What we learned from Night 1 of the Trump Show

RNC 2020: a two-hour glimpse into the upside-down world of Trump TV

 

The president promised ‘uplifting and positive’, but what viewers got was a dystopian vision under Biden – with racist overtones

 

David Smith in Washington

@smithinamerica

Tue 25 Aug 2020 05.49 BST

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/aug/24/trump-rnc-2020-kimberly-guilfoyle-racist-radical

 

There was once a theory that Donald Trump’s first run for president was a merely a stunt to help him launch his own TV network. On Monday the world finally got two and a half ghoulish hours of Trump TV. It was a lesson in the medium’s power in the art of make believe, especially of the Soviet kind.

 

The first night of the Trump national convention – sorry, Republican national convention – was proof how the 166-year-old party of Lincoln, Eisenhower and Reagan has become a personality cult. Speaker after speaker paid homage to the absolute monarch as if competing to outdo one another for obsequious sycophancy.

 

There is no Republican policy platform this year other than “the party’s strong support for President Donald Trump and his administration”.

 

Trump TV had two other crucial components. One was the type of propaganda that would make Fox News blush and had fact checkers scrambling, for example a selectively edited video segment on the coronavirus pandemic that trashed Democrats, claimed, “One leader took decisive action to save lives,” and made no reference to Trump’s repeated predictions that the virus will “just disappear” nor his suggestion that patients be injected with disinfectant.

 

Only on the upside down Trump TV channel could a Covid-19 death toll of more than 175,000 – far higher than any other country in the world – be an argument for reelection.

 

The other predictable theme was pornographic scaremongering about Democratic candidate Joe Biden and – in an endlessly repeated phrase – “the radical left”. Despite Trump’s promise that the evening’s programming would contain “something very uplifting and positive”, speakers portrayed the prospect of a Biden victory as the stuff of dystopian nightmares, sometimes with racist overtones.

 

Charlie Kirk, 26, of the student group Turning Point USA, set the tone early on by describing Trump as “the bodyguard of western civilisation” under mortal threat. But it was Kimberly Guilfoyle, partner of Trump’s son Don Jr and former Fox News host, who stole the show with a high-octane audition for Evita – without an audience.

 

Standing in Washington’s cavernous Andrew W Mellon Auditorium, scene of Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin’s wedding in 2018, Guilfoyle screamed into the void about Biden and his running mate Kamala Harris: “They want to destroy this country and everything we have fought for and hold dear. They want to steal your liberty, your freedom. They want to control what you see and think and believe so that they can control how you live.

 

“They want to enslave you to the weak, dependent, liberal victim ideology to the point where you will not recognize this country or yourself.”

 

It was about as different as could be imagined from Michelle Obama’s calm, intimate address exactly one week earlier at the Democratic address. But it had a similarly dramatic message: whereas Obama and her husband framed the election as Trump versus democracy, the Republican pitch this week is America versus socialism.

 

Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, the last speaker of the night, said: “Joe Biden’s radical Democrats are trying to permanently transform what it means to be an American.

 

“Make no mistake: Joe Biden and Kamala Harris want a cultural revolution. A fundamentally different America. If we let them … they will turn our country into a socialist utopia … and history has taught us that path only leads to pain and misery, especially for hard-working people hoping to rise.”

 

This was spoken in a tone more moderate than Guilfoyle’s so may have been more convincing to some. It also came from the only African American Republican in the Senate. There was a very obvious effort all night to counter charges that Trump is racist.

 

Former football player Herschel Walker, who is African American said: “It hurt my soul to hear the terrible names that people called Donald: The worst one is ‘racist’. I take it as a personal insult that people would think I’ve had a 37-year friendship with a racist. People who think that don’t know what they’re talking about. Growing up in the deep south, I’ve seen racism up close. I know what it is. And it isn’t Donald Trump.”

