CRUZ FAILS TO ENDORSE TRUMP
The elephant landed in Cleveland Wednesday afternoon. He touched down in a helicopter on a grassy field, an action movie soundtrack blaring from the speakers on the ground.
But Donald Trump did not arrive to a convention at peace with itself. The now official Republican nominee faced a party still divided Wednesday and a campaign that just can’t seem to stop going wrong.
Among the items to make news Wednesday at the Republican National Convention: a ghostwriting plagiarist who some worry might not exist; a Trump surrogate who wants Hillary Clinton killed; and Third Eye Blind.
And that was all before the real drama of the night. Ted Cruz, Trump’s toughest competitor for the U.S. Republican presidential nomination, addressed the convention Wednesday night. He received a series of ovations that dwarfed almost any other this week.
But if his speech was heavy on conservative principle it was noticeably short on Donald Trump. Cruz congratulated Trump on his victory but he never endorsed him.
“We deserve leaders who stand for principle, who stand behind shared values,” he said as parts of the audience chanted “Trump” and others cheered for Cruz. He urged voters to come out in November and cast votes up and down the ballot for candidates they believed in. But again, he didn’t say Donald Trump’s name.
The speech sounded much more like the launch of a 2020 presidential bid than it did an effort at party unity. And it came on a day when nothing else was going right for the Trump campaign.
Elsewhere Wednesday, the controversy over Melania Trump’s stolen speech ground on. For the first time a Trump staffer admitted publicly that parts of the address had been plagiarized.
In a statement posted on the Trump website, a woman named Meredith McIver claimed responsibility for the gaffe, which has come to overshadow protests, policies and almost everything else at the convention so far.
McIver, who co-wrote several of Donald Trump’s books, said in the statement she worked with Melania on drafts of the speech and inadvertently inserted some of Michelle Obama’s words into the final version.
According to the New York Times, the confession featured the first apology in the history of the Trump campaign. It also came from a woman some aren’t entirely sure is real. Trump has a history of invented surrogates and McIver, outside her work for Trump, has little presence online.
Regardless, the speech snafu again raised questions about the competence of the Trump team. The Republican nominee has run his unorthodox campaign with a skeleton crew of family members and close advisers. Key moments have often gone awry, fundraising has been tepid and he has somehow managed to offend Third Eye Blind.
The 1990s rock band played a show in Cleveland Tuesday night. And in one of the odder moments of a strange week, band members taunted the audience repeatedly from the stage, refused to play their hits and later released a statement calling Trump “grotesque.”
Trump himself was scheduled to address a rally Wednesday, an attempt perhaps to seize the narrative once more. But in the end it turned out to be less speech than theatrical photo-op.
Trump’s arrival was a brief piece of political theatre that fit the man to a T. When his plane — identified with a massive TRUMP on the side — flew into view, above a green field near the waterfront, the volume on the house music swelled. The plane did a loop then flew out of view.
Minutes later, the music cranked up again. A new song kicked in. And then, in the sky, a black TRUMP helicopter appeared. With Pence and the Trump family waiting below, the copter circled the grass several times. As it finally descended, the music grew louder again.
When it landed, Trump stepped off. He walked out and around the media zone with Pence and his children. “The last time I got accused of speaking a little big long,” he told the crowd. “So this time I’m going to speak a lot short.”
Remarkably, he kept his word. But given the display put on by Cruz later that night, Trump may now be wishing he’d carried on a little more.