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Republicans, Nominating Trump, Try to Paint Dark Portrait of Democrats Trump and Republicans Engage in Revisionism on His Record
(about 2 hours later)
President Trump was formally renominated for a second term on Monday and immediately accused Democrats of leveraging the coronavirus crisis “to steal the election,” using the first day of the Republican convention to level the sort of inflammatory, and often misleading, charges he has increasingly turned to as he tries to make up ground against Joseph R. Biden Jr. President Trump and his political allies mounted a fierce and misleading defense of his political record on the first night of the Republican convention on Monday, while unleashing a barrage of attacks on Joseph R. Biden Jr. and the Democratic Party that were unrelenting in their bleakness.
As his party gathered in North Carolina and Washington, D.C., for a hastily designed conclave that is mixing online and in-person appearances, Mr. Trump appeared before delegates in Charlotte, N.C., in the early afternoon to trumpet the economy while blistering Mr. Biden, former President Barack Obama and the state’s governor, a Democrat who he claimed had sabotaged the Republican convention for political purposes. Hours after Republican delegates formally nominated Mr. Trump for a second term, the president and his party made plain that they intended to engage in sweeping revisionism about Mr. Trump’s management of the coronavirus pandemic, his record on race relations and much else. And they laid out a dystopian picture of what the United States would look like under a Biden administration, warning of a “vengeful mob” that would lay waste to suburban communities and turn quiet neighborhoods into war zones.
Though several Trump advisers had promised an upbeat convention, the early stages of the gathering on Monday night were somber and even bleak, as a sequence of Trump supporters spoke from a dais in Andrew W. Mellon Auditorium, a formal, a wood-paneled Washington event space with towering pillars that gave the event something of the atmosphere of a memorial service. In that setting, Charlie Kirk, a right-wing youth activist, warned of the advance of “bitter, vengeful, deceitful activists,” while Rebecca Friedrichs, a school-choice activist from California, claimed that teachers’ unions had “morphed our schools into war zones.” At times, the speakers and prerecorded videos appeared to be describing an alternate reality: one in which the nation was not nearing 180,000 dead from the coronavirus; in which Mr. Trump had not consistently ignored serious warnings about the disease; in which the president had not spent much of his term appealing openly to xenophobia and racial animus; and in which someone other than Mr. Trump had presided over an economy that began crumbling in the spring.
The evening program began with a mixture of traditional ritual and typically Trumpian flourish and fulmination: a convening prayer by Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan of New York, a video narrated by the actor Jon Voight and a few preliminary speeches by conservative activists and other Trump allies. Mr. Kirk described the president as the “bodyguard of Western civilization,” and warned that Americans needed his protection from “the vengeful mob.” Donald Trump Jr., the president’s son, delivered a vehement address that framed the election as a choice between “church, work and school” against “rioting, looting and vandalism.”
A defense of Mr. Trump’s management of the coronavirus pandemic took the form of a video that criticized the news media, Democrats and the World Health Organization, and presented a greatly distorted version of Mr. Trump’s record, casting him as a decisive leader against Democrats who minimized the threat of the disease. The video featured three clips of Democratic governors, including Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York, praising Mr. Trump during the spring, when state executives were pleading with the federal government for help and taking exceptional pains to stay on the president’s good side. The younger Mr. Trump also praised his father’s management of the virus, one of several segments asserting an unsupported narrative that the president had been a sturdy leader in a crisis even as polls show Americans believe he has handled the pandemic poorly.
Mr. Trump’s first appearance in the evening program came in a brief segment that showed him at the White House interacting with frontline workers, who related their experiences in the health crisis as they stood in a semicircle. Mr. Trump largely deferred to the other speakers and prompted them to make comments — “Please, go ahead,” he said repeatedly — though he interjected his own commentary at one point about the drug hydroxychloroquine, which the president had promoted aggressively as a remedy for the coronavirus despite no consensus among doctors that it was effective. “As the virus began to spread, the president acted quickly and ensured ventilators got to hospitals that needed them most,” the president’s son said, making no mention of the millions of Americans sickened and killed or the complaints from governors that they were not receiving the necessary equipment. “There is more work to do, but there is light at the end of the tunnel.”
”It’s a shame, what they’ve done to that one,” Mr. Trump said, adding, “But I took it.” The scorched-earth rhetoric and knowing references to phrases like “cancel culture” would not have been out of place during a Fox News prime-time segment. By that measure, the arguments might help lure some wavering Republicans, uneasy with the president’s handling of the virus, back to Mr. Trump. But it was far from clear that the programming would appeal to any undecided voters.
