MILWAUKEE: The Republican National Convention has culminated Thursday with former President Donald Trump 's acceptance of the party’s presidential nomination, achieving a comeback four years in the making and anticipated even more in the past week in light of Saturday’s assassination attempt.
Barack Obama has reportedly told allies that he believes Biden, his vice president for eight years, should “seriously consider the viability of his candidacy,” the Washington Post reported.
Several leading Democratic lawmakers have called on the 81-year-old president to drop out in the wake of his disastrous debate performance against Trump last month in which he appeared tired and confused.
Supporters have been lining up all week to applaud the former president for his bravery since Saturday’s assassination bid by a gunman at a Pennsylvania rally.
As some of his loyalists blamed Democrats’ rhetoric for the attack, Trump said he had torn up a more aggressive version of his keynote address in favor of one to “unite our country.”
Some of the delegates at the convention said they were keen to hear from Trump about last weekend’s shock attack that very nearly ended in disaster.
“I’m just grateful we’re going to hear from him,” Teena Horlacher, a 50-year-old convention delegate from Utah, told AFP. “It’s a miracle that his life was spared, and I really believe it was God’s hand.”
Trump has a 90-minute speaking slot, from 9:00 to 10:30 p.m. (0100 to 0230 GMT Friday), according to a source familiar with the schedule.
Also set to address the convention are shirt-ripping 80s wrestling icon Hulk Hogan, and Trump’s longtime friend Dana White who is chief executive of the Ultimate Fighting Championship.
Trump has attended multiple UFC bouts as he seeks to lock in younger male votes.
The schedule notably shows no speaking slot for former first lady Melania Trump, a break from tradition at modern-era US nominating conventions, where spouses routinely take the stage seeking to personalize the candidates.
Trump has seen his polling lead expand since Biden’s dismal debate performance threw his party into chaos.
The Republican campaign has even been talking up Trump’s chances in Democratic strongholds like Minnesota and Virginia, potentially forcing Biden funds and manpower away from defending his “blue wall” in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
Trump’s keynote address will be watched by millions, closing the convention by promising what his team calls “a new golden age for America.”
The four-day gathering opened Monday with a vote to confirm Trump as the party’s nominee after he won almost every state’s primary contest.
It has been the first convention over which Trump has had total control, after a 2016 edition hampered by party divisions and a second appearance in 2020 reined in by the Covid-19 pandemic.
The schedule was designed around his image, with themes for each day playing on his “Make America Great Again” rallying cry.
Trump set the tone when he walked slowly into the Fiserv Forum arena on the opening day — looking emotional and with a bandaged ear, just two days after the shooting.
The week also saw Trump name right-wing Senator J.D. Vance of Ohio as his running mate.
The 39-year-old author of “Hillbilly Elegy,” a best-selling memoir about growing up poor in working-class America, is a former Trump critic who became one of his staunchest backers.
Trump himself was a diminished figure after his 2020 election loss and a subsequent riot at the US Capitol by his supporters, but he has spent much of the last four years reshaping Republican politics.
Installing close allies, including his daughter-in-law Lara Trump on the Republican National Committee, the mercurial tycoon has effectively crushed dissent within the party.
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Trump accepts his GOP nomination on the convention’s final night
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Trump accepts his GOP nomination on the convention’s final night
- Trump has seen his polling lead expand since Biden’s dismal debate performance threw his party into chaos
Russia strikes power plant, kills four in Ukraine barrage
KHARKIV: Russia battered Ukraine with more than two dozen missiles and hundreds of drones early Tuesday, killing four people and pummelling another power plant, piling more pressure on Ukraine’s brittle energy system.
An AFP journalist in the eastern Kharkiv region, where four people were killed, saw firefighters battling a fire at a postal hub and rescue workers helping survivors by lamp light in freezing temperatures.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said “several hundred thousand” households near Kyiv were without power after the strikes, and again called on allies to bolster his country’s air defense systems.
“The world can respond to this Russian terror with new assistance packages for Ukraine,” President Volodymyr Zelensky wrote on social media.
