CLEVELAND -- After getting off to a rocky start due to a procedural skirmish, Republicans opened their national convention Monday night with attacks on Hillary Clinton, blaming the former secretary of state for tragedies at home and abroad.
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Melania Trump, the wife of presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump, kicked off the convention by assuring voters that the candidate has the character and determination to unite a divided nation.
"If you want someone to fight for you and your country, I can assure you, he is the guy," Melania Trump told delegates in her highest-profile appearance of the presidential campaign.
Her husband made a showy entrance into the convention hall to introduce her, emerging from shadows to Queen's anthem "We Are the Champions" and declaring to cheers, "We're going to win, we're going to win so big."
He returned to the stage after his wife's remarks, greeting her with a kiss and cheering her on along with the crowd.
"I have been with Donald for 18 years, and I have been aware of his love for this country since we first met," Melania Trump said. "He never had a hidden agenda when it comes to his patriotism because, like me, he loves his country very much."
Melania Trump's appearance was a sharp contrast to most of the night's other speakers, who painted a bleak picture of an American future that they said only her husband can correct. A parade of speakers told emotional stories about loved ones killed while serving in the military or at the hands of people in the United States illegally.
"My son's life was stolen at the hands of an illegal alien," said Mary Ann Mendoza, mother of fallen police Sgt. Brandon Mendoza. "It's time we had an administration that cares more about Americans than about illegals. A vote for Hillary is putting all our children's lives at risk."
And they cast the turbulent times as a direct result of weak leadership by President Barack Obama and Clinton, the presumptive Democratic nominee.
"Who would trust Hillary Clinton to protect them? I wouldn't," former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani said in one of the night's speeches.
Ahead of Trump's appearance at the convention, tumult broke out on the floor after party officials adopted rules by a voice vote, a move aimed at blunting anti-Trump forces seeking to derail his nomination.
Delegates swapped competing chants.
Rep. Steve Womack, R-Ark., quickly put the rules to a vote and declared them approved by voice, rather than an individual tally of each state's delegation.
Earlier in the afternoon, dissident delegates had submitted petitions from a majority of delegates from what they said were at least nine states -- seemingly sufficient to force a roll call vote under party rules.
Womack said some delegates had withdrawn their signatures and that petitions from three of those states no longer qualified. That left the insurgents short of the seven states needed by GOP rule to force a roll call.
"The chair has found insufficient support for the request for a record vote," Womack said as booming objections got ever louder.
The reversal by some delegates came after heavy lobbying by the Trump campaign and top officials of the Republican National Committee.
The defeated mavericks reacted angrily, with some delegations leaving the convention floor and others vowing to not help Trump.
The Trump campaign had hoped the chaos would be little more than a footnote in the four-day convention. Despite persistent party divisions, his campaign is confident Republicans will come together behind their shared disdain for Clinton.
The convention speakers detailed at length the deadly 2012 attacks on Americans in Benghazi, Libya, while Clinton was serving as secretary of state. The mother of one of the victims choked back tears as she personally blamed Clinton for her son's death and accused her of giving a false explanation for the attack.
"If Hillary Clinton can't give us the truth, why should we give her the presidency?" Pat Smith said.
'Troubling times'
The convention comes amid a wrenching period of violence and unrest, both in the United States and around the world. On the eve of the opening, three police officers were killed in Baton Rouge, the city where a black man was killed by police two weeks ago.
Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus welcomed delegates with a brief acknowledgement of the "troubling times" swirling outside. The chairman called for a moment of silence out of respect for "genuine heroes" in law enforcement.
"Our nation grieves when we see these awful killings," he said.
A number of Monday night speakers of color echoed Trump's core themes of grievance, including some racial provocations.
"Frankly, somebody with a nice tan needs to say this: All lives matter," said Darryl Glenn, a GOP Senate candidate in Colorado who is black.
David Clarke, the Milwaukee County, Wis., sheriff, who also is black, cried out, "Blue lives matter in America!" His call for support of law enforcement officers was received with chants of "USA! USA! USA!" in the convention hall. Clarke went on to criticize the Black Lives Matter movement.
Giuliani bemoaned the racial divisions on display across the country and that first responders "have a target on their back."
"When they come to save your life, they don't ask if you are black or white," the former mayor said. "They just come to save you."
Monday night's convention headliners spoke under the theme Make America Safe Again. In a matter of weeks, Americans have seen deadly police shootings, ambushes of police in Texas and Louisiana and escalating racial tensions, not to mention a failed coup in Turkey and gruesome Bastille Day attack in Nice, France.
Trump has seized on the instability, casting recent events as a direct result of failed leadership by Obama and by Clinton, who spent four years in the administration as secretary of state.
