The only way this year’s Republican convention could have been worse would have been if actual violence erupted. People who work hard but no longer have a voice.
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But his speech, rich in rhetoric, offered scant detail beyond sweeping promises to put “America first”. “And when we get there, we will indeed make America great again”.
At moments it seemed Ivanka was rewriting her father’s domestic platform, and a large portion of her speech focused on a huge policy change for Trump.
Fewer Americans tuned in to watch Donald Trump than Mitt Romney or John McCain.
Mr Trump declared the nation’s problems too big to be fixed within the confines of traditional politics. “This convention was his chance to showcase the political version of ‘The Apprentice, ‘ and he couldn’t do it”, a veteran Republican strategist told me. “As I recall, we had a revolution to make sure we didn’t have someone who said, ‘I can fix it alone, ‘” she said. We also speak to 2012 Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain about why he believes Trump is qualified to be commander-in-chief. RNC strategist Sean Spicer went full Baghdad Bob, invoking My Little Pony to defend Melania’s honor. He called North Atlantic Treaty Organisation “obsolete”, and said “the countries we are protecting at a massive cost to us will be asked to pay their fair share”. It’s incredibly frustrating to watch lying on full display, day after day, for nearly a week. In other words, the Trump team and the GOP knew what Cruz would – and would not – say ahead of time and still let him go ahead.
In a press conference Friday, Trump blasted Cruz, telling reporters that, if the Texas lawmaker endorses him, he “will not accept it”. It’s not necessarily that we’re looking for someone of the Bernie Sanders wing of the party – indeed, we are more in agreement with Mr. Kaine (and, for that matter, Mr. Trump’s running mate, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence) on trade issues than we are with either of the candidates at the top of the parties’ tickets. After his daughter, Ivanka, had done a masterful job of portraying her father as a caring, compassionate, optimistic, can-do leader, the vision of Mr. Trump channeling a less subtle version of Richard Nixon circa 1968 was all the more jarring. Snopes.com took a look at that claim and cast doubt on the connection Carson suggested: “Based on what she has actually said and written about Saul Alinsky, to characterize Hillary Clinton as a starry-eyed acolyte of the Rules for Radicals author is a stretch”.
Trump said he would prioritize nationalism over “globalism”.
For Spencer and others who share his views, the past week has been astonishing. The generational gap was even more striking in person.
For moderate Republicans, the Convention cemented a bewildering transformation at the top of their Party. The convention site-Cleveland’s Quicken arena-was cordoned off from the surrounding community like the Green Zone in Baghdad.
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Trump spoke during the final day of the Republican Party convention in Cleveland. Even the advocacy of Rachel Hoff, the first openly gay delegate on the platform committee, wasn’t enough to have the platform acknowledge that yes, ISIS targets gays in the platform, losing out to the addition of transgender bathroom melodrama and conversion therapy as official party dogma. I mean every poll. Are we still committed to ending abortion rights? He was just repeating what he’d read in a very reliable publication, the National Enquirer, Trump insisted Friday: “This was a magazine that, frankly, in many respects, should be very respected”.
