A triumphant Donald Trump vowed to be tough on crime and illegal immigrants in a speech on Thursday accepting the Republican presidential nomination.
Mr Trump’s 75-minute speech was designed to set the tone for the general election campaign against Ms Clinton, an answer to Republicans who say the best way he can unify the divided party is to detail why the Democrat should not be elected on November 8.
As the crowd chanted: “Lock her up” for her handling of US foreign policy, Mr Trump waved them off and said: “Let’s defeat her in November.” Thousands of supporters who were gathered in the convention hall roared their approval.
When it was over, Mr Trump was joined on stage by family members as balloons cascaded from above and confetti blew around the arena.
A CNN snap poll of viewers of the speech said 57 per cent had a “very positive reaction” to the address and 18 per cent a somewhat positive reaction, while 24 per cent said it had a negative effect.
The acceptance speech by Mr Trump (70) closed out a four-day convention that underscored his struggle to heal fissures in the Republican Party over his anti-illegal-immigrant rhetoric and concerns about his temperament.
Trump presented a bleak view of America under siege from illegal immigrants, threatened by ISIS, hindered by crumbling infrastructure and weakened by unfair trade deals and race-related violence.
Accusing illegal immigrants of taking jobs from American citizens and committing crimes, Trump vowed to build a “great border wall” against the border-crossers. “We will stop it,” Mr Trump said.
Mr Trump took positions in conflict with traditional Republican policies. He said he would avoid multinational trade deals but instead pursue agreements with individual countries. He would renegotiate the NAFTA trade accord linking the US, Canada and Mexico. He would penalize companies that outsource jobs and then export their foreign-made products back into the US. “We will never sign bad trade deals,” Mr Trump thundered. “America first!”
“I have joined the political arena so that the powerful can no longer beat up on people that cannot defend themselves,” Mr Trump said. “Nobody knows the system better than me, which is why I alone can fix it.”
In his speech, Mr Trump portrayed himself as a fresh alternative to traditional politicians, willing to consider new approaches to vexing problems and help working-class people who may feel abandoned.
Mr Trump promised fearful Americans he would restore “safety” to a country mired in crises that had lost its way.
He “humbly and gratefully” endorsed the Republican mantle before 2,000 raucous party activists in Cleveland, in a strikingly populist speech that offered a dark view of today’s America.
Between defining chants of “U-S-A” and “Trump, Trump, Trump” the mogul-turned-TV-star-turned-politico cast himself as the “law and order candidate” and vowed to champion “people who work hard but no longer have a voice.”
“I am your voice,” he declared pointing into the cameras, promising a retu-rn to more secure times with “millions of new jobs and trillions in new wealth.” The “crime and violence that today afflicts our nation will soon, and I mean very soon, come to an end,” he said. “Beginning on January 20, safety will be restored.”
But in the end, many of these points were made when Ivanka Trump, Mr Trump’s daughter, introduced her father. “I have seen him fight for his family. I have seen him fight for his employees. I have seen him fight for his company and now I am seeing him fight for our country,” she said.
