What to know about the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, which is in its third day:
• The party’s deep fractures were on display Wednesday tonight: Among other incidents, Ted Cruz told delegates to “vote your conscience” and Scott Walker barely mentioned Trump’s name.
• Tales from the streets outside the GOP convention, where thousands have been holding their own debate over America’s future.
• Sign up for our free daily Essential Politics newsletter
Ready for Day 4? Find our coverage here
As Day 4 of the Republican National Convention begins, we’re posting news and analysis over here.
Below you’ll find our news feed from the first three days of events in Cleveland.
Mike Pence stuck to the script on an off-script night
Indiana Gov. Mike Pence hit all the standard notes for a high-profile political address Wednesday night: introducing himself to unfamiliar voters, extolling his running mate and making an explicit appeal to independent and Democratic voters.
That typical approach has been in short supply at the GOP nominating confab in Cleveland, with its outsized focus on base-pleasing issues like Benghazi and speakers whose anti-Hillary Clinton rhetoric is matched only by the audience’s preferred chant of “Lock her up!”
Adding to the unreality was Sen. Ted Cruz’s non-endorsement of Donald Trump just an hour before Pence took the stage, prompting a chaotic backlash from attendees.
But Pence appeared unfazed by the clamor, smoothly delivering a recitation of Trump’s attributes and promising a capable team to win the White House in November.
California delegate mad at Ted Cruz
Donald Trump supporter Michael Der Manouel, a California delegate from Fresno, is not happy with Sen. Ted Cruz.
“Everybody believed he was building to a point in his speech where he would endorse Donald Trump, and he couldn’t bring himself to do it, and the convention expressed its displeasure,” Der Manouel told The Times.
“He couldn’t bring himself to do what Reagan did in ’76, and it’s very disappointing,” he said. “We’re going to move forward without all of these guys who reneged on their endorsement pledge. We’re going to move forward without them.”
A dark star named Ted Cruz blots out the sun for Mike Pence
It wasn’t supposed to be like this.
The third night of the convention was supposed to belong to Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, Donald Trump’s running mate.
No one anticipated that Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, giving a surprisingly restrained speech, would nevertheless fail to endorse Trump, infuriating convention delegates.
“To those listening, please, don’t stay home in November,” said Cruz, in his typically languid debater’s cadence. “If you love our country, and love your children as much as I know you do, stand, and speak, and vote your conscience; vote for candidates up and down the ticket who you trust to defend our freedom and to be faithful to the Constitution.”
That’s when the booing began, the Twitter volume went to 11 and, it seemed, no one could speak of anything else.
Lost in the noise: Pence’s perfectly serviceable speech.
Retired astronaut Eileen Collins skips over line endorsing Trump in prime-time speech
In her Wednesday night convention speech, retired astronaut Eileen Collins lamented the fact that the last time the U.S. launched astronauts on American soil was more than five years ago, imploring leaders to “do better than that.”
She called for “leadership that will make America’s space program first again,” but skipped a line in her prepared remarks that would have endorsed newly-minted Republican nominee Donald Trump.
Earlier this week, Collins told Mashable that her speech was not meant to be political.
“This is a chance I could not pass up: We can raise awareness of how the U.S. human space program has slowed over the years,” Collins said in a statement to the website.
FBI may have resumed controversial checkups on Cleveland-area activists, legal group says
Federal Bureau of Investigation agents may have knocked on the doors of several Cleveland-area activists Wednesday morning, resuming a controversial checkup practice that put the local civil rights community on edge in the weeks leading up to the Republican National Convention, a legal advocacy group said.
In a statement issued Wednesday night, the Ohio chapter of the National Lawyers Guild alleged the FBI conducted a series of “raids” and may have entered a home without a warrant, continuing a practice that disturbed local demonstrators earlier this summer.
“It’s been a consistent theme throughout all of these visits that law enforcement are looking for links and relationships among activists or people known to be activists around the Cleveland area and around the state of Ohio and also in some other locations outside of the state,” said Jacqueline Greene, co-coordinator of the guild. “Ultimately they’re on an information-fishing expedition. The purpose of these visits is to intimidate and chill First Amendment expression.”
National activists with Black Lives Matter and Campaign Zero have also said they received unnerving visits from the FBI in the weeks leading up to the nominating conventions, according to the Washington Post.
Greene said her office had also reviewed video that appeared to show FBI agents and officers entering a home without consent.
Asked about the incident Wednesday night, Cleveland Police Chief Calvin Williams said he was not sure if his officers were involved in any door knocks, as some are on loan to the local FBI office. He said he generally supports the tactic.
“We’re not accusing them of anything,” Williams said. “We’re going around and talking to them.”
The FBI said earlier this year that the visits were simply about ensuring safety during the convention, but local organizers have criticized the tactic as intimidation.
FBI spokeswoman Vicki Anderson said the FBI and police officers from Elyria, a Cleveland suburb, conducted interviews this week “in response to investigative leads.”
“The occupants were interviewed outside the residence and no arrests were made,” Anderson said in an e-mail to The Times. “Law enforcement will continue to respond to investigative leads to ensure the security of the RNC.”
9:10 p.m. Updated with a response from the FBI in Cleveland.
The man of the moment
Gingrich immediately tries to mend the Cruz rift at Republican convention
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich sought Wednesday night to get the Republican National Convention back on track after disharmony erupted in full, prime-time view when delegates booed Sen. Ted Cruz for declining to endorse nominee Donald Trump.
Veering from his prepared remarks, Gingrich told the thousands of delegates and guests that they had misunderstood Cruz when he urged Americans to “vote your conscience.”
Gingrich said that Cruz had actually urged voters to abide by their conscience and vote any candidate who will uphold the Constitution. In the presidential contest, Trump is the only candidate who would do so, Gingrich said.
“So to paraphrase Ted Cruz, if you want to protect the Constitution of the United States the only possible candidate this fall is the Trump-Pence Republican ticket,” he said.
Gingrich, whom Trump passed over as his running mate, also hailed Trump for being generous in allowing his GOP primary rivals to speak without requiring an endorsement.
Analysis: Sen. Ted Cruz’s refusal to endorse Donald Trump lit up the GOP convention, with political implications
Watch Marco Rubio’s message to Republican delegates
Sen. Marco Rubio (Fla.) speaks in a video address played at the Republican National Convention.
Ted Cruz to delegates: ‘Vote your conscience’
“Please, don’t stay home in November,” Ted Cruz said to convention-goers. “If you love our country and if you love your children as much as I know you do, stand, and speak, and vote your conscience, vote for candidates up and down the ticket who you trust to defend our freedom and to be faithful to the Constitution.”
Delegates chanted at him to endorse Donald Trump, and the phrase “vote your conscience” appeared to infuriate the crowd. Anti-Trump forces had unsuccessfully sought to make rules changes that would have unbound delegates and allowed them to “vote their conscience.”
The lack of endorsement by Cruz, who mentioned Trump’s name only once, was not surprising.
Gov. Scott Walker -- a Trump critic, then backer, then skeptic -- got the party memo on GOP unity
When Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker addressed the Republican convention Wednesday, it was as if a memo had gone out from party headquarters that the time had come to step up the effort to unify the party behind Donald Trump.
The first two nights of the convention had resulted in start-and-stop progress. Lots of pro-Trump voices. Few new converts. Convention crowds that began to thin toward the end of the evening.
Walker, in some ways, was a prime messenger, thanks to his own discomfort over Trump.
If Walker -- a onetime Trump rival, who endorsed Trump only to walk it back later -- could vote for the ticket, so could so many other Republicans who preferred someone else.
The former presidential hopeful argued his case the way so many Republicans are doing it – not so much a vote for Trump as a vote for the alternative to Democrat Hillary Clinton.
He made a point of not just naming Trump but also including the vice presidential nominee, Mike Pence, who many believe will help persuade conservatives who are cool to Trump to fall in line with the GOP ticket.
“Hillary Clinton is the ultimate liberal Washington insider. If she were any more on the ‘inside,’ she’d be in prison,” Walker said.
“America deserves better than Hillary Clinton,” he said. “That is why we need to support Donald Trump and Mike Pence to be the next president and vice president.”
“Let me be clear: A vote for anyone other than Donald Trump in November is a vote for Hillary Clinton,” he said.
The speech was full of Walker’s sensible Midwestern passion, and it roused the crowd. After House Speaker Paul D. Ryan’s address the night before, it was among the few speeches that gave prime time the feel of a traditional convention otherwise filled with B-list actors and Trump’s business allies.
Walker may have lost his chance to be the one onstage as the GOP nominee.
But on Wednesday, he did his part to salvage the Republican Party in the age of Trump.
Watch the full speech:
Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker speaks at the Republican National Convention.
Mike Pence can bring it in a speech when he needs to
Indiana Gov. Mike Pence is giving the biggest speech of his life tonight.
If you are looking for a preview of what the man can do to a crowd it helps to look at the speech he gave to the Family Research Council Values Voter Summit in September 2010.
Pence, then a congressman, was so well received he won the straw poll there, beating out former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and eventual 2012 Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney.
Speaking shortly before Republicans won back a majority in Congress, Pence jabbed at then-speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and promised the crowd not to compromise with Democrats.
“I am here to say House Republicans are back in the fight and they are back in the fight for conservative values on Capitol Hill,” he told a rapturous crowd.
The crowd ate up the Republican red meat Pence offered throughout about the nation being trapped in “bondage” to big government.
But Pence also managed to maintained a light touch.
He put the crowd in stitches, joking that while MSNBC said Republicans would win “just a couple of seats” in the House, Fox News said “Republicans will win all 435 seats in the Congress.”
Pence used one of his common lines -- “I am a conservative but I am not in a bad mood about it.” -- that he has repeated on television since Trump selected him as his running mate.
Pence also flashed his socially conservative bonafides that made him attractive to a Trump campaign looking to broaden its appeal to the right wing.
“Don’t ask, don’t tell must remain the policy of the United States Armed Forces,” he said.
Watch:
Watch: Conservative radio host Laura Ingraham tells those with ‘bruised egos’ it’s time to support Trump
It was a speech to fire people up, and included marching orders.
“We should all, even all you boys with wounded feelings and bruised egos, and we love you, we love you, but you must honor your pledge to support Donald Trump now,” Laura Ingraham told delegates at the convention.
Watch the full speech:
Laura Ingraham, conservative commentator, speaks at the Republican National Convention.
The hot and cold relationship between Scott Walker and Donald Trump
His support of Donald Trump has fluctuated in recent months.
Ahead of his state’s April primary, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker endorsed Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, who at the time was seen as the strongest candidate to derail Trump’s quest to become the Republican nominee.
Trump’s response?
He said that countries like Mexico and China had taken jobs away from Wisconsin and that immigrants in the country illegally were burdening the state’s taxpayers. Trump blamed it on a lack of leadership by Walker, whose own presidential bid last year faltered after only a few months.
“I wouldn’t do this, except that he endorsed this guy Cruz, and Cruz would be a terrible president,” Trump told Wisconsin Republicans at the time.
But the effort to assail Walker, who is popular among Republicans in his state after staving off a 2012 recall spearheaded by Democrats, was not a formula for victory. Trump ended up losing to Cruz in the primary by 13 percentage points.
As Trump has mended some relationships with establishment figures, the one with Walker remains complicated. Though the governor plans to make clear in his speech Wednesday night his support for Trump over Hillary Clinton, the presumptive Democratic nominee, he’s wavered in his applause of the billionaire businessman.
During an interview with a local Wisconsin television station last month, Walker, who had initially said he would support the GOP nominee, backtracked.
“It’s just sad in America that we have such poor choices right now,” Walker said, a direct jab at Trump and Clinton.
Walker’s comments came on the heels of Trump’s inflammatory statements about a Latino judge overseeing a fraud lawsuit against the now-defunct Trump University.
Yet in recent weeks, Walker has not been as vocal in his criticisms of Trump. In fact, after Trump announced the selection of Indiana Gov. Mike Pence last week as his running mate, Walker offered plaudits.
“The Mike Pence decision this week to me is a sign that this is somebody who is actually thinking about how to govern,” Walker said of Trump in an interview with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
For Walker, who some political observers believe is eyeing another presidential run in 2020, it was a step toward unity.
An inflatable Trump
17 arrested at flag-burning protest outside RNC; observers dispute police account
Cleveland police arrested 17 people on suspicion of assaulting officers and failure to disperse after a U.S. flag was set on fire outside the Republican National Convention on Wednesday afternoon, but legal observers are disputing the police narrative of the incident.
Police Chief Calvin Williams said two people have been booked on charges of felony assault after they pushed and punched police who were trying to extinguish the fire outside the entrance to the Quicken Loans Arena on Wednesday. Fifteen other protesters face various misdemeanor charges, including failure to disperse, he said.
Police had no plans to stop Revolutionary Communist Party members from burning the flag, which is a legal but controversial form of protest, and Williams said officers only moved in because several protesters’ clothes caught on fire.
But Jocelyn Rosnick, co-coordinator of the Ohio Chapter of the National Lawyers Guild, said 10 legal observers on the scene did not see any of the protesters’ clothes aflame and contended that no dispersal order was given.
She also noted that officers are required to give multiple dispersal orders before making arrests.
“Flag burning as a means of speech is protected. It has been argued in a number of court cases all the way up to the Supreme Court,” Rosnick said.
Officers moved in seconds after the flag caught fire. One could be heard yelling, “You’re on fire, stupid” at a protester as he sprayed a fire extinguisher. A Times reporter who was standing feet away from officers when the flag was set on fire did not hear a dispersal order, however.
All 17 people arrested were adults involved in the protest. Williams said police were only at the scene to prevent clashes between members of the Revolutionary Communist Party, which organized the flag-burning protest, and counter groups who had come to stop them, including “Bikers 4 Trump.”
“There were people on the corner that were basically saying, ‘Why are you guys doing this?’ and the whole area got kind of amped up,” the chief said.
A city police officer and an Ohio state trooper were treated for minor injuries at the scene. None of the protesters whose clothes police said caught fire required medical treatment for burns, Williams said.
‘Small business owner’ speaking tonight works for a multi-level marketing company
Until a few hours ago, Florida-based Trump supporter Michelle Van Etten, who is speaking in a prime-time convention spot Wednesday night, was described on the RNC website as a “small business owner” who “employs over 100,000 people.” The U.S. Small Business Administration advises that most small businesses employ 500 people or fewer.
But when questions were raised about how Van Etten was billed on the speaker list, she clarified the facts: She doesn’t have any employees at all.
“I don’t employ,” she told the Guardian, adding that she sells products for Youngevity, a Chula Vista-based company that sells nutritional supplements, makeup and jewelry.
On a profile written for her Youngevity site, Van Etten describes the company as a “network marketing company” and says her business strategy “involves converting satisfied online product purchasers into business builders.”
A brochure on the company’s website says, “The power of the Youngevity compensation system is in duplication. If we assume that 13 of your new distributors achieve the same results as you, your override compensation would exceed $10,000 per month!”
The company’s products are also peddled by radio host and self-described “aggressive constitutionalist” Alex Jones and actress Marilu Henner.
A LinkedIn profile that appears to belong to Van Etten lists her as “Senior Vice Chairman Marketing Director” for Youngevity.
In an interview with Fortune, Youngevity Chief Financial Officer David Briskie said Van Etten is not an executive with the company, but is free to identify herself that way among her distribution network. Van Etten is an independent contractor who is paid a commission on sales, Briskie told the publication.
By 5 p.m. Wednesday, the GOP convention website had changed Van Etten’s speaker biography to say she “runs an international multi-million dollar network marketing business with an organization of customers and distributors of over 100,000 people.”
Reached by phone, Van Etten told The Times her bio on the GOP website “was not correct.”
“That’s why there was a retraction,” she said.
Van Etten declined to comment further.
Potential Trump Cabinet pick Harold Hamm makes convention debut
On Wednesday Reuters reported that Donald Trump will consider Harold Hamm, chief executive officer of oil and gas giant Continental Resources, as Energy secretary should he become president.
In 2012 Hamm chaired Republican nominee Mitt Romney’s Energy Policy Advisory Group, attacked President Obama’s policies on oil and gave almost $1 million to a super PAC supporting Romney, according to Politico.
Hamm isn’t new to politics. Reuters reported that in 2009 Hamm formed a lobbying group to oppose the Keystone XL pipeline, fearing it would flood his company’s territory with Canadian oil.
But Hamm dropped his opposition after the pipeline’s operator agreed to add an extension that would pick up his company’s oil and take it to refineries, according to the report.
Hamm backed Trump in April.
“He is someone who is not beholden to special interests and has the fortitude to make tough decisions,” he said at the time. “With a slew of onerous regulations now threatening to cripple American business, the next president of the United States must have the courage, determination and intelligence to disrupt politics as usual.”
Band at RNC goes patriotic, then plays antiwar song
Country singer Chris Janson joined G.E. Smith’s house band on stage tonight at the Republican National Convention.
Janson was in the middle of playing his band LoCash’s song “Love this Life” when he stopped to address the delegates dancing on the floor.
“Let me hear you if you’re proud to be from the U.S.A.!”
Then he broke from his band to play the chorus from “Born in the U.S.A.” Chants of “U-S-A” followed.
Bruce Springsteen’s 1984 hit is often deemed a patriotic song, despite its antiwar origins.
The song is a criticism of the Vietnam War and the U.S. government, and if you know it, you’ll recognize the lyrics that surround the catchy chorus:
I had a brother at Khe Sahn
Fighting off the Viet Cong
They’re still there, he’s all gone
Here’s the playlist (so far) from the convention.
Eileen Collins, the first female U.S. space shuttle commander, urges investments in space exploration at RNC
In her speech Wednesday night at the GOP convention, astronaut Eileen Collins urged investments to “make America’s space program first again.”
Collins herself has seen a few firsts in her career.
She was the first female pilot of an American space shuttle, and in 1999 became the first woman commander of a U.S. shuttle mission.
Before becoming an astronaut, Collins was a career military pilot and trained at Vance Air Force Base in Oklahoma. She also worked as an instructor pilot at Travis Air Force Base in California from 1983 to 1985.
She was picked for the astronaut program after attending pilot school at Edwards Air Force Base.
She’s also terrified of roller coasters.
Florida Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi was questioned over Trump donation
Florida Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi, who will speak at the Republican National Convention Wednesday, has drawn scrutiny for soliciting a political campaign contribution from Republican Presidential nominee Donald Trump when her office was considering joining an investigation into Trump University.
The Associated Press reported last month that a Trump family foundation gave a $25,000 donation to a political group supporting Bondi’s reelection after she solicited the contribution.
The donation alone appeared to be a violation of rules governing political activities by charities.
The timing of the contribution also raised questions: The check arrived four days after Bondi said her office was considering joining a New York state probe of Trump University.
Her office declined to join the suit against Trump after the check came in, citing insufficient grounds to proceed.
The news made waves because Trump has been open about what he expects when he makes political contributions.
“I give to everybody,” he said in an debate last August. “When they call, I give. And you know what? When I need something from them, two years later, three years later, I call them. They are there for me. And that’s a broken system.”
Bondi was highlighted in a 2014 New York Times investigation that uncovered lobbyist spending on meals, trips and other contributions for several state attorneys general.
The architecture of the convention stage
In Cleveland, the stagecraft is sleek, anodyne and less traditional. There are no Obama-style Greek columns for Donald Trump. Nor has he revived the domestic architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright the way Mitt Romney did during the 2012 GOP convention in Tampa, Fla.
Instead the set is a shotgun marriage of Star Trek and Macbook modern, with perhaps a touch — in the rounded stairs, lighted from below — of Art Deco. A dark oval stage is flanked by a pair of canted silver walls, between which hang several giant video boards.
The goal seems to be a series of smooth surfaces to which none of the more direct ad hominem verbal attacks or accusations of plagiarism might stick — a slate that can be wiped clean whenever a change in tone or direction is wanted. Call it Teflon minimalism.
For those of us watching on phones, tablets and television screens, this gap between the nostalgic and often aggressive rhetoric of the speeches and the sleek, vague futurism of the set design has been among the convention’s most striking elements.
Trump business associate Phil Ruffin takes the stage next
At the Republican National Convention, many of the speakers have something in common: They aren’t politicians. Instead, they are friends or business associates of nominee Donald Trump.
Take Wednesday night speaker Phil Ruffin.
The billionaire owns the Treasure Island Resort & Casino in Las Vegas and worked with Trump to develop the Trump International Hotel. Ruffin has developed properties across the U.S., including in California.
He was on hand when Trump was campaigning in Las Vegas this February.
He has also stumped for Trump in his native Kansas.
“He’s a brilliant businessman, one of the best I’ve ever seen,” Ruffin told members of the Wichita Pachyderm Club in downtown Wichita, according to the Wichita Eagle. “If he ever offers you a partnership, take the deal.
“Right now he’s offering a partnership for the country: Trump and the country. He would do a great job. … He’d make a great president.”
Conservative talk show host Laura Ingraham chides John Kasich ahead of prime-time speaking slot
Conservative radio talk show host Laura Ingraham is expected to address the need to “restore respect across all levels of society” in a night themed “Make America First Again.”
Ingraham, who said she would not choose between Ted Cruz and Donald Trump during the primaries, has taken to rallying conservatives behind Trump in recent days.
On Twitter, she’s criticized Ohio Gov. John Kasich, who dropped out of the race in May, for not attending the convention in his home state.
Ingraham told the New York Times in May that the anti-Trump effort within the Republican Party was “a little juvenile.”
“There are a lot of purists out there who, if they don’t get everything checked off on their little bucket list,” then they say “take your pail and go home,” she told the newspaper. “Come to the real world.”
On Twitter, Ingraham cited a flag-burning protest and subsequent arrests outside the convention hall Wednesday, saying she’d address “this level of disrespect” in her prime-time remarks.
Obama praises Florida Gov. Rick Scott. Tonight, Scott will bash him at the Republican convention.
The White House released a long statement Wednesday afternoon praising Florida Gov. Rick Scott, a Republican, for responding to a suspected case of Zika.
The statement recounted a phone call between the two men earlier in the day in which Obama touted an additional $5.6 million being sent to Florida from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: “The president recognized Florida’s strong record of responding aggressively to local outbreaks of mosquito-borne viruses like Zika, and offered federal support and technical assistance.”
It was a nice bipartisan moment, expressing how state and federal officials can make government work across party lines. Right?
Well, here’s an excerpt of the speech Scott plans to deliver at the Republican National Convention on Wednesday night.
“Today, America is in terrible, world-record-high debt. Our economy is not growing. Our jobs are going overseas. We have allowed our military to decay, and we project weakness on the international stage. Washington grows while the rest of America struggles. The Democrats have not led us to a crossroads; they have led us to a cliff.”
Scenes from a protest involving flag-burning in Cleveland
‘Firing squad’ comment draws Clinton campaign rebuke
Hillary Clinton’s campaign warned of a dangerous escalation in negative rhetoric directed toward her after a Donald Trump supporter called for the presumptive Democratic nominee to be “shot for treason.”
“Donald Trump’s overtaking of the Republican Party — and his constant escalation of outrageous rhetoric — is in danger of mainstreaming the kind of hatred that has long been relegated to the fringes of American politics where it belongs,” Clinton campaign communications director Jennifer Palmieri said in a statement.
