In RNC speech, President Trump claims Biden would be ‘the destroyer of American greatness,’

The speech was the coda of four days of speeches in which some speakers offered personal testimonies that affirmed Trump as someone compassionate to the needs of minorities and immigrants.

• By Juana Summers/NPR

(Washington) — In a speech rife with thinly veiled racial appeals, President Trump argued that Democratic nominee Joe Biden and his party were “completely silent about the rioters and criminals spreading mayhem in Democrat-run cities.”

But at the same time, the president himself seldom directly mentions the killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery and others whose deaths have sparked outrage, and an outcry over systemic racism and police brutality that has spilled into the streets of American cities.

He also offered little comfort — or notice — to the city of Kenosha, Wis., where Jacob Blake, a Black man, was shot by police. His only passing mention of the shooting and the outrage from the city was in a salvo during the speech focused on condemning lootings and fires in cities across the country.

“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 said.

The speech was the coda of four days of speeches in which some speakers — including several speakers of color — offered personal testimonies that affirmed Trump as someone compassionate to the needs of minorities and immigrants. Yet others echoed Trump’s messages of racial grievance, and expressed concern that if Joe Biden is elected that leftists would bring civil unrest and anarchy to American cities across the country.

For a convention focused on a president whose campaign and subsequent time in office has had exploiting divisions in American society as a hallmark, it has been a dissonant display.

Thursday night relied on a number of speeches that focused on fear, telling viewers that they would only be safe if President Trump was elected for a second term, and that if former Vice President Joe Biden was elected instead, they would be in grave danger.

Over the course of several hours, viewers heard from speakers including Ann Dorn, the widow of a retired police captain killed by someone looting a store during protests in St. Louis, Mo.; Patrick Lynch, the president of New York City’s largest police union; and the parents of Kayla Mueller, the American woman taken hostage by the self-declared Islamic State.

Lynch said that police officers across the country are “staring down the barrel of a public safety disaster,” and that when it comes to the safety of American families, “there is no other choice.”

“You won’t be safe in Joe Biden’s America. You can have four more years of President Trump. Or you can have no safety, no justice, no peace,” Lynch said.

Dorn described the moment she learned that her husband had been killed in devastating detail, and said that Trump will “restore order” in American communities.

She also described a society in which “so many young people are so callous and indifferent towards human life.”

That said, there were speakers of color on the convention’s final night who testified to President Trump’s personal character amid charges of racism by political opponents.

Alice Johnson, whose sentence President Trump commuted, said that Trump “saw me as a person” and had compassion for her.

“Free in body thanks to President Trump. But free in mind thanks to the almighty God,” she said.

Ja’Ron Smith, a deputy assistant to Trump who is Black, said Thursday that he had seen President Trump’s true conscience, and praised his response in “a moment of national racial consciousness.”

“I have seen his true conscience. I just wish every American could see the deep empathy he showed to families whose loved ones were killed in senseless violence,” he said. Adding that Trump has made it clear “that if you want to have a safe community, you must have a police department and that department must have the highest standards.”