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The Guardian - US
The Guardian - US
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Joan E Greve in Washington and Maanvi Singh

Mike Pence vows to 'make America great again, again' in RNC speech – as it happened

Key takeaways from the third night of the Republican convention

That’s it from us tonight. The Guardian team will be back tomorrow for the final night of the Republican convention.

Here are the key takeaways of the night:

  • Mike Pence delivered a dark message about his Democratic opponents to push Americans to support Donald Trump. “The hard truth is you won’t be safe in Joe Biden’s America,” the vice-president said, echoing a Trump campaign ad. “President Trump set our nation on a path to freedom and opportunity from the very first day of this administration. Joe Biden would set America on a path of socialism and decline.” That message seemed odd given the Democratic nominee is not a socialist and the country’s unemployment rate is currently 10.2%, which would seem to contradict Pence’s praise of the opportunity available under Trump’s leadership.
  • The night included few mentions of the police shooting of Jacob Blake and the resulting protests in Kenosha, Wisconsin. In his speech, Pence reiterated Trump’s call for “law and order”, but the vice president did not mention the name of Blake, an African American father of six who was repeatedly shot in the back by Kenosha police officers on Sunday. “The violence must stop, whether in Minneapolis, Portland or Kenosha,” Pence said. “We will have law and order on the streets of this country for every American of every race and creed and color.”
  • Republicans continued their trend of peddling falsehoods about the pandemic and Trump’s presidential record. The White House press secretary, Kayleigh McEnany, recounted her experience getting a preventive mastectomy because of her increased risk for breast cancer and said: “I can tell you that this president stands by Americans with pre-existing conditions.” In reality, the Trump administration has repeatedly tried to weaken the Affordable Care Act, which protects millions of Americans with pre-existing conditions.
  • Some of the president’s female advisers tried to paint a picture of a compassionate, open-minded president in an apparent attempt to win over female voters. McEnany recounted how the president called her after her mastectomy, and the White House adviser Kellyanne Conway applauded Trump for putting the women in his administration “on equal footing with the men”. However, the president’s advisers ignored the dozens of sexual misconduct allegations against Trump (which he denies) and his history of referring to women as “dogs” and “fat pigs”. That record will almost certainly weigh more heavily on female voters’ minds when they head to the polls in November.
  • The unrest in Kenosha and Hurricane Laura somewhat overshadowed the third night of the convention. Minutes before the convention started, more sports leagues were announcing player strikes in response to the shooting of Blake. News networks also interrupted convention coverage to provide updates on Hurricane Laura, a dangerous category 4 storm that is set to strike the Gulf Coast in the next several hours. Between the intensifying protests and the potentially catastrophic hurricane, the country seemed to be paying less attention to the Republican convention.

Thanks for following along with our coverage, and remember to tune back in tomorrow for the last night of the convention, when Trump accepts the Republican nomination.

Updated

Madison Cawthown, the 25-year-old congressional candidate who spoke tonight, has offered a mea culpa for falsely saying that James Madison signed the Declaration of Independence.

“I was afraid the fact-checkers were going to get bored. I wanted to give them something to do,” said Cawthorn, after a night when RNC speakers unleashed such a cascade of lies and misleading claims that fact-checkers (including me) could not even fathom keeping up.

– Maanvi Singh

Updated

Earlier tonight, Ronna McDaniel, the chairwoman of the Republican National Committee, was asked why former President George W Bush and former presidential nominee Mitt Romney, who is also McDaniel’s uncle, were not included in the convention.

“It’s a virtual convention, so it’s not the same as crowds in Charlotte like we were hoping to have,” McDaniel said. “And the president made a decision: I want this to be about the American people.”

When PBS NewsHour host Judy Woodruff noted the two men also aren’t appearing in videos for the convention, McDaniel said, “Right now, this convention is about nominating Donald Trump for president, and with the restrictions that Covid has placed on our convention, I think most Americans recognize that the limited programming we have is going to be focused on why we need to reelect President Trump.”

More than 30 former staffers of Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign are signing on to an effort to help elect Joe Biden in November.

