US President Trump and his political allies mounted a fierce and misleading defense of his political record on the first night of the Republican convention on Monday, while unleashing a barrage of attacks on Joseph R Biden Jr and the Democratic Party that were unrelenting in their bleakness. Hours after Republican delegates formally nominated Trump for a second term, the president and his party made plain that they intended to engage in sweeping revisionism about Trump’s management of the pandemic, his record on race relations and much else. And they laid out a dystopian picture of what the US would look like under a Biden administration, warning of a “vengeful mob” that would lay waste to suburban communities and turn quiet neighborhoods into war zones. Donald Trump Jr, the president’s son, praised his father’s management of the pandemic, one of several segments asserting an unsupported narrative that the president had been a sturdy leader in a crisis even as polls show Americans believe he has handled the pandemic poorly. The speakers on Monday night reflected a Trumpified Republican Party. A few of the president’s allies in Congress, including Represe­ntatives Jim Jordan of Ohio and Steve Scalise of Louisiana, delivered remarks. A handful of participants representing the Republican Party’s scant racial diversity spoke later in the evening, among them Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, the only Black Republican in the Senate, and the former United Nations ambassador, Nikki R. Haley, who is Indian-American.

In her remarks, Haley depicted Trump as a stern champion of American interests against an unfriendly international order, and attacked Biden and the Obama administration’s handling of adversaries like North Korea and Iran. Of Trump, she said, “He tells the world what it needs to hear.” Scott gave perhaps the most carefully crafted speech of the evening, recounting his ascent as a Black Southerner to deliver an optimistic assessment of America’s promise and to ridicule Biden for his clumsy references to race. Much as the Democrats sought to do last week with their parade of Republicans at Biden’s convention, GOP officials were hoping that the presence of people of color would provide something of a permission structure for centrist voters to back Trump. ©2020 The New York Times

US, China signal progress on trade

US and Chinese trade negotiators stre­ssed their commitment to the phase-one deal in a phone call where both sides said they’d seen progress, even as relations between the world’s largest economies deteriorate in multiple areas. The two countries discussed steps China has taken, including ensuring greater protection for intellectual property rights and removing impediments to American companies in financial services and agriculture, the US Trade Representative said. Both sides agreed to create conditions to push the deal forward. Bloomberg