Protesters try to Trump drown out

Senator says he was ‘attacked’ by crazed mob

HUNDREDS of protesters gathered around the White House for what was billed as a “noise demonstration and dance party” to drown out President Donald Trump’s speech accepting the Republican presidential nomination on Thursday night (US time).

President Donald Trump painted a grim picture of life in the US if his rival Joe Biden wins the White House in the November election, promising insecurity, economic decline and an end to basic rights like free speech and gun ownership.

Biden, 77, has spent nearly five decades in the public eye as a moderate, and during the Democratic primary he had to fend off a number of challengers from the left.

“No one will be safe in Biden’s America,” Trump said, as he accepted his party’s nomination to run for a second and final term as president on the last night of the Republican National Convention.

The threat dovetailed with a lawand-order message that seems set to dominate the Republican campaign, as just over two months are left before polling day.

The speech, which lasted nearly 70 minutes – by far the longest at either party’s convention – included outlandish claims, such as that Trump is the greatest president for AfricanAmericans since Abraham Lincoln, who freed slaves.

Trump, 74, held the speech on the South Lawn of the White House, a controversial move with limited parallel in US history, as generally such conventions are held in arenas away from government property.

Members of Biden’s Democratic Party have criticised the move.

“I hope you hear us, Trump,” the leader of the local band TOB shouted.

The band blared go-go music, a distinctive DC variant on funk, as it moved in the direction of the White House.

The demonstrators wore masks, but there was no social distancing.

Later, a crowd enveloped US Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky as he left the convention, yelling for him to say the name of police shooting victim Breonna Taylor, who was killed in his state.

Video posted online showed dozens of people confronting Paul and his wife, Kelley, who were flanked by police officers after midnight.

Paul later tweeted that he had been “attacked” by a “crazed mob” a block from the White House.

The senator and his wife did not appear to have been touched by any of the protesters.