Retired Allegheny County, state judge praises Donald Trump in Tuesday's RNC broadcast

Retired Superior Court Judge Cheryl Allen of Hampton was among a half dozen “ordinary Americans” who offered testimonials to President Donald Trump during Tuesday night’s Republican National Convention.

A portion of a video that featured conversations with Vice President Mike Pence included Allen. The segment also included testimonials from five others: a pair of mothers — one with a terminally ill child who was given a chance to access new drugs through the “Right to Try” Act and a working mother who was able to access school vouchers for her son — an Ohio truck driver who hailed Trump’s intervention in a plant closing, a Honduran immigrant whose business received a Paycheck Protection loan and a Tulsa pastor who runs a child care program for inner city children.

Allen, 73, a former Allegheny County Common Pleas Court judge, in 2007 became the first black woman elected to the Pennsylvania Superior Court. She met Pence in June when he visited the Covenant Church in Wilkinsburg to talk with church leaders as Black Lives Matter protests swept the region and nation in the wake of George Floyd’s death at the hands of a white Minneapolis police officer.

Introducing the retired jurist, Pence hailed her accomplishments.

“It’s because of leaders like Judge Allen that our nation has overcome our greatest challenges,” he said.

“In this time of racial division in the country, do you see faith and values and the strong stand that President Trump has taken for equality of opportunity as a pathway toward bringing the country together? “ Pence asked.

Allen responded that she didn’t know much about Trump in 2016, but said he has won her over.

“I know what racism feels like, but I also know that but for my being in this country I would’ve never been able to achieve the things that I have been able to achieve,” Allen said. “There are injustices, but the way to deal with those injustices is for people to sit down across the table and talk and come up with solutions. I do believe that President Trump is committed to that.”

Allen wasn’t the only local tie that was part of Tuesday’s RNC broadcast.

Eric Trump, one of the president’s sons, invoked Pittsburgh in his primetime speech.

“The Silent Majority had no one fighting for them — in either party,” Eric Trump said. “Their so called leaders were bowing to China, bribing Iran and spending more time worrying about how they were received by the elites in Paris — than how Americans would provide for their families in Pittsburgh.”

In 2017, Trump also mentioned Pittsburgh in a speech — one explaining his decision not to participate in the Paris Climate Accord.

“I was elected to represent the citizens of Pittsburgh, not Paris,” the president said then.

The comment drew sharp rebuke from Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto.

Other highlights from Tuesday’s RNC — an evening that culminated in First Lady Melania Trump’s much anticipated Rose Garden speech — included a presidential pardon for an ex-con from Nevada who runs a successful prisoner re-entry program and a naturalization ceremony in which with President Trump, who has made halting illegal immigration a keystone of his administration, welcomed five new Americans.