Donald Trump addresses Republican National Convention after accepting nomination for president.
Donald Trump formally accepted the Republican nomination for president on Thursday night, giving the biggest speech of his short political career - seeking to end a troubled, fractious GOP convention on a high note.
The nominee entered to stirring string music, with the jumbotron displaying only his name -TRUMP - in gold letters above his head.
"Friends, delegates, and fellow Americans, I humbly and gratefully accept your nomination for the presidency of the United States," Trump said. Then he joined the crowd in their chants, "USA! USA!"
Trump's speech cast the U.S. as a chaotic nation, where disorder and crime "threaten our very way of life." He portrayed himself as a man who could end it, almost immediately, without explaining exactly how.
"I have a message for all of you. The crime and violence that today afflicts our nation will soon - and I mean very soon - come to an end," Trump said. After he is inaugurated as president next January, Trump said, "Safety will be restored."
Trump's speech laid out stark differences between his agenda and that of presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. Trump cast Clinton as a captive of her donors, doing the bidding of those who've given to her foundation and her campaign.
"She is their puppet! And they pull the strings!" Clinton said. "That is why Hillary Clinton's message is that things will never change. Never ever. My message is that things have to change, and they have to change right now!"
At one point, the crowd chanted "Lock her up!" Trump shook his head no, and responded, "Let's defeat her in November."
The convention crowd cheered Trump's applause lines, and booed when he mentioned upticks in homicides, and crimes committed by undocumented immigrants. As Trump described a surge in illegal immigration, the crowd broke out into "Build that wall! Build that wall!"
Trump was introduced by his daughter Ivanka, who told the crowd that as a "proud millennial, I do not consider myself categorically Republican or Democrat."
'Sometimes, it's a tough choice," Ivanka Trump said. "That is not the case this time."
Ivanka Trump also endorsed an idea that Democratic candidates have focused on this year -using the government to make it easier for mothers to return to the workforce. "As president, my father will change the labor laws that will put in place at a time," Ivanka Trump said, referring to her own experience as a mother of three. "He will focus on making quality child care affordable and accessible for all."
Ivanka Trump's speech was remarkably more upbeat than the dire speech her father was set to give after her. She talked about towers built, jobs created - images of success, which would be juxtaposed by her father's vdismal vision of the world beyond his own business.
"Come January 17, all things will be possible again," Ivanka Trump said.
Earlier, Silicon Valley mogul Peter Thiel offered a tech-focused version of Trump's pessimistic critique, saying that U.S. government systems were hopelessly outmoded, with nuclear missile systems still run on ancient floppy disks.
"That is a staggering decline, for the country that completed the Manhattan project. We don't accept such incompetence in Silicon Valley, and we must not accept it from our government," Thiel said.
Thiel also offered a sharp critique of a policy fight that many Republicans have embraced, over rules requiring transgender people to use the bathroom that corresponds with their birth gender. In several states this year, social conservatives have fought bitterly to keep these rules.
Thiel said that was a mistake. "This is a distraction from our real problems. Who cares?"
He also said he was proud to be a gay American, a message that the convention crowd cheered, and met with chants of "USA."
Reince Priebus, the chairman of the Republican National Committee, portrayed the GOP -- now changing at lightning speed to fit Trump's vision - as the only party changing fast enough.
"The dirty little secret Democrats don't want you to know is they're the same old party, doing the same old thing," Priebus said. "We are the party of new ideas, in a changing and faster world."
Priebus also prompted the crowd into another round of this convention's signature chant, which refers to Clinton's use of a private email server to do government business. The Justice Department declined to prosecute Clinton, but the FBI director said her actions had been "extremely careless."
"She has spent the last 16 months looking into the eyes of the American people and lying," Priebus said. "She lied! And she lied over and over and over and over. She lied!
"Lock her up!" the crowd responded. "Lock her up!"
A man in a Hillary Clinton mask walks the convention floor during the Republican National Convention.
Jerry Falwell Jr., the son of the famous evangelist and the president of Virginia's Liberty University, described Trump as a "blue-collar billionaire."
"We are at a crossroads, where our first priority must be saving our nation," Falwell said, foreshadowing the somber tone of Trump's coming speech. He told the crowd that a decision to not vote, or to vote for a third-party candidate, was a de facto vote for Clinton. Falwell said that, were Clinton able to appoint new liberal justices to the Supreme Court, the consequences could be devastating: "A fatal blow to our republic." He did not explain exactly how the court would bring that disaster.
Falwell also recalled a joke told by his father, Jerry Falwell Sr., in which the elder Falwell dreamed that he told Chelsea Clinton - daughter of Hillary - that the three greatest threats to America were "Osama, Obama and Yo' Mama," Falwell said.
"Well, Osama is now gone," he said, meaning Osama bin Laden. "Obama has six months left in his term. And the only way to make America great and one again is to tell Chelsea's mama, 'You're fired.'"
Mark Burns, a South Carolina pastor who supports Trump, gave a raucous, revival-style speech, in which he led the crowd in shouting "All lives matter!" -- a rejoinder to the Black Lives Matter movement. "All lives matter!" the crowd shouted.
Officers pose with people outside Quicken Loans Arena in Cleveland at Republican National Convention.
"Let 'em know!" Burns said.
"All lives matter!"
"Push it!" Burns said.
He finished by leading the crowd in another yell. "Shout! Truuuuuump!" Burns said.
Burns drew attention during the primary campaign when he said that Democratic contender Sen. Bernie Sanders, who is Jewish, "gotta get saved, gotta meet Jesus."
Other convention speakers have largely avoided talking about one of Trump's most important - -and controversial - policy ideas, the construction of a wall on the southern border. But Maricopa County, Arizona, Sheriff Joe Arpaio, an outspoken critic of immigration policies, mentioned the plan in his address Thursday: "Donald Trump will build the wall!"
The crowd immediately started a chant, interrupting Arpaio: "Build that wall! Build that wall!"
Trump's acceptance speech, the culmination of the evening, will offer a chance to unify a convention that - so far - has seemed stuck halfway between the old party that he shook up, and a new party that has been remade in Trump's outsider image.
Speakers have extolled the value of overseas alliances; offstage, Trump told the New York Times he might not defend NATO allies from invasion. And the big ideas that brought Trump success on the campaign trail - a border wall, mass deportation of undocumented immigrants, a temporary ban on Muslim immigration - have received little attention from most speakers.
In one sign of the discordant messages of Trump's convention, a speech on Thursday night by Anthony Perkins of the Family Research Council - a leading voice for Christian morals in public life -- was followed, a few minutes later, by the house band playing AC/DC's "You Shook Me All Night Long."
© 2016 The Washington Post
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