2020 Presidential Election 4: How Much Longer?

[fraurosena]

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Republican convention speakers share dark vision of Democrats and praise Trump’s character"

Spoiler

Republicans began their nominating convention Monday with dark denunciations of Democrats and warnings about a future controlled by “radical liberals,” while praising President Trump’s stewardship of the country, including his handling of the coronavirus pandemic that has killed more than 173,000 Americans.

The night’s program also served as a response to attacks on Trump’s character and accusations of racism by featuring testimonials from Black supporters, the grieving parent of a Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting victim and a cancer survivor.

The evening’s remarks, coupled with the president’s rambling and conspiratorial address earlier Monday to delegates convened in North Carolina, stood as a stark reminder of Trump’s domination of the party and its message — and largely overshadowed the GOP’s official and cheerier theme for the day, “Land of Promise.”

Speaker after speaker painted the Democrats’ vision for the country in apocalyptic terms while arguing that a victory by Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden would threaten Americans’ physical and financial safety.

“They want to destroy this country and everything that 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 they can control how you live,” said an animated Kimberly Guilfoyle, a top Trump campaign official and the girlfriend of the president’s oldest son. “They want to enslave you to the weak, dependent, liberal, victim ideology, to the point that you will not recognize this country or yourself.”

The dire warnings were occasionally interspersed with promises that under Trump, the economy could recover and forces of change facing the country could be held at bay.

“There are millions of families like mine across this nation . . . full of potential, seeking to live the American Dream,” said Tim Scott (S.C.), the lone Black Republican in the Senate and the night’s closing speaker. “And I’m here tonight to tell you that supporting the Republican ticket gives you the best chance of making that dream a reality.”

Trump has come under withering criticism for his handling of the coronavirus pandemic, which has been the major cause of his plummeting poll numbers in his contest with Biden. In response, the first night of the convention prominently featured defenses of Trump’s response to the outbreak, with the president appearing in a video shortly after 9 p.m. to talk with a group about his efforts.

Earlier in the evening, a video montage touted Trump’s actions to mitigate the pandemic and played selectively edited clips of some Democratic leaders expressing appreciation for him, even though those officials have also been highly critical of Trump.

The rhetoric started long before the prime-time speaking lineup, with Trump appearing at the convention hall in Charlotte where he made baseless statements about election fraud.

“They’re trying to steal the election from Republicans,” the president said of Democrats, without evidence, minutes after formally securing the party’s nomination. “Just like they did it last time, with spying.”

Other speakers at the convention — including young conservative organizer Charlie Kirk, and the St. Louis couple who emerged from their mansion and aimed weapons at racial-justice protesters — amplified the president’s assertions that America would become a hellscape if Biden won.

“I am here tonight to tell you — to warn you — that this election is a decision between preserving America as we know it and eliminating everything that we love,” said Kirk, 26, calling Trump the “bodyguard of Western civilization” battling “vengeful activists.”

Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), one of the president’s staunchest defenders in Congress, said Democrats want to “disarm you, empty the prisons, lock you in your home, and invite MS-13 to live next door. And the defunded police aren’t on their way.”

The president’s son Donald Trump Jr. criticized Biden as a veteran of Washington who had his chance to solve the challenges facing the country and failed.

“Joe Biden is basically the Loch Ness monster of the Swamp,” Trump Jr. said. “For the past ­half-century, he’s been lurking around in there. He sticks his head up every now and then to run for president, then he disappears and doesn’t do much in between.”

Speakers appeared by video or from the party’s rented space inside Washington’s Andrew W. Mellon Auditorium, with American flags decorating the stage alongside looming columns.

Stoking racial and cultural animus has been central to Trump’s public identity for decades, and it has only become more pronounced as he has fallen behind Biden in the polls and as the country has embarked on a national debate over systemic racism after the shootings of Black Americans by White police officers, with the latest incident unfolding in Kenosha, Wis., over the weekend.

Scott’s turn Monday was part of a broader attempt by Republicans to counter Democrats’ charge that the GOP under Trump has become a bastion for White grievance, resentment and racism.

Kimberly Klacik, whose viral campaign ad last week showed her walking the streets of Baltimore while suggesting that Democrats do not care about Black voters, also spoke Monday. Klacik, who is Black, is the Republican running for the late congressman Elijah E. Cummings’s seat against Rep. Kweisi Mfume (D-Md.), the former NAACP chief who handily defeated her in a special election in April and now faces a rematch in November.

Vernon Jones, a Black Democratic state lawmaker from Georgia who announced in April that he would endorse Trump, also spoke, as did retired football star Herschel Walker.

“It hurts my soul to hear the terrible names that people call Donald,” Walker said. “The worst one is ‘racist.’ I take it as a personal insult that people would think I would have a 37-year friendship with a racist.”

