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July 19, 2024 10:40 AM UTC

Trump Throws Dems Another Lifeline By Being Trump

  • 23 Comments
  • by: Colorado Pols
Now and forever.

The Republican National Convention in Milwaukee wrapped up last night as former President Donald Trump accepted his third consecutive presidential nomination, with a speech that set a new record for the longest presidential nomination acceptance speech in history–beating the previous two records that were both set by Trump in 2016 and 2020.

After the failed assassination attempt last Saturday against Trump, his campaign encouraged the spread of the notion that the experience had fundamentally changed him, sufficiently that Trump claimed to have scrapped the acceptance speech he originally composed in favor of something more “unifying.” Throughout the week leading up to Trump’s address last night, the speculation over what this “New Trump” would sound like ran wild.

But as AP’s David Bauder reports, after days of voluminous hype about the “changed man” America would allegedly meet on Thursday night, what America got after a relatively on-script play-by-play of the assassination attempt was the same Donald Trump who spent the last eight years dividing the country like no President in modern American history ever has:

Trump’s speech had been billed as a call to unity where President Joe Biden’s name wasn’t going to be mentioned, but instead the Democrat’s name came up twice after Trump switched gears. Vanity Fair said the address “gave America whiplash.”

NBC News reporter Garrett Haake, stationed on the convention floor, reported that “in the first half I saw a lot of wet eyes. In the second half I saw a lot of closed eyes.”

The New York Times said in a headline Friday that Trump had struggled to turn the page on “American carnage,” the attention-getting phrase from his 2017 inaugural as president. “On the last night of the GOP convention on Thursday, Donald J. Trump promised to bridge political divides, and then returned to delighting in deepening them.”

Elder pundit Jeff Greenfield writing at Politico says Trump “derailed his own convention speech.”

Some Republican allies had claimed he had become a changed man after the assassination attempt. The Trump campaign promised a convention that promoted unity. Trump himself said he ripped up his original speech and that he wouldn’t even mention by name his opponent President Joe Biden. None of it was true; Trump couldn’t help himself, not completely…

But more significant, that shooting had no impact at all on the remainder of his meandering and occasionally bizarre speech. Except for one statement that “we must not demonize political disagreements” — a hilarious assertion coming from someone who has urged a military tribunal for one critic and an execution for another, and for whom terms like “vermin” for his enemies are par for the course — the rest of his speech did not reflect a single authentic note of reflection, not a hint that he had given a moment’s thought to a wider, more profound message for the American people. He blasted Biden by name, if just once, and called former Speaker Nancy Pelosi “crazy.”

Even the New York Times’ equivocator of record David Brooks couldn’t defend it:

There is no cure for narcissism. The part after the assassination-attempt story was one of the truly awful and self-indulgent political performances of our time. [Pols emphasis] My brain has been bludgeoned into soporific exhaustion.

With one speech that held true to the notion of a “New Trump” for about 30 minutes before devolving into Trump’s standard impromptu rambling only occasionally interrupted by the prepared text on the teleprompter, Trump appears to have both talked his way out of much of the goodwill he earned from the events of last Saturday, as well as significantly undermined the argument that Trump is mentally sound enough to serve again as president. Few politicians in history have been given such a golden opportunity to pivot from divisive demagogue to unifying statesman, and after being hyped as precisely that moment in history, Trump completely failed to deliver.

Because it’s just not who Trump is. In or out of office, Trump is America’s divider-in-chief.

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23 thoughts on “Trump Throws Dems Another Lifeline By Being Trump”

      1. Yeah fair enough … it was a bit harsh (I do take the time and effort to actually read Brooks columns when I come across them) … but 'twas all in fun!

        1. cgrandits – I just meant what pols said about Brooks, i.e. "equivocator of record" was a bit harsh. He's a pretty thoughtful guy IMHO. Cheers.

          1. Yeah, he has long been one of the least objectionable of the GOP talking heads. I believe he is a decent and honest man. I must say, , he always seems somewhat tortured by his association with the Republicans.

            A nice chap, though…and very well spoken.

    1. When I saw the Hulk on TV last night, I knew it was time to look for a movie on Netflix.

      Those three stooges wise men of the MAGA Movement: Hulk Hogan, Kid Rock and Dana White.

      Auditioning for cabinet positions next year.

      1. You are missing the point of Peter Thiel's involvement. He doesn't want to change out secretaries in government offices or get a more conservative presidency. He's going to completely obliterate our current world to build a more "true" world. 

        Take for example sports: https://enhanced.org/

    2. Those who read the NYT story JNoD shared until the end will also notice a link between Thiel and J.D. Vance, who as we know could find himself one heartbeat away from the Presidency. Probably nothing to see here, though.

      1. Peter Thiel, JD Vance and Blake Masters are three peas in a pod.

        These three plus Elon Musk are the future of the MAGA Movement after You-Know-Who is gone.

        1. MAGA won’t exist. You’re thinking is far too limited. 

          Also at the Republican convention speaking was David O. Sacks. Thiel wrote The Diversity Myth with Sacks published in ’95. Condoleezze Rice called them jokes. The conservative culture is different now, the Republican party is different now. 

          “Doing what someone else already knows how to do takes the world from 1 to n, adding more of something familiar. But when you do something new, you go from 0 to 1.” Zero to One Peter Thiel and Blake Masters

          Everything I’ve read points to a far different desire than to be politicians. 

    4. here's hoping the Democrats are able to raise an equivalent burst of laughter to the "bloody shirt" political speech of the Reconstruction Era. 

      Why would any candidate want someone ripping off a shirt to reveal a tee-shirt bearing his name? 

      Who among those who are not among the Trump-voting deplorables will be persuaded by anything Hulk Hogan has to say about national politics?

      Granted, it is slightly more amusing than speaker Clint Eastwood holding a mock conversation with President Obama, represented by an empty chair.

      1. Why would any candidate want someone ripping off a shirt to reveal a tee-shirt bearing his name? 

        They need men, over 40, who have been sexually embarrassed and have a racial animus. 

        Who among those who are not among the Trump-voting deplorables will be persuaded by anything Hulk Hogan has to say about national politics?

        Males over 40 politically disinterested who feel that their masculinity has been rejected. 

        It's strength and impotence wrapped up in vengeance. 

  3. We're not out of bones yet!! The Peter Principle will be "maximum Covfefe'' if this gigantic turd floats any closer to you top of the punch bowl. 
     

  4. So, she hasn't even been elected to her new congressional district yet, but that hasn't kept her from planning to vacate the seat and triggering yet another special election.

    Greg Lopez, you may not want to unpack your bags when you return to Parker in January.

    And Michael, your cousin Trent may get another bite at the apple!

    1. Perhaps! (he’s a nephew-in-law via my kids mother so I’m not sure how all this terminology works post-divorce but most of them still call me Uncle Mike! His MAGA fetish aside he’s still a good kid, a prisoner of the cult.  I hope to gawd he’s not wearing an earpon in solidarity with you-know-who)

      1. "he’s still a good kid, a prisoner of the cult."

        I have some Trump supporters in my family, too. And I have had to deal with some MAGA believers in my job.

        I have found that when you already know them, or get to know them, most are not the freaks depicted on TV (think Jacob Chansley dressed in full Viking drag) but well-meaning people who are seriously misguided but also very frustrated at what they perceive is a world that is changing too fast for their comfort and with which they are having trouble keeping up.

        And others are just plain old racists, xenophobes, homophobes and transphobes.

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