2020 R.N.C. Live Updates: Trump Says He Will Send Law Enforcement to Kenosha Amid Unrest

President Trump said on Wednesday that he was deploying the National Guard and other law enforcement to Kenosha, Wis., to quell the unrest that has erupted since the police shot an unarmed Black man, Jacob Blake, on Sunday.

“I will be sending federal law enforcement and the National Guard to Kenosha, WI to restore LAW and ORDER!” Mr. Trump wrote on Twitter.

“We will NOT stand for looting, arson, violence, and lawlessness on American streets,” he added.

His action came one day after two people were killed in a shooting related to the protests in Kenosha, a city of 100,000 people. It also came at the halfway mark of the Republican National Convention, where Mr. Trump has leaned into his message of supporting the police and avoided mentioning the unrest in Kenosha.

The looting, arson and other violence that have periodically flared amid mostly peaceful protests in American cities since the police killing of George Floyd in May have formed a key part of the backdrop of the convention. Mr. Trump and other speakers have accused Democrats of condoning and even encouraging lawlessness, warned that a vote for Joseph R. Biden Jr. was a vote for chaos, and falsely accused Mr. Biden of calling to defund the police.

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Highlights From the Republican National Convention: Night 2

A speech by the first lady touched on race relations as the White House was used for political purposes. It also was the first time a sitting secretary of state addressed a national political convention in at least 75 years.

“My father does not run away from challenges, even in the face of outright hatred, because fighting for America is something he will sacrifice anything for. He dreams big dreams for our country, and he is relentless at achieving them. You see, ‘Make America Great Again’ is not a slogan for my father. It is what drives him to keep his promise of doing what is right for American citizens.” “My father ran not because he needed the job, but because he knew hard-working people across this great country were being left behind. The media mocked these patriots in the ‘flyover states’ in which they lived. They ignored the Trump flags, they ignored the millions of MAGA banners and barns painted in red, white, and blue. The silent majority had no one fighting for them in either party. My father pledged to every American in every city, state, and town that he was going to make America great again. And so began the great American comeback.” “I think often about my ancestors who struggled for freedom. And as I think of those giants and their broad shoulders, I also think about Joe Biden, who says, ‘If you aren’t voting for me, you ain’t Black,’ who argued that Republicans would put us back in chains, who says there is no diversity of thought in the Black community. Mr. Vice President, look at me. I am Black. We are not all the same, sir. I am not in chains. My mind is my own. And you can’t tell me how to vote because of the color of my skin. I’m Mike Pompeo. I’m speaking to you from beautiful Jerusalem, looking out over the Old City. President Trump understands what my great fellow Kansan President Eisenhower said: For all that we cherish and justly desire for ourselves or for our children, the securing of peace is the first requisite. Indeed, the primary constitutional function of the national government is ensuring that your family and mine are safe and enjoy the freedom to live, to work, to learn and to worship as they choose.” “You are now fellow citizens of the greatest nation on the face of God’s Earth. Congratulations. Today you have also accepted the profound duties and responsibilities that come with American citizenship. By swearing the oath of allegiance, each of you has entered a sacred and unbreakable covenant with our nation. [music and applause] [cheering] I want to acknowledge the fact that since March our lives have changed drastically. The invisible enemy Covid-19 swept across our beautiful country and impacted all of us. My deepest sympathy goes out to everyone who has lost a loved one, and my prayers are with those who are ill or suffering. I know many people are anxious, and some feel helpless. I want you to know you are not alone. I have reflected on the racial unrest in our country. It is a harsh reality that we are not proud of parts of our history. I encourage people to focus on our future while still learning from our past. Our diverse and storied history is what makes our country strong, and yet we still have so much to learn from one another. With that in mind, I’d like to call on the citizens of this country to take a moment, pause and look at things from all perspectives. I urge people to come together in a civil manner so we can work and live up to our standard American ideals. I don’t want to use this precious time attacking the other side, because as we saw last week, that kind of talk only serves to divide the country further. I’m here because we need my husband to be our president and commander in chief for four more years. He is what is best for our country. We all know Donald Trump makes no secrets about how he feels about things. Total honesty is what we as citizens deserve from our president. Whether you like it or not, you always know what he’s thinking.”

With the Republican National Convention at the midway point, the biggest contrast with the Democrats has been in how little attention the Republicans have given to the coronavirus pandemic that has upended life across America and led to over 178,000 deaths.

Democrats made the virus, as well as the Trump administration’s failure to contain it, a dominant theme of their convention last week. The Republicans have mentioned the virus far less, and when they have, it has sometimes been in the past tense.

