Election Updates: Darkening Cloud of Crises Shadows Trump’s Renomination

LiveUpdated Aug. 27, 2020, 10:31 a.m. ET
Aug. 27, 2020, 10:31 a.m. ET
Republicans intensify their message about urban unrest, aiming for suburban voters. As the president prepares to accept the Republican nomination tonight, sports stars are in uprising.
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A hurricane pounding the Gulf Coast. Another American city lashed by uprisings after the police shooting of a Black man. President Trump has been waiting a long time for tonight accepting the Republican nomination for a second term as president but he finds himself competing for attention with the kinds of events that have become too familiar to Americans in recent years.
The question is if or rather how Mr. Trump will take these unsettling moments into account when he steps outside the White House to deliver his remarks.
His vice president, Mike Pence, offered a road map of how to deal with Hurricane Laura in his acceptance speech. He offered prayers for residents in harms way and promised that the federal government would help the people of Louisiana recover from any destruction wrought by a storm with winds of up to 150 miles per hour.
The situation in Kenosha, Wis., is far more fraught. Wisconsin is not only a swing state; many analysts say that Joseph R. Biden Jr., the presidents Democratic challenger, cannot win in November without taking it back from Mr. Trump. Some polls show him with a lead.
On one hand, the events the protest against the police shooting, buildings set on fire, tear gas fired into crowds and Mr. Trump pledging to send in the National Guard play directly into Republican attacks that Democratic rule would lead to unrest and crime in American cities.
But in this case, the victim, Jacob Blake, was a Black father who was left paralyzed after being shot in front of his children. And now, in the ensuing days of protests, a white teenager who confronted protesters has been arrested in the fatal shootings of two people. His social media posts suggest he is a strong supporter of Mr. Trump and law enforcement.
Despite the tense state of affairs in Wisconsin and questions about the teenagers political affiliations, Mr. Pence made clear the Trump campaign would not shy away from using the events in Wisconsin to illustrate the law-and-order attacks on the Democratic ticket.
Let me be clear: The violence must stop whether in Minneapolis, Portland or Kenosha, he said. Too many heroes have died defending our freedoms to see Americans strike each other down. We will have law and order on the streets of America.
Adam Nagourney
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Mike Pence officially accepted the nomination for vice president. In a speech from Fort McHenry in Baltimore, Mr. Pence emphasized law and order and acknowledged the protests about race relations nationwide.CreditCredit…Doug Mills/The New York Times
The America that many speakers described on Wednesday at the Republican National Convention did not sound like a desirable place: fractious, violent, functionally lawless in some pockets.
But their case that only President Trump could shield Americans from this fate was complicated by a nettlesome fact: He is in charge, at present at the controls of government through the purportedly real-time conditions these supporters outlined. And they would all like to keep him there.
America, Vice President Mike Pence told a Republican convention crowd sternly from Fort McHenry in Baltimore, needs four more years of President Donald Trump.
The third night of the Republican convention steered into a bit of messaging jujitsu that has become a dominant theme of the week: Mr. Trumps capacity to cure the ills that have visited America on his watch but have, in this telling, been largely out of his hands to date.
And so Mr. Trump, the argument has gone, can be relied upon now to shield Americans abandoned amid the threats they see all around them, in the nation he leads.
People that can afford to flee have fled, Gov. Kristi Noem of South Dakota said of cities like Portland, Ore., and New York. But the people that cant good, hard-working Americans are left to fend for themselves.
Mr. Pence was more explicit in establishing a contrast with the Democratic nominee: You wont be safe, he said, in Joe Bidens America.
Even as president, Mr. Trump has often appeared most comfortable in the role of back-seat driver, jeering his own government like a common bystander, insisting that someone really ought to do something about all this. (When he has an opinion, Mr. Pence said, he is liable to share it.)
Matt Flegenheimer and Katie Glueck
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In making his case for another Trump term, the vice president spoke of President Trumps character when the cameras are off.CreditCredit…Doug Mills/The New York Times
Republicans used the third night of their convention on Wednesday to amplify warnings of violence and lawlessness under Democratic leadership, trying to capitalize on the worsening unrest in Wisconsin to reclaim moderate voters who might be reluctant to hand President Trump a second term.