Still, those overtures to Black Americans were featured alongside an appearance by lawyers Mark and Patricia McCloskey, who have said they drew their guns to defend their home on a private street in an upscale St. Louis neighborhood from a crowd of racial-justice protesters who were marching to Mayor Lyda Krewson’s house.

Video and photos showing Mark McCloskey wielding a rifle and Patricia McCloskey aiming a pistol at the marchers created a firestorm of controversy. Some thought the couple were legally defending their home — instantly making them popular figures on the right — while others saw them as unnecessarily taking up arms against peaceful protesters.

St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner, St. Louis’s first Black chief prosecutor, filed charges against both McCloskeys last month, each with one felony count of unlawful use of a weapon.

The couple ominously warned of dangers facing American communities and criticized Biden for pushing anti-segregation policies that they said would hurt the suburbs. “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,” Patricia McCloskey said.

Republicans in Charlotte earlier Monday joined that chorus.

“We have crime ravaging our streets,” New York Republican Party Chairman Nick Langworthy said as the state delivered its 94 delegates. “That is what America will see if a Biden-Harris regime runs our country.”

Flickers of traditional Republican pitches, most notably from Scott, at times cut through the charged hostility toward Democrats. Scott’s approach to Trump is similar to the tack taken by other lawmakers: applaud the president and the GOP’s legislative gains and executive actions, but do not celebrate the man.

The senator commended Trump for taking steps to help Black Americans and “clean up Joe Biden’s mess,” and cautioned that Democrats are seeking a “cultural revolution.”

Scott, who has worked with Trump on criminal justice changes and tax breaks for investments in poorer neighborhoods, is considered by GOP donors and activists to be a potential future presidential contender, as is Nikki Haley, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, who also spoke Monday, promoting Trump’s foreign policy decisions, which often run against traditional GOP policies.

To respond to Democrats’ portrayal of Trump as a person of low character who harms the nation to suit his own needs, the convention featured several speakers highlighting their view of him as a generous man.

“I got to see who [President Trump] really is,” said Andrew Pollack, whose daughter, Meadow, was killed in the Parkland, Fla., high school shooting in 2018 and who has advocated for school safety measures while defending gun rights. “He’s a good man and a great listener. And he cuts through the BS.”

Democrats welcomed the arrival of the Republican National Convention with a new television ad accusing Trump of “job-destroying incompetence and deadly mismanagement” of the pandemic.

“Welcome to the RNC, Republican National Chaos,” the narrator says in the 30-second spot, which opens with a scene of downtown Charlotte. “Because Trump is meeting the covid moment with job-destroying incompetence and deadly mismanagement, students and teachers are left to themselves, the jobless left without a lifeline, grandparents left to die alone, an economy left to perish.”

Many of the party’s remaining establishment figures stayed away. The only living former Republican president, George W. Bush, will not speak this week — a break from tradition. All three past Democratic presidents offered remarks at that party’s convention last week.

Some vulnerable GOP senators are avoiding the Trump-dominated convention as well.

“It’s a concession to reality when an incumbent president doesn’t have a strong reelect number,” said GOP strategist Doug Heye, who used to work at the Republican National Committee. “You don’t have a lot of people in tough races flocking to be seen with him.”

The night featured stalwart congressional defenders of Trump, including Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and House Minority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) as well as Sean Parnell, a GOP congressional candidate in Pennsylvania.

But it was Trump who hovered over the event Monday, beginning with his last-minute appearance at the roll call.

The roll call, which typically occurs on the Tuesday of a four-day convention week, had been moved up to keep some party business in Charlotte, chosen as the site of the convention before the pandemic, ahead of prime-time programming anchored in Washington.

Greeted by cheers of “four more years,” Trump joked that he might deserve additional terms in office because of the investigations of his 2016 campaign. “If you want to really drive them crazy, you say 12 more years,” he said, instantly prompting some chants of “12 more years.”

The president received 2,050 delegates, a unanimous vote after primaries that set turnout records for an incumbent with no serious challenger. Three opponents had filed for the primaries, but only former Massachusetts governor Bill Weld stayed in the race past Super Tuesday, and the single delegate he won was reassigned to Trump.

Delegates who had largely stayed at their tables during Vice President Pence’s remarks crowded toward the front of the room to hear the president, who spoke briefly about the administration’s response to the pandemic before talking about TV coverage of the convention, the restrictions that prevented an in-person event in North Carolina, energy pipelines, international trade deals, judicial appointments and his false refrain that the election would be “rigged” by the expansion of mail voting.

Trump spoke for more than 50 minutes, and some delegates moved back to their seats as he circled around familiar themes.

“They want no guns. They want no oil and gas. And they want no God,” Trump said of Democrats.

