In a show of conviction, if not a defiance of critics, President Donald Trump will deliver his Republican National Convention re-nomination speech from the White House lawn.
The news was reported by the New York Post on Thursday night from an exclusive Oval Office interview.
"I'll probably be giving my speech at the White House, because it is a great place," Trump told the Post, refusing to make it official. "It's a place that makes me feel good, it makes the country feel good.
"We'd do it possibly outside on one of the lawns, we have various lawns, so we could have it outside in terms of the China virus.
"We could have quite a group of people. It's very big, a very big lawn. We could have a big group of people."
Trump, already forced out of North Carolina by Democrat Gov. Roy Cooper, was intending to hold an in-person speech in Jacksonville, Florida, but that too was nixed by coronavirus pandemic social distancing concerns.
Trump has faced criticism for the suggestion of accepting the Republican nomination from the White House, with Democrats claiming it is an abuse of the presidential estate for a political campaign purpose.
"Whether it's legally wrong or ethically out of the question, it shouldn't even have been something that was expressed," House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., a staunch rival who faced her own criticism for ripping up Trump's past State of the Union address behind Trump's back this winter, told MSNBC.
Trump, however, says the security concerns due to late movements will be aleviated by delivering the address from the White House lawn, because of Secret Service already in place. It will also be a "tremendous saving in cost," he told the Post.
Trump had seriously considered giving the speech from the battlefield national park in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, during the Aug. 24-27 Republican National Convention.
"Gettysburg is special; I will be doing something at Gettysburg, it may be something different, not for the convention," Trump told the Post. "We're going to be doing something terrific at Gettysburg, but when it gets a little bit cooler because now it's, you know, it's Aug. 27, so that's pretty hot out there.
"We're going to do something, I love Pennsylvania, and I love Gettysburg, so we're going to do something in Gettysburg at a little bit later date."
Eric Mack ✉
Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.
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