 

There were also contributions from Black Trump supporters Kim Klacik, a Maryland congressional candidate, and Georgia state representative Vernon Jones. In another counter-punch, Nikki Haley, the former ambassador to the UN, told how she was the proud daughter of Indian immigrants. “In much of the Democratic party, it’s now fashionable to say that America is racist. That is a lie. America is not a racist country.”

 

Such efforts were undermined, however, by Mark and Patty McCloskey, a white couple who waved guns at Black Lives Matter protesters outside their home in St Louis, Missouri. Their job was to voice Trump’s racist obsession with America’s suburbs, supposedly being under threat of invasion, violent crime and total destruction.

 

Sitting in a faux European medieval mansion, they knew how to push buttons. Mark warned: “The radicals are not content just marching in the streets. They want to walk the halls of Congress. They want power. This is Joe Biden’s party. These are the people who will be in charge.”

 

Patty addded: “They are not satisfied with spreading the chaos and violence into our communities, they want to abolish the suburbs altogether by ending single-family home zoning. This forced rezoning would bring crime, lawlessness and low-quality apartments into thriving suburban neighborhoods. President Trump smartly ended this government overreach, but Joe Biden wants to bring it back.

 

“These are the policies that are coming to a neighborhood near you. So make no mistake: no matter where you live, your family will not be safe in the radical Democrats’ America.”

 

Republicans struggled with the pandemic-enforced virtual format more than Democrats. Shots of Trump supporters in every state had a rushed look as if hastily commissioned in response to the Democrats’ moving roll call last week.

 

There was soaring music and clips of monuments and memorials glowing at sunset and yet more stars and stripes. Whereas Biden was seen last week at virtual roundtables with guests on TV screens, Trump was able to host Covid-19 front line workers and freed hostages in the grand setting of the White House (they did not wear masks and barely physically distanced).

 

But the speeches, delivered in that empty auditorium with six colossal fluted Roman doric columns and draped in giant stars and stripes, rang hollow without the “Make America great again” crowd cheers, chanting and, of course, booing of perceived enemies.

 

Trump Jr, who feeds off crowd adulation like his father, struggled to throw red meat to an empty room. He accused the left of trying to “cancel” the founding fathers, adding: “Joe Biden and the radical left are also now coming for our freedom of speech and want to bully us into submission. If they get their way, it will no longer be the ‘silent majority’, it will be the ‘silenced majority,’” – a comment met with deafening silence.

 

None of it was likely to win over wavering independents. This was a festival of fear aimed squarely at the base. It’s Trump’s party now: Republicans just happen to be living in it.

 

Republicans argue only Trump can save America at first night of convention

 

President’s allies and family issued dark warnings of what’s at stake in the election, and an array of misleading claims

 

Daniel Strauss

 @danielstrauss4

Tue 25 Aug 2020 05.59 BSTFirst published on Tue 25 Aug 2020 02.20 BST

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/aug/24/trump-rnc-latest-speeches-coronavirus

 

Republicans have used the first night of their national convention to issue dark warnings about the future of America, arguing that re-electing Donald Trump is the only way to save the country from falling into socialism, economic ruin, violence and anarchy.

 

Monday night’s theme was officially the “land of promise,” but the collection of speeches offered an almost apocalyptic vision of what’s at stake in November’s elections, and a dizzying array of misleading claims.

 

“They’ll disarm you, empty the prisons, lock you in your home and invite [street gang] MS-13 to live next door,” the congressman Matt Gaetz of Florida said of the Democrats in his speech, likening the prospect to a “horror movie”.

 

“The same socialist policies which destroyed places like Cuba and Venezuela must not take root in our cities and our schools,” Trump campaign senior adviser Kimberly Guilfoyle warned in a loud, inflammatory speech to an empty room.

 

Directly lifting a line from the Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden’s stump speech, Guilfoyle, whose partner is the president’s son Donald Trump Jr, said: “This election is a battle for the soul of America. Your choice is clear.”

