After running the most unconventional presidential campaign in modern history, Donald Trump accepted the Republican nomination in Cleveland on Thursday with a speech that touched on many themes that are by now familiar: the perceived dangers of immigration, the threat posed by Islamic extremism, and claims that his Democratic challenger, Hillary Clinton, is responsible for numerous world’s ills.
Advertisement
Mr Trump declared the nation’s problems too big to be fixed within the confines of traditional politics.
As the crowd chanted: “Lock her up” for her handling of USA foreign policy, Mr Trump waved them off and said: “Let’s defeat her in November”.
Mr Trump is the first presidential nominee for a major political party not to have held public office since Dwight Eisenhower who topped the Republican ticket in 1952.
A CNN snap poll of viewers of the speech said 57% had a “very positive reaction” to the address and 18% a somewhat positive reaction, while 24% said it had a negative effect. So what were the themes that Trump frequently mentioned during his address?
The event was boycotted by many big-name establishment Republicans, such as 2012 nominee Mitt Romney and members of the Bush family that have the party its last two presidents.
In the end, Donald Trump took the conventional route.
Accusing illegal immigrants of taking jobs from USA citizens and committing crimes, Mr Trump vowed to build a “great border wall” against the border-crossers.
The billionaire spoke directly to blue-collar Americans who felt ignored, describing them as “the forgotten men and women of our country – people who work hard but no longer have a voice”. He would penalise companies that outsource jobs and then export their foreign-made products back into the United States.
An ecstatic Jen Rae Wand, from Nebaska, thought it was a “great speech” that dealt with the “core values and principles” that unite Republicans as a party.
For one night, the Apprentice host-turned-contender chose to dance not with the fractured rhetoric that brought him, instead embracing that despised machine – the teleprompter – he once said presidential candidates shouldn’t be allowed.
He said: “I have joined the political arena so that the powerful can no longer beat up on people that cannot defend themselves”.
“Nobody knows the system better than me, which is why I alone can fix it”, he said.
“After 15 years of wars in the Middle East, after trillions of dollars spent and thousands of lives lost, the situation is worse than it has ever been before”.
He promised to “put America first” and ripped into his presumptive Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton and her “legacy of death, destruction, terrorism and weakness”, adding that “Hillary Clinton’s legacy does not have to be America’s legacy”.
“Donald Trump painted a dark picture of an America in decline”, campaign chair John Podesta said in a statement about Trump’s acceptance speech Thursday.
The 70-year-old tycoon’s get-tough speech went down a storm with the crowd at the giant sports arena in Cleveland, Ohio, who responded with chants of “USA, USA, USA”.
Ian Bremmer, a political analyst, told Al Jazeera before the speech that there were many Americans who believed that the USA got “very little out of American allies”, and Trump’s statement appealed to them. His remarks were leaked to the press before the speech, and the official version of the speech released by his campaign was heavily footnoted.
Advertisement
Cruz’s defiance follows a week of drama, including plagiarism charges against Mr Trump’s wife, Melania.
