MILWAUKEE (CN) — Strength was the theme of the night at the Republican National Convention’s third evening session on Wednesday, where conservatives from inside and outside Donald Trump’s administration hit on national security and foreign policy and railed against President Joe Biden’s handling of those issues.
Republican National Committee chairman Michael Whatley began the evening by reminding the delegates in attendance where America was before Biden’s presidency.
“Four years ago, Russia was in check. China was in check. Iran was in check. Our southern border was secure, and our economy was strong,” Whatley said.
Whatley compared that to today, living in a world where he said Russia has invaded Ukraine, China threatens the entire world, Iran has attacked Israel through proxies, 10 million immigrants have crossed the southern border unchecked and the economy is weaker.
“We can do better. We need to do better,” he said.
Headlining Wednesday night was Ohio Senator J.D. Vance, who two days ago was announced as Trump’s VP pick in a post on Truth Social by the former president himself.
Introduced by his wife, Usha, the 39-year-old “Hillbilly Elegy” author addressed Whatley directly and sealed his status as Trump’s running mate: “I officially accept your nomination to be Vice President of the United States of America.”
Vance took digs at “career politican” Biden for supporting the North American Free Trade Agreement, bad trade deals with China and the Iraq War. These resulted in lost jobs in areas like where he grew up in Southern Ohio, and young men from similar regions and backgrounds being sent to war, he said.
The newly designated vice presidential candidate appealed to working people in battleground states like Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, promising the Republican movement led by Trump will represent them and bring them prosperity.
Other speakers wasted no time highlighting foreign policy failures they laid directly at the feet of the Biden administration, including the August 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan that featured an IS-claimed terrorist attack that killed 13 U.S. service members at Kabul’s Hamid Karzai International Airport as U.S. diplomats and non-combat personnel fled the country.
Former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich contrasted the “orderly end to the Afghanistan war” orchestrated by Trump to the “chaotic, panic-filled withdrawal” overseen by Biden.
At one point in the evening, a montage of interviews with gold star families who lost loved ones in the Kabul attack played on the Fiserv Forum jumbotron. Interviewees in the video said Biden kept looking at his watch and seemed not to care during the fallen soldiers’ dignified transfer ceremony.
Members of the gold star families appeared on stage after the montage, drawing chants of “USA! USA! USA!” from the crowd. They held up Trump’s compassion and support for their grief against Biden’s relative silence and lack of empathy.
Gingrich also blamed Biden’s “weakness and confusion” for Hamas’ October 7, 2023, attack on Israel that killed nearly 1,200 Israelis and resulted in the ongoing Israel-Hamas war that, according to Gaza health authorities, has killed more than 38,000 Palestinians.
The parents of 22-year-old Omer Neutra, a Jewish-American hostage held hostage by Hamas in Gaza since the attack in Israel last fall, took the stage late in the night’s program. They chanted “Bring them home!” along with the crowd.
Also appearing Wednesday night — and receiving something like a hero’s welcome from the crowd — was Peter Navarro, Trump’s former director of the U.S. Office of Trade & Manufacturing.
Navarro was sentenced to four months in prison for defying a subpoena issued by the House special committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. But he had just been released from a Florida prison Wednesday morning, he said, looking ready and willing to stump for Trump.
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