His word is rare, his image a little blurred: Melania Trump, First Lady of the United States, enters the scene Tuesday evening with a message announced as positive in the middle of a Republican convention with a dark tone.
• Read also: The Republican Convention, more than ever a family affair
• Read also: Republican nomination: Trump accuses Democrats of fraud
Ten weeks before the presidential election, the speech of Donald Trump’s third wife is all the more expected as she has been far behind since the start of the campaign.
- Listen to the interview of international political columnist Loïc Tassé with Benoit Dutrizac on QUB Radio:
The ex-model of Slovenian origin, 50, should, as usual, stay away from politics, but could help to convey a less anxiety-provoking message than that conveyed so far by the “Great Old Party ”.
Melania Trump has, at times, in small touches, made her difference heard, as when she tweeted a photo of herself with a mask as the president sent contradictory messages on this subject in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic.
His words are unlikely to speak to the president’s loyal base, but could attempt to “attract at least a few undecided voters,” said Katherine Jellison, a historian at Ohio University.
The Republican billionaire’s campaign team announced a “very optimistic and cheerful” convention. But it is by evoking the possible “death of the American dream” if Joe Biden wins that the American president officially launched his re-election campaign on Monday.
The team of the Democratic candidate, veteran of American politics, quipped Tuesday on a beginning of convention “sad and incoherent”, riddled with “lies”.
With this speech, the First Lady will also try to make people forget the fiasco of 2016. Her first big speech at the Republican convention had taken entire passages from a speech by another “First Lady”, she much more present: Michelle Obama .
Pompeo from Jerusalem
Largely ahead in national polls, given beaten, by a shorter lead, in many key states, Donald Trump was officially invested Monday by his party in Charlotte, North Carolina, and has promised another victory.
Unprecedented in modern political history, Foreign Minister Mike Pompeo is expected to speak to him at the convention in a video recorded the day before in Jerusalem.
It is customary for the Secretary of State to stay away from these partisan high masses, whether they are Democrats or Republican.
“President Trump has guaranteed the safety of Americans and ensured our many freedoms, which are the foundations of this great nation,” he tweeted Tuesday, saying he was “eager” to recount how the president had “accomplished this mission. “.
According to Israeli media speculation, the message may have been filmed on the roof of the King David Hotel, an institution that overlooks the Old City. What send a message to the evangelical electoral base of Donald Trump.
Joe Biden’s communications director, Kate Bedingfield, was indignant at the Secretary of State’s “shameful” decision “to serve as the president’s small commissioner for his re-election during a diplomatic mission paid for by the taxpayer”.
As on the first evening, the president’s family will take center stage, with also the speeches of his children born from previous marriages: Eric and Tiffany Trump (36 and 26 years old respectively).
On Monday, his eldest son Donald Trump Jr summed up the upcoming presidential election to a choice between “church, work and school” and “riot, looting and vandalism”.
Don Jr assured that the president had “made quick decisions” against the COVID-19 pandemic, but, like almost all convention attendees, did not mention the some 178,000 Americans killed by disease.
The management of Donald Trump is however far from unanimous in his ranks and more than twenty former Republican Congressmen on Monday lent their support to his Democratic rival.
The billionaire will officially accept Thursday, and for the second time, the nomination of his party, during a speech in the gardens of the White House.