The Unconventional Diaries: Trump seals the deal at the RNC

Yahoo News has enlisted participants at the Republican National Convention representing different viewpoints and roles to file daily diary entries on their experiences in Cleveland. They will be your eyes and ears at one of the most unconventional political gatherings in generations, offering a front-row seat on the convention floor, behind-the-scenes access to key political meetings and a vivid picture of what conventions are really like, both inside and outside the arena. Here are yesterday’s entries.

It has been a long day, but it’s been an exciting day. The count’s over, and everybody’s relaxed. Donald Trump’s nomination is a sure thing. And with Mike Pence as our vice presidential nominee, it’s a done deal. I’m excited. I’m definitely not ready to go home yet.

The Rules Committee might be over, but this week isn’t slowing down. On Tuesday morning, Gregg Harper, a congressman from my home state of Mississippi, held a wonderful brunch at Brickstone here in Cleveland. They had gospel singers at the restaurant, which was great, because I was feeling a little guilty because I didn’t go to church on Sunday. I got religion Tuesday with the music, so that was good.

After brunch, I took a short nap (one of those power naps), and talked to my husband and daughter. Then I realized I had to be at the convention center at 5:30 p.m. So I jumped up, put my clothes on and ran downstairs. Because of the protesters, I was almost an hour late getting here! It took an hour to get there from the time we left the hotel. We didn’t get to the convention center until it was two minutes until 6 p.m. Unfortunately, I had missed the vote, but Mississippi cast all its votes for Donald Trump.

Monday was also a crazy day in Cleveland. That morning, the women of the Rules Committee kicked off the convention with a brunch with two survivors of the Benghazi attack. They spoke at the brunch and then later at the convention. After brunch, the committee met again and then went down to the floor to present the rules.

Some delegates tried to make it a full vote instead of a simple voice vote. It was kind of nerve-racking for a little while, but our rules all passed. The people fighting it are just sore losers, that’s all they are. They need to get a life. They lost. I was sitting in front of the delegates from Louisiana, and they were still fighting the rules, and all I could think was, “Oh gosh, don’t you have something else to do?” They all have to let it go. It was a mess. But after that, things improved.

On, Monday night, Jamiel Shaw Sr. talked about his son, who was shot by an illegal immigrant. You know, he was on the phone with his son right before he was killed. He heard the shot that killed his son. We have to secure our borders. If they commit a crime, they need to be deported — immediately. Just deport them, get them out of here. Hopefully we’ll soon have a wall, so they can’t come back.

But I think Rudy Giuliani stole the show that night. He got you on your feet more times than anybody else did. I was afraid he was going to have a stroke! It looked like he was going to have one if he didn’t calm down. He’s just such a great guy. I remember being in New York before he was mayor and walking down Broadway to get tickets. You know, you were scared to death to walk down the alley with the homeless begging. When I walked around there alone one time, I just pretended I was with this man. I just kept walking faster, and then he’d walk faster, and I’d walk faster. Then two years later, I go back, and it’s clean as a whistle. It’s wonderful. He’s a great guy.

I’m looking forward to the other speeches. Tomorrow, we start here at the arena at 7:20 p.m. I want to hear Scott Walker. I like him. Ted Cruz is going to be here, too. I’m anxious to hear what he has to say.

As told to Susanna Heller/Yahoo News

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The Stand Together Against Trump effort is based out of an old Masonic Lodge. It’s a sizable place with 30,000 square feet, and it’s affordable for our low-budget operation.

We’ve expanded a lot over the past couple of days. We added a lot of professional messaging and social media teams, and we’ve got three different areas at the center where we have people set up. It’s a space where any group can drop literature. A lot of the time, we’ll have people just hanging out — and it isn’t restricted to only our group.

We had a clear leadership structure in place and we could have pulled off something OK with just the full-time people. But we have six new interns who are in undergraduate communications and political science programs. They have experience beyond what we had. They started this morning, and we split them up into six different assignments. One is doing Snapchat, another is on press releases and a third is working on website design. There’s a clear chain of command, and our director can now think big picture rather than putting out fires all the time. It’s a weird campaign, though. It feels like it is a grassroots political campaign for city council.

We have a big room where we hold larger organizing meetings and trainings and then shut off the lights when we don’t need it, as part of the deal was that we don’t use electricity that we don’t need to use. The larger peace trainings are in the bigger space. Many of the groups are bringing large numbers of people there.

