WASHINGTON _ President Donald Trump unofficially accepted his party's nomination for reelection Monday by delivering an unscripted, tradition-busting and falsehood-riddled speech, making abundantly clear that his hostile takeover of a party that tried four years ago to thwart him is now utterly complete.
The president's rambling hourlong midday address in Charlotte, North Carolina, where the Republican National Convention kicked off, served as an ornery overture to an evening program, broadcast live from Washington, that featured a succession of impassioned speeches aimed at rallying Trump's base and addressing his vulnerabilities _ recasting him as a hero of the coronavirus pandemic and refuting the allegations that he is racist.
Several of the speakers hailed Trump with rapturous praise, while echoing his dystopian depiction of America if Democratic nominee Joe Biden is elected.
Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., sought to stoke fears about America becoming "a horror movie" if Trump loses, claiming that Democrats will "disarm you, empty the prisons, lock you in your home and invite MS-13 to live next door. And the defunded police aren't on their way."
But the RNC devoted multiple segments to addressing the president's biggest liability, his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.
A West Virginia nurse praised Trump's response to the health crisis. A Montana business owner said a federal PPP loan allowed her to keep her coffee shop. A Louisiana maxillofacial surgeon lauded Trump for removing FDA "barriers" to unproven therapeutics.
And an RNC video, featuring clips of lawmakers praising Trump, portrayed him as a leader "who got everything right" in responding to the pandemic, even though the U.S. caseload and death toll have far exceeded all other industrial countries.
Trump himself appeared in a taped segment from the White House East Room interacting for a few minutes with seven first responders, most of whom praised his actions.
Trump's campaign had promised an optimistic tone for this week, seeking to contrast the GOP's pitch with a DNC convention that the president's aides claimed was negative and overly critical of the country on the whole. The kinder, gentler approach quickly fell by the wayside as the president, in Charlotte, warned darkly that "your American dream will be dead" if Biden wins.
"They want no guns. They want no oil and gas and they want no God," he said of Democrats. He also suggested, as he has before, that he might stay in office beyond the constitutional two-term limit.
"If you want to really drive 'em crazy, you say 12 more years," Trump said to cheers from the 336 Republican delegates at the heavily scaled-down party gathering in the Charlotte Convention Center.
Trump accused Democrats of trying to "steal the election" by urging Americans to vote absentee to limit exposure to the coronavirus at polling places. Trump has long sought to sow doubt in the electoral process in case he loses, but doing so at a presidential nominating convention, which normally celebrates the virtues of voting, marked another unprecedented turn.
"Be very careful and watch it very carefully because we have to win," he added, falsely claiming that mail-in voting systems were being used to perpetuate fraud. "It's not fair and it's not right and it's not going to be possible to tabulate, in my opinion."
Polls show widespread disapproval of Trump's management of the pandemic, but in Charlotte on Monday he accused Democrats of taking advantage of COVID-19, which has killed more than 177,000 Americans since February and forced millions out of work.
"They're using COVID to steal an election," he said. "They're using COVID to defraud the American people."
Traditionally, presidential nominees do not speak extensively until the final night of a political convention. Trump plans to speak every day, and then give his formal acceptance speech before an invited crowd on the South Lawn of the White House on Thursday.
Trump's dominance of the convention appeared all but total. He faced no challengers for the nomination, and the GOP said Sunday that it would not update its official platform from 2016, explaining that "the Republican Party has and will continue to support" Trump's earlier agenda.
But in a sign of how toxic Trump remains in much of the country, only one of the six most vulnerable Republican senators seeking reelection in swing states this fall, Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst, is scheduled to take the convention stage this week.
Donald Trump Jr., the scion and heir to some of the most incendiary and divisive aspects of his father's politics, is among those scheduled to speak Monday night.
Unlike the Democratic roll call last week, which presented a country-crossing mosaic highlighting America's diverse population and varied landscapes, the Republican delegates _ nearly all of whom were white _ attended the convention in person and spoke in front of a white backdrop featuring the convention hashtag.
Many of their declarations mimicked the president's hyperbole and mendacity: An Arkansas delegate reveled in Trump's 2016 win over "Crooked Hillary," while one from Louisiana later claimed that Biden was "waiting in the dark, wanting to take the lives of our unborn babies."
Some speakers sought to soften Trump's image, if only to counter the Democrats' portrayal of Biden as empathetic and decent.
Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, described how Trump consoled his family after a loved one was killed. And former NFL star and "The Apprentice" contestant Herschel Walker directly addressed the notion that Trump, who has denigrated cities, attacked athletes for kneeling in protest of police brutality and refused to denounce a 2017 white supremacist march in Charlottesville, Virginia, is a racist.
"Growing up in the Deep South, I have seen racism up close," Walker said. "I know what it is. And it isn't Donald Trump."
Vernon Jones, a Black state lawmaker from Georgia, also made the case for Trump, claiming that Democrats take Black voters for granted.
If Democrats repeatedly warned last week that four more years of Trump would threaten democracy and the rule of law, Trump's supporters on Monday described a nation in ruins if Biden wins the White House.
"We see suppression of free speech, mob rule instead of the rule of law, elected officials putting politics ahead of public safety," Ronna McDaniel, the RNC chairwoman, said as she called the convention to order. "These images are just a preview of what would happen nationwide if Joe Biden and Kamala Harris win this election."
The Biden campaign was quick to fire back that the limited RNC lineup showed the president's dwindling support, even in his own party.
"While nearly half of the speakers you will hear from are members of the Trump family, you aren't going to hear much about the plight of American families," said Kate Bedingfield, a Biden spokeswoman.
She also seized on Trump's attempts to blame recent civil unrest on Democrats, noting that, in his campaign ads, Trump "likes to make this argument about what life will look like in Joe Biden's America while quite literally using footage from Donald Trump's America."
Additionally, Mark and Patricia McCloskey, the white St. Louis couple who brandished weapons from their front lawn at Black Lives Matter protesters this summer, are set to speak about a supposed effort by Democrats and the media to "cancel" them over their behavior. Both were charged with one felony count of unlawful use of a weapon.
Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., the only Black Republican in the Senate, will bring Monday's programming to a close. He is expected to highlight administration efforts to expand opportunity zones, which offer tax credits for economic development in depressed areas, and to attack Biden for his past support for policies that he'll argue have hurt Black Americans, including the 1994 crime bill that led to a sharp increase in incarceration rates.
