Ex-President Donald Trump took the stage of a convention choreographed to soften his image, staged by a party he has captured. He dropped a hint of being humbled by an assassination attempt just five days ago. “I am here before you in this arena only by the grace of an almighty God,” he told a rapt audience.
In 92 minutes, however, initial grace turned to grievance, uplifting prose gave way to personal attacks (“crazy Nancy Pelosi”), praise for dictatorial rulers, partisan hyperbole (“They’re destroying our country”), and ceaseless self-praise.
Donald Trump is not a changed man. The Democrats, in disarray with party grandees and donors pressing for President Biden to drop his reelection bid, took away renewed hope from Trump’s speech. “My takeaway from this speech is that this guy is beatable: We just have to get our shit together,” former Obama speechwriter Tommy Vietor wrote on social media.
“Boring. Rambling. Liar,” was the three-word comment from California Gov. Gavin Newsom, whose onetime wife Kimberly Guilfoyle is now romantically linked to Donald Trump, Jr., who delivered a fiery red meat speech at the GOP convention.
Trump started up the high road. Had he quit at 25 minutes, pundits would have raved at a transformation akin to St. Paul being knocked off his horse. “In every citizen, whether you are young or old, man or woman, Democrat, Republican or independent, Black or white, Asian or Hispanic, I extend to you a hand of loyalty and friendship,” he told supporters.
What followed, however, was a reference to Covid-19 as “the China virus.” The lie of a stolen 2020 election was repeated: “They used Covid-19 to cheat.” Immigrants are “taking jobs from Blacks and Hispanics.” “We’ve become a dumping ground for the rest of the world,” Trump argued, words reminiscent of his first presidential inaugural speech nine years ago.
Speaking of “the greatest invasion in history, “Trump promised the greatest deportation in American history. He even riffed a reference to Dr. Hannibal Lector, the cannibal/psychiatrist villain from “The Silence of the Lambs.”
“We must not demonize dissent,” said Trump, excoriating the Justice Department under Attorney General Merrick Garland. He himself is the victim, argued Trump, who faces federal indictments for trying to overturn results of the 2020 election and was recently convicted of hiding a payoff to former porn star Stormy Daniels. “I am the one saving democracy for the people of this country,” Trump argued.
In almost the same breath, however, he was praising Hungary’s authoritarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, and boasting of his chummy relations with North Korea’s dictator Kim Jong Un. “I got along very well with him (Kim) . . . It’s nice to get along with somebody who has a lot of nuclear weapons.”
The Republican convention was a remarkable blend of grace and grievance. With the exception of a few old-guard moderates and conservative intelligentsia, the Republican Party has submitted to Trump. Such moderates as New York Rep. Mark Lawler were giving interviews on their intent to vote for Trump. Gold Star mothers, who lost sons in a terrorist bombing during the chaotic U.S. evacuation from Afghanistan, moved the convention and viewers at home. Trump played with his grandchildren in the VIP section, joined for a time by billionaire Miriam Adelson, widow of the casino mogul, who has pledge to invest as much as $100 million in the Republicans’ 2024 campaign.
Even spouse Melania Trump, the “Slovenian Sphinx,” put in her first appearance of the 2024 campaign, introduced with music from the third movement of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. She came on stage, appearing to surprise her husband, during the balloon drop on stage after his speech.
The humanizing of Trump, as family man and champion of traditional values, was for the nighttime network audience. Vice Presidential nominee Sen. J.D. Vance delivered a well-received acceptance speech on Wednesday night, promising to champion workers (“union and non-union”) against Wall Street barons, and talking about the violence and addiction in his own family.
But the convention was also designed to motivate the Trump base, hence afternoons full of partisan attacks. Second son Eric Trump inveighed against “male athletes . . . competing in women’s sports” and claiming that immigrants are living in pricey New York hotels while homeless veterans are on the streets. Deposed Fox News firebrand Tucker Carlson, a Trump insider, joked likening President Biden to a mannequin.
After a summer of record heat and violent storms in the United States and around the world, Trump railed against climate initiatives of the Biden Administration. He promised to end the electric vehicle “mandate” on “day one” of a second Trump administration. As for energy policy, “We will drill-baby-drill,” he promised. “We will do it at levels people have never seen before.” (Fact-check: America’s domestic energy production has reached record levels under the Biden Administration.)
At the Republican convention eight years ago, Trump declared that “Only I” could solve problems allegedly hamstringing the nation. The celebration of self was updated last night. The Russian invasion of Ukraine “would have never happened if I was president.” The murderous Hamas incursion into Israel “would never have happened.”
After multiple demonstrations of self-absorption, ego, and belief that he is a blessed one – “I felt very safe because I had God on my side” – he said after being nicked by an assassin’s bullet. Trump spoke to the assembled MAGA Faithful, “The movement has never been about me. It has been about you.”
Fact checkers are at work collecting and tabulating the exaggerations and falsehoods in Trump’s speech. They will find a treasure trove of both. After a record long litany of attacks and grievances, however, one lie stands out among the grievances above all others: “I am running to be president of all of America, not just half of America.”
This essay also appeared in The Cascadia Advocate.
Hard to revisit various punditery recaps of Trumps horrifying speech. Horrifying because the MAGA faithful sapped it up like hungry cows at evening feeding back at the barn. Joel’s recap was best and, frightening, at what it pulls out of the blather. Yet, once standoffish Republicans are now rushing into the abyss that Trump is offering. Get in line early for the goodies that will flow to richie rich.
Reminds me of the great line from the Eagle’s classic “California Hotel.”
“And in the master’s chambers, they gathered for the feast. They stabbed it their steely knives, but they can’t kill the beast … “
The beast, indeed, the masterful OT guy.