U.S. President Donald Trump accepted the Republican Party’s nomination for a second term Thursday, joining a general-election contest against Joe Biden that he and his party cast this week as a crusade against left-wing ideology and violent social disorder, fought against the backdrop of a virus that Republicans largely described as a temporary handicap on the economy.
Trump misrepresented his own record on the coronavirus, part of a broader attempt to minimize his lapses in office and turn a harsh light toward Biden, the moderate Democratic nominee. The president also repeatedly accused his opponent and Democrats of failing to take on rioters, though Biden has condemned recent acts of violence, and of harboring designs to restructure the American economic system along socialist lines.
Trump, by contrast, adopted the role of a defender of traditional American values and an unbending ally of the police.