“This week at the Republican convention, we’ve seen the clearest embodiment yet of this dangerous phenomenon,” she added.
Al Baldasaro, a New Hampshire state representative who appeared often at Trump events this year, told a radio interviewer Wednesday that the former secretary of State should be tried for treason for her handling of the 2012 attack on Benghazi, Libya, and for mishandling classified material over her private email account.
“This whole thing disgusts me. Hillary Clinton should be put in the firing line and shot for treason,” he said in comments noted by BuzzFeed.
He repeated the incendiary comments to the NH1 network, while stipulating that he was speaking for himself and not for Trump’s campaign.
“My military mind believes it’s treason,” said Baldasaro, who says he is a military veteran. “Once you’re found guilty, normally it’s a firing squad.”
Clinton has not been charged with a crime, no less convicted of one.
The Trump campaign responded that the business mogul does not agree with Baldasaro’s statement.
But the Republican National Convention has been a showcase for sensational anti-Clinton comments, most notably repeated calls — often encouraged by headline speakers — to “Lock her up.”
California delegation afflicted by norovirus: Here’s what it does
At least a dozen GOP staffers from California’s delegation to the Republican National Convention in Cleveland are experiencing vomiting, cramps and diarrhea, and the dreaded norovirus is being blamed for their gastrointestinal misery.
Erie County Health Department officials have been called to the scene of the delegation’s quarters at the Kalahari Resort in Sandusky, Ohio, about 60 miles from the convention site, and have collected fecal samples to confirm the diagnosis.
Norovirus is the most common cause of diarrheal episodes globally and one of the leading causes of food-borne disease outbreaks in the United States.
Treated with rest and fluids, its symptoms of severe gastroenteritis generally wane after two or three days. But it claims the lives of 212,000 annually worldwide, mostly children and the elderly living in low- and middle-income countries.
Man who burned flag outside Republican convention has done it before, group claims
The man who set fire to an American flag outside the Republican National Convention on Wednesday, touching off a struggle between police and protesters, did the same thing outside the convention in 1984, according to a statement issued by the group that organized the protest.
The Revolutionary Communist Party has claimed Gregory Lee Johnson was the man who lit the flag on fire about 4 p.m. outside Quicken Loans Arena. Johnson was the plaintiff in a 1989 Supreme Court case that invalidated restrictions that criminalized burning flags in the U.S., the group said.
Johnson also burned a flag outside the GOP convention in Dallas in 1984, according to the statement.
Several people were arrested as police used fire extinguishers and pepper spray to stop the protest just seconds after the flag was scorched. The Revolutionary Communist Party had announced the protest earlier in the week, drawing the attention of a number of groups attempting to stop them.
A dozen protesters emerged from a tightly packed crowd near Quicken Loans Arena, donning black T-shirts bearing the group’s name and chanting “America Was Never Great” before setting fire to the flag.
At least six people were seen being led away by police in zip-tie handcuffs. In its statement, the Revolutionary Communist Party said 14 people were arrested. On Wednesday evening, the Cleveland Police Department said 17 arrests were made.
Two officers sustained minor injuries, police said.
The ghost of Richard Nixon is haunting the GOP convention
It has been a long time since Richard Milhous Nixon has found such love.
Law and order, the mantra that elected Nixon president in 1968, has become a central focus of Donald Trump’s convention. In the midst of Black Lives Matter, Blue Lives Matter and All Lives Matter, dueling but not incompatible perspectives, varying in emphasis but capable of being reconciled, comes the ghost of Nixon, in the form of Trump, rallying what he hopes are majorities to shout down and shut up the voices of grievance.
Like Nixon, Trump is a modern-day incarnation of poor besotted Thomas Hobbes, railing against a world he thought a bleak and forlorn home to a multitude whose lives were nasty, brutish and short. Donald Trump, bless his soul, is standing firm against the darkness. His anger makes Trump grate again.
With his double-aerial arrival, Donald Trump reminds the media who’s in control
Donald Trump, newly minted as the Republican presidential nominee, was about to land on the shores of Lake Erie in a helicopter — and nobody knew where to look.
Journalists, penned in on a field near the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, pointed their cameras in all directions, making sure they had every possible angle.
Unlike the raucous rallies filled with fans that have propelled his candidacy, Trump’s arrival in Cleveland, advertised as closed to the public, was all about his media horde — a relationship that has been rancorous, but undeniably mutually beneficial.
The elaborately staged proceedings left no question as to who was calling the shots.
Every time a helicopter passed, heads snapped skyward. But fears that Trump would somehow sneak past were unfounded. As his private jet swooped past, the blaring soundtrack suddenly switched from the Rolling Stones to the operatic swells of Puccini’s “Nessun Dorma.”
But where to look next? From the south, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, Trump’s running mate, strolled in, flanked by family. Overhead, from the east, a Trump-branded helicopter circled and then reversed course.
With each new sight — of an aircraft, a Trump family member, the man himself — the media gaggle dutifully pivoted to capture it. They shot photos and videos. They tweeted and Periscoped. They looked up and down, turned left and right — the collective herky-jerky dance of covering the quintessential cable news candidate.
Finally, Trump emerged from the chopper, greeted Pence and strode to a grassy field, family in tow. He spoke uncharacteristically briefly. No questions, no news made.
But no matter. The double-aerial landing got wall-to-wall coverage on television, Trump reinforced his reputation for showmanship, and the news media got another chance to practice the choreography of covering Trump.
The Trump kids, making their national political debut, soften their father’s sharp edges
The four eldest children of Donald J. Trump have become the unlikely stars of the show in Cleveland.
It’s not even really what they have said or will say; it’s simply who they are.
Their father can be uncouth; they are refined. He can be a bully; they are unfailingly polite. He often rambles and digresses; they stick to their scripts.
In this, they are following the recent tradition of other candidates’ children, including Mitt Romney’s five sons, and Chelsea Clinton.
In two presidential campaigns, 2008 and 2012, the Romney brothers’ job was to humanize a father who struck some as robotic and rehearsed.
In 2008, Clinton was selling her mother as more capable and experienced than her upstart opponent, Barack Obama. Like her mom, Chelsea was a bit rigid on the trail, but she was poised. When college students asked her about Monica Lewinsky, she replied, “I do not think that is any of your business.”
(Contrast those political offspring to a star of the 2008 presidential campaign, Megan McCain, then a free-spirited 23-year-old who posted photos of herself jumping on hotel beds as she blogged about life on the trail, complete with music playlists.)
In an impressive national debut Tuesday night, 22-year-old Tiffany Trump, Donald Trump’s daughter with second wife Marla Maples, shared a couple of meager anecdotes about her father.
Multiple arrests apparently made after demonstrators burn flag outside GOP convention
Warning: Graphic images and language.
A dozen people changed into T-shirts bearing the Revolutionary Communist Party name shortly after 4 p.m. Wednesday afternoon.
The group set a flag on fire after chanting “America Was Never Great,” before Cleveland police officers moved in with a fire extinguisher.
“You’re on fire, stupid,” one police officer yelled as he moved in on the group.
To the east of the convention entrance, several protestors chanted, “What’s the problem? The whole damn system.”
Several people were seen wrestling with police, and a few were led away in zip-tie handcuffs, with at least six moved to a police transport van. Jocelyn Rosnick, executive director of the Ohio chapter of the National Lawyers Guild told the Times up to 20 arrests may have been made, though the Cleveland Police Department has not confirmed the number.
The protest was announced earlier in the week. Firefighters were on the scene and Cleveland Police Chief Calvin Williams reported that the entrance to the Republican National Convention had been shut down by police before it was later reopened. The police department reported at least two officers were assaulted.
Crowd members were split over the incident.
“It’s freedom of speech. It’s the purest form of free speech,” said Martha Conrad, an attorney from Chicago who said she would offer to represent those arrested.
“It’s disrespectful. People fought and died for that flag,” countered Jeff Jagels, 15, of Dayton.
The scene has been tense for at least an hour. Minutes before the protest, a religious group that had been spotted around Cleveland earlier in the week said it could burn a gay pride flag instead of the American flag. And a U.S. Marine carrying an American flag was swarmed by media and later escorted away by police after cameras circled him.
Dog owners get the chance to express a political preference
There have been a grand total of three arrests at RNC protests so far
A sign outside Cleveland Municipal Courtroom D says NO LO TERING. The “I” has fallen off, sadly. “Is there anyone here scheduled for a protection order hearing?” a court worker asked the young men and women waiting in the rather soviet hallway.
Nope. This morning, a group of activists sat outside Courtroom D, not loitering, but awaiting judgment.
Municipal court is maybe the closest thing protesters have to a stern church: hard benches, rules that cannot be broken and a rather stiff penalty for skipping attendance. Jails and municipal courts often form the crucial backstage to all the protests you see on Twitter and TV, the place where the system takes in arrested activists, parks them behind bars and then spits them out after a fine, or, more rarely, jail time.
Loyal supporters cheer Ted Cruz and boo as Donald Trump’s plane flies overhead
Hours before Ted Cruz was to address the Republican National Convention, the second-place finisher in the nomination contest gave no indication he would endorse GOP nominee Donald Trump.
“In an amazing campaign field of 17 talented, dynamic candidates, we beat 15 of those candidates. We just didn’t beat 16,” Cruz told hundreds of supporters gathered at a riverside restaurant on Wednesday.
Just then, Trump’s plane flew overhead as the nominee returned to Cleveland ahead of the convention’s third night. The crowd booed and Cruz laughed.
“That was pretty well-orchestrated,” he joked, before continuing. “Let me say to the men and women here, I don’t know what the future is going to hold.… What I do know is everyone has an obligation to follow our consciences, to speak the truth, and the truth is unchanging, to defend liberty.”
“There’s a lot of talk about unity,” he said. “The way to see unity is for us to unite behind shared principles.”
Cruz pointed to his campaign’s accomplishments in the 2016 campaign: winning nearly 8 million votes, 12 states and nearly 600 delegates; raising 1.8 million donations; and amassing 326,000 volunteers.
All of which could lay the groundwork for a future presidential campaign, which was clearly the hope of many of the supporters.
As Cruz was talking, a man yelled, “God’s not done with you yet!” and the crowd chanted “2020! 2020! 2020!”
Democratic National Committee head says Trump is to blame for anti-Semitism in his party
Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz blamed Donald Trump for stoking “an anti-Semitic environment” within the Republican Party.
“The anti-Semitism that is threaded throughout the Republican Party today goes right to the feet of Donald Trump, their dangerous and abhorrent nominee,” Wasserman Schultz said on a call with reporters Wednesday.
Among other incidents, Wasserman Schultz pointed to Trump’s tweet of an illustration of Clinton next to a six-pointed star with the words “most corrupt candidate ever!” over a background of $100 bills. The image had first appeared on a white supremacist message board. Wasserman Schultz also referenced Trump’s initial reluctance to disavow an endorsement from David Duke, the former grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan.
Trump argued in a Facebook post that the star was similar to a sheriff’s star, not the Jewish Star of David. He said a faulty earpiece was the reason he didn’t immediately disavow Duke.
First by plane, then by helicopter, Trump arrives in Cleveland
Trump flies back into Cleveland for a campaign rally
Donald Trump ultimately landed at his Cleveland rally on a similarly styled Trump helicopter. He was greeted by vice presidential pick Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, Pence’s wife and his own adult children. Pence will speak at the convention tonight, and Trump is scheduled to join him on stage.
Paul Ryan manages to endorse Trump without praising him in the slightest
Paul Ryan’s speech to the Republican National Convention was far and away the best thus far.
That must be because Ryan had an actual purpose – a purpose, I mean, other than to spout a few platitudes in the hope that no one would remember you had once praised Donald Trump on television. (That was manifestly the case with Sens. Tom Cotton and Roger Wicker, among others, on the convention’s first night.)
Ryan’s purpose was to recommend Trump’s candidacy without in any way praising the candidate, or, in other words, to endorse Trump in the abstract without praising the man – indeed, almost without mentioning him at all.
California GOP is optimistic norovirus outbreak among staff at convention is contained
California GOP officials said Wednesday they were optimistic a highly contagious virus that led to the quarantine of at least a dozen staff members was contained.
“We’ve had no new outbreaks for the last 24 hours, which makes me feel like all of our efforts to fight it … have worked,” executive director Cynthia Bryant told the delegation at its breakfast meeting. “So knock on wood and say a prayer.”
The staff members had come down with what was confirmed to be norovirus, which causes stomach pain, nausea, vomiting, fever and diarrhea. They could not leave their hotel rooms until they had been symptom-free for 24 hours. The affliction is generally short-lived but can be dangerous and even fatal, especially for the elderly and the young. Erie County health officials have been involved in testing for and monitoring the outbreak.
The 550-member delegation was warned of the outbreak by the state GOP early Tuesday and advised to avoid shaking hands with others, to wash hands frequently, to avoid sharing food and to not use the delegation buses if they had any symptoms.
No delegates, alternates or guests had reported any signs of the virus, Bryant said.
Ann Coulter warns California Republicans the nation could turn into California
Conservative author and TV personality Ann Coulter warned California Republicans on Wednesday that the nation could become like California if Donald Trump is not elected president in the fall.
“Trump’s slogan is make America great again. Hillary’s slogan is make America California without the nice beaches, without the good stuff,” Ann Coulter told the state’s delegates at a breakfast meeting.
“You’re always ahead of the curve,” Coulter said. “You sent us two of our greatest presidents, Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan. And now a Republican can’t get elected statewide in California. That is because of immigration. This is why Trump’s campaign is absolutely crucial.”
Coulter, who was applauded by the Californians, contended the influx of immigrants over the past four decades had given Democrats an edge, and that the Republican establishment betrayed its base of supporters on immigration and trade issues.
“We all know there are certain flaws with our candidate,” she said, laughing. “It’s not like we looked around the country and said, ‘I know who we need to run. Let’s get a reality TV star who has never held elected office.’ No. He’s the only one who will speak for Americans.”
Earlier, Omarosa Manigault, Trump’s newly named director of African American outreach, told the crowd that Trump had changed her life by casting her in the first season of “The Apprentice.”
“Donald Trump really in that first season taught America that we can work hard, that we can accomplish whatever we put our minds to, and most importantly, sometimes folks aren’t going to like you,” she said.
Speechwriter takes fall for Melania Trump’s plagiarism, says her offer to quit was refused
Social media lit up Monday night as some on Twitter pointed out that Melania Trump’s prime-time speech at the Republican National Convention sounded strikingly similar to Michelle Obama’s 2008 convention speech.
The in-house staff writer did it.
After more than two days of evasion, denials and contradictory explanations, the Trump campaign released a statement Wednesday – “to whom it may concern” – ascribing the plagiarized passages in Melanie Trump’s convention speech to a scribe working for his corporate operation.
“In working with Melania Trump on her recent first lady speech, we discussed many people who inspired her and messages she wanted to share with the American people,” said Meredith McIver, who described herself as a longtime and admirer of the Trump family. “A person she always liked is Michelle Obama.”
By McIver’s account, Melania Trump read her some passages from Obama’s speech at the 2008 Democratic convention and they inadvertently made their way into the final draft that she delivered Monday at the GOP’s gathering in Cleveland.
“This was my mistake and I feel terrible for the chaos I have caused Melania and the Trumps, as well as Mrs. Obama,” McIver said. “No harm was meant.”
She said she offered her resignation to Donald Trump, the Republican nominee, as well as his family, but it was rejected. “Mr. Trump told me that people make innocent mistakes and that we learn and grow these experiences.”
McIver’s account was one of several explanations offered by the Trump campaign and its representatives, including denial that any plagiarism had taken place. Before the controversy erupted, Melania told NBC she had written virtually the entire speech by herself.
Far from laying the matter to rest, the statement reignited the issue, which overshadowed the convention for a second straight day and sparked a new round of finger-pointing at Trump’s barebones political operation and its repeated stumbles.
Government should favor the ‘hard-working middle,’ not ‘protected’ minorities, Donald Trump Jr. says
The government needs to do more for the “hardworking men and women who built the great nation we live in,” not members of minority groups who have status as a “protected class,” Donald Trump Jr. said Wednesday.
The Republican presidential nominee’s eldest son, whose speech at the GOP convention Tuesday drew praise, also criticized his father’s detractors within the party. Some delegates who opposed Trump during Tuesday’s roll call “look like idiots,” Trump Jr. said.
“I don’t think anyone would ever accuse us of being appeasers” of the opposition, Trump said of his family. Still, he agreed that his father’s decision to pick Indiana Gov. Mike Pence as his running mate was, to some extent, an effort to placate restive conservatives within the party.
Describing a vice presidential selection process in which he and his siblings Eric and Ivanka served as chief advisors to his father, Trump said that they had chosen Pence over former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie mostly because “it made sense to have someone to counterbalance my father.”
“We don’t need two Donald Trumps up there,” he said, referring to the outsize personalities that his father, Gingrich and Christie share.
Speaking to a large crowd at a breakfast sponsored by the Wall Street Journal, the younger Trump said he has thought about following his father’s path into politics, although not until his five children are older.
“I’d love to be able to do it,” he said.
He described himself, jokingly, as a “Fifth Avenue redneck,” referring to his love of guns and the outdoors, and he made clear that he shares some of the views and blunt expressions that have distanced his father from minority voters.
Responding to a question about the rise of “identity politics” on the political left, Trump said that the “hardworking men and women who built the great nation we live in, they’re the only people who aren’t protected anymore; they’re the middle class.”
Currently, he said, the government benefits people who can show “they’re one-sixty-fourth of some protected class.”
That has to stop, he said, adding that members of the middle class “are the people we actually have to start catering to. Those are the people that are forgotten.”
“We have to take care of the problems we have, but we also can’t forget the people who built this nation. The hardworking middle, who pay taxes, the middle class.”
Donald Trump on Melania Trump plagiarism fuss: All press is good press
Here’s what’s on tap for Day 3 of the Republican National Convention
We’re halfway through the four-day GOP convention in Cleveland and after last night’s festivities, it’s official: Donald Trump is the Republican nominee for president.
Tonight, we’ll hear from Trump’s pick for his running mate, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence. Also slated to speak are several of Trump’s primary foes, including at least one who still harbors future presidential ambitions.
Here are the highlights of tonight’s schedule of speakers:
- Gov. Mike Pence, the Republican vice presidential nominee.
- Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, one of Trump’s fiercest primary rivals
- Other 2016 runners-up: Florida Sen. Marco Rubio (appearing via video) and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker
- Trump’s son Eric
- Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker who was a finalist for Trump’s VP pick
8:51 a.m.: An earlier version of this post incorrectly listed Ivana Trump as a speaker.
‘Brexit’s’ Nigel Farage says some of Donald Trump’s ideas are ‘pretty out there’
Turns out that even the leader of “Brexit” finds Donald Trump a bit too much for British political sensibilities.
Nigel Farage, the brash former leader of the United Kingdom’s Independence Party, is visiting the GOP convention in Cleveland, and marveled Wednesday at the tone of the American political debate.
“Some of Donald Trump’s comments are pretty out there,” said Farage, the chief proponent of Britain’s divisive campaign to exit the European Union.
“To say that you would ban all Muslims coming into America ... I can see what he’s trying to do; he’s trying to reach voters who feel frustrated and, perhaps, a little bit scared,” Farage said at a breakfast hosted by the McClatchy news organization in Cleveland.
“Occasionally, the style of it, it makes even me wince a little bit.”
The British politician, whose Brexit campaign is often compared to the outsider revolt underway in Republican politics this election year, said he’s not about to tell Americans how to vote.
Though it’s no surprise his politics align with Republicans, who invited him to Cleveland, Farage is no fan of President Obama.
“It’s a big mistake for foreign politicians to tell people how to vote,” he said, referring to Obama, weeks before the vote, laying out the consequences from the U.S. view if Britain voted to leave the EU.
“Obama came to the United Kingdom during the Brexit debate. … He came to our county. He was rude to us; he told us what we should do, and he led to a big Brexit bounce.”
He added, “Although I have to say, I wouldn’t vote for Hillary if you paid me.
“There is that sense of entitlement,” he said about Clinton.
Farage is a bit of a political tourist making his way through the GOP convention and U.S. politics.
And even the leader of the Brexit campaign that shocked the world had the capacity to be surprised by what he saw in Cleveland — particularly the protests outside the hall.
“It was interesting seeing some of the language displayed on those protest cards — in particular on subjects around gay marriage, etc. — which in the United Kingdom would be hate crimes,” he said.
“There were some big cultural differences.”
Donald Trump really, really wants to win California
House GOP leader Kevin McCarthy, asked on Wednesday what it’s like to meet with Donald Trump, described the GOP presidential nominee as “inquisitive.”
And there’s one question Trump asks again and again.
“Every time he meets with me, he asks me...’Can I win California?’” said McCarthy, a Republican from Bakersfield, at an event hosted by Politico’s Playbook.
McCarthy said he replies: “Well, I don’t think so. It’s pretty difficult.”
That’s an understatement. California is one of the deepest blue states in the country. It hasn’t backed a Republican for the White House since George H.W. Bush won in 1988.
The Trump team insists they’ll play well in Democratic-friendly terrain like Connecticut, Oregon and New Jersey, and that Trump will campaign in blue states.
That has made veteran GOP strategists worry the Trump campaign will pull resources from pivotal swing states like Ohio, Florida and Colorado.
But McCarthy put a positive spin on Trump’s preoccupation with California, saying it illustrates the businessman’s pluck.
“He’s probably the most confident person I ever met,” McCarthy said. “I like people who are willing to take a risk.”
McCarthy likened Trump to California’s own mold-breaking politician -- the Governator.
During his gubernatorial run, Arnold Schwarzenegger had “the biggest rallies you’ve ever seen,” McCarthy said, noting both Trump and the former California governor would play the same song at their events: Twisted Sister’s “We’re Not Gonna Take It.”
Both celebrities-turned-politicians were tapping into “the frustration that nothing was happening” for many Americans, McCarthy said.
Fittingly, McCarthy noted, Schwarzenegger -- who endorsed Ohio Gov. John Kasich during the Republican primaries -- is taking over Trump’s storied “The Apprentice” franchise on TV.
Ben Carson explains how he draws a line from Hillary Clinton to, yes, Lucifer
Retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson expounded Wednesday on a rather unusual claim he made during his GOP convention speech — that Hillary Clinton has ties to Lucifer.
Yes, the devil.
Carson, himself a former candidate who now backs GOP nominee Donald Trump, laid out an elaborate thesis during his prime-time address Tuesday that began with Clinton’s study of Saul Alinsky, a community organizer who advocated disruptive tactics to bring about change. His methods were the subject of Clinton’s college thesis.
“We all have people who are our mentors; we all have people we admire,” Carson said on CNN’s “New Day.” “As a college student at Wellesley, she was on a first-name basis with Saul Alinsky.”
In Alinsky’s book “Rules for Radicals,” he employs Lucifer as a rhetorical tool to make a provocative point.
“The first radical known to man who rebelled against the establishment and did it so effectively that he at least won his own kingdom — Lucifer,” Alinsky wrote.
