President Trump and his advisers had talked up how they planned to present a sunny, uplifting and optimistic vision of America at this week’s Republican National Convention, but the first day of festivities was filled with brooding warnings of a dark Democratic future.
“Anarchists” would rule. Democrats would “abolish the suburbs.” There would be “rioting, looting and vandalism.” “Socialism” and “radicals.” “Cancel culture” run amok. “Woketopians” on the move. A “horror movie.”
Such divisive language was hardly a surprise at the renomination convention of a president who declared at his inauguration an end to “American carnage” and whose political calling card from the start has been amplifying and maximizing the grievances of his supporters.
But the explicit play to rev up Mr. Trump’s political base — from the list of speakers itself to their provocations from their various speaking perches — was a reminder of the narrow path he is pursuing as he seeks re-election. Suburban voters, especially white women who were essential to his surprise 2016 victory, have shifted decisively in the direction of the Democrats in the intervening years.
There were some efforts to show a softer side of Mr. Trump who “cares” — a buzzword that was used repeatedly — and to justify as purposeful his general bombast.
“Everyone knows he can be tough,” said Ronna McDaniel, the Republican Party chairwoman. “Some people don’t like his style,” noted the retired football player Herschel Walker. “President Trump sometimes raises his voice — and a ruckus,” said Representative Matt Gaetz, Republican of Florida.
The explicit division on Monday of America into “Democrat states,” as Donald Trump Jr. put it at one point, and the rest of the country stood in stark contrast to the promises last week by Joseph R. Biden Jr., the Democratic nominee.
Mr. Biden pledged to work as hard for those who vote for him as those who don’t. He said in his speech, “That’s the job of a president: to represent all of us, not just our base or our party.”
President Trump was trying to rewrite history and enlist frontline health workers to the cause. The strain showed.
Flanked in the East Room of the White House by Americans involved in the fight against the coronavirus — a nurse, a trucker, a postal worker, another nurse — Mr. Trump set off on Monday for more than four rose-colored minutes recasting the recent past before his Night 1 convention audience.
“Tell me a little about your stories,” he asked his guests at first. But he had a few of his own: about dastardly Democrats and governors who disappointed him, about his preferred nicknames for the virus and the insufficient gratitude for his government’s efforts.
“We have delivered billions of dollars of equipment that governors were supposed to give, and in many cases they didn’t get,” he complained. “So the federal government had to help them, and all of the people that did this incredible work, they never got credit for it. But you understand where it came from.”
At least twice, Mr. Trump called the pandemic “the China virus,” seeking to deflect blame.
“I don’t want to go through all the names,” he said at one point, “because some people may get insulted. But that’s the way it is.”
And this is the way it was, as ever, on Monday night: a re-election team that had pledged a message of uplift and unity beforehand — with its candidate struggling in the polls amid poor appraisals of his pandemic response — and a principal who knows no other way but rampaging and revisionism.
All night, the proceedings played out in this perpetual tug. Any aspirational appeals from speakers like Nikki Haley, the former United Nations ambassador, and Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, the chamber’s only Black Republican, seemed doomed to be shadowed by the often ominous tone of the evening.
President Trump appeared from the White House twice on the opening night of the Republican National Convention on Monday, and he will deliver his acceptance speech this week from the South Lawn. Melania Trump will speak from the Rose Garden. And Secretary of State Mike Pompeo will beam in to endorse the president from a rooftop in Jerusalem.
Their appearances amount to a radical break from tradition even for an administration that has repeatedly shattered longstanding norms. Never in recent times has a president used the majesty of the White House to stage a nominating convention, nor has a sitting secretary of state participated in such a partisan event, much less from overseas where he is ostensibly on a diplomatic mission.
According to State Department guidance from December 2019, department employees are not allowed to “speak for or against a partisan candidate, political party or partisan political group at a convention, rally or similar gathering sponsored by such entities.”
A State Department official said that Mr. Pompeo would “address the convention in his personal capacity” and added: “No State Department resources will be used. Staff are not involved in preparing the remarks or in the arrangements for Secretary Pompeo’s appearance. The State Department will not bear any costs in conjunction with this appearance.”
But the official guidelines, and a cable Mr. Pompeo himself recently sent to employees, state clearly that such partisan activities are prohibited even on employees’ personal time.
Senator Cory Booker, Democrat of New Jersey and a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, criticized Mr. Pompeo on Tuesday for traveling to Israel for a political speech.
