RNC Night 2: Melania Trump, a pardon, citizenship ceremony and Pompeo
It’s all in the family for President Trump.
Trump’s wife, two of his children and one of the most loyal members of his Cabinet took center stage at the Republican National Convention on Tuesday, praising the president’s “energy” and “strength” in superlative-packed speeches while he doled out a nationally-televised pardon, oversaw a naturalization ceremony and stretched the boundaries of political norms.
First Lady Melania Trump delivered the night’s final and most widely-hyped speech before a small crowd in the White House Rose Garden, using the backdrop of the historic building for blatantly partisan purposes — a juxtaposition that government watchdogs said may have violated federal ethics laws.
“No matter the amount of negative or false media headlines or attacks from the other side, Donald Trump has not and will not lose focus,” the usually-reclusive first lady said, her husband and about 50 supporters looking on. “He loves this country and knows how to get things done.”
Members of the Rose Garden audience were not socially distancing and few wore face masks despite the still-raging coronavirus pandemic, which has already killed nearly 180,000 Americans.
Still, the first lady dedicated a chunk of her speech to the victims of COVID-19 and pledged that her husband “will not rest until he has done all he can to take care of everyone impacted by this terrible pandemic.”
“I know many people are anxious and some feel helpless. I want you to know you are not alone. My husband’s administration will not stop fighting until there’s an effective treatment or vaccine available to everyone,” Trump said.
The president is languishing in general election polls against Joe Biden, in large part because an overwhelming majority of Americans disapprove of Trump’s handling of the pandemic as well as the fragile and faltering U.S. economy, as a result.
But Melania Trump stayed clear of such thorny grounds in her speech and focused on what she called her husband’s ability to “make change.”
“From the day that I met him, he has only wanted to make this country the best it can be,” she said.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, one of the night’s other keynote speakers, offered a full-throated endorsement of Trump’s reelection bid in a video recorded from Jerusalem, where he’s visiting on a diplomatic mission.
“President Trump has put his America first vision into action,” Pompeo said, becoming the first sitting secretary of state ever to deliver remarks at a political convention.
The House Foreign Affairs Committee earlier this week released an internal State Department cable issued by Pompeo warning U.S. diplomats that, under the Hatch Act of 1939, they cannot take overt sides in presidential campaigns and that even Cabinet-level officials such as himself should “not engage in any partisan political activity.”
The Democrat-controlled House committee has already launched an investigation into potential Hatch Act violations by Pompeo.
But the secretary of state claims his speech is in line with his ethical responsibilities because he was acting in his personal capacity.
Still, Pompeo listed off the Trump administration’s foreign policies, country-by-country, in his speech and lauded how “safe and secure” the president’s agenda has made the world.
“The way each of us can best ensure our freedoms is by electing leaders who don’t just talk, but who deliver,” Pompeo said.
Earlier in the mostly virtual second night of the Republican convention, Trump issued an unprecedented mid-convention pardon in a White House-branded video to Jon Ponder, a convicted Nevada bank robber who has turned his life around and runs a religious nonprofit to help former inmates get back on track.
“Jon, we honor your devotion to showing returning citizens that they are not forgotten,” Trump said from the White House, standing alongside Ponder and Richard Beasley, a retired FBI agent who arrested him and has since become the ex-con’s friend.
Later on, Trump pulled off another unprecedented move, overseeing a naturalization ceremony of five new American citizens in a move that blurred the lines between government work and political theater.
“The history and heritage of the United States are now yours to preserve and pass down to the next generation. Our culture, our traditions and our values are now yours to uphold and live by,” said Trump, whose administration has worked aggressively to curtail both legal and illegal immigration.
Eric Trump, one of the president’s sons, offered carefully-scripted remarks from an auditorium near the White House that didn’t offer much emotion and anecdotes of what the candidate is like behind closed doors, as is typically customary for family members.
Rather, he spoke of his dad’s “fighting” spirit and took ominous shots at Democrats.
“The Democrats want to defund law enforcement, the Democrats want an America where your thoughts and opinions are censored when they do not align with their own,” Eric Trump said. “It must be fought for and protected. This is a fight that we are in right now, and it is a fight that only my father can win."
Tiffany Trump, the president’s youngest daughter, suggested she could relate to the millions of Americans who have lost their jobs due to the coronavirus pandemic because she recently graduated from the prestigious Georgetown Law School.
“I can relate to so many of you who might be looking for a job,” she said. “My father built a thriving economy once and believe me, he will do it again.”
Melania Trump’s speech proved an opportunity for her to overwrite the controversy she sparked with her last convention address in 2016. That speech lifted several verbatim passages from former First Lady Michelle Obama’s address at a Democratic convention eight years earlier.
One of Melania Trump’s speechwriters ultimately took the blame for the 2016 snafu, but that didn’t save the soon-to-be first lady from embarrassing accusations of plagiarism at the time.
While she didn’t address the controversy in her Tuesday night speech, the first lady reminisced about the 2016 convention.
“It seems like just yesterday that we were at our first convention,” she said.
Beyond the cadre of family members, Trump invited some lesser-known characters to speak at Tuesday night’s GOP confab, including Nicholas Sandmann, a Kentucky high school student who settled multi-million dollar lawsuits against CNN and Washington Post over reports about his involvement in a 2019 protest at the Lincoln Memorial.
“Cancelled is what’s happening to people around this country who refuse to be silenced by the far left. Many are being fired, humiliated or even threatened, and often the media is a willing participant,” Sandmann said, echoing Trump’s attacks on the press. “I would not be cancelled. I fought back hard to expose the media for what they did to me.”
