Show an ad over header. AMP  

The RNC's first night showcased Trump's alternative reality

25 August 2020
 Dan Ackermann

The opening night of the Republican National Convention delighted President Trump's base with an alternative narrative where he masterfully deflected COVID, he's popular with Black Americans, and Joe Biden is a menacing leftist.

Why it matters: Although CNN and MSNBC cut away for fact checks, this week's convention gives the Trump campaign hour upon hour to show millions of viewers an America as Trump sees it.

It's relatively rare for a Trump production to include empathy testimonials, but last night's did.

  • For so much of his political career, Trump has depicted himself as an antihero, telling people that the world is a zero-sum battle, where only brutal tactics can defeat brutal enemies.
  • Two Trump friends, Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio and former football star Herschel Walker, both testified to what they described as his private empathy.
  • Walker described a 37-year friendship and Jordan recounted a family tragedy in which the president took time out of his day to console Jordan's grieving relatives.

The night's star was Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.), the only Black Republican senator, and the first Black senator from the South since Reconstruction:

My grandfather’s 99th birthday would have been tomorrow. Growing up, he had to cross the street if a white person was coming. He suffered the indignity of being forced out of school as a third grader to pick cotton, and never learned to read or write.
Yet, he lived to see his grandson become the first African American to be elected to both the United States House and Senate.
Our family went from Cotton to Congress in one lifetime.
Don Jr. speaks in the cavernous Mellon Auditorium. Photo: Kevin Lamarque/Reuters

Donald Trump Jr., who called Biden "basically the Loch Ness Monster of the swamp," made a populist appeal for his father's re-election:

  • "[W]e are not going to tear down monuments and forget the people who built our great nation. Instead, we will learn from our past so we don't repeat any mistakes."
  • "It all starts by rejecting the radicals who want to drag us into the dark, and embracing the man who represents a bright and beautiful future for all."
Nikki Haley speaks. Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Nikki Haley, who was Trump's ambassador to the UN, after serving as South Carolina governor: "In much of the Democratic Party, it’s now fashionable to say that America is racist. That is a lie. America is not a racist country."

  • "This is personal for me. I am the proud daughter of Indian immigrants. They came to America and settled in a small southern town."
  • "My father wore a turban. My mother wore a sari. I was a brown girl in a black and white world."

Axios' David Nather, Margaret Talev, Alayna Treene and Hans Nichols contributed reporting.

Transcripts show George Floyd told police "I can't breathe" over 20 times

Section2

Newly released transcripts of bodycam footage from the Minneapolis Police Department show that George Floyd told officers he could not breathe more than 20 times in the moments leading up to his death.

Why it matters: Floyd's killing sparked a national wave of Black Lives Matter protests and an ongoing reckoning over systemic racism in the United States. The transcripts "offer one the most thorough and dramatic accounts" before Floyd's death, The New York Times writes.

The state of play: The transcripts were released as former officer Thomas Lane seeks to have the charges that he aided in Floyd's death thrown out in court, per the Times. He is one of four officers who have been charged.

  • The filings also include a 60-page transcript of an interview with Lane. He said he "felt maybe that something was going on" when asked if he believed that Floyd was having a medical emergency at the time.

What the transcripts say:

  • Floyd told the officers he was claustrophobic as they tried to get him into the squad car.
  • The transcripts also show Floyd saying, "Momma, I love you. Tell my kids I love them. I'm dead."
  • Former officer Derek Chauvin, who had his knee on Floyd's neck for over eight minutes, told Floyd, "Then stop talking, stop yelling, it takes a heck of a lot of oxygen to talk."

Read the transcripts via DocumentCloud.