The party also made appeals to social conservatives with attacks on abortion and accusations that the Democrats and their nominee, Joseph R. Biden Jr., were Catholics in name only. And they intensified their effort tolift Mr. Trumps standing among women with testimonials vouching for him as empathetic and as a champion of women in the workplace from women who work for him, a number of female lawmakers and his daughter-in-law, Lara Trump.
Speaking hours after Gov. Tony Evers of Wisconsin called in the National Guard to restore order to Kenosha, where a police officer shot a Black man this week, numerous Republicans, led by Vice President Mike Pence, assailed Mr. Biden for what they claimed was his tolerance of the vandalism that had grown out of racial justice protests, asserting that the country would not be safe with him as president.
Last week, Joe Biden didnt say one word about the violence and chaos engulfing cities across this country, said Mr. Pence, standing before an array of American flags at Fort McHenry in Baltimore and vowing: We will have law and order on the streets of this country for every American of every race and creed and color.
The intense focus on the rioting amounted to an acknowledgment by Republicans that they must reframe the election to make urban unrest the central theme and shift attention away from the deaths and illnesses of millions of people from the coronavirus.
Jonathan Martin and Alexander Burns
In contrast to the Democratic Convention, where three former presidents and the partys 2016 nominee Hillary Clinton, made the case for Joseph R. Biden Jr., the Republican convention has been devoid of such standard bearers this week for President Trump.
Now dozens of former staff members of the G.O.P.s previous two presidential nominees Senator John McCain and Senator Mitt Romney of Utah have endorsed Mr. Biden.
Both have been targets of Mr. Trump Mr. McCain, who died in 2018, for his role in helping to preserve the Affordable Care Act, and Mr. Romney for voting his year in support of one of the articles of impeachment against Mr. Trump.
The cross-aisle alliance between Mr. McCain and Mr. Biden, one a conservative war hero from Arizona and the other an Irish Catholic senator from Delaware, has been pointed to by Mr. Bidens supporters as an example of Mr. Bidens bipartisan spirit.
The group of more than 100 former McCain staffers hope that their endorsement amplifies Mr. McCains Country First credo. That motto and his frequent call on Americans to serve causes greater than our self-interest were not empty slogans like so much of our politics today, the group of aides, most of them still Republicans, wrote in a joint statement, praising Mr. McCain and implicitly taking aim at President Trump. They were the creed by which he lived, and he urged us to do the same.
Mark Salter, Mr. McCains longtime chief aide and speechwriter, helped organize the letter.
We have different views of Joe Biden and the Democratic Party platform most of us will disagree with a fair amount of it but we all agree that getting Donald Trump out of office is clearly in the national interest, Mr. Salter said.
The list of signers includes a range of people from chiefs of staff in Mr. McCains Senate office to junior aides on his campaigns who worked for him over his 35 years in Congress and during two presidential bids.
Over 30 of Mr. Romneys former staff members signed a statement repudiating Mr. Trump, which was posted online.
What unites us now is a deep conviction that four more years of a Trump presidency will morally bankrupt this country, irreparably damage our democracy, and permanently transform the Republican Party into a toxic personality cult, they wrote. We cant sit by and allow that to happen.
Jonathan Martin and Neil Vigdor
It is President Trumps clearest path to re-election: winning back the suburbs in a handful of swing states that drifted from the Republican Party in the 2018 midterms. And that imperative has been vividly apparent each night of the partys national convention, with speakers and videos trying to recast Mr. Trumps divisive record, which hurt Republicans two years ago.
There have been glowing tributes from women, scenes of friendly banter between Mr. Trump and immigrants and a Black family, and stories from people he reached out to in their times of despair.
The approach amounts to an acknowledgment by the presidents campaign that appealing to his right-wing base will not be enough to win re-election, and that voters who have soured on him after three and a half years are not responding to a strategy that leans heavily into attacking his opponent, Joseph R. Biden Jr., and other Democrats as radicals and extremists.
Trump advisers said on Wednesday that they did not intend to change peoples minds about the president. Voter opinions about him have been remarkably impervious to the good and bad news about him, fluctuating little since he took office. Rather, the aides said, they were seeking to remind suburban voters of policies Mr. Trump has supported like granting citizenship for legal immigrants and softening harsh criminal statutes that will give them something to hang on to in the voting booth in November.
