President Donald Trump on Wednesday confirmed reports that he is considering accepting the Republican Party’s 2020 presidential nomination in a nationally televised address delivered from the White House.
“I’ll probably do mine live from the White House,” Trump told “Fox & Friends” of his nomination acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention later this month, adding that he had not officially settled on a location for the primetime remarks.
“If for some reason somebody had difficulty with it, I would — I could, you know, go someplace else,” Trump said. “The easiest, least expensive and, I think, very beautiful would be live from the White House.”
The acknowledgment from the president comes after The Washington Post reported Tuesday that convention planners were weighing the White House’s South Lawn as the site of Trump’s speech — a choice of venue that would represent an extraordinary breach of protocol and modern political norms.
Trump has already drawn significant criticism in recent weeks for staging campaign-style events on the White House premises, launching attacks at presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden from the seat of power of the federal government’s executive branch. Presidents have typically avoided mixing campaigning with the business of governing and the trappings of the White House.
Even prior to his general election campaign against Biden, Trump provoked controversy for his selection of sites for high-profile official events. Last October, he memorably announced plans to stage the upcoming G-7 summit of world leaders at one of his family’s resorts, only to reverse his decision days later.
Trump revealed last month that he was canceling GOP convention keynote events recently relocated to Jacksonville, Fla., amid a surge of Covid-19 cases there. And last week, Trump said he would accept the Republican nomination in the convention’s original host city of Charlotte, N.C. — which he spurned in June over its coronavirus-related public health restrictions.
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