Planning and invitations In April 2016, Trump vowed to bring "some
showbiz" to the convention, criticizing the party's
2012 convention in Tampa, Florida, as "the single most boring convention I've ever seen." The convention's lineup of speakers lacked "many of the party's rising stars" and rather featured some of Trump's "eclectic collection of friends, celebrities and relatives."
Politico reported that Trump was directly involved in details of convention plans, seeking "to maximize the drama and spectacle" of the four-night event. A large number of prominent Republican elected officials said they were not interested in attending the convention or even speaking at it, seeking to distance themselves from Trump. The Trump campaign considered the idea of having Trump speak all four nights at the convention – a break from the traditional practice of the presidential nominee taking the stage only on the final night of the convention. Trump also initially stated that he would announce his vice-presidential running mate at the convention itself, rather than before the convention, with a campaign staffer saying that "announcing the vice-presidential nominee before the convention is like announcing the winner of
Celebrity Apprentice before the final episode is on the air." and named
Mike Pence as his running mate on July 15, 2016. A number of figures that Trump said he would invite to speak, including boxing promoter
Don King, former
Alaska governor Sarah Palin and
New England Patriots quarterback
Tom Brady, were not included in the lineup. Former
Chicago Bears coach
Mike Ditka, a Trump supporter, declined an invitation to speak. An early roster of speakers obtained by the media listed former
NFL quarterback
Tim Tebow as a speaker, but Tebow later dismissed this as a rumor and did not appear at the convention.
Haskel Lookstein, a prominent
Orthodox rabbi, was initially set to appear at the convention to deliver the opening prayer (having accepted an invitation to do so from
Ivanka Trump, a congregant), but after hundreds of American
Modern Orthodox Jews urged him to withdraw from the convention, Lookstein pulled out. Trump sought to bar those who have not endorsed him from addressing the convention, making comments aimed at the former primary rivals who have declined to endorse him – Bush,
Carly Fiorina,
Lindsey Graham and
George Pataki. However, both Senator
Marco Rubio of Florida and Senator
Ted Cruz of Texas, who ran against Trump for the Republican nomination and lost, were eventually placed on the speakers' schedule, although "neither ... paid the expected price of that spotlight by offering an explicit endorsement." Cruz met with Trump two weeks before the convention and accepted an invitation to speak. but on July 17, 2016, it was confirmed that Rubio would address the convention via recorded video. Manafort called Kasich "petulant" and accused him of "embarrassing his party," prompting Kasich chief political aide
John Weaver to mock Trump and criticize Manafort for his work on behalf of foreign "thugs and autocrats" abroad. (An early, preliminary roster of speakers, "confirmed by two people with direct knowledge of the convention planning," had been obtained and published by the
New York Times several days earlier.) , the chairman of the convention, spoke on the second night •
Tuesday, July 19–"Make America Work Again" "almost immediately came under scrutiny when striking similarities were discovered between her speech" and
Michelle Obama's speech at the
2008 Democratic National Convention. The Trump campaign at first denied allegations of
plagiarism. Campaign manager Paul Manafort argued that the speech contained "not that many similarities" and the words used are not unique words "that belong to the Obamas." Following Trump's speech,
freelance journalist Jarrett Hill was the first to report that the speech had large similarities. Later, Chris Harrick, Vice President of Marketing at the plagiarism prevention service
Turnitin, later reported that Trump used about 6% of Michelle Obama's words and found two types of plagiarism, "clone" and "find and replace". Various media outlets suggested that members of
Donald Trump's presidential campaign should respond to the accusations, which they did a few hours after the speech in the form of the following statement by the campaign's senior communications advisor,
Jason Miller: "In writing [the] speech, Melania's team of writers took notes on her life's inspirations, and in some instances included fragments that reflected her own thinking. Melania's immigrant experience and love for America shone through in her speech, which made it a success."
Reince Priebus, chairman of the
Republican National Committee, described the speech as "inspirational" but said if plagiarism were found, he thought "it certainly seems reasonable" to fire the person who wrote the speech.
Paul Manafort, Donald Trump's campaign chairman, called it a "great speech" and said "obviously Michelle Obama feels very similar sentiments toward her family". He later said "to think that she would be cribbing Michelle Obama's words is crazy", adding "This is once again an example of when a woman threatens Hillary Clinton, she seeks out to demean her and take her down. It's not going to work against Melania Trump." Sean Spicer, director of communications for the Republican National Committee, defended the speech by saying that similar statements have existed before her speech such as quotes by
John Legend,
Kid Rock, and
Twilight Sparkle from
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. David Lauter of the
Los Angeles Times stated that while these allegations were unlikely to cost Trump votes, the distraction is unhelpful, referring to it as a "lost opportunity" for the campaign. On July 20, 2016, the Trump campaign issued a statement by
Meredith McIver which included the following: In working with Melania on her recent first lady speech, we discussed many people who inspired her and messages she wanted to share with the American people. A person she has always liked is Michelle Obama. Over the phone, she read me some passages from Mrs. Obama's speech as examples. I wrote them down and later included some of the phrasing in the draft that ultimately became the final speech. On July 20, two days after Melania's speech, McIver wrote that Donald Trump declined her offer to resign.
