity, some might say. But the selection of JD Vance is an interesting one. Some commentators here, Taeg, have portrayed this as Donald Trump essentially passing the baton to the next generation. J. D. Vance, 39 years of age, is nearly 40 years younger than Donald Trump, but he is the man who represents, despite all that he has said previously against Donald Trump, he represents the MAGA movement going forward. He has really come over to Donald Trump's side. He is an apostle of the Trump MAGA Mantra, if you like. And he is seen as somebody who the Republicans believe can capture those voters, those precious voters, in the swing states, the so-called rust Belt states, that Donald Trump needs to win if he's to get a second term in the White House tag.

Okay, David Willis in Washington. Thank you very much. We're shifting gears to the Biden campaign now. In a prime-time interview, Joe Biden told NBC that he's not changed his mind about remaining in the presidential race. He also defended calling Donald Trump a threat to democracy. But the US President said his campaign did have a duty to clearly communicate the threat of a second Trump term, and he disagreed that there was a need to tone down his rhetoric. However, he did tell NBC's Lester Holt that it was wrong to have called Donald Trump to be put in the bullseye. This is something that happened during a private donor call days before the assassination attempt.

The truth of the matter was, what I guess I was talking about at the time was there was very little focus on Trump's agenda. Yeah, the term is bullseye. It was a mistake to use the word. I didn't say crosshairs. I meant bullseye. I meant focus on him, focus on what he's doing, focus on his policies, focus on the number of lies he told in the debate. I mean, there's a whole range of things. Look, I'm not the guy that said, I want to be a dictator on day one. I'm not the I'm not the guy that refused to accept the outcome of the election. I'm not the guy who said that he wanted to accept the outcome of this election automatically. You can't only love your country when you win. Mr. President, you've been in politics a very long time, so let's speak frankly. We're all adults here. Has this shooting changed the trajectory of this race? I don't know, and you don't know either. I don't know, but it's something you've given thought to? No, I thought less about the trajectory of the case than two things. One, what his health is. That was secure, number one.

Number two, what happens from here on in terms of the coverage that the President and vice President and former President and new vice President get in terms of Look, I've never seen a circumstance where you ride through certain rural areas of the country and people have signs there, big Trump signs with a middle sign saying F Biden and the little kid standing there putting up his middle finger. I mean, that's the stuff that is just inflammatory and the viciousness.

Joe Biden there saying that he did not know whether the assassination attempt on Donald Trump had changed the trajectory of the campaign. Let's bring in John Michiels, who's a professor of law at the University of California. John, certainly, one thing we can say for sure is that the assassination attempt has shifted the focus, for now at least, as to whether Joe Biden should be replaced as the Democrats candidate. But do you feel as if that will come back into focus?

Well, I think what we've seen from American politics over the years is that people's attention spans are stunningly short. And so I can't imagine a world in which it doesn't come back. Part of that also has to do with the fact that I think the political violence in America is stunning and horrifying, but at the same time not surprising. So I think we're going to bounce back from this particular moment rather quickly.

In terms of the interview that we've just seen clips of and that no doubt, American voters will be digesting, what did you make of Joe Biden's performance in it?

Yeah, well, I think President Biden, the very fact, first of all, that he had to apologize for the use of terms like bullseye, again, just shows how far as a society, we've gone down the road of gun culture and how careful we have to be because metaphorical language like that would be taken literally. On the broader points about changing the tenor and the rhetoric of the campaign. I have to say that I'm sympathetic to President Biden's position, which is we still have to keep focus on the fact that we are facing a true crisis of our democracy and of our rule of law in this country. It's all been very clearly telegraphed by former President Trump and his team that they want to turn the country in a very dark, very aggressive, authoritarian direction. I don't think it would be responsible for a leading candidate to do anything but keep our attention on that fact.

Well, the opinion poll suggests that a majority of Americans may just choose that option, may choose Donald Trump. That was even before the assassination attempt. What do you make of the selection of JD Vance as his running mate? What a boost, if any, could that give to Donald Trump's prospects?

So it's hard to say what boost it'll give him, but I actually think it was a very smart choice on the part of the Republicans and former President Trump to do so. I think that JD Vance channels a lot of the MAGA movement in a way that a lot of the other front runners for the vice presidency didn't. They would have been more of a balancing act with Donald Trump. But with J. D. Vance, he seems to, after coming around to the MAGA philosophy, he seems to have embraced it in a way that very few politicians have. He really seems to commit himself to a Christian-nationalist type of governance, which affects our social policy. It affects the way we do regulation in this country, which is very different from old-school Republicans, which were much more lazy affair when it comes to business matters. I think he's also probably the choice that was going to be the most nativist when it comes to foreign relations, particularly with respect to Europe, NATO, and Ukraine in particular.

Okay. John Michiels from the University of California School of Law.Thank you for joining us.Thank you.