“Then came a once-in-100-year pandemic,” Larry Kudlow, the president’s top economic adviser, said in his convention speech last night. “It was awful. Health and economic impacts were tragic. Hardship and heartbreak were everywhere. But presidential leadership came swiftly and effectively with an extraordinary rescue for health and safety to successfully fight the Covid virus.”

In fact, the nation is still averaging more than 40,000 new cases and more than 900 deaths each day.

The virus has not gone ignored. Near the end of President Trump’s nearly hourlong speech to delegates in Charlotte, N.C., on Monday afternoon, he said that “we will never forget the 175,000 people,” and added that his decision to ban travelers from China had saved lives.

That night Mr. Trump was shown meeting, maskless, with frontline workers. Several speakers praised his response, including a doctor, a nurse and Nikki Haley, the former United Nations ambassador. Mr. Kudlow described the federal relief package as having “saved the economy.”

On Wednesday Vice President Mike Pence, who leads the federal coronavirus task force, is scheduled to speak.

While accentuating the positive is a time-honored part of any re-election campaign, it risks sounding discordant at a moment when the United States leads the world in reported virus cases and deaths; millions of workers remain unemployed; many schools districts say it is still not safe to reopen; and it is now Americans who are barred from traveling to other nations that have been more successful at taming their outbreaks.

So far, the most direct acknowledgment at the convention of the pain the virus has caused came from the first lady, Melania Trump.

“My deepest sympathy goes out to everyone who has lost a loved one and my prayers are with those who are ill or suffering,” Mrs. Trump said from the White House Rose Garden. “I know many people are anxious and some feel helpless. I want you to know you are not alone.”

Halfway through the Republican convention, there have been some notable omissions: a traditional party platform, any mention of impeachment and a meaningful reckoning with the number of Americans who have died from the coronavirus.

But perhaps even more conspicuously absent were masks — whether on President Trump or on those in his immediate orbit, some of whom have been featured in segments that were pretaped at the White House.

No masks when Mr. Trump recognized frontline workers. No masks when Mr. Trump presided over a naturalization ceremony. No masks during the made-for-TV pardoning of a former inmate.

And when Melania Trump, the first lady, gave a keynote speech on Tuesday night in front of a crowd in the White House Rose Garden, very few members of the audience wore masks. The attendees, who the White House said had been tested for the virus, also did not practice social distancing.

The Republican convention has not been completely devoid of masks. On Monday in Charlotte, N.C., all of the 336 delegates who took part in nominating Mr. Trump were required to wear masks.

But the lack of face coverings during high-profile moments stood in a stark contrast with the Democratic National Convention last week, when former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., the party’s presidential nominee, and his wife, Jill Biden, put on masks to wave to supporters in a parking lot outside a convention center in Wilmington, Del.

Mr. Biden and Senator Kamala Harris of California, his running mate, also kept their distance after Ms. Harris accepted her nomination. Mr. Biden also said this month he believed all U.S. governors should mandate mask wearing in their states, a position Mr. Trump has resisted.

“We do not need to bring the full weight of the federal government down on law abiding Americans to accomplish this goal,” Mr. Trump said at a White House news conference. “Americans must have their freedoms.”

Mr. Trump did not advise Americans to wear to prevent the spread of the virus until July, four months after the health crisis had been declared a pandemic — a delay for which he was roundly criticized. He did not wear a mask in public until mid-July.

Vice President Mike Pence will headline the third night of the Republican National Convention on Wednesday, which will also include speeches from several prominent members of Congress and the outgoing White House adviser Kellyanne Conway.

Ms. Conway’s speech will be a focus of attention. She announced over the weekend that she will be leaving the White House shortly and will not take a role with the Trump campaign so she can spend more time with her four children.

Mr. Pence, who leads the coronavirus task force, is expected to give a speech that sells President Trump’s record. Senator Joni Ernst of Iowa, who is in a re-election race that has tightened, is expected to do the same.

Representative Dan Crenshaw of Texas, a 36-year-old veteran who is seen as one of the party’s rising stars, is also speaking.

The big speeches of the night will happen from 8:30 to 11 p.m. Eastern time.

• The Times will stream the convention every evening, accompanied by chat-based live analysis from our reporters and real-time highlights from the speeches.

• The official livestream will be available on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Twitch and Amazon Prime.

• ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox News will cover the convention from 10 to 11 p.m. every night; CNN from 8 p.m. to 2 a.m.; MSNBC from 7 p.m. to 2 a.m.; PBS from 8 to 11 p.m.; and C-SPAN at 9 a.m. and then at 8:30 p.m.

