RNC Day 4: Trump delivers longest acceptance speech in history

It's been a frequent theme over four days in Milwaukee: The economy was roaring in the Trump years, and is flailing today. But the facts aren't so simple.

Here are few examples.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., said: "They claim that our economy is thriving, yet hundreds of thousands of American-born workers lost their jobs these past few years."

PolitiFact rates that Mostly False.

People are constantly leaving jobs and taking new ones. But the average monthly number of layoffs was higher under Trump than it's been under Biden. Leaving out the coronavirus pandemic months of March 2020 to December 2021, the number of monthly layoffs under Trump averaged 1.81 million. Under Biden, that number has been 1.52 million.

GOP vice presidential nominee J.D. Vance said: "There's this chart that shows worker wages, and they stagnated for pretty much my entire life until President Donald J. Trump came along. Workers' wages went through the roof."

This is exaggerated; while wages were stagnant for much of Vance's life, there was no sharp divide after Trump's election when wages skyrocketed.
A key metric for inflation-adjusted worker pay - median usual weekly inflation adjusted earnings for full-time wage and salary workers - shows that this figure stagnated from 1984, when Vance was born, until the mid-2010s.

Then, after about 2014, when Democrat Barack Obama was president and Vance was in his early 30s, they started rising, by about 4% for the final three years of his term. From the roughly three years between Trump's inauguration to the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, this figure also rose about 4%.

Vance also said that Trump "created the greatest economy in history for workers."

That's False.

The strongest evidence in favor of Vance's claim is the unemployment rate. During Trump's presidency, the unemployment rate fell to levels untouched in five decades. But his successor, Biden, matched or exceeded those levels. The annual increases in gross domestic product - the sum of a country's economic activity - were broadly similar under Trump to what they were during the final six years under his predecessor, Obama. And GDP growth under Trump was well below that of previous presidents.

Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump signed paperwork to officially accept the nomination during the final day of the Republican National Convention

In a rare public campaign appearance, former first lady Melania Trump attended the signing.

Melania has not yet been seen on the convention floor.

As Eric Trump speaks, Trump is sitting with his son's wife Lara Trump and his grandchildren.

Carolina Trump, the youngest child of Eric and Lara, is sitting on her grandfather's lap.

Many members of the Trump family -- including his oldest granddaughter Kai -- have spoken about his softer side this convention.

Hulk Hogan, bandana and sunglasses on his head and a sports coat covering his tank top, revved the crowd up with "USA" chants and called Trump "my hero" and a "gladiator."

By the middle of his remarks, he lost his jacket and ripped his tank top off to reveal a Trump-Vance T-shirt, crescendoing with passion as he said,"I think about how his family was compromised, how his business was compromised. But what happened last week when they took a shot at my hero -- and tried to kill the president of the United States -- enough was enough"

"Let Trump-O-Mania rule again, let Trump-O-Mania make America great again," he shouted, a nod to his career as a WWE entertainer.

Hogan abandoned the teleprompter and free-wheeled with his penchant theatrics, earning a "thank you" from Trump and energizing the crowd some 20 minutes before the former president takes the stage to accept his nomination.