Trump RNC speech live updates: Introduced by Hulk Hogan, ex-president only mentions Biden twice

Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance follows several accounts on X that espouse far-right and white nationalist views, according to an analysis by Richard Hall and Isaac Lozano for The Independent.

There were plenty of colorful twists on traditional outfits at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee this week and, in the wake of Trump’s wounding in an assassination attempt, an unusual new one, writes Michelle Del Rey.

The ascension of JD Vance, first to the Senate and now as Donald Trump’s running mate, is a story that’s as much about what the Republican Party does not represent as it is a story about the GOP’s evolution.

Wednesday night at the RNC was wholly oriented around Trump’s vice president.

In Vance, Trump has chosed a self-proclaimed economic populist as his partner — a strategic pick aimed at shoring up support in key areas of the Rust Belt and other communities where manufacturing and energy are critical.

Vance, a one-term senator from Ohio, has been in the upper chamber of Congress for just a year and a half.

In that time, he staked out his position as a clear outlier from the conservative mainstream with actions including an appearance on a United Autoworkers picket line and support for a railworkers union’s bargaining efforts over paid sick leave.

Now, as Trump’s prospective vice president, Vance could be about to face a rude awakening, as this clip from last night neatly illustrates.

It was around the time when one of the delegates to the RNC yelled “Kai Trump 2040!” when the scope of the Trump takeover of the Republican Party was suddenly laid very bare.

Major party conventions often feature family members and friends close to the person at the top of the ticket. It’s nothing new.

But the Trumpification of the GOP, which was on full display this week, took that trend to the extreme — and made clear that the continued strength of the MAGA movement would not only persist through 2024 but well into the future.

The really rather ineffective but nevertheless popular MAGA lawyer got emotional praising her most prominent client on stage last night, uttering the truly ghastly line, perhaps the most bowel-tremoring of the whole convention, when she declared: “The only crime President Trump has committed is loving America.”

Gustaf Kilander has this one.

You can read the former’s president’s entire nomination acceptance speech for yourself below.

If you do so, imitating his voice as preposterously as possible is strongly recommended.

Trump’s campaign spent the better part of four days promising a changed man – a more thoughtful candidate, forever changed by a would-be assassin’s bullet.

But that image was shattered over 93 minutes on Thursday.

The nominee’s speech, which trailed off the prepared remarks on the teleprompter at multiple points, was in turn monotonous as he waffled on the call for “unity” and angry about the current state of American life, for which he is as responsible as anyone else, if not much more so.

Here’s John Bowden’s assessment from Milwaukee.

It was a family affair at the convention as Trump accepted the GOP nomination and gave his first speech since surviving a shooting but his youngest son did not join the family on stage.

The former president’s middle son managed to work in his height as he bashed trans athletes during his speech on the final night of the RNC.

Insisting his dad is fighting for the “soul of America,” Eric Trump ticked off a laundry list of grievances with the Biden administration in his speech, which touched on energy, the economy, infrastructure, the southern border, the Russian war of aggression in Ukraine, the Middle East, the fentanyl crisis and crime.

He then attacked “male athletes, guys my height – six foot five,” whom he said “are swimming in women’s sports” and “destroying the dreams of young girls who have trained every minute of their lives.”

Here’s Gustaf Kilander on his hate-mongering buffoonery.

Another GOP favourite, the former Fox News host and Moscow tourist Tucker Carlson, also took to the stage on the convention’s final night to offer his, ahem, unique perspective.

Here’s Eric Garcia on what he had to say.