MILWAUKEE: The US former president Donald Trump accepted the Republican Party’s nomination for the presidency, with a speech that seemed at times more muted than his usual remarks.
Trump announced the acceptance of Rupublican Party’s nomination for the presidency in front of a rapt audience at the Republican National Convention in his first speech since the attack
Trump framed his speech with calls for unity: “I am running to be president for all of America, not half of America.”
He largely avoided naming his rival Joe Biden directly, as the Democrat faces mounting calls to step out of the race.
Trump revisited his near-death experience after a shooting at a rally on Saturday in Butler, Pennsylvania. Supporters have repeatedly credited “divine intervention” for his survival.
But this speech – the longest ever at the Republican National Convention – returned to familiar Trump talking points, decrying immigrant “murderers” and the prospect of a “World War III” should Democrats continue to lead.
In the meandering remarks that followed — at 90-plus minutes the longest convention speech in history — Trump abandoned the message of unity he had promised to embrace in favour of his usual mixture of bombast and grievance, repeating his false claim that Democrats stole the 2020 election.
Trump asserted, as he has throughout his political career, that only he was capable of saving the country from certain doom.
“I could stop wars with a telephone call,” he said.
The speech capped a four-day event during which he was greeted with adulation by a party now almost entirely in his thrall.
Trump devoted much of his speech to attacking migrants, a theme that has always animated his presidential campaigns.
“They’re coming from prisons, they’re coming from jails, they’re coming from mental institutions and insane asylums,” he said, before citing by name several Americans who were murdered by suspects in the country illegally.
There is no evidence foreign governments are intentionally sending such people to the US Academic studies show that immigrants do not commit crime at a higher rate than native-born Americans.
The speech broke Trump’s own 2016 record for the longest delivered by a nominee, according to the American Presidency Project at the University of California in Santa Barbara. His 2020 convention address, delivered at the White House, was the third longest ever.
After Trump concluded, his family and that of his running mate, Senator J D Vance, walked onto the stage as balloons dropped from the ceiling. His wife Melania Trump, who is rarely seen on the campaign trail, joined him on Thursday for the first time this week.
Vance, at 39 half Trump’s age, is widely seen as the ideological heir to Trump’s Make America Great Movement.
“J D, you’re gonna be doing this for a long time,” Trump said. “Enjoy the ride.”