While the Trump campaign released 50 priorities for a second term Sunday night, the president referred to only a few of them. He pledged to “create 10 million jobs in the first 10 months,” and he said an executive order that would drive down prescription drug prices by using trade powers would go into effect soon.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"The Democrats’ roll call showed America’s beauty and diversity. The Republicans’ roll call . . . did not."

Spoiler

The roll call on opening day of the Republican National Convention was sleepy. Low energy. And sad.

This American ritual, during which each state pledges its delegates to the winning candidate, was bereft of charm. It was technically stultifying. It was also devoid of Black people and sorely lacking in people of color. And it was a long way from exemplifying gender parity. In essence, it was White men in a room simplifying complex issues and repeatedly pledging their fealty to guns, fetuses and the importance of kneeling to pray and standing for the national anthem.

It was Trumpian politics as television. And it was dismal.

Each state’s chairman or representative appeared in front of the same bland backdrop decorated with the hashtag #RNC2020. The camera’s framing trapped each speaker in an uninspiring rectangle. The only reminder that the Republicans were live from a Charlotte ballroom were the disembodied cheers that would periodically erupt in the background — perfunctory, desperate noise from a greatly reduced throng.

The view of each speaker’s face was so uncomfortably intimate that you could see the perspiration shining on one forehead after another. You could tell how close people shave and how diligently they floss. And frankly, it just seemed to be a cruel and unnecessary act to put these civics die-hards under such a high-definition microscope.

But then, the longer the roll call ticked on, the more you realized that the Republicans had no interest in putting a gloss on their proceedings. They were reveling in the sweaty urgency of their law-and-order, build-a-wall, liberty-and-justice-for-me message. It was just fine that man after man after man after man felt very comfortable expounding on the sanctity of a fetus without mentioning the well-being and autonomy of the woman who carries it.

Diversity was mostly represented by American Samoa, Guam and Puerto Rico. The sweeping Whiteness of the roll call didn’t seem to weigh on anyone’s shoulders. The fact that speakers had to reach back into history — to Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln — to give the current party a sense of expansiveness and racial sensitivity did not give any of the speakers pause.

How heartbreaking that this major political party made no attempt to exemplify the everyone-is-created-equal ethos that its members so happily utter. There was no gathering up of disparate souls. No openhanded symbol of fellowship that encourages wanderers to come as they are. The result was the sense that equality is something that the Republicans deign to give others if they are deemed God-fearing and baseball-loving enough.

Their party is not a big tent with flaps billowing open in the breeze. Theirs is a clubhouse with a locked door that they are trying to build a wall around.

The Democrats had taken their roll call on the road. Representatives stood in their home state surrounded by family, colleagues or a panoply of quirky citizens to make their declarations. The result was a homey and expansive view of America — from the majesty of the Black Hills to the calamari of Rhode Island. Many of these postcards were pretaped, but viewers could see their neighbors in full. They could see the diverse geography of the country, whether it was a cattle ranch in the Western Plains or the fragile beaches of California, and get a glimpse of how that comes to define our thinking on so many issues.

The Republicans depicted themselves as a collection of talking heads clustered behind closed doors. Instead of continuing to describe the extensive natural landmarks of Arizona, its delegation chairman extolled the “miles and miles and miles of big beautiful wall.” Montana made note of there being almost five guns in every home. And countless people admonished: Get on your knees and pray, as if that is the only way a believer can communicate with God, as if that is a sign of moral standing.

In the midst of the roll call, when delegates officially made the president the party’s nominee, the man himself strolled into the ballroom. (He was not wearing a mask; but then, you probably already knew that.) He settled in behind the lectern and began to riff. He complained about the cable networks and how they weren’t showing the roll call live or that pundits were talking over it. He talked about absentee voting and mail-in voting and warned his supporters that the Democrats are “trying to steal the election from the Republicans.”

It’s a statement that says to his faithful that the victory already belongs to them, in the same way that Trump has reinforced their belief that the suburbs belong to them and the country belongs to them and God belongs to them, too.

Trump talked on and on. He’d leave a topic only to circle back to it. He’d begin to wrap up with a declaration of thanks and then he’d think of something else he wanted to say. He kept going until you wondered what will he have left to talk about when he formally accepts the nomination Thursday evening. But of course, the content, the details, the logic don’t particularly matter to those shielded by his presence.

Trump is their neighborhood watchman, rattling all the doors to make sure they’re firmly shut.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

A good one from Dana Milbank: "Republicans’ ‘uplifting’ convention becomes a festival of fear"

Spoiler

President Trump over the weekend said he expected a “very uplifting and positive” convention.

Uh-oh. Dude must have gotten into the hydroxychloroquine again.

