Trump: Acceptance speech ‘wasn’t dark,’ it was ‘optimistic’

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump on Monday night sought to cast his acceptance speech as “optimistic,” despite criticism that his prime-time address Thursday had a doom-and-gloom message. 

{mosads}At a rally in Winston-Salem, N.C., scheduled to compete with the first night of the Democratic National Convention, the GOP nominee said the only negative feedback he received last week at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland was that his speech was “dark.”

“Even the haters, they said it was dark,” Trump said. “That’s all they said. Some said the delivery was great, the speech was very dark. That was their negativity.”

“It wasn’t dark. You know what it was: It was optimistic, because I said what was going to happen, and I said we’re going to fix it,” Trump added.

Trump has been recently touting himself as a “law and order candidate” and that he said if he’s elected president, the country will be there for law enforcement.

“We’re going to have law and order. We’re going to take care of our cops,” he continued. “Our cops have to be careful. Our police our great people. They have to be careful, they have to be vigilant, they have to be trained.”

Trump’s Thursday night acceptance speech painted a bleak picture of the country that he vowed to restore and continued to trumpet his campaign’s “America first” mentality.

“Our convention occurs at a moment of crisis for our nation,” Trump said in his speech. “The attacks on our police, and the terrorism in our cities, threaten our very way of life. Any politician who does not grasp this danger is not fit to lead our country.”