In a Zoom video call organized by the Democratic National Committee, Mr. Booker said that Mr. Pompeo’s trip to Israel to stump for Mr. Trump seemed to trample on the idea that certain places were sacrosanct and should not be used for political purposes. He accused Mr. Trump of using Israel as a political wedge.
“To me, it’s reckless,” Mr. Booker said. “It is counter to the traditions of our country.”
The convention speeches are only the latest examples of how Mr. Trump has further blurred the lines between the government and his campaign as he presses the advantages of incumbency to pull off a come-from-behind victory in November.
While other presidents running for a second term have mixed governing and electioneering, they generally followed boundaries between their public duties and political interests, proprieties that Mr. Trump has disregarded from the start.
President Trump has long resisted criticizing President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey — despite the authoritarian leader’s detention of American citizens and diplomatic employees, offensive against U.S.-backed Kurdish fighters in Syria and crackdown on protesters in Washington.
And hours after the Republican convention aired an interview on Monday in which Mr. Trump called Mr. Erdogan “very good,” the State Department issued a statement denouncing Mr. Erdogan’s recent meeting with leaders of the Palestinian resistance group Hamas, highlighting the disconnect between Mr. Trump and the rest of his administration’s policy toward Turkey.
The statement, from the State Department spokeswoman Morgan Ortagus, said the United States “strongly objects” to a meeting that Mr. Erdogan hosted with two Hamas leaders in Istanbul on Saturday. The U.S. has designated Hamas a terrorist organization, and Ms. Ortagus said the leaders Mr. Erdogan met have been specifically designated global terrorists.
“President Erdogan’s continued outreach to this terrorist organization only serves to isolate Turkey from the international community, harms the interests of the Palestinian people, and undercuts global efforts to prevent terrorist attacks launched from Gaza,” Ms. Ortagus wrote. She said it was the second time that Mr. Erdogan had invited Hamas leaders to Turkey this year.
Contrast that with Mr. Trump’s comments in the convention segment: “I have to say that, to me, President Erdogan was very good,” he told the Rev. Andrew Brunson, who was detained in Turkey for two years until negotiators were able to convince Mr. Erdogan to release him in 2018. “So,” Mr. Trump said, “we appreciate that.”
CNN received plaudits on Tuesday from an unlikely source for its generally uninterrupted broadcast of the Republican convention’s opening night: President Trump.
Mr. Trump commended the network on Twitter for carrying the proceedings almost in their entirety on Monday night.
Very appreciative that @CNN covered the vast majority of the Republican Convention last night. That was really good for CNN, while at the same time being good for our Country. Thank you!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 25, 2020
The praise offered a stark contrast with Mr. Trump’s attacks on CNN throughout his term, from his frequent declarations that the network is “fake news” to his sparring with its White House correspondents.
Mr. Trump’s approval of the broadcast was also a reversal from his complaints earlier Monday about CNN and other cable news outlets’ decision not to air the roll call of states, during which Republican delegates cast their votes to nominate Mr. Trump for a second term, in its entirety.
Broadcasters have been bracing for a week of tough editorial decisions during the Republican convention, a balancing act between providing the party equal airtime and modulating the well-documented flow of misinformation by Mr. Trump, according to Michael M. Grynbaum, The Times’s media correspondent.
All three of the major cable news networks — CNN, MSNBC and Fox News — came under fire at various times on Monday for their coverage of the first day of the Republican conclave.
Brad Parscale, a senior Trump campaign adviser whom the president replaced as campaign manager in July, voiced his disapproval on Monday night of Fox’s convention broadcast.
“Can’t believe I have to watch the convention on @CNN,” Mr. Parscale said on Twitter. “Unbelievable. @FoxNews.”
The tv Watch
Broadcasting so much of the Republican National Convention from a real location, the “imperious” backdrop of the Andrew W. Mellon Auditorium in Washington, was an attempt to send a message to pandemic-stricken America that “things aren’t bad — well, they’re not that bad,” The Times’s chief television critic, James Poniewozik, wrote.
But he added that “the first night of the R.N.C. also took place in a virtual space: the political augmented reality of President Trump.” Here is an excerpt from his assessment of the first night, where, he wrote, most of the lineup “either spoke to the Trumpist id, with its red-meat culture-war overtures, or to Mr. Trump’s own ego.”
Speaker after speaker launched into attacks and grievances steeped in the language of conservative culture and meme-making. Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida denounced the “woketopians.” Natalie Harp, a cancer survivor, likened Mr. Trump to George Bailey of “It’s a Wonderful Life,” a character who famously battled a greedy real estate developer.
