On Thursday, the final night of the Republican National Convention, former President Donald described the criminal cases against him as “witch hunts, referencing “crazy Nancy Pelosi” and an “invasion” at the Southern border.
Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson used his platform at the convention on Tuesday to explain his reasons for leaving the “woke” Democratic Party, saying it was “never there for the American people” and its loyalty is “with the criminals, not with their victims.”
In the almost week since the assassination attempt on Trump, Republican leaders have rallied around a conciliatory message: unity. But at their convention, as Trump nominated U.S. Sen. JD Vance of Ohio as his running mate, familiar rhetoric reverberated.
Kristin Powell, the principal of the Black to the Future Action Fund, said she is skeptical of Republican leaders’ appeals for consensus.
“Vance, who’s out of my state of Ohio, is at the center of attacks on diversity, equity, and inclusion programs and policies that would benefit Black communities,” she told Capital B. “But you want unity?”
In June, Vance co-introduced the “Dismantle DEI Act” to eliminate federal DEI programs and cut off government funding for federal agencies, contractors, and other organizations that have DEI programs. It was the latest legislative effort by GOP lawmakers, since the U.S. Supreme Court eviscerated affirmative action in higher education last year, to erode programs designed to address racial inequality.
And at a campaign event in April 2022, Vance endorsed the “great replacement theory,” which claims that racial and ethnic minorities are intentionally seeking to replace white Americans. The same unfounded and racist theory motivated the gunman who, the following month, murdered 10 shoppers and store employees in a predominantly Black area of Buffalo, New York.
Safety for all?
No one should have to dodge a bullet while they’re on a stage, Cornell William Brooks, the former president and CEO of the NAACP, told Capital B, and it shouldn’t matter whether that person is a Democrat or a Republican or something else. But he said he would like to see Republicans use the moment to connect the country by talking about gun violence.
“How do you call for unity after an incident of political violence via gun violence without saying anything about rampant, daily gun violence?” Brooks asked. “Children in our schools don’t have the benefit of Secret Service protection. Children in our streets don’t have the benefit of Secret Service protection.” The January 6, 2021, riot – which began after Trump urged his supporters to “fight much harder” against “bad people” and “show strength” at the Capitol – cost 7 people their lives, according to a bipartisan Senate report.
In 2022, testifying to the Jan. 6 committee, two Black former poll workers — Shaye Moss and her mother, Ruby Freeman — described the terror they experienced after Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s former lawyer, made the unfounded claim that the two women had engaged in voter fraud during the 2020 race for the White House. They were inundated with racist messages, including threats of lynching.
“I won’t even introduce myself by my name anymore. I get nervous when I bump into someone I know in the grocery store who says my name,” Freeman said. “I’ve lost my sense of security, all because a group of people starting with [Trump] and his ally Rudy Giuliani decided to scapegoat me and my daughter Shaye, to push their own lies about how the presidential election was stolen.”
At a March rally, Trump warned that there will be a “bloodbath” if he loses the November race.
Omar Wasow, an assistant professor of political science at the University of California, Berkeley, shared similar sentiments. “Calls for unity could be meaningful if they included a genuine commitment to reject violent rhetoric,” Wasow argued. “Consequently, it will be Trump’s [and his allies’] actions, not words, that demonstrate whether there’s a sincere effort to find common ground.”
Staff writer Adam Mahoney contributed to this report.
This story has been updated.