 

Guilfoyle described Democrats as focused on enslaving Americans to their liberal ideology “to the point that you won’t recognize the country yourself”.

 

 

While Biden has moved to the left during his presidential campaign, he is regarded as a moderate within the party, and spent much of the Democratic convention last week touting his support among anti-Trump Republicans.

 

Other featured speakers described the incumbent president as a compassionate man who succeeded through his first term in office in the face of “radical” Democrats and the media, both presented as the president’s coordinated enemies hellbent on blocking his initiatives.

 

Mark and Patricia McCloskey, a white St Louis couple facing charges for brandishing guns at peaceful Black Lives Matter protesters, gave a pre-recorded speech, in which they baselessly accused Democrats of “protecting criminals from honest citizens” and trying to “abolish the suburbs”.

 

The dark tone was apparent to political operatives.

 

The “campaign said the convention would be about hope and light but so far most of the speeches are extreme fear porn”, one veteran Republican presidential campaign operative told the Guardian.

 

A video of Trump’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic featured multiple Democratic governors complimenting Trump and the federal government, editing out the fierce criticism of the administration’s response from those same speakers.

 

Trump has been criticized for playing down the pandemic, and saying the coronavirus – which has killed more than 175,000 people in the US, more than any other country by far – will eventually just “disappear”.

 

Voters have increasingly viewed the president’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic in a negative light. A new Gallup poll found that just 36% of Americans surveyed approve of how he’s handled the pandemic while 63% disapproved.

 

As the night wore on the more high profile speakers took aim at Biden and his running mate Kamala Harris.

 

 

“Joe Biden and the Democrats are still blaming America first. Donald Trump is putting America first. And he deserves four more years as our president,” the former UN ambassador Nikki Haley said, who is seen as a potential Republican presidential candidate for the 2024 election. “President Trump brought our economy back before, and he will bring it back again.”

 

One of the most common warnings throughout the night was about cancel culture -the blanket censorship of public figures. Haley said Trump “knows that political correctness and ‘cancel culture’ are dangerous and just plain wrong”.

 

“Joe Biden and the radical left are also now coming for our freedom of speech and want to bully us into submission,” Trump Jr argued in his speech, again to an empty room. “If they get their way, it will no longer be the ‘silent majority’, it will be the ‘silenced majority’.

 

The South Carolina senator Tim Scott warned “Make no mistake: Joe Biden and Kamala Harris want a cultural revolution. A fundamentally different America.”

 

The DNC included speeches from Republicans as a way to try and woo over moderates and Republicans who don’t support Trump. But most of the RNC addresses on Monday were aimed at revving up the Republican base. Trump himself has been more focused on that throughout his re-election campaign, hoping that an energized conservative electorate can overpower any broader coalition backing Biden.

 

The convention had some of the same elements as the Democratic national convention last week, including a short taped version of the roll call across America, testimonials from average Americans and the president interacting with people affected by the pandemic. But it also featured more live addresses over pre-recorded videos, which sometimes fell flat without the usual audience responses.

 

The format of the convention changed several times over recent months as the coronavirus crisis worsened. But despite health concerns, more than 300 cheering Republicans convened in Charlotte, North Carolina, on Monday to officially nominate Trump as the party’s presidential candidate.

 

 

In a preview of what was to come later in the evening, Trump claimed without evidence that the Democrats were attempting to “steal” the election.

 

“The only way they can take this election away from us is if this is a rigged election,” Trump told the 336 delegates in the hall, who had traveled to the convention from the 50 states and US territories. “They’re trying to steal the election.”

 

The majority of speakers at a political nominating convention such as the RNC or the Democratic national convention are usually current or former elected officials. But this year many of the speakers are celebrities for the conservative wing of the party.

