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WASHINGTON (AP) — Republicans predicted a national “horror movie” should President Donald Trump lose in November, offering warnings for the president’s supporters on the opening night of his scaled down national convention on Monday.
A school teacher warned that conservative Christian values were under attack from labor unions. A small business owner charged that businesses across America were facing unwarranted pandemic shutdowns and riotous mobs. And Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida likened the prospect of Democrat Joe Biden’s election to a horror movie.
“They’ll disarm you, empty the prisons, lock you in your home, and invite MS-13 to live next door,” Gaetz declared.
Trump, who is scheduled to deliver his keynote convention address later in the week, made multiple public appearances throughout the first day of the four-day convention.
“The only way they can take this election away from us is if this is a rigged election,” Trump told hundreds of Republican delegates gathered in North Carolina, raising anew concerns about Americans’ expected reliance on mail voting during the pandemic. Experts say mail voting has proven secure.
Trump and his supporters on Monday night touted his response to the pandemic while standing alongside front-line workers in the White House. Latest figures show 177,000 deaths due to COVID-19 in the U.S. and more than 5.7 million cases.
Organizers also repeatedly sought to cast Trump as an empathetic figure, borrowing a page from the Democrats’ convention playbook a week ago that effectively highlighted Biden’s personal connection to voters.
The evening program highlighted the tension within Trump’s Republican Party. His verbal attacks against Democrats who are trying to expand mail voting and demonstrators protesting deaths in police custody, for example, often delight his die-hard loyalists. Yet the party pointed to a somewhat more diverse convention lineup with a more inclusive message designed to expand Trump’s political coalition.
Two of the three final speakers on the prime-time program were people of color: former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley and South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, the only Black Republican in the Senate.
And one of several African Americans on the schedule, former football star Herschel Walker, defended the president against those who call him a racist.
“It hurts my soul to hear the terrible names that people call Donald,” Walker said. “The worst one is ‘racist.’ I take it as a personal insult that people would think I would have a 37-year friendship with a racist.”
The program also featured Mark and Patricia McCloskey, the St. Louis couple arrested after pointing guns at Black Lives Matter protesters marching past their home.
“Democrats no longer view the government’s job as protecting honest citizens from criminals, but rather protecting criminals from honest citizens,“ the McCloskeys said in remarks that broke from the optimistic vision for America.
They added: “Make no mistake: No matter where you live, your family will not be safe in the radical Democrats’ America.“
Those cheering Trump’s leadership on the pandemic included a coronavirus patient, a small business owner from Montana and a nurse practitioner from Virginia.
“As a healthcare professional, I can tell you without hesitation, Donald Trump’s quick action and leadership saved thousands of lives during COVID-19,” said Amy Ford, a registered nurse who was deployed to New York and Texas to fight the coronavirus.
Some of the planned remarks for the evening program were prerecorded, while others were to be delivered live from a Washington auditorium.
The fact that the Republicans gathered at all stood in contrast to the Democrats, who held an all-virtual convention last week. The Democratic programming included a well-received roll call video montage featuring diverse officials from across the nation. The Republicans spoke from the ballroom in Charlotte.
Trump said he had made the trip to North Carolina to contrast himself with his Democratic rival, who did not traveled to Wisconsin, the state where the Democratic convention was originally supposed to be held. Vice President Mike Pence appeared with him.
The impact of the pandemic was plainly evident at the Charlotte Convention Center, where just 336 delegates gathered instead of the thousands once expected to converge on this city for a week-long extravaganza. Attendees sat at well-spaced tables at first and masks were mandatory, though many were seen without.
Trump also panned the state’s Democratic governor for restrictions put in place to try to prevent the spread of the virus. The president accused Gov. Roy Cooper of “being in a total shutdown mode,“ and claimed the restrictions were aimed at trying to hurt his campaign.
Republicans will spend the week trying to convince the American people that the president deserves a second term. Aides want the convention to recast the story of Trump’s presidency and present the election as a choice between his vision for America’s future and the one presented by Biden.
“Over the next four days, President Trump and Republicans are going to talk about all we have achieved the past four years, and cast an aspirational, forward-looking vision about what we can achieve in the next four,” said GOP Chair Ronna McDaniel.
President Trump appeared in a brief video in which he spoke with hostages who have been returned to the United States, including Josh Holt, a young man from Utah who survived being in a Venezuelan prison. Holt told the president “It was a great honor to meet you when I got back.” President Trump said, “The great people of Utah wanted me to do something about it.”
Similar to the Democrat’s convention last week, Republicans made a video of each state declaring its nomination for the Trump/Pence presidential ticket.
Utah’s Sen. Mike Lee made a brief appearance to announce the state’s nomination for Trump. The president had already been formally nominated earlier in the day.
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