A day after formally accepting his party’s presidential nomination, Donald Trump breathed new life into old battles against a long-vanquished Republican rival: U.S. Sen.
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“When the world looks at how bad the United States is, and then we go and talk about civil liberties, I don’t think we’re a very good messenger”, Trump said.
Such was the closing night of the convention, with considerable disruption inside Quicken Loans Arena – from controversy surrounding Donald Trump’s nomination and the impertinence of Ted Cruz to a protester who made it into the arena for Trump’s speech – but little unrest on the streets.
“Middle-income Americans and businesses will experience profound relief, and taxes will be greatly simplified for everyone”, he said.
“Tonight, Donald Trump painted a dark picture of an America in decline”.
Trump’s plunge into a lengthy litigation of past spats with Ted Cruz – even bringing up his retweet of an unflattering photo of Cruz’s wife, Heidi – did nothing to assuage Republican fears about their standard bearer after a national convention complicated by unforced errors. However, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, the vice presidential nominee, understands those issues, the House Natural Resources Committee chairman added.
His team hopes to close the convention on a more traditional note, with the businessman delivering a scripted speech to the convention crowd and millions of Americans watching on television.
Trump will be introduced by his daughter Ivanka Trump who has been an important behind-the-scenes adviser. It was delegates around the arena, standing up, shouting him down and waving him off the stage.
John Santucci, an ABC News reporter who has been following the Trump campaign for more than a year, also weighed in on the “Powerhouse Politics” podcast with Karl and Klein.
“Nothing has affected me more than the time I have spent with the mothers and fathers who have lost children to violence spilling across our borders”. You are under awful threats from forces inside and outside your country, and he’s the only person who can save us. As the convention’s final night began, Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Arizona’s Maricopa County vouched for Trump’s hard-line credentials on immigration.
“This is the legacy of Hillary Clinton: death, destruction and weakness”.
Is Donald Trump done speaking yet?
Delegates for Cruz and other candidates also mounted a furious fight against rule-changing efforts from the campaign, repeatedly interrupting the normally staid procedural portion. It’s kind of hard to take Trump seriously when he decries Obama for not enforcing his red line in Syria when he opposed a military intervention in the first place. “If they fulfill their obligations to us, the answer is yes”, he said. He said Egypt, Iraq and Syria had descended into chaos, while Iran is about to have its hands on nuclear weapons.
But we’re not sure if this assessment from USA Today – that the convention was such a mess that it be a drag on Mr. Trump’s polling numbers – is correct; in fact, none of the things that we’d consider during a “normal” presidential election year may apply. But that goal seemed guaranteed to go unfulfilled following Cruz’s stubborn defiance on the convention stage.
When Ted Cruz took a stand on Wednesday night at the Republican National Convention, in front of the entire Republican party, and refused to endorse Donald Trump – or even congratulate him, technically (and as a Princeton man, we all know Cruz loves a technicality) – he became, for one evening, the bravest man in Cleveland.
It remains unclear if that message will be enough to unite a Republican Party riven with doubts over his candidature.
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A Bloomberg study of convention speeches dating to 1976, the first time both parties held nationwide primaries and caucuses, shows that the electorate ultimately favors those candidates who use more “we” words-we, us, our, ours, ourselves, and let’s-relative to “me” words-I, me, my, mine, and myself.