Other speakers insisted that Mr. Trump had a hidden caring side, or suggested, like the party’s chairwoman, Ronna McDaniel, that a “tough” man like Mr. Trump could get more done than “nice guy” Mr. Biden. Donald Trump Jr., his tone jittery, called Mr. Biden “basically the Loch Ness Monster of the swamp.”
But the decibel champion of the night was Kimberly Guilfoyle, the former Fox News host whose delivery threatened to Make America Deaf Again. In a tinnitus-tempting, five-alarm blare, she warned about enemies who “want to enslave you to the weak, dependent, liberal, victim ideology, to the point that you will not recognize this country or yourself.” The speech might have been better delivered to a roaring rally crowd, or maybe at an altar in front of an exploding volcano.
The second night of the Republican National Convention will feature some big names, like Melania Trump, the first lady; Secretary of State Mike Pompeo; and Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky.
It will also include Nicholas Sandmann, the teenager involved in a confrontation with a Native American man at a protest last year, and Mary Ann Mendoza, a consultant to the We Build the Wall organization, which was recently accused of fraud.
Here’s how to watch the convention and who else you can expect to see.
How to watch:
Convention proceedings will begin at 9 a.m. Eastern time Tuesday through Thursday but, as with the Democratic convention, the big speeches will happen at night.
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The Times will stream the convention every evening, accompanied by chat-based live analysis from our reporters and real-time highlights from the speeches.
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The official livestream will be available on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Twitch and Amazon Prime.
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ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox News will cover the convention from 10 to 11 p.m. every night; CNN from 8 p.m. to 2 a.m.; MSNBC from 7 p.m. to 2 a.m.; PBS from 8 to 11 p.m.; and C-SPAN at 9 a.m. and then at 8:30 p.m.
Who’s speaking:
Mr. Trump’s campaign released a partial list of speakers for Tuesday:
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Former Attorney General Pam Bondi of Florida
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Attorney General Daniel Cameron of Kentucky
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Abby Johnson, an anti-abortion activist
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Jason Joyce, a lobsterman in Maine
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Myron Lizer, vice president of the Navajo Nation
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Mary Ann Mendoza, whose son was killed in a car crash with an undocumented immigrant
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Lt. Gov. Jeanette Nuñez of Florida, the first Hispanic woman elected to that job
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Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky
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John Peterson, the owner of Schuette Metals in Rothschild, Wis.
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Secretary of State Mike Pompeo
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Gov. Kim Reynolds of Iowa
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Nicholas Sandmann, a teenager from a Catholic high school in Kentucky
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Eric Trump, the president’s son and an executive vice president of the Trump Organization
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Melania Trump, the first lady
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Tiffany Trump, the president’s younger daughter
Louis DeJoy, the postmaster general, told Congress on Monday that the Postal Service could be trusted to carry out the largest vote-by-mail program in American history without political bias, even as President Trump repeated baseless accusations that mail-in voting would be used by his rivals to rig the November election against him.
Under tough questioning by Democrats on the House oversight committee, Mr. DeJoy, a major donor to Mr. Trump and other Republicans, mounted an outraged defense of the modifications he has made at the Postal Service that have thrust the agency into a political firestorm, denying that they were motivated by partisanship. He refused to commit to reversing the changes, which he characterized as vital cost-cutting measures for a cash-strapped agency badly in need of an overhaul, and scolded Congress for failing for years to attend to the post office’s financial woes.
While he conceded that some of the changes he had put in place, such as reducing overtime and limiting trips, had caused service delays, Mr. DeJoy maintained that the issues were being rectified and hotly denounced suggestions from Democratic lawmakers that he was working to help Mr. Trump politically.
“I am not engaged in sabotaging the election,” Mr. DeJoy told lawmakers.
But even as he spoke, Mr. Trump was delivering an extraordinary diatribe against voting by mail in an unannounced appearance at the Republican National Convention in Charlotte, N.C., where he sought to sow mistrust in the process and claimed without evidence that Democrats were “using Covid to steal the election.”
The performance made for an awkward contrast with Mr. DeJoy, who spent the day trying to reassure Congress about the Postal Service’s role in helping to administer an election without political influence. Reiterating comments he made last week before a Senate panel, Mr. DeJoy criticized the “false narrative” that he said was being promoted about both his intentions and the changes at the agency, which he described as necessary to address the Postal Service’s financial challenges. Civil rights groups, state attorneys general and Democrats have asserted instead that they are part of a concerted attempt, directed by Mr. Trump, to disenfranchise voters.
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