Republicans nominate Trump at convention

CHARLOTTE, N.C. » President Donald Trump turned a surprise opening-day appearance at his party’s scaleddown national convention into an opportunity to question the integrity of the fall election.

Trump, who was not scheduled to deliver his keynote convention address until later in the week, nevertheless made multiple public appearances throughout the first day of the four-day convention.

“The only way they can take this election away from us is if this is a rigged election,” Trump told hundreds of Republican delegates gathered in North Carolina, raising anew his unsupported concerns about Americans’ expected reliance on mail voting during the pandemic. Experts say mail voting has proved remarkably secure.

The GOP convention marks a crucial moment for Trump, the first-term Republican president tasked with reshaping the campaign he is losing by all accounts, at least for now.

A deep sense of pessimism has settled over the electorate 10 weeks before Election Day. Just 23% of Americans think the country is heading in the right direction, according to a new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

Trump’s harsh attacks against Democrats who are trying to expand mail voting and demonstrators protesting deaths in police custody often delight his die-hard loyalists. Yet convention organizers are also featuring a diverse lineup with a more inclusive message designed to expand Trump’s political coalition beyond his white, working-class base.

The fact that the Republicans gathered at all stood in contrast to the Democrats, who held an all-virtual convention last week.

Contrasting with Biden

Trump said he had made the trip to North Carolina to contrast himself with his Democratic rival, Joe Biden, who never traveled to Wisconsin, the state where the Democratic convention was originally supposed to be held.

The president has sought to minimize the toll of the coronavirus pandemic and he barely addressed it on Monday, but its impact was plainly evident at the Charlotte Convention Center, where just 336 delegates gathered instead of the thousands once expected to converge on this city for a weeklong extravaganza. Attendees sat at well-spaced tables at first and masks were mandatory, though many were seen flouting the regulation.

Trump also panned the state’s Democratic governor for restrictions put in place to try to prevent the spread of the virus, which has killed more than 175,000 people in the country and infected millions. The president accused Gov. Roy Cooper of “being in a total shutdown mode,” and claimed the restrictions were aimed at trying to hurt his campaign.

Republicans will spend the week working to convince the American people that the president deserves a second term. Aides want the convention to recast the story of Trump’s presidency and present the election as a choice between his vision for America’s future and the one presented by Biden.

“Over the next four days, President Trump and Republicans are going to talk about all we have achieved the past four years, and cast an aspirational, forwardlooking vision about what we can achieve in the next four,” said Ronna McDaniel, who chairs the Republican Party.

For both sides, it is an unconventional convention year.

The parties’ election year gatherings are typically massive events, drawing thousands of delegates, party leaders, donors, journalists and political junkies for a week of speeches, parties and after-parties that inject hundreds of thousands of dollars into the local economy and deliver a multiday infomercial for the nominee.

Resolutions approved

Besides formally awarding Trump the Republican nomination, delegates gathered in North Carolina also approved a handful of new resolutions, including one to keep Columbus Day as a federal holiday and one that labels the Southern Poverty Law Center, which catalogs the country’s hate groups, as a “radical organization.” Another bemoans “cancel culture,” warning that it “has grown into erasing of history, encouraging lawlessness, muting citizens and violating free exchange of ideas, thoughts, and speech.”