The Republican National Convention on its opening day was as uplifting as the apocalypse, as positive as perdition.

“The woke-topians,” Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) warned, “will disarm you, empty the prisons, lock you in your home and invite MS-13 to live next door, and the police aren’t coming when you call.”

Kimberly Guilfoyle, the former Fox News personality and current girlfriend of Donald Trump Jr., informed the convention that Democrats “want to destroy this country and everything that 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 that you will not recognize this country or yourself.”

Midway through this rage-fest, the convention went to news footage of violence and destruction in the streets and bleeped-out obscenities — then cut to the wood-paneled interior of the mansion of Mark and Patricia McCloskey, the St. Louis couple who were charged with firearms violations after they threatened racial-justice demonstrators with a pistol and military-style weapon.

The pair, personal injury lawyers both, spoke about the “out-of-control mob” and the “Marxist liberal activist” and “radicals” who menaced them by walking past their house — which “could just as easily happen to any of you who are watching from quiet neighborhoods around our country.”

“They’re not satisfied with spreading the chaos and violence into our communities. They want to abolish the suburbs altogether,” the McCloskeys declared. “Make no mistake, no matter where you live, your family will not be safe in the radical Democrats’ America.”

It was a veritable festival of fear — made all the more intriguing because it was delivered by the incumbent president’s party, much of it from an ornate hall near the White House, the Mellon Auditorium, named for a robber baron. Four years ago, Trump pledged to end “American carnage.” Now he’s asking for another four years to put an end to all the additional American carnage he created in his first four years. The difference is his leadership has turned the dystopian America Trump pictured into more of a reality.

Officially, the convention tried for some positivity and uplift. It served up implausible testimonies about what a fabulous job Trump has done handling the pandemic. The Republican National Committee chairwoman, Ronna McDaniel, spoke with a straight face about Trump’s “reverence for the office of the presidency.” Ex-football great Herschel Walker said that the president is not a racist and described Trump, in a business suit, once joining him and their kids at Disney World’s “It’s a Small World” ride. Cancer survivor and Liberty University alumna Natalie Harp likened Trump to George Bailey in “It’s a Wonderful Life.”

The party officially resolved to “adjourn without adopting a new platform.” Instead, the party made its convention into a virtual assembly of the cult of Trump. The president, after his afternoon appearance in Charlotte, appeared in two prime-time segments of the convention on Monday to receive praise from virus survivors, health workers and former hostages, and he is expected to speak Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday nights, too. His wife, four of his children, a daughter-in-law and various Trump pals are also in the lineup. The lead consultant to the convention produced “The Apprentice” for Trump and was a judge on Trump’s Miss Universe pageant. Big letters on the lectern Monday announced “TRUMP 2020.” Smaller letters said: “The RNC CONVENTION.”

But the celebration of Trump was tedious — even Fox News cut away from live coverage — and the rage and dystopia invariably overtook the scripted calls for “hope.”

Charlie Kirk, head of a conservative group who has partnered with Jerry Falwell Jr. at Liberty University, proclaimed that “the American way of life is being dismantled by a group of bitter, deceitful, vengeful activists.” He cast Trump as “the bodyguard of Western civilization.”

Anti-union activist Rebecca Friedrichs declared that labor is “subverting our republic,” turned “schools into war zones” and wants to start “defunding police” and to “pick on loving teachers and little kids.”

Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) determined that “Democrats won’t let you go to church.”

Retiring Georgia state lawmaker Vernon Jones, a Black Democrat long critical of the party, said Democrats force African Americans to stay on “their mental plantation.”

Former U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley warned of a “socialist left” bringing “anarchy.” A Cuban American, Maximo Alvarez, accused Democrats of siding with “anarchy and communism.” And Donald Trump Jr. warned of “Beijing Biden” (“the Loch Ness monster of the swamp”) encouraging tyranny, illegal immigrants, rioting, looting, vandalism, torch-bearing mobs and “radicals who want to drag us into the dark.”

“Joe Biden and the radical left,” Trump Jr. reported, “want to bully us into submission.”

And there are three more nights! How much uplift can one nation stand?

 

[GreyhoundFan]

I didn't watch any of last night's crap live, but the clips I've seen are insane.

[GreyhoundFan]

Two good ones:

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Melania Trump is about to give her biggest speech in four years. The Trump campaign hopes she can be its secret weapon."

Spoiler

On the eve of her big speech headlining the second night of the Republican National Convention, first lady Melania Trump appeared in front of the White House to talk up her husband’s record on women.

“Since taking office,” she said Monday at an event celebrating women’s suffrage, “my husband and this administration have taken historic measures to empower and support women in the United States — and around the world.”

