Hello, I'm Charlotte Sree Pathma. We begin in the US, where JD Vance, the Republican candidate for Vice President, has delivered his acceptance address to the party convention. He began by paying tribute to Donald Trump and urge delegates to follow his lead and fight for America. Now, Mr. Vance said, Republicans were united to try to win back the White House, but not afraid to debate. Jd Vance has aligned himself closely with the policies of Mr. Trump, and if the pair win November, he's seen as the potential future of the Republican Party.

Now, never in my wildest imagination could I have believed that I'd be standing here tonight. I grew up in Middletown, Ohio. A small town where people spoke their minds, built with their hands, and loved their God, their family, their community, and their country with their whole hearts. But it was also a place that had been cast aside and forgotten by America's ruling clash in Washington. When I was in the fourth grade, a career politician by the name of Joe Biden supported NAFTA, a bad trade deal that sent countless good jobs to Mexico. When I was a sophomore in high school, that same career politician named Joe Biden gave China a sweetheart trade deal that destroyed even more good American middle class manufacturing jobs. When I was a senior in high school, that same Joe Biden supported the disastrous invasion of Iraq. At each step of the way, in small towns like mine in Ohio or next door in Pennsylvania or Michigan. In states all across our country, jobs were sent overseas and our children were sent to war.

So JD Vance there. We can go live to Milwaukee to my colleague, Katrina Perry. Katrina, we found out quite a lot there about JD Vance's personal story for those people that hadn't heard of him before. We really found the story of his upbringing rather compelling.

Deed, this was JD Vance's opportunity to introduce himself to the American public. He is known by a certain quarter of the public, of course. He's a senator of Ohio. He wrote the bestselling book, Hillbilly Elegy, which was turned into a movie. But in terms of the core Republican base, he's not someone who's been in elected office for a very long time. He's just been a senator for about two years. So this was about introducing himself, what he stands for. And that background, as he said himself on stage, he is the American dream. He came from a very tough upbringing as he just outlined there. His mother was addicted to narcotics. She was here tonight. He introduced her. She stood up and waved. She got a standing ovation at from the crowd in the arena here who started chanting JD's Mom, JD's Mom, and celebrating that she was 10 years clean. He mentioned his grandmother as well and how when she had passed away, they found 19 loaded guns in her house. That got a warm reception Reception, and people started chanting then Mama, the nickname he had for his grandma, as he referred to himself as Us Hillbillies.

So he ticked off a lot of boxes for the type of voters that the Republican Party, and indeed the Democratic Party, are hoping to sway in those battleground states, Wisconsin, where we are now, and Michigan and Pennsylvania, which border his own home state of Ohio. And he mentioned that fact a lot. He mentioned factory workers, he mentioned trade deals that he wasn't in favor of, and he really appealed to a broad swath of voters.

Yes, Katrina. So he was really appealing to what we call the Rust Belt of America. And you talked about factory workers. That was really the focus of Trump's 2016 campaign as well. It's interesting that we heard quite a lot about policy there as well.

We heard a lot about policies, indeed. It was a speech of two-halves in a way. The first half biographical, as we've been mentioning there, and the second half was more about setting out the platform terms for what he and Donald Trump will seek to represent to the American people and delivering a bit of a roadmap in terms of what we can expect from them in the days, weeks, and months ahead. They're both going to hold a rally, in fact, in Michigan on Saturday, once they leave the convention here together, their first rally together. And, of course, Donald Trump's first rally since that assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania last Saturday. So it will be interesting to see how they gel together at that point. And we'll hear more about What we heard here about there was a mention of taking a hard line against China. Jd Vance had a line about not wanting the Chinese to build their middle class on the backs of American workers. It was quite a strong line. He talked about delivering better wages and better rights for American workers here. He talked about addiction. He talked about stamping out Chinese-produced fentanyl coming into this country.

All issues that do appeal to people in that Rust Belt region, the Appalachian region, where three of those battleground states are.

