“We can never allow mob rule,” said the man who styles himself after mob bosses, consorts with criminals, and sniffs at obeying the law. Donald Trump’s greatest incentive for running for a second term is to stay a few steps ahead of it. His Republican National Convention acceptance speech Thursday night avoided that topic.
As usual, the more the acting president’s lips move, the more lies he tells. His lips moved quite a lot during Thursday night’s convention address. He spoke for over an hour, and read mostly from the teleprompter in that familiar Trump drone.
The speech itself was a tedious pastiche. The usual white grievance and bragging, plus the worst misty-mist and dusky-dusk writing ever uttered by a president this side of a banana republic. A sample: “Our American ancestors sailed across the perilous ocean to build a new life on a new continent. They braved the freezing winters, crossed the raging rivers, scaled the rocky peaks, trekked the dangerous forests, and worked from dawn till dusk.”
There was plenty of self-congratulations and fear mongering, naturally. “No one will be safe in Biden’s America,” he said, ignoring the fact that under his mismanagement the COVID-19 virus has killed over 180,000 and sickened nearly 6 million. Also unmentioned: the hundreds of dead and wounded mowed down on his watch by mass shooters in Las Vegas and Pittsburgh.
Daniel Dale afterwards provided an abbreviated summary of the false and misleading statements:
Like the speech, musical selections were a pastiche of styles from Lee Greenwood to Puccini. Even Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” (multiple times). “Fitting, since Trump’s election killed him (Cohen died the night he was elected),” a Twitter follower wrote.
Jimmy Breslin once described Rudy Giuliani as “a small man in search of a balcony.” (The former New York mayor delivered a speech last night taped in an empty auditorium.) Trump found himself a larger balcony, although he did not deliver his speech from it. Not yet.
What the acting president said was unimportant. The staging was the message: the White House, flanked by illuminated Trump-Pence displays and Hatch Act be damned. Over 1,500 packed onto the South Lawn with few precautions in sight:
The overwhelming majority of guests were not administered rapid coronavirus tests, Trump campaign and convention officials said, despite their relative proximity to the president and other White House officials. A White House official said it was logistically unfeasible to test such a large number of people.
Two attendees said in interviews that they were not offered tests and were not even put through a more basic screening, such as being questioned whether they had any symptoms, such as coughs, or taking their temperature. They spoke on the condition of anonymity to talk frankly.
Trump began riffing late in the speech, reprising lines he’d spoken earlier. It was if the teleprompter was running on a loop or Trump was performing in a bad musical review.
Only Robert Altman or Stanley Kubrick could top the dark satire of the Trump presidency. *
This election will determine where it ends or how far Trump will go.
A footnote to the speech. After not shutting down the economy, after not insisting people wear masks, and after hawking miracle cures and dragging out the epidemic where other countries have gotten control, Trump insists schools reopen so parents can get back to work resuscitating the economy before November.
The New York Times reports this morning:
Last week in Ohio, officials found Legionella at five schools in an assortment of towns. On Friday, a district in Pennsylvania also announced it had found Legionella at four of its schools.
That’s. Just. Great.
* Update: Heather Cox Richardson has a more optimistic take on how ere meet the future, even in the White House last night “looked like a Biff Tannen fantasy.”
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