Donald Trump Jr took his turn in the spotlight tonight as the highest profile member of the first family to address the Republican National Convention, painting his father as the sole guardian of American values, and Democrats as intent on tearing down the country.
His girlfriend Kimberly Guilfoyle also addressed the GOP faithful in remarks that seemed to come from the pulpit, with her arms reached out as she shouted out praise for President Trump.
The couple’s speeches came on a night in which the Republicans sought to present Trump as standing between the U.S. and an unruly, socialist future.
In a heavily-produced evening which saw two segments with Donald Trump speaking to first frontline workers and then freed hostages and prisoners from abroad, the party spent just short of two and a half hours seeking to convince voters of the virtue of four more years – which party faithful chanted at one point.
Trump had said last week that he wanted more of his convention to be live than the Democrats’ but just three speeches were live Monday – those of Ronna McDaniel, the Republican Party chair, Nikki Haley, the former ambassador to the United Nations, and Tim Scott, the South Carolina senator – and Trump Jr and his girlfriend pre-taped their speeches earlier in the day.
Organizers rolled out ‘ordinary voters’ who praised Trump for his impact on their lives, including a cancer patient and a recipient of PPP bailout cash, tried to present a diverse face of the party with black black speakers and an emotional Cuban immigration, started with a movie-style voiceover by Jon Voight and ended before 11pm EST.
The night made far less mention of coronavirus than the Democratic convention, and no mention at all of the death toll, with a taped segment of Trump meeting frontline workers to thank them at the White House, and a dental surgeon speaking about how he credited Trump with saving his life when he contracted COVID.
But it was president’s eldest son who made the main political argument of the night and struck directly and forcefully at his father’s rival for the presidency – Democratic nominee Joe Biden.
‘This time the other party is attacking the very principles on which our Nation was founded,’ he said of Democrats, in a speech taped before it was aired.
He accused Biden, who has spent over 40 years in public office as a senator from Delaware and then as vice president, ‘the Loch Ness Monster of the Swamp’ – which is the nickname for Washington D.C.
‘Joe Biden is basically the Loch Ness Monster of the Swamp. For the past half-century, he’s been lurking around in there. He sticks his head up every now and then to run for President, then he disappears and doesn’t do much in between,’ Trump Jr. said.
WATCH: Donald Trump Jr. Launch Attack On Joe Biden
Guilfoyle stuck to the campaign’s talking points in her brief remarks, emphasizing that Trump is the ‘law and order president’ while Joe Biden and Kamala Harris want to defund the police, which Biden has said is not true.
‘As Commander-in-Chief, he always puts America First! President Trump is The Law and Order President,’ she said. ‘Biden, Harris and their socialist comrades will fundamentally change this nation – they want open borders, closed schools, dangerous amnesty and will selfishly send your jobs back to China, while they get richer! They will defund, dismantle and destroy America’s law enforcement.’
She also criticized her former home state of California. Guilfoyle is the ex-wife of California Gov. Gavin Newsom. When he was San Francisco mayor the couple were portrayed as the future of Democratic politics.
‘If you want to see the socialist Biden/Harris future for our country, just take a look at California. It is a place of immense wealth, immeasurable innovation and immaculate environment – and the Democrats turned it into a land of discarded heroin needles in parks, riots in streets and blackouts in homes,’ she said in dramatic tones.
She then pivoted to what life is like under President Trump.
‘In President Trump’s America we light things up, we don’t dim them down. We build things up, we don’t burn them down. We kneel in prayer and we stand for our flag!’ she said.
WATCH: Kimberly Guilfoyle Praises Donald Trumo
Sen. Tim Scott, the only black Republican in the Senate, told his personal story at the GOP convention.
Scott, a South Carolina senator who says he was raised by a single mother and dropped out of school in ninth grade only to return to complete his education, spoke of his connection to his grandfather, who got to witness his own rise.
‘Growing up, he had to cross the street if a white person was coming,’ said Scott.
Scott tied his own story of achievement to a pitch for Donald Trump’s reelection at a time of angry clashes between Black Lives Matter protesters and police following the death of George Floyd in police custody.
‘And that’s why I believe the next American century can be better than the last,’ said Scott. ‘We have work to do, but I believe in the goodness of America,’ he added.
Scott also called for people to paint a ‘full picture’ of Trump,’ whose most fervent opponents have called him a racist.
He called several of Joe Biden’s flubs, including one the former vice president made while appearing withe Charlamagne tha God on his syndicated show ‘The Breakfast Club.’ Biden walked back the comment afterwards.
‘Joe Biden said if a Black man didn’t vote for him, he wasn’t truly black,’ said Scott, recalling the incident. ‘Joe Biden said black people are a monolithic community. It was Joe Biden who said “poor kids can be just as smart as white kids.”‘
Biden told the host in May: ‘“If you have a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or Trump, then you ain’t black.”
He quickly apologized for the remark. ‘I know that the comments have come off like I was taking the African American vote for granted. But nothing could be further [from] the truth.’ Biden said he was making the point that ‘making the point that I have never taken the vote for granted.’
Scott was also referencing Biden’s recent comment to NPR that ‘What you all know that most people don’t know, unlike the African American community with notable exceptions, the Latino community is an incredibly diverse community, with incredibly different attitudes about different things.’
Former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley also vouched for Trump and talked about her own diverse background.
‘He knows that political correctness and cancel culture are dangerous and just plain wrong,’ said Haley who is of Indian descent.
”In much of the Democratic party it’s now fashionable to say that America is racist. That is a lie. America is not a racist country. This is personal for me,’ said Haley, who called herself the ‘proud daughter of Indian immigrants.’