RNC 2024 Day 1 updates: Bandaged and emotional, Trump makes 1st appearance since assassination attempt
Chants of "we love Trump" could be heard as he entered the RNC.
The first day of the Republican National Convention has wrapped up in Milwaukee -- marked with an appearance by former President Donald Trump just two days he was wounded in an assassination attempt at a Pennsylvania rally on Saturday evening.
Despite the shooting, the gathering of more than 50,000 attendees, including an expected 2,400 Republican delegates, is slated to maintain its original programming as a time to bring the party together -- but now newly energized by Trump's amazing survival and raised-fist show of defiance.
One of the most anticipated moments of Trump's campaign happened Monday when Trump named 39-year-old Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance as his running mate.
Latest headlines:
RNC officially underway
The Republican National Convention is underway. A live rendition of Lee Greenwood's "God Bless the USA" filled the convention center in Milwaukee. Groups of delegate were seen before and during these opening ceremonies pumping their fists and chanting "fight, fight, fight," taking up former President Trump's gesture after the shooting at his rally as a symbol for the party's nominating convention.
Crowds continued the chant during "God Bless the USA" ahead of a vote on the party's platform.
RNC co-chair Michael Whatley gaveled the convention to order and asked for a moment of silence to honor the shooting.
As Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell was announced as an honorary co-chair, audible boos were heard from the crowd. The Senate leader, who will step down from his perch atop the GOP conference, has had a frosty relationship with the former president since Jan. 6, 2021.
-ABC News' Jay O'Brien
Rubio told he is not Trump's running mate
Florida Sen. Marco Rubio has been told he is not former President Donald Trump's running mate pick, five sources familiar with the matter tell ABC News.
Trump's pick is expected to be announced at some point Monday.
-ABC News' John Santucci, Katherine Faulders, Rachel Scott, Rick Klein
Trump has made his VP selection
Trump has selected his running mate, a senior campaign official told ABC News.
-ABC News' John Santucci
Vivek Ramaswamy recounts 'anger' after Trump shooting, calls for unity
Vivek Ramaswamy, speaking with reporters after his speech at the Heritage Policy Fest, joined Trump in stressing unity after the shooting at the former president's Pennsylvania rally.
ABC News asked Ramaswamy for his response to Republicans like J.D. Vance going after Democrats and President Joe Biden in the wake of the attempted assassination attempt.
"Look, I think that there is a lot of understandable anger. I was ... my first reaction was anger," Ramaswamy said. "And the reason my first reaction was anger was that the only thing more tragic than what happened on Saturday is that if we're being really honest with ourselves, all of us, it wasn't totally a shock, actually. And that, that is maddening. And that ... makes me angry as a citizen of the United States of America. But the question is, how do we channel that anger?"
Ramaswamy said Republicans have a "second chance that Lincoln didn't have: to unite a country that this time didn't have to fight a civil war, but avoids one."
"If that bullet hit Donald Trump, we'd be in a very different place now," he said. "And the fact that we've been given that chance, I think it's our responsibility to step up and seize it not by compromising on our principles, but by actually reviving the principles that unite all of us. And by seeing the enemy as the ideology that we're up against, rather than our fellow neighbors as our enemy combatants, and that's what I call on not only the Republican Party but every American to do in the wake of what happened on Saturday."
-ABC News' Alexandra Hutzler