WASHINGTON _ Mike Pence will emerge from President Donald Trump's long shadow for a night Wednesday, taking the stage to accept the nomination for vice president and to emphasize support for law enforcement as protests intensified following the police shooting of a Black man in the back in Wisconsin.
Those calls for racial justice prompted the cancellation of professional basketball and baseball games and formed a chaotic backdrop to the third night of the Republican National Convention, which is taking place as a Category 4 hurricane roars toward the Gulf Coast and as the nation struggles with the COVID-19 contagion.
"President Trump and I know the men and women that put on the uniform of law enforcement are the best of us. They put their lives on the line every day," Pence will say according to his prepared remarks. "The American people know we don't have to choose between supporting law enforcement, and standing with African American neighbors to improve the quality of life in our cities and towns."
But Pence also planned to attack Democratic nominee Joe Biden for his embrace of the Black Lives Matter protests and suggested _ falsely _ that Biden supports defunding law enforcement.
"You won't be safe in Joe Biden's America," Pence planned to say. "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."
While the cascade of crises has shaken the nation's faith, the police shooting of 29-year-old Jacob Blake in front of his children in Kenosha, Wisconsin, on Sunday may cast Pence's comments in a different light and complicate the president's reelection strategy.
Trump had planned to run on his economic record before it was ravaged by the pandemic. As millions of Americans lost their jobs and a deep recession set in, he shifted to a law-and-order message, signaling that he was willing to use armed force if necessary to put down urban unrest, or even just peaceful protests _ while stoking fears of crime and presenting protesters as vigilantes.
But the video of Blake being shot multiple times in the back has galvanized activists demanding police reforms, just as George Floyd's death in Minneapolis three months ago did. It offers up more indisputable evidence of excessive force that may further validate the protests the president has demonized.
On Wednesday, Trump tweeted that he would send National Guard troops to Kenosha to quash any violence arising from protests, prompting the state's Democratic governor, Tony Evers, to agree to request them. But there were signs that the calls for police reform could not be ignored.
As part of the backlash, the NBA suspended all playoff games Wednesday following the Milwaukee Bucks' decision not to take the floor for their playoff game to protest the Blake shooting, which occurred 40 miles from their home city. At least one Major League Baseball team, the Seattle Mariners, also opted not to play its scheduled game Wednesday.
But the first speakers to take the stage Wednesday night stuck to their original script. Although South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem acknowledged that "at times our country has struggled to live up to our founding principles," she warned that America would be lost if Democrats were in charge, even as she pointed to the unrest that has exploded on Trump's watch.
"The violence is rampant. There's looting, chaos, destruction and murder," Noem said, blaming the situation on local Democratic officials. "People that can afford to flee have fled. But the people that can't _ good, hard-working Americans _ are left to fend for themselves."
That comment was especially striking coming just hours after the arrest of a pro-police 17-year-old Trump supporter, Kyle Rittenhouse, who was charged Wednesday with two counts of murder for allegedly opening fire on protesters in Kenosha with an AR-15 assault rifle. Rittenhouse left a trail of social media posts in which he identified himself as a supporter of pro-police causes and of the president, including a video he took from the front row of a Trump rally in January.
Sen. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee accused Democrats of failing to recognize military veterans and law enforcement. "Leftists try to turn them into villains. They try to 'cancel' them. But I'm here to tell you these heroes can't be cancelled," she said. "They try to defund them, our military our police even ICE."
Over the first two nights, RNC speakers have taken little notice of the Blake shooting, despite national outrage, and instead have followed Trump's lead in portraying the overwhelmingly peaceful crowds who have protested police abuses, especially the shooting of unarmed Black men, as violent mobs terrorizing American cities.
"We will NOT stand for looting, arson, violence, and lawlessness on American streets," Trump tweeted Wednesday.
Former Vice President Joe Biden, the Democratic nominee, addressed the shooting _ and rejected Trump's false claims that he supports violence and wants to defund the police _ in a video released by his campaign Wednesday.
