Chris Christie Stages Raucous Mock Trial of Hillary Clinton at Convention

Then Trump called in to Fox News and conducted an interview while the mother of a dead soldier was on stage telling the tearful tale of her son’s death, and why it was Hillary Clinton’s fault. Sen. She also stumped in front of the Culinary Workers Union Local 226, one of the most powerful workers’ unions in Las Vegas.

After weeks of planning and one ferocious outburst that upstaged almost everything on the Republican National Convention’s first day, conservatives’ feisty but always improbable effort to deny Donald Trump the GOP presidential nomination succumbed to multiple causes of death.

“With the right leadership we can tone down some of the rhetoric, that’s why I have a big struggle with Donald Trump at this point because how do you take back some of the statements that he’s made?”

Manafort even tried to blame Clinton for the controversy over Melania Trump lifting passages of her convention remarks from a speech that Michelle Obama delivered in 2008. Trump will close the convention with an acceptance speech Thursday night.

The Trump campaign did not respond to requests for comment.

But Christie spent little time talking about Trump, the man he backed shortly after dropping his own 2016 presidential bid, and instead detailed the Republican Party’s case against Clinton.

“Since the Justice Department refuses to render a verdict, I’m going to present the facts against Hillary Rodham Clinton”, Christie said, before listing off every single region undergoing unrest in the world – Libya, Nigeria, China, Syria, Iran, Russia, and Cuba. Her backing by Unite Here, a national union consisting of 270,000 including the powerful Culinary Workers Union Local 226 in Nevada, will prove pivotal going forward.

Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort called the criticism “just absurd” and said the issue had been “totally blown out of proportion”.

Culinary has a large grassroots network it often uses in get-out-the-vote campaigns that can swing elections for favored candidates in the Silver State.

Nevertheless he confessed that Trump was his third choice, behind Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker and Florida Senator Marco Rubio.

The chant, which delegates began on the first night of the convention Monday, was revived again Tuesday when New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie began a speech by making a case against Clinton. “I think he has a real moral problem with what Trump has been saying”, Matthews said.

Perhaps the wildest attack on Tuesday came from former GOP presidential candidate Ben Carson, who told the crowd that one of Clinton’s “role models” – community activist Saul Alinsky – “acknowledges Lucifer” in a 1971 book. The theme was “Make America Work Again”, but it might as well have been “Make Hillary Unemployed”. However, Mr Christie and and the crowd disagreed as Mr Christie repeatedly yelled “guilty”. Aides say they talk regularly on the phone and Christie has acted as a liaison between fellow Republican governors and Trump, both on the trail and at Trump Tower in NY. “We Republicans have made our choice”, referring to the fact that Trump had been officially nominated by the party earlier in the evening. “Chip in now to make sure he never steps foot in the Oval Office”.

Tuesday night’s address was the second RNC speech of Christie’s career.

To me, all this seemed like a new crossing of a line and an ugly degradation of a norm in American politics.