Final night of the Republican National Convention begins

President Donald Trump's daughter Ivanka Trump rounds out the Trump family Republican National Convention speakers Thursday evening, with remarks focused on working families, a key component of her White House portfolio, per an aide familiar with the speech. She is slated to introduce her father later this evening.

“She will provide Americans with personal insight into how the President makes decisions and his everyday work for the forgotten men and women of our country. She will highlight his top policy accomplishments that have impacted American workers and families, and draw a contrast to her father’s leadership vs. Biden’s failed policies of the past,” the aide said. 

Based on that description, it appears that this will, like her siblings, be short on personal anecdotes but rather focus on her work and the administration’s work more broadly.

Trump championed paid family leave as part of the tax bill, which she is expected to highlight, per an excerpt of the speech provided to CNN:

Read more excerpts from her speech:

Guests gather to watch U.S. President Donald Trump deliver his acceptance speech for the Republican presidential nomination on the South Lawn of the White House on August 27 in Washington. Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

The fourth and final night of the Republican National Convention has begun.

President Donald Trump will take the White House stage this evening after three nights of propaganda and pageantry at the convention for a speech that's expected to paper over his flawed handling of the coronavirus pandemic and deliver a searing indictment of his rival Joe Biden.

Trump will accept his party's renomination for president at a time when the nation has passed the grim milestone of more than 180,000 deaths as a result of Covid-19 and some 5.8 million US cases — more than anywhere else in the world.

The President is expected to cast his response in glowing terms, highlighting the administration's efforts to produce a vaccine by the end of the year and its purchase of 150 million rapid tests to be distributed across the country in partnership with Abbott Laboratories.

Trump will be introduced on Thursday by his daughter Ivanka Trump and a crowd of more than 1,500 will attend the speech and the fireworks that follow. The White House thus far has offered conflicting information about how the guests will be screened for Covid-19.

The President is also expected, in some form, to address the protests in Kenosha, Wisconsin, following the police shooting of Jacob Blake, a 29-year-old Black man. Blake was shot seven times in the back Sunday by an officer as he tried to enter an SUV where three of his children were waiting. Early Wednesday morning, a 17-year-old Illinois youth — whose social media accounts show an affinity for Trump, guns and the police — allegedly shot and killed two people, and injured another, who were at one of the nighttime protests in Kenosha.

So far Trump has refused to answer questions about the two incidents in Wisconsin or to say whether he watched the video of Blake being shot by police, and it's unclear if he will make any statement of sympathy to Blake's family or Black Americans once again angered by police brutality.

Read about tonight's event here.

If the speakers at this week’s convention provided a portrait of Trump’s presidency that didn’t always align with reality, the images of mask-less crowds gathered without social distancing helped reinforce it.

Combined with the repeated references to the coronavirus pandemic in the past tense — most notably by Trump’s chief economic adviser Larry Kudlow — the images protect a post-pandemic world, even as deaths mount. More than 3,600 Americans have died since the Republican National Convention started three days ago — more than died during the terror attacks on 9/11.

Unlike most Americans, Trump has access to an extensive testing regime that his aides say renders him the “most tested man in America.” Anyone who comes into close proximity with him receives one; on Thursday, that includes a sizable number of the more than 1,000 invited guests on the South Lawn for his speech.

The same was true, at least in part, for guests at the first lady’s speech in the Rose Garden and Vice President Mike Pence’s address at Fort McHenry in Baltimore. While neither the campaign nor the White House would provide specific details, at least some of the guests at those events were tested. Few wore masks.

The effect has been to provide Trump with the crowds he long desired for his convention. But it has also allowed him to project a reality that simply doesn’t exist for the rest of the country. Many states still ban large gatherings. Rapid testing is not available in many places, and wait times are long. The mask requirements that exist in many states would not permit the types of bare-faced events that Trump has convened.

How effective that is in convincing Americans that Trump has handled the virus well isn’t clear. Even a number of Republican senators are opting not to attend Trump’s acceptance speech at the White House, despite most receiving invitations to join the audience on the South Lawn.

People living through the outbreak are still feeling its effects, be it through closed businesses, struggles with childcare or just the daily inconveniences that have now become routine, like remembering to wear a mask. Images of the President going about his life as normal can’t change that reality.

"Here's what you have to understand about the nature of a pandemic: It's relentless. You can't stop it with a tweet. You can't create a distraction and hope it'll go away. It doesn't go away," Democratic vice presidential candidate Sen. Kamala Harris said in a prebuttal to Trump’s speech earlier Thursday.