Yet Trump has been vague about how he would put the nation on a different course, offering virtually no details of his policy prescriptions despite repeated vows to be tough. Campaign Chairman Paul Manafort said Trump would "eventually" outline policy specifics but not at the convention.
The summer disturbances had tensions running high outside the heavily secured convention site.
Hundreds of Trump supporters and opponents held rallies a half-mile apart, with a few of the Trump supporters openly carrying guns as allowed under Ohio law. The president of the police union had asked Ohio Gov. John Kasich to suspend the law allowing gun owners to carry firearms in plain sight, but Kasich said he didn't have that authority.
Anti-Trump activists flooded Cleveland's Public Square with chants and banners condemning the presumptive nominee. Many were from Chicago, while others traveled from as far as Texas.
"This isn't a rally of the biggest names in the world, but there are real activists here with real struggles," Mick Kelly, a member of the Coalition to Stop Trump and the March on the RNC, told groups supporting causes including gay and immigrant rights and anti-corporate lobbying.
Clinton, during remarks Monday at the NAACP's annual convention, said there was no justification for directing violence at law enforcement.
"As president, I will bring the full weight of the law to bear in making sure those who kill police officers are brought to justice," she said.
Clinton was a frequent target of the group of lawmakers, military service members and entertainers headlining opening night of the convention.
Empty chairs
The lineup of speakers and no-shows for the four-night convention was emblematic of Trump's struggle to unify Republicans. From the party's former presidents to the host state governor, many leaders were staying away from the convention stage, or Cleveland altogether, wary of being linked to a man whose proposals and temperament have sparked an identity crisis within the GOP.
The speakers include Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, and Jeff Sessions of Alabama, immigration advocates and a Marine who fought in the Benghazi attack that occurred during Clinton's tenure at the State Department. Also taking the stage were actor Scott Baio and Willie Robertson, star of Duck Dynasty, who took the stage with an American flag bandanna wrapped around his head.
"No matter who you are, Donald Trump will have your back," Robertson said as he opened the evening program.
Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., an Iraq war veteran, also was to speak, as well as former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani.
Trump's team has insisted that by the end of the week, Republicans will plunge into the general election campaign united in their mission to defeat Clinton.
But campaign officials undermined their own effort Monday by picking a fight with Kasich, who is not attending the convention and has yet to endorse Trump. Manafort, in remarks to reporters at a breakfast hosted by Bloomberg Politics, called Kasich "petulant" and said the governor was "embarrassing" his party in his home state.
"That's a dumb, dumb, thing," Manafort said. "Will John Kasich finally grow up? Maybe. If he does, we'll welcome him."
Kasich -- the last member of the crowded GOP primary to end his campaign and whose exit from the race cleared the path for Trump's nomination -- didn't appear to be taking the bait.
In remarks to an Illinois delegation Monday afternoon, Kasich did not utter the presumptive nominee's name. But in an interview to be broadcast on NBC Nightly News, Kasich said Trump would "have to change everything that he says" before he would endorse the businessman.
"I don't hold any personal animus toward Donald Trump," Kasich said in the interview. "We are just two companies that have different values, different directions and different philosophies."
Other Ohio Republicans swung behind Kasich.
"Manafort still has a lot to learn about Ohio politics," Ohio GOP Chairman Matt Borges wrote on Twitter. "Doesn't know what he's talking about. Hope he can do better."
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, meanwhile, reminded Michigan Republicans that as a candidate for president, he and other GOP candidates pledged to support the eventual nominee.
"It is unacceptable to me -- and it should be unacceptable to you -- that anyone who signed that pledge is not now adhering to that pledge and supporting our party's nominee," Christie said. The governor, who is now a staunch Trump supporter and surrogate, didn't call anyone out by name.
As White House hopefuls, Kasich and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush pledged loyalty to the eventual nominee before later backing away. So did Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas. Like Bush and Kasich, Cruz has not endorsed Trump. He is, however, speaking at the convention.
Even some of those participating in the convention seemed to be avoiding their party's nominee. When House Speaker Paul Ryan spoke to Wisconsin delegates Monday morning, he made no mention of Trump in his remarks.
Ryan, asked at a later event whether Trump was really a conservative, said, "Define conservative; he's not my kind of conservative."
Information for this article was contributed by Julie Pace, Alan Fram, Kathleen Hennessey, Erica Werner, Josh Lederman, Jonathan Lemire, Daniel Sewell, Julie Carr Smyth, Kathleen Ronayne and Bill Barrow of The Associated Press; by Philip Rucker, Sean Sullivan, Ed O'Keefe, Peter Holley, Jenna Johnson, Louisa Loveluck, Ed O'Keefe, Karen Tumulty and Laura Vozzella of The Washington Post; and by Mark Niquette of Bloomberg News.
A Section on 07/19/2016