Donald Trump, the self-declared king of deal-makers, faces the toughest negotiation of his career on Thursday night when he arrives on stage in Cleveland to close the final night of a Republican party convention riven by discord and disharmony.



The booing of Texas senator Ted Cruz, who failed to endorse Trump in his speech on Wednesday night, exposed how even as the nominee tries to pull the party together, he presides over a house divided between true believers, reluctant fellow travellers and dissidents still refusing to accept his victory.



“It makes me sick to my stomach,” Stefani Williams, a Cruz delegate from Utah, said as she watched Trump formally clinch the nomination on Tuesday night. “This whole experience has been disgusting. I have no desire to be involved in a process that’s rigged and where people bully you and give you death threats. They are trying to force us to unify behind him but if he wants our support, he’s going to have to persuade us.”

All week the convention has strived to maintain harmony around its anti-establishment nominee. “What do you say that we unify this party at this crucial moment when unity is everything?” the House speaker, Paul Ryan, asked on Tuesday. He might not like the answer. Guardian interviews with dozens of delegates from across America found cracks in the facade.

To be sure, a majority of those present expressed support for the nominee, some with the kind of intense enthusiasm that has followed Trump on the campaign trail all year. Another segment were tepid, admitting that they would have to hold their nose in voting for the nominee but he was still preferable to Democrat Hillary Clinton. Then there was a vociferous minority who vowed to follow their conscience and remain defiantly #NeverTrump to the bitter end.

Williams, from St George, Utah, a heavily Mormon state where Trump is deeply unpopular, said: “I’m shocked he would be our nominee. He doesn’t stand for anything I believe in. His adultery, womanising, the way he treats women is disgusting. There are a lot of conservatives who can’t vote for Trump in good conscience. It’s a lost cause. I really don’t think he’s going to win; his campaign is inept and the majority of Republicans don’t want him. They think they can win without their base – conservatives.”

There are a lot of conservatives who can’t vote for Trump in good conscience. It’s a lost cause Stefani Williams

She shudders at the prospect of Trump swaggering on the global stage. “He’s a disaster. He’s a wild card. You don’t know what he’s going to do. He has no principles. He’s a playboy entertainer and it’s shocking that the American people would choose him.”

Williams, a pregnant mother of five, said she received a death threat when she first voiced opposition. Then Trump ally Carl Paladino sent her an email warning: “You should be hung for treason, Stefani. There will not be a Republican party if you attempt to replace Trump. I’ll be in your face in Cleveland.”

On Monday, Williams took part in a doomed effort by anti-Trump forces to challenge the nominating rules and disrupt his coronation. The resulting chaos was a blow to hopes of healing the rift but was soon overshadowed by the row over plagiarism in Melania Trump’s speech.

As Ryan was intimating, this lack of unity could be fatal in the upcoming election battle against Clinton, who faces a challenge of her own to bring Bernie Sanders’ supporters into the fold. Unfortunately for the GOP, Trump is one of the most divisive political figures in recent memory and the snub by Cruz illustrated the mountain he still has to climb.

Selena Coppa, a Cruz delegate from Washington, said after Cruz’s speech on Wednesday: “You can’t vote your conscience and vote for a bigot and proto-fascist.” She is now contemplating voting for Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson and said she would join any walkout during Trump’s speech on Thursday.

Christopher Morrill, a Cruz delegate from Arizona, said: “Trump needs to reach out to us and mend this bridge or we’re done.” He denounced the booing of Cruz and deplored “the level of disrespect that’s occurred in this convention”.

Despite the anti-Trump faction’s failure to disrupt his nomination, a lack of unity still exists. Photograph: Robyn Beck/AFP/Getty Images

Trump will also struggle to persuade the likes of Kris Shafer, 28, a businessman from Fort Worth, Texas, who this week was wearing a “Choose Cruz” T-shirt on the convention floor. “He embraces and promotes principles I do not believe fit the Republican party,” he said. “My wife is Hispanic and to vilify so many people, to say they’re stealing our jobs, to paint immigrants that way, is not what Republicans have stood for.”

Shafer was particularly galled by a boast that Trump made in January when he told a rally he could stand in the middle of New York’s Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody without losing voters. “This is not how a leader behaves,” he said. “Would you want someone who claims to be able to shoot people in charge of your country? Very many of his statements are disgusting. You can go through a collection of his most offensive tweets.”

Shafer, a former Cruz staffer, accused Trump of hypocrisy in his criticism of free trade, noting that Trump’s own companies use foreign labour. “He doesn’t care.” And he mocked Trump’s promise to make Mexico pay for a border wall. “Is he going to invade?” he asked.

