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Speakers at Donald Trump’s Convention: Tim Tebow, Peter Thiel, but No Sarah Palin?

Donald J. Trump spoke at a campaign event in Westfield, Ind., on Tuesday.

Tim Tebow, a former N.F.L. quarterback who played for the Philadelphia Eagles last year, is scheduled to speak on the fourth night of the Republican National Convention.

Donald J. Trump, left, speaking with Rudolph W. Giuliani, the former mayor of New York, at a fund-raising event in the Bronx last year.
JULY 13, 2016
CLEVELAND — A night highlighting the tragedy in Benghazi, Libya. An appearance by onetime football star Tim Tebow [ http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/15/sports/football/tim-tebows-republican-convention-spot-fires-up-fans-and-detractors.html ]. A presentation detailing former President Bill Clinton’s sexual misconduct.
Donald J. Trump [ http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/us/elections/donald-trump-on-the-issues.html ], the presumptive nominee, has been promising a different kind of Republican National Convention, and plans obtained by The New York Times show that he is eager to put his showbiz stamp on the party’s gathering, even as he struggles to attract A-list talent.
The roster of speakers obtained by The Times, and confirmed by two people with direct knowledge of the convention planning, reveals a lineup lacking many of the party’s rising stars. Instead, it features some of Mr. Trump’s eclectic collection of friends, celebrities and relatives, from his Slovenian supermodel wife, Melania, to the professional golfer Natalie Gulbis.
The parade of people seems to have been selected to broaden Mr. Trump’s demographic reach.
There are several notable women speaking. They include Pam Bondi, the Florida attorney general, who tangled on television with the CNN anchor Anderson Cooper after the Orlando, Fla., nightclub massacre; Eileen Collins, the first woman to command a space shuttle [ http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/science/topics/space_shuttle/index.html ] mission; Gov. Mary Fallin of Oklahoma; Senator Joni Ernst of Iowa; and Mr. Trump’s wife, Melania.
There are a few African-Americans, like Jamiel Shaw Sr., who became an outspoken advocate for tougher immigration laws after his son was killed in 2008 by an undocumented immigrant; and Darryl Glenn, who is running for the Senate in Colorado.
From sports there is Mr. Tebow, the former quarterback and Heisman Trophy winner who is known for his conservative views; Dana White, the president of the Ultimate Fighting Championship, a mixed martial arts [ http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/m/mixed_martial_arts/index.html ] organization; and Ms. Gulbis.
Peter Thiel, a billionaire Silicon Valley entrepreneur, will represent the business community, along with Thomas J. Barrack Jr., who helped start a pro-Trump “super PAC [ http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/c/campaign_finance/index.html ].” In what could be an awkward juxtaposition, Mr. Thiel is openly gay and the convention is set to adopt a platform that opposed gay and transgender rights.
The list of politicians scheduled to appear include people who have been out of office for some time, like Rudolph W. Giuliani, the former New York mayor, and newcomers like Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas.
There are plans to emphasize different themes each night of the convention. Mr. Trump wants to touch on a few of his favorite hot-button issues, like the 2012 attack on the American diplomatic compound in Benghazi, former President Clinton’s infidelities and border security. All four of Mr. Trump’s adult children are scheduled to speak.
There also will be governors like Rick Scott of Florida and Scott Walker of Wisconsin, and members of Congress like Representatives Sean P. Duffy of Wisconsin and Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee. The National Rifle Association will be represented by Chris Cox, executive director of the group’s political arm. Antonio Sabato Jr. is one Hollywood star who has been confirmed by the Trump campaign.
Mr. Trump is still inviting people, his aides have said. And the people who spoke about his list of speakers cautioned that it could still grow.
But what is striking, as much as who is on the list, is who is not. Several figures Mr. Trump had said he would invite to speak, like the boxing promoter Don King and Sarah Palin, the former Alaska governor, were not included. Neither was Tom Brady, the New England Patriots quarterback, a hugely popular figure in the key state of New Hampshire.
The list, which is subject to change, as obtained by The New York Times:
Night 1: A Benghazi focus, followed by border patrol agents and Mr. Shaw, whose son was killed by an undocumented immigrant. Senator Cotton, Mr. Giuliani, Melania Trump, Ms. Ernst and others.
Night 2: A focus on the economy: Mr. White, president of the U.F.C.; Asa Hutchinson, the governor of Arkansas; Michael Mukasey, the former United States attorney general; Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, a vice-presidential possibility; Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader; Mr. Trump’s daughter Tiffany; his son Donald Jr.; and Governor Walker.
Night 3: Ms. Bondi; Ms. Collins; Newt Gingrich, a former House speaker; Senator Ted Cruz of Texas; Mr. Trump’s son Eric; Ms. Gulbis; and the nominee for vice president.
Night 4: Mr. Tebow; Representative Blackburn; Governor Fallin; Reince Priebus, the Republican National Committee [ http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/r/republican_national_committee/index.html ] chairman; Governor Scott; Mr. Thiel; Mr. Barrack; Mr. Trump’s daughter Ivanka; and Mr. Trump.
Even as they finalized the list this week, Mr. Trump’s campaign aides and party officials were also working behind the scenes to stave off any challenges to Mr. Trump’s nomination on the convention floor next week.
Mr. Priebus was blunt about the need for party leaders to support Mr. Trump and defeat Hillary Clinton — even if the reasoning he offered appeared to be less than a full-throated endorsement.
“If we don’t stick together as a party and stop her, then the only alternative is to get comfortable with the phrase President Hillary Clinton,” Mr. Priebus said in remarks to party leaders on Wednesday.
[...]
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/14/us/politics/republican-convention-speakers-donald-trump.html


