In accepting the Republican nomination for a second term as president, Donald Trump sounded lofty themes of national unity and love for country while also offering a glowing and highly exaggerated account of his stewardship.
He claimed, for example, that he had done more for African Americans than any president since Abraham Lincoln and promised to produce a coronavirus vaccine “before the end of the year or maybe even sooner.”
He also made characteristically reckless attacks on his Democratic opponent, suggesting the election of Joe Biden would threaten the American way of life.
His broadside against Biden was a reminder of how this president has trafficked in demagoguery and distortion throughout his time in office. It also undermined attempts by his party during its virtual convention to project a more optimistic and inclusive message that might peel away enough voters to secure the president’s re-election.
That sort of fear-mongering was a central theme of Trump’s speech Thursday, and it echoed a recurring convention motif that a Democratic victory in November would bring about a dystopian nightmare of socialism, unchecked rioting and liberal thought police. The protests sparked by the deaths of George Floyd and other Black Americans at the hands of police were another recurring theme — not because of the issues they raised, but because of the violence they have at times unleashed. For Trump and his allies, the issue isn’t just law and order, it’s the fear of a cultural reckoning.
The speakers’ hyperbolic warnings during the Republican National Convention occasionally bore some relationship to actual events. But the proceedings often felt like a festival of falsehoods and exaggerations. The speakers largely ignored the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic (no masks in sight!), the millions of jobless Americans and Trump’s lack of a second-term agenda.
The party didn’t even bother to adopt a new platform. Instead, it referred voters to its 2016 version while saying it “will continue to enthusiastically support the president’s America first agenda.”
The convention also reflected Trump’s proclivity for blurring the distinction between his political interests and those of the nation. It wasn’t just that Trump used the White House as a backdrop for his acceptance speech. A naturalization ceremony for new citizens was woven into the convention’s partisan programming, and Secretary of State Michael R. Pompeo addressed the convention from Jerusalem, despite the tradition that the nation’s top diplomat should abstain from partisan political activities.
Yet the GOP also tried to project a more optimistic and inclusive message, one that might induce a requisite number of voters to vote for the president without too many pangs of conscience. Numerous speakers of color were featured throughout the four days, along with multiple individuals testifying to Trump’s concern for them as small-business people or individuals forgotten by Washington.
It’s doubtful how successful these kinder, gentler themes would have been in obscuring Trump’s actual record of demagoguery, dishonesty and divisiveness. But the president’s unfair attacks on his opponent made it clear what another Trump term would be like: More of the same, in terms of belligerent policy and caustic bluster.
He is what he is.
— Los Angeles Times