Politico reports:

The latest initiative launched by Republicans eager to unseat their party’s presidential nominee comes as Romney is increasingly viewed with scorn by President Donald Trump’s fervent base.

In an open letter obtained by POLITICO, the group, which dubs itself ‘Romney Alumni for Biden,’ says Trump’s rhetoric and actions are antithetical to the Republican Party they believe in.

‘What unites us now is a deep conviction that four more years of a Trump presidency will morally bankrupt this country, irreparably damage our democracy, and permanently transform the Republican Party into a toxic personality cult,’ the group writes in the letter, published on Romney4Biden.com and released on the day Trump is due to deliver his keynote convention address. ‘We can’t sit by and allow that to happen.’

A number of anti-Trump Republicans have announced their support for Biden, but the effort by Romney campaign alumni is particularly noteworthy given they worked to defeat Biden and Barack Obama in 2012.

The Biden campaign has found a consistent line of attack against the Trump and the RNC this week, once again pointing out that the Republicans have largely avoided discussing the harsh realities of the coronavirus pandemic.

“Instead of a roadmap to defeat this virus and rebuild our economy so that it works for the middle class, Vice-President Pence only offered up debunked scare tactics and gaslighting in an attempt to further divide us,” said Kate Bedingfield, the Biden campaign’s communications director, in a statement.

Yesterday, Bedingfield wrote: “President Trump’s RNC is an alternate reality. In this delusion, thousands of Americans didn’t die in the last week from COVID-19.”

And on Monday: “If you tuned into the Republican convention tonight looking for some indication from President Trump that he has a strategy to contain the coronavirus, you’re still waiting.”

– Maanvi Singh

Updated

Lara Trump, keeping with RNC speakers’ theme of denying the coronavirus pandemic, touted the unemployment rate for women before the pandemic hit.

“Under President Trump’s leadership, women’s unemployment hit the lowest level since World War II,” she said. That’s more or less true. But the job gains were lost to the pandemic – unemployment rates for women are now down to 2015 levels.

– Maanvi Singh

Updated

Tomorrow, on the last night of the RNC, the crowd may be even bigger. Per CNN’s Jim Acosta, the president may deliver his speech tomorrow in front of 1,500 people.

– Maanvi Singh

Updated

After Mike Pence concluded his speech, he was joined by his wife, Karen Pence, as well as Donald and Melania Trump, who greeted a crowd of audience members.

Per the White House pool, Pence fist-bumped a couple of people, but otherwise avoided physical contact – and both couples stayed behind a barrier. Guests were reportedly given temperature checks but weren’t tested for coronavirus.

The crowd was not socially distanced.

– Maanvi Singh

Updated

Lou Holtz, the former Notre Dame head coach, earlier accused Joe Biden of being a “Catholic in name only”.

Biden, who was the first Catholic vice-president, has often cited his faith as a motivator. He wrote about his Catholic upbringing in his 2007 memoir and has spoken about how his religion helped him heal from loss.

– MS

Updated

Mike Pence also misled Americans on Joe Biden’s stance on defunding the police.

“When asked whether he’d support cutting funding to law enforcement, [Biden] replied, ‘Yes, absolutely,’” Pence said.

When activist Ady Barkan asked Biden whether he’d consider redirecting some funds allocated to law enforcement to “social services, mental health counseling and affordable housing”, Biden agreed.

In a part of the interview that was edited out and obtained by the Washington Post, Biden also said he supported reforms but “that’s not the same as getting rid of or defunding all the police”.

Here’s the video:

– Maanvi Singh

Updated

ABC News reported tonight that the Trump campaign was considering delaying the president’s convention speech tomorrow because of Hurricane Laura.

But according to multiple reports, Trump’s speech tomorrow is currently scheduled to take place as planned.

Hurricane Laura is an extremely dangerous category 4 storm that is expected to make landfall along the Gulf Coast in the next several hours.

Updated

Mike Pence: “Last week, Joe Biden didn’t say one word about the violence and chaos engulfing cities. So, let me clear – the violence must stop.

