Jeff Burns was excited about attending his first in-person Republican National Convention, spending time with fellow conservatives — a rarity for a Bay Area GOP voter — and celebrating former President Trump being officially named the party’s 2024 nominee.
What’s more, as Burns flew to Milwaukee Saturday, he was seated next to veteran GOP strategist Karl Rove. But then images of Trump recoiling from a would-be assassin’s bullet flashed across their seat-back monitors.
In an instant, he said, “the gravity of the world we live in and the extremism and the violence and the rhetoric for both parties” became front of mind.
What was supposed to be a joyous time had been “turned on its head,” he said Sunday. “I’m still trying to wrap my head around it.”
Such are the emotions swirling as Burns and other delegates gather for the four-day convention, which begins Monday in Milwaukee. There’s relief that Trump survived, dismay that such a thing could happen and resolve to move forward.
Burns, 52, a Danville resident and chair of the Contra Costa Republican Party in Northern California, said the images of a bloodied Trump defiantly pumping his fist have become iconic. Trump already excites his audiences, but Burns predicted his appearance at the convention will be electrifying.
“When he makes an appearance on the stage, even just a wave, it’s going to be like the Beatles,” he said.
Burns is among about 2,400 delegates, as well as tens of thousands of elected officials, donors, guests, reporters and others, convening at the Fiserv Forum arena and nearby environs.
Given the number of high-profile potential targets, security around such events has always been heightened around political conventions, but has now intensified in the aftermath of the assassination attempt.
Convention planners had already been coordinating with 40 law enforcement agencies, Michael Whatley, chairman of the Republican National Committee, told Fox News on Sunday.
“The arena’s set, the security is here, and we feel very comfortable that we’re working with the Secret Service,” Whatley said, adding that there was “no place” in the nation’s politics for the “horrific” violence that unfolded Saturday at a Trump rally in Pennsylvania.
But he added that the violence would not stop the convention and the delegates’ work.
On Monday, a day with the theme of “Make America Wealthy Once Again,” delegates are expected to approve the party platform.
The next three days have themes as well.
• Tuesday: “Make America Safe Once Again”
• Wednesday: “Make America Strong Once Again”
• Thursday: “Make America Great Once Again”
“We are here in Milwaukee and the show is going to take place,” Whatley said. “It’s tremendously important for us as a country that the Republican Party is going to move forward. We are going to be strong. We are going to be resilient and certainly, President Trump is going to be strong and resilient.”
Trump, who was said to be “fine” after being bloodied by a bullet, arrived in Milwaukee on Sunday.
As Burns said, the photo of Trump pumping his fist after he was shot and being rushed off the stage by Secret Service agents — as an American flag waved in the background — has become an iconic image of the moment.
It was on the front of a red T-shirt worn by Shane Kruchten, 39, of San Diego, as he disembarked from a plane in Milwaukee on Sunday. His baseball cap also urged people, in a rather salty language, to vote for the former president.
“Obviously, tensions are on the rise,” said Kruchten, a private security officer and construction company owner. “Things are going to be crazy. But you still have people coming out because they love America at the end of the day. And America first.
“We know what is needed. This country is needed. It’s founded on God. It needs God back in it, and the evil spirits are trying to invade and here we are to fight.”
Kruchten said he worked for War Room, a podcast founded by Trump’s 2017 White House chief strategist Steve Bannon, who is imprisoned after being convicted of contempt of Congress.
Wisconsin is a swing state that President Biden won by less than 1% over Trump in 2020 and is critical to winning the White House in November. Democrats in Milwaukee and surrounding environs — longtime liberal strongholds — denounced the assassination attempt but also worried about what could occur during the convention.
“I’m hoping that this week is just peaceful, that there’s no violence that’s going on. There’s no place for it,” said Amy Yetson, a 47-year-old life insurance underwriter who is a registered Democrat. “I hope everybody has their say. But that everyone stays safe.”
Burns, who with other members of the California GOP delegation was staying in nearby Brookfield, was heartened to watch Trump’s plane land in Milwaukee on Sunday. He then watched Biden’s Oval Office address in a hotel bar, where he sipped a Sonoma-Cutrer chardonnay.
“We debate and disagree, we compare and contrast the character of the candidate, the records, the issues, the agenda, the vision for America,” Biden said. “But in America, we resolve our differences at the ballot box. That’s how we do it, at the ballot box. Not with bullets.”
While he wasn’t thrilled with some of Biden’s language in recent days about how it was “time to put Trump in a bull’s-eye,” Burns said he thought the president “did a good job” and “said the right things.”
He said he would like to see both men appeal to the better angels of Americans, and he expected Trump would do so when he accepts the GOP nomination on Thursday.
“We’ll see. It’s politics, and it’s a hand-to-hand sport,” he said. “We’re all Americans. I live in a blue state and a blue county. I work overtime to spend time with people and have friendships with people who totally don’t agree with me. And we leave that on the side. And that’s America, and I think it’s healthy.”