 

Over the next four days the RNC is poised to be the latest example of the Republican party’s complete shift over to a political party centered on Trump. The revised party platform for the convention this year is just an expression of support for the president’s second-term agenda. And none of the featured speakers at the convention are Republicans who have strongly dissented with Trump – a few, like the former Arizona senator Jeff Flake, have instead endorsed Biden.

 

Usually former presidents attend their party’s nominating convention, but former president George W Bush, the only living former Republican president, is not attending or offering a taped video. All three former living Democratic presidents participated in last week’s Democratic national convention.

 

Both national and statewide polling has shown Trump trailing Biden and although polls have recently tightened, Biden came out of his party’s convention with a polling bump. Trump and his aides are hoping the convention will help shift both Trump’s approval numbers and the national spotlight in the president’s favor.

What we learned from Night 1 of the Trump Show

 

Tim Alberta has spent more than a decade studying the Republican Party and reporting on the right as closely as anyone. Here are his takeaways from the first night of the convention.

 

By TIM ALBERTA

08/24/2020 06:18 PM EDT

Updated: 08/24/2020 11:53 PM EDT

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/08/24/trump-republican-national-convention-day1-401134

 

The opening act of the 2020 Republican National Convention featured a few strong individual performances but lacked a cohesive theme — like a stage play in which actors read from different versions of a script.

 

Feeling the heat after last week’s Democratic convention went off without much of a hitch, Republicans produced an effective piece of programming that interwove personal testimonies with roundtable-style conversations hosted by President Donald Trump. Many of the headliners spoke from a lectern in Washington, giving the event a consistency in style that was sometimes missing in substance.

 

There was talk of heroes and hostages, guardians and destroyers, dreams and nightmares. For two and a half hours in primetime, a procession of politicians, activists, family members and friends made their case for President Trump to receive another four years in office. The arguments in his favor — his economic prowess, his personal fortitude, his leadership vision — were not so much in conflict as they were disconnected, forcing viewers to zig and zag between themes.

 

Though the start of the proceedings may have been slow, Republicans felt good after finishing the night on a high note. The closer, South Carolina Senator Tim Scott, delivered easily the best speech of the evening, sharing his family’s triumphant story of rising “from cotton to Congress” and injecting much-needed flavor of hope into the production. For all the GOP hand-wringing last week about how dark and gloomy the Democratic convention was, the tone for much of Monday night was every bit as bleak. Had Scott not closed with such a powerful, aspirational message, the first episode of the GOP show might have been a total downer.

 

Here are my other observations from the night, recorded in real time:

 

Along with Scott, former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley delivered a standout performance. She spoke movingly of a being “a brown girl in a Black and white world,” a daughter of Indian immigrants who faced discrimination in their quaint southern town. She also launched a more coherent attack on Joe Biden’s policies than any of her Republican peers, describing how Democratic rule would devastate the domestic economy and invite trouble abroad.

 

Haley also brought in the phrase “cancel culture," saying that Trump "knows that political correctness and 'cancel culture' are dangerous and just plain wrong.” This observation ignores some of Trump’s own rhetoric: He recently called for a boycott of Goodyear Tire, and has launched similar broadsides against Apple, General Motors and Macy’s, to name a few corporate targets. He also has gone after celebrities who criticize him and called for countless television and print journalists to lose their jobs.

 

Haley used a conspicuous turn of phrase that deserves real scrutiny. Remembering the 2015 massacre at Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, S.C ., the former governor described how a white man murdered nine Black parishioners in cold blood. Then, she recalled the brightest moment in her political career: leading the charge to remove the Confederate Flag from the statehouse grounds in Columbia.

 

It was controversial — and exceptionally risky for someone with the grand aspirations of Haley. But she didn’t flinch. The flag was taken down. And Haley’s political celebrity took on whole new dimension because of it. Which made it strange to hear her on Monday night describe it this way: "After that horrific tragedy, we didn’t turn against each other. We came together—Black and white, Democrat and Republican. Together, we made the hard choices needed to heal—and removed a divisive symbol, peacefully and respectfully.”

