The year 2024 is starting to rival the most significant election years in our country’s history. In the last three weeks alone, the disastrous debate performance of President Biden that exposed his significant liabilities, the assassination attempt on former President Trump and his spontaneous and inspiring response, the Florida judge’s decision to throw out Trump’s documents case, and the Republican Convention’s move to embrace a unifying, more centrist strategy represent a potential instant sea change in American political life.

Tonight, the world’s attention will be on the closing night of the Republican Convention in Milwaukee. Specifically, the address by former President Donald J. Trump as he accepts his party’s nomination will be scrutinized to see if — as many expect — he charts a new, more unifying course for his party and the country with ramifications for a tectonic and long term shift in American political power. Will his words and delivery tonight — the first time we will have heard him speak since the awful events last Saturday — cement the welcome change in his party’s strategy, or will he miss the opportunity that the attempt on his life last weekend handed him?

We will all know by tomorrow, but Trump has the potential tonight of delivering a game-changing speech that brings to mind past iconic political addresses including John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address on January 20, 1961 (“Ask not what your country can do for you. . .”); Sen. Barry Goldwater’s 1964 Republican Convention speech (“Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice”); Sen. Robert F. Kennedy’s spontaneous statement at a campaign rally in Indianapolis on April 4, 1968 — the night of Martin Luther King’s assassination; and Ronald Reagan’s “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall” address in Berlin in 1987.

In the view of some seasoned observers, Trump’s speech tonight may be even more significant than all of the rest as he stands at a potential game-changing pivot point in modern American party politics.

In a “world exclusive” published in the Washington Examiner on Sunday, July 14, Salena Zito reported on her interview with Trump less than one day after an assassin’s bullet came close to ending his life. He indicated that his plans for his acceptance speech on the closing day of the Republican Convention Thursday night had changed.

Former President Donald Trump has completely rewritten his convention speech in light of the assassination attempt against him on Saturday and will call on Thursday for a new effort at national unity.

In an exclusive interview with the Washington Examiner a day after being hit by a sniper’s bullet, Trump said he wanted to take advantage of a historic moment and draw the country together.

He has switched, he said, from planning to excite his voter base to one that demonstrates his belief that the attack on him at a rally in Pennsylvania had changed the election campaign entirely. Both Republicans and Democrats have acknowledged this in the aftermath of Saturday’s shocking incident.

Talking as he boarded his plane in Bedminster, New Jersey, for Milwaukee, where the Republican National Convention starts Monday and lasts through Thursday, Trump said his speech will meet the moment that history demands. ‘It is a chance to bring the country together. I was given that chance,’ he said.

Early Sunday morning, Trump posted on Truth Social that it was ‘God alone who prevented the unthinkable from happening’ and that he would ‘fear not.’ Again, in talking to the Washington Examiner, he invoked ‘God’ for his deliverance.

‘This is a chance to bring the whole country, even the whole world, together. The speech will be a lot different, a lot different than it would’ve been two days ago,’ he said.

FOX News, which has left its cable news competition and all of the broadcast channels in the ratings dust this week, had a provocative live panel early yesterday morning that returned repeatedly during the program’s two hours. Two of the participants, in particular, had an interesting running discussion on the prospects for the election that should give heart to conservative readers. One of the participants was a Republican, the other a Democrat.

Kiron Skinner, the Republican, is a professor at Pepperdine University and a Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University and the Heritage Foundation and former Director of Policy Planning at the State Department. Julian Epstein, an attorney, has had a long career in and around national politics including as a Democrat activist at high levels. Lately, he has emerged as a political realist and a truth-teller to his party. Skinner’s and Epstein’s running discussion on FOX News on and off for two hours about the state of politics today was one of the most interesting that I've watched or read. Excerpts follow, transcribed by me from a recording I made of the FOX News broadcast early in the morning (ET) on Wednesday July 17, 2024.

1:37 AM ET 

Kiron Skinner: This convention tonight suggests to me . . . that the Republican Party that Donald Trump is ushering in is not your grandfather’s Republican Party. In fact, it’s flipping the narrative with the Democratic Party. It’s becoming the old New Deal coalition of the cities in the south with the minorities being a critical part. This is a realignment going on.