Chris Christie's speech In the second night of the convention, Governor
Chris Christie gave a speech in a style of a
mock trial. After a series of accusations against Hillary Clinton to which his audience responded "guilty", the crowd chanted "lock her up". The crowd's reaction has received widespread coverage following the speech. The "lock her up" chant was later uttered by supporters of
Bernie Sanders before the 2016 Democratic National Convention. Clinton responded to the chant in an interview on
60 Minutes by saying that it saddened her.
Ted Cruz's speech In the third night of the convention, Senator
Ted Cruz of Texas gave a speech in which he did not endorse Trump for president, and instead urged listeners to "vote your conscience, vote for candidates up and down the ticket who you trust to defend our freedom and to be faithful to the Constitution." Pro-Trump delegates were enraged at Cruz's speech, shouting him down and booing him off the stage, in what was described by the
New York Times as "the most electric moment of the convention." The following morning, Cruz attended a contentious meeting with delegates representing Texas that resulted in what
CNN labeled "a remarkable 25-minute back-and-forth with his own constituents, defying appeals from his own Texas delegation to put the party above his inhibitions and back Trump." Cruz's speech sparked a backlash and elicited negative reactions from prominent Republicans supporting Trump. New Jersey governor and former presidential candidate
Chris Christie called the speech "awful" and "selfish." Representative
Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, when asked about Cruz's speech, responded that she "would tell [Cruz] the same thing I would tell my kids, 'get over yourself.'"
Susan Hutchison, chair of the
Washington State Republican Party, confronted Cruz after his speech and labeled Cruz a "traitor to the party." In addition, Cruz was denied entry to influential Republican donor
Sheldon Adelson's suite at the convention. Conservative radio host
Rush Limbaugh speculated that Cruz was trying to mimic
Ronald Reagan's speech at the
1976 Republican National Convention, in that "he wanted to deliver a speech that was Reaganesque in that the delegates would walk out of there thinking that they should have nominated him. He didn't get there." Instead, Limbaugh compared his speech to
Ted Kennedy's at the
1980 Democratic National Convention, in which he failed to endorse President
Jimmy Carter, the nominee, by putting his own interests ahead of the interests of the party. In the wake of Cruz's non-endorsement of Trump, his critics believed that an intraparty challenge could be possible. GOP donors and Texas politicians asked Representative
Mike McCaul to run against him in the next cycle's Texas primary in 2018, before McCaul declined to run. Later, on September 23, 2016, Cruz publicly endorsed Trump for president.
Peter Thiel's speech Peter Thiel, a billionaire
PayPal co-founder and
Silicon Valley investor, delivered a manifesto for tackling the greater issues of the day, focusing on technology, the economy and small government. Thiel also affirmed his pride to be "gay, a Republican and most of all an American", a stance that earned him a standing ovation, chanting "USA!". It was the first time in the history of Republican National Conventions that a speaker identified himself as gay in his speech, although there have been previous speeches by gay men.
Donald Trump's speech making his acceptance speech for the RNC (
VOA) Trump, having been formally nominated as the Republican presidential nominee on the second night of the convention, spoke on the fourth and final night of the convention. Trump's speech was leaked hours in advance by
Correct the Record, a liberal-leaning
Super PAC, though Trump had already given copies of his speech to the network press pool. Trump's daughter,
Ivanka Trump, introduced Trump in a speech immediately before his own speech. "
Here Comes the Sun" was used as the entrance music for Ivanka Trump. The
George Harrison estate complained about the use of this song, which his family said was "offensive and against the wishes of the George Harrison estate." Trump spoke for 75 minutes, making his speech the longest since at least the
1972 Republican National Convention and one of the longest acceptance speeches ever in major-party convention history. In evaluating the speech, Glenn Thrush of
Politico noted the influence of
Richard Nixon,
Spiro Agnew,
Ronald Reagan, and
Rudy Giuliani, all of whom sounded similar themes earlier in American history in attempts to win over the "
Silent Majority". Trump also promised to limit American participation in global crises and trade deals. In his speech, Trump also became the first Republican nominee to mention the LGBT community in a GOP nomination address, saying, "As your president, I will do everything in my power to protect our LGBTQ citizens from the violence and oppression of a hateful foreign ideology." The speech was written by his advisor
Stephen Miller.
Reception of Trump's speech Philip Rucker and
David Fahrenthold of
The Washington Post found Trump's speech to be "relentlessly gloomy," and observed that Trump painted himself as an agent of change, while he cast Clinton as a defender of the status quo. Trump's speech was dubbed the "Mourning in America" speech. Niall Stanage of
The Hill argued that Trump's speech brought stability to a turbulent convention and showed Trump at his "most comfortable and energized." A
Politico poll found largely positive reactions among "GOP political insiders" while Democrats argued that Trump's "dark" speech would prove damaging.
The New York Post released a cover story the next day by Michael Goodwin praising Trump's speech, declaring it "the speech of his life," and also saying that the speech "could signal the start of an American revival." Ratings figures released by the major networks showed that approximately 32 million viewers watched Trump's speech, slightly ahead of the number that watched
Mitt Romney's 2012 speech. Some LGBT advocates critiqued Trump's reference to LGBT people, on the ground that it stood in contrast to positions he had taken on LGBT issues during the campaign; activists such as
Chad Griffin of the
Human Rights Campaign and Rick Zbur of
Equality California suggested that the statement was an attempt to turn LGBT people against Muslims and pit minority groups against each other. A
Gallup survey found that 35% of Americans saw Trump's speech positively (either "excellent" or "good"), while 36% saw it negatively. According to Gallup, the speech had "the least positive reviews of any speech we have tested after the fact." 36% of Americans said the convention made them more likely to vote for Trump, while 51% said it made them less likely to vote for him. This is the highest "less likely to vote" percentage for a candidate in the 15 times Gallup has asked this question after a convention. According to a CNN/ORC poll, the public rendered a split decision on whether the convention made them more or less likely to back Trump, with 42% saying more likely while 44% saying less so. According to FiveThirtyEight, poll averages suggested a post-convention bounce of 3 to 4 percentage points for Trump. ==Demonstrations==