Debate advice: Nancy Pelosi says Joe Biden should skip debates with President Trump.
Trump “has failed to protect us.”
Trump, speaking for an hour and 10 minutes, had plenty to say about Biden and wasn’t shy about using his name.
“Joe Biden is not the savior of America’s souls — he is the destroyer of America’s jobs and if given the chance, he will be the destroyer of American greatness,” he said. “We have spent the last four years reversing the damage Joe Biden inflicted over the last 47 years.”
Trump called Biden a puppet for a Democratic Party that he said has been taken over by radical socialists.
“If the left gains power, they will demolish the suburbs, confiscate your guns and appoint justices who will wipe away your Second Amendment” and other constitutional freedoms, he said.
None of those positions is actually advocated by Biden or other Democrats. None if it will happen if he’s reelected, Trump promised.
“If the Democrat Party wants to stand with anarchists, agitators, rioters, looters and flagburners, that is up to them,” he said. “But I, as your president will not be part of it.”
It was the culmination of a fournight convention in which Trump and other Republicans blamed Democrats for racial justice unrest that broke out in cities after the Minneapolis police killing of George Floyd in May and the shooting of Jacob Blake by police in Kenosha, Wis., on Sunday. Trump mentioned neither Black man by name Thursday, nor did he refer explicitly to the killings of two protesters in Kenosha on Tuesday night. A white 17yearold has been charged with those killings.
“When there is police misconduct, the justice system must hold wrongdoers fully and completely accountable, and it will,” Trump said. “But what we can never have in America — and must never allow — is mob rule. In the strongest possible terms, the Republican Party condemns the rioting, looting, arson and violence we have seen in Democratrun cities like Kenosha, Minneapolis, Portland, Chicago and New York.”
Trump also gave a glimpse at his plans for the next four years, saying he would provide a substantial tax cut for parents, ban sanctuary cities, greatly expand energy development, “fully restore patriotic education to our schools” and ensure that “America will land the first woman on the moon — and the United States will be the first nation to plant its flag on Mars.”
He touched briefly on the coronavirus pandemic, which has claimed more than 180,000 Americans. Trump said his administration is “marshaling America’s scientific genius to produce a vaccine in record time . ... We will have a safe and effective vaccine this year” — a time frame many medical experts think is optimistic.
The president ended his speech on a rare upbeat note, saying the next four years will show the country worth of America’s “magnificent legacy.”
“Together, we are unstoppable. Together, we are unbeatable,” the president said.
A CBS News poll taken last week found that 90% of registered Republicans wanted to hear good things about Trump and Vice President Mike Pence at the convention, compared with 10% who preferred attacks on Biden and his running mate, California Sen. Kamala Harris.
They haven’t always gotten their wish. On Wednesday, for example, the convention featured Sen. Marsha Blackburn, RTenn., saying that in response to the coronavirus, Democrats such as Biden and Harris wanted to shut down the country “but keep the liquor stores and abortion clinics open.”
Then there was Michael McHale, president of the National Association of Police Organizations, calling Biden and Harris “the most radical antipolice ticket in history,” and South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem charging that “Democratrun cities across this country are being overrun by violent mobs.”
The tone didn’t change much Thursday.
Biden “is a Trojan horse with ... his party’s entire left wing hidden inside his body just waiting to execute their procriminal, antipolice policies,” said former
New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani.
Biden “is being told what to do by the radicals running my former party ... the same radicals trying to install him as their puppet president,” said Rep. Jeff Van Drew, a New Jersey Republican who was a Democrat until December.
The convention also brought out regular people with stories to tell. But even some of those carried warnings. Ann Dorn told a chilling tale of how her husband, 77yearold David Dorn, who retired as a St. Louisarea police officer after 44 years, was shot and killed in June as he protected a friend’s pawn shop from looters.
“Violence and destruction are not legitimate forms of protest,” she said, nearly breaking down in tears. “They do not safeguard Black lives. They destroy them. President Trump understands this.”
In the hours before Trump’s acceptance speech, both Biden and Harris pushed back at the convention’s vision of an America that has moved past its problems with racism, economic inequality and the coronavirus pandemic under Trump.
“Donald Trump refuses to even acknowledge there is a racial justice problem in America,” Biden said in a statement. “Instead of looking to calm the waters, he adds fuel to every fire. Violence isn’t a problem in his eyes — it’s a political strategy. And the more of it, the better for him.”
Speaking in Washington, D.C., Harris charged that Trump “failed to protect the American people. Plain and simple.”
The convention, with its nonstop praise of the president, “is designed for one purpose, to soothe Donald Trump’s ego. To make him feel good,” Harris said. “It’s not supposed to be about him. It’s supposed to be about the health and the safety and the wellbeing of the American people.”
But it’s a twominute television spot, which ran on the broadcast networks Thursday night ahead of the convention programming, that was most likely to infuriate Trump.
The ad jabs hard against the Trump campaign’s narrative of the 77yearold Biden as “slow Joe” who can’t match the energy of the 74yearold president.
“Some people are always in a hurry,” an announcer intones. “They run when they could walk, race up steps when others take it slow,” as the video clips show Biden racing up a ramp to give a talk at the U.S. Military Academy and Trump unsteadily making his way down a similar ramp there in June.