But Biden did denounce violence earlier today:

– Maanvi Singh

Updated

After Mike Pence finished delivering his speech, Trump greeted some of the audience members who gathered to listen to the vice president’s remarks.

The president and the first lady kept some physical distance from the audience members, but the two were not wearing face masks.

Lara Trump earlier misquoted Abraham Lincoln:

“America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves,” Trump said.

From PolitiFact:

On Jan. 27, 1838, Lincoln spoke before the Young Men’s Lyceum of Springfield, Illinois, about “the perpetuation of our political institutions.” During that address, he said: “At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.”

Michael Burlingame, a chair in Lincoln studies at the University of Illinois Springfield, told us Lincoln “was denouncing mob violence which would lead to chaos, provoking the public to demand law and order, which would be provided by an ambitious leader who would rule tyrannically.”

– Maanvi Singh

Updated

Third night of the Republican convention concludes

With Vice-President Mike Pence’s speech wrapped up, the third night of the Republican convention has concluded.

The blog will have more reactions and analysis to come, so stay tuned.

Updated

Mike Pence said Trump suspended “all travel from China”. He did not - he restricted travel from China. After the restrictions went into place, nearly 40,000 Americans and other exempted travelers made their way to the US from China.

Also, the travel restrictions limiting trips from China and Europe were enacted after the virus was already circulating within the US. Public health experts told me they were an ineffective measure against the virus.

– Maanvi Singh

Updated

At the end of his speech, Vice President Mike Pence was joined onstage by the president and the first lady, as well as his wife, second lady Karen Pence.

Pence: 'We will make America great again, again'

Vice President Mike Pence closed his convention speech by promising Trump would “make America great again, again”.

“We will re-elect our president and principled Republican leaders across this land,” Pence said. “And with President Donald Trump in the White House for four more years, and God’s help, we will make America great again, again.”

The Trump campaign previously focused on the slogan “keep America great”, but that phrase has been de-emphasized since the start of the coronavirus pandemic.

Updated

Mike Pence honored Dave Patrick Underwood, a federal officer who was shot during the “riots in Oakland California”. What Pence’s vague phrasing omits: An air force sergeant with links to the far-right “boogaloo” movement, was charged with killing Underwood.

Pence’s mention of Underwood came with a tirade against rioters and looters amid protests against police brutality, misleadingly implying that largely peaceful demonstrators in Oakland (where - not-so-coincidentally, Kamala Harris was born) were somehow involved.

Here’s more about the Underwood case, from my colleague Lois Beckett:

– Maanvi Singh

Updated

Echoing the dark theme of the Republican convention, Mike Pence painted a dire picture of the alleged dangers of electing Joe Biden.

“President Trump set our nation on a path to freedom and opportunity from the very first day of this administration,” Pence said. “But Joe Biden would set America on a path of socialism and decline.”

Biden does not identify as a socialist, and under the current Trump administration, the US unemployment rate stands at 10.2%.

Updated

Sounding like a Trump campaign ad, Vice-President Mike Pence said, “The hard truth is you won’t be safe in Joe Biden’s America.”

Pence continued, “Under President Trump, we will stand with those who stand on the thin blue line, and we’re not going to defund the police – not now, not ever.”

Despite the claims of many convention speakers this week, Biden does not support defunding the police and has repeatedly said so.

Updated

Pence: 'The violence must stop ... we will have law and order'

Mike Pence repeated Trump’s message of “law and order”, as protests continue in Kenosha over the police shooting of Jacob Blake.

“The violence must stop, whether in Minneapolis, Portland or Kenosha,” Pence said. “We will have law and order on the streets of this country for every American of every race and creed and color.”

The vice-president has not yet mentioned the name of Blake, an African American father of six who was repeatedly shot in the back by Kenosha police officers.

Updated

Like other convention speakers, Vice-President Mike Pence tried to direct focus to the pre-pandemic economy.

“In our first three years, we built the greatest economy in the world,” Pence said. “We made America great again. And then the coronavirus struck from China.”

The US unemployment rate is currently at 10.2%, and tens of millions of Americans remain jobless.

