Republican Convention: Live Coverage Of The Final Night

While Trump has stayed close to script, he’s gone off sometimes. He just applauded for himself for at least the third time this evening and joined the crowd in chants of “U.S.A.” for at least the second time.

At this point I’ve written this so many times that it hardly seems worth it, but the wall would do nothing to stop the many undocumented immigrants — 40 percent, by one estimate — who enter the country legally and then overstay their visas. (In fairness, Trump did later mention this in passing.) And as I noted earlier, net immigration has been roughly zero in recent years.

The crowd is eating up building a wall, but, as I pointed out, most Americans don’t want a wall along the Mexican border. The fact that this is such a big applause line and Trump loves it sends the message to me that this is a speech for the base and not so much for the middle of the electorate.