MILWAUKEE — The second night of the Republican National Convention was all about unity, in the party and in the nation. But in Donald Trump’s Republican Party, unity is not something to strive for. It is something inherent in the Make America Great Again movement — if only the elites in the news media and the Democratic Party would recognize it.

For much of the Trump era, Trump and his acolytes were content to pit those in their movement against everyone else, and eke out a large enough coalition to win without expanding the tent. But with the wind at their backs, those same politicians seem ready to reframe Trumpism as a movement for everyone, whether they know it or not.

“The Americans who wear the red hats and wait for hours under a blazing sun” are “not hateful or extreme,” Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida said as he closed the night on Tuesday. “What they want are good jobs and lower prices. They want borders that are secure, and for those who come here to do so legally. They want to be safe from criminals and from terrorists, and they want for our leaders to care more about our problems here at home than about the problems of other countries far away.”

The message was clear: What could be more unifying than that?

Here are five takeaways from Night 2.

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The Watchword: Unity. The Visual: Fealty.

One after another, Trump’s vanquished foes took to the stage Tuesday night to bend the knee to the man who had beaten them: Vivek Ramaswamy, Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, former Gov. Nikki Haley of South Carolina, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, and Rubio, all pledging fealty to a man they once suggested should never grace the Oval Office.

Gone were the tensions of the 2016 convention, when Cruz gave a speech that failed to include an endorsement of the nominee, Trump. “Let me start by giving thanks to God Almighty for protecting President Trump,” Cruz said this time, as the former president smiled.

The imagery was more like the Roman Colosseum, with an emperor looking down from his box in judgment as those audacious enough to cross him tried to find their way back into his favor.

“My fellow Republicans, let’s send Joe Biden back to his basement, and let’s send Donald Trump back to the White House,” DeSantis, the subject of months of belittling at the hands of Trump and his campaign, bellowed to an appreciative crowd.

In past conventions, invitations to former opponents have been olive branches and gestures of humility in hope of harmony. George H.W. Bush invited Patrick Buchanan to speak in 1992 not as an act of retribution or humiliation but as one of contrition: He needed Buchanan’s voters.

In Milwaukee, the party is united, with or without those opponents. The speeches Tuesday night were loyalty tests — and by and large, the speakers passed.

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Nikki Haley Gave a Diplomatic Endorsement.

The most anticipated moment of the night came with the introduction of Haley, Trump’s first ambassador to the United Nations and his most dogged competitor for the 2024 Republican nomination. A few boos greeted her as she strode to the podium, but Haley did what was expected of her when she said, “Donald Trump has my strong endorsement. Period.”

She didn’t go overboard. She made it clear she still had her doubts and differences, and so did many of her supporters. “There are some Americans who don’t agree with Donald Trump 100% of the time,” she said. “I happen to know some of them.”

But in saying people did not have to agree with Trump all the time to vote for him in November, she was diplomatic enough not to delineate the serious areas of disagreement that separated Haley from Trump on the campaign trail: Support for NATO and Ukraine, determined opposition to President Vladimir Putin of Russia, and deep concern for a federal budget deficit that soared under the Trump presidency.

She left it simply with, “We agree more often than we disagree.”

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The Bereft Testified to Democratic Failures on Crime and Drugs.

The theme was “Make America Safe Again,” and the stars of the night were not onstage. They were the deceased loved ones of one emotional speaker after another: women, children and police officers, the victims of immigrants in the country illegally, vicious criminals and fentanyl dealers.

Anne Fundner, a mother of four from California, spoke tearfully of the death of her teenage son after a fentanyl “poisoning” that she laid directly at the feet of President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris. Michael Morin told of his sister Rachel, “raped and murdered by a suspected illegal immigrant.” Biden never called, he said. Madeline Brame, the mother of a New York Army veteran stabbed on the city’s streets, passionately decried being “sick and tired of being sick and tired,” all to cheers.

The accuracy of some of the statistics was questionable, especially those asserting that drugs and crime had reached their peak under the Biden presidency. After rising every year since 2018, when Trump was president, fentanyl overdoses actually declined slightly last year. Violent crime surged in the COVID year of 2020, but in 2023, crime rates — especially murder rates — declined remarkably.

But statistics were beside the point. The anecdotes were powerful, and often prompted a strong response from a crowd that chatted and milled about during some of the other speakers.

The Talk of Law and Order had One Noticeable Omission.

In pledging a return to law and order, in leading chants of “back the blue,” and lamenting chaos and lawlessness, speakers Tuesday night neglected to note one particular violator of the law, the Republican nominee.

Trump has been convicted of 34 felonies for falsifying business records to hide hush-money payments to a porn star. He has been indicted on charges of seeking to overturn the 2020 election and charges that he illegally held onto classified national security materials after leaving office, then obstructed government efforts to retrieve them.

If anything, his legal travails were framed as part of Trump’s political fight to reclaim the country for his supporters. As DeSantis put it, “Donald Trump has been demonized, he’s been sued and he’s been prosecuted, and he nearly lost his life.”

But Trump’s brushes with the law were not the only ones overlooked on a night dedicated to making America safe again. The chants of “back the blue” did not take into account the police officers injured on Jan. 6, 2021, by rioters whom Trump has promised to pardon. Peter Navarro, a former economic adviser to Trump, will address the convention Wednesday, fresh from prison after serving a sentence for defying Congress.

And a reality television star, Savannah Chrisley, spoke Tuesday of her family as victims “persecuted by rogue prosecutors.” There were details left out: Her parents were convicted in 2022 on federal fraud and tax evasion charges for bilking community banks out of more than $30 million.

Senate Candidates Yoked Their Opponents to Biden.

Confident that they will recapture the White House, Republicans on Night 2 turned an eye to the Senate and House, determined to give Trump total control of Washington.

A parade of Senate candidates came to the podium to make their case for capturing Democratic seats in Arizona, Michigan, Montana, Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin, and House Republican leaders asked for help to expand their slim four-seat majority in that chamber.

Each worked to tie his or her opponent to Biden and to saddle them both with blame for the litany of America’s ills being cataloged all night long.

But the star of the show — or at least the cameo of the night — accompanied the Republican Senate candidate most assured of capturing a Democratic seat. Gov. Jim Justice of West Virginia, who is gliding into the seat of retiring Sen. Joe Manchin, brought in his bulldog Babydog, who sat patiently in an armchair as he described her political appeal: “She makes us smile, and she loves everybody. And how could the message be any simpler than that?”

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This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

By Jonathan Weisman/Todd Heisler
c.2024 The New York Times Company