First lady Melania Trump will make the case for her husband’s reelection from the White House grounds and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo will weigh in from Jerusalem, as the second night of the Republican convention moves to unusual territory for a political event.
It is not traditional for a sitting secretary of state to give political speeches, particularly while on a diplomatic mission overseas, while political activity is generally not conducted on White House grounds.
A Democratic-led congressional committee said it would open an investigation into whether Mr. Pompeo’s speech—recorded during a trip aimed at urging Arab countries to forge formal ties with Israel—violates federal regulations or State Department guidelines on political activity.
The State Department said it wouldn’t bear any costs in connection with his appearance and wasn’t involved. Mr. Pompeo is thought of as a future Republican presidential candidate.
President Trump’s aides have defended the unconventional arrangements of speaking from the White House after the party was forced to cancel most of its in-person convention events due to the coronavirus pandemic. A government body charged with enforcing the rule that restricts political activity by federal employees said Mr. Trump could speak from the White House, but rules would apply to his staff. The White House said it would uphold those.
“This is their home,” Stephanie Grisham, the first lady’s chief of staff, said of Mrs. Trump’s decision to appear from the White House Rose Garden. “She thought it would be really nice to deliver tonight’s speech from their home.”
Mr. Trump made his first appearance early in the program. In a video, he said he was issuing a pardon for one convention speaker, Jon Ponder, who was convicted of bank robbery and became an advocate for felon rehabilitation. Mr. Ponder appeared with the former FBI agent who arrested him in a showcase of Mr. Trump’s work on criminal-justice reform. “My greatest failure led to my greatest success,” Mr. Ponder said.
President Donald Trump, flanked by Jon Ponder, left, and former FBI agent Richard Beasley, during Tuesday night’s Republican National Convention.
Photo: republican national convention/ReutersThe second day of the convention also featured people the campaign picked to highlight Mr. Trump’s policies.
“I have to confess: I didn’t support Trump in 2016,” said Jason Joyce, a Maine lobsterman. “Skeptical that he shared my conservative views, I expected him to flip flop on his campaign promises. But he has followed through on his promises.” He mentioned a new deal to lift European Union tariffs on lobster and Mr. Trump’s move to open up commercial fishing areas off the cost of New England that were closed under President Obama.
Cultural issues were also set to gain the spotlight, with a speech expected from a student whose encounter with a Native American activist at the Lincoln Memorial last year became a viral moment and led to settlements with CNN and the Washington Post. A former Planned Parenthood worker who said she quit over abortion is also expected to speak and is expected to call Mr. Trump “the most pro-life president we’ve ever had.”
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Mary Ann Mendoza, whose son was killed by a drunken driver in the country illegally, planned to speak but was pulled from the program Tuesday after she encouraged her Twitter followers to read a thread that included anti-Semitic ideas. She apologized, saying she shared it “without reading every post within the thread.”
Mrs. Trump’s speech will be “definitely very uplifting and positive,” Ms. Grisham, the first lady’s chief of staff, said on MSNBC Tuesday. Mrs. Trump was also expected to talk about where she would take her antibullying campaign, Be Best, in the next four years, Ms. Grisham said.
Trump campaign officials had promised an upbeat and inspiring national convention. The event’s first night on Monday, however, featured stark warnings about the lawlessness and chaos Trump supporters said would ensue if Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden won the November election. Mr. Trump used his remarks in Charlotte to attack governors as unprepared for the coronavirus pandemic and to warn that the push for mail-in voting amounted to a historic scam.
Trump campaign senior adviser Kimberly Guilfoyle said during the prime-time section of the program—which, because of the pandemic, was partly pretaped and partly filmed live with no in-person audience—that Democrats wanted to “destroy this country” and “want to enslave you to the weak, dependent, liberal, victim ideology.”
Mr. Pompeo’s planned appearance led to questions from the House Foreign Affairs Committee, whose chairman, Rep. Eliot Engel (D., N.Y.), pointed to State Department documents he said clearly show a violation of legal restrictions interpreted by department lawyers and reiterated by Mr. Pompeo in a July memo to employees. A subcommittee chairman said he was launching an investigation.
Neither the State Department nor the Trump campaign immediately responded to requests for comment.
Democrats said the Republican convention’s first night was dark and misleading. “Last night was grim and spiteful and fear inducing,” Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat, said Tuesday on a call arranged by the Biden campaign. “And while I do think that there are a lot of things to be concerned about, they all emanate from the policies coming out of the White House right now.”
Democrats used their convention last week to portray Mr. Trump as callous and inept, highlighting remarks by him including one on the more than 177,000 U.S. deaths from coronavirus: “It is what it is.”
Republicans on Monday cast the president as an empathetic figure in speeches and in a pretaped segment in which he met with workers affected by the pandemic. Rep. Steve Scalise (R., La.) recounted how, when he was shot by a gunman in 2017, the president visited him in the hospital and called him to check on him in the following weeks.
Other prominent speakers scheduled to appear Tuesday are Larry Kudlow, the president’s top economic adviser, Sen. Rand Paul (R., Ky.) and former Florida attorney general Pam Bondi, who was a member of the president’s defense team during his impeachment earlier this year.
Daniel Cameron, Kentucky’s first Black attorney general and a protégé of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.), is also scheduled to address the convention. Mr. Cameron is widely seen as a potential successor when Mr. McConnell leaves the Senate. Mr. McConnell told The Wall Street Journal earlier this year that his relationship with Mr. Cameron had “opened my eyes that there’s nothing that stipulates that African-Americans have to be liberals.”
Write to Alex Leary at alex.leary@wsj.com and Rebecca Ballhaus at Rebecca.Ballhaus@wsj.com
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