Pence also took issue with Joe Biden’s comment last week that “no miracle is coming” to save the US from the pandemic.

“What Joe doesn’t seem to understand is that America is a nation of miracles and we’re on track to have the world’s first safe, effective coronavirus vaccine by the end of this year.”

Updated

As Mike Pence was speaking at the RNC, Joe Biden countered with this:

The Milwaukee Bucks boycotted their game today as a protest against the police shooting of Jacob Blake. Milwaukee’s baseball team, the Brewers, have also boycotted their upcoming game.

– Maanvi Singh

Updated

In his convention speech, Mike Pence reflected on Trump’s leadership style since taking office.

“He does things his own way, on his own terms. Not much gets past him and when he has an opinion, he’s liable to share it,” Pence said.

“He’s certainly kept things interesting,” Pence added. “But more importantly, President Donald Trump has kept his word to the American people.”

According to Politifact, Trump has actually broken about half of the promises he has made to the American people.

Updated

Madison Cawthorn, the 25-year-old congressional candidate in North Carolina said, “James Madison was just 25 years old when he signed the Declaration of Independence.”

James Madison did not sign the Declaration of Independence, though he was 25 when other people signed it.

– Maanvi Singh

Pence formally accepts vice presidential nomination

Four years after first doing so, Mike Pence once again formally accepted the Republican vice-presidential nomination.

“With gratitude for the confidence President Donald Trump has placed in me, the support of our Republican party, and the grace of God, I humbly accept your nomination to run and serve as vice-president of the United States,” Pence said.

Updated

In his convention speech, Vice-President Mike Pence provided an update on the response to Hurricane Laura and offered a message of support to those affected by the storm.

“Stay safe, and know that we’ll be with you every step of the way,” Pence said.

Updated

Pence accuses Biden of 'attacking America' during convention

Reflecting on the setting of his speech, Vice-President Mike Pence began his speech by talking about the early American heroes who defended the country’s values.

“But they were hardly ever mentioned at last week’s Democratic national convention,” Pence said.

“Democrats spent four days attacking America. Joe Biden said we were living through a ‘season of American darkness.’

“But as President Trump said, ‘where Joe Biden sees American darkness, we see American greatness.’”

That messaged seemed odd considering the country is currently losing about 1,000 people a day to coronavirus.

Updated

Ric Grenell, the former US ambassador to Germany and the former acting director of national intelligence, said he saw how Trump “charmed the chancellor of Germany”.

Angela Merkel, the chancellor of Germany, has expressed that she is decidedly not charmed by how Donald Trump runs the country. Speaking about the global response to coronavirus pandemic in July, Merkel had this thinly veiled rebuke: “As we are experiencing first-hand, you cannot fight the pandemic with lies and disinformation any more than you can fight it with hate or incitement to hatred.”

Speaking at a Harvard graduation ceremony in 2019 she said: “More than ever our actions have to be multilateral rather than unilateral ... Don’t disguise lies as truth, and truth as lies … Tear down walls of ignorance and narrow-mindedness,” mounting an argument against Trump’s “America First” approach to foreign policy.

She did not visit the White House during a visit to the country. And then there’s this:

– Maanvi Singh

Updated

Pence delivers convention speech

Mike Pence is now delivering his convention speech at Fort McHenry in Baltimore, Maryland.

The convention played a biographical video about Pence before the vice-president took the podium.

Before he began speaking, the small crowd there broke out into a chant of “Four more years!”

Updated

Ric Grenell, the former US ambassador to Germany and the former acting director of national intelligence, defended Trump’s “America First” foreign policy agenda.

“For decades, while Washington politicians built a global system, American wages stagnated,” Grenell said.

“That’s what happened when Washington stopped being the capital of the United States, and started being the capital of the world.”

Grenell also embraced descriptions of the president as a “nationalist”. “The DC crowd thinks when they call Donald Trump a nationalist, they’re insulting him,” Grenell said.

“As if the American president isn’t supposed to base foreign policy on America’s national interests.”

Updated

Senator Joni Ernst of Iowa made some puzzling claims about environmental regulations.

