Elise Stefanik hammers campus antisemitism, and recaps her finest hour — her grilling of the college presidents who couldn’t clearly say that calls for genocide against Jews violated codes of conduct, because it was context dependent.
Milwaukee — Security to enter the venue is tight and slow following an attempted stabbing turning into an officer-involved shooting. An Ohio officer shot and killed the knife-wielding homeless man, an event that drew dozens of squad cars in the mid-afternoon. Local reporting suggests the attempted stabbing had nothing to do with the RNC but occurred close enough that out-of-town officers intervened.
Milwaukee — Convention attendees are expected to hear later this evening from House Speaker Mike Johnson, a formerly low-profile Louisiana congressman who faced threats to his speakership earlier this year from his rightmost flank.
“I think the toughest part for folks who know him best is hearing all the lies and the conspiracy theories and how he’s ‘compromised.’ We know this man,” delegate Louis Avallone said in an interview with National Review here in the convention hall. “So to hear the lies being spread about him — that somehow he’s not as conservative as folks believed him to be or that he’s somehow beholden to the the deep state — these are things that we know to be untrue. And that’s probably the toughest part is trying to explain to folks who aren’t from his district, that that’s not who he is.”
Milwaukee — Kari Lake brought the circus with her.
Milwaukee — Pro-life protesters demand that those entering the RNC hold the party accountable for its abandonment of the pro-life cause. Some entering the venue (pictured) take exception to the accusatory tone of the protesters.
Milwaukee — There is one lone protester in the authorized protest zone. A socialist, the protester is lobbying for free healthcare, unions, ‘No gods no masters,’ and ‘Save Palestine.’ A Trump supporter and he started debating….it did not go particularly well for the Trump guy. We discussed Top Gun and Milwaukee’s socialist history — the last major city with a socialist mayor, per the protester. A line of “Dictator on Day One” board trucks have idled on the street since 11:30 A.M., he says.
“Look at my face,” Nevada Senate candidate Sam Brown asked the audience, which is scarred from the wounds he suffered on the battlefield. “This is the high cost of war.”
“If Joe Biden stays in office,” Brown continued, more American soldiers “will pay this price.”
Milwaukee — Former South Carolina governor and 2024 presidential candidate Nikki Haley may get a cold reception from her home state delegation later this evening when she takes the stage here at the GOP convention.
“Obviously it made a lot of us mad” when Haley took until after Super Tuesday to drop out of the Republican presidential primary, said South Carolina delegate Manfred Lewis here in the convention hall. Does Lewis think she should’ve gotten a last minute invite to the convention? “No, absolutely not. Not after the way she treated Trump.”
Regarding West Virginia governor and U.S. Senate candidate Jim Justice and his bulldog, Babydog… they say, after a while, people start to resemble their pets, and vice versa.
Noah, maybe someone has told Lake to tone it down, lest she fumble away a winnable race. There hasn’t been a ton of polling in Arizona's Senate race, but the last two showed Lake tied and trailing Ruben Gallego by one point. Meanwhile, there’s been plenty of polling of the presidential race in Arizona, with Trump consistently ahead. What’s more, the level of support for Biden is awful, considering that he narrowly won the state. Biden’s support is sometimes in the upper 30s, never more than 40 percent. Yes, Gallego can outperform Biden, but there’s a limit.