Donald Trump to give speech on final day of Republican national convention – US politics live
JD Vance formally accepted the Republican vice-presidential nomination on Wednesday with a deliberate, and at times divisive, pitch to re-elect Donald Trump in November.
Addressing delegates in Milwaukee on the third night of the convention, Vance, the junior senator of Ohio, presented the Republican party as a champion of working-class Americans while denouncing Democrats as out of touch and ineffective. The populist-tinged rhetoric offered the latest sign of how Trump has reshaped the Republican party and rejected much of the traditional conservatism of its past.
Vance told the energized crowd:
From Iraq to Afghanistan, from the financial crisis to the Great Recession, from open borders to stagnating wages, the people who govern this country have failed and failed again.
That is, of course, until a guy named Donald J Trump came along. President Trump represents America’s last, best hope to restore what, if lost, may never be found again.
Vance leaned into his own personal story, first shared in his bestselling and controversial memoir Hillbilly Elegy, to bolster his message. He recounted experiences with childhood poverty in Middletown, Ohio, and his later acceptance to Yale Law School as he introduced himself to a much larger audience of Americans for the first time. In an emotional moment, Vance acknowledged his mother in the crowd and celebrated her 10 years of sobriety after decades of struggling with drug addiction.
With a mention of the battleground states that could determine the outcome of the election, he vowed that a Trump-Vance administration would deliver economic opportunity for working-class communities.
He added:
In Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Ohio and every corner of our nation, I promise you this: I will be a vice-president who never forgets where he came from. And every single day for the next four years, when I walk into that White House to help President Trump, I will be doing it for you, for your family, for your future and for this great country.