Four Ways the Specter of Death Infiltrated the Republican National Convention

The events and images from Saturday, July 13, 2024 will surely remain in Americans’ collective memories for quite a while. It’s not often that a former president and/or presidential candidate is nearly assassinated on live television. Yet, just days after being grazed by a bullet during that campaign rally in Pennsylvania, Donald Trump participated in the 2024 Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Although the RNC was supposed to be a four-day extravaganza cheering on the party and celebrating Trump’s survival, anyone who watched the coverage and commentary of July 13 couldn’t help but notice at least four instances where the theme of death overtook the stage.

The cemetery in Appalachia

On the third night of the RNC, the Republican vice presidential nominee, Ohio senator J.D. Vance, accepted his nomination and spoke to the packed arena for 35 minutes about his hardscrabble childhood, highlighting the challenges facing working class Americans then and now. As he illustrated in his memoir, Hillbilly Elegy, Vance grew up in poor blue-collar rural communities in Kentucky and Ohio. He was raised by his grandmother, as his single mother struggled with addiction. 

During his speech, Vance brought up his family’s ancestral cemetery, which is located “on a mountainside in Eastern Kentucky.” If he, his wife, and his children are buried there, Vance said, that plot of land will hold seven generations of his family — many, including Vance, military veterans. He used that statement as a segue to talk about the strength of the people who have fought, built, and died for their country. The image of an old Appalachian graveyard full of generations of the same family was easy for listeners to evoke, and it certainly helped Vance emphasize his family history of patriotic Americans, but nonetheless, it was an odd topic to introduce in an otherwise celebratory event.

The Gold Star families

Certainly less odd or unexpected at the RNC than the mention of cemeteries was the inclusion of family members of some of the 13 U.S. soldiers who died during President Biden’s term in office in an August 2021 suicide bombing in Afghanistan. These Gold Star families were brought on stage by the Republican party to criticize Biden for “never publicly naming their loved ones.”

Although critics quickly pounced on the ulterior motives of the RNC in inviting these families to speak, the majority of the audience (and probably TV viewers, as well) were brought to tears as the mothers, fathers, and in-laws of these American heroes shared details about their loved ones and expressed their frustration over these deaths and their devastating grief in equal measure.

The firefighter’s turnouts

On night four, as Lee Greenwood concluded his song “I’m Proud to be an American,” and the RNC audience prepared to listen to Donald Trump’s speech, men in black suits wheeled out the uniform jacket and helmet belonging to Corey Comperatore, the former fire chief who was killed by the sniper at the Pennsylvania rally that he was attending with his wife and children. As he took the stage, Trump placed his hands on the shoulders of the jacket, asked the crowd to observe a moment of silence, and kissed Comperatore’s helmet.

Meant as a tribute to Comperatore, who has been hailed as a hero for using his own body to shield his family from the sniper’s bullets, Trump’s gesture and the presence of Comperatore’s gear were heartbreaking reminders of this incredible husband, father, and firefighter’s senseless death. 

Trump’s recollections

Just minutes into his hour-and-a-half-speech, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump began to recount the assassination attempt the previous weekend, promising that the audience would “never hear it from me a second time, because it’s actually too painful to tell.”

In his distinctive syntax, Trump walked the crowd step-by-step through the events of that evening, from the moments before he heard the sniper’s bullet whiz by and through his ear to his eventual release from the hospital. In addition to describing his own near-death experience, Trump spoke about the terrible death of Comperatore, the Secret Service sniper’s efficient killing of the shooter, and the critical injuries the shooter inflicted on two other spectators. It was virtually impossible not to reflect on the tragic loss of life that day, no matter how one feels about Donald Trump.

Life and death at the RNC

Conversations about politics can be as polarizing as those about death, and the two topics aren’t usually complementary. The events that immediately preceded the 2024 Republican National Convention certainly gave its event planners and speech writers a reason to introduce death — or at least a heavy overshadowing of it — into the proceedings.