The book was published in 1971, two years after Clinton wrote her thesis at Wellesley, “There’s Only the Fight: An Analysis of the Alinsky Model.”
Carson suggested Alinsky’s ideas still shape Clinton’s thinking.
“It’s very interesting how it uses controlled anarchy in order to change us from a democratic republic to a socialist society,” Carson said of Alinsky’s book.
FBI director ‘forgot his job’ in Clinton case, Christie says
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie doubled down on his criticism of the FBI’s handling of the Hillary Clinton email investigation Wednesday, after he staged his own mock trial of Clinton during prime time at the Republican convention.
Christie, a former U.S. attorney in New Jersey, again slammed FBI Director James Comey and his handling of the investigation into the former secretary of State’s use of a private email server. The FBI concluded that there was not enough evidence to recommend that prosecutors pursue charges, but Christie said Comey should have forced Atty. Gen. Loretta Lynch to make the decision on whether to prosecute.
“He should have just laid out the facts privately, quietly and made the attorney general make this call,” Christie said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”
Lynch had said she would accept the recommendation of career prosecutors in the case after it came to light that she met former President Clinton on the tarmac at the Phoenix airport in June. But Christie argued that Comey unsuccessfully tried to fill a position as a prosecutor. And in his scenario, Hillary Clinton would have faced charges.
“She should be convicted. Yeah, absolutely,” he said.
Analysis: Anger and optimism vie for dominance in the Republican Party
Donald Trump won the Republican presidential nomination by harnessing the dour mood of GOP voters put off by the nation’s political class. Now, as he turns to the general election, he faces the challenge of incorporating something he has mostly omitted to this point — an overarching, positive vision for the nation.
His best opportunity to date will come during his Thursday night convention address. Hillary Clinton will have the same opportunity — and the same demand — one week later.
For Trump and his fellow Republicans, crafting an appealing argument requires a deft touch. They must persuade even parts of the country that have benefited under President Obama that what they say would be his third term — under Clinton — would be untenable. That requires a heavy dose of negativity.
But history suggests that shifting gears toward an upbeat message is also a necessity.
Down-ballot Republicans who’d like to network in Cleveland are instead navigating the Trump effect on the GOP
Republican Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio spent this week building houses with Habitat for Humanity, motivating young campaign volunteers and kayaking with wounded veterans on the Cuyahoga River.
Sen. Marco Rubio was home in Florida, stumping for votes before investigating mold contamination in a federal courthouse in Pensacola.
And Sen. Kelly Ayotte was busy in New Hampshire fighting the scourge of opiate addiction crushing the state.
As the Republican Party gathers in Cleveland to nominate Donald Trump as their candidate for president, some key lawmakers are steering clear of the GOP convention.
Second night of RNC is suffused with anti-Clinton message
On Tuesday, the theme of the Republican National Convention in Cleveland was “Make America Work Again” but the subtext was “We Hate Hillary Clinton.”
Once again the festivities were fueled by the festering personal rage that unites so many disparate groups in reality television, and once again the evening sparkled with oratorical oddities. The president of Ultimate Fighting Championship spoke, as did a professional golfer and former “Celebrity Apprentice” contestant and yet another cast member of “The Bold and Beautiful,” as well as some of Trump’s children.
On Tuesday, however, the lineup also included several of the GOP luminaries who did not decide to skip the convention altogether.
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Day 2 of the convention in less than 3 minutes
Relive the highlights of the second night of the Republican National Convention.
Ray Whitehouse and Cleon Arrey present the evening in less than 3 minutes:
Chris Christie’s Hillary Clinton show at the RNC, the supercut
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie spoke forcefully Tuesday night about Hillary Clinton’s record. Though the night’s theme was “Make America Work Again,” Christie chose to focus on the presumptive Democratic nominee, putting her on trial for the audience.
They responded favorably, chanting, “Lock her up! Lock her up!”
Watch:
Watch: Ben Carson tries to link Hillary Clinton to Lucifer
Are we going to elect someone as president who has as their role model somebody who acknowledges Lucifer? Think about that.
— Dr. Ben Carson speaking at the Republican National Convention
Vice President Biden was tweeting Republican National Convention videos. Here’s why.
Anyone who follows the @VPLive account associated with Vice President Joe Biden’s travels might have been surprised this evening when it started tweeting videos tagged with the Republican National Convention hashtag #RNCinCLE.
Several went out. The tweets were quickly deleted, but the vice president’s account did not offer an explanation.
A Twitter spokesperson told The Times that the tweets were accidentally sent by someone in Cleveland -- a mishap due to a technical error.
Twitter had previously worked with the @VPBidenLive account during Biden’s Cancer Moonshot Summit in June, using what’s called “Twitter mirrors.” The devices are essentially iPads that allow people to take and send photos through Twitter using an official hashtag. They’ve been used during the Oscars, MLB All-Star game and political events.
The Biden account was not properly logged out today, and that’s how these @GOPConvention tweets ended up on the official vice presidential feed. It’s not because Biden was hanging out with actor Tim Daly and Rep. Joe Wilson of South Carolina, who once shouted “You lie!” at President Obama.
The Twitter spokesperson says the Biden team knows about the situation.
Mike Memoli contributed to this report.
Scenes from the floor tonight
Watch: Donald Trump Jr. hails father as ‘mentor’ and ‘best friend’
Donald Jr. gave a stirring speech Tuesday night that sparked immediate speculation about his own political future.
The younger Trump’s address was far more detailed than the traditional policy speeches his father usually delivers.
In addition, Trump Jr. spoke of “my father, my mentor, my best friend, Donald Trump” as a businessman who “hung out with guys on the construction sites, pouring concrete and hanging Sheetrock.”
Watch:
How has the labor force really been doing since the Great Recession?
The theme of the second night of the Republican National Convention is “Make America Work Again.”
In June, the U.S. economy added 287,000 jobs, the highest increase in job growth in eight months.
The unemployment rate has declined steadily since reaching a high of 10% in October 2009, becoming 4.9% in June. It increased slightly from a 4.7% unemployment rate in May.
Participation in the labor force is down overall since 2008 but has remained between 62% and 63% since 2014.
Still, Sen. Shelley Moore Capito used Tuesday night to go after presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton on the U.S. workforce.
“We know [Clinton] will double down on an economic agenda that’s led to the lowest workforce participation in decades,” she said.
Shelley Moore Capito goes after Hillary Clinton on coal
Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-West Va.) assailed Hillary Clinton during her prime time speech at the Republican National Convention on Tuesday night, alluding to the former secretary of State’s comments earlier this year about putting coal miners out of work.
Since 2001, use of coal has gradually declined, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
Still, the issue of coal is important to many voters in the country.
In May, The Times’ Michael Finnegan explored the clash between Donald Trump and Clinton over coal.
All about Kimberlin Brown, the soap star-turned-California avocado farmer who is closing Tuesday’s GOP convention
The Republican National Convention lineup has featured several television stars, and tonight soap opera actress Kimberlin Brown will close out the festivities on Day 2.
Brown, 55, hop-scotched between roles on shows including “General Hospital,” “Port Charles” and “One Life to Live.”
Best known for her role as daytime villain Sheila Carter on “The Young and the Restless,” Brown later joined “The Bold and the Beautiful.”
More recently, Brown has hosted a Design Network show called “Dramatic Designs” in which she helps homeowners with interior design projects.
The GOP convention website describes Brown as a small business owner, and she and her husband own an avocado farm in Southern California.
It doesn’t appear either of them have contributed to federal or state political campaigns in the past.
UFC’s Dana White says Trump ‘will fight for this country’
UFC President Dana White spoke in support of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump on Tuesday at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, telling the supportive crowd, “Donald Trump is a fighter and I know he will fight for this country.”
White recounted how after his close friend and former UFC Chairman Lorenzo Fertitta purchased the company in 2001 for $2 million, Trump was supportive of staging UFC fights at his property in Atlantic City.
Tuesday, the deep appreciation for that early support was noted in White’s speech, which began minutes after House Speaker Paul D. Ryan confirmed Trump as the Republican nominee.
“I’m sure most of you are wondering, ‘What are you doing here?’” White said. “I am not a politician. I am a fight promoter. But I was blown away and honored to be invited here tonight and I wanted to show up and tell you about my friend, Donald Trump — the Donald Trump that I know.”
No ‘Drill, Baby Drill’ ... yet
Trump could learn a little about politics from his son, Republicans say
Unifying a party against Clinton, not for Trump
The view from inside the hall: The first half of Tuesday evening’s program has been, to borrow a Trumpism, strangely low-energy. House Speaker Paul Ryan formally declared Trump and Pence the nominees to brief cheers from a partly empty floor. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell got booed, twice. Even a brief video appearance by Trump himself drew only moderate enthusiasm. But, to be fair, this was always going to be the least exciting program for the mostly pro-Trump delegates: a parade of congressional leaders, most of whom endorsed Trump only reluctantly.
The evening’s theme was supposed to be GOP plans to create jobs -- “Make America Work Again” -- but most speakers barely touched on it. Instead, most of them, from McConnell to Ryan, focused on criticizing Hillary Clinton.
“The Clinton years are way over; 2016 is the year America moves on,” Ryan said. McConnell drew a lusty cheer when he promised that the Senate will continue to block Obama’s attempt to fill Scalia’s seat on the Supreme Court. “That honor will go to President Donald Trump next year,” he said.
Ryan finally roused the pro-Trump crowd to its feet with as close to a full-throated endorsement of the nominee as he’s given. “Whaddya say we unify this party?” he said. “Let’s win this thing.” And Christie drew ecstatic cheers -- plus chants of “Lock Her Up!” and “Guilty!” -- when he presented what he said was “the prosecutor’s case against Hillary Rodham Clinton.”
Hillary Clinton claps back at Chris Christie on Twitter
Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s priorities: Congress, then Trump
House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy backs Donald Trump, but he hasn’t been anywhere near the forefront of the Trump movement.
A speaking role at the Republican convention was not a role he was initially expecting to have.
That might help explain why he barely mentioned Trump, now the GOP nominee, in his prime-time address.
“I have good news — in just 112 days — it’s over,” said the Republican from Bakersfield.
“We have listened and you have told us — enough.”
House Republicans have other issues on their minds, namely preserving their majority in Congress, particularly with an unpopular nominee at the top of the GOP ticket. McCarthy is a powerhouse fundraiser and political strategist working on that goal.
“Together, by electing a Republican Congress, Donald Trump and Mike Pence, we can build a better America.”
Congress. Trump. In that order.
The most enduring chorus of GOP convention so far: ‘Lock her up!’
Donald Trump’s most ardent supporters — his kids — set to address convention
Among Donald Trump’s most trusted advisers are his children.
And on Tuesday night, Donald Trump Jr. and Tiffany Trump are taking the stage at the Republican National Convention to address the nation, offering insights into the man who just became the official nominee of the Republican Party. Ivanka and Eric Trump are also set to speak at the convention later in the week.
The elder Trump frequently boasts about his children on the campaign trail — appreciation they plan to reciprocate in their convention addresses.
“These won’t be typical child-of-candidate speeches,” Donald Trump Jr., 38, told the Wall Street Journal. “We will talk about him as a father, but I don’t foresee a lot of the joking and the fluff we have grown so accustomed to from prior conventions.”
While the Republican nominee criss-crosses the country speaking to supporters, Donald Trump Jr., Eric and Ivanka run his real estate company.
Ivanka Trump, 34, who will speak at the convention on Thursday night, has, according to her father, overseen the conversion of the Old Post Office building in Washington, D.C., into a high-end hotel. It’s scheduled for completion this fall.
Tiffany Trump, 22, the Republican nominee’s youngest daughter, recently graduated from the University of Pennsylvania where she majored in sociology and urban studies.
Why is it so hard for the Trump campaign to admit that Melania cribbed Michelle Obama’s words?
We hold this truth to be self-evident, that Melania Trump borrowed thoughts and words from Michelle Obama’s 2008 convention speech Monday night.
No, wait.
It is a truth universally acknowledged that when Melania Trump uttered words that sounded exactly like Michelle Obama’s words, she didn’t do her husband any favors.
Hey, did I just plagiarize the Declaration of Independence and the opening sentence of Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice”?
Nope.
Those words are so famous, so clichéd even, that they don’t need to be attributed because everyone knows who wrote them.
But what about lifting less famous turns of phrase?
What about what happened Monday night, after a guy named Jarrett Hill, who has a YouTube channel on home design, noticed that Melania Trump’s convention speech sounded an awful lot like the one delivered by Michelle Obama in Denver in 2008?
He noted that two passages in particular used parallel language to describe parallel thoughts.
Did Melania Trump — or her speechwriters — do something wrong? Did borrowing Obama’s words cross the line? Or was it all just an embarrassing coincidence?
Speaker Paul Ryan springs the question at GOP convention: ‘What do you say ... we unite this party?’
House Speaker Paul D. Ryan found himself presiding Tuesday over a presidential convention that nominated a Republican who could not be more different from him in style and substance.
“Democracy is a series of choices,” the Wisconsin congressman said in a prime-time speech from the convention in Cleveland. “We Republicans have made ours. Have we had our arguments this year? Sure we have.”
With Donald Trump now the nominee, Ryan used his own prime-time address to to try to bring the party together, focusing largely on the risk of electing Hillary Clinton rather than the promise of Trump, whom he scarcely mentioned.
“So what do you that say we unite this party, at this crucial moment when unity is everything?”
Watch: Top congressional leaders speaking at convention have one thing in mind: Keeping Congress in GOP control
Three top congressional leaders addressed convention delegates Tuesday in prime time. They offered different messages, but all pushed a similar goal -- keeping Republicans in control of Congress.
House Speaker Paul D. Ryan and House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy have less to worry about given large GOP majorities. But Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s party is in real jeopardy of losing the chamber this fall.
Listen to how each man framed the contest as a need to shore up their ranks.
And consider the message Sen. Roger Wicker, who leads the Republican Senate campaign arm, telegraphed yesterday at the convention:
“When Donald Trump is elected president he will determine the future of the Supreme Court and he will lead our troops as commander in chief.... He and Vice President Mike Pence will need a Republican Senate to get that job done.”
Sen. Roger Wicker, who leads the National Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee, talks about how Donald Trump would work with Congress.
It’s official: Trump will appear all four nights
Donald Trump appeared briefly on screen to address convention delegates tonight, marking the second evening in a row he’s been a presence at the party.
He told the crowd he’ll join his vice presidential nominee Mike Pence Wednesday night, and of course he’ll formally give an acceptance speech Thursday night.
That means convention-goers will get four nights of Trump in a row.
Trump sends message to GOP convention: ‘We have to go all the way’
Donald Trump just can’t stay away from his convention.
From New York, he sent a video message Tuesday shortly after delegates delivered him the GOP nomination.
“Today has been a very, very special day, watching my children put me over the top,” he said.
“Getting the party’s nomination, I’ll never forget it. It’s something I will never, ever forget.”
But the convention in Cleveland is just the start, he said. “This is a movement, but we have to go all the way.”
“Most importantly we’re going to make America great again.”
Senate GOP Leader McConnell warms to Trump, hits Hillary Clinton’s ‘tortured relationship with the truth’
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is known as a skilled tactician, if a cautious politician.
But on Tuesday, the Kentucky Republican showed the punch he packs behind the Southern pleasantries and penchant for home-state bourbon.
“Ladies and gentlemen, I’ve been around a while.
And I’ve been around the Clintons more than anybody should ever have to,” McConnell opened.
“A couple years ago, Bill and Hillary camped out in my state telling anybody who’d listen why they ought to vote against me,” he said. “Tonight I’m here to return the favor.”
McConnell has long wanted the position he now holds as the Senate majority leader, and he once famously said his goal was to make President Obama a one-term president.
“I’ve had my differences with Barack Obama, but l will give him this: At least he was upfront about his plans to move America to the left,” he said. “Not Hillary.”
Clinton, he said, has a “tortured relationship with the truth.”
He said: “I am here to tell you Hillary Clinton will say anything, do anything and be anything to get elected president. And we cannot allow it.”
McConnell was initially slow to warm to Donald Trump, but once it was clear Trump would become the nominee he cautiously embraced him.
“With Donald Trump in the White House, Senate Republicans will build on the work we’ve done,” he said.
Not McConnell’s first choice for the GOP nominee, but the one he’s ready to negotiate with.
As NRA’s Chris Cox speaks, some context for U.S. deaths by firearm assault
Chris Cox of the NRA went after Hillary Clinton as someone who would not protect the 2nd Amendment if she is elected president.
He kept his remarks brief, focusing more on the type of Supreme Court justice Clinton would appoint than specific claims about gun violence.
Here’s some context for the topic. Violent gun deaths in the United States have hovered between 10,000 to 13,000 over the last 15 years.
Here’s the shortlist of 11 conservative judges Trump said he could nominate to the Supreme Court
In his speech before the convention Tuesday night, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell spoke of the importance of Republicans winning the White House in November, particularly as it relates to Supreme Court nominees.
“Let us put justices on the Supreme Court who cherish our Constitution,” McConnell said.
In May, Donald Trump released a list of 11 judges he might pick as Supreme Court nominees.
They are:
- Steven Colloton: An Iowa judge appointed by President George W. Bush in 2003. He previously worked as U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Iowa and was a clerk for former Chief Justice William Rehnquist.
- Allison Eid: A Colorado Supreme Court justice since 2006 and former solicitor general for the state of Colorado who clerked for Justice Clarence Thomas.
- Raymond Gruender: Appointed in 2004 to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit in Missouri by President George W. Bush. A former federal prosecutor in Missouri.
- Thomas Hardiman: A federal judge on the 3rd Circuit of Pennsylvania who was appointed by Bush in 2003. Hardiman, the first in his family to attend college, graduated from Notre Dame University.
- Raymond Kethledge: A Michigan federal appellate judge for the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals. Appointed by Bush before his departure from office in 2008. Kethledge was previously in private practice and worked as a corporate attorney.
- Joan Larsen: Sits on the Michigan Supreme Court and was a professor at the University of Michigan School of Law. She clerked for Justice Antonin Scalia, whose death has left a vacancy on the Supreme Court.
- Thomas Lee: A justice on the Utah Supreme Court since 2010 and a former faculty member at Brigham Young University Law School. Son of former Reagan-era Solicitor Gen. Rex Lee and brother of Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah).
- William Pryor: A Bush appointee to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit in Alabama. Took Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions’ place as state attorney general when he entered the Senate.
David Stras: A justice on the Minnesota Supreme Court since 2010. Previously worked as a legal scholar at the University of Minnesota Law School and clerked for Justice Clarence Thomas.
Diane Sykes: A federal appellate judge for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th District, appointed by George W. Bush in 2004. A former Wisconsin Supreme Court justice.
Don Willett: A justice on the Texas Supreme Court since 2005 who was appointed by Gov. Rick Perry. Willett has publicly mocked Trump on Twitter in recent months.
Former U.S. Atty. Gen. Michael Mukasey has called for charges against Hillary Clinton
Former U.S. attorney general and Republican National Convention speaker Michael Mukasey has not been shy about criticizing Hillary Clinton.
Last year, George W. Bush’s former top lawyer said that if Hillary Clinton was convicted of destroying government records by erasing emails from her private server, she couldn’t legally run for president.
He eventually walked those comments back.
But this year he wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal saying criminal charges against her were justified.
House Speaker Paul Ryan announces tally for Trump
House Speaker Paul D. Ryan announces the tally:
1,725 Trump
475 Cruz
120 Kasich
114 Rubio
7 Carson
3 Bush
2 Paul
The chair announces that Donald J. Trump, having received a majority of these votes entitled to be cast at the convention, has been selected as the Republican Party nominee for president of the United States.
— House Speaker Paul D. Ryan as convention chair
Mood uneven in convention hall as the GOP nominates Trump
The mood was celebratory, but also subdued and uneven, around the Republican National Convention as Donald Trump became the party’s official nominee Tuesday evening, a reflection of how divisive this year’s primary contest became.
Keiko Orall of Massachusetts, an incoming member of the Republican National Committee, described the feeling as “hopeful.”
“People are really excited to do something different,” she said.
Orall said full acceptance of Trump by the GOP establishment was “going to take some time,” but predicted the party would be united in November because of the prospect of a Hillary Clinton presidency.
“There’s a binary choice,” she said. “And there’s a long game in the Supreme Court.”
New Yorkers were jubilant as their vote pushed their native son over the 1,237 delegates needed to claim the nomination.
“Congratulations, Dad — we love you!” Donald Trump Jr. shouted as the band began playing “New York, New York.”
Among some delegations, the mood was sour. When Ohio cast its 66 votes for its governor, John Kasich, some near the delegation booed and flashed their thumbs down. Many of its delegates left once Trump was named the nominee.
Utah’s state rules dictate that it can only vote for a candidate who is put into contention, yet tried to cast its 40 votes for Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas. Delegates said they were informed only just before the vote that they could not cast their votes for Cruz, even though he won the state’s caucus decisively.
Chris Herrod, a mortgage officer from Provo, said it felt like a ham-fisted push for party unity. Utahans have been slow to come around to Trump.
“We’re trying to get behind Trump. We obviously don’t want Hillary,” Herrod said. But, he added: “It’s a lot harder when there’s a spear at our back.”
He said several delegates had told him they wouldn’t have spent the money to travel to the convention if they had known they would not be able to vote for Cruz.
“I’m not a ‘Never Trump’ person,” he said. “I just believe in the process.”
The Alaska delegation was displeased when party rules dictated that all their votes be given to Trump, and demanded a poll of its vote. Party leaders halted the dispute by saying Alaska was among the states that didn’t allow votes to be cast for candidates who have dropped out of the race.
Others appeared to have put their differences aside. As Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick announced his delegation’s votes, he called primary winner Cruz “our dear friend” and “our favorite son” as he announced he had won 104 votes, compared with 48 for Trump, whom Patrick described as “our new friend” and “our latest adopted favorite son.”
The California delegation — a 100% pro-Trump delegation since the state primary took place after the contest was decided — was seated in the front row and among the most enthusiastic in the room.
“We are rock-solid for Trump,” said Shirley Husar, a delegate from Pasadena who announced California’s vote.
Dana White said he wasn’t ‘a political guy.’ Now he is speaking at the RNC
UFC President Dana White may seem like an unconventional choice to speak at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland: Just last December he told Yahoo Sports, “I’m not a political guy, at all, not a little bit.”
So what is he doing here? He told TMZ this week the speech “will be about my relationship with Trump and the Trump that I know.”
That makes sense given that the night’s theme is about the economy and that White has spoken about Trump’s early support of the ultimate fighting league in the past.
“Donald Trump was the first one to have us come out at the Trump Taj Mahal,” he told TMZ. “Not only did we host the events there, but he actually showed up and supported the events. You’ll never hear me say a negative thing about Donald Trump.”
Get your groove on to the music of the Republican National Convention
Mike Pence nominated for GOP vice president
Some know Mike Pence as congressman. Others know him as governor. But back home, most call him Mike.
— Indiana Lt. Gov. Eric Holcomb on Gov. Mike Pence as vice presidential nominee
Trump tweets on becoming GOP presidential nominee
Alaska contests the way its votes were counted at RNC and roll call vote pauses
After a brief dust-up over the roll call votes of Alaska, Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus took the stage to explain the procedure.
