WASHINGTON, DC, United States (AFP) — President Donald Trump will seek to revive his re-election hopes this week at the Republican Party’s largely online convention, battered by the coronavirus pandemic, economic troubles, racial unrest and polls pointing to an uphill fight.

Trump and his top aides strived over the weekend to put an optimistic spin on the convention as he prepared to head North Carolina to formally launch the four-day event today.

“I think we’re going to see something that is going to be very uplifting and positive, that’s what I’d like it to be,” the president told Fox News.

He sought to draw a sharp contrast to the just-ended Democratic convention, which he has called the “darkest, angriest and gloomiest” in history.

Republicans, facing polls that give Democrat Joe Biden an eight- to 10-point lead, were also hoping for a boost from a planned Trump announcement yesterday on an advance in the fight against the coronavirus pandemic, which has claimed more than 175,000 lives across the country.

The coming convention appears to be a highly Trump-centric affair — with the president appearing, unusually, on each of the four days — and with some speakers seen as intentionally provocative.

The schedule includes a Missouri couple who pointed guns at anti-racist protesters marching past their mansion in June — an image that quickly went viral.

And Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is set to deliver a speech tomorrow in support of Trump during an official visit to Israel.

Such a directly political intervention by the nation’s top diplomat while abroad would be highly unusual.

Moreover, the president plans to deliver his acceptance speech Thursday from the lawn of the White House, shrugging off criticism over the use of the presidential residence for campaign purposes.

Charlotte, North Carolina, is where the party originally planned to hold its convention before the pandemic intervened, forcing first a shift to Florida and then a quick reimagining of the event as mostly virtual.

A few hundred Republican supporters are slated to gather in Charlotte to hear Trump speak today, but Republican Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel insisted that the gathering was being handled safely.

“We tested everybody before they came to Charlotte. We have been testing people on-site,” she told NBC.

Convention speakers include former Ambassador Nikki Haley and Donald Trump Jr today; First Lady Melania Trump and Pompeo tomorrow; and Vice-President Mike Pence on Wednesday.

While Democrats heard from all living former Democratic presidents as well as former presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and John Kerry, former Republican President George W Bush is not expected to appear. Bush has been a critic of Trump’s.

The event comes only four days after the Democrats — in a history-making all-virtual convention of their own — formally crowned former Vice-President Biden as the party’s presidential candidate.

Trump, whose rise from New York real estate mogul to political prominence was boosted by his reality TV show The Apprentice, has turned to two of the programme’s producers to help with convention planning, according to reports.

The Republicans’ effort is expected to incorporate more live broadcasting — an approach holding both opportunity and risk — than the Democratic event.