We just finished a nonviolence training session in one of the smaller rooms. We expected five people to come, but we got more like 15 to 20. Half were people who heard about us in the media and wanted to join. And we’ve been getting more and more of those people in the past few days.

We know that a lot of our contingent is first-time protesters who haven’t been in this situation before. We have to get them ready for a conflict situation. We try to put out very simple messages because that’s how you get people to remember them during heated confrontations. The goal of the training is to give them core principles to come back to: Calming yourself, listen if other people are yelling at you, affirm the other person and respond the right way.

Other protest groups may not have spent as much time focusing on peace, nonviolence and creating a culture of protest during an entire convention week. But we thought this moment was different, both because of incidents in Dallas, Baton Rouge and Minneapolis, but also because of the nature of Trump and his rhetoric. We really felt like violence would hurt the end goal, so that’s why we spent so much time on this.

Today there aren’t a lot of large protests in the city. So we decided this morning that we would chill a few hundred bottles of water and then members would gather downtown to distribute water on this hot day. We’ll hand it out to anyone, whether they’re a Trump opponent or supporter. We’re actually looking for people who an anti-Trump group would not normally reach out to. And we don’t mean that to be condescending to anyone. I’d like to have a conversation with someone who believes in the Second Amendment, someone who has their firearm with them. And if they want a bottle of water, we’re happy to give it to them — no questions asked. We don’t want to make it complex, hold a bunch of anti-Trump signs or scream. It isn’t big or sexy, but we’re promoting it and trying to get people to pay attention to it rather than the screaming matches we saw yesterday. It is a different day and we have a different message.

I never thought the team would get this big, but now we’ll see what we can do with it. We have 60 hours left and are still adding new members. Turnout and message will be key. We’ve got some media interviews and trainings tomorrow. Then we have the last Stand Together Against Trump meeting in our home basement. That will be where we talk about our final logistics, how to keep people cool and get people ready. It will be beautiful for our big rally and march on Thursday.

As told to Andrew Bahl/Yahoo News

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I put on CNN on Tuesday morning, and it seems like they’re watching a different convention than the one I’m at. They kept saying negative things about the RNC, but I thought Monday was great. The media is misleading the public. It confirms everything I’ve ever thought about the media being slanted to the left. I mean, talk about making a mountain out of a molehill with this plagiarism controversy. I think Joe Biden once got caught plagiarizing when he ran for president. This was just words — everybody says, “We have a dream.” It is nothing.

We had breakfast with Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker. He remembered me from when he visited Charleston during his presidential campaign. He’s a great guy, and we got a chance to talk. He admitted, “Donald Trump wasn’t my first choice, I was.” So that shows you his sense of humor. We talked about how, down the line, there will be another chance for him, entering back into national politics. He’s done a great job in Wisconsin.

The other speaker that morning was the pollster Frank Luntz, and he was so funny. He had us rolling in the aisles. He was very poignant, speaking about talents. It is worth checking him out on YouTube, because I can’t do it justice. But he talked about taxes and how we’re taxed to death in this country. He was surprisingly good.

A number of TV stations keep calling from South Carolina to get my commentary on some things, especially on the “Never Trump” movement. I tell the reporters, “A man is his word.” And as I come from the military, and know the perspective of an officer leading men, if you aren’t straight with them, they won’t follow you, and you’ll get killed. That being said, I’m very upset with the people who ran for president of the United States, who forced Trump to pledge to support the nominee, and now they’ve gone back on their own pledge to do the same. I’ve lost all respect for some of them. The Republican Party has been very good to the Bushes, to South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, to Ohio Gov. John Kasich. For them to snub the GOP nominee, shame on them. That’s what the papers and TV stations back home wanted to hear about.

Later in the day Tuesday, we went over to the Cleveland Browns stadium, and it was beautiful. It was a nice time, a concert for the Southern states. We had a tent set up for South Carolina. It was laid back before we got down to business in the evening.

Officially nominating Trump was great. Everyone was anticipating it. It was just a fabulous moment. People really looked forward to it, to hype their state one by one in the arena.

I also enjoyed seeing Trump’s family speak. I think a real testament to any parent is what your kids do. I know I’m very proud of my kids’ accomplishments. Our candidate has to be thrilled, and it shows, because they clearly have his confidence. They tell him the truth. You can judge a man, a woman, by their kids. If the kids are good and decent, that’s a testament to the parents. Donald Trump Jr.’s speech especially. I could see him running for Senate soon.

As told to Andrew Bahl/Yahoo News
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