President Donald Trump, Ivanka Trump, Sen. Mitch McConnell and Rudy Giuliani. Getty, AP

The fourth and final night of the Republican National Convention tonight will feature President Donald  Trump's speech officially accepting the Republican nomination for president.

Similar to the first three nights, some speeches are expected to take place at an audience-less auditorium. But before closing out the week's festivities, Trump is expected to deliver a speech to a large crowd from the South Lawn of the White House, breaking with tradition among US presidents not to mix official functions in the White House with overtly political ones. Fireworks are expected after his remarks.

The night will also feature Republican congressional leadership, namely Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy. The convention's theme for Thursday night is "Land of Greatness."

Here are key things to watch tonight:

Read more about the night's events here.

Judging from the view on the South Lawn tonight, you wouldn’t know a pandemic has swept across the nation and killed 180,000 Americans. 

The White House and campaign are expecting anywhere from 1,500 to 2,000 guests tonight on the South Lawn and the chairs are positioned within less than a foot of one another.

A White House official says there are 1,500 chairs and they expect the rest of the crowd (roughly 500) to be standing. 

The guests received guidance today that was obtained by CNN and did not include required coronavirus testing. White House chief of staff Mark Meadows just told reporters “a number of people will be tested."

The guidance also said masks would be necessary to enter and in high traffic areas, but few were seen wearing masks as they milled about beforehand. 

President Trump’s allies, advisers and old friends are in the crowd tonight. Dozens of lawmakers are expected to attend as well, even though Congress is in recess.

The Republican convention worked with a company that said they have protocols in place that are in compliance with guidelines from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and DC Department of Public Health. These officials have been on site, the campaign says, though they declined to say which guidelines they were given. 

Watch the scene:

A senior Trump campaign adviser said President Trump will hit his law and order theme hard tonight.

The adviser explained “this is how we win suburban moms back,” an acknowledgment of Trump’s shaky standing with women voters.

Top adviser Stephen Miller is leading the writing team in drafting tonight’s speech.

As for the situation in Kenosha, Wisconsin, Trump is likely to address the unrest in the streets of US cities. But aides are being tight lipped about whether Trump will mention the police shooting of Jacob Blake.

White House chief of staff Mark Meadows told CNN he reached out to representatives for Blake’s family to offer Trump’s sympathies. Meadows said Trump has seen the video of Blake being shot by police, something Trump would not talk about earlier today when asked.

Dr. Jonathan Reiner, director of the cardiac catheterization laboratory at The George Washington University Hospital, says it's "maddening" that President Trump and the Republican National Committee is hosting between 1,000 to 1,500 people at the White House tonight for their convention.

Reiner told CNN's Erin Burnett that the President is breaking DC coronavirus gathering restrictions which states that mass gatherings of more than 50 people are prohibited.

This latest criticism comes after Democratic vice presidential nominee Kamala Harris called out Trump and the GOP for not acknowledging the reality of the pandemic during their convention earlier today.

White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows speaks to the press in Statuary Hall at the Capitol on August 22 in Washington. Gabriella Demczuk/Getty Images

The White House has reached out to the family of Jacob Blake but has not directly had contact with them, White House chief of staff Mark Meadows said Thursday. He also confirmed that the President has watched the video of Blake’s shooting. 

Meadows told CNN’s Jim Acosta that he reached out to representatives of the Blake family, and specifically his mother, “and conveyed a message that I wanted to make sure that not only as a mother of someone who has undergone a real tragic event and still the prognosis is yet to be fully determined, that for the President and myself we certainly appreciate her call for peace and we join her in that.” 

Meadows said he reached out to express, “not only my desire but the President’s desire to share support for the family.” 

“I’m fully confident that that message has been conveyed,” he added. 

Meadows said that Trump told his attorney general “I want to make sure it’s fully investigated I want to get to the bottom of what happened.” 

He also confirmed the President has seen the video of the shooting, which Trump ignored questions about earlier on Thursday. 

Meadows would not get into the details of tonight’s speech to the Republican National Convention, and on Covid-19 precautions, he would only say that people in close proximity to the President would be tested at the event. 

The White House coronavirus task force was not consulted about convention plans for President Trump's speech tonight on the White House South Lawn, a senior administration official said.

The official said it made more sense for the campaign and the task force to "stay out of each other's way."

Health experts on the task force, like the nation's leading coronavirus expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci, have been advising Americans to avoid large crowds during the pandemic.

At a hearing in July, Fauci warned large crowds where people are not wearing masks are especially risky. 

Trump's speech is expected to draw between 1,000 to 1,500 people, according to outgoing counselor Kellyanne Conway.