It was a prelude to Tuesday’s prime-time speech, her biggest since the 2016 Republican convention and a far more public and political spotlight than she normally seeks. With President Trump’s campaign strategists privately saying that suburban women are a weak spot for him, they hope she will help attract voters from that crucial bloc.

For the first lady, it also will be a chance for redemption. The last time she spoke at the Republican National Convention, she was accused of plagiarizing Michelle Obama’s 2008 Democratic National Convention speech. (A Trump Organization employee took the fall, though others have pointed fingers at poor staffing that meant no one had vetted Melania Trump’s remarks.)

This time around, Trump — the only first lady who did not grow up speaking English — has spent days crafting the speech, according to a White House aide. She’s leaning heavily on departing presidential adviser Kellyanne Conway, one of her top allies in the West Wing, and Stephanie ­Grisham, the former press secretary and her current chief of staff, as well as her top aide, Marcia Lee Kelly. Kelly, who is also CEO of this year’s convention, has been closely working with Trump in Washington to prepare her speech in recent days, a person familiar with the matter said.

White House officials and members of the first lady’s staff would not answer basic questions on the record, if at all, fully aware that she prefers to be tight-lipped.

“It’s a chance to rebrand herself ­­— at least a bit,” said Lori Cox Han, a political science professor at Chapman University who has written about first ladies. “It’s almost as if it’s a do-over from 2016, an opportunity to leave a better impression.”

The first lady’s speech will not delve deeply into policy details. The Slovenian native is planning to praise her husband’s agenda and mention her own story of coming to America, emphasizing that she came to the country legally, according to someone close to her. It’s a tricky subject matter. The Trump administration has sought to curb both legal and illegal immigration, while she has helped her family members get legal status in America using the visa system President Trump disparages as “chain migration.” Since his election, her parents have become naturalized U.S. citizens. Her sister, Ines, also quietly became a legal permanent resident.

“I do think the speech is consequential,” said Lauren A. Wright, a political scientist at Princeton University. “She doesn’t make very many public appearances, especially ones where she gives extended remarks, and so the instances in which she does do that are disproportionately important.”

Melania Trump’s term as first lady has been a relatively quiet one. A former model, she has often seemed more comfortable being photographed than speaking to large audiences. In her pre-pandemic days of promoting Be Best, her initiative aimed at raising awareness about the ­opioid crisis, promoting child welfare and discouraging online bullying, she would keep her remarks brief and seemed most comfortable chatting with children, out of the earshot of the press.

Perhaps her most provocative statement was not spoken but written on the back of a jacket she wore in 2018 while visiting migrant children at the U.S.-Mexico border at the height of the outcry over the Trump administration’s child-separation enforcement: “I really don’t care, do u?” The first lady later said that it was a swipe at her negative press coverage. “I wore it for the people and for the left-wing media who are criticizing me,” she said in a TV interview. “And I want to show them that I don’t care.” In fact, she was fed up with all the criticism of her, including some from her stepdaughter Ivanka, and did not understand the optics of wearing that message while visiting children, according to one person close to the family.

The blowback from her 2016 speech stung. Before she announced the name of her signature Be Best program, she had been warned it sounded grammatically awkward. But she stuck with the name and retorted: “At least they won’t say I plagiarized it!”

It remains to be seen what kind of role the first lady might play in helping her husband lift his poll numbers and win a second term. In a January Fox News poll, she had net positive favorability while the president did not. Surveys that Wright conducted in 2016 and 2017 show that she is the most effective Trump surrogate at shaping opinions of her husband, particularly among independent voters, and especially among independent women.

“I think Melania Trump, if she wanted to do those things, would be a tremendous draw and a tremendous fundraiser,” Wright said. She grew up working-class, has a more bootstrapping American story than her husband or his adult children, and is seen as less partisan. “I think there’s intense interest in her,” Wright said. “It’s just that she does not tend to do those types of campaign events.”

In the final few months before the election, campaign officials have been urging the first lady to be more active, and some are frustrated that she has not been more involved in the reelection effort. One White House official said Trump is likely to campaign occasionally this fall but said a schedule had not been set. In 2016, the official said, she agreed to campaign for her husband on a few occasions. The official said that she was also helping care for parents and a teenage son.

During the coronavirus pandemic, the East Wing has been largely dormant, with many aides working from home — a difference from the busier West Wing. Four administration officials say they have seen Grisham, the first lady’s chief of staff, infrequently since March. (Grisham and other staffers have been working mainly from home and coming in for some meetings, a senior administration official said, at Melania Trump’s direction.) The first lady has not been a player in most critical political meetings in recent months, officials say.

