CHARLOTTE, North Carolina — President Trump will be boosted by some of his most loyal supporters and fans before he officially accepts his party’s renomination.
Trump will cap the Republican National Convention on Thursday from the White House South Lawn, according to his campaign, though the New York Times reported Sunday morning he might address the party faithful every night of the four-day program airing nightly from 9-11 p.m.
Organized around the theme of “Honoring the Great American Story,” the Trump family features heavily in the lineup, including first lady Melania Trump, his adult children, and their partners. But echoing the Democratic convention last week, the schedule also relies on ordinary people and celebrities to tout the president’s achievements after almost four years in the Oval Office.
Alice Johnson, whose life sentence for cocaine trafficking was commuted by Trump in 2018, will speak in support of the incumbent’s reelection. She’ll be joined by Andrew Pollack, who worked with the administration after his daughter Meadow died during the 2018 Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in Parkland, Florida.
Pollack’s involvement was announced last week, along with former Covington Catholic High School student Nicholas Sandmann. Sandmann this year settled multimillion-dollar lawsuits with the Washington Post and CNN over their coverage of his 2019 confrontation with Native American elder Nathan Phillips. Mark and Patricia McCloskey, the St. Louis couple who pointed their guns at Black Lives Matter protesters over the summer, will appear as well.
While the list mostly reflects Trump’s base general election strategy and his “law and order” message ahead of the fall fight, it does respond to Democratic efforts to pull support from the political center and the other side of the ideological aisle. New Jersey Rep. Jeff Van Drew, a Democrat who defected to the Republican Party last year over the president’s impeachment, will address the convention.
Party heavyweights, such as Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, will speak at the largely virtual gathering too, as will potential 2024 Republican White House hopefuls Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, former United Nations ambassador and South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, and Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton.
Going second has allowed Republicans to learn from the Democrats’ experiment with the digital format amid the coronavirus pandemic. Plans for the GOP convention to be hosted in Charlotte, North Carolina, were scrapped, but for GOP business meetings and a convention delegate vote on this cycle’s nomination.
“The Republican Party is feeling great after the Democrat convention,” Florida GOP national Committeewoman Kathleen King told the Washington Examiner in Charlotte. “We are the party of optimism — they are the party of doom and gloom. We have a vision — they have nothing but complaints. We believe in America — they believe in socialism.”
