President Trump accepts GOP nomination for second term during White House RNC speech, says Biden will be ’destroyer of American greatness’

President Donald Trump accepted the Republican Party’s nomination for president on Thursday night, using an elaborate set on the South Lawn of the White House to warn of a radical takeover of America if Democrat Joe Biden is elected.

The event, a critical mixing of partisan politics and government on the lawn of the People’s House, was the culmination of a Republican National Convention held in the shadow of a national pandemic -- though few of the 1,500 people in attendance wore masks and sat and cheered Trump with no social distancing.

For Trump, the convention’s conclusion was an attempt to make his case for re-election and to “make America great again” in a post-pandemic world while warning that if elected, the former vice president would be “the destroyer of American greatness.”

“When re-elected, the best is yet to come,” Trump said.

Against a backdrop of coronavirus, a hurricane that battered the Texas-Louisiana coast and civil strife over the issues of law enforcement’s role amid a push for racial and social justice, Trump restated his commitment for strong policing while warning of the threat of anarchy under Democrats.

“Your vote will decide whether we protect law abiding Americans or whether we give free reign to violent anarchists, agitators and criminals who threaten our citizens. And this election will decide whether we will defend the American way of life or whether we allow a radical movement to completely dismantle and destroy it,” Trump said.

Trump assailed Biden and Democrats at the previous week’s party convention for having “repeatedly assailed America as a land of racial, economic and social injustice.”

“I ask you a very simple question: How can the Democrat Party ask to lead our country when it spends so much time tearing down our country,” he said.

Trump’s comments were the exclamation point of a truncated Republican convention that focused on a theme of law and order, coinciding with civil unrest and later deadly violence following the shooting of Jacob Blake, a Black man, by a white Kenosha police officer on Sunday. A 17-year-old alleged vigilante from Antioch, Kyle Rittenhouse, was charged with murder Thursday in the killing of two protesters and attempted murder for wounding a third during a subsequent protest.

Echoing a theme of seeking to appeal to voters in suburbs that have been shifting from Republican to Democrat, Trump warned, “If the left gains power, they will demolish the suburbs, confiscate your guns and appoint justices who will wipe away your Second Amendment constitutional freedoms.”

“Make no mistake, if you give power to Joe Biden, the radical left will defund police departments all across America,” Trump said. “They will pass federal legislation to reduce law enforcement nationwide. They will make every city look like Democrat-run Portland Oregon. No one will be safe in Biden’s America.”

In contrast, Trump said, “My administration will always stand with the men and women of law enforcement.

Republicans have maintained the civil unrest and violence that erupted in Kenosha and, before that in Chicago and other cities following the death of George Floyd while in police custody in Minneapolis in May, is due to Democratic governors and mayors.

Republicans looked at the developments in Wisconsin and other cities as a call to restore law and order, chastising Democrats for supporting lawlessness. Democrats have sought to draw a line between peaceful protest and violent unrest and looting, contending Trump has failed to condemn extremism and promoted division and racial strife.

“We must remember that the overwhelming majority of police officers in this country are noble, courageous and honorable. We have to give law enforcement, our police, back their power. They are afraid to act. They are afraid to lose their pension. They are afraid to lose their jobs. And by being afraid, they are not able to do their jobs. And those who suffer most are the great people who they want so desperately to protect,” Trump said.

“When there is police misconduct, the justice system must hold wrongdoers fully and completely accountable, and it will. But what we can never have in America --and must never allow -- is mob rule,” he said. “In the strongest possible terms, the Republican Party condemns the rioting, looting, arson and violence we have seen in Democrat-run cities like Kenosha, Minneapolis, Portland, Chicago and New York.”

Trump contended there was “violence and danger in the streets of many Democrat-run cities throughout America” that could be “easily fixed” by federal intervention.

“We must always have law and order,” the president said. “As long as I am president, I will defend the absolute right of every American citizen to live in security, dignity and peace.”

Trump said if the Democratic Party wants to “stand with anarchists, agitators, rioters, looters, and flag-burners, that is up to them. But I, as your president, will not be a part of it. The Republican Party will remain the voice of the patriotic heroes who keep America safe.”

The final night of the convention featured an interesting juxtaposition of messaging over civil unrest.

Ben Carson, Trump’s Housing and Urban Development secretary said “our hearts go out to the Blake family and the other families that have been impacted by the tragic events in Kenosha.” Carson said, “History reminds us that necessary change comes through hope and love, not senseless and destructive violence.”

But Carson’s measured message was followed by attacks on Democrats by the head of the largest union in the New York Police Department and former New York Mayor Rudi Giuliani, an attorney for Trump.

“The Democrats have walked away from us,” said Pat Lynch, head of the New York City Police Benevolent Association. “They have walked away from police officers and they have walked away from the innocent people we protect. Democratic politicians have surrendered our streets and our institutions.”

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Giuliani accused “Black Lives Matter and Antifa” of hijacking peaceful protests and turning them into “vicious brutal riots.”

“Soon protests turned into riots in many other American cities, almost all Democrat. Businesses were burned and crushed. People were beaten, shot and killed. Police officers were routinely assaulted, badly beaten and occasionally murdered. And the police handcuffed by progressive Democrat mayors from doing anything,” Giuliani said.

Trump also contended that murders of African Americans in Democratic run cities are ignored by Biden and the left. “I never will,” he said.

“Just imagine if the so-called peaceful demonstrators in the streets were in charge of every lever of power in the U.S. government,” he said.

Earlier in the day, speaking at a briefing on Hurricane Laura, Trump restated his call for Democratic leaders to request the National Guard and other federal assistance.

“And we will put out the fire. We will put out the flame. We will put out the vandalism, because the vandalism and the looting is ridiculous to allow this to happen. I don’t know how they can possibly do it and why they do it. I don’t understand, because all they have to do is call,” Trump said.

But Biden contended it was Trump fueling the racial strife.

“The part that bothers me the most is the idea of just pouring gasoline on the racial flames that are burning now,” Biden said on MSNBC. “That does not justify any of the looting, any of the burning any of the ... damage being done by protesters. But the people have a right to be angry, people have a right to protest.”

Biden said he didn’t believe the divisions in Kenosha were about whether “all folks in that community agree with white supremacists, or blacks in the community agree with some of those folks who are looting.”

“I don’t think that’s what Kenosha is about. I don’t think that’s what Black and white America is about. But that’s what’s being seen now and it has to stop,” he said.

Prior to the start of the convention, Biden spent a half hour speaking at a virtual fundraiser hosted by the Illinois Trial Lawyers’ Association in which he repeated many of his comments from earlier in the day.

Larry Rogers, Jr., a partner with Power Rogers, LLP and president of the trial lawyers’ group, said Biden was needed “because of the lawless, self-serving conduct and destruction we’re seeing with the current president and administration.”

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