CLEVELAND — Painting a dark portrait of a country besieged at home and threatened abroad, Donald Trump accepted the Republican presidential nomination Thursday night with a blistering indictment of the Obama administration and a promise to enhance the safety and economic standing of Americans victimized by a failed political system.
Lacing into Hillary Clinton, Trump seized on her unofficial campaign slogan, “I’m With Her,” to portray his presumptive Democratic opponent as part of a self-dealing Washington culture that has lost touch with the anxiety and struggles of everyday Americans.
“My pledge reads, ‘I’m with you, the American people,’” Trump said on the final night of the Republican National Convention. “I am your voice.”
It was a voice suffused with anger and steeped in resentment — toward trade deals that, Trump said, have undermined the working class; at a culture straitened by “political correctness”; at the deaths of police officers shot down in the line of duty; at terrorists who have struck in San Bernardino, Calif., Boston and Orlando, Fla.; at masses of “illegal immigrants” who “are tonight roaming free to threaten peaceful citizens.”
America is in crisis, Trump said, with attacks on police and domestic terrorists threatening “our very way of life. Any politician who does not grasp this danger is not fit to lead our country.”
Trump’s message was leavened at times by his delivery. He hollered, pumped his fists in the air, waved his arms and occasionally strode from the lectern to applaud himself as delegates cheered and clapped along.
But some took away a message of unity.
Hilo businesswoman Lorraine Shin, a former delegate for Hawaii, current Hawaiian delegation aide and the mother of famed MMA fighter B.J. Penn, was one of those.
The Trump Chair for the Big Island said the GOP presidential candidate’s speech inspired the crowd from the get go.
“When he came out, it was like roaring thunder in the arena. It was deafening,” she told West Hawaii Today in a phone interview after the speech from Cleveland. “Tonight, we unified.”
Respecting and taking care of veterans, building the wall and dealing with ISIS and radical Islamic terrorists evoked the strongest reaction from the crowd, she said.
“This was almost like a happy new year, a rebirth for our country to make our country better again. That’s how I felt,” she said.
Trump went after two of the GOP’s ripest targets: Clinton and President Barack Obama.
“The irresponsible rhetoric of our president, who has used the pulpit of the presidency to divide us by race and color, has made America a more dangerous environment than, frankly, I have seen or anybody in this room has ever watched or seen,” Trump said.
Overseas, “the world is far less stable than when President Obama made the decision to put Hillary Clinton in charge of America’s foreign policy,” he said of her time as secretary of state. “I am certain it is a decision he truly regrets.”
When the crowd interrupted to chant “Lock her up,” Trump calmly replied, “Let’s defeat her in November.”
“Her bad instincts and her bad judgments — something pointed out by Bernie Sanders — are what caused so many of the disasters unfolding today,” Trump said, pouring salt on his harsh words by invoking Clinton’s main Democratic primary opponent.
“Big business, elite media and major donors are lining up behind the campaign of my opponent because they know that she will keep our rigged system in place,” Trump said, suggesting he alone could fix it.
Corruption, according to Trump, should be the top line on Clinton’s resume. “Her single greatest accomplishment may be committing such egregious crime and getting away with it,” he said, referring to the lack of charges against Clinton for using a private email system to transmit government information.
Trump shunned sweeping passages and high-flying rhetoric for a series of punchy rat-a-rat declarations. He made few specific proposals beyond his oft-repeated promises to build a wall along the U.S. border with Mexico — which delegates celebrated with repeated chants of “Build that wall!” — and impose an open-ended ban on immigrants from “any nation that has been compromised by terrorism.” He did not, as he has before, single out Muslims.
He also vowed to cut taxes, roll back regulations and “turn our bad trade agreements in great ones.”
“I have made billions of dollars in business making deals,” the Manhattan real estate magnate said. “Now I’m going to make our country rich again.”
Notably absent from the 75-minute address were the standard Republican promises to outlaw abortion, bring back school prayer or define marriage as a union between a man and a woman.
Trump vowed instead to protect gays and lesbians from Islamic terrorism, then ad-libbed when he heard the crowd react enthusiastically. “As a Republican, it is so nice to hear cheers for what I just said.”
And in a rare show of humility, Trump dramatically paused to thank evangelical Christians for their strong support in the primary season.
“I’m not sure I totally deserve it,” the thrice-married, admitted adulterer said with a sheepish smile.
Trump’s speech, after a glowing introduction by his oldest daughter, Ivanka, concluded the final night of the convention, followed by a showering of 125,000 balloons and the classic tableau of the nominee, his running mate, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, and their families smiling and waving from the stage.
The stakes for his acceptance speech grew exponentially greater after three days of serial mishaps: a last-gasp floor fight by delegates seeking to thwart the business mogul’s nomination; revelations that his wife plagiarized passages in her testimonial address; and, most dramatically, Sen. Ted Cruz’s snub of Trump during his prime-time speaking slot Wednesday.
Unrepentant, Cruz ignored demands Thursday that he make amends by immediately endorsing Trump. Instead, he declared he would not be a “servile puppy dog.”
“This isn’t just a team sport,” the senator told fellow Texans at a delegation over breakfast. “We either stand for shared principles or we’re not worth anything.”
Times staff writers Michael Finnegan and Lisa Mascaro and West Hawaii Today reporter Max Dible contributed to this report.