Initially, all of Alaska’s delegates went to Donald Trump.
However, Alaska state rules have a provision that notes that when a presidential candidate drops out, those delegates remain with that candidate. Alaska’s vote would have been 12 Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, 11 Trump and five for Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida.
The discrepancy was eventually alleviated with all delegates going to Trump.
Donald Trump Jr. announced the votes to send his dad over the top
I have the incredible honor of not only being a part of the ride that’s been this election process and to watch, as a small fly on the wall, what my father has done in creating this movement – because it’s not a campaign anymore, it’s a movement -- speaking to real Americans, giving them a voice again. It’s my honor to be able to throw Donald Trump over the top in the delegate count tonight.... Congratulations, Dad, we love you.
— Donald J. Trump Jr. at GOP convention
Rowdy protest outside RNC ends peacefully after police threaten arrests
For the first time this week, police threatened a group of demonstrators with arrest, after a rowdy crowd, some wearing masks, sprinted through the streets of downtown Cleveland in a cat-and-mouse game with officers on bicycles.
The protest, Tuesday afternoon, which seemed to have splintered from a larger march that started at Public Square earlier in the day, ended shortly before 8 p.m. when officers declared an unlawful assembly just outside the city’s convention center.
Police Chief Calvin Williams skipped the police department’s nightly news briefing to help break up the rally, conversing with protesters, even bantering with a man wearing a bandana who insisted the police had violated the Constitution by asking the demonstrators to go home.
“We’re free to go wherever we want!” the man yelled at Williams.
“You’re free to go that way,” the police chief replied, pointing away from the convention center.
No one was arrested, though protesters defied police barricades and directions several times, at one point sprinting through a parking garage to evade officers on bicycles.
The demonstration marked the end to a more chaotic, but still largely non-violent, second day of protests at the convention.
A minor melee broke out in Public Square around 4 p.m., when a shoving match erupted near where Alex Jones, the far-right political commentator and founder of InfoWars.com, was chanting through a bullhorn.
Williams was bumped into during the fracas, but no one was arrested.
In the hour that followed, a number of different groups, including the Westboro Baptist Church and the Revolutionary Communist Party, held dueling demonstrations in the area, but police on bicycles kept opposing groups away from one another.
Amid Make America Work Again refrain, a look at U.S. job growth under the last five presidents
Donald Trump often boasts that he would be the “greatest jobs” president ever elected -- an idea that’s been echoed throughout the Republican National Convention.
The past 35 years has seen swings in job growth. Republican presidents, starting with Ronald Reagan, saw multiple periods of job losses. But the largest single-month gain also appeared during Reagan’s term, with more than a thousand jobs added in September of 1983.
The largest decline started during Great Recession in the final years of George W. Bush and carried into the first term of President Barack Obama.
Bill Clinton was the only president to have near-perfect period of growth with only minor losses.
UFC president, California pro golfer to speak tonight
Despite a mix-up that forced former NFL star Tim Tebow to announce that he was not, as rumored, going to be speaking at the convention, Trump has rounded up a couple of figures from the sports world to speak Tuesday.
Dana White, president of the wildly popular Ultimate Fighting Championship franchise, will deliver remarks after the roll call votes concludes. White is also an MMA talent scout and reality television star on his UFC Fight Pass/YouTube show, “Looking for a Fight.”
White, based in Las Vegas, has previously contributed money to Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, Rep. Joe Heck (R-Nev.) and Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign.
Also speaking Tuesday is Natalie Gulbis, a professional golfer from Sacramento, Calif. Gulbis, 33, appeared with Trump on the eighth season of “Celebrity Apprentice.”
She recently penned an article in Golf Magazine supporting “The Donald Trump I Know.”
“I realize he has made his share of controversial remarks, but in my experience, I have found him to be gracious, generous and inspiring,” she wrote. “Because of that, I have always found political rhetoric about Trump’s misogynistic ‘war on women’ to be inconsistent with the Trump I know.”
Other sports stars previously rumored to be speaking at the convention included Mike Tyson, Mike Ditka and NASCAR chief Brian France.
At California fundraisers, Tim Kaine predicts only that Clinton will choose the running mate she thinks is best
By Friday, Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine might well be on a Florida stage with Hillary Clinton as her newly announced running mate.
But for now, he is across the country in California, raising money for his own political action committee. This long-scheduled trip has only attracted greater interest given his status as one of the top potential choices to complete the Democratic ticket as Clinton’s pick for vice president.
“The attention has generated more than you might expect for a Virginia senator in California,” said one donor who co-hosted a fundraiser for Kaine, granted anonymity to freely discuss the closed-door event.
At one event Monday in West Hollywood, Kaine, a former governor and Democratic National Committee chairman, was questioned repeatedly by donors about his future.
According to multiple people familiar with the discussion, Kaine did not tip his hand about his status in Clinton’s deliberations. But he described the chance to serve as the No. 2 for the first female president as a unique and historic opportunity.
“He was being extremely respectful and diplomatic for the other three or four people” also being considered by Clinton, one donor said. Kaine said he was confident that Clinton would choose who she feels is best for the position, he added.
“He discussed it as something of importance to all of us, to him as a senator, to him as a citizen regardless of whether he’s on the ticket,” said another attendee.
In his remarks, Kaine offered a comprehensive overview of domestic and international events, including heightened tensions in the U.S. after a series of racially fraught shootings, Britain’s vote to leave the European Union and the attempted coup in Turkey.
And he spoke of his interest in finding consensus — his fundraising committee is called the Common Ground PAC — and argued that Donald Trump has demonstrated he is not the bridge-builder that Clinton has promised to be.
Kaine had four events Los Angeles and San Francisco this week. He was scheduled to speak Wednesday at an event in Northern Virginia hosted by the local Chamber of Commerce.
Clinton is to campaign Friday in Tampa, Fla., one day after the end of the Republican National Convention.
Donald Trump wins the Republican nomination for president, capping an extraordinary run
Donald J. Trump, the New York real estate tycoon and reality TV star, captured the Republican presidential nomination Tuesday night, ushering him into an uphill fall campaign against the presumptive Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton.
Trump’s victory on the first roll call ballot at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland completed his conquest of the GOP and capped what seemed an impossibly long shot when he launched his campaign a little over a year ago from his headquarters in a Manhattan high-rise.
Trump topped a field of 17 candidates, including many with far longer political resumes and considerably more polish, and weathered innumerable controversies to win the nomination on his first run for elected office. As recently as 2011, Trump was not even a registered Republican.
New York passes its turn in roll call vote -- for a reason
Former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski casts New Hampshire’s votes
Fact check at the Republican convention: Carson City, not Las Vegas, is the capital of Nevada
Pasadena Republican gets moment on convention floor
Republican Shirley Husar of Pasadena had the honor of announcing that California’s delegates were all unanimously bound to Donald Trump.
“The floor seating is cool! I got a great seat!” she told Capital Public Radio about her proximity to Trump at the convention. “I’m sweating bullets -- aahhhh! I feel good about that!”
Husar is well known in California Republican circles and is a columnist for the Washington Times.
She was also on the Lifetime reality television program “Living With the Enemy,” where she spent time interacting with proponents of same-sex marriage and told them about the benefits of traditional marriage, she wrote in a blog post.
Why are Rubio and Cruz still getting votes?
Here’s a refresher on the primary election results.
Name that tune: The 1960s anthem quoted to nominate Trump
In seconding the nomination of Donald Trump for president, Lt. Gov. Henry McMaster of South Carolina reached back to the 1960s for inspiration.
“There’s something happening here. What it is is precisely clear. We are going to make America great again!” McMaster said, paraphrasing lines from the 1967 Buffalo Springfield song “For What It’s Worth.”
Written by Stephen Stills, the song was inspired by the Sunset Strip riots of 1966. It would become an antiwar anthem for the era with lyrics including, “What a field day for the heat / A thousand people in the street / Singing songs and carrying signs.”
Neil Young, a former member of Buffalo Springfield, made it clear to Trump last year that he didn’t want the candidate using his music on the campaign trail.
The reaction on social media was almost immediate.
John Kasich says he’s ‘never been more satisfied’ with his career
Ohio Gov. John Kasich won only one primary victory — his home state’s — during his presidential run, but he told his supporters that he was never in it just “to win an election.”
“We hear a lot about negative and division and polarization,” he said at an event at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum. “Let me tell you. I’ve never been more satisfied professionally.”
The governor is conspicuously absent from the Republican National Convention this week, even though it’s in his state. But he’s virtually holding his own shadow convention, going to various delegate breakfasts and other events just outside the RNC site.
Kasich didn’t mention Trump at the afternoon event. He instead focused on party unity and the importance of making every American feel as though he or she matters.
“We left the race abruptly,” Kasich said. “And the reason why we did is that I became convinced, that in one way or another, to go forward I would have to tell people things that I didn’t think were true.”
Kasich was the last Republican candidate to exit the race, leaving Trump with a clear path to the nomination.
The speakers at the Republican National Convention are mostly white men by a huge margin
Of the scheduled speakers, only a third are women. This graphic doesn’t include Donald Trump or his running mate, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence.
And most are politicians.
On Sunday, the Republican National Convention referred to the speakers as an “unconventional lineup” of “veterans, political outsiders, faith leaders and presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump’s family members.”
Trump’s name is formally put forward for nomination at GOP convention
It is my distinct honor and great pleasure to nominate Donald J. Trump for the office of president of the United States of America.
— Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions
Meet California’s Harmeet Dhillon, who led the RNC invocation with a Sikh prayer
Harmeet Dhillon, the vice chair of the California Republican Party, delivered the convention invocation to kick off the second day, offering a Sikh prayer in Punjabi and English. Before the prayer, Dhillon remarked that the Sikh religion is the fifth-largest in the world.
“Forgive us our shortcomings, our oversights and the times we may fall short,” said Dhillon, who was born in India and immigrated with her parents first to Wales and then to the U.S.
Dillon overcame some overt racism to rise to her position in the state party, including fliers labeling her a “Taj Mahal princess” and rumors that she’d perform a goat sacrifice if elected to her post.
“As she’s proven, she’s a rising star in the party and she’s also a sharp cookie and highly able,” said Charles Munger Jr., a major GOP donor. “She got there in spite of being a woman, in spite of being Sikh. She’s the first woman vice chair in party history. There was no royal road paved for her.”
Donald Trump’s name put forward by Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions, the first GOP senator to back him
Donald Trump’s name was formally put up for nomination as Republican presidential candidate by the first GOP senator to back him, Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama.
“Americans love our country like no other people on Earth, but we have gotten off course, and the American people know it,” said Sessions from the convention stage in Cleveland.
“One man, Donald Trump, was not intimidated. He would not be silenced. He spoke the truth. He gave voice to the people’s concerns,” Sessions said.
“Donald Trump is the singular leader who can get this country back on track.”
First elected to the Senate in 1996, after a career as a federal prosecutor in Alabama, Sessions, like Trump, remains a bit of an outsider in his own party.
In Trump, Sessions found a kindred colleague on many issues, but almost none ties the two more tightly than immigration.
Sessions shares Trump’s nativist streak, arguing that immigrant arrivals depress the economic opportunities for native-born Americans. He proposed a border wall long before Trump made it a campaign punchline and helped squash legislation for a pathway to citizenship for those here illegally.
The nomination was seconded by Rep. Chris Collins of New York, the first Republican in the House to support Trump.
The two are among smaller circle of Trump supporters in Congress who are not among the GOP’s top leaders.
Did Melania Trump’s speech lift a phrase from a Rick Astley song?
Another accusation has emerged that has nothing to do with the alleged plagiarism of Michelle Obama’s ’08 speech and everything to do with British pop star Rick Astley’s song “Never Gonna Give You Up,” writes The Times’ Randall Roberts.
Specifically, one passage from Trump’s inspiring address bears a striking resemblance to Astley’s song, which had led to accusations that the Trump campaign may be “Rickrolling” the electorate.
We explain the allegations and (briefly) what “Rickrolling” is.
It’s a Trumporium, with a little Hillary and Bernie thrown in, on the streets of downtown Cleveland
Hillary Clinton mocks ‘sound and fury’ of Republican convention in Las Vegas speech
Hillary Clinton described the first day of the Republican National Convention as “surreal,” comparing Donald Trump’s dramatic entrance to “The Wizard of Oz.”
“Lots of sound and fury. Even a fog machine,” she said in a speech to union members in Las Vegas. “But when you pulled back the curtain, there was just Donald Trump, with nothing to offer the American people.”
Clinton did not mention the plagiarism controversy over Melania Trump’s speech at the convention, but she harshly criticized the presumptive Republican nominee’s business track record.
“Donald Trump’s business model is basically fraud and abuse,” she said, pointing to contractors who didn’t get paid by Trump’s company after they finished their work.
“Putting Donald Trump in charge of our economy would be devastating.”
Ohio Gov. John Kasich is everywhere (except the convention), condemning Donald Trump (but not naming him)
You see him here. You see him there. You just don’t see Ohio Gov. John Kasich inside the GOP convention hall.
The Republican governor and former primary opponent of Donald Trump has famously taken a pass on appearing at his home state’s convention, drawing criticism from Trump’s campaign chairman.
But that doesn’t mean Kasich isn’t around. He’s everywhere, speaking to state delegations at hotels, the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce and at a forum at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. The governor of Ohio is holding a virtual shadow convention, just outside the thick security perimeter of downtown Cleveland.
He was literally a few blocks from the convention floor Tuesday afternoon, at a Republican think tank praising globalism, delivering a speech that defended free trade, immigration expansion, cooperation with European allies, supporting emerging Democracies around the world.
He did not mention Trump by name. But the speech was a complete repudiation of the man who was set to become the party’s nominee just a few hours later.
He described a world very much like the one Trump has often described, with stronger barriers between nations and less U.S. intervention and international trade.
“What does that stew look like?” Kasich asked derisively. “I’m very worried about it.
“We think NATO doesn’t matter?” he said at another point, as if holding an imaginary debate with Trump.
He made an oblique reference to the convention when he asked hypothetically if anyone in the room supported the recent vote by Britons to leave the European Union. He did not expect to find any takers, given that the think tank, the International Republican Institute, holds global ties as a core principle.
He poked fun at someone he thought was raising his hand.
“You’re happy with ‘Brexit’? You sure you’re at IRI and not the other one?” he asked.
After delivering his speech, Kasich was quickly ushered out of the room, with handlers warning reporters to stay away and refrain from asking questions, which Kasich would not answer.
California billionaire will counter Trump’s message with new ad that uses his own words on women against him
While Donald Trump is basking in his moment onstage this week, California voters will see less flattering portrayals of the New York billionaire, courtesy of a California billionaire.
Tom Steyer, who founded climate-focused political action committee NextGen California and already has spent millions on behalf of Democrats, launched a new ad Monday that will run all week during the Republican National Convention, including during Trump’s acceptance speech.
The 30-second spot turns Trump’s sound bites on women against him. Trump’s disembodied voice proclaims, “She’s a slob,” and states there “has to be some form of punishment” for getting an illegal abortion as faces of young women stare blankly at the camera.
“That’s not America. That’s not California,” says Steyer, appearing as he does in the other ads at the end.
It will run on broadcast TV and cable statewide this week during the convention.
Steyer, who spent $74 million in 2014 alone, has been dubbed the Democrats’ answer to the Koch brothers and is considering a run for California governor in 2018.
The ad is part of a $25-million nationwide voter registration and outreach effort Steyer announced earlier this year. He’s spending $1.7 million of that on ads in California, including one that called out Trump and former GOP candidate Texas Sen. Ted Cruz for their statements on climate change, and another that highlighted Trump’s remarks about Latinos.
Tensions remain high, but police are keeping a lid on minor skirmishes outside RNC
You can’t go five feet in downtown Cleveland today without overhearing arguments about “Adolf Trump” and “Killary Clinton.”
A dozen religious activists in fatigues continue to appear in public spaces to hurl anti-LGBT slurs at anyone in shouting distance, and controversial Sheriff Joe Arpaio strolled down a media gallery outside the Quicken Loans Arena Tuesday morning, earning himself a healthy amount of jeers.
On Tuesday afternoon, conservative radio host Alex Jones was leading a “Hillary For Prison” chant in Public Square when pushing and shoving broke out. A witness said someone threw a punch at Jones, who was escorted away by police. Police quickly broke up the skirmish, and a spokesperson for the department said no arrests were made.
But while tensions have been high during an endless string of pop-up debates and protests in the area surrounding the Republican National Convention, police have continued to keep the rhetoric and profanity from exploding into pugilism.
Swarms of Cleveland police officers on bicycles, coupled with cops from more than a dozen other states, have continually broken up minor skirmishes Tuesday, as demonstrations continue to be more docile than expected.
Only five people had been arrested this week in connection with the convention as of Tuesday morning, including three people who tried to hang an anti-Trump banner on flagpoles outside the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame around 8 a.m., police said.
The most chaotic display of the day came when a group that harassed anti-Trump protesters Monday made their presence known in the Public Square. Dozens of people began arguing with them, but police moved in quickly to separate the crowds. Police Chief Calvin Williams was on hand, but dismissed any notion that officers were paying extra attention to fringe groups.
Despite the relative peace, tempers could flare later in the day with the controversial Westboro Baptist Church set to speak in Public Square at 5 p.m. A flag burning has also been announced for Wednesday afternoon.
Local activists have attributed the calm to an overwhelming police presence downtown. Cops have outnumbered activists at most events nearly 3-to-1, according to Jocelyn Rosnick, executive director of the Ohio chapter of the National Lawyers Guild.
“They are displaying shows of force in what they are wearing, what they are using, but what we’ve seen so far has been constitutional policing and that is a good thing,” she said.
The effect of the swarming police presence was especially visible on Euclid Avenue, downtown’s main thoroughfare, where a woman shouting about mistreatment of black people at a lunch table instantly drew a throng of media around 3 p.m. Tuesday.
Her speech escalated into an argument between pro and anti-Trump forces within minutes, and a Cleveland police captain was forced to step between a man and a pro-Trump biker who had begun puffing their chests and threatening to punch one another.
“Enjoy your stay in the city of Cleveland,” the cop said as he separated the two, rolling his eyes in exhaustion.
State loyalty trumps all, as Ohio senator stands by Ohio governor
Buckeyes stick together.
Ohio Sen. Rob Portman weighed in Tuesday on the trash talk that Donald Trump’s campaign has directed against Gov. John Kasich, who has conspicuously absented himself from the Republican National Convention in Cleveland.
“Big mistake,” said Paul Manafort, the chairman of Trump’s campaign. “Hurting his state.”
Portman, a Republican freshman senator facing a tough reelection fight in November, was asked whether the Trumpian “rampage” would spill over and cause collateral damage to his own campaign.
“I don’t think he should keep up any kind of rampage,” Portman said. “The fact is, John is a very popular elected official in Ohio — the most popular statewide elected official. He’s been a great governor and we need to pull together.”
Portman, like Kasich, has not appeared in the sports arena hosting the four-day convention, though he’s being seen in and around town. His agenda includes work at a Habitat for Humanity site and kayaking with veterans on the Cuyahoga River.
But Portman has so far been spared the wrath of the Trump camp, perhaps because, unlike Kasich, he did not run against the Manhattan business for the GOP nomination and continue campaigning long after it was clear he would fall well short.
Meeting with Ohio reporters, Portman also offered his take on Melania Trump’s Monday night speech and revelations that a portion was cribbed from Michelle Obama’s 2008 convention address.
“Our reaction was, frankly, very, very positive,” he said of he and his wife, Jane, who tuned in to watch the speech together.
Portman then turned coy, per the Cleveland Plain Dealer, when the subject of plagiarism came up.
“Michelle Obama gave a great speech, too,” he quipped.
Chris Christie on being passed over for the role as Donald Trump’s No. 2: ‘I’m over it’
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie insists that he has no hard feelings after Donald Trump last week decided not to select him as his running mate.
In an interview with CNN on Tuesday, hours ahead of his prime-time convention speech, Christie said although he was initially disappointed that Indiana Gov. Mike Pence got the job over him, he’s moved on and is ready to work in any capacity to help elect Trump.
“It’s not, like, my lifetime dream was to be vice president of the United States, and so I’m disappointed, no doubt I was disappointed, but I’m over it,” Christie said.
He added, “I don’t like when people … say, ‘Oh, no, no, I didn’t care in the least.’ Come on. No one believes that. I’m a competitive person.”
Christie, who ended his presidential bid in February and endorsed Trump, has campaigned in recent weeks alongside the billionaire businessman in a handful of battleground states.
Hillary Clinton spokeswoman drops public hint about VP announcement Friday
Hillary Clinton seems likely to announce her choice for vice president on Friday while she’s campaigning in Florida.
That on-the-record hint, which came after days of backstage rumors, came Tuesday while CNN’s Wolf Blitzer was interviewing Karen Finney, a spokeswoman for the Clinton campaign.
Blitzer asked whether the announcement could come on Friday.
“I expect that’s about right,” Finney said.
Clinton is scheduled to campaign in Orlando and Tampa on Friday, and then in South Florida on Saturday.
Finney later downplayed her answer.
“To be clear, there is no announcement set yet,” she tweeted.
Finney added, “I’m not spoiling the surprise!”
Fresh from yesterday’s floor mutiny, Never Trump forces look to disrupt formal nomination
Donald Trump will be formally nominated as the GOP presidential candidate Tuesday night, which means the anti-Trump contingent has one more chance to kick sand in his face.
The insurgent delegates — who have been thwarted in their effort to block Trump from the ticket — are looking to mount one more display of defiance during tonight’s roll call of states.
“Delegates will vote their conscience, whatever that looks like,” wrote Kendal Unruh, a Colorado delegate and public face of the insurrection, in a text message to The Times. “The right to conscience is God given, and isn’t granted or robbed by the [Republican National Committee], even though they just attempted to craft a golden calf.”
Unruh and her allies sought to insert a conscience clause in the convention rules that would have allowed delegates to vote for whomever they want, instead of voting according to the results of their state’s primary or caucus.
That effort was decisively stamped out last week. A tightly aligned Trump camp and Republican Party fiercely lobbied against the effort, and instead inserted language explicitly binding delegates to the primary results for at least one round of balloting.
That leaves Trump’s nomination virtually assured; he has a total of 1,543 delegates, around 300 more than he’ll need to lock up a majority of the convention.
Still, vocal dissent during the state roll call could create an awkward spectacle for Republicans, who already had to contend with a rowdy display from anti-Trump delegates on the floor Monday.
One anti-Trump group, Delegates Unbound, sent supporters a list of guidelines for tonight’s vote, which will start around 2:30 p.m. Pacific time. The complicated parliamentary procedures include challenging the vote totals announced by each state delegation’s chair.
“As has been our goal all along, we want delegates to simply follow their conscience on the floor tonight,” said M. Dane Waters, co-founder of the group.
Expect the RNC and the Trump campaign to be well prepared for any floor shenanigans. One key figure to look for will be House Speaker Paul D. Ryan, who will preside over the roll call and have significant control over how the proceedings shake out.
