Trump campaign officials repeatedly promised an uplifting national convention. The president opened the week on a different note.
He criticized governors as being unprepared for the pandemic and warned that the push for mail-in voting was “the greatest scam in the history of politics.”
“They are trying to steal the election from Republicans,” Mr. Trump said in remarks in Charlotte, N.C., where the GOP held the first part of its Monday convention events. In 2016, he won three states that are now presidential battlegrounds—Arizona, Florida and Michigan—with high ratios of mail-in voting.
The first of four nights of the Republican National Convention—which is partly pretaped and partly filmed live in Washington due to the pandemic—included speeches from Sen. Tim Scott (R., S.C.) and former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley, who are seen as potential future presidential candidates, in addition to a handful of lawmakers, friends of the president and people affected by his policies.
Here are some key takeaways from the first day of the convention:
Political Vaccination
One of the story lines to watch this week is how Team Trump frames his handling of coronavirus, which promises to be a major issue in the race against Democratic nomineeJoe Biden. More than half of Americans in the most recent Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll said they disapproved of the president’s pandemic management.
On Monday, Donald Trump, Jr. pointed to his father’s “quick action” to ban most travel from China. Amy Johnson Ford, a nurse who said she traveled around the U.S. fighting Covid-19, praised the administration for increasing access to telemedicine. Tanya Weinreis, a Montana coffee-shop owner, thanked the president for signing a bill that provided cash to help keep her company afloat.
“When you run a business, a little faith runs a long way—faith in Jesus and faith in America,” she said.
Democrats spent much of their convention last week criticizing Mr. Trump’s handling of the pandemic, which has included dealing with shortages of masks, gloves and other personal protective equipment and continuing problems with testing. They highlighted Mr. Trump’s comment that “it is what it is” when recently discussing the U.S. death toll, which currently exceeds 177,000.
Republicans, meanwhile, sought to display the president’s empathy Monday. In a pretaped segment in the East Room of the White House, Mr. Trump was shown speaking with a postal worker, a trucker, a law-enforcement officer and medical professionals, including some who had contracted the disease.
In a pretaped segment in the East Room of the White House, President Trump met with frontline workers.
Photo: Handout/Getty Images“I’m for the nurses, I’m for the doctors, I’m for everybody,” he said. “We just have to make this China virus go away.”
Guilfoyle Goes Full Blast
The convention was peppered with dark predictions about the future if Mr. Biden wins the election in November. Trump campaign senior adviser Kimberly Guilfoyle, who delivered her warning to Americans in a nearly continuous shout, said Democrats want to enslave Americans with liberal ideology, steal liberty and freedom and “control what you see and believe.”
“They want to destroy this country and everything we have fought for and hold dear,” said Ms. Guilfoyle.
Trump campaign senior adviser Kimberly Guilfoyle said Democrats want to enslave Americans with liberal ideology, steal liberty and freedom and ‘control what you see and believe.’
Photo: kevin lamarque/ReutersIn a bid to excite the party’s base, U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz coined the term “woketopians” as a jab at liberals. And Mark and Patricia McCloskey, the St. Louis couple who became famous online and were later charged with gun crimes after pointing firearms at Black Lives Matter protesters outside their home, warned that “what you saw happen to us could just as easily happen to any of you who are watching from quiet neighborhoods around our country.”
Make 2024 Great Again
Among the potential 2024 Republican presidential candidates at the convention this year was Ms. Haley, the former South Carolina governor, who focused much of her speech Monday on her biography and a passionate defense of the president.
Ms. Haley secured a speaking slot at the convention with an early, direct phone call to Mr. Trump, Republican organizers said. She has been careful to walk the line between allegiance and criticism.
Nikki Haley focused much of her speech on her biography and a passionate defense of the president.
Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty ImagesOn Monday, Ms. Haley was perhaps the president’s top surrogate, describing his record as a “new era of opportunity” and delivering a harsh attack of his rival, saying Mr. Biden’s last boss was President Obama and predicting his new boss would be “Pelosi, Sanders, and the Squad.”
“This president has a record of strength and success,” Ms. Haley said. “The former vice president has a record of weakness and failure. Joe Biden is good for Iran and ISIS, great for communist China, and he’s a godsend to everyone who wants America to apologize, abstain, and abandon our values.”
Mr. Scott, also a South Carolinian and potential 2024 presidential candidate, delivered an optimistic keynote speech, describing being raised by a single mother and failing classes before meeting a mentor who helped him realize his potential.
“Our family went from cotton to Congress in one lifetime,” he said. “And that’s why I believe the next American century can be better than the last.
Rival Headlines
The purpose of a modern political convention is to sell a presidential nominee in a way that will energize the party’s rank-and-file voters and appeal to undecided Americans. It is a four-day infomercial, if everyone remains on message.
The challenge for this week, as it has been for four years for the Trump White House, will be to minimize competing headlines—often from the president’s own social-media account—that pull attention away from the carefully crafted convention message.
That was a struggle heading into the convention, as the White House over the weekend was confronted by recordings of Mr. Trump’s sister disparaging her brother’s conduct. It also faced questions about a tweet in which president accused his own administration of trying to delay a coronavirus vaccine until after the November election.
On Monday, the same day as Mr. Trump’s nomination to seek re-election in November and the evening’s prime-time speeches, cable networks aired a House hearing in which Postmaster General Louis DeJoy was grilled by Democrats about Mr. Trump’s suggestions that he would veto Postal Service funding while complaining about mail-in voting. The New York attorney general’s office also said it was investigating whether the president and the Trump Organization improperly inflated the value of Mr. Trump’s assets in financial filings.
Write to Michael C. Bender at Mike.Bender@wsj.com
Copyright ©2020 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8
"first" - Google News
August 25, 2020 at 07:26PM
https://ift.tt/3aS1syC
Four Key Takeaways From the RNC’s First Night - The Wall Street Journal
"first" - Google News
https://ift.tt/2QqCv4E
https://ift.tt/3bWWEYd
Bagikan Berita Ini
0 Response to "Four Key Takeaways From the RNC’s First Night - The Wall Street Journal"
Post a Comment