The Republican Party opened its national convention Monday, kicking off a four-day political jamboree that will anoint billionaire Donald Trump as the Republican presidential nominee. / AFP PHOTO /
by Michael Mathes Andrew BEATTY
CLEVELAND, United States (AFP) — Donald Trump looked to his wife Melania to put the Republican convention back on track Monday, after a chaotic first day dominated by a stunning open revolt against his White House bid.
Jeers and yells filled the convention floor in Cleveland, Ohio and echoed across the political landscape, as simmering divisions among thousands of Republican delegates spilled out into the open.
Anti-Trump Republicans — outraged that their party will be led by a man who described Mexicans as rapists and advocated barring Muslims from the country — expressed fury when procedural machinations denied them a chance to register their discontent.
“We deserve to be heard, this is the people’s convention!” said Diana Shores, a delegate from Virginia, while pro-Trump delegates tried to drown out the rebels with shouts of “Shame! Shame!”
Several hundred anti-Trump delegates were seeking to change convention rules so they could opt out of voting for Trump — but their rebellion was ultimately quashed.
Trump fans argue delegates should heed the will of the grassroots of the party: The billionaire won a thumping victory in a series of statewide party elections, winning more than 13 million votes — the most of any Republican nominee ever.
But the rare spasm of Republican disunity quashed any hopes that the four day convention would bring Trump’s smooth and straightforward coronation as the party’s White House nominee.
First the lady
This was meant to be Trump’s moment — the point at which he put the lid on Republican divisions and marched the party toward November’s election and the White House.
Heading into the four-day political jamboree at the tightly secured arena in Cleveland, he tried to assuage conservative critics and bring the party together by naming Indiana Governor Mike Pence as his running mate.
But it is Trump’s Slovenian-born former model wife who will be his chief advocate Monday.
She has top billing for the first prime-time session and will make the case for her husband’s policies and personality.
Her background and allure make her a potentially potent surrogate for her White House hopeful husband, particularly on sensitive issues like immigration and gender.
The Trump campaign hopes her story can bring nuance to his much criticized stance on immigration — contrasting the call for hardline measures against Latin Americans and Muslims with a more open stance on legal immigration.
After his wife, the candidate’s team will send his son and daughters to the convention stage in the coming days in an attempt to humanize The Donald.
No-shows
In a sign of lingering divisions, several party luminaries are staying away from Cleveland, including the entire Bush family, Mitt Romney and reportedly even John Kasich, host state Ohio’s sitting governor.
Much now rides on Trump’s supporters putting the case to a divided party.
Amid a spate of racially charged killings in the United States and terror attacks across the globe, Republican Congressman Michael McCaul summed up a core tenet of Trump’s appeal: “Are you safer than you were eight years ago?”
Throughout day one in Cleveland, a host of speakers focused on issues that unite Republicans: support for the armed forces, concern about law and order — and hatred of the presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.
Clinton fired back at her billionaire rival as the convention kicked off, blasting Trump’s candidacy as a “threat to our democracy,” and accusing him of stoking racial and ethnic tensions with his rhetoric.
Trump “plays coy with white supremacists, Donald Trump insults Mexican immigrants,” she told the NAACP, America’s largest black civil rights organization, at a meeting in Cincinnati.
“Donald Trump cannot become president of the United States,” she said, to huge applause.
The Republican convention ends Thursday with a speech from the 70-year-old billionaire real estate mogul. The Democrats stage their own convention next week in Philadelphia.
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