Trump to Cruz: I don’t want your endorsement

Donald Trump accepted the Republican nomination for president, declaring America in crisis and promising its people they will be safer and richer if he is elected in November.

Trump’s speech was consistant with the theme of many of his previous speeches, where he painted the current state of the country as bleak, unsafe and constantly under attack, things only he as president can fix.

America, your choice: great again or same again?

“I have a message for all of you: the crime and violence that today afflicts our nation will soon come to an end”.

The speech by Trump’s wife, Melania, for example, bore a too-striking resemblance to one of Michelle Obama’s.

Just before Republicans opened the convention on Monday, Trump had trailed Clinton by almost 10 percentage points in the poll. Trump was speaking to commonsense, American concerns about safety and security, primarily, though not exclusively, of the working and middle class white Americans – the people he called forgotten Americans, reminiscent of Richard Nixon’s silent majority. Her primetime speech elicited repeated applause and much praise from delegates in the arena.

“USA!” And when he took the stage after a video introduction from actor Jon Voight and a heartfelt speech from his daughter, Ivanka Trump, he clapped for himself as well. I mean, if that was the New York Times they would’ve gotten Pulitzer Prizes for their reporting. “Any government that fails to do so is a government unworthy to lead”.

The last time Trump drew about even with Clinton was in mid-May, after his last two rivals for the Republican nomination dropped out of the race and party leaders started to get behind his campaign. “It’s a powerful combination”, Steel said. “A week few will forget”, NBC’s Hallie Jackson said.

He set out his vision for a more inward-looking United States, framing his economic and foreign policies around a domestic focus in an age of globalisation.

“No one has more faith in the American people than my father”.

Cruz’s play could crush his political future-or it could ensure it. One thing’s for sure, it is already being compared to past convention speeches and will mark Cruz as gutsier than most of his party. But, is Trump’s America a portrait that undecided voters recognize?

Because of the heated primary, because of his outsider status, Trump has drawn many comparisons to Reagan (most recently from his vice presidential pick, Mike Pence).

Cruz also said that his speech last night could be seen as a template for what he thinks Trump needs to do to earn his vote.

“And his answer – more fear, more division, more anger and more hate – was yet another reminder that he is temperamentally unfit and totally disqualified to be president”, he said. Trump said of a hypothetical Cruz endorsement.

Others thought differently. Congressman Trent Franks from Arizona, on the convention floor, standing near his delegation, described the speech as “the best he has ever done”.

The four-day eventincluded a failed bid by anti-Trump delegates for a rule change allowing them to vote for alternative candidates, and a refusal by his main primary rival, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, to endorse him. “I think the country will be paralyzed”.

Trump said he would speedily address the violence that has dominated headlines, such as the shooting deaths of five Dallas police officers earlier this month. “Hillary is going to talk to the whole country”. If Republicans can’t rant about her ills in a room full of Republicans, I’m afraid we’re becoming a nation of pearl clutchers.

Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus spoke at the event, applauding traditional Republican values and calling for party unity, saying “let’s stand united as Republicans, let’s get to work to expand our Republican majorities”. (Former Bush State Department official and head of the strategic studies program at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies said to me that Trump’s comments were “the height of irresponsibility, a repudiation of key principles of American foreign policy, and a display of cowardice and incompetence of disqualifying proportions.”) Then, on Friday, Trump demonstrated he really does have a screw loose.

“Real change, the kind we have not seen in decades, is only going to come from outside the system and it is only going to come from a man who has spent his entire life doing what others said could not be done”, she said.