Republican Party Convention: The Trump fightback is unleashed on night one
Video report by ITV News Washington Correspondent Robert Moore
President Trump has launched his re-election campaign on the opening day of the Republican National Convention.
It was vintage Donald Trump. Not one speech, but two.
And in case anyone is suffering from Trump-deprivation syndrome, the president is scheduled to appear on every single night of the convention
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For good reason, this has been dubbed the Trump Family Convention.
It's not just the president who is dominating proceedings. Don Jr spoke last night too; so will Melania, Ivanka and Jared in the next few days.
It is certainly evidence that the Trump brand has completely overtaken the party of Abraham Lincoln and Ronald Reagan.
The president's first speech of the day was in person in the convention hall in Charlotte, North Carolina.
It was a conspiracy-heavy, dark and rambling performance in which he accused the Democrats of being ready to steal the election. He strongly hinted he would only accept the outcome if he won.
Dark and destabilising stuff.
It feels that this election is going to head from the voting booth on November 3 straight to the courtroom in dozens of states across the country.
The president's second appearance - this time in prime time - was altogether more choreographed and polished.
Donald Trump was in the White House, surrounded by former American hostages (or in some cases prisoners) all of whom thanked the president for working to achieve their freedom.
That moment may well resonate in many American homes.
The message was designed to suggest that Biden talks the talk about allies and diplomacy, but that Trump delivers. That the president's "America First" foreign policy is abrasive and erratic, but it works.
Also appearing in a primetime slot was Nikki Haley, a first-generation daughter of Indian immigrants - an important nod to diversity even in the overwhelmingly white world of the Republican Party.
Haley is a former Ambassador to the UN, and a woman with ambitions to lead the party in a post-Trump political world.
We will see if that opportunity for Haley comes in 10 weeks. Or in four years.
Other speakers during the opening night amplified the assault on Joe Biden's character and record. They claimed he was a socialist whose policies would destroy America, and bring anarchy to the streets of the suburbs.
Republicans will be pleased with the Convention so far.
It has played to voters' fears of chaos under Biden. It has projected the Democrats as a danger to democracy - inverting the idea of Barack Obama's speech last week that Trump is a unique threat to the American republic.
The latest polling shows a comfortable ten point lead for Democrats. If it stays that way, Biden will sweep into the White House.
But Donald Trump hopes that news of a coronavirus vaccine and a strong economic bounce - what he has called a "super-V" shaped recovery - might yet make Americans give him a second chance, and a second term.
It's still a long-shot.
But if this opening night showed anything, it revealed that the Republican Party is not going down without a fight.