Where are the Republicans at the Republican National Convention?
There are no Ronald Reagans in Cleveland this week, no Jack Kemps. There are few neoconservatives, eager to promote the spread of democracy, and even fewer serious players in the Republican foreign and defense policy establishment. Nor, most surprising, are there many members of the #NeverTrump movement, those Republicans, like John Kasich and Jeb Bush, who are not only appalled by Trump’s ignorance and bigotry but willing to oppose him because of it. Instead, the convention has become a battle between two, much more narrowly defined elements: on the one hand, the coalition of actual Trump supporters and their enablers at the Republican National Committee, and, on the other hand, Ted Cruz supporters trying less to block Trump than to reconfigure the nomination process to secure the brass ring for the Texas senator four years from now.
This is why people like Bob Dole have given their support to Trump: The Donald may be awful, scary, stupid, etc., but at least he’s not Ted Cruz. Or, for others, Trump is incompetent and unhinged, but at least he’s not Hillary Clinton. This is not 1964 or 1976, when the Republican nominating conventions provided a framework for ideological confrontation – what does our party stand for? what policies make most sense for America? The convention unfolding in the Quicken Loans Arena is at least in part about who is least loathsome. Do we despise Trump more than we despise Cruz? Do we hate Trump more than we hate Hillary? Do we hate hate more than we hate Democrats?
Mickey Edwards is a former congressman from Oklahoma and member of the House Republican leadership.
Mark your calendars: Hillary Clinton’s campaign points to Friday for vice presidential announcement
In an interview today with CNN, a spokeswoman said to expect an announcement on Friday, when Hillary Clinton is scheduled to be campaigning in Florida.
What to look for in Donald Trump’s second convention night
The Trump campaign is trying to move past several new controversies — including allegations of plagiarism against Melania Trump — as it highlights a second night of convention speakers that will feature House Speaker Paul D. Ryan.
The evening is dubbed “Make America Work Again.”
Here’s what to look for:
Ryan aides have said he will call for unity. But how much will he talk about Trump, with whom he’s had several policy and rhetorical disagreements? The 2012 vice presidential nominee is regarded as the party’s policy leader, and his voice carries particular weight with establishment Republicans.
Other leaders, including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy will speak. McConnell is not known for charismatic stemwinders, but is one of the party’s most successful strategists. McCarthy has kept a lower profile, avoiding ideological clashes that have engulfed the party in recent years.
Two Trump children: Donald Trump Jr. and the seldom seen 23-year-old Tiffany Trump. The Trump children are regarded as a key campaign asset, but Monday night’s firestorm over Melania Trump’s speech shows that even family members are not immune to controversy.
Former primary contenders, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, are both slated for prime time. Christie was disappointed to be passed over as Trump’s running mate. This will be his highest profile appearance since then.
The group of prime-time speakers is eclectic and unorthodox, including the general manager of Trump Winery and the president of the Ultimate Fighting Championship.
Campaign aides are eager to promote the appearance of soap opera actor Kimberlin Brown, who also hosts a show on the Design Network and is a California avocado farmer.
“When people say, ‘Just who is it that’s voting for Mr. Trump?’ she’s a good person to give a story on it,” said Bill Greener, a convention organizer.
Trump will also officially receive the nomination, a key symbolic moment for a candidate initially regarded with ridicule amid a once-crowded primary field. However, look for the Never Trump contingent to make a fuss over it on the convention floor
Mike Pence on Trump: ‘It’s time for us to come together around this good man’
Donald Trump’s pick for vice president, Mike Pence, told conservatives Tuesday that it was time to unite behind the GOP’s presumed nominee.
Pence, the Indiana governor, is a favorite among fiscal and social conservatives, and adding him to the GOP ticket is expected to help comfort Republicans wary of Trump’s rise.
“It’s time for us to come together around this good man,” Pence said at an event sponsored by the American Conservative Union outside the Republican convention. “His heart is with everyday Americans.
Pence spoke as Republicans are struggling to unify after a raucous first day in Cleveland that included a protest over Trump on the convention floor.
Conservatives have been slow to unite behind Trump, who some view as insufficiently grounded in GOP priorities.
Top Democrat seeks to blame Donald Trump’s campaign for Melania’s speech
Social media lit up Monday night as some on Twitter pointed out that Melania Trump’s prime-time speech at the Republican National Convention sounded strikingly similar to Michelle Obama’s 2008 convention speech.
Disorganization within the Trump campaign is to blame for the firestorm over whether Melania Trump plagiarized her convention speech, a top Democrat said Tuesday, trying to highlight the chaotic start of the GOP event.
“Melania Trump comported herself very well on the stage in front of the American people,” said Debbie Wasserman Schultz, chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee. “She gave a very nice speech and the Trump campaign is the one that should be held accountable for the content of it.”
During a news conference in Cleveland, Wasserman Schultz called the Republican National Convention “a mess,” “chaotic” and “disruptive.” She said she expects to see more disorganization as the convention continues through Thursday.
Wasserman Schultz said she was not surprised that the Trump campaign tried to shift the blame to Clinton, and she denied that Clinton or her aides were responsible.
“You are going to see a remarkable and stark contrast between what is going on on the convention floor in Cleveland and what will be going on” at the Democratic convention next week in Philadelphia, she said.
Why the plagiarism allegations against Melania Trump matter for her husband’s campaign
Social media lit up Monday night as some on Twitter pointed out that Melania Trump’s prime-time speech at the Republican National Convention sounded strikingly similar to Michelle Obama’s 2008 convention speech.
The allegations that a chunk of Melania Trump’s speech Monday night was lifted from Michelle Obama almost certainly won’t change anyone’s vote.
That doesn’t mean they won’t affect the Trump campaign.
The problem for Trump and his allies is lost opportunity. The whole purpose of a modern political convention is to serve as a 96-hour advertisement for the nominee and his or her party. The aim is to spend every minute of each of those hours pounding home a few basic messages.
Even in the best of times, Trump has little patience with that sort of message discipline.
Trump ally Roger Stone: ‘Unity is a misnomer.... This is the elites versus Donald Trump and the people’
GOP unity is overrated, and the election will come down to a battle pitting the elites of both parties against the rest of the electorate, Donald Trump’s longtime associate Roger Stone said Tuesday.
“This is not a Republican versus Democrat race,” Stone said at an event sponsored by Politico. “That’s why this whole idea of party unity — party unity is a misnomer.”
“This is an insider-outsider election,” he said. “This is the elites versus Donald Trump and the people.”
Stone does not have an official role with Republican Party, which is trying to overcome the rocky first day of the convention in Cleveland with a message of party unification.
In fact, House Speaker Paul D. Ryan’s prime-time speech Tuesday will be a plea for unity.
But Stone remains a longtime friend and ally of Trump’s, dashing off memos to the candidate with musings from his colorful career in Republican Party politics dating to the Nixon era.
Stone said he would not expect to play a formal role in a Trump White House — in part because he doesn’t think he could win confirmation by the Senate.
But his informal counsel continues.
“Sometimes you may have an impact on him, sometimes you may have none,” Stone said, comparing Trump’s style to that of Lyndon Johnson.
“He’s a very aggressive user of the telephone — he calls a broad cross section of people to get their opinion.”
Stone said he views the election as a “jump ball” between Trump and Democrat Hillary Clinton, but said his friend’s stamp on the GOP will be lasting.
“Whether you talk about Lincoln or McKinley or Eisenhower or Nixon or Reagan — all successful Republican presidents have remade the party in their own image,” he said.
“Trump, ironically — just as Roosevelt was an aristocrat who made his party the party of working people — I think Trump takes us back to Main Street from Wall Street.”
Speechwriter: Most of the Monday night convention speeches sounded plagiarized
Former political speechwriter Barton Swaim says “it’s easier to plagiarize a passage inadvertently than most people think.”
‘Any other topics?’ Donald Trump’s campaign chief tries to deflect questions about Melania’s speech
Donald Trump’s campaign chief tried to cut off and brush off questions about the apparent plagiarism in Melania Trump’s convention speech, refusing to say Tuesday whether he reviewed the speech or whether anyone on the campaign would face discipline.
Paul Manafort again blamed Hillary Clinton and the media for bringing attention to “50 words, and that includes ands and thes and things like that” that were remarkably similar to Michelle Obama’s 2008 convention speech.
Manafort, speaking to reporters at a morning briefing at the Cleveland Convention Center, refused to concede the passages were lifted from Obama and said the controversy was prompting the media to “distort that message” and was “totally ignoring the facts of the speech itself.”
These are themes that are personal to her, but they’re personal to a lot of people depending on the stories of their lives.Obviously, Michelle Obama feels very much similar sentiments towards her family.
— Paul Manafort, Donald Trump’s campaign chairman
“These are themes that are personal to her, but they’re personal to a lot of people depending on the stories of their lives,” he said, recounting Melania Trump’s focus on her own story and what he called “family values.” “Obviously, Michelle Obama feels very much similar sentiments towards her family.”
“Care and respect and passion, those are not extraordinary words,” he said.
Using the now-familiar Trump playbook, Manafort refused to back down or apologize. Instead, he tried to use the moment to rally supporters, by repeating an argument he made on a morning television show, that it was Clinton’s fault.
“There’s a political tint to this whole issue and certainly we’ve noted that the Clinton camp was the first to get it out there and tried to say that there was something untoward about the speech,” he said. “It’s just another example as far as we’re concerned that when Hillary Clinton is threatened by a female, the first thing she does is try to destroy the person.”
The similarities were initially highlighted by Twitter user Jarrett Hill.
The briefing was supposed to highlight Trump’s moment in the spotlight. Manafort began his remarks by noting that Trump would be elected the nominee Tuesday night, defying all the skeptics who said he could never win the long primary process that included more than a dozen other candidates with long political resumes.
But the plagiarism issue had clearly sucked up the attention, frustrating Manafort.
“Any other questions on different topics?” he said, declaring that he would not answer follow-up questions on the speech.
“Any other topics?” he repeated, when a reporter asked another related question.
Former campaign manager: ‘There should be accountability’ for Melania Trump’s speech
Donald Trump’s former campaign manager said staff responsible for crafting Melania Trump’s speech on the first night of the Republican National Convention should be held accountable after portions mirrored remarks First Lady Michelle Obama delivered in 2008.
Corey Lewandowski, who was fired in June following months of controversy including allegations that he grabbed a reporter as she approached Trump, said the matter should be resolved as soon as possible.
“If the staff did not do their job properly ... there should be accountability. No question,” Lewandowski said.
The head of the Republican Party says he’d fire a speechwriter who plagiarized
The head of the Republican Party said Tuesday amid the firestorm over Melania Trump’s convention speech that he would likely fire a speechwriter who plagiarized an address.
Similarities between Trump’s RNC speech Monday night and Michelle Obama’s 2008 Democratic convention address were uncovered soon after Trump spoke, quickly distracting from the security message the party was trying to convey. RNC Chairman Reince Priebus said in an interview with Bloomberg that he would punish the writer if confronted with such a situation.
“Certainly I don’t blame her for anything,” he said of Trump.
The address “gets you off message a bit this morning, but I think we’ll get back to action this afternoon,” Priebus said.
Trump ally Roger Stone says someone should be fired over Melania Trump’s speech, but she remains an ‘asset’
Donald Trump’s longtime ally Roger Stone said Tuesday someone should be fired over Melania Trump’s speech, but stressed she remains an “asset” to the campaign and that the allegations of plagiarism are no big deal.
“I just don’t think the voters care,” Stone said at a Politico event.
“It’s sloppy staff work and somebody should go.”
Stone compared Trump’s wife to President Kennedy’s wife, Jacqueline, a fashionable outsider who won over Americans.
“She is refined, she’s educated, she speaks multiple languages,” he said.
“She’s more comfortable being photographed than she is speaking in public,” he said. “She’s an asset.”
Senate Republican to the Trumps: ‘Admit it and move on’ if convention speech was plagiarized
Donald Trump should “admit it and move on” if his wife did pass off remarks made by Michelle Obama as her own, a Senate Republican said Tuesday.
“If there was a mistake there, ... we’re better served and, Donald Trump’s better served, to just admit it and move on,” Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) told CNN.
On Monday, Trump’s wife delivered a GOP convention speech that was immediately overshadowed by the discovery that some passages resembled excerpts from Michelle Obama’s 2008 Democratic convention speech.
Capito argued that Trump spoke of universal values, including love and family, but acknowledged that her rare public appearance became notable for the plagiarism accusations.
“It’s a shame this is now the story,” said Capito, who was scheduled to speak Tuesday at the convention.
Rep. Sean Duffy (R-Wis.) suggested Trump “blame it on a speechwriter” and apologize.
“If you don’t acknowledge at least something’s there, this ends up being not just a one, uh, one-hour story ... it’s a convention story,” Duffy told CNN.
Top aide calls Melania Trump speech copying an unfortunate oversight
I’m sure what happened is the person who was helping write this plugged something in there — probably an unfortunate oversight, and certainly Melania didn’t have anything to do with it. ... I’m sure action will be taken inside the campaign to make sure it never happens again.
— Sam Clovis, national co-chairman of the Donald Trump campaign, in an MSNBC interview
If you get hurt during convention protests, just look for this logo
Protests outside the Republican National Convention were relatively peaceful during the opening day of the event in Cleveland, but if things turn violent, there are about 80 volunteer medics in downtown Cleveland looking to provide aid, regardless of political affiliation.
The Rustbelt Medics and a few dozen volunteers from outside the city have been spotted roaming around protest sites in recent days. They are on hand and prepared to offer aid to people who find themselves overtaken by a tear gas cloud or simply stifled by the soup-like humidity that’s turned most demonstrations into sweat-soaked affairs this week.
Some members are medical professionals, while others are volunteers who completed a 20-hour “street medic” training course, according to Delyla Wilson, who is handling media relations for the group. Wilson said it’s all too easy for people to forget about basic things such as hydration when they’re caught up in the adrenaline rush of a protest march.
“There’s a lot of people who come out here with preexisting conditions,” said Wilson, who traveled to Ohio from Montana.
Many of the group’s members took time off from their jobs to render aid outside the convention. An emergency medical technician from Pittsburgh, who asked to be identified only as Vinnie, said most of the group’s members have agreed to put aside their politics to treat patients. With police barricades blocking walking paths all over downtown Cleveland, he said the street medics might be the first and only option for anyone who suffers a medical emergency during a demonstration.
“This is more about helping people who can’t get help otherwise,” he said.
DNC chair on Melania Trump speech: They’re ‘going to have to answer for the content of that speech’
The Trump organization is going to have to answer for the content of that speech, and the side by side is pretty clear, and the evidence, as you said, really isn’t in dispute, and so we’ll leave it to them to answer for the similarities between other individuals who have delivered speeches on that.
— Democratic National Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, speaking on CNN about the speech Melania Trump delivered at the Republican National Convention, which included several repeated lines from a 2008 Michelle Obama speech.
Melania Trump says she wrote convention speech with little help
Shortly before a storm of plagiarism accusations, Melania Trump told NBC News that she crafted most of her Republican National Convention speech with little assistance from campaign staff.
“I read once over it and that’s all, because I wrote it, and with as little help as possible,” the would-be first lady, accompanied by her husband, told NBC anchor Matt Lauer in an interview on Donald Trump’s private jet shortly before her speech Monday night.
Several lines of the speech appeared to be copied word-for-word from Michelle Obama’s 2008 speech to the Democratic National Convention.
In a statement released overnight, Donald Trump’s senior communications advisor, Jason Miller, said that Melania Trump’s “team of writers took notes on her life’s inspirations, and in some instances included fragments that reflected her own thinking.”
Shortly after her interview was broadcast Tuesday morning on the “Today” show, Lauer asked New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, a top Trump advisor, whether he could make a case for plagiarism.
“No, not when 93% of the speech is completely different than Michelle Obama’s speech,” he said. “And they expressed some common thoughts.”
Christie said he didn’t know whether the dustup signaled anything about the Trump campaign’s staff work.
“I think they’re trying to do a lot of things at one time, and I know Melania,” he said. “I think she worked very hard on that speech, and a lot of what I heard last night, sitting on the floor, sounded very much like her and the way she speaks about Donald all the time.”
House Speaker Paul Ryan to call for unity in convention speech
House Speaker Paul Ryan will make a plea Tuesday for unity — not just among Republicans torn over Donald Trump’s nomination, but for the divided country too.
Ryan, the party’s 2012 vice presidential nominee, is scheduled to deliver a prime-time address during the GOP convention here as the day’s theme focuses on the economy and jobs.
But after the turbulent first convention night, Ryan — who has famously struggled over his own comfort level with Trump as the GOP presidential nominee — now has an opportunity to try to restore decorum to the event.
“Speaker Ryan will talk about the sense of urgency that our party should feel in such a consequential election,” an aide familiar with the speech told The Times.
“He will offer a sharp contrast with the failed progressivism of the last eight years. The Speaker will call for a contest of ideas this fall and talk about the better way that Republicans are offering the country,” the aide said. “He will also argue that we can make the changes we need only with Republican majorities in Congress and Donald Trump in the White House.”
“And finally,” the aide added, “the Speaker will make a call for unity, not just as Republicans but as a country as well.”
Trump’s campaign manager calls plagiarism accusations ‘absurd’ and blames Hillary Clinton
Donald Trump’s campaign manager flatly denied the possibility of plagiarism in Melania Trump’s Monday night address to the Republican convention, despite striking similarities to passages in Michelle Obama’s 2008 Democratic convention speech.
“There’s no cribbing of Michelle Obama’s speech,” top aide Paul Manafort said Tuesday on CNN. “These are common words and values — that she cares about her family, things like that. She was speaking in front of 35 million people last night; she knew that. To think that she would be cribbing Michelle Obama’s words is crazy.”
He added on CBS that the words in question “are not unique.”
Rather than specify whether a Trump staffer was responsible for the similar text, Manafort pinned the blame on the presumptive Democratic nominee.
“This is once again an example of when a woman threatens Hillary Clinton, how [Clinton] seeks to demean her and take her down,” Manafort said on CNN. “It’s not going to work.”
Manafort said that in writing Melania’s speech, “There was a process, certainly, of collaboration. Certainly, there’s no feeling on her part that she did it. What she did was use words that are common words.”
“To think that she would do something like that, knowing how scrutinized her speech was going to be last night, is just really absurd,” he added.
Manafort’s insistence puzzled CNN host Chris Cuomo, who told the campaign manager: “If that’s the way you want to explain it, that’s up to you.”
Manafort’s flat assertion runs counter to a vague statement released by the campaign last night, which did not address the plagiarism charges directly. The contradictory statements did little to quell cable news chatter Tuesday morning, which focused nearly exclusively on the intrigue over the speech.
Convention was most certainly reality TV
“Reality TV Rules” was the unofficial subtext of the Republican National Committee’s first day, down to issues of writers’ credit.
Accusations of plagiarism by headliner Melania Trump made social media go wild, a fitting climax to a full day of political theater.
Day One of the convention in less than 3 minutes
Had plans last night? Aren’t a fan of sitcom stars? Want to relive the highlights?
Whatever your reasons, we’ve got you covered.
Ray Whitehouse and Cleon Arrey present the convention in less than 3 minutes:
From reality TV stars to Donald Trump’s wife, catch up quick on the opening day of the GOP convention. More coverage at latimes.com/trailguide
Day One: That’s a wrap!
At least one California GOP staffer struck with cruise-ship virus at the convention
At least one staff member of the California GOP at the Republican National Convention has fallen ill with what appears to be the norovirus, or the cruise ship virus, according to a state party warning emailed to the delegation early Tuesday.
Some delegates and other party guests have pinned the number of those affected as a handful up to a dozen, according to multiple sources.
The stomach bug, which has gained notoriety in recent years for making hundreds of people wrenchingly ill aboard cruise ships, typically occurs in crowded settings such as day-care centers and nursing homes, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It affects 19 million to 21 million people in the United States annually.
The symptoms -- stomach pain, nausea, vomiting, fever and diarrhea -- are generally short-lived but can cause death, according to the CDC. Norovirus, a collection of gastrointestinal viruses, is highly contagious.
The 550 delegates, alternates and guests were advised by the California GOP to avoid shaking hands with others, to wash hands frequently, to avoid sharing food and to not use the delegation buses to the convention if they have any symptoms, according to the delegation email.
Over the weekend, staffers were seen frequently using small bottles of hand sanitizer. By Monday night, large towers of hand sanitizer had been placed at a delegation party at the Kalahari Resort in Sandusky, Ohio, where the state party is staying during the convention. The hotel, home to the nation’s largest indoor water park, is an hour from the convention in Cleveland.
State party officials did not respond to questions early Tuesday about how many people were sick, whether they were quarantined and how the affected staffer caught the virus.
Campaign aide responds to Melania Trump’s speech controversy
In writing her beautiful speech, Melania’s team of writers took notes on her life’s inspirations, and in some instances included fragments that reflected her own thinking. Melania’s immigrant experience and love for America shone through in her speech, which made it such a success.
— Jason Miller, senior communications advisor
Giuliani’s fiery speech: ‘You know who you are, and we are coming to get you’
Rudolph W. Giuliani, the former mayor of New York, spoke Monday night at the Republican National Convention, fiercely going off about the imminent terrorist threat facing America.
He ended with, “You know who you are, and we are coming to get you.”
Watch:
Former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani addressed “Islamic extremist terrorism” on night one of the Republican National Convention.
Melania Trump’s RNC speech is strikingly similar to Michelle Obama’s 2008 convention speech
Social media lit up Monday night as some on Twitter pointed out that Melania Trump’s prime-time speech at the Republican National Convention sounded strikingly similar to Michelle Obama’s 2008 convention speech.
Social media lit up Monday night as some on Twitter pointed out that Melania Trump’s prime-time speech at the Republican National Convention appeared strikingly similar to Michelle Obama’s 2008 convention speech.
The two speeches use the same phrasing, including “work hard for what you want in life,” “your word is your bond” and “the only limit” to achieving dreams is “your willingness to work for them.”
Twitter user Jarrett Hill was among the first to notice Monday night.
Trump’s campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but the presumptive Republican presidential nominee complimented his wife’s Monday night appearance on Twitter.
Watch Michael Flynn’s speech from the Republican convention
Donald Trump’s national security advisor spoke on the first night of the Republican National Convention. Retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn vowed Trump would “lead from the front” and railed against political correctness.
Watch:
Retired Army Gen. Michael Flynn addresses the Republican National convention, criticizing Hillary Clinton and President Obama.
Watch Melania Trump’s RNC speech
Donald Trump’s wife Melania was one of the keynote speakers on the first night of the Republican National Convention. She spoke about her family, her husband’s values and her journey as an immigrant to the United States.
“Donald is, and always has been, an amazing leader,” she said. “He will never, ever give up. And, most importantly, he will never, ever let you down.”
Watch:
Watch Melania Trump’s speech on night one of the Republican National Convention >>
‘War is not about bathrooms’ and other end-of-night moments as convention crowd fades
Retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn knew it would be tough delivering a convention speech after Melania Trump.
And he was right: He got off to a rough start as the crowd began thinning out, and his speech segued at one point when he asserted “war is not about bathrooms.”