Earlier in the year, Trump agreed to be the draw at her first two solo fundraisers, including one in California, but then the coronavirus hit and criticism of how her husband has handled the public health crisis soared. Those fundraisers, scheduled for March, were canceled and never rescheduled, even though other members of the Trump family have switched to raising money via Zoom — including Ivanka Trump, the president’s elder daughter, who raked in $4 million earlier this month. Asked whether Melania Trump would appear for virtual campaign fundraisers, a White House official said, “Not sure yet, details still being worked out.” She has been more careful about the coronavirus than her husband and has largely eschewed campaign travel with him in recent months.

This convention speech, then, may be her biggest contribution to the reelection campaign. And while the president plans to speak every day of the convention, and his adult children will also have turns at the microphone, Conway said the first lady’s speech might be “the highlight of the week.”

Reluctant campaigner

It is sometimes hard to discern how much the first lady is really invested in her husband’s political career. On one hand, in a 2011 interview, she echoed his false claims questioning the legitimacy of Barack Obama’s birth certificate. On the other, she’s been both a reluctant campaigner and public speaker.

After her 2016 convention speech, she mostly disappeared from the campaign trail, saying that she had chosen instead to focus on raising Barron, the first couple’s son. “They would have me on the trail all the time,” she told CNN’s Anderson Cooper then, referring to her husband and his campaign. “They wish to have me there. But I made the decision. I will be a parent to our boy.” She didn’t move to the White House for six months after the election, instead choosing to stay at Trump Tower in New York City, at a cost of millions of dollars a month for Secret Service and New York City Police Department protection. She said it was so that Barron could finish his school year, but several people close to the Trumps said she was also using her absence as leverage to renegotiate her prenuptial agreement with the president.

Once she arrived in Washington and started taking on official duties, reviews were mixed. First-lady historians point to her first state dinner, welcoming French President Emmanuel Macron and his wife, Brigitte, as a highlight. “I think she’s a graceful and gracious first lady whose background of being foreign-born makes her very comfortable on the world’s stage,” said Anita B. McBride, who served as chief of staff to Laura Bush and runs the First Ladies Initiative at American University. (Trump has hosted only two state dinners, not counting one that was canceled because of the pandemic; Michelle Obama hosted six in her first term, and Hillary Clinton hosted 12.)

The lowlights almost all seem to be clothing-related: The “I really don’t care, do u?” jacket. The stiletto heels she wore while planting a tree and visiting hurricane victims in Texas in 2017. The white pith helmet that unintentionally evoked colonialism that she wore on an otherwise successful tour of Africa. She has few close friends but one who used to be close to her, Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, is expected to be critical of the private first lady in a book coming out next week.

Trump’s public activities, first-lady experts agree, have been less numerous than those of her predecessors. “Her volume of speaking is certainly nothing compared to Michelle Obama’s,” said Myra Gutin, author of “The President’s Partner: The First Lady in the Twentieth Century.”

The Be Best campaign represents the most visible example of her venturing out into America to address the nation’s social ills — opioid addiction, child welfare and cyberbullying. It’s difficult to measure the impact of any first lady’s initiative, said McBride, particularly one like Be Best. It’s not as concrete as Laura Bush starting the National Book Festival, which is still going, for instance. Trump’s initiative remains ill-defined and little understood. On its second anniversary this year, CNN found that, of the goals announced at the program’s first anniversary — such as expansion of the part of the campaign focused on opioids or the appointment of Be Best “ambassadors” (representatives from various government agencies who would be responsible for finding ways to “make a difference in the lives of children,” a White House official told CNN) — none seemed to have been fulfilled.

Her work has also been undermined indirectly by the president’s public fits of pique. The irony of a first lady touting the importance of online civility while the president rages against his political opponents on Twitter did not go unnoticed. Last year she was booed, amid some cheers, when she spoke at a youth opioid summit in Baltimore, a city her husband had called “a rodent and rat-infested mess.” A person close to the first lady said she knew she would get attacked for an online bullying campaign but decided to do it anyway. The women who say they had sexual relations with her husband during their marriage continue to be an uncomfortable issue for the first lady. Michael Cohen, President Trump’s former lawyer who has said he paid hush money to two women, is expected to go into new detail about the affairs in his book due out soon.

The president, for his part, has told others that the first lady is popular and that he knows she is an asset to him politically.

“How popular can you be when your last name is Trump?” said Cox Han, the Chapman professor. “It’s challenging because of how divisive her husband is. We’ve never had a president like Trump before, and that reflects on how the public views his spouse, as well.”

Restoration legacy

The first lady’s legacy may end up being what she did inside the White House grounds, rather than any interaction with the public.

Trump, who studied architecture and loves design, just finished managing a project to restore the Rose Garden to the original design overseen by Jackie Kennedy. The project seems to have personal meaning, as her affection for Jackie Kennedy runs deep. Amalija Knavs, Melania’s mother — a dark-haired, elegant woman who grew up in the former Yugoslavia and wore heels to work every day to her factory job as a seamstress — was called “Jackie” by those in her small town. Amalija has often stayed in the White House, as Michelle Obama’s mother did, and helped her daughter raise Barron.

