This week’s Republican National Convention in Milwaukee already had no shortage of intriguing storylines, including former President Donald Trump becoming the first convicted felon to accept a party’s presidential nomination and the questions swirling about President Joe Biden’s viability atop the Democratic ticket.

But the convention’s significance has been catapulted into a new stratosphere following Saturday’s assassination attempt on Trump during a rally in Butler, Pa.

Despite Trump suffering a wound to his ear and one rally attendee being killed, the Trump campaign and Republican National Committee said Saturday night the convention will go on.

“President Trump looks forward to joining you all in Milwaukee as we proceed with our convention to nominate him to serve as the 47th President of the United States,” they said in a joint statement. “As our party's nominee, President Trump will continue to share his vision to Make America Great Again.”

The convention at the Fiserv Forum runs Monday through Thursday, when Trump, who will be nominated for the third consecutive time, will address the crowd in what is sure to be a highly dramatic moment. 

Raven Harrison, a conservative political strategist, told Spectrum News the energy at the event following the shooting will likely be “high, strong and patriotic.”

“The images that have emerged from the aftermath of the attempted assassination have cemented President Trump’s legacy of true leadership, courage and strength, in the face of adversity. It is this spirit that will unite the conservatives, moderates and the undecided under the flag of patriotism,” said Harrison, who called the attack a “foreseeable outcome” of years of “hateful and violent rhetoric” by Democrats.

Perhaps the biggest question that could be answered at the convention is who Trump’s running mate will be. The former president said Friday the finalists for his vice presidential pick are North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott and Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance. All four are slated to speak at the event.

The list of speakers is a long one. It also includes a who’s who of Republican political figures, among them House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La.; Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who challenged Trump for the GOP nomination; and conservative firebrand Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia. 

Former Trump White House aide Peter Navarro, who is set to be released from prison Wednesday, will also address the crowd. He is finishing a four-month sentence for contempt of Congress  after defying a subpoena from the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.

West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice will even appear with his English bulldog, Babydog. 

Other speakers include Trump’s older sons, Donald Jr. and Eric; conservative TV personality Tucker Carlson; Ultimate Fighting Championship president Dana White; and model, rapper and TV personality Amber Rose, a Trump critic turned supporter.

The Trump campaign announced Friday there will also be two dozen speakers who are “everyday Americans.” Many will put faces and stories to issues important to Republicans. Among those speakers will be Michael Morin, whose sister, Rachel, was killed while jogging in Maryland last year, allegedly by an undocumented migrant; University of North Carolina fraternity members who protected an American flag during a pro-Palestianian protest; and Anne Fundner, whose 15-year-old son died in 2022 from fentanyl.

Aside from speeches and the roll call vote to formally nominate Trump, there will be policy sessions, meetings of state delegations and events sponsored by organizations promoting conservative causes.

The party will also vote to adopt a platform that calls for sealing the southwest border, carrying out the largest deportation of migrants in U.S. history, ending inflation, cutting taxes, and protecting Social Security and Medicare, among other goals. 

Each day of the convention will have a different theme. Monday will tout Trump’s economic record during his first term. Tuesday will focus on crime and border security. Wednesday will center on Trump’s foreign and military policy. And Thursday will sum up Trump’s case on how he plans to “make America great once again.”

“From the beginning of President Donald J. Trump’s campaign to Make America Great Again, we’ve received an outpouring of support from everyday Americans who are ready to turn the page on the last four years of failure, disaster, and embarrassment at home and abroad,” Trump campaign senior advisers Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita said in a statement last week. “The 2024 Republican National Convention will showcase President Trump’s vision to turn our country around and launch our America First movement to victory come November.”

Harrison said she expects Trump to focus on issues such as border security, inflation and the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East. 

“I think he's going to stay on the task to really hammer home why this election is so important, how far our country has fallen and how important it is that we get behind him to get this back on track,” she said.

Harrison said she does not anticipate Trump aggressively going after Biden over his devastating debate performance last month and the tensions that have followed within the Democratic Party. Twenty congressional Democrats have publicly called on Biden to withdraw from the race.

“The issue with Joe Biden seems to be taking care of itself in real time, as more and more people are seeing that this is not just normal behavior,” Harrison said. “here is really no point of [focusing on it] when you're watching your quote-unquote enemy destroy themselves. There is an absolute, complete and utter civil war going on behind the scenes right now in the Democrat Party.”

But Casey Burgat, director of the legislative affairs program at the George Washington University’s Graduate School of Political Management, said he expects Trump and his allies to point to the dysfunction in the Democratic Party to argue that voters should send a Republican to the White House.

Both Harrison and Burgat said they think Trump will discuss his criminal conviction and three other pending cases against him to, just as he regularly does on the campaign trail, argue they are the result of a government weaponized against him.

“I think it's a rallying cry more than anything,” Burgat said. “What we used to treat as like a disqualifier has now proven to be not only a poll booster, but also a fundraising message.”

Trump was found guilty in New York in May of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records to cover up hush money payments made to a porn star. He faces charges in Washington, D.C., and Georgia related to his efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election. On Monday, a federal judge in Florida dismissed another case against Trump alleging he illegally retained classified documents after leaving the White House, ruling that the appointment of a special counsel was unconstitutional.

Harrison and Burgat said they would not be surprised if Trump avoids talk of the 2020 election and the attack on the U.S. Capitol by a mob of his supporters.

“I bet his advisers are trying to hypnotize him to not bring it up, that that is not a winning message for him, that this is again about moving the country forward, exciting the Republican base,” Burgat said.

Burgat said party conventions usually don’t figure much into the outcome of an election because “if you're paying attention to a party's convention, you already know who you're going to vote for.”

But, he added, that the GOP convention is different because of Trump’s ability to draw TV ratings and the ongoing drama within in the Democratic Party.

“You add in these characters and the politics of the moment, you're going to get people paying attention, and that will have an effect,” Burgat said in an interview conducted before the Trump shooting.

Although many Americans are waiting to learn who Trump chooses as his running mate, Harrison said it is unlikely to provide any meaningful boost to Trump’s election prospects.

“I've been reading a lot of the polls on this,” she said. “Trump is the ticket. He is the nominee, and he is the draw. So anyone he picks is really a truly secondary figure.”

The Democratic National Committee and Biden-Harris campaign announced Thursday their strategy for countering the GOP convention. It includes a six-figure campaign utilizing billboards and bus ads to attack what it calls “Trump and MAGA Republicans’ unpopular, far-right agenda” and to tout Biden’s record of “delivering for working families.” 

Democrats are also planning daily news conferences and deploying key surrogates. 

“The GOP is descending on Milwaukee next week to showcase the best that they have to offer the American people: a coup-attempting convicted felon,” DNC spokeswoman Rosemary Boeglin said in a statement. “If Trump thought Milwaukee was ‘horrible’ before, he won’t be happy when he’s met by a counter-convention from Democrats on the ground who will expose his extreme Project 2025 agenda and hold him accountable for shilling for the rich at the expense of working families, attacking reproductive freedom, and threatening to be a dictator on ‘day one.’"

Editor's note: This article was updated to say the criminal case against Trump in Florida has been dismissed.