But then things picked up.
Flynn went on a riff against Democrat Hillary Clinton and the thinning crowd responded with a chant.
“Lock her up! Lock her up!”
Flynn seemed energized by the crowd and led them further.
His own preference, he told them, is “#NeverHillary.”
It was peak Trump-ism — a take-back of the NeverTrump element in the GOP.
The crowd got a second wind.
And Flynn had his moment.
Immigrants at GOP convention support Trump’s hard line against illegal immigration
Immigrant stories are central to the American narrative, often heartwarming accounts of coming to the United States to make a better life.
But at the Republican convention, the immigration narrative took a more somber tone as several immigrants sided with Donald Trump’s plan to build a wall to stop illegal immigration.
“Having secure borders, protecting our citizens — none of this is hateful. it’s the right thing to do,” said Italian-born actor Antonio Sabato Jr.
Sabato, who said he arrived in the U.S. in 1985, spoke a few words in Italian on the convention stage. But he otherwise suggested that other immigrants should come to the country legally, like he said he did.
“I followed all the rules,” he said, adding that he become a citizen in 1996. “We are a nation of laws for a reason, there should be no shortcut for those who don’t want to pay or wait.”
Rep. Sean Duffy (R-Wisc.) — with his wife, Rachel Campos-Duffy, whose parents came to the U.S. from Mexico — said their families chose to be Americans “and we chose to be Republicans.”
Several parents of adult children killed by immigrants in the U.S. illegally also gave heart-wrenching accounts of their loss — tragic stories of the nation’s problems with immigration enforcement.
One of them, immigrant Sabine Durden, who lost her son, Dominic, a 911 dispatcher, told the convention: “Build the wall. And Americans need to come first.”
Joni Ernst has castrated pigs, but just missed prime-time spot
She has always been something of a rising star.
Joni Ernst made her first splash when she proudly declared in a television ad for her 2014 U.S. Senate campaign: “I grew up castrating hogs on an Iowa farm, so when I get to Washington I’ll know how to cut pork.”
Ernst, a former lieutenant colonel in the Iowa National Guard, became the first woman ever elected to statewide office in Iowa when she won a tight race to replace retiring Sen. Tom Harkin.
A few months later, she delivered the Republican response to President Obama’s State of the Union address.
Ernst was scheduled to give a prime-time speech tonight, but the preceding speeches went long so her remarks came after 11 p.m. EST. Adding insult to injury, the crowd started to stream out once Melania Trump spoke, so Ernst was left talking to an thin crowd.
Melania Trump’s speech, all generalizations, was a missed opportunity
Melania Trump’s much-anticipated speech, preceded by her husband’s theatrical entrance to introduce her, was a missed opportunity.
Yes, she introduced herself for those who don’t know that she is a Slovenian immigrant who became a successful model on the runways of Paris and Milan before moving to New York City, where she met her husband.
Melania Trump’s job was – or at least it should have been – to help change the minds of women voters, most of whom have an unfavorable impression of Donald.
As the person who knows Donald Trump best and most intimately, she needed to share something of the man behind the bluster. Instead, she offered only bromides and generalizations:
“I have seen him fight for years to get a project done – or even started – and he does not give up! If you want someone to fight for you and your country, I can assure you he is the guy. He will never, ever give up. And, most importantly, he will never, ever let you down. Donald is, and always has been, an amazing leader. Now, he will go to work for you.”
She didn’t have to be poetic, the way Ann Romney was on the convention stage in 2012, when she spoke about the challenges women face, and shared something about her marriage:
“I read somewhere that Mitt and I have a ‘storybook marriage.’ Well, in the storybooks I read, there were never long, long, rainy winter afternoons in a house with five boys screaming at once. And those storybooks never seemed to have chapters called MS or breast cancer. A storybook marriage? No, not at all. What Mitt Romney and I have is a real marriage.”
Nor did she need to puncture her husband’s self-regard, the way Michelle Obama did on the campaign trail, calling him “snore-y and stinky.”
Surely the Trumps have overcome some obstacles in life? Even a billionaire and a supermodel must have the kind of quotidian stories to which average folks can relate.
I didn’t learn a thing about Donald Trump from his wife tonight. Did you?
Melania Trump says Donald Trump values diversity
Melania Trump cast her husband Monday night as a champion of diverse racial and religious backgrounds, pushing back at critics who portray the Republican presidential hopeful as a divisive bigot.
“Donald intends to represent all the people, not just some of the people,” the would-be First Lady said at the Republican National Convention. “That includes Christians and Jews and Muslims. It includes Hispanics and African Americans and Asians, and the poor and the middle class.”
Melania Trump, 46, offered the first in a series of family testimonials designed to soften the New York business tycoon’s image before he accepts the GOP’s White House nomination on Thursday night.
Melania Trump is the candidate’s third wife. A Slovenian immigrant and former fashion model, she now sells lines of jewelry and skincare products. Her husband introduced her to the packed arena of GOP delegates and the national TV audience after he emerged on stage, back-lit like a rock star, to the tune of Queen’s “We Are the Champions” anthem.
Speaking with a thick accent, Melania Trump recalled growing up in communist Eastern Europe with a mother, Amalia, who introduced her to “fashion and beauty,” and a father, Viktor, who inspired her “passion for business and travel.”
In her biggest applause line, she said becoming an American citizen a decade ago was “the greatest privilege on planet Earth.”
Trump described her husband as a loving father and patriot with a “never give-up attitude.”
“The race will be hard-fought, all the way to November,” she said. “There will be good times and hard times and unexpected turns -- it would not be a Trump contest without excitement and drama.”
Melania Trump speech: Is the wrong Trump heading the ticket?
Is America ready for a first lady who’s a supermodel from Slovenia, whose natural expression is a fashion-runway pout, and who pronounces her husband’s last name “Tromp”?
Melania Trump, not a practiced public speaker until now, did a creditable job of delivering – carefully, from a teleprompter – a 15-minute encomium to the presumptive Republican nominee on Monday.
Most intriguing, she argued that her famously pugnacious husband has a kinder, gentler side – and not merely for his immediate family.
“You judge a society by how it treats its citizens,” she said. “We must do our best to ensure that every child can live in comfort and security, with the best possible education. As the citizens of this great nation, it is kindness, love and compassion for each other that will bring us together – and keep us together.”
For a moment, she sounded more like Hillary Clinton than Donald Trump. Maybe the wrong Trump is heading the ticket?
Retired Army Gen. Michael Flynn delivers fiery speech to emptying convention hall (VIDEO)
Passed over for Trump’s vice presidential pick, retired Army Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn delivered a fiery speech pushing Trump’s candidacy and criticizing Hillary Clinton and President Obama, who appointed him to the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Pentagon’s main spy service, in 2012.
“We are tired of Obama’s empty speeches and his misguided rhetoric,” Flynn said. “This, this has caused the world to have no respect for America’s word, nor does it fear our might.”
Flynn criticized “political correctness” and debates over transgender bathrooms.
“My God, war is not about bathrooms. War is not about political correctness or words that are meaningless. War is about winning.
“My message to you is very clear: Wake up, America! There is no substitute for American leadership and exceptionalism.”
Flynn punctuated his speech by pausing to lead the crowd in chants of “U-S-A! U-S-A!” adding, “Get fired up! This is about our country.”
The former Army intelligence officer left the Obama administration after clashing with top officials in 2014. Since then, he has publicly criticized the White House strategy for fighting militant groups.
Flynn’s views align closely with Trump’s attacks on Islam and the Republican presumptive presidential nominee’s calls for barring Muslim immigrants from entering the U.S.
Retired Army Gen. Michael Flynn addresses the Republican National convention, criticizing Hillary Clinton and President Obama.
The Trumps leave, and the crowd quickly follows suit
Melania Trump: ‘Donald gets things done’
Energized Giuliani paints dystopian picture of America
Emphatic doesn’t begin to describe it.
Former New York Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani gave an animated speech Monday night that often escalated into a full shout, injecting a jolt of energy into the convention hall.
Giuliani’s remarks depicted a country riven with anxiety.
“The vast majority of Americans today do not feel safe,” he said. “They fear for their children. They fear for themselves. They fear for police officers who are being targeted with a target on their back.”
That portrayal departs from national crime statistics, which have shown crime on the decline since the 1990s.
The onetime presidential hopeful touted Donald Trump’s charity in New York City – saying the real estate mogul always insisted on anonymity – and insisted Trump would be the better equipped to ensure “unconditional victory” against terrorists.
He particularly relished attacking Hillary Clinton – his onetime foe in the 2000 U.S. Senate race before Giuliani dropped out.
“Hillary Clinton’s experience is exactly the reason she should not be president of the United States,” he said.
After electrifying the crowd – and dismissing a protester – Giuliani ended on a foreboding note on the election’s stakes.
“There’s no next election. This is it....There’s no more time to repeat our mistakes,” he said.
Melania Trump addresses the GOP convention
Melania Trump says her husband is ‘moved by this great honor’
Blame Hillary Clinton
The first hour of the Republican National Convention was largely about Benghazi, the 2012 terrorist attack on a U.S. consulate in Libya that left four Americans dead – and a four-year-long trail of mostly partisan recriminations over who was to blame.
The mother of one of the victims, Pat Smith, said: “I blame Hillary Clinton personally for the death of my son. She lied to me, then called me a liar…. She deserves to be in stripes.”
John Tiegen, one of the security contractors who fought to save the Americans – and later co-wrote a controversial book about the incident – repeated a charge that has been discredited by a series of congressional investigations: that Clinton, or at least her State Department, ordered U.S. personnel to “stand down” rather than rescuing the besieged U.S. ambassador to Libya.
Missing from the narrative: the fact that the House Benghazi Committee, led by Republicans, couldn’t substantiate the charge.
But here’s what was weirdest about the convention’s lengthy return to Benghazi: It served no clear political purpose.
Americans who blame Clinton for the Benghazi tragedy are already in Donald Trump’s camp. Every other American has had plenty of time to consider the question.
If that’s the core of the Trump campaign’s pitch to Make America Safe Again, it’s not going to win many converts.
Donald Trump apparently agrees. During that segment, he dialed into the Fox News Channel and preempted his own convention with a telephone interview.
Donald Trump makes first appearance on convention stage to introduce his wife, Melania
Watch live: Melania Trump addresses RNC crowd
We’re broadcasting Melania Trump’s speech on Facebook.
Iowa Rep. Steve King asks if other ‘subgroups’ besides whites have contributed ‘more to civilization’
Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) is no stranger to racially offensive language, but his remarks Monday about the superiority of white people during a TV panel outside the Republican National Convention still caused a stir.
He was on an MSNBC panel when Esquire writer Charles Pierce said the GOP was catering to disaffected whites.
“That hall is wired,” he said. “That hall is wired by loud, unhappy, dissatisfied white people.”
King responded:
“This ‘old white people’ business does get a little tired, Charlie,” King said. “I’d ask you to go back through history and figure out: Where are these contributions that have been made by these other categories of people that you’re talking about? Where did any other subgroup of people contribute more to civilization?”
“Than white people?” host Chris Hayes asked.
“Than, than Western civilization itself,” King replied. “It’s rooted in Western Europe, Eastern Europe and the United States of America and every place where the footprint of Christianity settled the world. That’s all of Western civilization.”
Another panelist April Ryan asked, “What about Asia? What about Africa?”
The panelists started speaking over themselves until Hayes stepped in again.
“We’re not going to argue the history of Western civilization,” Hayes said. “Let me note for the record that if you’re looking at the ledger of Western civilization, for every flourishing democracy, you have Hitler and Stalin as well.”
Imani Perry, a professor of African American studies at Princteon University, reacted on social media Monday:
Sheriff pits police against Black Lives Matter movement
“I would like to make something very clear: Blue lives matter!” Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke Jr. said at the Republican National Convention before addressing the recent shootings in Dallas and Baton Rouge, La., that left a total of eight officers dead.
Police deaths in the U.S. have gone down in the last two years. But according to the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund, the total number of law enforcement deaths so far this year is higher than the number of officer deaths from the same time in 2015.
Clarke, who is black, started his career in law enforcement at age 21. The sheriff went on to discuss the “good news out of Baltimore” in regards to Monday’s acquittal of Lt. Brian Rice in the death of Freddie Gray.
Clarke called the Black Lives Matter movement “anarchy” when it “violates the code of conduct we rely on.” The activist group became widely known in 2014 after shooting deaths led to protests in Ferguson, Mo., and Baltimore.
Clarke has previously called Black Lives Matter a “domestic hate group.”
Senate candidate hits Hillary Clinton and Black Lives Matter
Somebody with a nice tan needs to say this: All lives matter.... We all know she loves her pantsuits…. She deserves a bright orange jumpsuit.
— Darryl Glenn, running for Senate in Colorado
Chris Christie, passed over as Trump’s VP pick, makes appearance on convention floor
Reality stars line up to stump for Trump at RNC convention
Former “The Apprentice” star Donald Trump has plenty of fellow reality TV celebrities speaking on his behalf at the Republican National Convention.
- Antonio Sabato Jr. has been on multiple reality shows. He had his own VH1 reality dating TV show called “My Antonio.” He danced on season 19 of “Dancing with the Stars,” when he was paired with dancer Cheryl Burke. And he was on “Celebrity Wife Swap.”
- Professional golfer Natalie Gulbis had her own show before Donald Trump convinced her to appear on the second season of “Celebrity Apprence” by telling her it would help her raise money to start her own Boys and Girls Club. “You’re going to be on prime time for two hours on the highest-rated show on television,” she recalled him saying in a recent op-ed in Golf Magazine. “You’ll raise so much money.”
Rep. Sean Duffy (R-Wis.) was on “The Real World: Boston.” His wife, Rachel Campos-Duffy, also starred on another season of the MTV reality show set in San Francisco.
Scott Baio starred in VH1’s “Scott Baio Is 45 ... and Single.” That show was followed by “Scott Baio Is 46 ... and Pregnant.”
Rep. Michael McCaul, chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security, joins the speaker roster
U.S. Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas) has frequently criticized President Obama, calling his deferred action on immigration “unconstitutional.” But McCaul, chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security, is well-respected in policy circles and isn’t known as a particularly partisan figure.
As of late May, McCaul had not endorsed Trump, telling CNN, “I assume he is going to be the nominee. And I have said I will support the nominee.”
His presence on stage brings some policy heft to the national security debate.
The Turtles don’t like the GOP’s use of ‘Happy Together’ at the convention, but they can’t do anything about it
Shortly after “Happy Together” started playing over the speakers at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, the Turtles’ lead singer Howard Kaylan tweeted his concern:
But reached by phone, Turtles bandmate Mark Volman told The Times that because the organizers employed a house band to play the famed tune, the group does not appear to have much legal recourse.
The Turtles own only the so-called mechanical rights -- their own performance and recording of the song -- and are therefore unable to prevent another act from covering it.
“They can’t use the Turtles’ record on TV without paying for it, so if they did, they will certainly hear about it,” he said.
Parents of slain children to speak out against illegal immigration
Three parents of U.S. citizens slain by immigrants in the country illegally will speak together on stage.
Jamiel Shaw’s son was a Los Angeles High School football star before he was shot in the head and back in 2008 by a gang member who was in the country illegally.
Shaw has appeared alongside Trump in the past, including at a rally in Costa Mesa in April and a news conference in 2015.
Dominic Durden, a 911 dispatcher for the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department, was struck and killed by an immigrant in the U.S. illegally while riding his motorcycle. His mother, Sabine Durden, wrote an angry letter to President Obama and is speaking tonight.
Also speaking is Mary Ann Mendoza, an Arizona mother whose son, was a Mesa police officer hit head-on and killed by a driver in the country illegally.
Donald Trump calls into Fox News in the middle of emotional Benghazi portion of convention
Patricia Smith, the mother of a State Department officer killed in Benghazi, Libya, delivered a searing, emotional speech about the death of her son on the opening night of the Republican National Convention.
But in an odd scheduling decision, Donald Trump decided to call into Fox News at the same time, meaning viewers of the conservative news channel were listening to him riff on the day’s news — topics included his “60 Minutes” interview and his wife’s upcoming speech tonight — rather than Smith.
Hillary Clinton’s role in Benghazi attack looms large at GOP convention
It may be the Republican convention, but Democrat Hillary Clinton’s performance as secretary of State during the terrorist attack on Benghazi, Libya, filled Monday’s prime-time stage.
Clinton’s handling of the 2012 Benghazi attack that killed four Americans looms large among her GOP critics, including those intimately involved in the deadly encounter.
Pat Smith, the mother of Sean Smith, shared her sadness and frustration in trying to confront Clinton for information about her son’s death.
Mark Geist and John Tiegen, the co-authors of “13 Hours: The inside account of what really happened in Benghazi,” told their personal stories of the harrowing ordeal.
Clinton was nowhere near the arena in Cleveland, but her presence filled the proceedings nonetheless.
Analysis: Scott Baio’s dog whistle to Republicans who yearn for the good old days
Unlike former Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who did not mention Donald Trump in his brief speech at the GOP convention, actor Scott Baio lavished praise on Trump, calling him “the man that I trust with the lives of my family and the health of our country.”
But he did more than that.
He used a favorite talking point of conservatives, telling first-time voters, “It’s important for you to know what it means to be an American. It doesn’t mean getting free stuff.”
That dog whistle of a line echoes Republican conventional wisdom, which holds that the country is divided into “makers and takers.”
It echoes Mitt Romney’s infamous contention in 2012 that 47% of Americans would vote for President Obama “no matter what” because they are folks “who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to healthcare, to food, to housing, to you-name-it.”
Baio’s final line was more of a dog howl than whistle to the white male conservatives who form the backbone of Trump’s base and are dismayed by the country’s changing demographics and social mores.
“So of course, let’s make America great again,” Baio said. “But let’s make America America again.”
Oops! Rick Perry’s campaign site still shows Trump attack
Former Texas Gov. Rick Perry introduced the portion of the convention focused on veterans and the attacks in Benghazi, without mentioning Donald Trump by name.
There was no outright endorsement or embrace of Trump, his one-time rival in the presidential race.
A reminder of that race still exists on Perry’s campaign website.
Trump’s comments about Sen. John McCain “make him unfit to be commander-in-chief,” reads the news release, dated July 18, 2015.
Antonio Sabato Jr., the soap star-turned-Chippendales performer, to speak soon
For convention-goers who are also avid fans of “General Hospital,” “Melrose Place” or “The Bold and the Beautiful,” Antonio Sabato Jr. is probably a familiar face.
For others needing a refresher on his more recent credits, the Italian-born actor has also starred in VH1 reality TV show “My Antonio,” a “Bachelorette”-type show set in Hawaii where Sabato went on a quest to find love, and on season 19 of “Dancing with the Stars,” when he was paired with dancer Cheryl Burke. He is also, of course, a former Calvin Klein underwear model.
Most recently, Sabato was featured as a celebrity guest host of Chippendales, the shirtless male revue in Las Vegas.
As for why Sabato is speaking as part of the first prime-time lineup for the GOP convention? That’s unclear.
The actor did recently say Hillary Clinton “should be behind bars” and even suggested America should skip the election altogether and just let Trump win.
Earlier Monday, he said that part of Donald Trump’s political appeal is that he isn’t really a Republican — or a Democrat.
“You have a guy who’s in between these parties: He’s not really a Republican. He’s not a Democrat,” Sabato told CNN.
“He comes in and says I love this country, I want to do what’s best for this country,” he said. “You might not like what I have to say, but at least it’s the honest truth. That’s refreshing.”
Siblings of slain border agent to highlight border security
Brian Terry was 40 years old when he was killed in a shootout with Mexican bandits in southern Arizona.
Terry was a member of the U.S. Border Patrol’s elite tactical unit that had been working a few miles north of the U.S.-Mexico border in 2010.
Two of the guns found at the scene of the shooting were later traced to the Fast and Furious Operation, headed by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, which allowed the illegal sale of weapons in the United States so that authorities could track them across the border to drug cartels in Mexico.
Terry’s siblings, Kelly Terry-Willis and Kent Terry, have emphasized the importance of border security since his death.
“I understand the need for compassion,” Terry-Willis said in a statement after the sentencing of one of her brother’s killers. “But first we must address this dire public safety issue so that the men and women of the Border Patrol who worked with my brother will not unnecessarily be in harm’s way.”
Republicans add Bernie Sanders-style Wall Street reform to their platform
Republicans approved a party platform Monday peppered with Donald Trump mainstays on trade, the border wall with Mexico -- and an unexpected banking reform provision straight from Bernie Sanders’ playbook.
The plank calls for reinstating the Glass-Steagall Act, a Depression-era banking law championed by many on the left who see it as a way to limit the ability of big banks to engage in risky investments.
The law was repealed late in the Clinton administration by a Republican-controlled Congress. Some in both parties have said the repeal exacerbated the 2008 financial meltdown, although most economists are skeptical of that because most of the financial institutions that crashed were not banks that would have been covered by Glass-Steagall.
Sanders made reimposing Glass-Steagall central to his economic platform -- and a line calling for an updated version of the law was tucked into the draft Democratic platform.
Now, Republicans have a version, too.
Think of it as Trump’s play for the Sanders vote, as the renegade Republican taps into populist discontent among Democrats. It was added last week by a pro-Trump delegate from Illinois.
Trump’s campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, said Monday that the platform “reflects the Donald Trump impact.”
“There’s been some added components to it that reflect the issues Mr. Trump has raised during the course of the campaign,” he said.
But to confuse matters among populists interested in reining in Wall Street, the GOP platform also calls for repealing the Dodd-Frank financial reforms passed under President Obama. Republicans call it “the Democrats’ legislative Godzilla.”
Probably not too many Sanders takers on that plank.
Early RNC protests largely peaceful with only two arrests
Only two people have been arrested during the first 48 hours of demonstrations at the Republican National Convention, Cleveland Police Chief Calvin Williams reported Monday.
A woman was arrested for an outstanding warrant, and a man was charged with petty theft for allegedly trying to steal a police officer’s gas mask Sunday night, officials said.
Otherwise, the opening day of the convention was relatively peaceful. Officers had to break up a few minor skirmishes between opposing groups at various demonstrations on Monday, including a clash that involved men in military fatigues verbally sparring with anti-Trump demonstrators. But in each case, Williams said, officers on bicycles simply formed a wall between the clashing crowds. No one was arrested at any of those scenes.
“Nothing physical, we just wanted to make sure we got in there before anything got out of hand,” Williams said.
The two largest rallies of the day, both of which were decidedly anti-Trump, featured crowds of 200 and 300 people respectively, Williams said.
Despite concerns over the state’s open-carry laws, Williams said police also monitored a number of 2nd Amendment demonstrations without much trouble. Late Monday, a dozen men carrying rifles who identified themselves as the West Ohio Minutemen were seen walking through Public Square. They attracted a few sideways glances, but nothing more.
Police also confiscated a few prohibited items, including a knife and a slingshot, from people trying to enter secure areas of the convention, Williams said.
Former teen heartthrob Scott Baio is in charge ... for the next four minutes
Known best for his role as Chachi in sitcoms “Happy Days” and its spin-off “Joanie Loves Chachi,” Scott Baio will again get the limelight for a few minutes of prime time tonight.
