MILWAUKEE — The Republican Party is projecting unity after last weekend’s assassination attempt against former President Donald Trump.

After a bitter primary, Trump, who has a reputation for holding grudges, his campaign, and the Republican National Committee asked former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley and Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) to address at the Republican National Convention. But some Republicans remain unconvinced a speaking spot means they are welcomed members of Trump’s GOP.

RNC co-chair Lara Trump, in an interview Tuesday before Haley and DeSantis delivered their remarks at the convention in Milwaukee that night, described the GOP as “truly a unified party.”

“I’ve never seen our party more unified than we are right now unified behind Donald Trump,” Trump told the Washington Examiner. “When he walked into that arena [Monday] night, the cheers from people, the whole place was basically shaking. And I think that we’ve done a great job in terms of Michael Whatley, the chairman and I have tried to make this a place for everybody, for the very, very strong Trump supporters to the people who maybe originally didn’t want to support him.”

“We’ve seen them come back into the fold,” she said. “I think they understand that this is the person we have to galvanize behind, this is the person who’s going to take our party into the future, and this is the person who’s going to win this election.”

Vivek Ramaswamy, another presidential but more pro-Trump candidate who appeared at the convention Tuesday, told the Washington Examiner last weekend’s assassination attempt “changes just a lot.”

“National unity is the answer,” Ramaswamy said on the sidelines of the Iowa delegation’s breakfast. “It’s not just about the party.”

But with Haley receiving 17% of the vote in the Pennsylvania Republican primary and 13% in the Wisconsin counterpart, even after she suspended her campaign after Super Tuesday, a senior Trump campaign adviser called Tuesday “important.” Exactly a week earlier, Haley spokeswoman Chaney Denton told the Washington Examiner the former South Carolina governor had not been invited to the convention.

The Trump campaign senior adviser contended Tuesday “closes the loop” because “the field of credible candidates in the GOP primary are all represented at this convention.”

“We’re going to leave the convention and take that effort to unify the nation,” the Trump adviser told the Washington Examiner. “We’re going to take a unifying message of the Republican Party with a new platform, a platform that aims at working families and everyday concerns that people have, and take it to November.”

But Principles First founder Heath Mayo, whose “pro-democracy, anti-Trump” conservative organization has an event at the convention on Wednesday discussing “duty, honor, and country,” dismissed the idea Republicans are united, arguing Lara Trump and the Trump campaign’s comments demonstrated how much the MAGA movement is dominated by “the politics of personality.”

“They think if they can put Nikki Haley on the stage or DeSantis on the stage, all of a sudden everybody will just sort of fall in line, no matter what they’re saying,” Mayo told the Washington Examiner. “What the Republican Party is saying now is just fundamentally different than the principles and ideas that a lot of folks thought they were signing up for.”

Mayo cited Trump’s populist economic and isolationist foreign policies as examples of positions with which he disagreed, conceding the Republican Party of old is “certainly gone” and 2024 platform, a “16-point set of all cap sentences,” is “a pretty unserious document.”

“He needs to take seriously these voters, these Nikki Haley voters, the principled conservative voters, who are, you know, largely suburban voters,” he said. “They’re not a controlling percentage of the Republican primary electorate, but they’re probably 20%, they’re the people who voted for Nikki when she was out of the race. They’re independent voters in swing states. You cannot get to the White House, if you don’t win those voters.”

Mayo predicted Haley backers would write-in a replacement candidate in four months’ time.

Former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, another presidential but more anti-Trump candidate, similarly underscored the significance of Haley’s speech when stopped by the Washington Examiner outside Fiserv Forum.

“That’s really an important part of bringing people together,” Hutchinson said, adding she has “an independent voice tonight that needs to be expressed.

“That’s what a party is about, managing those differences and striving to win in November.”

When Haley stepped into the spotlight Tuesday, the crowd largely cheered her, after pleas from party leaders, such as Texas Republican National Committeeman Robin Armstrong, not to jeer her.

“Nikki Haley represents a lot of votes,” Armstrong told the Washington Examiner during his state delegation’s breakfast. “We need to have every Republican on board, whether it’s a Nikki Haley Republican (or) a Donald Trump Republican.”

From the podium, Haley told the audience Trump’s invitation was “gracious” and that she was “happy to accept,” despite him not appealing to her supporters as she implored him to during her concession.

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“I’ll start by making one thing perfectly clear: Donald Trump has my strong endorsement. Period,” the former Trump administration official said. “You don’t have to agree with Trump 100% of the time to vote for him. Take it from me: I haven’t always agreed with President Trump. But we agree more often than we disagree.”

“We must not only be a unified party,” she continued. “We must also expand our party.”