The Rose Garden “renewal” is “really long, long, long, long, long, long, long overdue,” said McBride, who remembers dealing with maintenance issues back when she worked for Laura Bush.

The fixes involve irrigation and wear and tear from the garden being used for many of President Trump’s news conferences. There is new lighting and electrical wiring for broadcast television crews, and new limestone walkways that make the garden accessible for those with disabilities. While the new garden has many more roses, and the distinctive crabapple trees are gone (the White House said they were casting too much shadow on other plantings), Melania Trump made sure that a rose named after Pope John Paul II remained in the garden. The first lady, who was baptized Catholic, has said her meeting with Pope Francis in Rome in 2017 was particularly meaningful.

She has taken a keen interest in the rest of the White House grounds, too. “Before the inauguration, she requested copies of all of our books and publications and wanted to know about our history and our work,” said Stewart McLaurin, president of the White House Historical Association, the private nonprofit that funds renovations.

While her seasonal decorations have made the most headlines (remember those “creepy” blood-red Christmas trees she had lining the colonnade in 2018?), much of what she’s done is unglamorous restoration work: organizing a massive storage room of relics in the basement; redoing the Nixon bowling alley; refinishing worn historic wooden doors; replacing the parquet floor of the East Room, which had loose tiles; and refreshing the worn fabric in the Red, Blue and Green rooms. A rug in the diplomatic reception room had gone threadbare because it’s what the president crosses every time he walks outside to catch a helicopter; she had it remade in the style of the old one, replacing the original border of all 50 state seals with a border of all the state’s flowers.

The time she got dinged for wearing stilettos to a tree-planting? She had invited the largest gathering of presidential descendants in history to plant the tree with her on the South Lawn.

“These aren’t the flashy, showy things, but are necessary to keep the house going,” McLaurin said. “I think she understands that families who live in the house, it’s like a relay race. You receive the baton and you carry the baton for your four or eight years, and then you hand the baton to another family.”

Michelle Obama, for instance, chose new wooden chairs with brown upholstery for the State Dining Room. McLaurin said that every time he has seen President Trump give an interview, he has been sitting in one.

Unique value

Just as the president seems obsessed with criticizing his predecessor, the White House seems determined to measure the first lady’s performance in Tuesday’s prime-time speech against Michelle Obama’s remarks at last week’s Democratic convention, where she received widespread praise and news coverage for delivering a stinging rebuke of the Trump presidency.

The president responded by criticizing Obama for pre-taping her speech, saying he could tell because she cited a coronavirus death toll that is at least 17,000 deaths lower than the total count when Obama’s speech aired. “Frankly, she should have made the speech live, which she didn’t do — she taped it,” he said. ­Grisham has said publicly that the Tuesday speech will be given live, not taped.

At crucial times Melania Trump has backed up her husband. After the 2016 “Access Hollywood” tape came out and voters heard him boast about grabbing women, she made a rare solo campaign appearance in Pennsylvania (which he narrowly won) five days before the election.

But she has made it plain she does not agree with everything her husband says. Early in the pandemic, she was the first Trump administration figure and first Trump family member to post a picture of herself wearing a mask, at a time when her husband said he refused to wear one, in defiance of a national recommendation from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. When the president had his infamous photo op outside St. John’s Church in Washington, after law enforcement had cleared his path by violently dispersing protesters, the first lady was nowhere to be seen.

She reads all the polls, said someone close to the campaign. She knows her husband is down. His campaign is already using her convention speech to raise money: An email to Trump supporters promised those who contribute “ANY AMOUNT IMMEDIATELY” will get their name “broadcast live during her address.” She knows that for this president, at this moment, she has unique value.

At the women’s suffrage event on Monday, the mother of one of the children chosen to attend praised the first lady. Lisl Lange, one of the few people wearing a mask, had traveled from Missouri with her 12-year-old daughter Abigail.

She called the first lady “exquisite” and said, “The president wouldn’t be where he is without her.”

 

[fraurosena]

13 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

"Melania Trump is about to give her biggest speech in four years. The Trump campaign hopes she can be its secret weapon."

  Hide contents

On the eve of her big speech headlining the second night of the Republican National Convention, first lady Melania Trump appeared in front of the White House to talk up her husband’s record on women.

“Since taking office,” she said Monday at an event celebrating women’s suffrage, “my husband and this administration have taken historic measures to empower and support women in the United States — and around the world.”

