BALTIMORE: US vice president Mike Pence took center stage at the Republican convention Wednesday to warn voters they “won’t be safe in Joe Biden’s America” — casting Donald Trump as their protector against the “radical” left.

Pence was the keynote speaker in a parade of Trump acolytes who sought to uplift the president as an economic virtuoso and champion of conservative and pro-life values, law enforcement and civil rights.

They also spoke of dark forces intent on ending the American dream, and said losing to their Democratic rivals is not an option.

“Law and order is on the ballot,” Pence stressed on the third night of a convention overshadowed by violent unrest in Wisconsin and the approach of Hurricane Laura to the southern US coast.

He addressed the event from Fort McHenry in Baltimore, the site of an 1814 British bombardment that inspired the poem later turned into the US national anthem, “The Star-Spangled Banner.”

With that backdrop, Pence made the patriotic case for Trump getting a second term instead of allowing the nation to be “fundamentally transformed” by a Biden administration he warned would take an uncharted path towards socialism and mob rule.

“The hard truth is, you won’t be safe in Joe Biden’s America,” said the 61-year-old Pence. Pence’s address came amid a new flare-up of racial tensions in the United States, with protests spreading over the latest police shooting of an African-American man, Jacob Blake, in Kenosha, Wisconsin.