Democratic leadership today united in attacking Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump at their four-day convention which kicked off to a rocky start with supporters of Bernie Sanders vehementing their anger after speakers declared support for Hillary Clinton.
Speakers after speakers slammed the policies and rhetoric of Trump as the pro-Bernie supporters raised their pitch in favour of the Senator from Vermont.
It became so prominent that at one point comedian Sarah Silverman even scolded them, while Sanders himself sent a text message to supporters and delegates not to protest.
While all this was going on, Democratic leaders both in their speeches and their audio video presentations slammed Trump and argued that it is only Hillary Clinton, their presidential nominee, could defeat Trump the November presidential elections.
"Well I've got news for Donald Trump. The American people are not falling for it. We've seen this ugliness before and we are not going to be Donald Trump's hate filled America, not now, not ever," Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, said in her key note address to the convention.
"Here's the really ugly underside to his pitch. Trump thinks he can win votes by fanning the flames of fear and hatred. By turning neighbour against neighbour, by persuading you that the real problem in America is your fellow Americans. People who don't look like you, or don't talk like you , or don't worship like you," she said.
"He even picked a Vice President famous for trying to make it legal to openly discriminate against gays and lesbians," she said.
Warren said Trump knows that the American people are angry.
"A fact so obvious, he can see it from the top of the Trump Tower. So now, he's insisting that he and he alone can fix the rigged system. Last week, Donald Trump for more than an hour on the biggest stage he's ever had. But other than talking about building a stupid wall, which will never get built," she said.
In his address Senator Jeanne Shaheen alleged Trump certainly doesn't have a plan to deal with health epidemic that's gripped the country.
"In fact Donald Trump doesn't seem to know what's happening outside of Trump Towers. And he seems completely uninterested in finding out. How can Trump represent America when he doesn't even take the time to know America?" the Senator from New Hampshire said.
"Like my parents, Hillary Clinton believes the US is a country where people of all backgrounds can make a home and a better life. But that America isn't possible if we allow Donald Trump and his Republican party to build a wall that divides us," said Congresswoman Linda T Sanchez.
Democratic Congressman from Oregon alleged that Trump got
rich by taking advantage of Americans like the hardworking Oregonians in his community back home, making his products overseas, hiring foreign workers instead of Americans for jobs that are right here in the US, cheating small-business contractors, never paying them what he owed, and scamming people out of their savings through his fraudulent university.
American Federation of Labour and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) president Rich Trumka alleged that Trump has repeated outsourced jobs to line his own pockets.
"He routed for the housing collapse. He actually said that our wages are too high, not just once but repeatedly. Donald Trump isn't the solution to America's problems, he is the problem," he said.
New Jersey Senator Cory Booker said that Trump is not a leader.
"Hillary Clinton knows what Donald Trump betrays time and time again in this campaign, that we are not a zero-sum nation. It is not you or me. It is not one American against another American. It is you and I, together, interdependent, interconnected, with one single interwoven destiny," he said.
The Republican Party refuted the allegations.
Republican National Committee (RNC) chairman Reince Priebus said the Democratic convention felt more like a convention for Sanders than for Clinton, with many of his supporters refusing to embrace her candidacy and the convention floor descending into chaos for most of the day.
"Throughout this primary, a 74-year old socialist from Vermont has encouraged grassroots Democrats to reject Hillary Clinton's pay-to-play politics and cronyism, and the deep division that has fostered was on full display," he said.
