U.S. first lady Melania Trump is telling American voters Tuesday night why they should re-elect her husband, President Donald Trump, delivering a key address at the Republican National Convention from the White House Rose Garden she recently redesigned. The first lady, an émigré from Slovenia and now a naturalized U.S. citizen, has been an infrequent participant in the U.S. political scene and has rarely accompanied her husband to political rallies. But an aide to Melania Trump, chief of staff Stephanie Grisham, said in advance of the first lady’s nationally televised address that, “Every word in this speech is from her.” Other key speakers are set to voice their support for the president as well, including Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who has prompted a controversy by speaking to the Republican convention on Trump’s behalf from Israel while he is on a diplomatic mission to the Jewish state. Typically, the top U.S. diplomat has not played a role in U.S. elections and has been viewed as apolitically representing the United States in overseas relations rather than the political party of the president who appointed him or her.  A handful of opposition Democrats have assailed Pompeo for breaking the tradition of staying out of the presidential race, and Rep. Joaquin Castro, the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee, announced he would lead “a full investigation.” Trump was formally nominated on Monday to face former Democratic Vice President Joe Biden in the November 3 presidential election.  On the second night of the convention, two more of the U.S. leader’s four adult children will speak. Eric Trump, an executive with the Trump Organization, the president’s New York-based global real estate and golf resort company, and Tiffany Trump, a recent law school graduate, plan to urge voters that their father deserves another four-year term.Production staffers help Tiffany Trump pre-record a speech for the Republican National Convention in Washington, Aug. 25, 2020.Tiffany Trump declared, “My father built a thriving economy once and he’ll do it again. My father does not run away from challenges. He dreams big dreams for our country.” Other Republicans set to endorse Trump include Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds, a couple of state elected officials and rank-and-file party members who want to see him re-elected. One speaker, Mary Ann Mendoza, the mother of an Arizona police officer killed by an undocumented immigrant who was driving drunk, was pulled from the night’s roster of those supporting Trump after she encouraged her Twitter followers to read through a QAnon believer’s convoluted conspiracy theory about a Jewish plot to control the world. She deleted the tweet and apologized. Aides said the president will make a handful of appearances during the evening. At the outset of Tuesday’s event, he pardoned a bank robber who since his imprisonment has worked to help inmates rejoin life on the outside. On Monday, as the mostly virtual convention opened, Trump lauded several health care workers at the White House. The front-line caregivers had treated people who had contracted COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus that has swept the U.S. He also met with a half-dozen people who had been freed from overseas captivity through the diplomatic efforts of his administration. Trump often has predicted the coronavirus will disappear, but as the election nears, Republicans have sought to portray the president as in control of leading the government’s effort to find a vaccine to inoculate people against the infectious disease. An Associated Press poll this week showed that only 31% of Americans approve of Trump’s handling of the fight against the virus. “We have to make this China virus go away,” Trump told the health care group Monday night in the East Room of the White House. None of the group was wearing a face mask or socially distancing from the others as health experts have advised.   Biden has attacked Trump’s claims that he was a “wartime president” in the fight against the virus. The Democrat, in his presidential nomination acceptance speech last week, said the president’s actions were unforgivable and a failure of leadership. For Trump, the four days of the Republican convention are crucial. They are a chance, through saturation television coverage, for him to convince enough American voters that he deserves another White House term.  He has 10 weeks to make his case before Election Day, but the polls show Biden leading by an average of 7.6 percentage points, according to an aggregation of polls by the Real Clear Politics website. However, Biden’s edge is a bit thinner in several key battleground states that could once again prove decisive in the election. Only two U.S. presidents have lost reelection contests after a single term in office in the past four decades, Jimmy Carter in 1980 and George H.W. Bush in 1992.  
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