Melania Trump appears at convention
Melania Trump is walking out of the backstage and on to the convention floor.
The former first lady is climbing up to the VIP box, where JD Vance and his wife, Usha, among many others, are waiting.
However, her husband, Donald Trump, is no longer there. Perhaps he is getting ready for his speech.
Key events
The convention is currently being shown a relatively long video recounting Donald Trump’s story as a businessman, and his accomplishments in his first term.
It is ending with the famous image of him pumping his fist after being shot.
Hugo Lowell
Melania Trump appeared at the Republican convention wearing a dark red dress.
As she walked out, the sound system was playing Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 in D Minor.
The only scheduled guest who has not yet appeared is Dana White, the CEO of Ultimate Fighting Championship.
That may be a sign he will act as the hype man for the former president, much as Usha Vance last night introduced her husband, JD Vance, the Ohio senator who is Trump’s running mate.
Joan E Greve
Donald Trump is expected to take the stage in just a few minutes, and the convention crowd is clearly eager to hear him speak.
The upper section of seats in Fiserv Forum, which had been partly empty for each of the first three nights of the convention, is now completely packed.
Melania Trump appears at convention
Melania Trump is walking out of the backstage and on to the convention floor.
The former first lady is climbing up to the VIP box, where JD Vance and his wife, Usha, among many others, are waiting.
However, her husband, Donald Trump, is no longer there. Perhaps he is getting ready for his speech.
Melania Trump backstage at the Republican convention, photo shows
Hugo Lowell
Melania Trump is currently at the Republican national convention, according to a photo of her backstage taken by the New York Times’ Doug Mills – although she is not sitting next to her husband in his special box.
The photo shows Donald Trump, turning to his left to greet an amused-looking Melania in a narrow corridor underneath the stands, with the bandage on his ear visible.
Eric Trump says father ‘not a threat to democracy’
Donald Trump’s son Eric Trump has hit back at those who say the former president is “a threat to democracy”.
Trump’s critics cite such actions as his incitement of the crowd that stormed the Capitol on January 6, his persistent attempts to stop Congress’s certification of Joe Biden’s election win, and his continued insistence that the 2020 election was marred by fraud, despite not producing any evidence.
Despite all that, Eric Trump, a top official in the Trump organization, assured the convention that his father is an honest man.
“He has defied the predictions of every political pundit. He fills stadiums across our country. He energizes Americans to the issues facing this nation, and does so with unvarnished honesty,” Trump said.
“He is not a threat to democracy. He is a threat to those who despise our republic, many whom are bought and sold, bribed and coerced, people who have never signed the front of a check and who have been dependent on the government … their entire adult lives.”
Hugo Lowell
Donald Trump is currently sitting with his running mate JD Vance in a VIP box that has three rows of seating.
To make space for Trump and Vance, some of the ex-president’s other allies who were in the box had to move.
Sitting in the front row currently is Trump, Vance and his wife, Usha, and the ex-president’s son Donald Trump Jr.
In the second row is his daughter Ivanka Trump and son-in-law Jared Kushner and daughter Tiffany Trump, among others.
For them to get those seats, a bunch of House lawmakers and senators had to move.
Among those ejected from the special seats for the prime time speeches: senators Ted Cruz and John Barrasso.
This post has been corrected to note that Melania Trump was not present in the VIP seats.
Speakers at the convention thus far have avoided anything having to do with abortion.
It is yet another sign that Republicans are nervous bringing up a subject on which they haven’t been scoring a lot of victories lately, after omitting support for a national abortion ban from their platform for the first time in decades.
Evangelist Franklin Graham came the closest of any speaker so far, in his just-concluded remarks to the convention – and it wasn’t all that close.
“For as long as I’ve known president Trump, I found him to be a man of his word. Things that he said he’ll do, he did. When he told me and our country in 2016 that he was going to appoint conservative justices, guess what he did?” asked Graham, the son of evangelical Christian icon Billy Graham.
Trump appointed three conservative justices during his term, and all of them signed on to the 2022 Dobbs opinion, which overturned the constitutional protections on abortion established 49 years prior in Roe v Wade.
We mentioned earlier that Hulk Hogan is a retired professional wrestler.
While he’s now done with the sport, apparently for good, in 2015, he was fired by World Wrestling Entertainment for a few years after being overheard using racial slurs.
That, apparently, was no problem for the Republican party. Here’s a look back at what Hogan said:
Hogan just did a bit of a strip tease.
He was wearing a navy blazer when he first got on stage, then took it off to reveal a sleeveless black shirt with the words “real American”.
And as the crowd roared, he tore that off to reveal a red sleeveless “Trump Vance” shirt.