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Republican Convention: Denials of Plagiarism on Day 2
(about 1 hour later)
Right Now: Follow our latest Day 2 coverage of the Republican National Convention.
CLEVELAND — Day 2 of the Republican National Convention is underway, with much of the focus on Melania Trump’s Monday night speech. A few other things to look for on Tuesday (and scroll through Monday’s best photos):
CLEVELAND — Here’s what’s happened at the Republican National Convention earlier, and scroll through our best photos of the day.
Donald J. Trump’s top advisers closed ranks around the candidate’s wife Tuesday morning, insisting that there had been no plagiarism and attempting — without much success — to shift the day’s political conversation back to their planned convention message.
The convention floor momentarily turned into a scene of discord and boisterous dissent on Monday. Those who were opposing Donald J. Trump broke into booming jeers and chants of “Roll call vote! Roll call vote!” in an attempt to demand a vote by all 2,472 delegates on a procedural motion that is required before the convention can formally get underway.
As the Times reported this morning, Paul Manafort, Mr. Trump’s campaign manager, called it “absurd” to think that Ms. Trump had copied anyone’s work, despite stark, side-by-side evidence that several passages appeared to be almost identical to passages from Michelle Obama’s 2008 convention speech.
Their hope was that by starting a lengthy process so late in the day — just a few hours before the convention’s prime-time programming was set to begin — they could embarrass Mr. Trump by delaying the convention’s opening speakers.
The response from the campaign this morning appears to have intensified the story, which dominated the cable television shows and was the talk of the convention hall. And some of that talk included former Trump campaign aides, who demanded accountability. “I think if it was Paul Manafort he would do the right thing and resign,” said Corey Lewandowski, who was ousted from the campaign.
Delegates who opposed them appeared to have the advantage. And they responded with their own noisy shouts of “U.S.A.! U.S.A.!”
As the day goes on, Republicans assembled here in Cleveland are repeatedly being asked about their opinions on the issue, adding to a sense of general campaign chaos as campaign allies offer a variety of different assessments of what the campaign should do.
But after several minutes of confusion, and a couple of musical interludes by the band to kill time, the anti-Trump delegates appeared to have been stymied.
The question on Tuesday: how, and when, will the campaign get past the issue?
When the chairman called for a voice vote on whether to have a roll call vote, he ruled that the “no” votes prevailed.
On Tuesday, the party’s star-crossed efforts to project harmony will fall to some of its best-known leaders in Washington, including Paul D. Ryan, the House speaker from Wisconsin, whose embrace of Mr. Trump has been halting at best. Though he said as recently as Monday that Mr. Trump was not “my kind of conservative,” Mr. Ryan will take the stage to make the case that the alternative, a second Clinton administration, would be far worse.
Initially, there appeared to be at least nine states in which a majority of delegates agreed to the roll call vote, meeting the threshold of seven required under party rules. But faced with the possibility of a runaway start to the convention, the Trump campaign and Republican National Committee staff members working the floor went into overdrive to get delegates to withdraw their support.
Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader, is also expected to lend a dutiful hand, keeping Republicans’ near-universal disdain for Mrs. Clinton front and center.
Stamping the rebellion out was a show of organizational muscle and discipline by the Trump campaign and the party, which had teams of aides scurrying around the arena as they tried to flip votes. They wore ear pieces and carried stacks of affidavits that they circulated to delegates as they pressured them to withdraw their support for the roll call vote.
The stated theme of Tuesday’s slate is “Make America Work Again” — a potential challenge of tone for speakers eager to sully Mrs. Clinton on a topic as sober as job creation, a night after blistering attacks on her foreign policy.
In the end, they peeled away enough votes so that only six states had a majority of their delegates on the petition. And the crowd broke into chants of “we want Trump!”
And as Mr. Trump seeks to present himself as a fiscal wizard of the highest order, he has assembled an eclectic cast of validating voices to attest to his business savvy. Voters will hear from Dana White, the swaggering president of the Ultimate Fighting Championship, and Natalie Gulbis, a professional golfer who once appeared on Mr. Trump’s reality show “Celebrity Apprentice.”
Leaders of the rebellion conceded defeat. “It’s disappointing,” said Ken Cuccinelli, a delegate from Virginia who was coordinating the effort. “There’s nowhere to appeal.”
Some speakers come from more traditional industries.
