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OAK CREEK, Wis. — U.S. Senate candidate Bernie Moreno, who is running against Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown, elicited some boos from a tired but happy room of Illinois Republican delegates on Thursday when he offered Gov. J.B. Pritzker as a top of the ticket replacement for President Joe Biden.
“The Democrats are in a full blown civil war,” Moreno said. “Think about this for a second now. One hundred and 10 days away from this election, we don’t even know who President Trump and JD Vance is going to run against. We have no idea. It could be your governor.”
Delegates booed, with some screaming “no” and others laughing.
The Pritzker bashing continued after the breakfast, with U.S. Rep. Darin LaHood, R-Ill., telling reporters, “I think if Gov. Pritzker didn’t have a billion dollars, he wouldn’t be in office right now.”
“But for his money is the only reason why he’s been in office. I don’t think many people outside of his media window, bubble, pay any attention to Gov. Pritzker,” he said.
Pritzker’s campaign shot back at LaHood’s remarks.
“Bruce Rauner proved that money, or an endorsement from Rep. LaHood, is not what wins elections in Illinois. It’s a record of delivering for working families and getting the state back on track,” Pritzker spokeswoman Christina Amestoy said. “While Darin LaHood is in Milwaukee backing Trump and his plans to ban abortion nationwide, Gov. Pritzker has been banning junk health insurance plans, creating the jobs of the future, and investing in Illinois’ infrastructure.”
— Tina Sfondeles
Pressure mounts on head of Secret Service to resign over Trump assassination attempt
OAK CREEK, Wis. — Illinois’ Congressional Republicans are joining mounting calls for U.S. Secret Service chief Kimberly Cheatle to step down over the agency’s failure to protect former President Donald Trump.
After an Illinois delegation breakfast on Thursday at their suburban Milwaukee hotel, Rep. Darin LaHood and Rep. Mike Bost told reporters Cheatle must resign.
“She needs to go. She failed,” Bost said. “It’s not just what happened with Donald Trump. We don’t even know what happened at that rally. What fell and failed. So we need to answer that. We also need to know in the future, that [it] never happens again.”
LaHood, who serves on the House Intelligence Committee, said he spoke with Speaker Mike Johnson on Wednesday about Cheatle.
“It’s unacceptable, what the Secret Service didn’t do on Saturday. I call for the Secret Service director to step down. I think it’s unacceptable the actions that they didn’t take to secure the perimeter for President Trump,” LaHood said.
LaHood also said, “other people that didn’t do their job should be held accountable. “
U.S. Rep. Mary Miller on Wednesday wrote on social media that she was “gravely concerned that so many important questions remain unanswered.”
“The American people deserve answers on how the leading candidate for President came within an inch of being assassinated, and Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle should resign for failing to adequately protect President Trump.”
In an interview with ABC on Monday, Cheatle called the shooting “unacceptable” but said she wouldn’t resign.
“The buck stops with me,” Cheatle said. “I am the director of the Secret Service, and I need to make sure that we are performing a review and that we are giving resources to our personnel as necessary.”
On Wednesday, House Oversight Chairman James Comer issued a subpoena for Cheatle to testify at a public hearing on Monday, focused on the security breach.
— Tina Sfondeles
GOP congressman has ‘never seen Democrats so despondent’ as now
OAK CREEK, Wis. — U.S. Rep. Darin LaHood, R-Ill., on Thursday declared the “table has been flipped” on Democrats heading into the Nov. 5 election with momentum building behind former President Donald Trump’s campaign.
The central Illinois congressman told state delegates at their breakfast program at a suburban Milwaukee hotel that the tide turned most dramatically after President Biden’s dismal debate showing last month.
“I’ve never seen Democrats so despondent, so sad,” LaHood said. “I actually felt so sorry for a Democrat. I thought about hugging one that week. I didn’t do it, but it’s nice for a change that the table has been flipped. And make no mistake about it: Democrats are in a freefall right now in terms of where they’re at in the party.”
An Illinois delegate wears a badge on her ear, mimicking the bandage Donald Trump has worn at the Republican National Convention since he was wounded Saturday in an assassination attempt. The delegate was attending the Illinois delegation breakfast Thursday at the Comfort Suites Milwaukee Airport hotel in Oak Creek, Wis.
Ashlee Rezin/Sun-Times
Meanwhile, LaHood said he’s “never seen so much unity, so much optimism, so much energy in our Republican Party. It is palpable every single day.”
He pointed to a “much more focused, disciplined” Trump after his assassination attempt.
“We saw that in the debate prep. We saw it in the vice presidential pick, and we’ve seen it with this convention,” he said.
— Mitchell Armentrout
Get rid of ‘crazy, dysfunctional’ Democrats, former Illinois GOP chair says
Outgoing Illinois Republican Party Chair Don Tracy advised delegates to work closely together to rid the state of “crazy, dysfunctional Democrats” who have had a lock on all statewide elected offices since 2019.
“I’ve really enjoyed serving the party,” Tracy said in his farewell at the Illinois RNC delegation breakfast. “I believe in selfless service, and that’s what you all are doing here today.”
“I just ask that you keep helping the Illinois Republican Party grow bigger and become a bigger tent party and take back Illinois from the crazy dysfunctional Democrats.”
Tracy announced his resignation last month after three and a half years in the volunteer post, complaining he “had to spend far too much time dealing with intra-party power struggles.”
