Pence: 'You won’t be safe in Joe Biden’s America'

Republicans aggressively defended law enforcement on the third night of their convention, as the nation faced renewed tensions following the police shooting of Jacob Blake, a Black man in Wisconsin, that sparked protests in a state that could decide the fall election.

Vice President Mike Pence, the evening's featured speaker, seized on the national reckoning over racial injustice to argue that Democratic leaders are allowing lawlessness to prevail in cities from coast to coast.

He and others described cities wracked by violence, though protests in most locations have been largely peaceful.

He also assailed Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden for saying there is an "implicit bias" against minorities and "systemic racism" in the U.S.

"The hard truth is you won't be safe in Joe Biden's America," Pence said

Meanwhile, the steady image Republicans were aiming to portray of President Donald Trump at the convention was running into a turbulent outside reality: the police shooting of Jacob Blake, 29, in Kenosha, Wisconsin, the potentially catastrophic hurricane bearing down on the Gulf Coast, wildfires that have ravaged huge areas of California and the still-raging coronavirus pandemic that is killing more than 1,000 Americans a day.