RNC 2024 live: JD Vance gives fiery speech as Trump’s VP pick as Kai Trump speaks publicly for first time

Senator JD Vance’s mother attended the Republican National Convention to watch her son speak this evening.

“Our movement is about single moms like mine who struggled with money and addiction but never gave up,” Vance said. “And I’m proud to say that tonight, my mom is here, ten years clean and sober. I love you, Mom.”

Bev Vance stood from her seat next to Speaker Mike Johnson as the audience applauded and chanted, “JD’s Mom!”

“Mom, I was thinking, it’ll be 10 years officially, in January,” Vance continued. “If President Trump is okay with it, let’s have the celebration in the White House.”

Donald Trump rally shooter Thomas Crooks’ former school guidance counselor has said there was no official record that he was bullied, and that “something evil happened” which caused him to snap and decide to shoot the former president.

Jim Knapp, who retired from Bethel Park in 2022, said the school took a “proactive approach” towards bullying and mental health.

Crooks opened fire at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, in an attempt to kill the former president. His bullets clipped Trump but killed another man, Corey Comperatore, who was protecting his family from the attack.

In a prerecorded video at the Republican National Convention on Wednesday, former president Donald Trump referenced baseless claims he made repeatedly after he lost the 2020 presidential race — that the election was “rigged” and that Democrats cheated to put president Joe Biden in the White House.

“Whether you vote early, absentee, by mail or in person, we are going to protect the vote,” he said alluding that the 2020 vote was stolen.

“That’s the most important thing we have to do is protect the vote. Keep your eyes open because these people want to cheat and they do cheat. And frankly, it’s the only thing they do well.”The election was not stolen.

Mr Biden earned 306 electoral votes to Trump’s 232, the same margin that Trump had when he beat Hillary Clinton in 2016, which he repeatedly described as a “landslide.”Mr Biden achieved victory by prevailing in key states such as Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona and Georgia.T

rump’s allegations of massive voting fraud have been refuted by a variety of judges, state election officials and an arm of his own administration’s Homeland Security Department.

In 2020, then-Attorney General William Barr told the AP that no proof of widespread voter fraud had been uncovered. “To date, we have not seen fraud on a scale that could have effected a different outcome in the election,” he said at the time.

He was bundled into a waiting motorcade by his Secret Service detail.

JD Vance introduced himself to a national audience on Wednesday after being chosen as Donald Trump’s running mate, sharing the story of his hardscrabble upbringing and making the case that his party best understands the challenges facing struggling Americans.

Speaking to a packed arena at the Republican National Convention, the Ohio senator cast himself as fighter for a forgotten working class, making a direct appeal to the Rust Belt voters who helped drive Trump’s surprise 2016 victory and voicing their anger and frustration.

“In small towns like mine in Ohio, or next door in Pennsylvania, or in Michigan, in states all across our country, jobs were sent overseas and children were sent to war,” he said.

“To the people of Middletown, Ohio, and all the forgotten communities in Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Ohio, and every corner of our nation, I promise you this,” he said.

“I will be a vice president who never forgets where he came from.”

The 39-year-old Ohio senator is a relative political unknown, having served in the Senate for less than two years. He rapidly morphed in recent years from a bitter critic of the former president to an aggressive defender and is now positioned to become the future leader of the party and the torch-bearer of Trump’s “Make America Great Again” political movement.

The first millennial to join the top of a major party ticket, Mr Vance enters the race as questions about the age of the men at the top — 78-year-old Trump and 81-year-old President Joe Biden — have been high on the list of voters’ concerns. He also joins Trump after an assassination attempt against the former president — in which Trump came perhaps millimeters from death or serious injury — underscoring the importance of a potential successor.

JD Vance, who had never attended, let alone spoken at a previous Republican convention, spent much of his speech talking up Donald Trump and going after Joe Biden, using his relative youth to draw a contrast with the 81-year-old president.

He said he was in fourth grade when “a career politician by the name of Joe Biden supported NAFTA, a bad trade deal that sent countless good American manufacturing jobs to Mexico.”

“Joe Biden has been a politician in Washington as long as I’ve been alive,” he added. “For half a century, he’s been a champion of every single policy initiative to make America weaker and poorer.”

Mr Biden’s campaign responded with a blistering statement calling Vance “unprepared, unqualified, and willing to do anything Donald Trump demands.”

“Tonight, JD Vance, the poster boy for Project 2025, took center stage. But it’s working families and the middle class who will suffer if he’s allowed to stay there,” said Michael Tyler, Biden campaign communication director.

Convention organisers had stressed a theme of unity, even before Donald Trump survived an attempted assassination at a rally in Pennsylvania on Saturday.

Trump’s refusal to accept the results of the 2020 election and the subsequent attack on the US Capitol, officials said, would be absent from the stage.

But that changed with former White House official Peter Navarro, who was greeted with a standing ovation hours after being released from a Miami prison where he served four months for defying a subpoena from the congressional committee investigating the 6 January 2021 attack on the US Capitol by a mob of the former president’s supporters.

“If they can come for me, if they can come for Donald Trump, be careful. They will come for you,” he said in a fiery speech, comparing his legal troubles to those faced by Trump, who earlier this year was convicted on 34 felony charges in his criminal hush money trial.

Madison Cawthorn, a former US representative from North Carolina, told The Independent about his future political plans when asked if he would run for Congress again.

“I don’t know if it’ll be Congress, but I’m running for something,” Cawthorn told The Independent. “I’m almost 30!”

The minimum age requirement for serving in the US Senate is 30, while the minimum age for the presidency is 35.