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Trump convention speech: He hasn’t changed since the primaries

Trump walked to the convention hall stage Thursday afternoon (Friday NZT), surveying the setup with his daughter, Ivanka, who will introduce him.

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Trump’s speech was largely focused on “law and order”. And at the Republican National Convention, Donald Trump and Ted Cruz are taking the concept to an art form.

The world is in a sorry state, Trump said.

In his speech, Trump offered little in the way of details about his policies but rather portrayed himself as a fresh alternative to traditional politicians, willing to consider new approaches to vexing problems and help working-class people who may feel abandoned.

“This is the legacy of Hillary Clinton: death, destruction, terrorism and weakness”, he said.

“The crime and violence that today afflicts our nation will soon come to an end”, he said.

He claimed to be the “voice” of the people who had been “ignored, neglected and abandoned” and renewed his promise to “build a great border wall” along the United States border with Mexico to stop illegal immigration and drug trafficking. He again blasted what he called the unfair trade tactics of competitors like China.

Throughout the day, the Clinton campaign and other Democratic groups sent out statements denouncing various Trump polices as ineffectual, divisive or simply wrong-headed, and accusing him of distorting Clinton’s records.

Last night, an unsmiling Donald Trump struck a martial tone in accepting the Republican presidential nomination, vowing to restore security to an America he sees as surrounded by danger.

The chairman of the Hillary for America campaign, John Podesta, attacked Mr Trump’s speech as divisive. “U.S.A!” and “build a wall” rang through the Quicken Loans Arena during Trump’s speech at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland.

As a kid, she said her father would tell her, “Ivanka, if you’re going to be thinking anyway, you might as well think big”. These were a lot of points to convey in one tweet, and one must again admire Trump’s concision.

Praising him as “honest”, “real”, and an “optimist”, Trump said to applause: “When you have my father in your corner, you never again have to be anxious about being let down”.

“To every parent who dreams for their child, and every child who dreams for their future,”he averred, “I say these words to you tonight:I’m with you, I will fight for you, and I will win for you”.

The prevailing narrative at the Cleveland convention has not been about Trump’s positions, but dominated instead by the failure of he party’s various factions to unite behind Trump. On Day 1, anti-Trump delegates caused a commotion when they tried to force a roll call vote to try to unbind delegates. “Great love in the arena!” The remarks, in an interview with The New York Times, deviated from decades of USA foreign policy doctrine and seemed to suggest he would put new conditions on the 67-year-old alliance’s bedrock principle of collective defense.

On the eve of his address, Trump suggested a new course for US foreign policy, saying he would set different conditions before coming to the defense of North Atlantic Treaty Organisation allies.

“It is true that the U.S. overall will suffer under a Trump presidency from a foreign policy perspective”.

Whether you support Trump or not, you should probably support facts.

Following the controversy over Melania Trump’s speech at the Republican National Convention Monday and its direct parallels with Michele Obama’s 2008 speech, the pressure is on for the other woman of the Trump campaign to deliver strong remarks Thursday evening in hopes it will resonate with female voters. Trump’s opponents say that raises questions of competence and put a stake through the heart of the notion of GOP unity, while his supporters claim that the move was courageous and made Trump look like the bigger man.

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“I’m not in the habit of supporting people who attack my wife and attack my father”, Cruz said, “and that pledge was not a blanket commit that if you go and slander and attack Heidi that I’m going to come like a servile puppy dog and say, ‘Thank you very much for maligning my wife and maligning my father'”. Indeed, in some ways the delegates at this convention seem to have gone beyond even Mr Trump on politically extreme rhetoric.

Donald Trump set out his stall at the Republican Convention in Cleveland