Veering into even more unusual territory, the president emphasized how those who had contracted the virus could assist with research. “Your blood is very valuable, you know that,” he said. The Republicans’ message veered wildly, sometimes between consecutive speakers. State Representative Vernon Jones of Georgia, a Democrat who has endorsed Mr. Trump, trumpeted the president’s support for police reforms, for instance, while other Black speakers appealed directly to minority voters. Minutes later, a St. Louis couple, Mark and Patricia McCloskey, who recently drew wide attention in the news media for brandishing firearms at peaceful Black protesters in their neighborhood, turned to barely veiled racial rhetoric.
A few speakers representing the Republican Party’s scant racial diversity were due to speak later in the evening, among them Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, the only Black Republican in the Senate, and the former United Nations ambassador, Nikki R. Haley, who is Indian-American. But much of the program appeared aimed at antagonizing the left and issuing stark warnings about civil disorder, including a planned appearance by a St. Louis couple, Mark and Patricia McCloskey, who recently drew wide media attention — and an indictment — for brandishing firearms at Black protesters in their neighborhood. “Your family will not be safe in the radical Democrats’ America,” said Ms. McCloskey, sitting with her husband in their home, warning that Mr. Biden wanted to “abolish the suburbs.”
Mr. Trump’s stew of false claims, hyperbole and invective earlier in the day dismayed some Republicans, who were hoping he and the party would use this week to stick to more scripted attacks on Mr. Biden as a tool of the left. But most Republicans recognized heading into the week that the convention would be Mr. Trump’s show and that there was little chance of redirecting his energies during a convention that from the start put on display his personal dominance of the party. The couple was followed by Kimberly Guilfoyle, a former Fox News host who is now a campaign fund-raiser, back in the empty auditorium. “Rioters must not be allowed to destroy our cities” she said, before abruptly changing her tone and smiling broadly. “The best is to come,” she said, her voice rising to a shout.
Hours earlier, Mr. Trump appeared before delegates in Charlotte, N.C., after they conducted a roll-call vote to formally nominate him for a second term. The president promoted the economy while blistering Mr. Biden, former President Barack Obama and North Carolina’s governor, a Democrat who he claimed had sabotaged the Republican convention for political purposes.
Mr. Trump’s stew of false claims, hyperbole and invective earlier in the day dismayed some Republicans, who were hoping he and the party would use this week to stick to more scripted attacks on Mr. Biden as a tool of the left. But most Republicans recognized heading into the week that the convention would be Mr. Trump’s show and that there was little chance of redirecting his energies.
Mr. Trump is planning on speaking each day during the four-day convention, and party officials scrambled over the weekend to fill in the schedule. It seemed inevitable, though, that the president would overwhelm his own convention, given his television-honed obsession with stagecraft and his total control of the Republican Party.
Though several Trump advisers had promised an upbeat convention, the evening program was bleak from the early stages, as a sequence of Trump supporters spoke in Washington, D.C., from a dais in Andrew W. Mellon Auditorium, a formal, a wood-paneled event space with towering pillars that gave the event something of the atmosphere of a memorial service.
In that setting, Charlie Kirk, a right-wing youth activist, warned of the advance of “bitter, vengeful, deceitful activists,” while Rebecca Friedrichs, a school-choice activist from California, claimed that teachers’ unions had “morphed our schools into war zones.” A defense of Mr. Trump’s management of the coronavirus pandemic took the form of a video that criticized the news media, Democrats and the World Health Organization, and presented a greatly distorted version of Mr. Trump’s record, casting him as a decisive leader against Democrats who minimized the threat of the disease. The video featured three clips of Democratic governors, including Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York, praising Mr. Trump in the spring, when state executives were pleading with the federal government for help and taking exceptional pains to stay on the president’s good side.
Mr. Trump’s first appearance in the evening program came in a brief segment that showed him at the White House interacting with frontline workers, who related their experiences in the health crisis as they stood in a semicircle. Mr. Trump largely deferred to the other speakers and prompted them to make comments — “Please, go ahead,” he said repeatedly — though he interjected his own commentary about the drug hydroxychloroquine, which the president had promoted aggressively as a remedy for the coronavirus despite no consensus among doctors that it was effective.
Amy Ford, a nurse from West Virginia, spoke of working on the front lines during the pandemic and credited the president’s leadership with saving lives, despite the extensive evidence that Mr. Trump had defied public health experts by playing down the threat of the virus and by opposing some of the most effective measures to control it.
“As a health care professional, I can tell you without hesitation Donald Trump’s quick action and leadership saved thousands of lives during Covid-19,” Ms. Ford said, though for much of her brief speech she focused on the benefits of telemedicine.
Charlotte was the original site of the convention before Mr. Trump pulled the bulk of it out of the city because of his disagreements with the governor over health restrictions. The in-person roll-call vote on Monday morning, making his nomination official, was a stark contrast with the Democratic convention, which was conducted completely online.Charlotte was the original site of the convention before Mr. Trump pulled the bulk of it out of the city because of his disagreements with the governor over health restrictions. The in-person roll-call vote on Monday morning, making his nomination official, was a stark contrast with the Democratic convention, which was conducted completely online.
