The third day of the Republican National Convention kicks off Wednesday with Republicans — led by the newly nominated Donald Trump and his running mate, U.S. Sen. JD Vance of Ohio — shifting their focus to issues of national security and foreign policy.
Republicans are expected to focus on Democratic President Joe Biden’s handling of the ongoing crises in Europe and the Middle East. Former Trump administration officials are also expected to take the stage to outline what foreign policy would look like if he returns to the White House for a second term.
Vance will also introduce himself to a national audience Wednesday evening when he delivers his first speech as the Republican vice-presidential nominee.
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Democrats are trying to offer political counterprogramming to the RNC, announcing $15 million to fund campaign operations in seven key swing states — even as some in the party have urged President Joe Biden to bow out of November’s election.
The Democratic National Committee announced Tuesday that it is investing $15 million in state parties, meant to help them open more field offices and bolster staffing. The funding will let them add to the 217 existing coordinated campaign offices working jointly for Biden’s reelection bid and state parties that already employ 1,100-plus staffers in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, the DNC said.
The investments will pump nearly $3 million into Wisconsin; nearly $2 million each into Pennsylvania, Michigan and Nevada; almost $1.5 million in Arizona; more than $1.2 million in North Carolina; and more than $1 million in Georgia.
Usha Chilukuri Vance, wife of JD Vance, is a Yale law graduate and attorney.
She stood next to her husband on Monday as he was named the Republican vice presidential nominee at the Republican National Convention.
The 38-year-old Chilukuri Vance was raised in San Diego, by Indian immigrants. Her mother is a biologist and provost at the University of California at San Diego; her father is an engineer, according to JD Vance’s campaign.
She received an undergraduate degree at Yale University and a master of philosophy at the University of Cambridge through the Gates Cambridge scholarship.
▶ Read more about Usha Vance
Trump and Vance were expected to appear in the hall each night of the convention. Vance is slated to speak Wednesday and Trump will speak Thursday.
Trump, who has long decried rivals with harsh language and talked about prosecuting opponents if he wins a second term, seemed poised to deliver a more toned-down speech. His eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., said in an Axios interview outside the RNC that he spent three or four hours going through his father’s convention speech with him, “trying to de-escalate some of that rhetoric.”
But there were hints in Tuesday’s programming of some of Trump’s old grievances, including several references to Trump’s disproven theories of election fraud. One of the primetime speakers, Madeline Brame, railed against Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, whose office prosecuted Trump for illegally orchestrating a hush money scheme to influence the 2016 election. That made Trump the first former president convicted of a felony crime.
Brame accused Bragg of having mishandled the cases against the people accused of killing her son. Of Trump, she said, “He’s been a victim of the same corrupt system that I have been and my family has been.”
Trump’s survival of an attempted assassination Saturday at a rally in Pennsylvania was on the minds of many inside the convention hall. One of the delegates in the crowd could be seen with a folded white piece of paper over his ear — an apparent tribute to the bandage Trump wore when he entered the hall Monday to a roaring crowd.
He was wearing it again when he arrived Tuesday night, appearing even earlier than he did the night before. Trump entered a few minutes after his newly chosen running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance.
Many of the speakers so far have referenced the assassination attempt on Trump’s life, and that’s something we can expect to hear more of as speeches go on.
With Trump’s primary rivals speaking, Day 2 at the RNC was an occasion for the GOP to demonstrate its unity, a sharp contrast to the Democratic party’s mounting concerns over the viability of Biden.
▶Read the AP’s takeaways from night 2
Madeline Brame, whose veteran son was stabbed to death in Harlem in 2018, brought the crowd’s focus Tuesday night to one of right’s biggest boogeymen: New York District Attorney Alvin Bragg.
Brame has publicly criticized Bragg for being soft on crime, including in the case of her son’s alleged killer. The crowd responded with roaring applause as Bragg is one of the officials involved in Trump’s various legal battles. “They betrayed us and stab us in the back,” Brame said about Democrats. “Trump was right when he said they’re after us, he’s just standing in the way.”
As part of the convention’s ‘Make America Safe Again’ session, family members of those who have lost loved ones to fentanyl overdose appeared back-to-back on the RNC stage to make the forceful and at time emotional case for why Trump would fix the epidemic.
Michael Morin, the brother of a woman who was killed by a man who was allegedly in the country illegally, said that Trump would take more action on the drug crisis than Biden and Harris have in the past three and a half years. Another speaker, Anne Funder, lost her 15-year-old son Austin to an overdose two years ago. As she got choked up on stage, the crowd began to chat “Joe must go!” to which she responded, “Yes, he must.”
Tom King, a Pennsylvania delegate from Butler, Pennsylvania, said he spoke to Trump at the rally 10 minutes before the shooting erupted on Saturday. He says he sat about 20 feet in front of Corey Comperatore, the former fire chief who was killed.
“It was a great day to see the president,” said King, who is general counsel for the Pennsylvania Republican Party. “He was in a great mood. He was energetic, but he was very serious about what we need to do in Pennsylvania to win the election.” When an AP reporter asked him to specify what he said needed to be done in Pennsylvania, King said, “I won’t say what he said.”
“We pledged to do everything we could to help him,” he said. “He’s a great guy.”
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