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Ahead of GOP Convention, Cleveland Officials Affirm Protesters May Carry Guns


The Republican convention will be held at the Quicken Loans Arena in Cleveland, shown July 11.
Photo: Angelo Merendino/Getty Images

But water guns, toy guns, knives, aerosol cans, rope, tennis balls are barred

By Byron Tau
Jul 13, 2016 4:16 pm ET

CLEVELAND — Cleveland officials said Wednesday that they will uphold the right of protesters at the Republican National Convention to carry firearms even as they expressed opposition to the state’s open carry laws.

Speaking to reporters in advance of the Republican National Convention next week, both Cleveland Mayor Frank G. Jackson and police Chief Calvin Williams they were bound by the state’s laws allowing people to carry guns even if they disagreed with them.

“Our intent is to follow the law. And if the law says you can have open carry, that’s what it says. Whether I agree with it or not is another issue,” said Mayor Jackson in a press conference.

That was a sentiment also echoed by the city’s police chief. Asked if he would prefer that people be prevented from carrying weapons at the Republican National convention, Chief Williams said, “Of course.”

“It’s the law in this state. As police chief, I’m bound to uphold the law in this state,” he added.

Just days after five Dallas police officers were shot dead by a gunman with a high-powered rifle at a protest against the police killings of two black men earlier last week, several groups of demonstrators have suggested that they may bring weapons to the protests at or around the convention.

The group Oath Keepers said this week that they would appear at the RNC armed, while the chairman of the New Black Panther Party also said that his group may carry weapons at an event designed to protest police brutality in advance of the RNC. Event organizers of the police brutality event later said that no armed demonstrators were expected [ http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/12/us/politics/guns-rnc-cleveland.html ].

Cleveland has banned a wide array of items inside a broad zone in downtown Cleveland around the convention site, including water guns, toy guns, knives, aerosol cans, rope, tennis balls and others. But because of Ohio’s open carry laws, protesters who legally own a firearm will be allowed to carry it near the convention center.

The Secret Service bans guns within a much smaller security perimeter around the Quicken Loans Arena where the event is being held. That area is only open to credentialed attendees of the convention.

More In Republican Convention

Ted Cruz to Hold Cleveland Event for Supporters of His Presidential Bid
http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2016/07/14/ted-cruz-to-hold-cleveland-event-for-supporters-of-his-presidential-bid/

2016 GOP Convention Speakers List vs. 2012: By the Numbers
http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2016/07/14/2016-gop-convention-speakers-list-vs-2012-by-the-numbers/

GOP Releases Convention Speakers Roster
http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2016/07/14/gop-releases-convention-speakers-roster/

Thursday Preview: RNC Rules Committee Meets in Cleveland
http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2016/07/14/thursday-preview-rnc-rules-committee-meets-in-cleveland/

Rogue Republicans Offer Alternative Platform That Skips Marriage Issue
http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2016/07/13/rogue-republicans-offer-alternative-platform-that-skips-marriage-issue/

Copyright ©2016 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.

http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2016/07/13/ahead-of-gop-convention-cleveland-officials-affirm-protesters-may-carry-guns/ [with comments]


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Emerging Republican Platform Goes Far to the Right


Donald J. Trump left the stage after he spoke at a campaign event in Virginia Beach on Monday.
Credit Damon Winter/The New York Times

By JEREMY W. PETERS
JULY 12, 2016

CLEVELAND — Republicans moved on Tuesday toward adopting a staunchly conservative platform that takes a strict, traditionalist view of the family and child rearing, bars military women from combat, describes coal as a “clean” energy source and declares pornography a “public health crisis.”

It is a platform that at times seems to channel the party’s presumptive presidential nominee, Donald J. Trump [ http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/us/elections/donald-trump-on-the-issues.html ] — calling to “destroy ISIS,” belittling President Obama as weak and accusing his administration of inviting attacks from adversaries.

