RNC 2024 Day 1 highlights: Trump appears wearing bandage after being shot as opening day ends

A deluge of conspiracy theories flooded the web in the aftermath of Saturday’s attempted assassination of Donald Trump at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania, with social media users spreading outlandish claims about the shooting that shook the nation.

Almost immediately after the attack, an alternate reality emerged online, creating a dark abyss of mis- and disinformation about the shocking attack.

Republican senator Ron Johnson said he read the wrong speech at the RNC after he referred to the Democratic agenda as threatening to domestic interests.

“Their policies are a clear and present danger to America, to our institutions, our values and our people,” Wisconsin senator Ron Johnson had earlier said, as he welcomed the party to his battleground state, which Donald Trump won in 2016 but lost to Biden four years ago.

He, however, later told PBS that he intended to read a different version of the speech but the wrong one was uploaded on the teleprompter.

“I had taken that out. Instead I’d loaded about that we needed a somber moment in history. We should heed President Trump’s call to unite,” he said.

“We must heal and unify this nation. I didn’t know how to take that out without screwing up the teleprompter.”

The Republican convention resumes Tuesday, when the focus shifts to immigration, an issue central to Donald Trump’s political brand that helped endear him to the GOP base when he began his first campaign in 2015.

Trump, accompanied by a wall of Secret Service agents Monday, did not address the hall — with his acceptance speech scheduled for Thursday — but smiled silently and occasionally waved as Greenwood sang.

The raucous welcome underscored the depth of the crowd’s affection for the man who won the 2016 nomination as an outsider, at odds with the party establishment, but has vanquished all Republican rivals, silenced most conservative critics and now commands loyalty up and down the party ranks.

“We must unite as a party, and we must unite as a nation,” said Republican Party chairman Michael Whatley, Trump’s handpicked party leader, as he opened Monday’s primetime national convention session. “We must show the same strength and resilience as President Trump and lead this nation to a greater future.”

But Mr Whatley and other Republican leaders made clear that their calls for harmony did not extend to Mr Biden and Democrats, who find themselves still riven by worries that the 81-year-old question is not up to the job of defeating Trump.

Nearly 3,000 protesters descended upon Milwaukee on Monday, denouncing Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump.

A coalition of more than 100 activist groups gathered near the RNC convention, where Mr Trump appeared less than 48 hours after an attempt on his life.

Opposing Republicans’ “racist and reactionary agenda,” they said it threatens the rights of women, queer community and immigrants, reported the Washington Post.

“Defeating the Republican agenda is a matter of life and death for working and oppressed people,” Kobi Guillory of the Freedom Road Socialist Organisation told the demonstrators.

“There’s divisive rhetoric on both sides, but the most violent rhetoric has been on the Trump side,” said another protester named Jackie Sparks, 69.

“It is undeniable that Trump’s rhetoric, policies and actions have contributed to a climate of increased violence and hate crimes by white nationalists, especially against people of color,” said Christine Neumann-Ortiz, the head of Wisconsin’s largest immigrant rights group, Voces de la Frontera.

The former first daughter highlighted that the Pennsylvania shooting happened almost exactly two years from her mother’s death in 2022.

Trump fell to the floor and then covered by Secret Service agents after popping sounds, now known to be multiple gunshots, were heard as he began the campaign event. He had appeared to move his head slightly in the seconds beforehand.

JD Vance, the GOP pick for vice president, has been a vocal critic of foreign aid packages, including providing assistance to Ukraine.

Arguing that the US should encourage a peace deal in which Ukraine cedes land to Russia, he has previous dismissed concerns that it would motivate Vladimir Putin to attack other European countries.

“The most fundamental question: How much does Ukraine need and how much can we actually provide?” he asked in a guest essay in the New York Times. “Mr Biden suggests that a $60 billion supplemental means the difference between victory and defeat in a major war between Russia and Ukraine. That is also wrong … . Fundamentally, we lack the capacity to manufacture the amount of weapons Ukraine needs us to supply to win the war.”

He had previously said that the US should focus on Asia, instead of Ukraine.

“There are a lot of bad guys all over the world. and I’m much more interested in some of the problems in East Asia right now than I am in Europe,” the Ohio senator said during the Munich Security Conference in February this year.

Elon Musk has vowed to donate $45 million a month to a pro-Donald Trump super PAC, The Wall Street Journal reports.

The group, called the America PAC, also receives donations from major figures like the Winklevoss twins and former ambassador Kelly Craft, according to the Journal.

Republicans are expressing their approval of JD Vance as the vice presidential pick for the Republicans, with senator Rand Paul writing on X: “It’s great to have an opponent of endless wars and more aid to Ukraine on the ticket.”

House speaker Mike Johnson welcomed the decision saying the Ohio senator “possesses a profound understanding of the anxieties of working families and has both the lived experience and the policy expertise to help President Trump deliver a government worthy of the people it is supposed to serve.”

Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell also backed Donald Trump’s running mate, saying: “Senator JD Vance is a fierce advocate for the president’s policies and is the obvious pick for President Trump. He’ll make a strong case on the campaign trail on why we need to turn the page on the disastrous policies of the Biden administration.”

Tom Cotton, who is also believed to have been considered as running mate, applauded the choice. “JD Vance is a friend and a conservative champion who fights for American workers. He’ll make an outstanding vice president,” he wrote on X.

The Biden campaign has been quick to launch a scathing attack on Donald Trump’s newly-picked running mate JD Vance.

“Here’s the deal about JD Vance,” said president Joe Biden in a post. “He talks a big game about working people. But now, he and Trump want to raise taxes on middle-class families while pushing more tax cuts for the rich.

Former Barack Obama adviser Van Jones also condemned Mr Vance as the VP choice for the Republicans.

He told CNN that while Trump represents an “instinctive, impulsive, intuitive nationalist. JD Vance is an ideological nationalist.

“That‘s a much more dangerous virus because he can make this – he can polish this stuff and make it seem palatable to people. He can sell this stuff to Silicon Valley, he can sell this stuff to other places.

“What it does is it locks the Republican Party on a pathway that I think is dangerous for the world.”