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US President Donald Trump has warned his Democratic challenger Joe Biden will “demolish” the American dream if he wins the White House in November.
Speaking on the final night of the Republican convention, the president depicted his opponent as “the destroyer of American greatness”.
He said the Democrats would give free rein to “violent anarchists”.
Mr Biden has a steady single-digit lead over Mr Trump with 68 days to go until voters deliver their verdict.
The end of the Republican convention heralds a 10-week sprint to election day, and the coming campaign is widely expected to be one of the ugliest in living memory.
On Thursday night, he asked voters for another four years in office, as his opponents blame him for the severity of a coronavirus pandemic that has ravaged the economy and accuse him of stoking division amid civil strife ignited by police killings of African Americans.
What did President Trump say?
Mr Trump accepted his party’s renomination on Thursday night from the South Lawn of the White House.
“This election will decide whether we save the American dream,” he said, “or whether we allow a socialist agenda to demolish our cherished destiny.”
He added: “Your vote will decide whether we protect law-abiding Americans, or whether we give free reign to violent anarchists, agitators, and criminals who threaten our citizens.”
Mr Trump’s reference to the sometimes violent racial justice protests that have swept the nation in recent months came as hundreds of Black Lives Matter demonstrators gathered outside the White House gates.
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He said the Democrats at their party convention last week had painted America as a place of racial and economic injustice.
“So tonight,” he said, “I ask you a very simple question – how can the Democrat Party ask to lead our country when it spends so much time tearing down our country?
“In the left’s backward view, they do not see America as the most free, just, and exceptional nation on earth. Instead, they see a wicked nation that must be punished for its sins.”
The president’s choice of venue for his speech provoked accusations that he was unethically using the White House as a political backdrop.
Washington media outlets noted disapprovingly that his audience of more than 1,500 people were seated closely together and face masks were not required.
A political blunderbuss
In a ponderous, hour-long speech more akin to a State of the Union address than a nomination acceptance, Donald Trump alternated between ticking through his record as president and circling around, like a prize fighter, to launch strikes on his Democratic opponent, Joe Biden.
It was a blunderbuss of attacks, of varying levels of validity, in the hope that some will draw blood – on trade, immigration, education, energy and foreign policy. But most of all, Trump sought to paint Mr Biden as in league with the protesters on the streets and the more left-wing members of the Democratic party.
The setting of the speech was majestic – on the grounds of the White House and in view of the Washington monument.
The delivery from a president who thrives more on rousing rallies than rhetorical set-pieces, however, frequently landed with a thud.
How is the Biden camp responding?
The Democratic presidential nominee – who was vice-president under Barack Obama – told MSNBC earlier: “The problem we have right now is that we are in Donald Trump’s America.
“He views this as a political benefit to him, he is rooting for more violence not less. He is pouring gasoline on the fire.”
Speaking by video link on Thursday night, Mr Biden said he was planning to hit the campaign trail again.
The Trump campaign has mocked the Democrat for running his campaign during the pandemic mostly from the basement of his home in Wilmington, Delaware, citing coronavirus prevention measures.
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The Democratic nominee’s running mate, Kamala Harris, delivered a speech half a mile from the White House earlier on Thursday, declaring: “Donald Trump doesn’t understand the presidency.”
She added: “Donald Trump has failed at the most basic and important job of a president of the United States: He failed to protect the American people, plain and simple.”
The California senator did not take questions.
Mr Biden is reportedly to win endorsements on Friday from more than 160 people who worked for former President George W Bush or for past Republican presidential candidates Mitt Romney and John McCain.
Who else spoke at the convention’s final night?
Some of the speakers sought to humanise the president, who is sometimes accused of lacking empathy.
His daughter, Ivanka Trump, a White House adviser, said: “I’ve been with my father and seen the pain in his eyes when he receives updates on the lives that have been stolen by this [coronavirus] plague.”
Ja’Ron Smith, a White House political aide who has worked on racial disparities in the criminal justice system, said the president “really cares”.
The parents of Kayla Mueller, a US hostage of the Islamic State group who was killed in Syria, lauded Mr Trump for ordering the operation, named after their daughter, that killed IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi last year.
“The Trump team gave us empathy we never received from the Obama administration,” said grieving father Carl Mueller.
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Trump had the White House behind and the Washington Monument ahead
Other speakers touted Mr Trump as a law-and-order leader.
The convention heard from the widow of a retired 77-year-old black police captain David Dorn, who was shot dead while reportedly trying to protect his friend’s pawn shop during rioting in June in St Louis, Missouri.
Ms Dorn fought back tears as she said: “Violence and destruction are not legitimate forms of protest. They do not safeguard black lives. They destroy them.”
Mr Trump’s personal attorney Rudolph Giuliani, who was mayor of New York in the 1990s, said: “These continuous riots in Democrat cities gives you a good view of the future under Biden.”
