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Despite a tsunami of hatred coming at him, Donald J.Trump accepted the renomination by the Republican National Convention for President of the United States at the White House. He promised to rebuild the economy, defend the country from all threat, and lead America to new heights of discovery. He was the Donald J. Trump who just doesn’t care what anyone says about him.
In the age of the Coronavirus, it would have been difficult and unwieldy for President Trump to give his speech at any other location, but that didn’t stop many news outlets, including Vox from kvetching about the unseemliness:
Trump shredded norms and laws like the Hatch Act that have restrained previous presidents from using public property as a political prop, and delivered his speech from the White House. The result was gauche images of “TRUMP/PENCE” signs on property that isn’t supposed to belong to any political party.
While the president and vice president are technically immune from the Hatch Act, federal employees who helped stage the RNC are not. But on a deeper level, the decision to hold a political convention at the White House is an affront to the principle that it’s wrong for elected officials to use their offices for campaigning.
The speech was overlong (about 70 minutes) and Trump was constrained by the teleprompter. You can read the transcript here. If you didn’t see the speech last night, here is the full video:
Amy Klobuchar, not known for her sense of humor, tweeted:
Get off our lawn.
— Amy Klobuchar (@amyklobuchar) August 28, 2020
Way to win over the rest of America, Amy.
I said that Donald J. Trump was constrained by the teleprompter and he was. Trump is at his best when he is off the cuff and feeding off of the crowd. There were some great moments in the speech:
We must reclaim our independence from the left’s repressive mandates. Americans are exhausted trying to keep up with the latest list of approved words and phrases, and the ever-more restrictive political decrees. Many things have a different name now, and the rules are constantly changing. The goal of cancel culture is to make decent Americans live in fear of being fired, expelled, shamed, humiliated, and driven from society as we know it. The far-left wants to coerce you into saying what you know to be FALSE, and scare you out of saying what you know to be TRUE.
Donald J. Trump has been and will be a disrupter. He tells the unvarnished truth that many of us have longed to hear. The CNN political analyst wrote:
The President railed over looted and burned “Democrat” cities as though they were suffering sudden instability for no reason. He made no connection with the despair of African Americans over years of killings by Black men in instances of police brutality — or the emotional toll of the death of George Floyd in Minnesota and the shooting of Jacob Blake in Wisconsin during his convention.
No. It’s very clear to about 50% of us that the “Democrat” cities are not suffering from sudden instability. They are suffering from 40 years of Democrat rule that has gutted them.
The CNN analyst did pick up on Trump’s flat teleprompter delivery:
Trump, who at times appeared bored with his own unusual self-discipline in sticking to the script, reeled off lists of promises kept — including benches worth of conservative judges, new trade deals, a tough new line on China, the withdrawal from the Iran and climate deals and the freeing of fossil fuels from Obama-era regulations.
Trump is at his best when he is on the fly. The thinking behind the teleprompter speech may have been to win over the undecideds, but the speech was largely uninspiring. Of course, following Ann Dorn, the widow of retired police chief David Dorn, would be difficult. Her package on her husband was gut-wrenching. Our Nina wrote about it and you can read it here.
The Republican National Convention ended with a fireworks display by the Grucci family that was explosive. Bad joke.
The next two months of the battle between Donald J. Trump and Joseph R. Biden will be nasty and exhausting. Gird your loins.
Featured Image: Darleen Click for Victory Girls
GWB says: it would have been difficult and unwieldy for President Trump to give his speech at any other location
He should have given it from that bunker in West Virginia. The one no one knew about until about 15 years ago.
And he should have publicly announced that location beforehand, so we could witness the theater of all the ‘protesters’ and newsies having to trek out there and stand around outside with not a Starbucks in sight.
Mar-a-Lago was floated at one point as an alternative. In which case, we’d be hearing screams of “Emoluments Clause, Emoluments Clause” all through the convention.
Democrats tried to set up a “heads, we win, tails you lose” situation – and the coin landed sideways for them. A good-sized crowd of people for the last night at the RNC (most of whom were proudly NOT partaking in the CoViD hysteria) – and the DNC had to copy and paste to get more than a dozen on their big screen.
Mimi says: Trump has never been at his best from a TP. Nothing new. For better or for worse, this is likely to be a wash. But the other speakers were excellent.
Btw – Trump’s speech at Rushmore and after the death of GF were both better than his usual, when it comes to TP speeches.
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