Republicans tout Trump's law-and-order bona fides on third day of Republican convention; Pence gets fact-checked

On the third day of the Republican National Convention, speakers continued to stress familiar themes: that President Trump "is on the side of blue-collar workers and African-Americans; that he is the only credible candidate for pro-life voters; that he has saved the nation from what could have been a much worse coronavirus pandemic; and that he is the last bulwark standing in the United States between order and anarchy," David Knowles reports for Yahoo! News. "Meanwhile, a pattern solidified in which the president’s perceived weaknesses were portrayed as strengths and the Democratic nominee, Joe Biden, was portrayed as a radical, intent on letting the far left burn the country to the ground. On a night whose theme was 'Land of Heroes,' the program made the case that Trump was one of them.

Here's some fact-checking from The New York Times:

• Several speakers, including Vice President Mike Pence, said Democratic nominee Joe Biden has said he would "defund the police." In July, asked if whether he would support redirecting “some of the funding for police into social services, mental health counseling and affordable housing,” Biden said "absolutely."
• Speakers did not frequently mention the pandemic, but when they did, they "largely downplayed the threat or misstated the government’s response, as one lawmaker did when he said the administration 'authorized testing requests at blazing speed.' It did not," the Times reports.
• Pence, in an attempt to paint Trump as the stronger candidate on terrorism, said Biden opposed the 2011 mission that took out Osama bin Laden. The Times called that misleading, saying was more skeptical than other Obama-administration officials at the time, "saying that he opposed the raid outright is at best a selective interpretation of the available evidence."
• Pence also slammed recent-police brutality protests, and lamented the death of Dave Patrick Underwood, an officer in the Department of Homeland Security's Federal Protective Service who was killed in Oakland, Calif. He didn't mention that the man charged with killing Underwood was an Air Force sergeant who has been linked to the far-right, anti-government "boogaloo" movement, the Times reports.