Day 2 Of The Republican National Convention: Hits & Misses
MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) -- On Wednesday night, Republican vice presidential nominee Mike Pence will take the stage at the GOP convention, but once again, people are talking about Donald Trump's wife and her speech from the opening night.
It's hard to believe "speechgate" is consuming the national media for the third day in a row, but that's in large part thanks to how the Trump campaign handled the controversy.
The Donald Trump campaign repeatedly, categorically, heatedly denied that parts of Melania Trump's Monday night convention speech were plagiarized almost whole from a Michele Obama convention speech in 2008.
Finally, on Wednesday, a speechwriter for the Trump organization -- not the Trump campaign -- admits she put it in the speech at Melania's request. In a statement, Meredith McIver said: "Yesterday I offered my resignation to Mr. Trump and the Trump family, but they rejected it. Mr. Trump told me that people make innocent mistakes and that we learn and grow from these experiences."
Trump, who had largely stayed out of the conversation surrounding his wife's speech, finally broke his silence on Twitter, falsely claiming the speech to have gotten "more publicity than any in the history of politics." He also took the opportunity to take a jab at Hillary Clinton's email scandal.
Hits
One of the night's most memorable moments came in call and response segment with the crowd: New Jersey Governor Chris Christie put Hillary Clinton on trial (symbolically) over emails, her foreign policy, personal judgment.
Two more big hits of the night came in two very well received speeches from two of Donald Trump's children, Donald Trump Jr. and Tiffany Trump. Both took the chance to humanize the Republican nominee, and spoke in very personal terms about their father.
Misses
Likely the biggest miss of the night was the speech by one of Trump's former rivals, Dr. Ben Carson. Carson went off script, which is often dangerous at a convention. He went off on a riff about Hillary Clinton and the community organizer Saul Alinsky, whom he called her "role model." He also referred to Alinsky's book -- which contains an ironic reference to the devil -- and linked Hillary Clinton to "Lucifer."