The Memo: GOP seeks to detoxify Trump at convention

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Donald Trump isn’t a racist, a sexist or a xenophobe.

At least, that was the message that was written between the lines on the second night of the Republican National Convention on Tuesday.

The GOP is having to spend a lot of time trying to prove what Trump isn’t — an effort that tells its own story about negative perceptions of the president and the degree to which he is languishing in the polls.

Tuesday night’s programming featured an early tribute to Trump from Jon Ponder, a Black man who was convicted of bank robbery before reforming his life and founding an organization to help rehabilitate ex-prisoners. Trump pardoned Ponder before the cameras at the White House. Continue reading