 

“A divisive symbol” is… well, one way to describe the Confederate Flag. It’s certainly divisive in places like Boston and Pittsburgh. But in South Carolina? Well, it’s something more than divisive. It’s a cultural fault line, the subject of a century-and-a-half of hard feelings. Haley knew that when she staked her reputation — and her future — on eliminating it from public view in Columbia. So why the vague language? Why not call it what it is?

 

I don’t have any special insight into her choice of words. But I do know that Haley—and every other speaker at this year’s convention—is wary of not showing up President Trump. This is his show, and anything seen as self-promotional at his expense could be costly. It’s absurd to think of the Confederate Flag in that way; to think that Haley could be damaged politically by invoking her crusade against that “divisive symbol” just because Trump has embraced it. But the truth is, this goes beyond Trump. He has defended the Confederate Flag for a reason—because he knows a not-insignificant chunk of his base wants him to. Haley was able to split the difference tonight, telling a story that portrays her as being on the right side of America’s racial-justice divide while avoiding anything that could antagonize people on the other side. But if she runs for president in 2024, that approach will quickly prove unsustainable.

 

During a pre-taped roundtable conversation in which Trump sat with six Americans who were formerly held hostage overseas, only to be freed and brought home by his administration, the president sat listening to an American pastor who had been held in Turkey and faced a 28-year prison term.

 

After the pastor, Andrew Brunson, shared his gratitude for being brought home, Trump told him, “I have to say, that to me, President Erdogan was very good.”

 

That would be Recep Tayyip Erdoğan — the brutal Turkish dictator whose government had imprisoned Brunson in the first place.

 

Trump went on, “I know that they had you scheduled for a long time, and you were a very innocent person. And he ultimately, after we had a few conversations, he agreed, so we appreciate that. And we appreciate the people of Turkey. And you still appreciate the people of Turkey, I understand, right?”

 

Brunson, who had stared straight forward, motionless, during Trump’s commentary, replied, “We love the Turkish people.”

 

Trump has gotten himself in hot water before with his paeans to tyrants. But this was especially cringe-worthy, given how Trump’s bizarre annotation distracted from what otherwise was shaping up as powerful, unifying moment.

 

Trump’s reelection campaign entered this year believing it could peel away a statistically significant chunk of Black voters in 2020, with a particular focus on younger and middle-aged Black men. But that hasn’t panned out. If anything, top strategists in both parties say, the president’s handling of Covid-19 has been so widely panned in the Black community that his performance in cities like Detroit, Milwaukee and Philadelphia could be markedly worse than it was in 2016.

 

That’s a five-alarm fire for the GOP. To put it plainly: If Biden runs up the score with Black voters, on the strength of huge turnout in the industrial Midwest, Trump’s path to reelection vanishes.

 

To neutralize this threat, Trump’s campaign is invoking a testimonial strategy. They realize it’s not always compelling to hear white politicians denying accusations of racism; so they’re turning to people who might carry more weight.

 

The first hour of programming saw appeals from three Black Trump supporters: congressional candidate Kim Klacik, retired football star Herschel Walker and Georgia state representative Vernon Jones.

 

Their pitch was simple enough: Democrats have taken the Black community for granted — and therefore, have failed them with bad policies. But there was also something more at work. Each of the them — particularly Walker, a longtime friend of Trump’s and easily the best-known of the three — was vouching for the president, insisting that he’s not the racial bigot the left makes him out to be.

 

Walker’s key passage: "I take it as a personal insult that people would think I would have a 37-year friendship with a racist. People who think that don’t know what they are talking about. Growing up in the deep south, I have seen racism up close. I know what it is. And it isn’t Donald Trump.”

 

From a strategic standpoint, these sorts of testimonials aren’t about swinging massive numbers of Black voters toward Trump. They’re about preventing a massive swell of intensity against Trump.

