The ex-president is believed to be softening his convention speech, but top Republicans are sticking with a caustic tone
After Donald Trump survived a shooting at a campaign rally that officials were investigating as a domestic terror attack and an attempted assassination, the former president suggested he had been changed by the near-death experience and wanted to project a message of unity.
But two days after Trump said he would try to bring the country together, it was unclear whether the message would catch on – and how long it might last.
Trump told the New York Post in an interview on Sunday that he had intended to deliver biting remarks against Joe Biden in his speech at the Republican national convention until the shooting at his campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, prompted him to throw it out.
Trump is understood to have been reworking his remarks with his speechwriter Ross Worthington since the shooting, according to a person close to the former president, and has discussed making himself sound like he is still the president, as opposed to just a candidate.
The conventional political approach to a unity theme would revolve around calling to move past partisan divides or to tone down incendiary rhetoric, but whether Trump adopts or sustains such a message remains unclear.
