“My husband offers a new direction”, the glamorous 46-year-old told the crowd, her speech a high point after a chaotic opening day at the Cleveland confab.
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Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort this morning praised Melania’s convention speech, which contained several passages directly lifted from Michelle Obama’s 2008 convention speech, before blaming the whole thing on Hillary Clinton.
A statement later released by the Trump campaign did not directly respond to the allegations of plagiarism. “In writing her lovely speech, Melania’s team of writers took notes on her life’s inspirations, and in some instances included fragments that reflected her own thinking”, Trump spokesman Jason Miller said.
“What Donald Trump says on national security is not believable at all, and it’s unsafe”, Wasserman Schultz said. The speeches were also filled with harsh criticism of Democrat Hillary Clinton, with delegates chanting “Lock her up”. Under President Barack Obama, the jobless rate has fallen from close to 10 percent at the height of the recession to under 5 percent.
Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, whose administration has been credited with sharply reducing crime in the city during the 1990s and who oversaw the city’s response to the September 11, 2001, attacks that destroyed the World Trade Center and killed nearly 3,000 people, gave a highly charged speech slamming Clinton and making the case for Trump. “That is one reason I fell in love with him to begin with”, she said.
Mr Trump himself made a brief, but showy, entrance at the convention to introduce his wife.
“And that has to do with training and it has to do with something, but there is something going on that maybe… we can’t recognize it or we can’t see it unless you’re black”, he said.
Donald Trump is expected to introduce his wife before she speaks.
Melania Trump’s speech lay towards the end of a long evening of the Republican National Convention’s TV broadcast like the pot of gold at the end of-well, not a rainbow.
The businessman has cast aside decades of Republican orthodoxy in his unexpected political rise, creating a crisis within the GOP about its future.
Republican divisions erupted briefly on the convention floor Monday afternoon after party officials adopted rules by a shouted voice vote. Ending the dust-up was important to show at least a veneer of party unity behind Trump. “He had a little bit more credibility in talking about foreign and domestic affairs, in terms of law and order”. When Trump isn’t on stage, Trump’s Republican Party is still angry, but it’s not entertaining.
Lengthy speeches were devoted to blow-by-blow descriptions of the attack on the USA mission in Libya in 2012, when Clinton served as secretary of State. The mother of one of the victims choked back tears as she personally blamed Mrs Clinton for her son’s death and accused her of giving a false explanation for the attack.
“If Hilary Clinton can’t give us the truth, why should we give her the presidency”, Pat Smith said.
“Hillary Clinton can not be trusted”. But Trump has been vague about how he would put the nation on a different course, offering virtually no details of his policy prescriptions despite repeated vows to be tough.
In an interview on Fox’s “The O’Reilly Factor” Monday evening, Trump said Kasich should have attended “from the standpoint of honor”.
Trump, who broke with tradition by appearing at the convention before his nomination, beamed as his wife, a Slovenian-born former model, strode to the podium to a roar of applause.
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Even some of those participating in the convention seemed to be avoiding their party’s nominee. They also endorsed new language that condemned same-sex parenting: “Children raised in a traditional two-parent household tend to be physically and emotionally healthier, less likely to use drugs and alcohol, engage in crime or become pregnant outside of marriage”.
