Donald Trump said he had been saved “by the grace of almighty God” as he vowed to crack down on immigration, slash taxes and renew trade wars if given another four years in the White House.
Trump used his speech accepting the Republican presidential nomination to make a pitch for the centre, calling for national healing and an end to “discord and division” as he recounted his near-death experience in an assassination attempt days earlier.
But he also saw his more than 90-minute national primetime speech to a packed arena at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee as an opportunity to double down on an “America First” agenda rife with economic nationalism, putting US trading partners on notice that new protectionist measures could be coming.
With less than four months to go until November’s election, Trump’s speech came at an extraordinary moment in American politics, as the former president surges ahead in the polls despite his recent criminal convictions, and his Democratic opponent Joe Biden faces an unprecedented revolt from members of his own party urging him to abandon his re-election bid.
Trump now leads Biden in nearly all national and swing state opinion polls, making him the clear favourite to return to the White House. Betting markets on Thursday put the odds of a win for Biden, who tested positive for Covid on Wednesday, at an all-time low.
He used his first speech since the assassination attempt to lash out at the “inflation under Biden, but also to warn the US’s trading partners that he would revive the trade fights that unsettled markets and businesses globally when he was last in office.
“We have long been taken advantage of by other countries, often being considered our allies. We lose jobs and revenue, they gain everything, and wipe out our businesses. I stopped it four years ago, and I will stop it again,” Trump said.
“We will not let countries come in, take our jobs, and plunder our nation,” he said. “The way they will sell their product in America is to build it in America, and only in America.”
Trump specifically vowed to use “taxes, tariffs and incentives” to help the US car sector, and “would not allow massive auto manufacturing plants to be built in Mexico, China or other countries”. But he also promised to end rules boosting the adoption of electric vehicles that are at the heart of Biden’s climate plans.
Trump’s delivery was relatively muted and difficult to hear at times, especially as the former president rambled off-script in the 92-minute speech. But the crowd of Republican party activists frequently cheered their leader. At one point, he revived his false claims that the 2020 election was rigged. “The election result, we’re never gonna let that happen again,” he said, adding that Democrats had used “Covid to cheat”.
In foreign affairs, Trump cast his policies as preserving peace compared to the wars in the Middle East and Ukraine that have flared up since he left office. He gave an off-script shout-out to Viktor Orbán, the Hungarian prime minister who is sympathetic to Russian President Vladimir Putin, as a “tough leader”. Of North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un he said: “I think he misses me.”
In one of the darker sections of his speech, he blamed countries in Latin America for encouraging violent criminals to enter the US, and vowed a draconian crackdown at the US-Mexico border.
“The world’s criminals are coming here, to a town near you — and are being sent by their governments, because their governments are smarter than ours,” he said. “Tonight, America, this is my vow: I will not let these killers and criminals into our country. I will keep our sons and daughters safe.”
But Trump also avoided some of the most inflammatory language he has deployed in campaign rallies, including warning of a “bloodbath” if he lost the coming election, and that immigrants were “poisoning the blood” of the nation. He made no mention of the attack on the US Capitol by his supporters on January 6 2021.
Trump frequently invoked God in his speech and talked of attending meetings by the late evangelist Billy Graham with his father — a nod to his loyal evangelical Christian base. However, he made no mention of abortion, an issue that has become a liability for Republicans in recent elections after Trump appointed Supreme Court justices who overturned the constitutional right to end a pregnancy.
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The speech was the climax of a four-day Republican convention that was dominated by the fallout from the assassination attempt on July 13. Trump and his allies have adopted “fight, fight, fight” as their rallying cry, a homage to his words shouted as US Secret Service agents ushered him off the stage after the attack in Butler, Pennsylvania.
Fighting was a theme of the final night of the convention as Trump and his allies sought to convey a message of strength. Warm-up speakers included professional wrestler Hulk Hogan and Dana White, chief executive of Ultimate Fighting Championship, the mixed martial arts franchise.
Trump was also supported on Thursday by nearly all of his close family members, including his wife, Melania, and daughter, Ivanka, who have to date shied away from publicly supporting his third bid for the White House.
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