But the document positions itself far to the right of Mr. Trump’s beliefs in other places — and amounts to a rightward lurch even from the party’s hard-line platform in 2012 — especially as it addresses gay men, lesbians and transgender people.

As delegates debated in two marathon sessions here on Monday and Tuesday, they repeatedly rejected efforts by more moderate members of the platform committee to add language that would acknowledge or condemn anti-gay discrimination — something Mr. Trump has done himself.

The numerous additions to the platform on marriage, family, homosexuality and gender issues were a reflection of just how much society and the law have shifted since Republicans adopted their last platform four years ago. And the debate this week showed just how unsettled many Republicans remain with those changes.

In 2012, the Supreme Court had not yet ruled that same-sex marriage [ http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/s/same_sex_marriage/index.html ] was a constitutional right, and transgender rights had not yet become a matter of intense national discussion.

But while public and legal opinion has moved steadily in one direction, the official declaration of Republican Party [ http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/r/republican_party/index.html ] principles appears to be heading sharply in the opposite direction. The party’s approach to social issues now threatens to disrupt the convention next week. Moderate delegates pushing for gay rights language in the platform secured enough signatures on Tuesday to demand a vote on their proposals from all 2,472 delegates.

Social conservatives in the party exerted significant influence over the drafting and amending of the platform this week, succeeding in almost all of their efforts to add language that pushed the document more to the right.

And what Republicans will probably end up with when they formally vote next week to ratify the platform approved in committee on Tuesday is a text that can seem almost Victorian in its moralizing and deeply critical of how the modern American family has evolved.

The platform demands that lawmakers use religion as a guide when legislating, stipulating “that man-made law must be consistent with God-given, natural rights.”

It also encourages the teaching of the Bible in public schools because, the amendment said, a good understanding of its contents is “indispensable for the development of an educated citizenry.”

The pornography provision was not in an initial draft that the Republican National Committee [ http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/r/republican_national_committee/index.html ] drew up and released on Sunday. But delegates added it on Monday at the same time they were inserting many of the amendments opposing gay and transgender rights. It calls pornography “a public menace” that is especially harmful to children.

Much of the most combative debate centered on language in the platform that describes gay and transgender people, and efforts to strip those words out and replace them with language proposed by a minority contingent of socially moderate delegates.

An amendment to specifically recognize that gay people are targets of the Islamic State caused a stir among more conservative delegates who said they felt there was no need to single out any one group. As the delegate who offered the amendment, Giovanni Cicione of Rhode Island, argued his case — by saying he believed it was an “innocuous and important” way to tell gay people the Republican Party does not exclude them — another delegate moved to shut off the debate.

Jim Bopp, a delegate from Indiana, said the Republican Party had always rejected “identity politics.” Arguing against the measure, he said, “Obviously, there’s an agenda here.”

The amendment was defeated, as were others in a similar vein.

But nearly every provision that expressed disapproval of homosexuality, same-sex marriage or transgender rights passed. The platform calls for overturning the Supreme Court marriage decision with a constitutional amendment and makes references to appointing judges “who respect traditional family values.”

“Has a dead horse been beaten enough yet?” asked Annie Dickerson, a committee member from New York, who chastised her colleagues for writing language offensive to gays into the platform “again and again and again.”

Additional provisions included those that promoted state laws to limit which restrooms transgender people could use, nodded to “conversion therapy” for gays by saying that parents should be free to make medical decisions about their children without interference and stated that “natural marriage” between a man and a woman is most likely to result in offspring who do not become drug-addicted or otherwise damaged.

If Mr. Trump, who has children with three different wives, does not share all of the party’s most socially conservative stances, he could certainly be heartened by other additions to the platform, especially on national security and defense.

One section is titled “A Dangerous World,” echoing Mr. Trump’s assertions of the unstable nature of current geopolitics. There is specific reference to the failings of “the secretary of state” — a jab at Hillary Clinton, Mr. Trump’s presumed Democratic Party opponent.

Mr. Trump’s influence was also evident in the absence of any mention of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a trade agreement that was promoted in the last Republican platform.

Another tweak to the platform’s language on immigration will also please Mr. Trump: Though the initial draft called for building a “physical barrier” along the United States border with Mexico, that passage was amended yesterday to call specifically for a wall.

Yet it was the lack of much interference by Mr. Trump or his aides that seemed to set the tone for the platform’s direction. That allowed conservative activists like Tony Perkins, the president of the Family Research Council, to exert greater influence. Mr. Perkins’s hand could be seen in dozens of amendments on issues like gun control, religious expression and bathroom use.

“He is going to be the nominee for the party. He has his own ideas,” Mr. Perkins told reporters on Monday. “But this is a statement of not Donald Trump’s campaign, but of the Republican Party.”

© 2016 The New York Times Company

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/13/us/politics/republican-convention-issues.html [with comments]


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