By SHANE GOLDMACHER
07/21/16 07:41 PM EDT
CLEVELAND — Exactly 350 days after Donald Trump stood in Quicken Loans Arena at the first presidential debate and refused to endorse the eventual Republican nominee if it wasn't him, he accepted that same Republican Party’s nomination — and vowed to keep winning all the way to the White House.
In the biggest address of his unlikely, divisive and meteoric political career, Trump on Thursday night sought to bring together a party that he helped fracture in an ugly primary that left divisions that were apparent all the way through a tumultuous four days in Cleveland.
The Manhattan mogul sold himself as the champion of a downtrodden working class — “America’s blue-collar billionaire” as one speaker called him earlier in the evening — promising to restore “law and order” and casting himself as a change agent against presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.
“I am your voice,” he boomed, pointing straight toward the television audience.
“Hillary Clinton’s message is that things will never change. Never ever,” Trump said. “My message is that things have to change and they have to change right now.”
Trump delivered a deeply negative speech that described a darkening America. He spoke of spiking crime, “third-world” airports, growing trade deficits, “chaos in our communities,” and terrorism on the home front. Abroad, he said, the situation was “worse than it has ever been before.”
“This is the legacy of Hillary Clinton: death, destruction, terrorism and weakness,” he said.
“Lock her up!” the crowd burst out repeatedly during Trump’s speech and throughout the week. Hatred of Clinton has proved among Trump’s most potent weapons as he has pursued elusive party unity.
But the energy in the arena faded as Trump’s speech stretched past the one-hour mark and as Trump’s deliberative style while reading a teleprompter slowed his cadence to a crawl. C-SPAN reported it was the longest acceptance speech since at least 1972.
While Trump used heated rhetoric to rip into Clinton, he adopted far more progressive and conciliatory language in what amounted to the kick-off speech of his general election campaign. He spoke about inner cities suffering under Democrats, African-Americans living in poverty, and the vision of “a country of generosity and warmth.”
Citing the recent attack at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Trump said he would do “everything in my power to protect our LGBTQ citizens.” When the crowd applauded the line, Trump ad-libbed, “As a Republican it is so nice to hear you cheering for what I just said.” Facebook reported it was the most talked-about moment of the speech on its network.
Trump claims the prize
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