In 2016, exit polls showed Mr. Trump winning suburban areas 49 percent to 45 percent, helping to offset his deep deficit among city voters. By the 2018 midterm elections, Democrats had caught up: Each party captured 49 percent of votes cast in the suburbs in House races that year, according to exit polls.
Now, Mr. Trumps job approval is worse among suburbanites than even among city dwellers. Sixty-one percent of suburban voters disapproved of his job performance while just 38 percent approved, according to a Fox News poll this month. Among suburban women in particular, Mr. Trumps net approval rating was only 34 percent.
Jeremy W. Peters, Annie Karni and Nick Corasaniti
On one of the most consequential nights in recent sports history when a player-led boycott forced the N.B.A. to postpone playoff games the Republican National Convention offered pro-Trump testimonials from a retired Notre Dame coach and a former N.F.L. player facing insider-trading charges.
It is a pleasure, a blessing and an honor for me to explain why I believe that President Trump is a consistent winner, said Lou Holtz, 83, who coached college and pro football teams during a successful four-decade career.
I am here as a servant to God, a servant to the people of our nation and a servant to our president, said the former Minnesota Vikings safety Jack Brewer, 41.
Mr. Trump has plenty of support among athletes, especially white ones, across a range of sports. And he has hobnobbed with many Black sports figures, most from previous generations, like Mike Tyson, Herschel Walker and Jim Brown. Some, like Mr. Walker, have appeared at the Republican National Convention and delivered a message that the party wants to project that the president is not racist.
But many in the current generation of Black athletes in the N.B.A. and other leagues have added their voices to a broader call for social justice
And the shooting of Jacob Blake, a Black father who was partly paralyzed after a white officer fired seven shots into his back on Sunday in Kenosha, Wis., has revived the sense of urgency stirred by the death of George Floyd under the knee of a Minneapolis police officer in May.
Glenn Thrush
In one of the most striking moments of the second night of the Republican convention on Tuesday both for its content and for its blatant disregard for the traditional separation between governing and politicking President Trump held a naturalization ceremony for five immigrants.
It was an effort by Mr. Trumps campaign to cast him as pro-immigrant after three and a half years of anti-immigrant policies. But at least two of the five new citizens were not told the ceremony was being broadcast at the convention.
The decision by Mr. Trumps campaign to feature the ceremony angered some senior officials with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Some asylum officers confronted senior agency officials during a virtual town hall on Wednesday about whether Chad F. Wolf, the acting secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, had violated rules prohibiting political activity by presiding over the ceremony.
Its one of the things that shouldnt be politicized, and you can hardly get more political than your partisan political convention, said Barbara Strack, a former chief of the refugee affairs division at Citizenship and Immigration Services during the Bush and Obama administrations.
Zolan Kanno-Youngs and Michael D. Shear
Four years ago, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas delivered the most stunning speech of the Republican National Convention, conspicuously declining to endorse Donald J. Trump, his former presidential primary rival, and urging viewers instead to vote your conscience.
This time, well.
They didnt ask me to participate, Mr. Cruz said in a phone interview from his home in Houston. So, Im not on the speakers roster.
Amid the whiplashing loyalties and perpetual game theory of Trump-era Republicanism, Mr. Cruz is at once a singular figure former antagonist, wannabe successor, current ally generally (convention lineups notwithstanding) and perhaps the most striking exemplar of a certain kind of 2020 party leader.
He would like to be there for whatever comes after Mr. Trump, openly aspiring to run for president again if the opportunity presents itself. And like most of his Republican peers, he is not quite sure what will be there on the other side.
Mr. Cruzs bet, as in his runner-up finish in the 2016 primary, is that ideological conservatism will eventually win the day, despite the manifest indifference many Trump supporters have shown toward some traditional stated priorities of the right, like controlling deficits.
Asked in the interview to make a convention-style case for Mr. Trumps re-election on the spot, Mr. Cruz cited the remarkable policy successes of the last four years, paused for 12 seconds, then set off on an auditorium-ready, fully-composed celebration of tax cuts, deregulation and the historic economic boom that preceded the coronavirus.
Asked if Mr. Trump was making this argument effectively, the senator ruled: Sometimes. (Mr. Cruz made clear that he would have been happy to step to a microphone this week, if he had been invited.)
Matt Flegenheimerread more