As Mr Trump faces pressure to expand his appeal beyond his loyal supporters, senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, the US senate’s sole black Republican, and former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley, the daughter of Indian immigrants, sought to cast the party as welcoming to Americans of colour, despite its overwhelmingly white leadership and voting base.
Ms Haley said: “I was a brown girl in a black and white world,” noting that she had faced discrimination but rejecting the idea that “America is a racist country”.
She also gave a nod to the Black Lives Matter movement, saying: “Of course we know that every single black life is valuable.”
The evening also featured contributions from the St Louis couple who are facing charges over allegedly pointing guns at Black Lives Matter protesters outside their home.
But the prime-time convention proceedings, which featured a blend of recorded and live speeches, focused largely on dire warnings about Joe Biden, Mr Trump’s Democratic challenger in the November election.
Speakers warned that electing Mr Biden would lead to violence in American cities spilling into the suburbs – a frequent Trump campaign message with racist undertones.
One speaker referred to Mr Trump the “bodyguard of Western civilisation”.
Scrambling to find a message that sticks, Mr Trump’s team tried out multiple themes and tactics over the course of the night.
They featured optimism from those who could represent the party’s future, attempts to characterise Mr Biden as a vessel for socialists and far-left Democrats despite his moderate record, and humanising stories about the 74-year-old man who currently sits in the Oval Office.
Mr Trump and a parade of fellow Republicans misrepresented Mr Biden’s agenda throughout the evening, falsely accusing him of proposing to defund police, ban oil fracking, take over health care, open borders and raise taxes on most Americans.
Just stay focused, folks.
Let’s get to work. Join our campaign: https://t.co/4oQNtuyuG7— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) August 25, 2020
They tried to assign positions of the Democratic left to a middle-of-the-road candidate who explicitly rejected many of the party’s most liberal positions through the primaries.
The opening night of the four-day convention reflected the rising urgency fuelling Mr Trump’s push to reshape a presidential contest that he appears to be losing for now, with election day just 10 weeks away.
It will continue on Tuesday when first lady Melania Trump delivers remarks from the White House.
Mr Biden and his running mate, California senator Kamala Harris, are keeping a relatively low profile this week. In a tweet on Monday night, Mr Biden told supporters to “stay focused”.
The emphasis on diversity at Mr Trump’s convention was an acknowledgement that he must expand his appeal beyond his largely white base.
Polling shows that black Americans continue to be overwhelmingly negative in their assessments of the president’s performance, with his approval hovering around one in 10 over the course of his presidency, according to Gallup polling.
One of several African Americans on Monday night’s schedule, former football star Herschel Walker, defended the president against those who call him a racist.
“It hurts my soul to hear the terrible names that people call Donald,” Mr Walker said.
“The worst one is ‘racist’. I take it as a personal insult that people would think I would have a 37-year friendship with a racist.”
However, that emphasis clashed with Mr Trump’s instinct to energise his die-hard loyalists.
He featured, for example, Mark and Patricia McCloskey, the St Louis couple charged with felonies for pointing guns at what prosecutors deemed non-violent Black Lives Matter protesters marching past their home.
“What you saw happen to us could just as easily happen to any of you who are watching from quiet neighbourhoods around our country,” Patricia McCloskey said, sitting on a couch in a wood-panelled room.
“They’ve actually charged us with felonies for daring to defend our home,” her husband said.
And representative Matt Gaetz of Florida said Democrats will “disarm you, empty the prisons, lock you in your home, and invite MS-13 to live next door”.
Mr Trump’s political future may depend on his ability to convince voters that America is on the right track, even as the coronavirus death toll exceeds 177,000 and pandemic-related job losses also reach into the millions.
A deep sense of pessimism has settled over the US electorate 10 weeks before election day. Just 23% of Americans think the country is heading in the right direction, according to a new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.
Mr Trump and his supporters touted his response to the pandemic while standing alongside front-line workers in the White House, although he glossed over the mounting death toll, the highest in the world, and his administration’s struggle to control the disease.
Organisers also repeatedly sought to cast Mr Trump as an empathetic figure, borrowing from the Democrats’ tactics a week ago which effectively highlighted Mr Biden’s personal connection to voters.
The first day of the 2020 Republican convention began early in the day as Mr Trump and vice president Mike Pence were renominated by delegates who gathered in Charlotte, the North Carolina city that was originally selected to host the convention before the pandemic struck.
Mr Trump paid a surprise visit to the city, where he warned delegates that “the only way they can take this election away from us is if this is a rigged election”, raising once more his unsupported concerns about Americans’ expected reliance on postal voting during the pandemic.
Experts say mail voting has proven remarkably secure.
The fact that the Republicans gathered at all stood in contrast to the Democrats, who held an all-virtual convention last week.
The Democratic programming included a well-received roll call video montage featuring diverse officials from across the nation.
The Republicans spoke from the ballroom in Charlotte and were overwhelmingly white before the proceedings moved to Washington for prime-time.
