Trump not expected to name Biden in RNC speech

MILWAUKEE — Former President Trump is not expected to refer to President Biden by name in his remarks to close out the convention, a campaign official confirmed.

An official said Trump was personally involved in rewriting his speech in the wake of Saturday’s assassination attempt. Trump himself indicated the speech would take on a more unifying tone than it would have otherwise.

“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,” Trump said Monday.

It’s still unclear whether Trump will use dystopian rhetoric and describe the U.S. as a nation on the brink of collapse, as he does at nearly every campaign rally.

Trump will likely raise issues like immigration, inflation and the wars in the Middle East and in Ukraine to broadly criticize the Biden administration and Democrats.

Politico reported Trump is expected to call for healing the “discord and division in our society.”

Multiple Trump allies have spoken publicly about how they think Trump’s brush with death has changed him and his outlook, and how that may be reflected in his speech.

“I think he’s changed his speech. … Went from a much tougher speech really prosecuting the administration for a lot of failures, for every failure that we know about that our country’s going through right now, to a very unifying speech, and I’m proud of that,” the former president’s son, Eric Trump, said Wednesday on CBS.

When Trump’s speech concludes he is expected to be joined by former first lady Melania Trump, Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump and other families, as well as his running mate, Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) and his family.

Updated at 9:37 p.m. EDT