Here are some of the other speakers on the schedule:

• Senator Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee

• Sister Dede Byrne, a surgeon, retired Army colonel and member of the Little Workers of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary religious order

• Madison Cawthorn, the Republican nominee in North Carolina’s 11th Congressional District

• Scott Dane, executive director of the Associated Contract Loggers and Truckers of Minnesota

• Richard Grenell, the former acting director of national intelligence

• Clarence Henderson, who participated in the 1960 lunch counter sit-ins in Greensboro, N.C.

• Former Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg, Mr. Pence’s national security adviser

• Michael McHale, president of the National Association of Police Organizations

• Gov. Kristi Noem of South Dakota

• Burgess Owens, the Republican nominee in Utah’s Fourth Congressional District

• Representative Elise Stefanik of New York

• Lara Trump, a campaign adviser to Mr. Trump and the wife of his son Eric

• Representative Lee Zeldin of New York

In an abrupt swerve from the dire tone of the Republican National Convention’s first night, Tuesday featured President Trump and the various speakers — including three of his family members — painting his presidency as one of inclusion, mercy and harmony, in a grab bag night that seemed aimed at female and minority voters.

In videos recorded at the White House, Mr. Trump pardoned a Nevada man convicted of bank robbery and swore in five new American citizens, all of them people of color, in a miniature naturalization ceremony.

Where the convention on Monday emphasized predictions of social and economic desolation under a government led by Democrats, the speakers on Tuesday hailed the president as a friend to women and a champion of criminal justice reform. There was no effort to reconcile the dissonance between the two nights’ programs, particularly the shift from Monday’s rhetoric about a looming “vengeful mob” of dangerous criminals into Tuesday’s tributes to the power of personal redemption.

Tuesday’s programming featured friendships — between an F.B.I. investigator and a reformed criminal, a police officer and a drug addict. Anti-abortion activists praised the president for his steps to limit access to abortion. A dairy farmer from Wisconsin, a lobster fisherman from Maine and a mayor from Minnesota’s Iron Range cast Mr. Trump as saving their economic livelihoods.

It was not clear whether this new appeal would change the minds of women, minorities and others who formed negative opinions of Mr. Trump over the last five years, amid the allegations of sexual assault against him, the appeals to racial bigotry and hard-line policies like a border crackdown that separated migrant families.

The coronavirus pandemic was largely confined to parenthetical comments within the speeches, until Melania Trump, the first lady, addressed it directly in the final speech Tuesday and extended her “deepest sympathy” to people who had lost loved ones. Like her husband, Mrs. Trump enlisted the trappings of the presidency for her remarks: She spoke from the White House Rose Garden.

Live (and taped) from Washington, it was Tuesday Night.

The Trump presidency has always had the air of a variety show, with every announcement delivered with an eye for how it would appear to a television audience.

But never has a commander in chief wielded the powers of his office so openly at a political convention as President Trump during the second night of the Republican conclave.

With his party’s leading lawmakers remaining mute, Mr. Trump used the second night of the convention to issue a pardon and help swear in five new citizens in the White House. That was before his current secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, delivered an endorsement speech from Jerusalem. The evening was topped off by Melania Trump, the first lady, who made the case for her husband’s re-election from the Rose Garden.

The scenes of the Trump administration using the settings and trappings of power for political gain raised new questions about whether they were violating the Hatch Act, the federal law prohibiting the use of government resources for campaign purposes.

Some Republicans said that Mr. Trump’s dynamiting of the line between campaigning and governing was somewhat understandable in light of the coronavirus, which upended their plans to have the convention first in Charlotte, N.C., and then in Jacksonville, Fla.

But like so much else with this president, once he breaks longstanding political norms, it becomes far easier for his successors to do the same, particularly if they have the consent of their party.

After the second day of a Republican National Convention whose proceedings trampled over long-established lines between governing and campaigning, Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff, scoffed at concerns that President Trump and other top officials were abusing federal offices and property for political gain.

“Nobody outside of the Beltway really cares,” Mr. Meadows said in a video interview with Politico, adding, “This is a lot of hoopla that’s being made about things.”

Mr. Meadows said in passing that “there are a couple of things that you can do to make sure that you’re in compliance with the Hatch Act,” the federal law prohibiting the use of government resources for campaign purposes. But he did not explain how the administration had avoided violating the law when Mr. Trump led a naturalization ceremony at the White House that became a featured convention event; when Vice President Mike Pence spoke from a national park; or when Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, on an official trip, spoke from Jerusalem and became the first top diplomat to address a convention in at least 75 years.

