Paul Manafort, Trump’s campaign chairman, said on NBC’s “Today” show that he thinks very few delegates in the convention hall are anti-Trump.
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Braced for uncertainty and hoping for unity, Republicans on Monday prepared to kick off their convention to nominate Donald Trump as dissident delegates pursued one last chance to deny the front-runner and a nation reeled from another outburst of violence.
Schneider then engaged in an uncharacteristic Ronnie “Woo Woo” Wickers-style impression, chanting “woo, woo, woo” and then began shouting “Trump, Trump, Trump”, before his microphone was cut off.
It’s rare for a governor to skip his party’s convention when it’s in his home state, but Kasich said earlier this week that he wouldn’t show up unless Trump “changes everything that he says”. Tiffany Trump and Donald Trump Jr. are among the headliners.
Trump himself made a brief, but showy, entrance at the convention to introduce his wife.
The centerpiece of Tuesday’s evening convention program will be the roll call vote making Trump’s nomination official – a once-unthinkable scenario for Republicans who spent months dismissing the real estate mogul as a mere sideshow. Campaign manager Paul Manafort called Kasich “petulant” and said the governor was “embarrassing” his party in his home state.
While accepting his nomination on Tuesday, July 19, the Republican candidate thanked his supporters during a brief speech.
Kasich has not endorsed Trump since ending his own presidential campaign and is not attending the GOP convention in Cleveland. “If you take aim at that and at them, you take aim at all of us”, Mrs Clinton told civil rights activists at the annual convention of the NAACP.
Also on Monday, Melania Trump’s speech garnered some unwanted attention as observers noticed its similarity to a speech delivered by Michelle Obama in 2008 at the Democratic National Convention.
For Trump, the celebrations were a much-needed opportunity to regroup after a chaotic convention kickoff that included a plagiarism charge involving wife Melania Trump’s address on opening night.
Trump says he doesn’t care because: “It’s a long time ago” and “they were also misled”.
In a campaign marked by insults and inflammatory rhetoric, Trump tapped into a deep vein of unhappiness running through white Middle America, giving voice to millions who felt left behind in the rush to globalisation and who eschewed traditional establishment Republicans like Bush in favor of a brash political outsider who promised to “Make America Great Again”.
“We’ve heard reports from different sources about everyone from anarchists, to black separatists, to, you know, just regular Trump followers, anti-Trump followers”, Williams said on CBS.
In more somber speeches, Republicans highlighted at length the deadly 2012 attacks on Americans in Benghazi, Libya, while Hillary Clinton, the presumptive Democratic nominee, was serving as secretary of state.
Mrs. Trump was praised for her success in doing just that, despite the plagiarism charges.
Mrs Clinton pounced on the tumult, saying the Republican gathering had so far been “surreal”, comparing it to the classic fantasy film Wizard Of Oz.
The roll call vote on the nomination is expected on Tuesday, with Mr Trump scheduled to close the convention with an acceptance speech late on Thursday. According to the Associated Press, Trump had 1,543 delegates locked up going into the convention. She spoke of her husband’s “simple goodness” and his loyalty and love of family – while noting the “drama” that comes with Trump in politics.
Conventions are massive organizational undertakings, with thousands of delegates to manage and dozens of speakers to oversee.
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