This evening, Republican convention attendees have been given a sign with a message we had not seen in the past two nights: “Mass deportation now!”
It’s an indication that Donald Trump believes campaigning on hardline immigration policies will get him to the White House. He has previously vowed that “on day one, we will begin the largest domestic deportation operation in American history”. Here’s more about that:
Updated
Trump returns to Republican convention hall for third night
Donald Trump, his right ear still bandaged from the assassination attempt on Saturday, is back in the arena where the Republican national convention is being held.
The former president walked out and pumped his fist to the crowd, to rapturous cheers. It’s A Man’s Man’s Man’s World by James Brown is playing on the PA.
Updated
Republican delegates shrug off possibility of Biden stepping aside
Donald Trump up, Joe Biden down.
That, in a nutshell, has been the theme of this Republican national convention, where speakers have spent their time relentlessly attacking the Democratic president, and occasionally vice-president Kamala Harris.
But what if Biden bows to the pressure from his party to end his re-election bid after his uneven performance in the first debate against Trump, and makes way for a younger candidate, perhaps someone who has more luck rallying Democrats? Do the delegates gathered in Milwaukee for the convention fear that could make Trump’s road back to the White House more treacherous?
The Guardian’s US politics live blog took to the floor of the convention hall to hear their answers.
“The real problem Democrats are facing is there really is only one other candidate they can run, and that’s Kamala Harris,” said Blake Marnell, a California delegate. The San Diego resident was wearing an orange suit with a brick pattern, which he said was “a metaphor for strong borders, which he had under president Trump, and which Joe Biden reversed”.
Harris, a former senator from his home state, was “a disaster”, he said.
Clayton Manthorpe, a delegate from the president’s home state of Delaware, said the Democrats “don’t really have a strong candidate besides Joe Biden, and I’m not saying he’s a good candidate”.
“He’s a stubborn old man,” Manthorpe continued. “Nobody wants to be told: ‘You can’t be president of the United States.’”
But Manthorpe, a self-described “conspiracy theorist”, referred to the announcement this evening that the president had Covid-19 as potentially setting up a narrative Biden could use to step aside.
“If Trump’s not going out by the bullet, something has to change on the other side of the equation,” Manthorpe said.
Updated
Donald Trump and his allies have increasingly flung accusations that they engage in authoritarian rhetoric and behavior back at Democrats.
“At home, Biden is acting like a dictator,” Doug Burgum, the North Dakota governor, told the Republican convention on Wednesday.
Trump, who has said he would be a “dictator on day one” if re-elected has already tried to overturn a presidential election and has not committed to accepting the results of this year’s vote.
Updated
Doug Burgum, the North Dakota governor, compares Trump to 'a beautiful breeze at our back'
Doug Burgum, the North Dakota governor who was on the shortlist to be Donald Trump’s running mate, took a metaphorical tone in his remarks to the convention.
“Serving as a governor with president Trump was like having a beautiful breeze at our back. He cut taxes, and cut red tape,” Burgum said. “Serving as a governor under Joe Biden has been like a gale force wind in our face. Biden’s war on energy hurts every American because the cost of energy is in everything we use or touch every day.”
Much like the East Palestine mayor Trent Conaway, who spoke right before him, Burgum argued that Trump was a fighter for the working class.
“President Trump cares deeply about every American, rig workers, truck drivers, roughnecks and yes, America’s great farmers and ranchers, President Trump cares deeply about you. We know that he’ll fight for us. He’ll fight for our families,” said Burgum.
In a reference to the ongoing conservative revolt against electric vehicles, Burgum added, “And we know one more thing: he’ll let all of you keep driving your gas powered cars.”
Updated
The saga of East Palestine, Ohio, where a Norfolk Southern train derailed and spread chemicals far and wide, gripped the country in early 2023.
More than a year later, the town’s mayor, Trent Conaway, strolled onstage at the Republican convention to describe the Biden administration as unconcerned with his town’s plight.
“The Biden administration’s federal response was much different. It consisted almost entirely of meetings and press events. They talked and talked, but they delivered little help,” Conaway told the crowd.
“For the longest time, the White House was silent and we never heard a word from vice-president Harris. I guess we weren’t their type of folks, no Hollywood elites or Wall Street billionaires live in East Palestine, just hard-working Americans.”
Conaway continued:
But Donald Trump cared. First, he called to ask permission to visit, not wanting to intrude and then he asked how he could help. When he arrived with fresh pales of drinking water, he met with everyone from first responders to local officials and residents. He toured the derailment site, he listened to us, and he shared a meal with volunteers at a local McDonald’s.
His presence was genuine. His concern was real. After a year of criticism, President Biden finally did show up. His appearance was brief, forced and scripted. He met with a select few, and then left. We needed so much, and he delivered so little.
