It was supposed to be a kinder, gentler Donald Trump accepting the Republic nomination for president.
Surviving an assassination attempt had made him a new man, we were led to believe. Newly humbled by his close brush with death, he was supposed to have torn up the vitriolic speech he was originally going to deliver. Instead, he would give a “unity speech,” one designed to heal the political divisiveness tearing the country apart.
That lasted for, oh, around 15 minutes or so.
The speech began innocently enough, with Trump announcing, “The discord and division in our society must be healed.”
“We rise together or we fall apart,” he went on, sounding like Abraham Lincoln, the president to whom he favorably compares himself so often. “I am running to be president of all of America, not half of America.”
So far, so good.
Then he began milking the details of the attempt on his life, speaking in the soft tones of a country minister. “I had God on my side,” he told the crowd, which probably surprised him as much as us. “I’m not supposed to be here tonight,” he continued.
“I will tell you exactly what happened,” he said, as if we hadn’t seen the footage of the assassination attempt roughly a thousand times. “And you will never hear it from me a second time because it’s too painful to tell,” he went on, clearly relishing reliving it. He proceeded to recount the event in minute detail, including the fact that he wasn’t killed only because he happened to turn his head. To look at a chart extolling his accomplishments on the border, naturally.
He paid moving tribute to Corey Comperatore, who died attempting to protect his family. And then he made even that tacky in his inimitable way, by displaying the volunteer firefighter’s uniform and kissing his helmet, in much the same way that he hugs American flags.
And then, after reminding us that he was the one “saving democracy for the people of this country,” he went off script, reminding the crowd of his opening acts. “How good was Dana?” he asked, referring to Dana White, the CEO of Ultimate Fighting Championship. “How ‘bout the Hulkster?” he enthused, referring to Hulk Hogan, who earlier in the evening had dignified the event by ripping off his shirt to reveal a “Trump/Vance” red tank top. Suddenly, he wasn’t the potential 47th president of the United States but the emcee of a Friars Roast.
As Trump’s advisers probably began tearing their hair out and Democratic strategists slowly began crawling off their ledges, Trump proceeded to deliver his greatest hits like a Lynyrd Skynyrd cover band. The crowd cheered the shout-outs to “Crazy Nancy Pelosi,” the “Green New Scam,” the “China virus,” the “late, great Hannibal Lecter who’d love to have you for dinner,” the gruesome details of horrific crimes committed by “Illegal immigrants,” the “stolen election,” and the “invasion that’s killing hundreds of thousands of people a year.”
“Our planet is teetering on the verge of World War III,” he proclaimed, and that was one of the most optimistic things he said all night. He presented such a vividly terrifying portrait of America as a post-apocalyptic wasteland that overburdened suicide hotlines were probably unable to handle the volume of calls.
It was Trump as you either love him or hate him, utterly unchanged despite the token nods to religiosity. He rambled on for 90 more minutes, until after the clock struck midnight on the East Coast and many viewers had wisely given up watching, even out of morbid curiosity, and gone to bed. By the time he finished, even the folks in the hall — who for four days had acted with such unrelieved giddiness you’d think nitrous oxide was being pumped into the arena — were starting to look glassy-eyed.
It was the fittingly ignominious end to an evening that was more a celebration of testosterone than a political event. Needless to say, such GOP luminaries as Bush, Cheney (Dick or Liz), Romney and Pence were no-shows, clearly unwelcome at what should have been called the Trump National Convention.
Instead, we were treated to speeches by the likes of Tucker Carlson, who seemed to be winging it as if he was still rambling for hours every night on Fox; evangelist Franklin Graham, who prayed for God to give Trump wisdom (even he seemed skeptical); Alina Habba, Trump’s attorney, because he never knows when a subpoena might be served; and Kid Rock, who performed his signature brand of country/rap/rock while declaring Trump to be a “real American badass.”
The sorry line-up smacked less of one of America’s two political parties than the cast of a red state reboot of Hollywood Squares.