She lauded Trump’s rollback of the Waters of the United States Rule, Obama-era legislation that clarified the scope of water protections under the Clean Water Act.

Ernst said: “We scrapped Obama and Biden’s punishing Waters of the United States Rule, which would have regulated about 97% of land in Iowa – in some cases, even puddles. It would have been a nightmare for farmers.”

Agricultural interest groups (who might feel bogged down by rules regulating toxic agricultural runoff) claimed that the rule was an overreach that could end up regulating 97% of land in Iowa.

But the argument had little legal merit. Puddles were explicitly excluded.

Ernst also claimed that Joe Biden would “essentially ban animal agriculture”. There is no such provision in his climate plan, nor in the Green New Deal.

– Maanvi Singh

Updated

In her convention speech, Lara Trump quoted her seventh-grade English teacher, who told her, “Believe none of what you hear, half of what you read and only what you’re there to witness first-hand.”

But as a New York Times reporter pointed out, the president’s daughter-in-law and advisers are asking female voters to simply take them at their word when it comes to Trump’s character.

Updated

Trump’s daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, continued tonight’s theme of casting the president as a champion for women.

Trump recounted how her father-in-law gave her a prominent role in his 2016 campaign, despite her having no political experience.

“He believed in me and supported me – he knew I was capable even if I didn’t,” Trump said.

Again, the Trump team’s efforts to reach out to women voters ignore the dozens of sexual misconduct allegations against the president, as well as his history of describing women as “fat pigs” and “dogs”.

Recent polls indicate Joe Biden has a double-digit lead over Trump among female voters.

Updated

Former NFL star Jack Brewer said, “Are you going to allow the media to lie to you, by falsely claiming that he said there were ‘very fine’ white supremacists in Charlottesville? He didn’t say that! It’s a lie!”

In the aftermath of the white supremacist and neo-Nazi rally during which one person died, and nearly two dozen were injured after a man rammed a car into counter-protesters, Trump said:

You had some very bad people in that group, but you also had people that were very fine people, on both sides. You had people in that group … There were people in that rally – and I looked the night before – if you look, there were people protesting very quietly the taking down of the statue of Robert E Lee. I’m sure in that group there were some bad ones. The following day it looked like they had some rough, bad people – neo-Nazis, white nationalists, whatever you want to call them. But you had a lot of people in that group that were there to innocently protest, and very legally protest.

Virtually all the participants in the Unite the Right rally were white supremacists – and they were joined by armed anti-government militias.

– Maanvi Singh

Updated

Echoing other Republican lawmakers at the convention, Senator Joni Ernst painted a dire picture of what the country would look like if Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are elected in November.

“If given power, they would essentially ban animal agriculture and eliminate gas-powered cars,” Ernst said. That comment is not true.

Ernst went on to say, “Folks, this election is a choice between two very different paths. Freedom, prosperity, and economic growth, under a Trump-Pence administration. Or, the Biden-Harris path. Paved by liberal coastal elites and radical environmentalists.”

Ernst is facing a difficult re-election race in November against the Democratic candidate Theresa Greenfield.

Updated

Congressman Lee Zeldin applauded the Trump administration for providing much-needed personal protective equipment to his New York district amid the coronavirus pandemic.

At the onset of the pandemic, healthcare workers in New York reported running dangerously low on PPE, posing a threat to those treating coronavirus patients.

A number of health experts have also said the country still faces a shortage of PPE, nearly six months into the pandemic.

Neimat Awadelseid, one of the five new US citizens whose swearing-in ceremony was portrayed during the second night of the RNC, wasn’t aware she’d be featured at the event, the Washington Post reports:

Awadelseid, who is originally from Sudan, said she had a citizenship interview about three weeks ago. It marked the end of a long path. She had applied for citizenship in 2018, she said, but had been in the United States since the early 2000s through a student visa and temporary protected status program. She was able to become a permanent resident earlier this decade, she said, through her brother’s sponsorship.

On Thursday night she received a call from immigration officials, she said, who told her the ceremony would be at the White House. Elated, she agreed to participate, and in subsequent days she received paperwork from the White House related to her security clearance. Awadelseid said she signed a media privacy release but was not aware how the ceremony would factor into the convention...

