We were joined by Hilario Deleon, Chairman of the Milwaukee County Republican Party.
Matt Frei: You’ve been through a very difficult time with the events on Saturday, but the impression I get from everyone here, and I wonder if you’re the same, is that this thing has really turned out to be an extraordinarily, amazing piece of good luck. Not just for the former president himself, but also for the Republican Party, because he’s now ahead in the polls.
Hilario Deleon: I was watching the rally live that Saturday. I was not there. I was watching it live from home, and it was a very, very emotional moment. I didn’t get to bed till three in the morning that day. Phone was ringing off the hook. Thank God President Trump survived the shooting. It’s just tragic to hear that a rally goer died, and then there was someone who was wounded. But I think there’s a lot of tension on both sides going on, especially in this election, the heated rhetoric. And, you know, Republicans aren’t entirely wrong when it comes to the rhetoric that was spewed by the Democrat Party when it came to ‘Trump is Hitler’, ‘He’s going to be a dictator’, ‘We’ve got to save democracy’, and all these things.
Matt Frei: The things that Trump has said, from’ Lock her up’ about Hillary Clinton when she wasn’t accused of any crimes, to egging on people on January the 6th. He was mocking the husband of Nancy Pelosi when he was attacked by a hammer. This is appalling stuff, isn’t it?
Hilario Deleon: At the end of the day, there are, again, rhetoric on both sides. You need to calm down. And I think it is very powerful to see that President Trump and President Biden both called one another and talked on the phone, and it’s great to see that, I think tension’s coming out. Here at the convention, we’re getting a sense of unity coming out right now, and I think there’s going to be a sense of unity, hopefully within the country.
Matt Frei: There’s never been any doubt about unity in the Republican Party, unlike the Democrats. You know who you want to run this ticket, he’s been ahead all along, let’s face it. But I wonder when Trump says that this near-death experience was a moment of conversion for him, as I think he told the Washington Examiner, do you believe him? And converted to what?
Hilario Deleon: I believe him 100%. The fact that he had a prepared speech that he was going to say here at the RNC, and he said he’s now changing the speech completely. Got rid of the old speech, and he’s going to have a new one. President Trump is definitely someone who says things that are on the top of his mind, and he’s going to be very honest with people.
So I think we’re going to see a very different President Trump. I think we’re going to see a President Trump that really talks about the policies that he put forth during his administration and how they help the American people and the world, too. But I think he’s also going to extend an invitation to the Democrat Party, members of the Libertarian Party, members that are in between moderate independents, all that stuff, to join the movement, in wanting to make America great again.
Matt Frei: But we heard the crowd earlier shouting, ‘Fight, fight, fight’. Basically picking up a cue directly from Donald Trump. And we know that he’s very good at being very defined and incredibly robust and actually quite aggressive, and his supporters love it. How does that square with a man who’s going to suddenly become the healer-in-chief?
Hilario Deleon: He was telling his people to get out and knock doors. And when I hear ‘Fight, fight, fight’ as a county party chairman, my job is to make sure that we get volunteers, our staffers out there, knocking doors. We’re building relationships in the community. That’s a fight. It’s not an easy thing to do. So when he was saying ‘Fight, fight, fight’, that is the message that each and every single one of these people heard.
We could have easily been angry and gone out and rioted after that shoot. But the movement did not, because this is a movement of love for country, and we love our candidate, President Trump, and the policies that he put forth, and so we didn’t go out and riot. As a matter of fact, yesterday at Ziegler Park in Milwaukee, we came together and we prayed and we prayed for our nation. We prayed for our leaders. We prayed for the Democrat leaders, everyone. So that’s the difference between, very much, the movements going on.
Matt Frei: He was already slightly ahead in the polls before this happened on Saturday. Do you think he’s now definitely going to win? Is he unstoppable?
Hilario Deleon: I don’t want to say he’s unstoppable because you never know what the election’s going to…
Matt Frei: You don’t want to jinx it?
Hilario Deleon: Yeah. You don’t want to jinx it. Everyone here is just happy that he survived the shooting, and we’re very much looking forward to hearing his speech on Thursday. We don’t know who he’s going to pick as the VP.
Matt Frei: By the way, just very quickly, who do you think it should be?
Hilario Deleon: That’s not my decision to make. It’s President Trump’s decision. Whoever he chooses is, in my opinion, the best decision for not only the party, but the country as a whole. And so I think that in this case, I’m sure his polling numbers are going to go up. That happened with Reagan, too, when he was shot.