Baio, who also played a big-hearted nanny in the TV show “Charles in Charge,” has been a vocal critic of Hillary Clinton. He endorsed Trump in March.
“I think he’s a straight shooter,” Baio told Fox News at the time. “When he talks, I understand him.... I don’t need a political decoder ring to understand what the guy is saying.”
Baio, who has said he considers himself a “conservative independent,” told the network, “Donald Trump is the only guy I think that has the will and the nerve to attack and to fight.”
He said Trump had personally asked him to speak at the convention recently at a fundraiser.
The former teen actor more recently appeared in “Arrested Development” as attorney Bob Loblaw, and on the VH1 reality show “Scott Baio is 45 ... and Single,” which was followed by “Scott Baio is 46 ... and Pregnant.”
Opening act: Willie Robertson of ‘Duck Dynasty’ to kick off prime-time program
On Day 1 of a Republican National Convention headlined by a one-time star of NBC’s “The Apprentice,” the first prime-time speech will come from another reality TV star.
Willie Robertson, the main force behind A&E’s hit television series “Duck Dynasty,” and chief executive of his family’s duck call business, will kick off tonight’s remarks.
The show, now in its 10th season, was the focus of controversy a few years back after Phil Robertson, Willie Robertson’s father and patriarch of the Robertson clan, made comments criticizing gay marriage and said he never saw blacks mistreated in the Jim Crow-era South.
The elder Robertson was temporarily suspended from the TV program, but was reinstated after family members threatened to pull out of the show.
In 2013, Willie Robertson shot down rumors he was running for Congress in his home state of Louisiana.
Robertson had previously said he hoped Republican Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal would run for president in 2016, calling him “my guy.” Robertson endorsed Trump in January, while Phil Robertson endorsed Ted Cruz.
Willie Robertson also attended the State of the Union in 2014 as a guest of Rep. Vance McAllister (R-La.).
Air Force Trump has arrived
‘I put lipstick on a pig,’ says Trump’s ‘Art of the Deal’ ghostwriter, breaking a decades-long silence
Days before Donald Trump accepts the Republican nomination for president, the New Yorker has published a regret-laden interview with the ghostwriter of his best-selling 1987 memoir, “The Art of the Deal.”
Tony Schwartz, writes Jane Mayer, was a respected magazine writer when he made a conscious decision to sell out (his phrase) and write a book that made him rich but robbed him of his integrity along the way.
Schwartz spent 18 months with Trump, much of that time eavesdropping (with Trump’s permission) on phone calls, both personal and professional. The resulting portrait, he nows says, was skewed and dishonest.
“I put lipstick on a pig,” Schwartz told Mayer. “I feel a deep sense of remorse that I contributed to presenting Trump in a way that brought him wider attention and made him more appealing than he is.”
Among the revelations:
Who’s speaking in prime time at the Republican National Convention?
In addition to Donald Trump, there will be no shortage of other Trumps speaking at this convention in prime time, starting tonight with the candidate’s wife, Melania Trump, and continuing with his sons, Donald Jr. and Eric, and his daughters, Ivanka and Tiffany.
There will also be a generous sprinkling of reality TV celebrities, including Willie Robertson of “Duck Dynasty” and Rep. Sean P. Duffy of Wisconsin and his wife, Rachel Campos-Duffy, who met on MTV’s “The Real World.”
Several of Trump’s vanquished opponents will appear as well: Texas’ former governor, Rick Perry, and junior senator, Ted Cruz, as well as Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie.
Meet the televangelist who delivered the RNC’s invocation
Before Mark Burns met Donald Trump for the first time last October in a meeting with other black pastors, the preacher from South Carolina said he was “full of apprehension” and not a Trump supporter.
Other pastors backed out of the meeting, but he stuck around and since then has become an important surrogate for Trump. He regularly delivers invocations at Trump rallies around the U.S. and goes on cable television to defend Trump’s controversial comments on race.
“One of reasons why I believe I’ve been called to do this, to bring right where there is wrong, [is that] I know that [Trump] is not at all how many African Americans view him,” he told CBS in February.
Burns’ early support of Trump led the relatively unknown evangelical to the main stage of the Republican National Convention on Monday where he delivered the invocation calling for the party to unite behind Trump.
“Lord we are so thankful for the life of Donald Trump, we are thankful that you are guiding him, you are giving him the words to unite this party, this country,” he said.
Trump had the support of just 7% of African Americans in a new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll released on the eve of the convention.
In Ohio and Pennsylvania, recent polling has Trump with zero percent of the black vote.
Burns, the co-founder of the Christian TV network NOW, has defended Trump against attacks that the presumptive Republican presidential nominee is racist.
“I know what real racism looks like, and even sounds like,” Burns told MSNBC in May. “And it’s not Donald Trump.”
Though he is not on the official schedule to appear again during convention, Bloomberg Politics reported that Burns will be added to the prime-time lineup Thursday to talk about “bridging divisions” in the wake of the shootings of three police officers in Louisiana.
Another evangelical leader, Jerry Falwell Jr., president of Liberty University, is also set to speak Thursday.
We’ll be on Snapchat all week, folks
Intense police lineups. Protests. The best swag (who can beat a $15 stuffed elephant named “Phil A. Buster”?). Observations from the floor. And much more.
We’ll be here all week, folks. We’re at losangelestimes.
Trump allies downplay floor fight as anti-Trump forces promise more protests inside convention
The floor fight at the Republican convention Monday over the gathering’s rules was not really about Donald Trump, a top aide insisted, downplaying the unusual uprising as last-ditch efforts of a few rabble rousers.
Campaign chairman Paul Manafort had previously promised that anti-Trump efforts had been “crushed,” only to see them pop up again in dramatic form at the convention in Cleveland.
After the rebellion on the floor was squelched, however, he said the fight would not have any lasting impact.
“What you saw today was just some people that wanted to play politics with the rules,” Manafort told CNN.
The rebellious delegates wanted a roll call vote on the convention rules package — part of their continuing effort to change the convention format so delegates would be free to vote for the candidate of their choice rather than the winner of their state primary or caucus, who in many cases was Trump.
Amid chants of “Roll call vote!” and counter-shouts of “We want Trump,” convention officials quickly passed the rules package by voice vote.
The insurgent group was led by Utah Sen. Mike Lee and former Virginia Atty. Gen. Ken Cuccinelli. Some Trump supporters have criticized the effort as a backdoor plan to nominate Texas Sen. Ted Cruz or other candidates.
Rebellious delegates vowed more floor fights in the days ahead.
“You’re going to see our delegates challenging the roll call votes,” Kendal Unruh, the Colorado schoolteacher leading the “Free the Delegates” effort, said on C-SPAN.
Unruh didn’t elaborate on next steps, but a text message to anti-Trump supporters offered a clue: “Rigged election. Walk out.”
Trump’s California director, Tim Clark, dismissed the dissenting delegates as “a very small embittered group that refuses to stand down.”
“We put away the nonsense,” Clark said. “We had to stamp it out one more time so we could go about the business of electing Donald Trump.”
To block the vote, Trump’s whip operation went into high gear. They were able to convince some delegates to drop off a petition demanding a roll call vote on the rules. That reduced the number of state delegations calling for a roll call to below the threshold for demanding one.
Manafort, who said he didn’t think Cruz was behind the protest, said conducting a roll call would have been time consuming and taken the convention off schedule.
Trump had ample support from delegates for keeping the rules package as is, he added. A roll call “would have been a meaningless gesture,” Manafort said. “Everybody knew the result.”
He added that Trump is interested in making rules changes — “after the elections.”
What music is playing on the convention floor?
The Republican National Convention kicked off with tunes from the likes of Rush, David Bowie and The Who. G.E. Smith of Hall and Oates and “Saturday Night Live” led the band.
We’ll continue to update this playlist throughout the week.
Meet one of the few Latinos speaking at the GOP convention
Dr. Ralph Alvarado is one of the few Latinos lined up to speak at the Republican National Convention this week, and he wants to remind his fellow Latinos of a big reason he thinks they should vote for Trump: He’s pro-legal immigration.
“If you look at second-, third-generation Latinos, I think the political breakdown is pretty similar to the general public,” said Alvarado, who is on the agenda for Wednesday.
“Economic opportunity, security for our country. Those are the big things that I think most Hispanics want to see.”
Trump isn’t the most popular man among Latinos, according to polls, and his rhetoric has prompted fears that the Republican Party will lose Latino voters for a generation.
Reminder: You can brings real guns to the RNC protests, but not water guns
Despite the city’s temporary bans on items as innocuous as tennis balls and bicycle locks in downtown Cleveland, Ohio state law allows demonstrators with radically different viewpoints to openly carry handguns and rifles as they encounter each other outside the convention. And it’ll be up to a multi-agency police force of thousands of officers, and demonstrators themselves, to keep things from getting violent.
Meet Kendal Unruh, leader of ‘Free the Delegates 2016’
Think of it as a counterinsurgency within the Republican revolution.
Suburban mom and teacher Kendal Unruh, 51, may not look like much of a rebel, but she’s descended upon Cleveland to wage a long-shot battle that GOP establishment leaders gave up on long ago: to deny Donald Trump the party’s presidential nomination.
The conservative activist, who hasn’t missed a Republican convention since 1988, left her Colorado home to lead a rag-tag band of party faithful still clinging to the hope that they can nominate anyone else but Trump.
Party leaders with similar reservations about Trump have already given up trying to fight against the businessman’s strong tide of support within the GOP base. Many have opted to skip the convention or swallow their pride and fall in line behind Trump.
But Unruh has come to fight, describing the struggle in biblical terms as an epic campaign for the soul of the Republican Party.
Watch the Republican convention #NeverTrump floor fight
The Republican Convention erupted into chaos as some delegates, including “Never Trump” supporters, loudly demanded a roll call vote.
Watch Donald Trump’s acceptance speech with the L.A. Times
Join us for a watch party in downtown Los Angeles as Donald Trump formally accepts the Republican presidential nomination, and play bingo with members of The Times’ politics team.
After the speech, Assistant Managing Editor For Politics Christina Bellantoni, Sacramento Bureau Chief John Myers and columnist Robin Abcarian will offer analysis and predictions, and take your questions.
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Floor fight over rules erupts at Republican convention
A floor fight erupted at the Republican convention as delegates opposed to Donald Trump’s nomination loudly protested during a fight over the gathering’s rules.
Utah Sen. Mike Lee stood up for the Never Trump rebels, saying that it was “unprecedented” that the convention chairman walked off the stage rather than allow a roll call vote on the rules.
“A roll call vote is our right as delegates,” said Lee, as protesters chanted “roll call vote!”
The uproar was a blow to Trump’s claim that his team had “crushed” the uprising as the GOP struggled to unify.
“Those who are calling for unity need to keep that in mind – if they want unity, treat us respectfully as delegates,” Lee said.
The Utah senator said that a majority of delegates from 11 states had asked for a roll call vote on the rules.
Party officials said several state delegations had dropped off the petition, leaving only nine — insufficient to force a roll call.
The Never Trump delegates want a vote on a proposal to change the rules so that delegates can vote for the presidential candidate of their choice, rather than the winner of their state’s primary or caucus.
Kendal Unruh, Colorado delegate and leader of the anti-Trump effort, accused the Trump campaign and the party of pressuring delegates to reject the roll call.
“They whipped them pretty hard,” she said.
She said she didn’t know who had removed their names from the petition. “We have a right to know that. We can’t just take them at their word. We actually need to know who these names are.”
She vowed to refuse to help Trump get elected and expressed skepticism that he would be able to unify the party.
“Not after behavior like this,” she said. “Not after he’s shown us that we’re not wanted and not after he’s said that he can win without us.”
2 p.m.: This post was updated with comment from Kendal Unruh.
Boos, shouting for ‘roll call vote’ as convention adopts rules package
Anti-Trump delegates seek procedural move to embarrass him at the Republican convention
After being decisively beat back by the Republican Party, anti-Donald Trump delegates are pursuing a last-ditch procedural bid to embarrass the party and its presumptive nominee, even though their bid to block his nomination is all but doomed.
Proponents of the “Free the Delegates” movement say they have cleared a procedural hurdle that would force a roll call vote on the convention rules package crafted by a key panel last week.
The current rules package requires delegates to vote according to the results of the primary season. Anti-Trump forces hope they can get a majority of convention-goers to reject those guidelines, forcing Republicans to craft a new rules package that would let the 2,472 delegates to vote for whomever they choose.
Not everyone who signed petitions trying to force a roll call is in favor of such a rule change; some simply sought other alterations that the panel rebuffed last week.
“It’s only fair the delegates on the convention floor get a chance to vote on this up or down,” said Guy Short, a delegate from Colorado who was active in the roll call. “I will vote no. I think this was not an inclusive process. It was not a deliberative process.”
If the rules package gets voted down, “we’ll have to come back and do some work again,” said Short, a member of the rules committee. “If it passes, then we move on, and I believe Donald Trump is the only name put in nomination and he’ll be our nominee.”
The likelihood of the mutiny drawing sufficient support is extremely slim, but a protracted roll call on the floor could be an embarrassing spectacle for Trump and the GOP, underscoring the lingering unease some in the party have for their presumptive nominee.
One committee member, who was allied with the party operatives and Trump campaign to quash the revolt last week, dismissed the maneuver as an annoyance.
“It’s just to disrupt,” said John Hammond of Indiana. “And it’s not looked upon kindly around here.”
Julian Castro, potential Clinton running mate, slips up
This is not great timing for Julian Castro, who is on Hillary Clinton’s short list of potential running mates.
The charismatic political rising star serving as President Obama’s secretary of Housing and Urban Development has gotten himself into trouble for mixing politics with his government job. An investigation by the Office of Special Counsel, which oversees the rules governing politicking by federal employees, found Castro recently had violated the Hatch Act, which prohibits such co-mingling.
The transgression took place during an April interview with Katie Couric on Yahoo News. The interview was coordinated through Castro’s government office and took place with the HUD seal behind him. During the interview, Castro answered a few questions about his agency’s work until conversation turned, predictably, to the upcoming presidential election.
Such interviews happen all the time. But investigators found that the format in this case left the impression that Castro was speaking on behalf of HUD, and not as a private citizen, when he made his pitch for Hillary Clinton during the interview.
As investigators put it, he had “impermissibly mixed his personal political views with official government agency business.”
That’s not a career-killing move. Violations of the Hatch Act can lead to a civil fine of as much as $1,000, but two legal experts with experience with the statute said they could not recall a case with facts similar to Castro’s that was resolved with anything more dramatic than a reprimand.
Still, the incident is another reminder that Castro is still a relative political newcomer and lacks the savvy and expertise of some others on Clinton’s short list. Her vice presidential vetting team is surely taking notice.
Speaking of the veepstakes, the Clinton campaign just announced that the candidate will be holding events in the crucial swing state of Florida on Friday and Saturday. There is a lot of speculation that she will unveil her pick during that trip.
This post was updated at 3:17 p.m. to include additional information on Hatch Act penalties.
Cleveland police form barrier between anti-Trump protesters and counter-demonstrators
Cleveland police separated a group of anti-Trump protesters and a small crowd of counter-demonstrators who had been hurling anti-LGBT slurs at the crowd.
About a dozen men wearing hats that read “Fear God” or “Obey Jesus” began antagonizing the anti-Trump demonstrators after an otherwise peaceful march through downtown and past the Quicken Loans Arena.
At one point, the counter-protesters screamed “Micah Johnson is your hero,” referring to the Dallas shooter who killed five police officers. Anti-Trump protestors returned with chants of “Black Lives Matter.”
Asked why they chose to come down to Mall A, one of the counter-protesters said they wanted to oppose demonstrators who “hate America and hate God.” The protester, who wore military fatigues and would not give his name, was also involved in confrontations with demonstrators at a Trump rally in Anaheim earlier this year.
Cleveland police on bikes formed a barrier between the two groups and no one appeared to have been arrested.
Some of the anti-Trump protesters bemoaned the fact that the late clash would distract from an otherwise peaceful rally.
“Our focus is not on trying to be louder than the next guy,” said Devin Rodgers, 27, of Cleveland. “It’s about trying to show people who we are and get them to understand where we come from.”
See what’s going on inside the Republican National Convention
Ted Cruz to thank delegates supporting him at the convention
Sen. Ted Cruz, the second-place finisher in the GOP primary season, on Wednesday is scheduled to greet the hundreds of delegates who are supporting him at the Republican National Convention.
“Ted Cruz made a lot of new friends over the last two years, many of whom are delegates and the convention is an opportunity to thank and encourage them to continue working in the field to advance constitutional principles and candidates who will put those ideas into action,” said Ron Nehring, who served as a national spokesman and California chairman for Cruz’s presidential campaign.
At one point, the Texas senator and his supporters had hoped to win Cruz the presidential nomination at a contested convention here. They abandoned those efforts once it became clear that Donald Trump would win the 1,237 delegates necessary to clinch the nomination.
Cruz is one of the highest-profile Republicans who is appearing at the convention but has not endorsed Trump.
“In this election I am where a great many voters are, which is that I am listening and watching and coming to a decision,” Cruz told Politico on Sunday.
At the convention, Cruz’s supporters have worked on supporting conservative efforts in the platform and rules committees, hoping to create a glide path for a future presidential run.
Cruz is set to address the convention Wednesday evening. Earlier in the day, he’s scheduled to host the “thank you event” for delegates at a waterfront restaurant. On Thursday, he’s to speak at the Texas GOP delegation breakfast.
‘There’s something going on,’ Trump says of President Obama’s body language
When he is not being brutally frank, Donald Trump has a tendency to speak in dog whistles, code words and innuendo.
Once a vociferous “birther” who questioned President Obama’s citizenship, Trump has taken to suggesting he can infer insincerity, or worse, from the president’s body language and tone.
On Monday morning, as the Republican National Convention kicked off in Cleveland, the party’s presumptive nominee told Fox News that there was just something off about Obama’s response to Sunday’s horrific police killings in Baton Rouge, La.
“I watched the president, and sometimes the words are OK, but you look at the body language, there’s something going on,” Trump told “Fox & Friends.”
What, exactly, is going on?
To many observers, the president appeared freighted with sadness. He has spent a good chunk of his time consoling Americans about the spate of police killings of black men and the apparent revenge killings of officers in Dallas and Baton Rouge. “We need to temper our words and open our hearts,” he said Sunday.
But Trump could not quite put his finger on it.
“There’s just a bad feeling, and a lot of bad feeling about him,” he said. “I see it, too.”
“Something going on” is a theme Trump has advanced in the past, especially when he attacks Obama for not using the phrase “radical Islamic terrorism.”
“People cannot believe that President Obama is acting the way he acts, and can’t even mention the words ‘radical Islamic terrorism,’” Trump told Fox News in June. “There’s something going on. It’s inconceivable. There’s something going on.”
In December, he said the same thing in a speech to Republican Jewish fundraisers: “There’s something going on with him that we don’t know about.”
Delegation hotels give a glimpse of importance (or not)
If you’re from a swing state, chances are your commute to the Quicken Loans Arena is going to be a lot easier than many of the other Republican National Convention attendees.
We put together a handy chart showing how far each of the delegations are staying from the main event. Notice a pattern? Strongly red or blue states have to a long ways to travel, with the exception of Donald Trump’s home state of New York.
As Republicans take the stage in Ohio, so does Hillary Clinton at the NAACP
As Republicans opened their national convention in Cleveland Monday, Hillary Clinton wasted no time launching into counter-programming, taunting Donald Trump at a nearby address before the NAACP and offering a vision for confronting the recent spate of violence in American communities starkly different than his.
Clinton mocked Trump for declining to appear before the group, and she told the audience that the first time her publicity friendly opponent spoke to the press was in 1973, when one of his companies was accused of discriminating against black people seeking to rent apartments.
“We have heard a lot of troubling things from Donald Trump, but that one is shocking,” Clinton said.
The speech at the NAACP annual conference in Cincinnati came as both Clinton and Trump find their campaigns overshadowed by the shooting deaths of three police officers in Baton Rogue, La., over the weekend, the latest incident in an epidemic of violence that has claimed the lives of multiple police officers, as well as black civilians who were killed by police.
As Trump positions himself as the “law and order” candidate whose answer to the violence is cracking down on lawbreakers with little patience for movements such as Black Lives Matter, Clinton warns that the problems can only be solved by rooting out racism from the criminal justice system. She is also pushing for new gun control laws.
“Let’s admit it,” Clinton said. “There is clear evidence that African Americans are disproportionately killed in police incidents compared to any other group…Something is profoundly wrong. We can’t ignore that. We can’t wish it away. We have to make it right.”
Clinton used the NAACP platform to tear into Trump’s record on issues of equality, saying he demeaned the first black president by accusing him of not being an American citizen, has played “coy with white supremacists,” showed disrespect for women, and wanted to “ban an entire religion” with his plan to block Muslims from entering the country. (He appeared to walk back that plan Sunday night on “60 Minutes.”)
“At times like these, we need a president who can help pull us together, not split us apart,” Clinton said. ”I will work every single day to do just that. The Republican nominee for president will do the exact opposite. He might say otherwise if he were here, but of course he declined your invitation. So all we can go on is what he has said and done in the past.”
Study: Donald Trump far more likely to retweet and link to the outside; Hillary Clinton pushes voters to Clintonland
The contrast between Donald Trump’s free-wheeling campaign style and Hillary Clinton’s tightly controlled apparatus also extends to their digital strategies. Trump is far more likely to retweet the general public and link to outside news sources than Clinton, whose retweets and Facebook links tend to keep her followers within the Clinton campaign universe.
That’s all according to a new Pew Research Center study released Monday as part of a technology forum outside the Republican National Convention. Four out of five of Clinton’s Facebook links send supporters to articles and posts on her news site, which are also predominantly written by the campaign. The opposite is true for Trump: Four out of five of his Facebook links go directly to outside news sources. His own website also includes much more content written by outsiders than Clinton’s.
A similar pattern emerges on Twitter, Trump’s favorite medium. Both candidates retweet others about 20% of the time. But when Trump retweets, he is far more likely than Clinton (78%) to retweet a member of the general public. The vast majority of Clinton’s retweets (80%) come from campaign-related accounts.
Pew has been studying campaign and voter Internet habits since 2000, when only one in 10 adults said they regularly got campaign news from online sources. Now, eight in 10 get news online, including six in 10 who get election news that way, much of it on mobile devices.
That doesn’t mean their happy about all that news.
Clinton’s use of technology to link supporters to her own message is not merely style. She also has a far more sophisticated technology apparatus than Trump, who has called analytics overrated.
Sara Fagen, a technology strategist and former advisor to George W. Bush, said Clinton’s technology advantage will matter if the election is close. She cited Trump’s naming of Mike Pence as his running mate via Twitter as an example of a blown opportunity. Both Barack Obama in 2008 and Mitt Romney in 2012 used their announcements to enlarge their lists of supporters.
Fagen predicted that the next major step in using technology to target voters would use data to find where and when to target them, using their location and beliefs to determine the type and content of ads. For example, certain women might hear education-related ads on the radio when they drop their kids off at school, then get another message at their work computers, followed by a mobile ad when they are most likely to be looking at their phones.