Updated
Greg Abbott, the Texas governor, vows to continue bussing migrants 'until we finally secure our border'
In his speech to the Republican convention, Greg Abbott gave a strenuous and well-received defense of his state’s forays into immigration enforcement, and vowed to keep up his controversial practice of bussing migrants from the state to cities nationwide.
“When Biden took 50 acres of Texas border property to illegally process up to 5,000 illegal immigrants a day, I directed the Texas National Guard to take back our land and wire it shut,” Abbott said, in an apparent reference to a legal clash between the state government and the Biden administration earlier this year.
“Now there’s no longer 5,000 people crossing the border like there was under Joe Biden. Now that the National Guard wired that shut, on average, there is one illegal immigrant crossing the border at that location a day.”
Both Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have visited the US-Mexico border during their administration. Ignoring that fact, Abbott vowed:
Joe Biden and Kamala Harris refused to even come to Texas and to see the border crisis that they created. I took the border to them. I began bussing illegal immigrants to Washington DC, and we have continued bussing migrants to sanctuary cities across the entire country, and those busses will continue to roll until we finally secure our border.
Updated
Eric Trump joins calls for head of Secret Service to resign
Donald Trump’s second eldest son, Eric, has joined other Republicans calling for the director of the Secret Service to step aside following the assassination attempt on his fatheron the weekend.
Eric Trump sat down for an interview with Kristen Welker earlier today, the anchor of the Sunday Meet the Press politics talk show on NBC.
“People are calling for the resignation of the Secret Service director. Are you saying you think the Secret Service director should resign?” Welker asked Trump, referring to the head of the USSS, Kimberly Cheatle, according to a rush transcript issued by the TV network.
Eric Trump didn’t mince his words. “No question about it. There’s no question about it,” he said.
He continued: “How can this possibly happen? How can … think just what that would do, Kristen. On the world stage. If our leader, you guys were covering it, and Fox was covering it, CNN, everybody was covering it, got assassinated, took a rifle round to the head on live TV, while the entire nation … we’d look like a third world country.”
Trump added: “This can’t happen in the United States. And somebody’s got be held accountable. You can’t just sweep that kind of stuff under the rug.”
Updated
In pantomime style, Navarro is delivering lines to the RNC crowd designed to attract lots of boos as well as cheers. No audible hissing yet.
Navarro has railed against his conviction and is spinning the line further that the US justice system is “out to get” any and all rightwingers.
He accused the judge who convicted Donald Trump in New York earlier this year of a hush-money plot to influence the 2016 election of running “a kangaroo court”.
“You may be thinking this could not happen to you, make no mistake they are already coming for you, Joe and Kamala,” he said, without explaining how.
Then Navarro also repeated the Trumpesque far-right line that migrants crossing the US-Mexico border without authorization, as they flee danger, oppression and destitution in countries ranging from Venezuela, Haiti, China, parts of Africa and Central America are nothing but “murderers and rapists”.
He’s left the stage now. Many attendees are enthusiastically holding or waving signs that say, simply: “Mass Deportation Now”.
Updated
Former Trump trade adviser Navarro addresses RNC after release from prison
To massive cheers across the convention floor, Peter Navarro has taken the stage. He just got out of prison.
“Yes, this morning I did walk out of a federal prison in Miami. Joe Biden and his department of INjustice put me there,” he said.
He added: “If they can come for me, if they can come for Donald Trump, believe me they can come for you,” Navarro said, repeating a populist line that Trump and the Maga crowd like to use.
Navarro is a former trade adviser to Trump and in March became the first former White House official ever jailed for contempt of Congress.
He was sentenced to four months in prison for refusing to cooperate with the House January 6 committee investigating the insurrection at the US Capitol in 2021 when extremists wanted to overturn Trump’s defeat by Joe Biden in the presidential election.
The the 74-year-old economist appealed all the way to the US supreme court, claiming he could not testify as his work with Trump on attempts to overturn the 2020 election was covered by executive privilege.
Updated
Matt Gaetz, a Florida congressman, took to the stage at the Republican national convention on Wednesday with a brief but charged-up speech that took aim at Democrats, and in particular, at Kamala Harris.
“Appointing Kamala Harris to oversee the border is like appointing Bernie Madoff to oversee your retirement plan,” said Gaetz, to jeers and applause.
With some Democrats urging Joe Biden to step down amid concerns about the president’s health and cognition following a devastating debate in early July, the possibility of Harris at the top of the Democrats’ 2024 presidential ticket seems top-of-mind for Republican speakers at the RNC.
Updated
The third day of speeches got under way in Milwaukee a short while ago.
