Rep. Byron Donalds (R-Fla.) on Monday said former President Trump has a “new sense of purpose” moving forward in his presidential campaign following the assassination attempt against him over the weekend.
“I don’t want to speak for him, but knowing him, his mind getting back to business getting back to working hard for the American people,” Donalds said in an interview on CNN. “And the assassination attempt, which obviously would be chilling for anybody, what it has done for the president is, it has given him a new sense of purpose, focus and energy to move forward with this campaign and get back into the White House.”
Donalds, a longtime supporter of Trump, said he spoke with some members of the former president’s senior team who said he is in “good spirits.”
Shots were fired at Trump’s campaign rally in Butler, Pa., on Saturday, wounding the former president and killing a spectator. Two other attendees were injured and were stable as of Sunday.
The shooter, identified by the FBI as 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks of Bethel Park, Pa., was fatally shot by authorities moments after he fired from a rooftop in the vicinity of the rally site.
Trump arrived in Milwaukee for the GOP convention Sunday, less than a day after the shooting occurred. He said he decided to depart for the convention Sunday afternoon because, “I cannot allow a ‘shooter,’ or potential assassin, to force change to scheduling, or anything else.”
In an interview with the Washington Examiner, Trump said he is changing his planned speech for the convention to focus on unity in the wake of the shooting.
“I think it’s the right path. Because look, we have major disagreements and politics, we know this, but it can’t go to that level,” Donalds said Monday. “It cannot go to where now people are being targeted for assassination, where you have violence between citizens.”
“We’re allowed to have disagreements as families. We have disagreements within businesses, in politics, obviously,” the lawmaker continued. “But when something like this happens, it requires you to reassess. The president has done that, unity is going to be our message of the week, and not just this week, for the rest of this campaign and going forward in our country.”
President Biden, in a prime-time address Sunday night, made a plea to lower the temperature in politics.
“The political rhetoric in this country has gotten very heated. It’s time to cool it down,” Biden said in remarks in the Oval Office. “This places an added burden on all of us that no matter how strong our convictions, we must never descend into violence.”