What to expect from Trump's RNC acceptance speech
27 August 2020
On Night 4 of the Republican National Convention, President Trump will deliver a wildly different speech than Joe Biden gave last week.
What to watch: Trump will offer a blistering rebuke of Biden’s record and his decades as "a failed" elected official in a closing address that will declare November as a battle between “us vs. them,” campaign officials tell Axios.
- Biden's speech didn’t mention Trump by name once, but instead used the platform to share his personal story and offer himself as “an ally of the light.”
- Trump will say Biden is “an empty shell of a candidate” and a “Trojan Horse” for the progressive wing of the Democratic Party, said Trump campaign communications director Tim Murtaugh.
- Trump will also go into “granular detail” about his second-term agenda.
Trump is expected to address the shooting of Jacob Blake and make reference to Kenosha as part of a larger discussion of unrest in the U.S.
- Trump's speech will be delivered from the White House South Lawn, a departure from presidential norms.
The big picture: The campaign is especially excited about an appearance by Alice Johnson, whose prison sentence Trump commuted.
Other speakers include:
- Ivanka Trump, who will call her father the “people’s president"
- House GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy
- Rudy Giuliani
- New Jersey Rep. Jeff Van Drew, who switched parties to become a Republican during impeachment
👀 Preview of White House south lawn set-up for President Trump speech this evening on the last night of the #RNC2020Conventionpic.twitter.com/iQ5f7kJJq8
— Paula Reid (@PaulaReidCBS) August 27, 2020
Transcripts show George Floyd told police "I can't breathe" over 20 times
Section2Newly 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.