Mr Trump’s son Donald Junior is due to speak at the Republican convention today before members formally nominate his father as the party’s presidential candidate later this week.
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Trump Jr. said: “Even in the places that aren’t so conservative, we’ve had such incredible support”. And that’s what Alaska announced when its turn came on the Republican National Convention floor.
The Slovenian-born former model inspired so many women to snap up the $2,190 dress she wore during her speech Monday night at the RNC in Cleveland, that the retailer sold out of the stunner within hours of her appearance.
Melania Trump’s speech included passages that are verbatim matches to those delivered by Michelle Obama at the Democratic National Convention in Denver in 2008. There were no big missteps Tuesday, but the event was void of the glitzy, Hollywood touch Trump promised, with a series of Republican officials parading on stage to level sharp, but repetitive, criticisms of Clinton.
Addressing Melania Trump’s speech, her husband’s campaign said a team of writers crafted the address after speaking to Melania Trump about her life. Two of Trump’s children testified to his character, casting him as a man undeterred by challenges. In order to win the White House, Republican nominees have had to limit the loss of female voters to Democrats to less than 10 percentage points.
For some Republicans, the night also offered a glimpse of what could have been.
Many Republican leaders stayed away from the convention, still wary of being associated with the divisive candidate and unsure how his nomination impacts their own political futures.
When Sessions placed Trump’s name in nomination, the seats belonging to the Virginia delegation were largely empty, and when the time came for the state to announce that it was throwing a plurality – but far from a majority – of its votes to Trump, it sent delegate Subba R. Kolla, the first Indian American to serve as a Virginia delegate to the national convention, to the microphone.
This convention will nominate Donald Trump and Mike Pence, and is as much about Hillary Clinton as anyone, but when the delegates head home they will have Mr. Priebus to thank for accomplishing something no one thought possible a month ago.
Anti-Trump delegates tried to deny Trump a sufficient number of votes.
Trump, she noted, canceled his campaign schedule while Clinton continued to stump.
Trump earned the 1,237 bound delegates necessary to secure the party’s nomination in early June.
New York Rep. Chris Collins, the first congressman to endorse Trump, thundered that, “Donald Trump is not merely a candidate”.
James DeVors of Aroma Park, another Trump delegate, said there should be consequences if someone intentionally lifted lines, “but it was just a small part of the speech”.
With three of the candidate’s other children at his side, the younger Trump said: “It is my honour to be able to throw Donald Trump over the top in the delegate count tonight”.
“Weakness, decline, and ultimately, chaos and oblivion”.
“It is not given to us to know the future”, Sessions said. “But, ladies and gentlemen, that is about to change”.
The band played New York, New York for several minutes before the roll call recommenced, but the result was no longer in doubt: The GOP had officially declared Trump its candidate for president in the upcoming November election. “Chip in now to make sure he never steps foot in the Oval Office”, she said in a fundraising tweet.
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Along with praises his qualities as a leader, she talked up his abilities as a father. 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. He led efforts to successfully tamp down a rebellion on the convention floor Monday, though the campaign still had to contend with angry outbursts from anti-Trump delegates. Campaign officials invested significant time arguing with delegates about the importance of presenting a united front during the televised convention.
