Cedar Springs man speaks at Republican National Convention

With the Republican National Convention underway, there is no shortage of speeches to listen to. On Monday, one of the people to take the stage was a retiree from Cedar Springs, and he went on just after Donald Trump came to the convention floor.

“I'm not a senator or a governor or some other politician, but I'm just a regular guy,” said Mark Laws from the RNC stage.

He got the chance to speak at the RNC convention Monday. "Prices keep going up, but my income stays the same," he said during his speech. "I just keep putting things off hoping that I'll be able to afford them again someday.”

Last Thursday, Laws received a phone call from the Trump campaign asking if he was available to talk at the convention.

“They said, 'Well, we want you to go to Milwaukee,' and I went, 'Really? You want me to go to Milwaukee.' ... So we talked a little bit about what they wanted me to do, and I said, 'Hey, I'd be happy to do whatever,'” said Laws.

His speech was about challenges he and other older people are facing.

Thirty minutes before he took the stage, he found out that he would be the first speaker after Donald Trump and his new VP nominee, J.D. Vance, were introduced.

“I got up there, and I was having a little bit of a hard time kind of keeping ... keeping myself under control. And I had to kind of wait a minute and kind of put my hand up so people didn't see me kind of, you know, making a funny face or whatever. But yeah, that was ... that was a very ... I was nervous. And then really nervous when I found out it was Trump,” said Laws.

Even though he didn’t get to meet the former president, he has been meeting and networking with a lot of other Republicans and was glad people got to hear him talk.

Laws said, “We got to keep the principles of freedom and liberty and whatnot that's made us great.”

Laws says he was glad for the opportunity and plans to keep meeting with other Republicans for the rest of the convention.

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