Mr. Trump is planning on speaking each day during the four-day convention, and party officials were still scrambling over the weekend to fill in the schedule. It seemed inevitable, though, that the president would overwhelm his own convention, given his television-honed obsession with stagecraft and his total control of the Republican Party. Mr. Trump offered his remarks to a crowd that frequently broke into applause, a feature that was noticeably absent from the Democratic convention last week. The Republicans have made their decision to hold an in-person convention a political statement in itself.
The planned speakers for Monday night reflected the Trumpified Republican Party. A few of his allies in Congress, including Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio, were scheduled to speak. So was the president's eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., and the younger Mr. Trump’s girlfriend, Kimberly Guilfoyle, a former Fox News host turned campaign fund-raiser. Just hours after the roll-call vote, Mr. Trump was confronted with a new embarrassment when a sex scandal ensnaring Jerry Falwell Jr., the president of Liberty University and a close ally, forced Mr. Falwell to the brink of departing from the Baptist college his father founded.
There were several other figures whom highly engaged Republicans like to use to taunt equally well-informed liberal activists, among them Mr. Kirk and the St. Louis couple. The speakers on Monday night reflected the Trumpified Republican Party. A few of the president’s allies in Congress, including Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio, delivered remarks. A few speakers representing the Republican Party’s scant racial diversity spoke later in the evening, among them Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, the only Black Republican in the Senate, and the former United Nations ambassador, Nikki R. Haley, who is Indian-American. But much of the program appeared aimed at antagonizing the left and issuing stark warnings about civil disorder, including the appearances by Mr. Kirk and the McCloskeys.
The Black speakers in addition to Mr. Scott included a Democratic state lawmaker from Georgia, a long-shot Republican candidate for a House seat in Maryland and the former football star Herschel Walker. The former football star Herschel Walker, who identified himself as a longtime friend of Mr. Trump’s, pushed back on what he called unfair depictions of the president as a racist — a sign, perhaps, of Republicans’ concerns that a wide range of voters see Mr. Trump in those terms, including a sizable number of whites.
Mr. Walker, who identified himself as a longtime friend of Mr. Trump’s, pushed back on what he called unfair depictions of the president as a racist — a sign, perhaps, of Republicans’ concerns that a wide range of voters see Mr. Trump in those terms, including a sizable number of whites. “I take it as a personal insult that people would think I would have a 37-year friendship with a racist,” Mr. Walker said. “People who think that don’t know what they are talking about.” “I take it as a personal insult that people would think I would have a 37-year friendship with a racist,” said Mr. Walker, who is Black. “People who think that don’t know what they are talking about.”
In her remarks, Ms. Haley depicted Mr. Trump as a stern champion of American interests against an unfriendly international order, and attacked Mr. Biden and the Obama administration’s handling of adversaries like North Korea and Iran. Of Mr. Trump, she said, “He tells the world what it needs to hear.”
Underscoring Republicans’ determination to run against the left wing of the Democratic Party, rather than Mr. Trump’s decidedly moderate challenger, Ms. Haley warned that if Mr. Biden were elected, he would report to “Pelosi, Sanders and the squad,” employing a widely used nickname for four progressive women of color in the House including Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York.
Much as the Democrats sought to do last week with their parade of Republicans at Mr. Biden’s convention, G.O.P. officials were hoping that the presence of such diverse voices would provide something of a permission structure for centrist voters to back Mr. Trump. Mr. Scott gave perhaps the most carefully crafted speech of the evening, recounting his ascent as a Black Southerner to deliver an optimistic assessment of America’s promise and to ridicule Mr. Biden for his clumsy references to race.
The numerous pro-Trump voices were more disciplined than the president about reading from their teleprompters. They were expected to use their remarks to harshly criticize Mr. Biden, the former vice president, and to link him and Democrats to the violence and looting that occurred in some cities in the aftermath of initially peaceful protests against police brutality. Much as the Democrats sought to do last week with their parade of Republicans at Mr. Biden’s convention, G.O.P. officials were hoping that the presence of people of color would provide something of a permission structure for centrist voters to back Mr. Trump.
The speakers were not expected to say much about Mr. Trump’s handling of the coronavirus crisis or his second-term agenda, a rough outline of which the president’s campaign issued in an emailed news release on Sunday evening. In interviews, Mr. Trump has repeatedly struggled to articulate his plans were he to be elected to serve four more years. At the start of the convention’s second hour, Mr. Trump appeared in a video with several people who were held as hostages or prisoners overseas until his administration negotiated their release, and who praised the efforts of his team. Mr. Trump spoke briefly with them in turn, generating at least one dissonant moment in which he told Andrew Brunson, a pastor who was jailed in Turkey, that the country’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, had been “very good” to deal with.
