Donald Trump officially became the Republican Party’s presidential nominee on Tuesday after a roll call vote overshadowed by dissent and apathy atypical of what is traditionally a celebration of the party’s White House candidate.
Trump easily earned the 1,237 delegates needed to capture the nomination. But sporadic boos could be heard as some states attempted to award delegates to Trump’s Republican primary competitors.
Trump’s home delegation of New York put him over the top, announced on the convention floor with Trump’s children standing nearby.
"Congratulations Dad, we love you," Donald Trump Jr. yelled while declaring that the state would award 89 votes to his father.
Particularly outraged was the Washington, D.C., delegation, which held its convention in March and attempted to award 10 votes to Marco Rubio and nine to John Kasich. But convention officials announced the rules merit Trump be award all 19 delegates from the nation’s capital.
“This is an outrage, and this is a reason the Republican Party is turning off a lot of voters,” a Kasich delegate from D.C. said on MSNBC.
After Trump had clinched the nomination, the Alaskan delegation contested how its vote total was recorded. They originally requested 12 votes go to Ted Cruz, 11 to Trump and 5 to Rubio, but the RNC recorded all 28 votes to Trump. However, the appeal was unsuccessful because, Republican National Committee Chair Reince Priebus said, all the votes went to Trump because Rubio and Cruz suspended their campaigns.
Despite the at-times contentious atmosphere, Trump was never in jeopardy of the type of floor fight talked frequently about during GOP primary battle.
Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions put Trump’s name up for the nomination shortly before 6 p.m. ET. The nomination was seconded by New York Rep. Chris Collins, the first member of Congress to endorse him.
“Donald Trump is the singular leader that can get this country back on track," Sessions said while nominating Trump.
The official nomination came on the second day of what has been a rocky start to the convention. An effort Monday to protest Trump’s candidacy on the convention floor fell short, but not before images of chaos unseen in recent conventions played out on live television.
That preceded prime-time speeches headlined by Melania Trump, who is accused of plagiarizing lines from Michelle Obama’s 2008 speech at the Democratic National Convention.
The Trump campaign has struggled to explain the similarities between the two speeches. Top aide Paul Manafort eventually blamed presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.
“It's just another example, as far as we're concerned, that when Hillary Clinton is threatened by a female, the first thing she does is try to destroy the person," Manafort said.