Democrats are facing something incredibly fundamental right now. They could lose part of the black vote that they’ve counted on. They could lose part of the Hispanic vote, losing many of the voters that they've counted on for better than a half century. And the Republican Party that was once the country club set is now the blue collar party and Donald Trump is the blue collar billionaire. I think they’re disoriented on the Democratic side and the issue around Biden continuing is at the center of that concern.

Julian Epstein: I tend to think that’s right. The Democratic coalition is starting to crumble, not just with minority voters but working class voters and young voters. The Republicans are showing remarkable discipline on message.

Julian Epstein during an interview on FOX News (Screenshot used with the permission of FOX News)

2:07 AM ET

Epstein: I saw three subtle but very important shifts that the Republicans made tonight [Tuesday] on messaging. One is they’re not calling the Democrats names. They’re not going around saying they’re Marxists and socialists and they’re terrible people. They focus specifically on the problems that the Democrats have on crime, immigration, education, and foreign affairs. It was very policy-centric, as opposed to what Democrats are doing now — they are sticking with sort of ‘MAGA Republican threat to democracy’ which I thought would be toned down after the assassination attempt.

The second thing I noticed is that the Republicans have a clear message: more wealth and more security, at home and abroad. That’s a memorable line. Democrats don’t have a message. When people ask Democrats what they plan to do in the next four years, they don’t really have a clear answer that anyone can remember.

The third point is the Republicans have now had a sort of Sister Soulja moment here where they have pivoted to the center. They are keeping the abortion question not only out of the platform, but out of the discussions at the convention. This suggests to me that they are moving to the center, not just in the lack of militancy in the language or the demilitarizing the language but also on policy. Democrats should look at these three things because it’s what the public is asking for, particularly after the assassination attempt.

Secretary of State Michael R. Pompeo officiates the Swearing-In Ceremony for Dr. Kiron Skinner as Director of Policy Planning at the Department of State, September 4, 2018. State Department Photo/Public Domain

Skinner: I actually think what Trump was trying to do was always in the center of American politics. It was just so distorted by the mainstream media and many around him including the Never Trump Republicans who wanted to defeat him. What I think has actually happened is a lot of those forces have been stripped away and you’re seeing the real Donald Trump in terms of policy. What he is saying now he was saying in 2016. It was never extreme, especially on foreign and defense policy. And that’s now coming out. I think it will help him in the vast Midwest and many of the flyover states because those voters care about jobs, they believe that there are guns vs. butter trade offs that need to be made. This is not centrist or conservative, it’s kind of practical politics. I saw Trump as a kind of political realist always but we couldn’t see it given the dynamics around him for many years.

2:37 AM ET

Epstein: There really was a red wave in 2022. Biden won in 2020 by four points. In 2022, the Republicans won the popular vote by three points. That’s a seven point switch that was happening in 2022 because moderate voters didn’t like the cultural left and the intersectional left policies in the Biden Administration. The reason it didn't translate into a larger congressional majority was because Trump came in at the end of the day complaining about the 2020 election which turned a lot of people off.

All this is to say to the Democrats that this shift towards the Republicans has been underway for at least three years. And it’s also to say to the Republicans that just because there is this shift underway it doesn’t mean that you have closed the deal on the undecided voters. It means that voters are turning away from Democrats because of what they think are left extremist policies. But these voters are still up for grabs and it’s maybe five to eight percent of voters and that’s where the pay is. And right now the Republicans have the clear advantage.

For readers interested in exploring Skinner or Epstein further, Epstein’s X/Twitter is x.com/JulianEpstein. Epstein’s column in the NY Post last Sunday is “Replacing Biden is a start, but Dems must replace their policies.” Kiron Skinner’s X is x.com/kironskinner.

Former President Trump’s acceptance speech at the Republican Convention is expected to take place around 10 PM ET tonight, Thursday July 18th. It will be part of live coverage of the convention on the five cable news channels (FOX News, CNN, MSNBC, NewsNation, and Newsmax), as well as on the broadcast channels (ABC, CBS, NBC, and PBS). It will also be streamed live on multiple sites.

Peter Barry Chowka is a veteran journalist who has covered national politics and other topics for over five decades. His most recent interview on BBC Radio in the U.K. can be listened to here. His web page with links to his work and a bio is http://peter.media. Peter’s extensive American Thinker archive: http://tinyurl.com/pcathinker. His X/Twitter account is @pchowka.