Nancy Mace, a South Carolina congresswoman, kicked off Wednesday’s evening program, began her speech by introducing herself as “Nancy, ‘Don’t call me Pelosi’, Mace.”
There was muted applause for the joke.
.@NancyMace: "We can never project strength around the world when WEAKNESS stands in the White House." pic.twitter.com/H7SrxU3DVx
— Team Trump (Text TRUMP to 88022) (@TeamTrump) July 17, 2024
Updated
Profile: Who is Usha Vance, JD Vance's wife
Many Republicans have welcomed Usha Vance, the Indian American wife of vice-presidential nominee JD Vance, as a symbol of generational change and growing diversity in the party ranks.
Usha, 38, a corporate lawyer who used to be a registered Democrat, is the daughter of Indian immigrants and a practicing Hindu.
Danny Willis, 25, chair of Delaware Young Republicans, said: “With this ticket, with the show of diversity in what would be the second gentleman and second lady of the United States, I’m extremely proud to be a Hispanic male and a Republican.”
Usha has a very different story to tell from the last Republican second lady, Karen Pence, a white grandmother and devout Christian from Indiana who was an elementary school teacher and watercolour artist.
Trump’s choice of JD Vance has sparked concern in Europe, where leaders fear the potential new vice-president would be catastrophic news for Ukraine and its ability to keep fighting Russia.
The Guardian’s Andrew Roth has this:
Donald Trump’s choice of JD Vance as his vice-presidential pick has reignited fears in Europe that he would pursue a transactional “America first” foreign policy that could culminate in the US pushing for Ukraine to acquiesce to Vladimir Putin and sue for peace with Russia.
“It’s bad for us but it’s terrible news for [Ukraine],” said one senior European diplomat in Washington. “[Vance] is not our ally.”
Foreign diplomats and observers have frequently called Trump’s actual policies a “black box”, saying that was impossible to know for certain what the unpredictable leader would do when in power.
Some have soothed themselves by suggesting that names tipped for top positions, such as former national security adviser Robert O’Brien, would maintain a foreign policy status quo while Trump focuses on domestic affairs.
Updated
Trump sees former ‘Never Trumper’ JD Vance as a way to expand his base, insiders say
Donald Trump and his campaign see his running mate, the Ohio senator JD Vance, as a way to expand Trump’s voter base, according to sources familiar with the matter, intending to lean into Vance’s previous criticisms of Trump to convince voters who dislike both 2024 candidates to back the former president.
In the years before Vance ran for the US Senate, he repeatedly criticized Trump and his presidency in interviews where he made clear he never liked the former president and considered him “cultural heroin” and in private conversations, where he suggested Trump was “America’s Hitler”.
But the criticisms, which once angered Trump, are now being seen by the Trump campaign as a unique asset that could resonate with voters who could be in a similar position: people who have previously found Trump unsavory but might prefer him to Biden, the sources said.
The Trump campaign has suggested that they want Vance to lean in to the fact that he was previously a so-called “Never Trumper”, with the hope that it could give independent and uncommitted voters a path towards supporting the former president in November.
Updated
Donald Trump's running mate JD Vance to take center stage on Republican convention's third night
Good evening, US politics blog readers, and thanks for joining us as we cover the third night of the Republican national convention in Milwaukee. Dubbed “Make America Strong Once Again”, tonight’s session will center on foreign policy, and the marquee event comes around 9.30pm CT, when Ohio senator JD Vance will address the convention for the first time since Donald Trump named him his running mate on Monday. We’ll hear from plenty of other prominent Republicans before Vance takes the stage, including Doug Burgum, the North Dakota governor, who was on the shortlist to be Trump’s vice-presidential pick, Greg Abbott, the Texas governor the Florida congressman Matt Gaetz and the former House speaker Newt Gingrich.
The convention is scheduled to begin at 5.45pm CT. Here are a few things we’ll be looking out for tonight:
How will JD Vance introduce himself to America? While Ohio voters and people who read his 2016 memoir Hillbilly Elegy know who he is, an AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll released today found, “Most of the public does not know enough about … Vance to have an opinion”.
What will Republicans say about their policies towards Ukraine and Israel, the two major conflicts the United States is involved in? The GOP has grown increasingly hostile towards military aid to Ukraine, and European diplomats fear Vance’s ascension is a bad sign for future assistance. Meanwhile, the Republicans have been steadfast in their support of Israel’s invasion of Gaza, and attacked Joe Biden for not doing enough to support America’s top ally in the Middle East. We’ll see what Vance and other speakers have to say about these two wars.
Will the convention speakers touch on Trump’s most divisive beliefs, such as that the 2020 election was stolen, or that the former president’s enemies should be prosecuted? Or will they go along with the reported wishes of the Trump campaign and tone down their rhetoric in favor of a message of unity?
Updated