Americans “expect that Donald Trump is going to promote Republican values, and they would expect that Barack Obama, when he was in office, that he would do the same for Democrats,” Mr. Meadows said. It was not clear what he meant, particularly given that President Obama, during his re-election campaign in 2012, did not test the boundaries Mr. Trump repeatedly broke on Tuesday.

“You can’t break the law — you shouldn’t do it,” Mr. Meadows said. But he added that “the law, in the way that it was originally intended, never thought that we would be on Zoom talking to people live.” It was also unclear how that applied to the question of whether it is appropriate to use federal resources for political benefit.

President Trump sought Tuesday to wrap himself in pro-immigrant sentiment — even though his administration has waged a yearslong assault on the nation’s immigration system — by presiding over a naturalization ceremony at the White House during the second night of the Republican National Convention.

Using the majesty of the White House for blatantly political purposes, Mr. Trump appeared during the convention’s second hour as “Hail to the Chief” played and strode to a lectern where five immigrants, all of them people of color, were waiting to take the oath to become citizens.

“Today, America rejoices as we welcome five absolutely incredible new members into our great American family,” he told them in a 10-minute ceremony that had been taped in the afternoon.

Mr. Trump’s claim that he loves and appreciates immigrants stood in stark contrast to his record over the past four years, during which he has repeatedly pursued anti-immigrant policies, often fueled by xenophobic language.

The president has largely blocked asylum seekers and refugees fleeing persecution, war and violence. He has built nearly 300 miles of border wall (though without persuading Mexico to pay for it, as he once insisted). He has made it harder for poor people to immigrate to the United States, imposed travel bans on predominantly Muslim countries, and separated migrant children from their parents at the border.

Mr. Trump’s critics offered some rather harsh reviews of the televised ceremony.

Cristina Jiménez, an Ecuadorian immigrant and co-founder of United We Dream, an immigrant youth organization, called Mr. Trump’s gesture “shameless” on Twitter and wrote: “Using immigrants in a citizenship ceremony won’t erase this administration calling immigrants animals, Mexicans rapists, issuing a ban on Muslims, leading mass deportation, family separation, dismantling #DACA, & putting kids in cages.”

DACA refers to the program that protects about 700,000 young immigrants known as Dreamers from deportation. Mr. Trump’s administration was thwarted by the Supreme Court in June from ending the program.

Representative Veronica Escobar, Democrat of Texas, called the display “creepy beyond belief” and noted with disapproval that the citizenship oath was administered by Chad F. Wolf, the acting secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, whom Mr. Trump nominated Tuesday to lead the agency on a permanent basis.

“The sight of Child-Separator-and-Trump-Boot-Licker-in-Chief, @DHS_Wolf alongside the white supremacist who is the current occupant of the White House at this political naturalization ceremony is a scene so perverse it actually hurts,” Ms. Escobar wrote.

President Trump built a television persona around his catchphrase, “You’re fired,” on “The Apprentice.” But he also gave away prizes and presented himself as a benefactor — a role that he has revived during the Republican National Convention, The Times’s chief television critic, James Poniewozik, noted. He wrote:

In a series of taped segments, the Republican National Convention has tried to resurrect that Donald Trump for prime time: the president as gracious, generous host; the benefits of democracy (citizenship, a pardon, a presidential audience, freedom itself) as the prizes; the White House — in potential violation of the Hatch Act — as his soundstage.

Monday night, the program had Mr. Trump meet with a group of Covid-19 frontline workers and a group of American hostages, released from captivity overseas.

Tuesday’s installments used presidential powers even more brazenly as campaign favors. First, he granted a pardon to Jon Ponder, a felon who founded Hope for Prisoners, a group that helps the once-incarcerated re-enter society. Later, he spoke at a naturalization ceremony for five immigrants, welcoming them to “our great American family.”

Both segments were deeply emotional, embodying the chance for reinvention that America offers at its best. They were also deeply cynical, illustrating how willing the president is to leverage the office for his own reinvention, via a TV production.

The stunts were reminiscent of this year’s State of the Union address, an extravaganza of surprise twists, in which Mr. Trump handed out a scholarship, arranged a viral-video-style military reunion and graced the right-wing shock jock Rush Limbaugh with a Presidential Medal of Freedom.

In the R.N.C. pieces, he sometimes speaks off the cuff, sometimes from a script. But in his familiar TV-host role, he seems more comfortable than he ordinarily does reading an address off a teleprompter.

