Last week’s DNC featured a slew of Republican voices coming out in support of Biden. 

The RNC’s answer to that on Monday night was to feature a speech from Vernon Jones, who serves in the Georgia statehouse. Jones ripped into his own party’s leaders (Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer) and touted Trump’s agenda. 

"The Democratic Party does not want Black people to leave the mental plantation they've had us on for decades,” he said. “But I have news for them: We are free people with free minds." 

Jones resisted calls to resign from party leaders. He slammed the direction of the Democratic party and signaled to Black voters to support Trump. 

“I’m here to tell you that Black voices are becoming more woke,” Jones said.

Mark and Patricia McCloskey, the couple who made national news after they were seen waving guns at protesters as demonstrators neared their St. Louis area home in June, are speaking at the Republican National Convention on Monday to further bolster Donald Trump's rhetoric around ongoing nationwide anti-police brutality protests.

The McCloskeys, who are both personal injury lawyers, have each since been charged with one felony count of unlawful use of a weapon. As the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported last month, the couple is "almost always in conflict with others, typically over control of private property, what people can do on that property, and whose job it is to make sure they do it."

The incident was the subject of scorn on the left while gun rights advocates and conservative media hailed the two as heroes for their actions. 

After blasting Democrats, Rep. Jim Jordan sought to paint Donald Trump as an empathetic leader — a quality Democrats spent days promoting in Joe Biden at their convention last week.

Jordan discussed how Trump connected with his family after a nephew died in a car accident two years ago.

"For the next five minutes, family and friends sat in complete silence, as the president of the United States took time to talk to a dad who was hurting," Jordan said. "That’s the president I know."

Republican speakers made misleading claims about calls from some politicians to reform or defund the police during the first night of the RNC. 

“The police aren’t coming when you call in Democrat-run cities. They’re already being defunded, disbanded. Blaming our best and allowing society's worst? That's the story they write in Hollywood,” Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., said in his remarks.

“Democrats spent a lot of time talking about how much they despise our president. But we heard very little about their actual policies. Policies that would have been unthinkable a decade ago. Policies like banning fossil fuels, eliminating private health insurance, taxpayer-funded health care for people who come here illegally, and defunding the police,” Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel said shortly after, referring to last week's Democratic National Convention.

While there are some on the left who have embraced calls to cut police funding, Democratic nominee Joe Biden and the Democratic Party are not among them. Biden says he supports adding funding for local police forces and using more psychologists and social workers to do police work. The official Democratic Party platform, approved last week, does not include any references to defunding the police. 

Asked recently by ABC News if he supports defunding the police, Biden said “No, I don’t.” 

There are some cities run by Democratic mayors that have sought to reduce police funding — New York City shifted $1 billion in funding out of the police budget — and some, like Minneapolis, have considered a fundamental rethinking of policing. But that doesn't mean Americans have been left without police. New York City’s police still has a $5 billion operating budget. Efforts to disband the Minneapolis police through a ballot initiative have so far failed.

When President Trump spoke to a group of essential workers, some of whom survived COVID-19, in a maskless, not-so-socially-distanced meeting at the White House he revived a racist term for the virus.

"I'm for the nurses. I'm for the doctors. I'm for everybody. We just have to make this China virus go away and it's happening,” Trump said in a segment. 

Despite being criticized for using it and the rise in anti-Asian hate crimes, Trump continues to use the phrase in press conferences and on Twitter.

In one of President Trump's first prime-time convention appearances, he spoke in a recorded segment from the White House with a handful of people on the front lines of the coronavirus battle including nurses, police officers and postal workers.

The segment echoed Biden's video roundtables from last week, which were done through video chats rather than in person.

A video played at the Republican National Convention tonight mocked Democrats and experts for their early remarks and analysis on the coronavirus and praised President Trump as the only leader who took quick and decisive action.

But the video left out any reference to Trump's own remarks from January through early March on the virus, during which he was downplaying entirely whether the country faced any threat from it.

“We have it totally under control,” Trump said in January. “It’s one person coming in from China. We have it under control. It’s going to be just fine.”

In fact, Trump continued to downplay the virus and recommendations from health experts on how to stop the spread. Experts told NBC News recently that the administration's mixed messaging on masks cost lives.

In the first minutes of the RNC, early hints of its overarching themes emerged: Republicans are the only real and loyal Americans; they love Trump, support capitalism, and believe that Trump has done more for Black and Latino Americans than anyone else, especially that 1994 crime bill architect, Joe Biden.

And, here to tell you about it: a smattering of people of color and mostly white Americans in public office who approve of the content of the Trump presidency or campaign. There are also private citizens who came to national notoriety for assorted displays of insensitivity or racism, such as the St. Louis couple who pointed guns at peaceful Black Lives Matter protesters, and several people who are known for defying the scientific consensus about the spread of the coronavirus.