The next state GOP chair, Kathy Salvi, officially takes the reins Friday.
No whey! Cheesy Trump is back
A tabletop cheese sculpture of former President Donald Trump got a second term in front of Illinois delegates at their breakfast program Thursday.
The chiseled cheddar of Trump carved against an Illinois backdrop was refrigerated after its debut on Wednesday and offered up for another round of pasteurized pomp.
No bites were taken.
— Mitchell Armentrout
Trump says he rewrote acceptance speech after assassination attempt
MILWAUKEE — The Republican National Convention culminates Thursday with Donald Trump expected to accept the party’s presidential nomination at the Fiserv Forum.
The comeback, four years in the making, has become even more anticipated in light of Saturday’s assassination attempt.
But Trump’s narrow escape also means the speech the former president will deliver is not the same one he planned to give.
Republicans throughout the week in Milwaukee have suggested the combative former president take a gentler tone in light of the shooting and have suggested the crisis provides a chance to de-escalate the divisive political rhetoric that has marked the 2024 campaign.
Donald Trump told the Washington Examiner that he had rewritten his acceptance speech in the wake of the Saturday shooting, emphasizing a call for national unity.
“The speech I was going to give on Thursday was going to be a humdinger,” he said. “Had this not happened, this would’ve been one of the most incredible speeches,” aimed mostly at the policies of President Joe Biden. “Honestly, it’s going to be a whole different speech now.”
A shift wouldn’t surprise Lawrence Tabas, state chairman of the Republican Party in Pennsylvania, where the assassination attempt occurred.
“I do believe that after going through that his message will be better, and I do think he will appeal to our better emotions,” Tabas said. “He has an enormous compassion and empathy that doesn’t always come through.”
— Associated Press
House Speaker Johnson calls on Biden to fire Secret Service director
House Speaker Mike Johnson is ramping up the pressure on U.S. Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle, calling on President Biden to fire her for security failures in the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump.
Johnson had already called for Cheatle to step down but says it’s clear she has no intention of doing so.
“I think there has to be accountability and it begins at the top. This is ridiculous,” Johnson said Thursday during a Fox Business interview.
Johnson also described a telephone briefing that Cheatle and FBI Director Christopher Wray provided lawmakers on Wednesday, saying “they did not give us satisfactory answers to some very important questions” while also acknowledging that some of the information may need to be discussed in a classified setting.
— Associated Press
Vance: ‘Social conservatives have a seat at this table and always will’
Ohio Sen. JD Vance made his first public appearance Thursday since accepting the Republican vice presidential nomination Wednesday, speaking at an evangelical Christian breakfast where he described the winding path to his faith.
He told roughly 1,000 influential social conservatives that he once considered himself an atheist, but marrying and some early influences from the devout grandmother who raised him set him on the course to his Christian faith.
Vance also addressed uneasiness stemming from the Trump campaign’s effort to streamline the Republican Party platform, which, until this month, had for 40 years called for a national abortion ban.
“There has been a lot of grumbling in the past few weeks that the Republican Party of now and the Republican Party of the future is not going to be a place that’s welcoming to social conservatives,” Vance told attendees. “And, really, from the bottom of my heart, that is not true. Social conservatives have a seat at this table, and always will so long as I have any influence in this party, and President Trump, I know.”
The breakfast was hosted by the Faith and Freedom Coalition at the Victorian-era Pfister Hotel in downtown Milwaukee.
— Associated Press
Democrats make fresh push for Biden to reconsider running
WASHINGTON — Democrats worried about President Joe Biden’s ability to win this November are making a renewed push for him to reconsider his reelection bid, using mountains of data, frank conversations and now, his own time off the campaign trail after testing positive for COVID, to encourage a reassessment.
Biden has insisted he is not backing down, adamant that he is the candidate who beat Republican Donald Trump before and will do it again this year. But publicly and privately, key Democrats are sending signals of concern and some hope he will assess the trajectory of the race and his legacy during this few days’ pause.
In a radio interview with Univision’s Luis Sandoval that airs Thursday, Biden said it’s still early and that many people don’t focus on the election until September.
“All the talk about who’s leading and where and how, is kind of, you know — everything so far between Trump and me has been basically even,” Biden said in an excerpt of the interview.
Some national polls do show a close race, though others suggest Trump with a lead. And some state polls have contained warning signs too, including a recent New York Times/Siena poll that suggested a competitive race in Virginia.
— Associated Press
The four things Biden has said would make him drop out of race
President Joe Biden has made it clear basically any which way you ask him: he’s definitely, assuredly, “one thousand percent” staying in the presidential race.
But in response to questions from journalists over the last few weeks, the embattled Democratic president has given some clues as to what could make him step aside — especially as the calls from his own party to end his candidacy continue unabated.
• Divine intervention: “I mean, if the Lord Almighty comes out and tells me that, I might do that,” Biden said in an interview with ABC anchor George Stephanopoulos.
• Cold, hard data: No politician ever wants to lose — and it seems Biden would be willing to exit if he had numerical proof that that’s what would happen.
• A fateful accident: “Unless I get hit by a train” was Biden’s response to an interviewer’s question last week about staying in the race.
• A not-yet-diagnosed medical ailment: “If I had some medical condition that emerged,” Biden told BET journalist Ed Gordon. “If doctors came to me and said, ‘You got this problem, that problem.'”
— Associated Press