But despite the criticism Trump has received, Awadelseid said she did not mind that the ceremony had been featured in a political format. The spectacle, she said, did not diminish the uniqueness of being sworn in as a citizen in one of the country’s most iconic settings.

“That is the world we live in now,” she said. “It is an honor for me to get my citizenship after all these years and to have it at a place like the White House.”

The portrayal of the swearing-in ceremony, with the White House as a backdrop, drew intense criticism – with some critics saying it violated norms and ethics. It also jarred against Trump’s hardline anti-immigration stances.

Sudan, where Awadelseid is from, was recently added to the Trump administration’s restricted travel list. Trump originally described the stringent restrictions as a travel ban on Muslims.

– MS

Madison Cawthorn, a 25-year-old Republican congressional candidate, just addressed the convention.

Cawthorn noted that he would be the youngest person elected to Congress in more than 200 years if he wins in November.

The candidate also recounted being in a car accident at 18 that left him paralyzed from the waist down. “I say to people who feel forgotten, ignored, and invisible: I see you. I hear you,” Cawthorn said.

Cawthorn’s appearance at the convention was noteworthy given he defeated a Trump-endorsed candidate in his June primary.

Congresswoman Elise Stefanik, who gained national attention during the House impeachment inquiry, focused her convention speech on denouncing the “sham” process.

“Since his first day in office, President Trump has fought tirelessly to deliver results for all Americans, despite the Democrats’ baseless and illegal impeachment sham and the media’s endless obsession with it,” Stefanik said.

It’s entirely unclear how the impeachment inquiry was “illegal,” considering the constitution gives Congress the ability to impeach the president.

Trump was impeached by the House in December but was later acquitted by the Republican-controlled Senate.

Updated

Former Notre Dame coach Lou Holtz addressed the Republican convention and attacked Joe Biden for his stance on abortion.

“The Biden-Harris ticket is the most radically pro-abortion campaign in history,” Holtz said. “They and other politicians are ‘Catholics in Name Only’ and abandon innocent lives.”

Biden is a lifelong practicing Catholic and would be the first Catholic president since John F Kennedy. Vice presidential candidate Kamala Harris is a Baptist.

Barack Obama has spoken out on the unprecedented strikes currently taking place in the NBA, after the Milwaukee Bucks boycotted Game 5 of their playoff series against the Orlando Magic in protest at the police shooting of Jacob Blake. The strikes have led to the postponement of all of tonight’s playoff games, and spread to the MLB, where several baseball teams are sitting out tonight’s games in solidarity.

Updated

Kayleigh McEnany, the White House press secretary, spoke about her personal experiences with the healthcare system as someone with a preexisting condition – the BRCA2 mutation that elevated her risk of breast cancer.

“I can tell you that this President stands by Americans with pre-existing conditions,” she said.

She can tell you that, but she’d be wrong.

The Affordable Care Act, signed into law by Barack Obama, currently protects those with pre-existing conditions from being denied coverage. The Trump administration has aimed from the beginning to tear down the law, and in June, as the coronavirus pandemic raged on, the administration filed a legal brief asking the supreme court to strike down the landmark healthcare law.

Trump supported House and Senate bills to weaken the ACA and protections for pre-existing conditions. And he presented alternatives that did not cover pre-existing conditions.

This month, he vowed to write an executive order to protect those with pre-existing conditions, though the logistics of doing that without Congress are dubious.

– Maanvi Singh

Updated

The stage has been set at Fort McHenry in Baltimore, Maryland, where Vice-President Mike Pence will deliver his convention speech tonight.

According to the pool report, about 100 white folding chairs have been set up at the site for a small audience to listen to Pence’s speech.

Updated

Senior White House adviser Kellyanne Conway thanked Trump for having “elevated women to senior positions in business and in government”.

Conway applauded the president’s behavior toward women, saying he “insists that we are on equal footing with the men”.

The praise was jarring, considering Trump has been accused of sexual misconduct by 20 women. (The president has denied the allegations.)

