MILWAUKEE, WI — Did you watch Donald Trump’s speech at the Republican National Convention Thursday evening? I meant to, but drifted off—I think it was Eric Trump who finally put me to sleep. I dreamt of a world with two respected and competent candidates vying for the Presidency of the United States—and woke (small “w”) to the nightmare of Biden-Trump, the Sequel.
I began watching the speech Friday morning with a strange mixture of hope and fear. Hope that in the aftermath of the, thankfully, failed assassination attempt there would be a new Donald Trump. And fear, that in the aftermath of the failed assassination attempt, there would be a new Donald Trump—born of the old. Both my hopes and fears were realized.
In many ways it was two speeches—and two Donald Trumps. A kinder, gentler Trump began by calling for unity. “The discord and division in our society must be healed. We must heal it quickly. As Americans, we are bound together by a single fate and a shared destiny. We rise together. Or we fall apart,” he told the assembled delegates and party faithful. “I am running to be president for all of America, not half of America, because there is no victory in winning for half of America.”
“He opened his address by casting himself as a unifying figure, promising to bridge political divides he had long delighted in deepening. He mentioned President Biden by name only once,” wrote the New York Times Lisa Lerer and Michael C. Bender, “At brief moments, he struck tones more similar to President Barack Obama’s message of hope and healing than to the dark version of America that Mr. Trump described in accepting his first two Republican presidential nominations.”
Wow! Complimentary words from the New York Times, who in an editorial a week earlier had called him “unfit to lead.” They say near-death experiences can be life-changing, and the speech did begin on a hopeful note, but THAT life-changing? New York Times complimentary life-changing? As I mentioned in an earlier post, Trump had said that he had “ripped up” the acceptance speech he had planned to give before the assassination attempt and was planning a new speech to emphasize national unity.
Now unity for Trump might mean a lot of things. To the pre-assassination Trump, unity meant “agree with me, or else.” But the post-assassination Trump—the kinder-gentler Trump—said “I am here tonight to lay out a vision for the whole nation. To every citizen, whether you’re a 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 of friendship.”
For fans of “The Office,” it reminded me of when Dwight, suffering from a concussion, started being nice to Pam. But once the effects of the concussion wore off…well…so did the being nice to Pam. Enter the new Trump, same as the old Trump. The middle of the speech was pretty much pre-assassination Trump, and rather than extending a hand of friendship, he instead extended his middle finger.
Democrats aren’t “fierce” he said, except when “cheating on elections and a couple of other things,” the country is in the midst of an “invasion” that is “killing hundreds of thousands of people a year,” and illegal aliens are taking jobs away from hard-working Americans. “Today, our cities are flooded with illegal aliens. Americans are being squeezed out of the labor force and their jobs are taken,” he said. “By the way, you know who’s taking the jobs, the jobs that are created? One hundred and seven percent of those jobs are taken by illegal aliens.” I wasn’t a math major—but I’m pretty sure you can’t have one-hundred-seven percent of a fixed thing.
He referred to the US as a “dumping ground” for illegal aliens, and that while “our crime rate is going up…crime statistics all over the world are going down.” The wars in Ukraine and Israel “were not going to happen” if he had been President. “We have a great military,” he said. “Our military is not woke. It’s just some of the fools on top that are woke.”
It was pretty obvious that much of this part of the speech was off-script, though he stuck, clung even, to familiar themes—out-of-control immigration and inflation, the “failed” economy, the failure to project American power and influence throughout the world. “We have long been taken advantage of by other countries. And think of it, oftentimes these other countries are considered so-called allies. They’ve taken advantage of us for years,” he told the approving crowd.
But unlike many of his previous speeches and public utterances, Trump stayed away (mostly) from the ad hominin attacks that have become his signature style. Though replete with lots of self-congratulation and exaggeration, there were no “crooked Joe,” references—and he mentioned Biden by name only once. “[O]pen threats and nakedly vicious imagery were largely absent from his address,” the Times story said. “Still, in a speech designed to place a friendlier face on Trumpism, the former president couldn’t resist a handful of exaggerations and personal attacks on Democrats.”
But that’s what conventions, and convention speeches, are for—to whip up the party faithful, to prop yourself up, and to contrast yourself with your unworthy opponent. Yet much of the media criticism of Trump’s speech scolded him, as the Washington Post did, for “the same dark view of American decline and loathing for political opponents.”
Some in the media have short memories. In his 2020 acceptance speech, then nominee Biden referred to “this season of darkness in America,” warned that “America is at an inflection point, a time of real peril,” and said his administration would stop “cozying up to dictators.” He insinuated that the “current President” was a racist and that we “were in a battle for the soul of this nation.” I would call that a “dark view of American decline,” and a “loathing” for his political opponent. But at the time the very same Washington Post described Biden’s acceptance speech as a “a call to optimism at a time of national fear,” as Democrats “portrayed their struggle against President Trump as a battle against a dark force with American democracy hanging in the balance.”
Preach to the choir, or to the disbelievers?
Trump didn’t do himself any favors with his meandering ad-libbing though. The Wall Street Journal reported that for extended periods Trump’s teleprompter was turned off—and that was the section of the speech that was most roundly criticized, even by the right-leaning media. “Republicans in Milwaukee put on a first-rate and unified show this week, and the question for Donald Trump was whether he could cap it off with a speech that would broaden his political appeal,” said the Wall Street Journal. “He met the moment for about 30 minutes before devolving into a rambling stump speech that probably had many Americans heading for bed.”
I wouldn’t have known, since I was already asleep in my utopian dreamworld. But I’ve come to realize that it was unrealistic to hope that Trump would be a completely changed man—that’s probably too much to ask. But it’s not unfair to say that a good portion of his speech was much different then I would have expected before the assassination attempt. Back on track—and back on the teleprompter—Trump, the Gentle, returned to where he had started. “We must now come together, rise above past differences,” he said. “Tonight, I ask for your partnership, for your support and I am humbly asking for your vote.”
I know that many will scoff, incredulous that Trump could ever humbly ask for anything—or that post-assassination Trump is different in any meaningful way from pre-assassination Trump. Russ Douthat, writing in the New York Times, says he agrees with William Kristol—no fan of Trump—that Trump “came across as more self-indulgent than scary, more boring than terrifying, more undisciplined than dangerous.” Duothat said that it was “not a speech that gave ammunition to liberals warning about a Trumpian dictatorship or a radical right-wing lurch.” Perhaps the pre-assassination Trump has already given them enough ammunition. Instead, Duothat wrote, the speech was “an incredible waste of a political opportunity.”
To my mind, that it was. Trump didn’t need to preach to the choir as much as he needed to convert the disbelievers—to reach out rather than to push away. It was, even after an assassination attempt, perhaps unrealistic to expect Trump to completely abandon his nature. And given the Biden campaign’s self-immolation, maybe it won’t matter—in terms of the election—that Trump may have “wasted” an opportunity to reach out to distrusting voters.
But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t matter.