Pledging to save struggling Americans, Trump accepts GOP presidential nomination

There he was against all odds and despite all the prognosticators, center stage and in full command and control. Some of the most evocative moments came when Donald Trump just looked out into the audience, now firmly ensconced in a new pomp and circumstance.  

In Thursday night’s acceptance speech, the Republican presidential nominee used every one of the 75 minutes for one thing, and one thing only: to position himself as the sole change agent on the ballot come November. As Trump tells it, he is riding to the rescue of a nation that is rapidly deteriorating at home and overseas, stumbling from one mismanaged conflict to the next.

By simply voting for him, Trump claimed, voters would restore law and order, peace and prosperity. 

“After 15 years of wars in the Middle East, after trillions of dollars spent and thousands of lives lost, the situation is worse than it has ever been before,” Trump told the audience gathered in Cleveland’s Quicken Loans Arena. “This is the legacy of Hillary Clinton: death, destruction and weakness.” 

“But Hillary Clinton’s legacy does not have to be America’s legacy,” Trump continued. “The problems we face now – poverty and violence at home, war and destruction abroad – will last only as long as we continue relying on the same politicians who created them. A change in leadership is required to change these outcomes.”

And even as the standard bearer from one of the nation’s two establishment parties, Trump is not only running against the former secretary of state, senator and first lady, but against what he portrayed as self-interested elites whose agendas are at odds with the needs of their fellow Americans.

“A number of these reforms that I will outline tonight will be opposed by some of our nation’s most powerful special interests,” Trump said. “That is because these interests have rigged our political and economic system for their exclusive benefit.”

He charged that “big business, elite media and major donors” are lining up behind Clinton because she will keep the “rigged system” in place, Trump said.  “They are throwing money at her because they have total control over everything she does,” he said, without offering evidence to support the claim. “She is their puppet, and they pull the strings.”

The most important difference between him and his opponent, the candidate said, is that his plan would “put America first.” “Americanism, not globalism, will be our credo,” Trump pledged. “As long as we are led by politicians who will not put America first, then we can be assured that other nations will not treat America with respect. This will all change in 2017.”

During the address, Clinton took to Twitter to jab her rival over his positions and issue fundraising appeals, warning that a Trump presidency would be disastrous.

“This is real—Donald Trump just accepted the @GOP nomination,” she wrote in one tweet. “RT if you agree: We can't let him become president.”

Trump double downed on appealing to disaffected supporters of U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, who lost to Clinton after a surprisingly strong campaign in the Democratic primary. Some of Sanders campaign themes, including the plight of the working class and the negative impact of international trade agreements, have resonated with Trump supporters as well, although the two men differ on other policies and Sanders has pledged to do all he can to prevent a Trump presidency.

 “I have seen firsthand how the system is rigged against our citizens, just like it was rigged against Bernie Sanders – he never had a chance,” Trump said. “But his supporters will join our movement, because we will fix his biggest issue: trade. Millions of Democrats will join our movement because we are going to fix the system so it works for all Americans.”

Sanders, who posted a stream of tweets during the speech criticizing Trump, questioned his positions on such policy issues as health care, climate change and education funding.

In one tweet, Sanders wrote: “Our movement understands that what we don't need is Trump's huge tax breaks for millionaires. #RNCwithBernie.”

Much to the satisfaction of the convention, Trump showed no signs of backing down on his pledge to build a wall between Mexico and the United States, tying the nation’s failure to control its borders to the erosion of wages for African-American and Latino workers.

“Decades of record immigration have produced lower wages and higher unemployment for our citizens, especially for African-American and Latino workers,” Trump said. “We are going to have an immigration system that works, but one that works for the American people.”

And as he has done throughout his improbable run for the White House, Trump took on the news media. “Again, I will tell you the plain facts that have been edited out of your nightly news and your morning newspaper: Nearly 4 in 10 African-American children are living in poverty, while 58 percent of African American youth are not employed.”

“Two million more Latinos are in poverty today than when the president took his oath of office less than eight years ago,” he continued. “Another 14 million people have left the workforce entirely.”

As they have throughout his campaign, journalists worked diligently to correct the record as Trump delivered it.  

“Numbers are taken out of context, data is manipulated, and sometimes the facts are wrong,” The Washington Post reported. “When facts are inconveniently positive – such as rising incomes and an unemployment rate under 5 percent – Trump simply declines to mention them. He describes an exceedingly violent nation, flooded with murders, when in reality, the violent-crime rate has been cut in half since the crack cocaine epidemic hit its peak in 1991.”

And yet, as with the media’s zeroing in on plagiarism in Melania Trump’s speech earlier in the week, it may not stick. The Trump show is just so much bigger than that.

Indeed, Trump’s message resonated strongly with Ty Turner, an African-American who was an alternate delegate from North Carolina. Illegal immigration “doesn’t affect Caucasians directly,” Turner said. “It affects African-Americans directly because those low-wage jobs African-Americans have worked for a very long time. We have a certain mindset we want to get paid a certain wage but they come in and say I’ll work whatever you want.”  

Joy Hoffman, a delegate and chairwoman of Colorado’s Arapahoe County Republicans, said Trump’s prosperity message resonates back home.

“You see Denver and it looks like it is thriving and bubbling and everything else,” Hoffman said. “I also have older, older people in my neighborhood and in my county, farmers, ranchers and the economy is not so good for them. You have pockets where corporations have done real well and then you have everybody else. There is a real opportunity gap.”