Split screen: Trump triumphant at RNC convention as Biden battles for his political life
MILWAUKEE − Talk about a split screen.
The applause was thundering when a triumphant Donald Trump arrived to view the Republican National Convention Monday night, hours after he had breezed to the nomination and brought his just-picked running mate, Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance, along with him.
An hour earlier, NBC had been airing a one-on-one interview with a defensive Joe Biden, battling for his political future.
The two images reflected what increasingly optimistic Republicans see as a shift in momentum in a rematch that has been a margin-of-error race all year.
In a New York Times/Siena College poll released Monday, Trump not only led Biden by 3 percentage points in Pennsylvania, considered a must-win state for Democrats. He was also just 3 points behind Biden in Virginia, close enough to contest a state that had been seen as safely Democratic.
Meanwhile, Biden is still trying to convince voters and officeholders from his political base that he is sharp enough and healthy enough to warrant being renominated at the Democratic convention next month in Chicago.
"I'm old," Biden told NBC anchor Lester Holt in an interview designed to display his fitness for what is often called the toughest job in the world. "But I'm only three years older than Trump, number one. And number two, my mental acuity has been pretty damn good."
He called it "a legitimate question to ask" but gave no sign he might heed calls from Democratic donors and members of Congress to step back from the nomination.
Asked who he would consult about that, he replied, "Me. I've been doing this a long time."
A buoyant crowd, a disciplined message
The mood on the floor of the Fiserv Forum was buoyant and the message from the stage disciplined on the first night of the four-day Republican convention.
Even two of the GOP's most incendiary voices, Georgia U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Green and North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, now running for governor, stuck to the script. They bashed Biden's record on inflation and touted Trump's record on manufacturing on a night billed as focused on the economy.
The speakers blasted Biden as inept and feeble, but they didn't blame him or his sharp rhetorical attacks for the assassination attempt on Trump at a Saturday rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. In the immediate aftermath, Vance and Donald Trump Jr. were among those who had done that.
That reflected a decision by Team Trump to temper the tone of the convention, calling for national unity in the wake of the violence that could have cost the former president his life. He said the shooting had prompted him to rewrite his convention acceptance speech, discarding a "humdinger" of a draft.
Not everyone is convinced that Trump, known for a lifetime of inflammatory words on race, immigration and more, will be able to sustain a tempered tone, despite its potential value in reaching some voters who have been put off by his rhetoric.
He doesn't speak to the convention until Thursday, but he commanded its rapt attention as video screens in the hall showed him waiting in a corridor, then walking down a red carpet until he entered as country-music singer Lee Greenwood sang "God Bless the USA."
Trump's right ear was covered by a neat square bandage that hid his wound from the shooting.
Several convention speakers saw God's hand in the fact that Trump escaped serious injury, though one rally-goer was killed and two others wounded.
"If you didn't believe in miracles before Saturday, you better be believing right now," South Carolina's U.S. Sen. Tim Scott declared. "An American lion got back up on his feet and he roared! He roared!"
South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem likened Trump to Abraham Lincoln.
"Donald Trump is calling us to be touched by our better angels," she said.
A behind-the-scenes glimpse of the last-minute revisions became clear when the original version of Sen. Ron Johnson's speech was mistakenly loaded onto the teleprompter and read by him.
Left unsaid were his new opening lines: "We meet a somber moment in history. We should all heed President Trump's call for unity. strength and determination."
And he did read a line that was cut in the revised version. He called the Democratic policy agenda "a clear and present danger to America, to our institutions, our values and our people."
The final speaker, and a Democratic chill
Of all the speakers, the most alarming to Democrats may well have been the final one. Sean O’Brien, the president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, became the first Teamsters chief to address a Republican convention.
The union wasn't "beholden" to any party, he said, despite decades of endorsing Democrats. This time, that isn't guaranteed. Not this year.
Contributing: Lawrence Andrea
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Split screen: Trump triumphant as Biden battles for his political life
