As of today, Donald Trump is officially and formally the Republican candidate for President of the United States. Indiana Governor Mike Pence is officially the Republican Candidate for Vice President.
For the second day, despite grave expectations, no substantial violence occurred from protesters outside the event. While it could be that the more sinister plans are waiting for Thursday, it appears the Cleveland police are effectively in control.
While the pace of the convention is not quite as intense as an episode of “The Apprentice” some of the speeches were quite good.
Chris Christie gave a rousing speech playing the game of “guilty or not guilty” with the crowd about Hillary Clinton. My favorite remark from Christie – Hillary will bring “all the failures of the Obama years but with less charm and more lies.”
Tiffany Trump provided some insight into Donald Trump as a father. She is not the most experienced speaker having just graduated from college a couple of months ago. But she was quite bold, well rehearsed and the overall effect was charming.
Donald Trump, Jr. perhaps gave the best speech of the evening. It occurs to me he will make a good politician if he wants to be. He seemed a bit nervous at the start but brought the fire and produced some great memes. For example:
– Our schools are like “Russian department stores, run for the benefit of the clerks and not the customers”
– “Dodd Frank is consumer protection for big business” (after describing the 22000 pages of regulations it generated).
Ben Carson was humorous and on point. He spoke, in part, about Hillary’s attraction to Saul Alinsky and his work Rules for Radicals. Alinsky was a propagandist and supporter of radical and anti-establishment causes. Hillary was a fan and wrote her senior thesis about Alinsky.
Probaly the most awkard moment was the last speaker of the night arrived, Sajid Tarar from American Muslims for Trump. The audience seemed a bit taken aback at first and he received almost no applause at the start. He led a prayer with the crowd praying for better leadership and then gave a speech that acknowledged Crhistianity (as radical Islamists never seem to do). He managed to endear himself to some extent with the audience and got rousing applause upon completion.
Author’s note: Much has been made in the media about “plagiarism” by Melania Trump because her speech has some common phrasing with Michelle Obama’s speech in 2008.
In my opinion this was complete hogwash.
I looked at the phraseology used by both Trump and Michelle Obama. It seemed to me this was a common way to express this sentiment (kind of like the phrase “in harm’s way” which was from some poem somewhere and now everyone uses it).
Melania’s and Michelle’s speech writers each used this common phraseology, it was original in neither case. Plus it was a very small part of a very nice and effective speech from Melania Trump.
But the liberal press, hungry for any story (since I guess the level of violence outsite was not yet to their liking…), latched onto a liberal accusation and ran with it.