“Russia must come to learn that cold will not help it win the war,” he added.
Authorities in Kyiv and the surrounding region rolled out emergency power cuts in the hours after the attack, saying freezing temperatures were complicating their work.
DTEK, Ukraine’s largest energy provider, said Russian forces had struck one of its power plants, saying it was the eighth such attack since October.
The operator did not reveal which of its plants was struck, but said Russia had attacked its power plants over 220 times since Moscow invaded Ukraine in 2022.
Daily attacks
Moscow has pummelled Ukraine with daily drone and missile barrages in recent months, targeting energy infrastructure and cutting power and heating in the frigid height of winter.
The Ukrainian air force said that Tuesday’s bombardment included 25 missiles and 247 drones.
The Kharkiv governor gave the death toll and added that six people were wounded in the overnight hit outside the region’s main city, also called Kharkiv.
White helmeted emergency workers could be seen clambering through the still-smoking wreckage of a building occupied by postal company Nova Poshta, in a video posted by the regional prosecutor’s office.
Within Ukraine’s second city, Kharkiv Mayor Igor Terekhov said a Russian long-range drone struck a medical facility for children, causing a fire. No casualties were reported.
The overnight strikes hit other regions as well, including southern city Odesa.
Residential buildings, a hospital and a kindergarten were damaged, with at least five people wounded in two waves of attacks, regional governor Sergiy Lysak said.
Russia’s use last week of a nuclear-capable Oreshnik ballistic missile on Ukraine sparked condemnation from Kyiv’s allies, including Washington, which called it a “dangerous and inexplicable escalation of this war.”
Moscow on Monday said the missile hit an aviation repair factory in the Lviv region and that it was fired in response to Ukraine’s attempt to strike one of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s residences — a claim Kyiv denies and that Washington has said it does not believe happened.
An AFP journalist in the eastern Kharkiv region, where four people were killed, saw firefighters battling a fire at a postal hub and rescue workers helping survivors by lamp light in freezing temperatures.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said “several hundred thousand” households near Kyiv were without power after the strikes, and again called on allies to bolster his country’s air defense systems.
“The world can respond to this Russian terror with new assistance packages for Ukraine,” President Volodymyr Zelensky wrote on social media.
“Russia must come to learn that cold will not help it win the war,” he added.
Authorities in Kyiv and the surrounding region rolled out emergency power cuts in the hours after the attack, saying freezing temperatures were complicating their work.
DTEK, Ukraine’s largest energy provider, said Russian forces had struck one of its power plants, saying it was the eighth such attack since October.
The operator did not reveal which of its plants was struck, but said Russia had attacked its power plants over 220 times since Moscow invaded Ukraine in 2022.
Daily attacks
Moscow has pummelled Ukraine with daily drone and missile barrages in recent months, targeting energy infrastructure and cutting power and heating in the frigid height of winter.
The Ukrainian air force said that Tuesday’s bombardment included 25 missiles and 247 drones.
The Kharkiv governor gave the death toll and added that six people were wounded in the overnight hit outside the region’s main city, also called Kharkiv.
White helmeted emergency workers could be seen clambering through the still-smoking wreckage of a building occupied by postal company Nova Poshta, in a video posted by the regional prosecutor’s office.
Within Ukraine’s second city, Kharkiv Mayor Igor Terekhov said a Russian long-range drone struck a medical facility for children, causing a fire. No casualties were reported.
The overnight strikes hit other regions as well, including southern city Odesa.
Residential buildings, a hospital and a kindergarten were damaged, with at least five people wounded in two waves of attacks, regional governor Sergiy Lysak said.
Russia’s use last week of a nuclear-capable Oreshnik ballistic missile on Ukraine sparked condemnation from Kyiv’s allies, including Washington, which called it a “dangerous and inexplicable escalation of this war.”
Moscow on Monday said the missile hit an aviation repair factory in the Lviv region and that it was fired in response to Ukraine’s attempt to strike one of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s residences — a claim Kyiv denies and that Washington has said it does not believe happened.
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