"Protesting brutality is a right and absolutely necessary," Biden said, speaking to the camera. "But burning down communities is not protest, it's needless violence _ violence that endangers lives, violence that guts businesses and shutters businesses that serve the community."
Pence, whose speech will close out Wednesday's RNC program, 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.
Pence headed the White House coronavirus task force this spring, and is likely to defend its much-criticized work. Although nearly 180,000 Americans have died of COVID-19 so far, and much of the country cannot safely reopen, convention speakers have mostly ignored or downplayed the contagion, suggesting falsely that the pandemic has ended and an economic revival is underway.
Already trailing in polls, Trump's political challenges could grow significantly worse in real time. Hurricane Laura, a potentially catastrophic storm gaining strength in the Gulf of Mexico, is poised to slam into the upper Texas coast and western Louisiana late Wednesday or early Thursday. But party officials suggested Wednesday that Laura, already a Category 4 storm, will not stop this week's mostly virtual festivities.
But if the predicted ferocious storm surge and high winds devastate a swath of the Gulf Coast, it could potentially create a split-screen that casts the president, who is scheduled to give his acceptance speech Thursday night from the White House, as uncaring during a national emergency.
Pence is slated to give his speech in Fort McHenry, the site of the War of 1812 battle that inspired Francis Scott Key to write what later became "The Star Spangled Banner."
The coastal fort, which successfully defended Baltimore Harbor from a British naval attack, was chosen to underscore the night's theme, "Land of Heroes," which Trump has long defined in militaristic terms.
The president, who avoided military service in Vietnam, put Reps. Dan Crenshaw of Texas and Lee Zeldin of New York, both military veterans, center stage Wednesday night.
Crenshaw praised Trump for intimidating Iran, even though his pressure campaign has failed to bring Tehran to the bargaining table, and for overseeing the eradication of Islamic State's caliphate. He credited Trump's "rebuilding our military so we'd have what we needed to finish the mission."
The terrorist group appears far from finished, however. A United Nations report released this week estimates about 10,000 Islamic State fighters remain in Iraq and Syria, and said attacks by the militants have "increased significantly" this year and that they have "relaunched" a rural insurgency.
Like the convention's first two nights, the lineup also includes a family member and members of the White House staff, who do not traditionally speak at political conventions: Lara Trump, Trump's daughter in-law, Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany and Kellyanne Conway, a top White House adviser who managed his 2016 campaign and who announced her resignation last week.
Trump has faced criticism for allegedly violating the Hatch Act by utilizing government resources and officials for partisan purposes at the convention. On Tuesday, he held a televised naturalization ceremony and pardoned a bank robber at the White House. Secretary of State Michael R. Pompeo interrupted a visit to the Middle East to address the RNC from Jerusalem, sparking a House ethics investigation.
The president's campaign has chosen some speakers, including small-business owners from swing states, in hopes they can win over wavering voters. But speakers from Trump's political base have dominated with dire warnings about supposed urban violence, socialist takeovers and a "cancel culture" meant to stifle conservative speech.
Pence is the highest-profile speaker of the four-day convention whose last name is not Trump, and the rare member of the president's inner circle from outside Trump's business and family orbits.
A career politician from Indiana, Pence was chosen in 2016 to give socially conservative ballast to Trump, who had changed parties and spouses repeatedly in the past. Pence tends to speak in soaring but carefully scripted terms that bear little resemblance to Trump's rambling monologues. His appearance at Fort McHenry may complement his tendency toward grand, patriotic language.
Since taking office, Pence has endured constant speculation that Trump might replace him on the ticket even though he apparently hopes to run for president after a second Trump term. He has stayed in Trump's good graces by largely staying in the background, and offering constant and often obsequious praise for the president.
Pence often highlights Trump's record of appointing conservative judges, cutting regulations and lowering taxes on corporations. He has largely overlooked Trump's insults to women and minorities, and defended his record on foreign affairs and handling the pandemic.
