Takeaways from the final night of the Republican National Convention

CNN —

On a night Republicans projected bravado around their 2024 presidential ticket, Donald Trump started his prime-time address by displaying a rare vulnerability.

In his speech capping off the Republican National Convention as he accepted the party’s nomination for a third consecutive election, Trump recounted Thursday night his attempted assassination five days earlier at a Pennsylvania rally.

“I’m not supposed to be here tonight,” he told the crowd at the Fiserv Forum in Milwaukee.

After the crowd chanted back, “Yes, you are,” Trump shook his head.

“Thank you,” he said. “But I’m not.”

Then it was back to the usual Trump.

Often, he went off script to attack his political enemies, laud the dismissal of one of his indictments and tick through crowd favorites in the longest nomination acceptance speech in modern American history.

He bragged about the economy and lack of new foreign entanglements during his presidency, and he lambasted President Joe Biden’s administration for its handling of border security, energy, foreign policy and more.

Delivering a script that was intended to offer a unifying message, Trump said he would only use Biden’s name once. But he did so, he said, to say the Democratic incumbent was a worse president than the nation’s prior 10 worst, combined.

As much as Republicans sought to make unity the theme, there were still incendiary figures such as far-right media personality Tucker Carlson on stage Thursday, and plenty of jabs at Democrats. The former president’s son Eric Trump delivered conservative red meat, much like his brother Donald Trump Jr. had a night earlier. Then, the 45th president bemoaned what he described as a politicized justice system and “partisan witch hunts.”