“Great honor. Thank you”, Trump said.
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Republican officials have promised the convention’s theme will be the same as the Trump campaign’s: a pledge to “Make America Great Again”.
“I’m a Christian, a conservative and a Republican”. The worst example came in November when Black Lives Matter protester Mercutio Southall interrupted Trump at a rally, causing the candidate to call out for his supporters to get him out of the venue. After setting ratings records throughout the Republican primary season, Trump could very well shatter that number.
He says the selection of Pence is unlikely to make him switch his support to Trump.
“One of the big reasons I chose Mike – one of the reasons – is party unity, I have to be honest”.
A steady conservative with extensive governing experience, Pence may also serve to reassure Republicans who are skeptical about Trump’s conservative bona fides.
Trump’s campaign says the midnight wavering didn’t happen. Trump delegates must vote Trump on the first ballot, even if they now want someone else, a virtual guarantee that Donald Trump and Mike Pence will be the GOP nominees.
Trump’s decision to select Pence was seen as a move to unify the Republican Party, which remains deeply divided in the wake of the NY real estate mogul’s primary victory. Weeks earlier, Trump’s children had been leaning toward Newt Gingrich, several sources said, dazzled by the former House speaker’s charm and encyclopedic knowledge of politics. Or does Pence find them truly objectionable but he has checked his principles on the side in order to advance his own political career? “Trump will be our next president because in the final analysis Americans are smart enough to realize what message we are sending to the rest of the world, and to each other, when we elect a known criminal, and a known immoral husband, as the leaders of our country”.
Pence, who emerged relatively late in the vice presidential stakes, nearly immediately gives the Trump campaign much-needed social conservative credentials without the kind of political baggage that Democrats had hoped to exploit in other finalists like Christie or Gingrich.
In a wide-ranging speech on Saturday in which he touted his own “landslide” victory in the Republican primaries, Trump cast Pence as a ideal complement for the White House: a veteran of government, a man with a Midwestern sensibility and strong Republican credentials as a job creator and budget balancer. But shortly after the governor touched down on the East Coast, Trump declared in a television interview that he had not made a “final, final” decision. A few hundred people greeted him at a suburban Indianapolis airport hangar bereft of any “Trump-Pence” signs.
He promised that he and Trump-whose shifting positions and departures from party orthodoxy have alarmed and mystified many Republicans-would govern as a traditional conservative while also hailing him as an anti-establishment figure. He says as a whole, after Trump’s convention speech on Thursday, voters of different groups will understand why Trump should be president. Trump won by 17 points, and Cruz dropped out that night.
“This logo accurately represents what Trump Pence will do to America”, he tweeted. That’s left donors and operatives who are more aligned with the GOP’s Wall Street wing unenthused, predicting that Pence will do more to win rock-ribbed anti-abortion activists than the buttoned-up business set.
Clinton intends to announce the plan on Monday in a speech to the NAACP convention in Cincinnati, followed by a stop at an OH voter registration event with volunteers.
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The New York billionaire, set to be crowned Republican presidential candidate at the party’s national convention in Cleveland next week, called the 57-year-old in governor “a solid, solid person”.
