Before night two of the Republican National Convention had even begun, there was controversy: Mary Ann Mendoza, who had been scheduled to speak on President Trump's efforts to stop illegal immigration, was pulled from the schedule after retweeting a Twitter thread that included anti-Semitic and conspiratorial messages. As the AP reports, Mendoza's son was killed in 2014 in a head-on crash with an illegal immigrant who was driving under the influence. "Do yourself a favor and read this thread," Mendoza wrote atop the series of tweets that included what Politico calls "nearly every anti-Semitic trope of the last century to portray a Jewish cabal set on taking over American government." She later deleted the post and tweeted that she had "retweeted a very long thread earlier without reading every post within the thread." She apologized and said the Twitter thread "does not reflect my feelings or personal thoughts whatsoever." More from the night:
- Another Tuesday night speaker, anti-abortion activist Abby Johnson, made headlines due to her own past statements. Johnson has advocated for "household voting," in which wives defer to their husbands on all political decisions. She also said earlier this year that it would be "smart" for police to racially profile her biracial son, whom she and her husband adopted at birth, Vice reports: "Statistically, my brown son is more likely to commit a violent offense over my white sons," she said in a YouTube video following the death of George Floyd at the hands of police. "Right now, Jude is an adorable, perpetually tan-looking little brown boy. But one day, he’s going to grow up and he’s going to be a tall, probably sort of large, intimidating-looking-maybe brown man." Johnson is white, and said her biological children would grow up to look like "white nerdy men."