Trump RNC LIVE: Introduced by Hulk Hogan, ex-president mentions Biden only twice in marathon speech

The former president’s favourite daughter made her return to politics and her old man’s campaign trail on Thursday night as she joined her family on stage to close out the Republican National Convention.

Ivanka worked as a senior adviser in the Trump administration but — following his exit from the White House in January 2021 in the wake of the January 6 Capitol riot — has distanced herself from his re-election goals and the world of politics altogether.

After leaving Washington DC, Ivanka and her husband Jared Kushner moved to Miami with their three children.

And when, in November 2022, Trump announced that he would run for the White House for a third time, she made it clear she did not want to return to politics.

“I love my father very much,” she wrote in a statement at the time. “This time around, I am choosing to prioritize my young children and the private life we are creating as a family. I do not plan to be involved in politics.”

Rachel Sharp has more on her surprise return.

Elon Musk and Peter Thiel are key figures in a rising network of pro-Trump techies who are channelling tens of millions of dollars towards Republican campaigns.

And Thiel is the one who reportedly introduced Vance to Trump in the first place.

For Indy Premium, Io Dodds reports on the GOP’s increasingly cosy relationship with Big Tech.

Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance follows several accounts on X that espouse far-right and white nationalist views, according to an analysis by Richard Hall and Isaac Lozano for The Independent.

There were plenty of colorful twists on traditional outfits at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee this week and, in the wake of Trump’s wounding in an assassination attempt, an unusual new one, writes Michelle Del Rey.

The ascension of JD Vance, first to the Senate and now as Donald Trump’s running mate, is a story that’s as much about what the Republican Party does not represent as it is a story about the GOP’s evolution.

Wednesday night at the RNC was wholly oriented around Trump’s vice president.

In Vance, Trump has chosed a self-proclaimed economic populist as his partner — a strategic pick aimed at shoring up support in key areas of the Rust Belt and other communities where manufacturing and energy are critical.

Vance, a one-term senator from Ohio, has been in the upper chamber of Congress for just a year and a half.

In that time, he staked out his position as a clear outlier from the conservative stream with actions including an appearance on a United Autoworkers picket line and support for a railworkers union’s bargaining efforts over paid sick leave.

Now, as Trump’s prospective vice president, Vance could be about to face a rude awakening, as this clip from last night neatly illustrates.

It was around the time when one of the delegates to the RNC yelled “Kai Trump 2040!” when the scope of the Trump takeover of the Republican Party was suddenly laid very bare.

Major party conventions often feature family members and friends close to the person at the top of the ticket. It’s nothing new.

But the Trumpification of the GOP, which was on full display this week, took that trend to the extreme — and made clear that the continued strength of the MAGA movement would not only persist through 2024 but well into the future.

The really rather ineffective but nevertheless popular MAGA lawyer got emotional praising her most prominent client on stage last night, uttering the truly ghastly line, perhaps the most bowel-tremoring of the whole convention, when she declared: “The only crime President Trump has committed is loving America.”

Gustaf Kilander has this one.

You can read the former’s president’s entire nomination acceptance speech for yourself below.

If you do so, imitating his voice as preposterously as possible is strongly recommended.

Trump’s campaign spent the better part of four days promising a changed man – a more thoughtful candidate, forever changed by a would-be assassin’s bullet.

But that image was shattered over 93 minutes on Thursday.

The nominee’s speech, which trailed off the prepared remarks on the teleprompter at multiple points, was in turn monotonous as he waffled on the call for “unity” and angry about the current state of American life, for which he is as responsible as anyone else, if not much more so.

Here’s John Bowden’s assessment from Milwaukee.