Republican Women Were Ready for War on Night Two of the RNC

The president’s wife and daughter led a sharp rebuke to the Democratic agenda

Melania Trump wore a green military-chic blazer and skirt ensemble at Tuesday’s Republican National Convention, a far cry from the suffragette white dress she wore at the same event four years ago. A savvy operator who understands the power of fashion, the first lady’s outfit choice this time around crystallized a sentiment shared by all of the female speakers at this year’s convention: Republican women are ready for war.

Standing at the White House’s newly renovated Rose Garden, FLOTUS delivered a message that was much sharper than her (pretty plagiarized) 2016 address. “Donald Trump has not, and will not, lose focus on you,” she said on Tuesday, adding that her husband “demands action, and he gets results.”

Her speech — which offered an acknowledgment of the devastating impact of the coronavirus pandemic and a superficial reference to the way racism has shaped this nation for more than 400 years — was not vetted by the Trump administration, in an effort to capture the elusive suburban women vote, which leaned Democrat in 2018. It clearly offered a counterbalance to her husband’s penchant for high drama, even though it was full of generic platitudes and aphorisms. “Despite what’s being said again this year, I know just as you do that Americans will go to polls and vote on behalf of their families, our economy, our national security, and our children’s future. To vote for those ideals is not a partisan vote. It’s a common-sense vote,” Melania Trump said. “Because those are goals and hopes that we all believe in. I believe that we need my husband’s leadership now more than ever in order to bring us all once again to the greatest economy and the strongest country ever known.”

The first lady was not the only woman to champion President Trump Tuesday evening. His youngest daughter Tiffany, who posted in support of Black Lives Matter on Instagram at the height of this summer’s anti-racism protests, also came out swinging in her father’s defense. “He dreams big dreams for our country,” she said, encouraging people to look beyond “this manipulation of what information we receive [from the media].” She even encouraged conservative Democrats to jump ship in November: “This election I urge everyone to transcend political boundaries,” Tiffany said, stressing the threats that the usual Republican bogeymen — cancel culture, attacks on freedom of speech, and a biased media — posed to American life. “A vote for my father Donald John Trump is a vote to uphold our American ideals,” she said.

The Trump women were joined over the course of the evening by a number of other women who have landed in Trump’s political orbit. Soon-to-be former adviser Kellyanne Conway, former press secretary Stephanie Grisham, and RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel all made appearances in a stylish, soft-focus segment where they praised the president’s record on women’s issues and what they consider is his uplifting of working mothers within his administration They laughed and softly spoke to the camera about how the president is a champion for women.

Elsewhere, anti-abortion activist Abby Johnson, Florida Lt. Gov. Jeanette Núñez, and Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds delivered passionate defenses of the president and the issues they believe in — facts be damned in some cases — always without losing their traditionally Republican, carefully curated (that is, unthreatening to men) image. It was a meticulously planned, and highly feminized, declaration of war.