 

Jim Jordan, the arch-conservative congressman and one of Trump’s fiercest allies on Capitol Hill, took an interesting approach to his convention speech.

 

Republicans are eager to challenge suburban voters’ perceptions of the two parties — specifically, that Democrats are empathetic and compassionate while Republicans are cold and callous. Jordan took a whack at both, deploying a two-part pitch that could be a blueprint for other speakers to follow.

 

Part One: "Look at what’s happening in America’s cities — all run by Democrats. Crime, violence, mob rule. Democrats refuse to denounce the mob. And their response to the chaos? Defund the police, defund border patrol, defund the military. And while they’re doing all of this, they’re also trying to take away your guns. Democrats won’t let you go to church, but they’ll let you protest. Democrats won’t let you go to work, but they’ll let you riot. Democrats won’t let you go to school, but they’ll let you loot."

 

Part Two: "I love the President’s intensity and his willingness to fight. But what I also appreciate is something most Americans never see — how much he truly cares about people. Our family’s seen it. Two years ago, our nephew Eli was killed in a car accident.” After explaining that he was on a call with Trump while walking into the bereaved family’s house, Jordan told of how Trump got on the phone with Eli’s father. "For the next five minutes, family and friends sat in complete silence, as the President of the United States took time to talk to a dad who was hurting. That’s the President I know. That’s the individual who’s Made America Great Again and who knows America’s best days are in front of us.”

 

It was a surprising anecdote from Jordan, who’s perhaps the least outwardly emotional politician I’ve covered. But clearly, he felt the story was important to tell; it certainly added dimension to a speech that was otherwise aimed at assailing Democratic policies.

 

Even after everything I have seen and heard while reporting on Republican politics for the last decade, there are still some things that make me stop and do a double-take in disbelief.

 

Charlie Kirk batting leadoff at the GOP convention is one of those things.

 

The first speaking slot on the first night of the convention is a chance to grab America’s attention and not let go. Instead, Kirk, the 26-year-old founder of the young conservative organization Turning Point USA, gave meandering remarks that included calling Trump “the bodyguard of Western civilization.”

 

In one particularly memorable passage, Kirk observed, "This election is the most critical since 1860, when a man named Lincoln was elected to preserve the union from disintegration. This election is not just the most important of our lifetime—it is most important since the preservation of the Republic in 1865.” Hyperbole is part of politics, but Kirk’s commentary foreshadowed just how much of it we’re in for over the coming four days.

 

Rather than following Kirk with a big name, someone to lend gravitas to the proceedings, Republicans lined up two unknowns: a California school teacher, Rebecca Friedrichs, and a Montana small businesswoman, Tanya Weinreis. (Friedrichs stood on Kirk’s rhetorical shoulders, saying Democrats’ "lenient discipline policies morphed our schools into war zones” and accusing teachers’ unions of "subverting our Republic, so they undermine educational excellence, morality, law and order.”)

 

It’s important to elevate the voices of the grassroots, but it may have come at the expense of grabbing viewers’ attention at the top of the program.

 

Fittingly, the first high-profile of the 2020 convention was Matt Gaetz, the Florida congressman whom former Speaker Paul Ryan once dismissed as “an entertainer.”

 

Gaetz, a Trump loyalist, did not disappoint, giving an impassioned if meandering speech that toggled between questioning Joe Biden’s mental health and hailing Trump as a “visionary.” The most memorable remarks from Gaetz—who self-identified as “a Florida man,” perhaps unintentionally nodding to the bizarre behaviors of Sunshine State citizens — came at the end of his speech, when he tried to justify the president’s own uncouth conduct.

 

"President Trump sometimes raises his voice—and a ruckus,” Gaetz said. "He knows that’s what it takes to raise an army of patriots who love America and will protect her.”

 

After a most forgettable kickoff to the convention programming, at least Gaetz got to the point Republicans need to drive home with swing voters: You don’t have to like Trump, you just have to agree that he loves America and will keep you safe.