It's interesting, Katrina, because he has a very different background to former President Trump, and that is presumably part of his appeal to have him on the ticket. Indeed.

He set that out in great detail during the speech that he gave here, coming from that working class, very tough background, dragging himself up by his bootstraps, essentially, putting himself through law school, then becoming a very successful businessman. He is wealthy in his own right and on to be a senator and now a vice presidential candidate, which of course, stands in marked contrast to Donald Trump, who grew up in a middle class, living situation in New York and has then turned into this successful businessman, as he would say himself. He calls himself a billionaire. That's been disputed, as we know, in various court cases. But they stand in marked contrast to each other. Obviously, there's a huge age difference there as well. J. D. Vance is along the same age as Donald Trump's sons. So there is that appeal as well. Donald Trump seeking to, in some way, anoint the next generation of the Republican Party, of the MAGA Movement, the Republican Party here, very much now becoming the party of Donald Trump. And we've heard on all the platform policy speeches so far, a move away from traditional conservative positions into something different.

Katrina, over in the Democrat camp, we heard that President Biden tested positive for COVID.

Indeed, Joe Biden has not had a good run of luck, you would have to say, in this camp campaign so far. Testing positive for COVID while he was on the campaign trail in Las Vegas. He had paused his campaigning because of that assassination attempt on Donald Trump. He wanted to give a respectful break. He took down some of his attack ads that were due to run on television and then resumed this campaigning in Nevada, another battleground state yesterday and today. And he had been at an event, done an interview, and was due to appear at a large rally for Latino worker rights union, and that was canceled at a very late notice. All the crowd were gathered in the venue and one of the organizers came on stage to say that the event was canceled. Joe Biden had Covid and was going back to his home in Delaware to be in self-isolation there. Now, the White House has put out a couple of statements on this, and the White House doctor saying that he only has mild symptoms, that he has a runny nose and a cough, and he's feeling well, and he's going to continue that self-isolation in Delaware while also carrying out his presidential duties.

Okay, Katrina, thank you very much for joining us. It's been a long day for you, Katrina Perry there. We can speak to Calvin Duck now, a political analyst who's in Washington, DC. Hi, Calvin. Thank you very much for joining us. What did you make of that convention's speech by J. D. Vance?

I think J. D. Vance had three main tasks tonight, and I think he did all three of them. The first one was to praise the man at the top of the ticket, that's Donald Trump. We saw that a lot. The second was to introduce himself to the Republican Party and to America in a way that doesn't overshadow or outshine Donald Trump. And then the third thing is do no harm, because one of the things we know about vice presidential pics is they don't make people win elections, but they definitely don't need to hurt. And so he did no harm. So in that way, I think he succeeded.

Some of us felt that it was surprising to hear policy there in his address. We heard from his past about his personal story, but we also heard about the types of policies that he essentially agrees with in terms of him and President Trump and where they align. But none of that was surprising in terms of the policies and where he stands.

You're right. I personally would have thought that if he had leaned more heavily into his story, he's a best-selling author about his story. But then I reminded myself, if this convention ends and we remember his speech and not Donald Trump's speech tomorrow, that's not the goal. The second thing is, is we know that in his short time, I think 18 months in the Senate, he has some very, sometimes controversial I don't know, but some very specific policies. Obviously, his policies have to be in line with Trump's, but he has to articulate them in the way that Trump does. Because let's remember, Trump is not a policywong. Trump is not the person with the facts and the figures and the historical comparisons. So he We also had to mimic him in style because if he looks like he knows more about the policy than Trump, that doesn't make Trump look good at the top of the ticket.

I also want to talk about immigration. Now, he took a rather hard line on immigration. He was saying that America welcomes newcomers, but on our terms. How will that go down?

Well, with the crowd in the room, it probably was too soft. But in general, I think that that's going to be one of the hardest things he's going to defend him and Donald Trump, because what they are proposing, mass deportations, forget the legal logistical complications, just what that means to chase 15 million people out of our country, that's going to be one of the biggest hurdles he's going to have to overcome when he tries to make his case to voters.