Republicans formally picked Donald Trump as presidential candidate for November 8 election, as the GOP sought to put behind divisive strains on the party from an unconventional primary campaign.
Running high on rhetoric and tearing apart many traditional GOP positions, the billionaire businessman smashed more than a dozen conservative candidates with stinging attacks. Afterwards, Party leaders called for forging unity ahead of the intense election season when Trump faces presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.
The Republican National Convention on its second day declared Trump as presidential candidate, when state-by-state tally of delegates culminated to 1,237 number with his son Donald Trump Jr presenting New York state delegates.
Trump Jr. made a surprisingly aarticulate speech.
“For my father, impossible is just the starting point,” Trump Jr. said, after hailing his father as his mentor and best friend.
Speaker of the House of Representatives Paul Ryan, who co-chaired the proceedings, did not touch on Trump’s contentious positions on a host of issues as he underscored in his speech that Americans want a change.
Ryan had differed with Trump on a number of issues in the months leading up to the convention.
But it was not all smooth for Trump as he had to grapple with allegations of plagiarism against his wife Melanea, who, according to media reports used at least two paragraphs in her speech on Monday evening from Michelle Obama’s 2008 Democratic National Convention speech.
The GOP leaders, one after another, also made it a point to criticize Hillary Clinton, the Democratic presumptive nominee. Critics noted speakers could have allocated that time to rolling out Republican vision for the election and future.
The Conservatives also got flak for embracing Trump’s proposal of building a wall along US-Mexican border and for offering some far more narrower positions on immigration.
