CLEVELAND — Exactly 350 days after Donald Trump stood in Quicken Loans Arena at the first presidential debate and refused to endorse the eventual Republican nominee if it wasn't him, he accepted that same Republican Party’s nomination — and vowed to keep winning all the way to the White House.

In the biggest address of his unlikely, divisive and meteoric political career, Trump on Thursday night sought to bring together a party that he helped fracture in an ugly primary that left divisions that were apparent all the way through a tumultuous four days in Cleveland.


The Manhattan mogul sold himself as the champion of a downtrodden working class — “America’s blue-collar billionaire” as one speaker called him earlier in the evening — promising to restore “law and order” and casting himself as a change agent against presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.

“I am your voice,” he boomed, pointing straight toward the television audience.

“Hillary Clinton’s message is that things will never change. Never ever,” Trump said. “My message is that things have to change and they have to change right now.”

Trump delivered a deeply negative speech that described a darkening America. He spoke of spiking crime, “third-world” airports, growing trade deficits, “chaos in our communities,” and terrorism on the home front. Abroad, he said, the situation was “worse than it has ever been before.”

“This is the legacy of Hillary Clinton: death, destruction, terrorism and weakness,” he said.

“Lock her up!” the crowd burst out repeatedly during Trump’s speech and throughout the week. Hatred of Clinton has proved among Trump’s most potent weapons as he has pursued elusive party unity.

But the energy in the arena faded as Trump’s speech stretched past the one-hour mark and as Trump’s deliberative style while reading a teleprompter slowed his cadence to a crawl. C-SPAN reported it was the longest acceptance speech since at least 1972.

While Trump used heated rhetoric to rip into Clinton, he adopted far more progressive and conciliatory language in what amounted to the kick-off speech of his general election campaign. He spoke about inner cities suffering under Democrats, African-Americans living in poverty, and the vision of “a country of generosity and warmth.”

Citing the recent attack at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Trump said he would do “everything in my power to protect our LGBTQ citizens.” When the crowd applauded the line, Trump ad-libbed, “As a Republican it is so nice to hear you cheering for what I just said.” Facebook reported it was the most talked-about moment of the speech on its network.

Republicans react to Trump's RNC speech Gov. Scott Walker and Representatives John Mica and Mark Sanford react to Donald Trump's speech in Cleveland. Produced by Beatrice Peterson.

Earlier, Trump had granted a speaking slot to Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel, who declared to cheers, “I’m proud to be gay. I’m proud to be a Republican. But most of all I’m proud to be an American.”

All of Trump’s children jumped to their feet and clapped in unison. It was a remarkable display for a party that had stripped all gay-rights mentions from its platform the week before.

In Ivanka Trump’s speech introducing her father, she adopted rhetoric far more typical of Democrats, promising that Trump, as president, would pursue affordable child care and equal pay laws for women. And after months of criticism of Trump for racist and xenophobic rhetoric, she said her father was “color blind and gender neutral.”

Trump also modulated one of his signature policies — “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims” entering the country rolled out last December — casting his immigration blockade in terms of terrorist-compromised countries, rather than an entire religion.

“He drew the line with Hillary very clearly,” former Speaker Newt Gingrich said afterward. “Eighty percent of Americans will find something to like in there.”

Even as he pivoted with an eye toward November, the speech was Trump’s last, best chance to bring together the GOP and his only opportunity of the campaign to deliver an uninterrupted, prime-time speech carried live on every major television network before an audience expected to number in the tens of millions.

Trump spent a swath of his speech on his signature issue — illegal immigration. He said Clinton is for “mass amnesty” and touted his proposed border wall, though he left out his oft-repeated brag that Mexico would pay for it.

Trump also named people who have been killed by undocumented immigrants, including some whose family members spoke earlier in the convention, and issued a warning about the “180,000 illegal immigrants with criminal records…tonight roaming free to threaten peaceful citizens.”

Earlier in the evening, some delegates had chattered about the possibility of walk-outs from restive delegations including Utah and Washington. Few actually followed through.

The speech capped off a roller-coaster convention that began with a public feud with the popular Republican governor of Ohio, continued with a mismanaged speaking schedule that pushed keynote speakers past prime time and ended with the revelation that portions of Melania Trump’s speech had been lifted verbatim from Michelle Obama in 2008.

And that was just Monday.

By Wednesday, Trump’s campaign was forced to acknowledge the plagiarism charge after a day of denials and then that evening Sen. Ted Cruz refused to endorse Trump in dramatic fashion, robbing the spotlight from Trump’s running mate, Gov. Mike Pence, and casting it instead on the party’s internal divisions.

Before Trump’s speech on Thursday, Cruz said he would not “go like a servile puppy dog" and endorse the GOP nominee and questioned the delegates who booed him the night before:

“What does it say when you stand up and say ‘vote your conscience,’ and rabid supporters of our nominee begin screaming, ‘What a horrible thing to say!’”

But it was Trump who would have the last word.

In a topsy-turvy race that saw Trump break most of the supposed rules of politics en route to dispatching sixteen primary opponents, including Jeb Bush, brother and son of the last two Republican presidents, Trump was remarkably consistent.

“Our country is in serious trouble. We don't win anymore,” Trump said in his closing statement on that first debate night, “…We have to make our country great again, and I will do that.”

On Thursday, his message was the same: America was a nation in decline and he was the man to fix it.

“I will win for you,” Trump told the crowd as he built in a crescendo to the slogan that has powered his candidacy from the start. “We will ‘Make America Great Again.’”

Julia Ioffe, Seung Min Kim, Ken Vogel, Katie Glueck and Nick Gass contributed to this report