Mike Pence has accepted Republican nomination for Vice President of the United States in the biggest spotlight of the Republican National Convention (RNC) day 3.
“I humbly accept your nomination to run and serve as Vice President of the United States,” said Pence.
Pence’s speech accepting the vice presidential nomination, on the third night of the convention, capped programming meant to show support for the military, law enforcement and public displays of patriotism. He spoke from Fort McHenry in Baltimore, the site of a battle in the War of 1812 that inspired Francis Scott Key to write “The Star-Spangled Banner.”
The nomination comes ahead of his own potential bid for the White House in 2024. Trump tapped Pence in 2016 partly for his pull with White evangelical Christians, a valuable campaign asset especially after a tape surfaced late in his 2016 run in which Trump discussed assaulting women.
Vice President Mike Pence raised the stakes in the November election in his Republican convention remarks, arguing that Democratic nominee Joe Biden’s election would mean the end of America.
Biden argued last week in accepting his party’s nomination that “character” and even democracy itself are on the ballot in November. Pence sought to turn those remarks against the former vice president.
Yet the convention risks being upstaged by far more dramatic events unfolding across the country.
Gulf Coast residents are bracing for landfall from a potentially catastrophic hurricane. A teenager reported to be a Trump supporter was arrested for killing two Black Lives Matters protesters in Kenosha, Wisconsin, on Tuesday. And NBA athletes refused to play Wednesday in solidarity with the Wisconsin demonstrators.
Hurricane Laura is approaching Category 5 and is poised to pummel the Texas-Louisiana border, inflicting as much as $25 billion in damage. The Wednesday convention program opened with a rabbi’s prayer for people in the path of the storm.
White House counselor Kellyanne Conway, who spoke during Wednesday’s program, held out the possibility that the storm may cause Trump to postpone his nomination acceptance speech, scheduled for Thursday at the White House.
“We adapt to events,” she said. “As of right now, the president plans to speak tomorrow.”
The vice president’s appearance was planned to involve combat veterans, according to people who asked not to be identified because it is intended as a surprise for viewers, with imagery intended at least in part as criticism of professional athletes who kneel during the national anthem.
Republicans have sought to capitalize on U.S. cultural divides and present themselves as defenders of freedom, while portraying Democrats and Biden, the former vice president, as socialists bent on trampling American values. Democrats painted Trump at their convention last week as an incompetent and corrupt chief executive who threatens democracy.
Before the pandemic struck, Trump could boast that U.S. jobs had increased by close to 7 million on his watch, with unemployment at a half-century low of 3.5%.
This year, the economy has endured the sharpest recession on record, shrinking in the second quarter by 9.5%. The job gains have been wiped out and unemployment stands at 10.2%.
Democrats have hammered Trump for reacting too slowly to the pandemic that has killed more than 179,000 Americans, saying it would disappear, and failing to marshal a national response plan. Republicans largely avoided focusing on the virus during their convention until first lady Melania Trump spoke at length on Tuesday night with sympathy for victims, saying her husband “will not rest until he has done all he can to take care of everyone impacted.”
Other speakers included second lady Karen Pence; Lara Trump, campaign adviser and the president’s daughter-in-law; and Senator Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee and Senator Joni Ernst of Iowa, who is facing a competitive re-election battle of her own.
Sports figures included in the program are former Notre Dame football coach Lou Holtz, an advocate for holding college games despite the pandemic, the campaign said, and former National Football League player Burgess Owens, who is running for Congress in Utah this year but has ties to believers of QAnon, a conspiracy theory.
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