Updated

Second lady Karen Pence thanks military spouses

Second lady Karen Pence used her convention speech to thank service members and their spouses for their contributions to the country.

Pence noted that her son and son-in-law are both in the military, and her daughter and daughter-in-law are “the home front heroes”.

The second lady said, “To all of the military spouses, thank you.”

Updated

Congressman Dan Crenshaw hailed the “defeat of Isis”.

“The defeat of Isis was the result of America believing in our heroes, our president having their backs and rebuilding our military so we’d have what we needed to finish the mission,” he said.

While the Islamic State has lost ground, it isn’t quite defeated. The group continues to carry out attacks, despite having lost its so-called “caliphate” – the vast territory it once controlled in parts of Syria and Iraq.

Also, some of the gains made against the extremists happened during the Obama administration, which began a push against Isis in 2014.

– Maanvi Singh

Updated

Like other convention speakers, White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany used her speech to try to paint a picture of a compassionate president, even though Trump is better known for his personal attacks on his opponents.

McEnany recounted her decision to get a preventative mastectomy in 2018 to limit her risk of breast cancer.

“As I came out of anesthesia, one of the first calls I received was from Ivanka Trump,” McEnany said. “As I recovered, my phone rang again. It was President Trump, calling to check on me. I was blown away. Here was the leader of the free world caring about my circumstance.”

Other convention speakers have similarly recounted stories of Trump calling them to offer condolences and support in times of hardship, a clear effort to respond to the Democratic convention, which spotlighted stories about Joe Biden’s character.

This is the moment the South Dakota governor Kristi Noem, in the middle of a pandemic no less, rallied against “an elite class of so-called experts”, asserting that “we the people are the government”.

Noem recently ignored calls to cancel large gatherings and welcomed a large-scale biker rally in the state that has since been linked to a spread of coronavirus cases across the country. She has also been a critic of wearing face masks.

Updated

Over the past two weeks, both Democrats and Republicans have argued this presidential election will be the most important one in decades.

Keith Kellogg, the national security adviser to Vice-President Mike Pence, said moments ago, “This is the most important election of our lifetimes. The next four years will decide the course of our country for decades to come.”

Democrats delivered a similar message last week; of course they were warning against the danger of electing Trump, while Republicans are arguing the president must be re-elected to prevent the country from falling into chaos.

Updated

Marsha Blackburn, the Tennessee senator who just spoke, is what you might call an ultra-conservative. She is a climate change denier who rejects the theory of evolution. She has actually claimed that the Earth is cooling, and voted against the Violence Against Women Act.

She was recently slammed by Taylor Swift in the documentary Miss Americana.

After watching an ad in which Blackburn touts herself as a proud “deplorable”, Swift is shown telling her team: “She votes against the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act, which is just basically protecting us from domestic abuse and stalking. Stalking. She thinks that if you’re a gay couple, or even if you look like a gay couple, you should be allowed to be kicked out of a restaurant. It’s really basic human rights, and it’s right and wrong at this point, and I can’t see another commercial and see her disguising these policies behind the words ‘Tennessee Christian values’. Those aren’t Tennessee Christian values. I live in Tennessee. I am Christian. That’s not what we stand for.”

– Maanvi Singh

Updated

Congressman Dan Crenshaw provided one of the only uplifting speeches of the Republican convention so far.

Crenshaw, a veteran, said American heroes could be found on the battlefield and in hospitals as nurses and doctors treat coronavirus patients.

“This is what heroism looks like. It’s who we are – a nation of heroes, and we need you now more than ever. We need to remind ourselves what heroism really is,” Crenshaw said. “We must become the heroes that we so admire.”

Updated

Tennessee Senator Marsha Blackburn claimed Democrats were trying to “cancel” law enforcement officers.

“Leftists try to turn them into villains,” Blackburn said. “They try to ‘cancel’ them. But I’m here to tell you that these heroes can’t be cancelled.”

“Cancel culture” has been mentioned many times at the Republican convention so far, as speakers have attempted to inflame culture wars.

