Behind the Curtain: "Getting shot in the face changes a man"

"I think it's real," Tucker Carlson — who'll speak in prime time at the convention, and talks to Trump often — told us. "Getting shot in the face changes a man."

• Trump — who landed yesterday in Milwaukee, just over 24 hours after the assassination attempt — brought a rare succinctness to a post on his Truth Social platform: "UNITE AMERICA!"
• It's an echo of former President Ronald Reagan, who projected strength and humor after being shot in 1981. The late David S. Broder, legendary Washington Post political dean, recalled decades later that Reagan "was politically untouchable from that point on. He became a mythic figure."

Trump said in an interview Sunday with the Washington Examiner's Salena Zito, a Pittsburgh native who has long covered him, that he's rewriting his Thursday convention speech to take advantage of a historic moment and draw the country together.

• "The speech ... was going to be a humdinger," Trump told her as he boarded his plane in New Jersey. "Had this not happened, this would've been one of the most incredible speeches," aimed mostly at President Biden. "Honestly, it's going to be a whole different speech now."
• Zito writes that Trump repeatedly invoked God in their conversations. "It is a chance to bring the country together," Trump told her. "I was given that chance."

Trump had a loose, large white bandage on his right ear as he flew into Milwaukee aboard his private plane. "The doctor at the hospital said he never saw anything like this — he called it a miracle," Trump told New York Post columnist Michael Goodwin during an airborne interview.

• "I'm not supposed to be here. I'm supposed to be dead," Trump said.

Reality check: He's Trump. He could just become old Trump again.

• Incendiary attacks have flown from him and his allies. He has made Jan. 6 a cornerstone of his campaign, and defended those charged with crimes as "hostages" and "unbelievable patriots."
• Don Jr., campaign co-manager Chris LaCivita and Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio), a finalist to be Trump's running-mate, attacked Democrats and the media on X in the hours after the shooting. LaCivita deleted a post blaming Trump political opponents for the attack in Butler, Pennsylvania.

The big picture: In Sunday night's Oval Office address, Biden talked of "the need for us to lower the temperature." At least rhetorically, these two enemies have aligned on something big.

• Biden said while unity seems like the most elusive goal in America right now, nothing is "more important for us now than standing together."

Behind the scenes: We're told that Trump ordered aides not to allow the convention's prime-time speakers to update their remarks to dial up outrage over the shooting.

• By contrast, Fox News on Sunday night featured prime-time Chyrons like "MEDIA LAYED [sic] GROUNDWORK FOR VIOLENCE AGAINST TRUMP" and "MEDIA BLAMES TRUMP FOR GETTING SHOT."

Between the lines: Even before Trump began engineering a more unifying convention, Biden allies felt boxed in about how to campaign against him now. At least for the moment, he's a more broadly sympathetic figure, buoyed by his visceral, showman's instinct to pump his fist as he was hauled off the stage.

• One close adviser, explaining the new convention plans, said Trump's gambit is that now Democrats "can't come after me anymore as a fascist. What're they gonna do now?"

The backstory: Trump's friends tell us sitting in court and getting convicted rattled him more than people realized.

• The possibility of spending his remaining years in prison slapped him straight(er).
• He was suddenly more open to do whatever it takes to win — even if it meant toning it down in the CNN debate, and going dark in the aftermath, while some Democrats and the media torched Biden.

Now Trump has a legitimate moment to change, substantively:

1. He can unify the party. His rival, Nikki Haley, is a late add to the convention, with a speaking slot on Tuesday. So fully unifying the party is plausible, if he and others show grace and class with his Republican skeptics. Imagine if she were named to the ticket or told on stage she would play a prominent role in his administration. As a sign of how bullish Republicans are, an ebullient Trump adviser told us yesterday: "Even the DeSantis people are fired up."
2. He could unify America. Imagine he gave a speech featuring something he rarely shows: humility. Imagine him telling the nation that he has been too rough, too loose, too combative with his language — and now realizes words can have consequences, and promises to tone it down and bring new voices into the White House if he wins.
3. He could box out Democrats. Some of his friends are pushing him to promise RFK Jr. a role in his administration in exchange for an endorsement. If you combine Trump support + RFK support, you have a very different election.
4. He could show a different side of himself. In public, he's all fire and bombast. But his wife, Melania, talked in a statement yesterday of looking "beyond the left and the right, beyond the red and the blue." People who know Trump well say he's a gracious host, inquisitive, loves music and social media. This is the kind of moment when people give leaders a second look, a second chance.

Like all moments, this one will pass in a blink. You seize them — or let them waft away.