GOP Smacked: Simon Carswell’s Republican convention diary

Clinton’s nuclear option

Hillary Clinton's campaign has reprised a famous political ad from the 1964 campaign that played on Republican concerns about another presidential nominee who divided the party, conservative Arizona senator Barry Goldwater. The Democrat's "Confessions of a Republican II" ad is most effective because it uses the same concerned Republican, Bill Bogert, who appeared in the 52-year-old ad.

“This man scares me,” the 2016 Bogert says of the billionaire. “Trump says, ‘we need unpredictability’ when it comes to using nuclear weapons. What is this supposed to mean? When a man says that he sounds a lot like a threat to humanity.”

Democratic president Lyndon Johnson similarly trolled Goldwater's "In your heart, you know he's right" slogan more than a half-century ago with "In your heart, you know he might [push the nuclear button]" and "In your guts, you know he's nuts."

Goldwater won just six states in the 1964 election in one of the most lop-sided presidential elections.

Colbert opens Republican ‘Hunger Games’

It was bound to happen with an open mic during Sunday's final-day rehearsals for the Republican national convention in the Quicken Loans Arena. Talk-show host Stephen Colbert, who for years poked fun at Republicans on the Colbert Show, crashed the podium for a skit comparing the convention to the Hunger Games (though it was not clear if it was staged or not).

The Late Show host, dressed as fictional Hunger Games host Caesar Flickerman and wearing a blue wig, announced that it was his honour to "hereby launch and begin the 2016 Republican national hunger for power games". He banged the gavel before he was escorted off the stage. "Look, I know I'm not supposed to be up here," he said before leaving the podium, "but let's be honest, neither is Donald Trump. "

Irish need apply

Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort has stressed that his boss's plan to ban immigrants from "terrorist countries" would not shut the door on the Irish.

Doorstepped at a swanky Cleveland hotel on Sunday, I asked him to square the proud reference made by Mike Pence to his "immigrant grandfather" (from Sligo) in his maiden speech as running mate with Trump's proposals. Manafort denied Trump was "anti-immigrant".

“The point that Donald Trump is making when it comes to terrorist countries you have to know who is coming in,” he said. “As far as immigration is concerned generally, what he is saying is we have a process.”

Quote of the day

“You just look at the body language: there’s something going on”.

Donald Trump questioning President Barack Obama’s loyalties in disputes between police and black community

Number of the day

125,000

The estimated number of red, white and blue balloons packed into the roof of the Quicken Loans Arena for Trump’s triumphant moment.