Delegates said the forces working to stop the vote were intense. “They just steamrolled it,” said Rachel Hoff, a delegate from the District of Columbia, which was one of the delegations that initially supported the roll call vote but backed off. “It seems like they’re denying the delegates the agency to play a role in the process,” added Ms. Hoff, who did not sign one of the affidavits.
Kerry Woolard — a 15-year veteran of winery management, according to convention organizers — oversees operations at a 1,300-acre estate in Virginia: Trump Winery.
After the scene in the arena settled down, the Trump campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, insisted he was never concerned he was going to lose control of the convention.
Then there is the headliner who serves as an executive vice president of his family’s business, with experience in real estate and retail. That would be Donald Trump Jr.
“From our standpoint, it wasn’t relevant,” he said. “It was handily defeated. And now we move on.”
The younger Mr. Trump and his half sister, Tiffany Trump, would seem capable of carrying off a difficult task: bringing some texture to a man whose public persona can border on caricature.
The floor skirmish was further evidence that the party still had a long way to go toward unity.
It is not clear, of course, that Mr. Trump wants this.
The Trump campaign lashed out at Gov. John Kasich of Ohio for refusing to support Mr. Trump. “He’s embarrassing his party in Ohio,” Paul Manafort, Mr. Trump’s campaign chairman, said at a breakfast on Monday morning, calling the decision “dumb.”
Often in their public remarks, family members of Mr. Trump have relayed less-than-personal anecdotes, eagerly hailing his deal-making and foresight, but dwelling little on any fatherly flourishes.
John Weaver, a strategist for Mr. Kasich, mocked Mr. Manafort and accused him of being “on the lam” with thugs and autocrats.
Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey wanted to be president. O.K., fine, vice president?
Party unity, it seems, will still take some time.
He’s getting a Tuesday speaking slot alongside two Arkansas officials and Ben Carson.
The shooting deaths of three police officers on Sunday in Baton Rouge, La., have heightened tensions here, posing a challenge of tone and approach for demonstrators.
Now, a few days after being bypassed for a spot on Mr. Trump’s ticket — and four years after addressing the convention for Mitt Romney, in a speech that critics broadly panned as self-serving — Mr. Christie has an opportunity for at least a measure of redemption.
Many have been drawn to Cleveland to oppose Mr. Trump, whom they see as inflaming racial hostilities, and to speak out against the deaths of black Americans at the hands of the police. Two hundred of his supporters held an “America First” rally in a park around midday. (Watch video we recorded live on Facebook of anti-Trump protesters marching through downtown Cleveland.) Later in the day, a group focused on economic justice will take to the streets.
In an interview with CNN on Monday night, he was asked what people could expect from him on Tuesday.
A national poll of registered voters from Monmouth University shows Mr. Trump gaining on Hillary Clinton as he heads into the convention. He now trails her by just three points, narrowing a six-point gap from a month ago.
“I hope to be charming,” he said, before raising an eyebrow playfully. “Charming and absolutely disarming.”
Mr. Trump says women love him. Public surveys say otherwise.
Which takes us to …
And if part of the convention’s purpose is to package Mr. Trump as a more acceptable choice to this skeptical swath of the electorate, Monday’s testimonials could go a long way.
From our photographers:
The headliner is Melania Trump, Mr. Trump’s often-seen but rarely heard-from wife originally from Slovenia, who is expected to take the stage in the evening. Mr. Trump’s family has been central to his campaign arc, with his children serving as top advisers and surrogates. But Mrs. Trump’s role has been less conspicuous, so far.
Mr. Trump announced on Twitter Monday morning that he would be in attendance later that evening, to watch his wife deliver her speech.
Little about the speaking schedule is subtle. But the Trump campaign’s chief aim, it seems, is to present him as a champion of law enforcement and to highlight his hard-line stance on immigration.
Among those invited onstage, organizers say, are the relatives of people killed by immigrants who entered the country illegally. There will also be a discussion of the 2012 Benghazi, Libya, attack, which will surely double as a rolling broadside against Hillary Clinton.
And in a nod to the Northeastern bravado at the top of the Republican ticket this year, former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani of New York will lend his voice. Look for Mr. Giuliani, who recently prompted an uproar after calling the Black Lives Matter movement “inherently racist,” to weigh in on the most recent violence against police officers.
Carolyn Ryan and Carl Hulse of The New York Times talked with Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, and took reader questions live on Facebook.