More revealing was the organizers’ decision not to release a party platform. Platform documents are typically toothless, and few delegates even read them. But that Republicans would skip the process entirely illustrates the degree to which their identity is shaped more by Mr. Trump, and his critics, than by any set of policy proposals. One revealing aspect of the convention was the organizers’ decision not to release a party platform. Platform documents are typically toothless, and few delegates even read them. But that Republicans would skip the process entirely illustrates the degree to which their identity is shaped more by Mr. Trump, and his critics, than by any set of policy proposals.
In this spirit, the Republican National Committee passed a resolution defending its decision not to craft a platform that hailed Mr. Trump while criticizing Democrats and the news media.
“Resolved, that the 2020 Republican National Convention calls on the media to engage in accurate and unbiased reporting, especially as it relates to the strong support of the R.N.C. for President Trump and his administration,” the resolution read.
The degree to which Mr. Trump has reshaped the Republican Party in his own image was on display even in the Democratic Party’s counterprogramming on Monday. Mr. Biden’s campaign used the start of the convention to release a list of Republican dissenters and outcasts who are opposing Mr. Trump’s re-election and backing the former vice president as a suitable alternative.The degree to which Mr. Trump has reshaped the Republican Party in his own image was on display even in the Democratic Party’s counterprogramming on Monday. Mr. Biden’s campaign used the start of the convention to release a list of Republican dissenters and outcasts who are opposing Mr. Trump’s re-election and backing the former vice president as a suitable alternative.
The most prominent new name on the list, which heavily featured long-retired lawmakers with little to lose through their dissent, was former Senator Jeff Flake of Arizona. Mr. Flake, a 57-year-old conservative, was pushed into retirement after just one term because his persistent criticism of Mr. Trump enraged Republican voters.The most prominent new name on the list, which heavily featured long-retired lawmakers with little to lose through their dissent, was former Senator Jeff Flake of Arizona. Mr. Flake, a 57-year-old conservative, was pushed into retirement after just one term because his persistent criticism of Mr. Trump enraged Republican voters.
“If we are honest, there is less of a conservative case to be made for re-electing the president than there is a blatant appeal for more rank tribalism,” Mr. Flake said in a prepared speech on Monday, in language that lined up neatly with Mr. Trump’s opening remarks in North Carolina. On Monday in Charlotte, where only party business was being conducted, Mr. Trump used his speech to focus on the strength of the stock market and to hurl all manner of attacks at Democrats.
The convention was originally to be held in Charlotte. Then, after it became clear that Mr. Cooper would not allow such an event, organizers sought to switch the gathering to Jacksonville, Fla., where the mayor is a Republican and the state’s governor is, too. Yet after a summer flare-up of the coronavirus in the state, Mr. Trump grudgingly decided to cancel the rescheduled convention there.
On Monday, Mr. Trump used his speech at the original venue, where only party business was being conducted, to focus on the strength of the stock market and to hurl all manner of attacks at Democrats.
He repeated his unfounded allegations that Mr. Obama and Mr. Biden had spied on his campaign in 2016. “We caught them doing really bad things,” he said. “Let’s see what happens. They’re trying it again.”He repeated his unfounded allegations that Mr. Obama and Mr. Biden had spied on his campaign in 2016. “We caught them doing really bad things,” he said. “Let’s see what happens. They’re trying it again.”
Though shutdowns caused by the pandemic have left millions of Americans unemployed, and new rounds of relief have been held up in Washington, Mr. Trump focused on what he depicted as his economic successes. The president also continued his monthslong assault on voting by mail and repeated unfounded accusations that it was part of a plot by Democrats to hand the election to Mr. Biden.
“We just broke a record on jobs, an all-time record,” he said. “There’s never been three months when we’ve put more people to work. We’re just about ready to break the all-time stock market record.”
Mr. Trump offered his remarks to a crowd that frequently broke into applause, a feature that was noticeably absent from the Democratic convention last week. The Republicans have made their decision to hold an in-person convention a political statement in itself.
The president continued his monthslong assault on voting by mail and repeated unfounded accusations that it was part of a plot by Democrats to hand the election to Mr. Biden.
Yet he said far less about the virus itself. Inside the convention center, where delegates were seated at socially distanced chairs, attendees crowded together toward the front of the room near the stage to hear the party’s standard-bearer.
While the Democrats at their convention made the U.S. death toll from the pandemic — now past 175,000 — a centerpiece of their case, and tried to lay the blame for it at Mr. Trump’s feet, the president mentioned the virus’s victims almost as an afterthought at the end of his rambling, hourlong speech.
“We will never forget the 175,000 people — that will go up,” he said, claiming, as he has previously, that the toll would have been millions more without travel bans he put in effect.