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17-07-2024
WASHINGTON: Donald Trump has received enough votes at the Republican National Convention (RNC) to become the party’s official presidential nominee – days after surviving an assassination attempt.
At the gathering in Milwaukee, the ex-president was confirmed as the Republican candidate ahead of the 5 November election.
The 78-year-old also named Ohio senator JD Vance as his election running mate on his social media platform Truth Social.
Trump’s dominance over the party was reasserted as his confirmation as the Republican nominee sparked scenes of celebration in the convention hall.
Meanwhile, protests against him were held outside the venue.
It comes after Trump survived an assassination attempt on Saturday when a gunman, named by authorities as 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks, shot at him during a campaign rally in Pennsylvania.
Trump, who was struck on the ear in the attack, has been the presumptive nominee for months, having easily clinched a majority of convention delegates earlier in the year brushing aside rivals like South Carolina governor Nikki Haley and Florida governor Ron DeSantis.
However, he didn’t officially become the party’s standard-bearer until Monday’s roll call, where delegates voted for him.
His son, Eric Trump, announced the delegates from Florida which put the former president over the line.
The leader of each state took turns to announce their result, formally putting Trump back in to battle the Democrat candidate likely to be incumbent Joe Biden for control of the White House later this year.
The vast majority of the delegates were already bound to support Trump, with at least 2,243 of the around 2,400, known to be supporting him before the four-day RNC began on Monday while at least 150 delegates, including the entire delegations from Montana, New Mexico, and South Dakota, were technically “unbound” many had already confirmed they planned to vote for Trump prior to the convention.
President Joe Biden is still expected to be the Democrats’ presidential nominee despite coming under increased pressure and scrutiny over questions of his mental fitness and ability to carry out the job.
Despite calls for him to step aside, the 81-year-old is expected to run against Trump once more and Biden has insisted he’s going nowhere.
He will be nominated ahead of the Democratic National Convention on 19 August, due to an Ohio law that could have kept Biden off the ballots in the state if he was not nominated by 7 August.
Trump comfortably beat the internal opposition in the party’s primaries even as he faces a number of legal cases.
Nikki Haley was the last opponent standing against him and had pitched herself as a solid conservative and younger alternative to Trump who is 25 years older than her.
Despite Ms Haley performing well in the debates, that Trump skipped, and drawing some support from deep-pocketed donors, she, nor anyone else, ever posed a serious threat to Trump.
A judge in Florida has dismissed the criminal case relating to classified documents that were found at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate.
The former US president, who is recovering from an assassination attempt at the weekend, has said on his Truth Social platform that the throwing out of the case should be “just the first step” and that it should be “followed quickly by the dismissal of ALL the Witch Hunts”. (Int’l News Desk)