“I can’t even imagine being a regular voter and having to choose between a guy who’s a lunatic and a woman who’s a horrible person in her own right,” said Jarrod Atkinson, a delegate from Texas who supported Rand Paul in the primaries.



“Everything he’s said and done is not conservative or in support of the constitution,” Atkinson said. “He was telling security to throw out people who were at his rallies because they disagreed with him. I don’t want somebody with that kind of mentality to have the power and authority that the president is entrusted with. That doesn’t make sense to me.”

He added: “I support Republicans up and down the ballot. To me, this isn’t just about who’s the next president, it’s about how are we going to get people to share our conservative values. And Donald Trump doesn’t represent Republicans and he’s not going to. He’s made it abundantly clear.”

We have to be realistic, Donald Trump is our nominee. He is our only hope to be able to defeat Hillary Clinton Beverly Gossage

Over in the Virginia delegation, Bethany Bostron, 25, a law student, agreed. “I’m not a fan,” she said of Trump. “He does not accurately reflect conservative values and the Republican party is supposed to be the conservative party.”

Referring to Trump’s outlandish statements on the campaign trail, she added: “It’s a terrible way to represent our party. He said some terrible things and it makes me question his integrity and fitness for office.”

She admitted: “It would be very difficult to vote for Donald Trump.”

The same dilemma faces Brenda High, 63, a bullying prevention specialist from Paslo, Washington. “I think he’s a bully and you can tell that the people who support him are harassing people a little bit,” she said. “He’s pretty outlandish. I was leaning towards him until August 6 last year when he called Rosie O’Donnell a ‘fat pig’ and I thought, he’s a rude, crude kind of guy. That’s unacceptable.”

Yet High, who had originally supported Cruz, will swallow her objections and vote for Trump. “As long as he has good people around him, it’ll be OK,” she said wryly.

Jessica Fernandez, at 31 years old Florida’s youngest delegate, supported Marco Rubio in the primary but had now come around to backing Trump. “Sixty-six of the 67 counties in Florida voted for Trump. I think it’s part of my duty as being a delegate to deliver my vote for Donald Trump. I don’t agree with him all the time, but I disagree with Hillary Clinton all the time.”



She added: “I don’t always like his rhetoric and the way that he speaks, but then again that has been one of his greatest assets. He’s really connected with voters; he’s motivated people to come out who have never voted before.

“I would have preferred for him to not use such harsh rhetoric, but I think it’s a tactic he uses to get attention and it’s really worked.”

If there’s one thing that unites almost all Republicans, it’s an overwhelming desire to defeat Hillary Clinton in November. Photograph: John Locher/AP

Others have hardened their resolve to show as much enthusiasm as they can muster. Mindy McAlindon, 49, a stay-at-home mother from Centerton, Arkansas, said: “I would love for it to be Ted Cruz but he didn’t win, fair and square. Donald Trump has issues I can get behind, like immigration, and he’s a true capitalist. No candidate is perfect but I think we can all get behind him when our other option is Hillary Clinton. I’m still for the team.”

Nazly De La Hoya, 26, a delegate from El Paso, Texas, initially backed Kentucky senator Rand Paul. “He [Trump] was not my first choice; however, I’m very against the corruption and lies that Hillary’s been involved with,” she said during a rally in Cleveland’s Public Square. “Trump is a better alternative because he is likely to get us into unnecessary conflicts around the world. I think it’s great that he is ending the politically correct culture that we have in the United States.”

Beverly Gossage, 66, a Cruz delegate from Kansas who described herself as a Tea Party grassroots activist, said: “We have to be realistic, Donald Trump is our nominee. He is our only hope to be able to defeat Hillary Clinton. My advice to other Tea Party people, like me, is look at the frontman, but then look at the people he’s putting behind him, the policy people. Those are good, strong Republicans who want to change things the way that we do.

“So if you don’t like the front guy, just take your eyes off the front guy. He’s not a king, he’s not an emperor – we have a republic.”

That sentiment was shared by Craig Dunn, party chairman in Howard County, Indiana, who earlier this year told an interviewer: “If it came down to Satan and Donald Trump at the convention, I might consider supporting Donald Trump.”

Dunn, originally a supporter of Ohio governor John Kasich, said on Wednesday: “If you might imagine, the Trump supporters didn’t appreciate that very well and I went through about two weeks of threatening calls, threats against my life, my profession and a little bit of everything else because there were some people back in that time who were a little bit extreme.

“So if anybody had a reason to not support Donald Trump, to tell somebody, stay at home, stay away from the game, it would be me. But our country’s future, I believe, is far too important to let your personal prejudices get in the way.”

A number of elected officials who supported candidates other than Trump have described their feelings about the convention in simple, plaintive terms: “It is what it is.”