Cindy McCain, the widow of the Republican senator John McCain, appeared last week in a video at the Democratic National Convention detailing her husband’s “unlikely friendship” with Joseph R. Biden Jr. She praised Mr. Biden, the Democratic nominee, for his willingness to reach across the aisle, calling it “a style of legislating and leadership that you don’t find much anymore.”

Before the clip aired, Kelli Ward, the chairwoman of the Arizona Republican Party, who in 2016 lost a bitter Senate primary challenge to Mr. McCain, filmed her own video to share her thoughts on Mrs. McCain’s appearance. “Well, I just say: Not a Republican,” Ms. Ward asserted as her husband, wearing a red “Make America Great Again” hat, nodded alongside her.

Those dueling images — the widow of Arizona’s most popular Republican since Barry Goldwater lauding the Democratic presidential nominee’s character, and the state party’s current leader denouncing her in response as a “pretend Republican” who wants to “cause the destruction of this great nation” — succinctly reflected the political identity crisis currently unfolding in Arizona.

The party’s rightward lurch in the Trump era has left a growing number of Republicans in the state disenchanted and caused Arizona, a longtime Republican stronghold, to suddenly resemble a battleground.

That’s in large part because of women: In 2018, 16 percent of Republican women broke with their party to help make Kyrsten Sinema the state’s first Democratic senator since 1995. Most strategists in the state believe President Trump’s chances there in November hinge on bringing such voters back into the fold.

And if the tenor of the Republican National Convention is any indication — early speeches on the party’s commitment to protecting “quiet neighborhoods,” and a Wednesday lineup of prominent Republican women including Kellyanne Conway, Karen Pence and Joni Ernst — Mr. Trump is beginning to agree.

In Arizona, Mrs. McCain serves as an avatar of sorts for many Republican women — educated suburbanites, including lifelong party members who have perhaps felt alienated by the party’s Trumpist turn. But Ms. Ward, a devout Trump loyalist who dabbles in the occasional conspiracy theory, more closely resembles the kind of voter the party is devoting its resources to instead.

It is the state-level iteration of Mr. Trump’s national strategy, targeting core supporters even as Mr. Biden aggressively courts moderate Republican and independent women in states that were critical to the president’s success in 2016. And for now, at least in Arizona, Mr. Trump’s approach is not working so well. Recent polls show Mr. Biden leading the president by as many as seven percentage points.

Stephanie Bice, an Oklahoma state legislator, won the Republican primary on Tuesday to challenge Representative Kendra Horn, the lone Democrat in the Oklahoma delegation.

Ms. Horn was perhaps the most surprising victor in the 2018 elections, winning by just over 3,300 votes and flipping the seat for the first time since the 1970s.

Nine Republicans had sought the chance to challenge Ms. Horn, sending the race into a runoff. Ms. Bice defeated Terry Neese, an entrepreneur who had closely tied herself to President Trump, for the chance at the seat.

“Kendra Horn promised to be a moderate but has been nothing but a rubber stamp for Nancy Pelosi and the socialist agenda of House Democrats,” said Representative Tom Emmer, the chair of the House Republican campaign arm. “Horn will be rejected by voters in November and I look forward to welcoming Stephanie to Congress.”

Representative Cheri Bustos of Illinois, the chairwoman of the House Democratic campaign arm, said that she had no doubt that Ms. Horn would be re-elected.

“Representative Kendra Horn has proven to be an effective leader for her community, working tirelessly to lower the cost of prescription drugs and get Oklahomans back to work safely,” she said.

The race is considered a tossup by most political handicappers, including the Cook Political Report.

Sometimes campaign stores are not just about selling merchandise. Sometimes they are about making political statements.

That is what Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s campaign is doing with the release on Tuesday of a two-ounce bottle of hand sanitizer ($8), complete with the Biden plans to address the coronavirus pandemic printed on it.

“Donald Trump’s catastrophic failures of governance have led to tens of thousands of needless deaths and economic pain for tens of millions of Americans,” reads the label, whose dense thickets of fine print appeared to pay tribute to Dr. Bronner’s soap, the eccentrically marketed countercultural cleanser.

There are links both to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website and Mr. Biden’s “plan to get the virus under control.”

Stunt sales items can help vacuum up supporter data and — if the profit margin is significant — make campaigns a pretty penny. Last year, President Trump’s campaign began selling a 10-pack of recyclable straws for $15.

“Liberal paper straws don’t work,” says the copy on the shop.donaldtrump.com site. They sold more than $450,000 worth in a few days.

Democrats whose current sanitizer supply is running low may need to look for alternatives to the Biden product, however: The website says it will not be released until Sept. 22.