Why does California have front row Republican convention seats? For looks
A California delegate was among the first to be called on as the convention got underway, and the state’s prominent seating is both rare and strategic.
Presidential campaigns typically give priority to states that are competitive in the general election or have significant ties to the ticket or the party.
But California is one of a handful of states where all of the delegates support Donald Trump. Because the state’s primary took place after the race was decided and per the state GOP’s rules, all 172 California delegates support Trump and were chosen by his campaign. Placing them in the front at the convention helps Republicans avoid images of disunity. Here’s the seating chart:
Anti-Trump protesters in Cleveland: ‘He is a candidate who will set us back decades’
Dozens of anti-Trump protesters gathered in downtown Cleveland on Monday afternoon, minutes before the Republican National Convention was set to begin, to protest a candidate many say has deepened racial divides in a country already split over fractious issues such as police use-of-force.
“He is a candidate who will set us back decades,” said 19-year-old David Udall of Los Angeles as he held a large “Stop Trump” banner.
Many of the activists, some of whom took part in a thunderous but peaceful march against Trump and police brutality on Sunday afternoon, had traveled thousands of miles to oppose the GOP nominee.
The group planned to march again Monday from St. Clair Avenue to an unknown location. Event organizers have said the group does not have a permit to march, which could lead to clashes with police.
Although Sunday’s rally was peaceful, Udall said the people assembled here on Monday expected to face tougher resistance as the week goes on.
“It’s definitely a risk. You’ll notice they have banned every weapon imaginable except for automatic weapons,” said Udall, referring to heavily criticized convention rules that have banned tennis balls and water guns, but not rifles.
California delegates to hear from elected officials, celebrities
California Republicans will hear from a variety of personalities at their delegation breakfasts this week, including a reality television star and a rising GOP star.
On Thursday, delegates are to hear from Omarosa Manigault, who was a contestant on the first season of “The Apprentice,” and conservative author and television personality Ann Coulter. On Friday, the group of about 550 is to hear from Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Vista), who will be signing copies of his new book, and Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton, the youngest person in that body.
Despite the fact that California is the largest delegation and home to many of the GOP’s most generous donors, it is hard for the state party to get speakers to visit during the Republican National Convention because it is often housed far from the action.
That was especially true this year, with the delegation staying about an hour away in Sandusky, Ohio. State party officials sought help from their national counterparts in getting speakers to make the drive.
As for Cotton, who is believed to be considering a 2020 presidential run? His people reached out to the delegation.
People hate political parties, except when they’re voting. That’s good news for Trump (and Clinton)
This summer of discontent seems a perfectly awful time to hold a national political convention.
The two presumptive White House nominees, Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, have record-high disapproval ratings. Polls show their respective parties are held in similarly low regard.
Yet come November, as surely as summer turns to fall, the overwhelmingly majority of voters — probably 80% or more — will cast ballots for the two candidates marching beneath their respective party banners.
Donald Trump or Donald Doe: It wouldn’t matter who Republicans nominate this week in Cleveland. The same goes for Hillary Clinton and the Democratic convention next week in Philadelphia; anyone with the “R” or “D” beside his or her name can count on the overwhelming support of fellow partisans.
Indeed, for all the talk of fading political allegiances, about the two major parties dying off, about the rise of independent voters, party labels are still the single best predictor of voting behavior. They telegraph how an individual will cast a ballot far better than age, income, gender, education, sexual orientation or whether someone lives in a big city, the suburbs or the countryside.
How police have prepared for the Republican convention: Thousands of officers, courts open late
Tens of thousands of Donald Trump supporters and activists who oppose him have arrived in or are on their way to Cleveland. Law enforcement officials have said they are ready for anything. Here’s how they’ve prepared to deal with a potentially very tense atmosphere:
• In addition to local police, law enforcement agenciess from as far as Fort Worth, Texas, are sending up to 2,500 officers.
• Cleveland’s municipal court system is prepared to stay open from 5 a.m. to 1 a.m. during the convention, with a dozen judges available to process up to a 1,000 arrests a day.
• Ohio’s open-carry laws will allow protesters to bring their guns, but police said they have “tweaked our policy a bit, our tactics, to ensure everybody is safe, including that person open-carrying” in response to the Dallas killings of police officers during a protest.
• Real guns are protected by law, but police have banned a very long list of other items from the protest area, including fake guns, tennis balls, containers of bodily fluids, bike locks and gas masks.
The convention floor this morning: Just add delegates
The Republican National Convention will officially kick off in just under an hour.
‘I hope to God I don’t have to use it,’ says a man who brought a gun to a Cleveland Donald Trump rally
Tyson Gross arrived at a Donald Trump rally on the Cleveland riverfront Monday with a plainly visible Glock pistol in a holster on his belt.
“I hope to God I don’t have to use it,” said the soft-spoken 31-year-old Navy financial analyst.
Gross, who drove more than five hours from his home in Greenbelt, Md., to attend the rally, said he did not want to be left like “a sheep to the slaughter” should violence erupt at the Republican National Convention.
He said it was the first time he has walked around in public with an openly displayed firearm. That wouldn’t be legal in Maryland, but Ohio’s open-carry law makes it possible outside the convention hall, adding to the tense mood of a city on edge after another terrorist attack in France and fatal shootings of police officers in Baton Rouge, La., and Dallas.
“I don’t want to be here, because it’s dangerous,” said Gross, who added that he fears a terrorist attack and violent clashes with anti-Trump protesters.
“I respect their right to protest,” he said of Black Lives Matter demonstrators and others who oppose the Republican presidential nominee-in-waiting who described the nation Sunday as “a divided crime scene” that “will only get worse.”
“Come armed too,” Gross said of the Black Lives Matters supporters. “It’s fine. Just don’t harm anybody.”
The rally of bikers, tea party followers and other Trump supporters was organized by Roger Stone, a veteran GOP campaign consultant and Trump confidant.
“I can’t wait to get out of here,” said Gross, who lifted his “Hillary for Prison 2016” T-shirt to show how the heavy gun on the belt of his baggy shorts was weighing down his thin frame.
He said his wife urged him not to drive to Cleveland for the rally, but he insisted he needed to demonstrate — by displaying his loaded gun — that Trump’s supporters could not be intimidated.
“When I was saying goodbye to my wife, I was getting a little teary-eyed,” he said. “I didn’t know what to expect.”
It’s never too early to pander to Iowans
At political conventions, it’s nice to be from Iowa.
From their hotel in one of Cleveland’s toniest suburbs, Iowa’s small delegation to the Republican convention exerts a powerful attraction on aspiring politicians out of all proportion to their numbers. The reason, of course, is the state’s position on the political calendar -- the first contest of the nominating season every four years.
“That’s what Iowa receives because Iowa is first in the nation,” the state party chairman, Jeff Kaufmann, told delegates gathered Monday morning at a breakfast featuring Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, who ran for the GOP nomination this time around and clearly has not ruled out doing so again.
“In 20 years, I’ll still be younger than Hillary,” Walker told reporters (and he will be, albeit by a week), suggesting that he has many years in which to grab for the brass ring once more.
He’s not necessarily going to wait that long, however.
Walker said he leaned toward running for election to a third term as governor in 2018, and that if he did so, he wouldn’t seek the nomination in 2020. “I would fulfill my term,” he said, adding that he had learned from this past year the difficulty of running for one office while holding another.
Notably, however, he didn’t say that he had made up his mind. “For the future, we’ll have to see,” he said after speaking to about 80 delegates and guests.
Saying much more would clearly be impolitic, because talk of a 2020 run largely presupposes that a Republican will not be in the White House seeking reelection.
Walker is far from the only aspiring Republican paying court to the Iowans. This week, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich is scheduled to host the delegates on a boat cruise. Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, who won the Iowa caucus in 2012 but barely registered there this year, plans a visit to their hotel. Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas may visit as well. The delegation ranks with New Hampshire’s – scene of the first primary – as a destination.
Orange County woman is organizing the GOP convention behind the scenes
There are tough jobs, and then there’s Marcia Lee Kelly’s job: organizing the Republican National Convention in Cleveland at a time of growing national unrest and an outspoken, often unpredictable presidential candidate named Donald Trump.
Like the presumptive GOP nominee himself, the event that kicks off Monday has the potential to go off script at any moment.
But Kelly, director of operations, betrays no special worry about the convention that’s expected to draw 2,470 delegates, more than 50,000 guests and about 15,000 members of the media, including a large international press corps. Various groups — from right-wing activists to left-wing anarchists — also have vowed to show up in a city still raw from the 2014 fatal police shooting of Tamir Rice, a 12-year-old African American boy with a pellet gun.
One year ago, Kelly, 46, moved from her home in Laguna Niguel to an apartment in Cleveland to start her new role. The youngest of five children of Korean immigrants, she is the first woman and first Asian American to take that mantle.
Sen. Cotton doesn’t mention Trump by name as he kicks off sprint through the convention breakfast circuit
Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas is among a handful of elected officials addressing the Republican National Convention this week. But the rising GOP star never mentioned Donald Trump, his party’s presumptive nominee, by name as he addressed South Carolina delegates Monday morning.
Instead he lauded the Republican party’s gains in recent years in local, state and federal offices.
“When you think about the accomplishments we’ve made and you hear what some Republicans still say today, that we need to show we can govern, that we should not be scary, that we have to show that we’re a grown-up party, I just fundamentally disagree with that viewpoint,” he told delegates dining on eggs and fruit at the Kafeteria restaurant in downtown Cleveland. “I don’t think we should accept the viewpoint of the Democrats about our party. We don’t have to show we can govern, we have proven that we are America’s governing party. From city hall to the courthouse to the state house to the Congress, and this November to the White House, Americans have entrusted us to govern our country.”
Politicians who appear at delegation events, particularly those hosted by the early-voting states of Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina, are trying to raise their national profile and are often eyeing higher office. And no politician is working the delegation breakfast circuit harder this year than Cotton, a combat veteran who, at the age of 39, is the youngest member of the Senate and is widely believed to be considering a 2020 presidential run.
He also spoke to the Ohio delegation on Monday, and will speak to Iowa, New Hampshire and California later this week.
At the South Carolina breakfast, as is customary, Cotton wove platitudes about the host state into his remarks.
“South Carolina has a very special spot in my heart,” Cotton said, adding that he got the worst hair cut of his life there at Fort Jackson during basic training. “It makes [bald South Carolina Sen.] Tim Scott look like he has a full head of flowing hair. Of course neither of us could hold a candle to [Rep.] Trey Gowdy,” who is known for his ever-changing hair styles.
Cotton declined to take questions from reporters after his 15-minute remarks, saying “gotta go” as he rushed down an escalator.
Donald Trump impugns President Obama on race, then agrees with him
As the convention at which he will be nominated prepared to open, presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump today raised questions about President Obama’s loyalties when it comes to disputes between African Americans and police -- and at the same time acknowledged Obama’s point that blacks are treated differently by police.
Trump acknowledged both with what has become his catch-all phrase: “Something’s going on.”
In a Monday morning telephone interview with Fox News, Trump said race relations were at their worst level in a generation. He agreed when host Steve Doocy quoted an earlier guest as saying Obama “has blood on his hands” when it comes to violence against police officers.
Obama spoke to the nation Sunday, after the killings of three Baton Rouge, La., officers. “Nothing justifies violence against law enforcement. Attacks on police are an attack on all of us and the rule of law that makes society possible,” the president said. He also cautioned against “inflammatory rhetoric.”
Trump, in response, called Obama “a great divider.”
“I mean, you know, I watched the president and sometimes the words are OK but you just look at the body language, there’s something going on,” Trump told Fox anchors. “Look, there’s something going on and the words are not often OK, by the way.”
“What does that mean, there’s something going on?” Doocy replied.
“There’s just a bad feeling, a lot of bad feeling about him,” Trump said. “I see it too. There’s a lot of bad feeling about him.”
Trump’s comments were in line with his suggestions four years ago that Obama had been born in Africa, the birthplace of his father. He campaigned relentlessly for proof of Obama’s U.S. citizenship, which Obama produced in the form of his birth certificate.
Seconds after slighting Obama on Monday, Trump agreed when host Brian Kilmeade reminded him of assertions by fellow Republicans that African Americans often are treated more severely by law enforcement. Trump said that there was “definitely something going on there also.”
“And it has to do with training and it has to do with something,” he said. “But there is something going on that maybe, Brian, we can’t recognize it or we can’t see it unless you’re black, and it’s an experience.”
Earlier in the conversation, Trump said that the Baton Rouge shooter, Gavin Eugene Long, a Marine Corps veteran, was “a member” of “radical Islam.” No evidence has been uncovered to support that claim.
So much for GOP unity. Manafort bashes Bushes for skipping the convention, calling them ‘part of the past’
When Donald Trump’s campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, outlined the GOP convention themes Monday morning, Republican Party unity was last on the list.
No surprise — after Manafort started the day bashing some of the party’s most admired leaders, including the Bush family and Ohio Gov. John Kasich, for skipping the convention in Cleveland.
“Certainly the Bush family, while we would have liked to have had them, they’re part of the past,” Manafort said at the morning briefing. “We’re dealing with the future.”
Kasich, he said, was also invited, but chose to sit it out, which he said was “embarrassing.”
“We think that was a wrong decision,” Manafort said.
As the party gathers in Cleveland to nominate Trump, it also is pulling itself apart.
What remains to be seen is if Trump’s unlikely rise and brash populism can unify the frayed GOP, or if the Republican Party is becoming something else in the Trump era.
As Manafort put it Monday, the GOP voters who nominated Trump are moving ahead with or without the Bushes and other naysayers.
“They do not reflect the broad strokes of the Republican Party,” he said.
Trump backers hoped the addition of Indiana Gov. Mike Pence to the GOP ticket as Trump’s running mate would soothe wary Republicans unhappy with Trump’s rise.
Pence has helped, but it’s still, as Manafort said this week, “Trump’s convention.”
In detailing the week’s themes, introducing voters to Trump, litigating the “failures of the Obama administration” and exposing Democrat Hillary Clinton’s “character... her personal issues,” as Manafort put it, “the fourth and final piece of the strategy is to unify the party.”
“We think that the unification is happening,” he said. “We hope that when the Bush family decides to participate again in the political process, they will join us.
“But healing takes time, and we understand that.”
Watch: These Republicans will be Cleveland no-shows
Many notable Republicans, including two former presidents and the party’s two most recent nominees, are staying away from the Republican National Convention this year.
Even though they’re in the majority, House Republicans are still going to run on a theme of change
House Republicans hold the biggest majority since the Great Depression. But the lawmaker in charge of keeping all those seats, Oregon Rep. Greg Walden, said Monday that the next election is about “whether you want to continue things the way they are or whether you’re ready for real change.”
The contradiction is one of several that underscores the challenge facing many down-ballot Republicans in an election year headlined by Donald Trump, one of the party’s least popular presumptive nominees in modern history.
Walden said many GOP candidates in competitive districts will outperform Trump on the ballot because of the personal connections they have made with voters. Yet, he also said they will rely on the frustration and insecurity expressed by Trump’s voters.
During a forum hosted by the Atlantic magazine outside the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, he spoke confidently about his party’s chances for keeping the House, calling Democratic predictions that 70 to 80 seats are competitive “preposterous.”
Republicans hold 247 of 435 House seats. Though they are predicted to lose seats this year, few expect them to lose control.
Walden did not dismiss Trump’s effect on House races, but said it would vary by region.
One thing in the Republicans’ favor: presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton is also extremely unpopular, particularly in some competitive House districts. Walden argued that Republicans will have an easier time linking Democratic candidates to Clinton than Democrats will have linking their opponents to Trump. His reason: Clinton is more tied to the Democratic establishment because of her career in politics.
David Wasserman, House editor of the Cook Political Report, estimated that Democrats would win five to 15 seats. He said the party would have a tough time making larger gains because, in many cases, Clinton will run up her vote tallies in districts already controlled by Democrats and because the party has failed to field strong candidates in some competitive districts.
Still, he predicted that House Speaker Paul Ryan’s job would get tougher in 2017, with a smaller majority and a growing caucus of insurgent members willing to buck leadership.
GOP convention: There’s an app for that
Republican National Convention organizers are bragging their app for the press is not just full of information (although it’s still missing the schedule) , it can double as Google Maps.
The app features “turn-by-turn directions inside Convention Complex,” reads a press release issued Friday.
Find it here. Or check out our map below.
Donald Trump will introduce wife Melania at the Republican convention Monday night
It was more civil in 1976
This year’s Republican National Convention in Cleveland is nothing like what happened in 1976 in Kansas City.
That year, Ronald Reagan tried his hardest to wrest the nomination from Gerald Ford. And the convention showed American politics at its best: Rough but respectful, cutthroat but civil.
No Donald Trump-like “Lyin’ Jerry” or “Corrupt Ron.”
Here’s a bit of a history lesson as the 2016 convention gets started.
The morning coffee hasn’t even cooled and already it’s snarky at the Republican convention in Cleveland
The sun had barely peeked over the horizon here along Lake Erie when the first Trump-versus-the-world battle flared.
Paul Manafort, chairman of Donald Trump’s campaign, took to MSNBC to trash the Republican convention’s host governor, Ohio’s John Kasich, an erstwhile rival for the GOP nomination who has refused to endorse the presumptive nominee and pointedly announced he would not be taking the stage at this week’s party gathering.
Not that Kasich is exactly making himself scarce. He released a schedule showing him attending a number of events in and around Cleveland, including a visit with the New Hampshire delegation. (Can you say 2020?)
“He’s making a big mistake,” Manafort said said of Kasich. “He’s looking at something that’s not going to happen. He’s hurting his state — he’s embarrassing [the] state, frankly.”
The Kasich camp, through a spokesman, fired back on Twitter, one of Trump’s favorite outlets.
Analysis: As violence elsewhere cuts into the GOP convention, Trump is under pressure to stay on his safety message
The day before Republicans were to open a convention meant to serve as a fresh opportunity to redefine Donald Trump, organizers had to delay their long-awaited preview of the gathering so as not to collide with President Obama’s remarks to the nation about yet another shocking act of violence.
This time it was in Baton Rouge, La., where three police officers were shot dead Sunday morning. When the GOP briefing began, the first topic was Baton Rouge.
Across Cleveland, worries about violence led the head of the local police union to ask Ohio Gov. John Kasich to rescind the right of gun owners to openly carry weapons near the convention areas. Kasich said that under state law, he did not have the power to limit firearms, which were in evidence Sunday.
Donald Trump says he’ll attend wife Melania’s convention speech today
Donald Trump said Monday he will attend wife Melania’s speech at the Republican National Convention later in the day.
“I’d love to be there when my wife speaks,” Trump said on Fox News’ “Fox and Friends.” “So the answer is yes — I will be there.”
His children Donald Jr., Eric, Ivanka and Tiffany are also scheduled to speak at the convention.
“I’ll bet she gives a great speech,” Trump said of Melania. “She’s worked hard on it.”
GOP convention schedule: There’s (not yet) an app for that
This is what the GOP convention will look like: Reality-TV stars and few high-profile Republicans
Donald Trump’s climb to the top of the Republican ticket shattered the rules of presidential politics. Now his nomination is promising to break with tradition like no other political convention in the modern era.
Trump’s brash brand of reality-TV politics is expected to produce a crowd-pleasing four days in Cleveland. It’s sure to capture the populist sentiment that propelled his rise, but will be absent the pageantry of party elders and statesmen giving approval to a presidential hopeful the Republican establishment has been slow to embrace.
Many top officials, including both living former Republican presidents, opted to stay home, not that they were entirely welcome by Trump fans anyway. In their place will be soap opera actors, Trump family friends and several billionaires who will attest to the businessman’s character and savvy.
A Republican convention starring Donald Trump is a wild card for TV executives
The stunning development of having Donald Trump as the Republican presidential nominee brings an element of unpredictability to the GOP’s convention, which is not lost on TV network executives who have covered the coronation-like conventions of recent decades.
Here’s a sneak peak at Stephen Colbert’s Republican convention show
“The Late Show” will air live from July 18 to July 21 during the Republican National Convention.
Colbert also fooled around (or practiced?) on stage Sunday.
Everything you really want to know about Donald Trump, the GOP’s new leader
Despite his early lead in the polls, Donald Trump was dismissed by many early on as a real estate tycoon and reality show star who had never held public office and was unlikely to retain his lead. This week, he’ll become the Republican party’s standard-bearer. This is everything you need to know about him.
Protests in Cleveland are well under way before the convention start today
The protests began in earnest over the weekend in Cleveland as delegates and Republican officials arrived from all over the nation to nominate Donald Trump for president. Here’s why this Code Pink protester was there:
Protesters from the antiwar group Code Pink were at an anti-Donald Trump demonstration on the eve of the Republican National Convention in Cleveland on July 17, 2016. (Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)
Though many pro-Trump demonstrators are expected, the protests in downtown Cleveland on Sunday seemed to be largely anti-Trump.
There were some early signs of pro-GOP demonstrations, however.
What Donald Trump needs to achieve at this ‘unconventional’ convention
During the next four days, Donald Trump must do something he has yet to achieve, even as he stormed past a field of far more politically practiced rivals to seize the GOP nomination: convince a majority of voters that he has the steadiness of temper, solidity of character and capacity for leadership they desire in a president.
Our live Republican convention coverage begins where it will probably end: With balloons
These were the balloons at the Republican National Convention before they were lifted to the ceiling. About 125,000 balloons are now hanging in Quickens Loans Arena.
They’re scheduled to come down just after Donald Trump wraps up the convention on Thursday night.
Stay tuned. Much more to come before the balloons come down.
Social media explodes with more Trump plagiarism allegations
Another day, another speech by a member of the Trump family — and another round of plagiarism charges coursing through social media.
The Daily Show’s Twitter account seemed to pounce first when it pointed out lines from Donald Trump Jr.’s speech that seemed to be identical to words first used in a May article by F.H. Buckley in The American Conservative called “Trump vs. the New Class.”
Within 45 minutes The Daily Show’s tweet had been retweeted 9,900 times.
In his speech, Donald Trump’s son said:
“Our schools use to be an elevator to the middle class, now they’re stalled on the ground floor. They’re like Soviet-era department stores that are run for the benefit of the clerks and not the customers, for the teachers and the administrators and not the students.”
From Buckley’s article:
“What should be an elevator to the upper class is stalled on the ground floor. Part of the fault for this may be laid at the feet of the system’s entrenched interests: the teachers’ unions and the higher-education professoriate. Our schools and universities are like the old Soviet department stores whose mission was to serve the interests of the sales clerks and not the customers. “
The relevant part of Trump’s speech begins at the eight-minute mark here:
In response, Buckley took to Twitter to defend the younger Donald Trump, saying the speech “wasn’t stealing.” He later told Business Insider he was, in fact, a writer for the convention speech.
James Fallows, former chief speechwriter for President Jimmy Carter, responded to the hubbub on Twitter and in a piece for The Atlantic:
“You don’t recycle, without attribution, things you’ve written and let someone else present them as his or her own words,” Fallows wrote. “At least I haven’t done it myself or previously known of people doing this.”