MILWAUKEE — A day after Donald Trump was formally nominated as the Republican Party’s 2024 presidential candidate and Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio was named his running mate, Trump’s final rival in the presidential primary is taking center stage at the Republican National Convention.
Former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, John F. Kennedy, who served as ambassador to the United Nations during the Trump administration, is scheduled to speak at the convention on Tuesday, multiple sources familiar with the decision confirmed to Fox News over the weekend.
As of last week, Haley had not been invited to speak at the convention and was not scheduled to attend the four-day conference in the battleground state of Wisconsin’s largest city.
But after the attempted assassination of Trump at a rally in western Pennsylvania on Saturday, which left the former president visibly bleeding with a bullet grazing his ear, one spectator dead and two seriously injured, Republicans quickly rallied around their standard-bearer — and as part of that drive for unity, Haley was invited to speak at the convention.
Trump announces J.D. Vance as his running mate for 2024
Former President Donald Trump gestures with a bloody face as multiple gunshots ring out during a campaign rally at the Butler Farm Show in Butler, Pennsylvania, USA, July 13, 2024. (Reuters/Brendan McDiarmid)
Haley Presidential Election She announced her candidacy for president last February, becoming the first major candidate to challenge Trump, who had announced his candidacy three months earlier. She was Trump’s final rival, battling the former president in a fierce two-candidate contest from the New Hampshire primary in late January through Super Tuesday in early March.
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Haley announced she would stop campaigning at the White House on March 6, the day after Trump won 14 of the Republican Party’s 15 nominating races on Super Tuesday.
As she dropped out of the race, Haley made it clear she would continue to speak out, and she continued to receive 20% of the Republican vote. Presidential primaries A few months after she dropped out.
Republican presidential candidate and former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley announced she was ceasing her campaign activities in Charleston, South Carolina, on March 6, 2024. (Reuters/Brian Snyder)
In late May, Haley, in her first public comments since announcing her 2024 presidential candidacy, said she would vote for Trump.
Haley won a total of 97 delegates in the Republican presidential primary, and last week she urged them all to release their votes and support Trump.
Asked about Haley in an interview with Fox News’ Brian Kilmeade last week, Trump said, “There’s a lot of ill will there and she stayed there too long.”
“She dropped out right after Iowa. She should have dropped out right after Iowa,” Trump said, pointing to another former candidate, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who dropped out three days before the New Hampshire primary.
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The second night of the convention will also be a high-profile event, with several prominent Republican Senate candidates scheduled to address GOP delegates from the podium at the Fiserv Forum in Milwaukee.
With Senate districts so favorable, Republicans are aiming to recapture the Senate majority they lost in the 2020 elections.
Tuesday’s session follows Monday’s big developments.
Just before the formal nomination at the convention’s presidential slate call, Trump announced his long-awaited running mate.
With an eye on the future of a Republican Party dominated by Trump and his legion of MAGA supporters, the former president added Vance, 39, to his party’s national roster of candidates.
Senator J.D. Vance (R-Ohio), former President Trump’s choice as the Republican vice presidential nominee, arrives on the first day of the Republican National Convention at Fiserv Forum in Milwaukee, Wisconsin on July 15, 2024. (Win McNamee/Getty Images)
Trump will now share a slate of candidates with one of his main allies in the Senate and a one-time critic of Trump who is now a leading advocate of the America First movement.
Vance, a former venture capitalist who wrote the best-selling memoir “Hillbilly Elegy” before running for office, was among a small group of Republicans considered front-runners for the vice presidential nomination, including North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio.
Fox News reported that Rubio and Burgum received the call just hours before Trump announced that he would not be the vice presidential nominee.
A source close to Vance’s political circle also told Fox News that he wasn’t even informed that the senator was Trump’s running mate until 20 minutes before he announced his choice on the Truth Social social media platform.
Get the latest 2024 campaign updates, exclusive interviews and more on Fox News Digital’s Election Hub.