The first politician to speak tonight was South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem, who (like many other speakers) warned: “Our founding principles are under attack.”

“It took 244 years to build this great nation - flaws and all - but we stand to lose it in a tiny fraction of that time if we continue down the path taken by the Democrats and their radical supporters,” Noem said.

“From Seattle and Portland to Washington and New York, Democrat-run cities across this country are being overrun by violent mobs.”

In reality, the recent protests against racial injustice have been mostly peaceful. On MSNBC, Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan accused Noem of painting a “caricature” of her city.

Noem’s speech also hit the dark tone conveyed by many other speakers at the Republican convention so far, clashing with the optimistic vision that party leaders promised to deliver this week.

Updated

As the third night of the Republican convention started, the White House released a statement on the protests in Kenosha, Wisconsin, over the police shooting of Jacob Blake.

White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said, “President Trump condemns violence in all forms and believes we must protect all Americans from chaos and lawlessness.

“This is why he is encouraging Democrat Governors to request the National Guard and federal law enforcement to augment their local law enforcement efforts.

“We have assisted Wisconsin in the deployment of almost 1,000 National Guard and over 200 federal law enforcement personnel, which include FBI and U.S. Marshals.”

Third day of the Republican convention starts

The third night of the Republican convention is now under way. The blog will have updates and analysis as the night unfolds, so stay tuned.

Updated

The Republican national convention is just minutes away, but there are more updates in connection to the protests over the police shooting of Jacob Blake.

The WNBA has just announced its players will also not move forward with the set of games scheduled for tonight.

Elizabeth Williams of the Atlanta Dream said in a statement, “The consensus is to not play in tonight’s slate of games and to kneel, lock arms and raise fists during the national anthem. We stand in solidarity with our brothers in the NBA.”

Williams went on to encourage everyone to register to vote, complete the 2020 census and demand change to address racial injustice.

Updated

Amid the protests over the police shooting of Jacob Blake, Vice-President Mike Pence is expected to repeat Trump’s message of “law and order” in his convention speech.

The LA Times reports:

Pence will emerge from President Trump’s long shadow for a night Wednesday, taking the stage at the Republican National Convention to emphasize support for law enforcement as protests are intensifying following the police shooting in Wisconsin of a Black man in the back.

Pence is expected to lionize Trump and join other RNC speakers who have carefully airbrushed the president’s management of a devastating pandemic, double-digit unemployment and growing upheaval over racism and police brutality in numerous communities.

Convention speakers so far have largely ignored the shooting of Blake, as well as the recent police killings of other African Americans including George Floyd and Breonna Taylor.

Instead, most speakers have followed the president’s lead and tried to recast largely peaceful protests against racial injustice as “violent mobs”.

Updated

Pence to headline third night of the Republican convention amid unrest in Kenosha

Hello, liveblog readers, and welcome to the third night of the Republican convention.

Mike Pence will deliver his speech tonight to formally accept the Republican vice-presidential nomination, marking the most consequential moment of the convention yet.

Vice President Mike Pence arrives to speak during the first day of the Republican National Convention.
Vice President Mike Pence arrives to speak during the first day of the Republican National Convention. Photograph: David T Foster Iii/AFP/Getty Images

The vice-president will speak from Fort McHenry in Baltimore, Maryland, and he is expected to tout Donald Trump’s economic accomplishments to make the case for a second term, even though the coronavirus pandemic has driven the country’s unemployment rate into double digits.

As Pence accepts the vice-presidential nomination, protests continue to unfold in Kenosha, Wisconsin, over the police shooting of Jacob Blake.

Blake, an African American father of six who was shot multiple times in the back by police officers, has been mentioned only briefly at the Republican convention so far.

Instead, the first two days of the RNC focused on inflaming culture wars by featuring controversial speakers, including the St Louis couple who pointed guns at Black Lives Matter protesters.

But the shooting of Blake has undeniably upended US politics and sports, with the NBA postponing tonight’s playoff games after the Milwaukee Bucks refused to play to protest racial injustice.

Will Republicans address the intensifying protests tonight? The third night of the convention kicks off shortly, so stay tuned.

Updated

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