Louis Capozzi | Trump's Penn alum children appear in Cleveland

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Penn alumni rocked Cleveland last night.

On a night where marquee politicians like Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell, and Chris Christie were addressing the RNC in Cleveland, two Penn alumni stole the spotlight.

Tiffany Trump, who just graduated with the College’s Class of 2016, effectively made her debut as a political figure on Tuesday night. Tiffany acknowledged this, saying, “When I graduated college a couple of months ago, I never expected to be here tonight addressing the nation. I've given a few speeches in front of classrooms of students, but never in an arena with more than ten million people watching.”

And considering that her public speaking has mostly been limited to Penn classrooms, she came off well. Tiffany provided a compelling character reference for her controversial father, calling him a “strong, protective, kind, and endearing man.”

More importantly, Tiffany showed the softer side of her father, who is famous for this tough persona and telling hopeful people, “You’re fired.” As a father, Donald wrote sweet notes of encouragement on Tiffany’s report cards, “not even focusing on the letter grades themselves.” Furthermore, he always checked in on her mother’s family and was there for her when a close friend passed away, she said.

In short, Tiffany Trump painted a picture of kind, loving father. For a recent Penn grad making her national debut, she delivered a persuasive piece of political rhetoric.

But the media was almost universally more impressed with the other Penn grad speaking on Tuesday, Donald Trump Jr, who graduated from Wharton in 2000.

Like Tiffany, Donald Jr. provided a character reference for his father as down-to-earth businessman who spent as much time with construction workers as business executives. Trump Jr. expounded on his father’s affinity to blue-collar workers, saying,” He listened to them and he valued their opinions as much and often more than the guys from Harvard and Wharton locked away in offices away from the real work.”

Indeed, the Penn alum repeatedly distanced himself from his elite Wharton degree, saying, “We didn’t learn from MBAs, we learned from people who had doctorates in common sense.”

Then, Trump Jr. did what his father consistently fails to do. Without meandering to irrelevant personal trivia, He tossed red meat generally consistent with conservative orthodoxy to the crowd. On education, he accused Democrats of being “more concerned about protecting the jobs of tenured teachers than serving the students in desperate need of a good education.” He called the Dodd-Frank financial regulations “consumer protection for billionares” and denounced Hillary Clinton as the potential “first president who couldn’t pass a basic background check.”

Politico, Salon, MSNBC, and several other news outlets praised Trump Jr’s speech as the best of the night. CNN’s David Chalian reported that several prominent Republican operatives are mentioning Trump Jr. as a talented prospect to run for political office himself in the future. Even once the 2016 election is over, I suspect we’ll be hearing about Donald Trump Jr. for a long time.

Without a doubt, Tuesday was a big day for Penn.