“This woman I’ve been saying for some time is the greatest asset Donald Trump has”. Yet, a year later, Trump has officially become the Republican presidential nominee despite having no prior political experience.
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Mr Trump is scheduled to speak on the final night of the event in Cleveland.
A number of “Bikers for Trump” moved through the throngs, escorting a Republican delegate in the direction of her hotel while a man with a loudspeaker taunted anti-Trump protesters, one of whom was yelling, “America was never great”. However, per political tradition, he did not formally accept the nomination until the end of the convention.
An employee of the Trump Organisation later apologised and admitted her role in writing Melania Trump’s speech, but not before the address triggered backlash on social media. It wasn’t a typical Republican speech, especially his attacks against business and free trade, and it was short on specifics.
And its adherents at home, he said, must also be stopped.
Throughout the Cleveland convention Republicans have rallied around chants of “lock her up”.
All of this would amount to making America “win” again.
Speaking for over an hour, he repeated numerous hard right themes from a bruising primary campaign.
Business daily Handelsblatt’s headline meanwhile focused on Trump’s call that “we can not be so politically correct” – something Trump has never knowingly been accused of. “A change in leadership is required to change these outcomes”.
Mr Trump’s focus was firmly on reassuring Americans with the promise of a hardened response to the racially tinged violence against police in Dallas and Baton Rouge and the terror attacks in Orlando, San Bernardino, Boston and on the World Trade Centre in NY.
Butler says the individuals are being held in jail vans while police identify and photograph each one, speak to the arresting officers and take a short narrative of what happened.
House Republican Thomas Massie used to support fellow Kentuckian Rand Paul, but now said Trump had “the opportunity and the obligation to bring us together”. About 500 Cleveland police and thousands of law enforcement officers from around the country were assigned to convention security. The speech linked illegal immigration with crime, citing recent crimes committed by illegal aliens in sanctuary cities.
One pillar of Mr Trump’s campaign has been his plan to build a wall along the US-Mexico border, to halt illegal immigration and the smuggling of drugs and weapons.
The speech was strikingly dark for a celebratory event and lacking in much policy detail.
“Chris Christie’s speech was a travesty”, he added, referring to New Jersey Gov. Christie’s address on Tuesday night where he chose to “prosecute” Hillary Clinton by asking the crowd to reply “guilty” or “not guilty”. He said that President Obama “truly regrets” appointing Clinton as Secretary of State in 2008. He concluded, “This is the legacy of Hillary Clinton: death, destruction and weakness“.
But if the convention matched the unpredictable and messy branding that propelled Trump to the top of his primary race, his acceptance speech signaled a potentially new path forward for the candidate himself.
Trump painted her as corrupt, incompetent and hopelessly out of touch.
Trump’s carefully crafted speech in Cleveland-when compared to the rambling address delivered a year ago in the lobby of his NY skyscraper-shows that the real estate and branding billionaire is still betting his presidential chances on the dark picture of America that he started painting from that first day of his candidacy. He said he will not sign “bad” trade agreements.
But Christine Link, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of OH, said Clevelanders have little experience assembling large-scale protests.
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And he connected his story of the previous year with his promises: “Remember, all of the people telling you that you can’t have the country you want are the same people” who told you that Trump could never make it to this point. “I’m am proud to be gay, I am proud to be a Republican, but mostly I am proud to be an American”, Thiel said.
