The Republican Party has just kicked off its partly-virtual, partly-offline quadrennial event to hand another presidential nomination to Donald Trump. Here are the key names and places for the next four days.
A week after the Democrats, the Republicans are making the case for their own standard-bearer for the next four years.
While the Democrats held an entirely online convention, which avoided any major technical mishaps, the GOP has decided to retain some in-person business in the schedule.
Initially planned for Charlottesville, Virginia, the convention was moved to Jacksonville, Florida in June.
However, a spike in coronavirus cases there led Republicans to cancel the Florida location and run a pared-down gathering across two cities – Charlotte, North Carolina and Washington, DC.
Republicans have sought to preserve, to an extent, the glitzy style of previous gatherings. A group of Republican leaders, including RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, will be physically present in Charlotte, with social distancing restrictions and mandatory self-swab coronavirus tests before travelling and entering their hotels.
Most, however, will be speaking live or feature in pre-taped addresses, like their counterparts at the Democratic convention.
The full event schedule begins at 9 a.m. ET (13 p.m. GMT) each day from 24 to 27 August. The primetime coverage will air each night from 21 p.m. ET to 23 p.m. ET (1 a.m. GMT to 3 a.m. GMT).
A pared-down group of just 336 delegates will gather in person to conduct a nighttime roll call vote to renominate Donald Trump and Mike Pence on Monday.
The US president clearly exerts a massive gravitational pull on Republican politics, and much of the attention these days will be on him and the other Trumps, who make up half of the keynote speakers.
Donald Trump is expected to appear, in one capacity or another, on each day of the convention and will deliver a formal nomination acceptance speech on Thursday night from the White House – something his critics said was a mixture of official and campaign duty.
U.S. President Donald Trump, First Lady Melania Trump and Barron Trump disembark from Air Force One at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland, U.S., August 16, 2020
Another highly-anticipated headliner is Melania Trump. The first lady rarely speaks in public, and she was ripped online after it emerged that parts of her 2016 speech were plagiarised from Michelle Obama’s address to the 2008 Democratic convention. She is scheduled to speak on Tuesday.
Vice President Pence will deliver his speech from Fort McHenry, a historic place in Baltimore where US soldiers withstood a British bombardment in 1814. The sight of the American flag still flying over the fort after the attack inspired Francis Scott Key to write the US national anthem “The Star-Spangled Banner”.
U.S. Vice President Mike Pence arrives on the South Lawn of the White House prior to U.S. President Donald Trump holding an event to tout administration efforts to curb federal regulations in Washington, U.S., July 16, 2020
Nikki Haley, one of the few officials to have left the Trump administration on good terms, is among the star speakers this year. The former UN ambassador, who has become a rumoured fit as a post-Trump Republican presidential candidate, will give an address on Monday.
Here’s the line-up of key speakers for the next four days.
Monday:
Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday
Sourse: sputniknews.com
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