WASHINGTON — The Republican National Convention kicks off Monday, where Donald Trump will formally accept his party's nomination as the GOP candidate for the presidential election.
The event comes just days after Trump narrowly escaped an assassination attempt during a campaign rally in Pennsylvania.
Even before Saturday's deadly shooting, the RNC was set to be a major event in the campaign. Trump will unveil his pick for running mate, the person who will be his vice president if he wins the election in November. And party members will likely be trying to put their best foot forward through speeches and presentations as possible future leaders of the GOP conference. If Trump wins in November, he will be term-limited out from running again, meaning a new Republican candidate will have to emerge for 2028.
But before that, Trump is expected to take the stage and address the Republican party.
How to watch the 2024 Republican National Convention
The RNC will livestream proceedings across a number of online platforms, including YouTube and X.
A number of networks have announced special programming for the prime-time portions of the convention, where Trump and others will give speeches from the hall where delegates are convening.
Other media outlets, both local and national, will stream whatever is happening on the floor. The actual space itself is closed to the public, behind several layers of security accessible only to delegates, officials, volunteers and credential media.
When will Donald Trump speak at the RNC?
Trump is the headliner for the event, and is expected to address delegates on Thursday evening, the last day of the convention. His remarks will come as those delegates cast their votes for him as the party's nominee.
In a joint statement released Saturday evening, the Trump campaign and RNC said Trump "looks forward to joining you all in Milwaukee as we proceed with our convention to nominate him to serve as the 47th President of the United States."
Has Trump changed his speech?
After the assassination attempt on Trump, anger and anxiety are coursing through the party, even as many top Republicans call for calm and a lowering of tensions.
As elected officials, politicians and a few regular Americans address the conference, the question is which tone will prevail in the aftermath of the attack: Will it make speeches even more fiery or will calls for calm prevail?
Trump, for his part, has reportedly been changing his speech in response to the shooting.
Much of the speech was originally focused on the Biden administration's policies, and likely wouldn't have sounded much different from his usual campaign rally stump speeches — tangential, off the cuff and undeniably Trumpian.
But in the wake of the shooting, the former president has reportedly sought a softer message. He has been calling for national unity, as members of his party and Democrats, including President Joe Biden, call for cooler heads to prevail and for political violence to be avoided.
Trump has said he will carry that message into the convention. He told The Washington Examiner that he has rewritten his speech after being the target of an attempted assassination.
“The speech I was going to give on Thursday was going to be a humdinger,” he told the news outlet in an article posted Sunday evening.
In the interview, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee says he will now call for a new effort at national unity, noting that people from different political views have called him after the attack.
Where is the RNC taking place?
Republicans are convening at the Fiserv Forum in downtown Milwaukee, home to the NBA's Milwaukee Bucks. Other facilities such as University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Panther Arena and the Baird Center are hosting event spaces, including a filing center for the hundreds of reporters from around the world who are in town to cover the convention.
Wisconsin is among the handful of states expected to be battlegrounds in this year's general election, with an anticipated close finish between Biden and Trump.
Biden won the state by the slimmest of margins over Trump in 2020; last week, it was among the three “blue wall states” that Biden’s campaign said in a memo present his “clearest pathway” to victory in November.
Who will be on stage?
Trump is expected to give his nomination acceptance speech Thursday, although there's another speaker who might be just as highly anticipated.
Trump waited until Monday to announce Ohio Sen. JD Vance as his running mate in a post on his Truth Social platform, building anticipation as convention plans came together and delegates arrived in town without knowing who would be atop the ticket with their nominee.
As is tradition for vice presidential picks, Vance is expected to take the stage on Wednesday night.
There are themes for each night's speeches, from economics to immigration to crime to national security. The campaign hasn't released a full slate of speakers, and it's possible we won't know who is taking the stage each night until hours before.
What’s up next?
Democrats are set to gather next month in Chicago for their own convention.
And in September, there's another debate scheduled between Biden and Trump.
The Associated Press contributed to this story.