It was a prelude to Tuesday’s prime-time speech, her biggest since the 2016 Republican convention and a far more public and political spotlight than she normally seeks. With President Trump’s campaign strategists privately saying that suburban women are a weak spot for him, they hope she will help attract voters from that crucial bloc.

For the first lady, it also will be a chance for redemption. The last time she spoke at the Republican National Convention, she was accused of plagiarizing Michelle Obama’s 2008 Democratic National Convention speech. (A Trump Organization employee took the fall, though others have pointed fingers at poor staffing that meant no one had vetted Melania Trump’s remarks.)

This time around, Trump — the only first lady who did not grow up speaking English — has spent days crafting the speech, according to a White House aide. She’s leaning heavily on departing presidential adviser Kellyanne Conway, one of her top allies in the West Wing, and Stephanie ­Grisham, the former press secretary and her current chief of staff, as well as her top aide, Marcia Lee Kelly. Kelly, who is also CEO of this year’s convention, has been closely working with Trump in Washington to prepare her speech in recent days, a person familiar with the matter said.

White House officials and members of the first lady’s staff would not answer basic questions on the record, if at all, fully aware that she prefers to be tight-lipped.

“It’s a chance to rebrand herself ­­— at least a bit,” said Lori Cox Han, a political science professor at Chapman University who has written about first ladies. “It’s almost as if it’s a do-over from 2016, an opportunity to leave a better impression.”

The first lady’s speech will not delve deeply into policy details. The Slovenian native is planning to praise her husband’s agenda and mention her own story of coming to America, emphasizing that she came to the country legally, according to someone close to her. It’s a tricky subject matter. The Trump administration has sought to curb both legal and illegal immigration, while she has helped her family members get legal status in America using the visa system President Trump disparages as “chain migration.” Since his election, her parents have become naturalized U.S. citizens. Her sister, Ines, also quietly became a legal permanent resident.

“I do think the speech is consequential,” said Lauren A. Wright, a political scientist at Princeton University. “She doesn’t make very many public appearances, especially ones where she gives extended remarks, and so the instances in which she does do that are disproportionately important.”

Melania Trump’s term as first lady has been a relatively quiet one. A former model, she has often seemed more comfortable being photographed than speaking to large audiences. In her pre-pandemic days of promoting Be Best, her initiative aimed at raising awareness about the ­opioid crisis, promoting child welfare and discouraging online bullying, she would keep her remarks brief and seemed most comfortable chatting with children, out of the earshot of the press.

Perhaps her most provocative statement was not spoken but written on the back of a jacket she wore in 2018 while visiting migrant children at the U.S.-Mexico border at the height of the outcry over the Trump administration’s child-separation enforcement: “I really don’t care, do u?” The first lady later said that it was a swipe at her negative press coverage. “I wore it for the people and for the left-wing media who are criticizing me,” she said in a TV interview. “And I want to show them that I don’t care.” In fact, she was fed up with all the criticism of her, including some from her stepdaughter Ivanka, and did not understand the optics of wearing that message while visiting children, according to one person close to the family.

The blowback from her 2016 speech stung. Before she announced the name of her signature Be Best program, she had been warned it sounded grammatically awkward. But she stuck with the name and retorted: “At least they won’t say I plagiarized it!”

It remains to be seen what kind of role the first lady might play in helping her husband lift his poll numbers and win a second term. In a January Fox News poll, she had net positive favorability while the president did not. Surveys that Wright conducted in 2016 and 2017 show that she is the most effective Trump surrogate at shaping opinions of her husband, particularly among independent voters, and especially among independent women.

“I think Melania Trump, if she wanted to do those things, would be a tremendous draw and a tremendous fundraiser,” Wright said. She grew up working-class, has a more bootstrapping American story than her husband or his adult children, and is seen as less partisan. “I think there’s intense interest in her,” Wright said. “It’s just that she does not tend to do those types of campaign events.”

In the final few months before the election, campaign officials have been urging the first lady to be more active, and some are frustrated that she has not been more involved in the reelection effort. One White House official said Trump is likely to campaign occasionally this fall but said a schedule had not been set. In 2016, the official said, she agreed to campaign for her husband on a few occasions. The official said that she was also helping care for parents and a teenage son.

During the coronavirus pandemic, the East Wing has been largely dormant, with many aides working from home — a difference from the busier West Wing. Four administration officials say they have seen Grisham, the first lady’s chief of staff, infrequently since March. (Grisham and other staffers have been working mainly from home and coming in for some meetings, a senior administration official said, at Melania Trump’s direction.) The first lady has not been a player in most critical political meetings in recent months, officials say.

Earlier in the year, Trump agreed to be the draw at her first two solo fundraisers, including one in California, but then the coronavirus hit and criticism of how her husband has handled the public health crisis soared. Those fundraisers, scheduled for March, were canceled and never rescheduled, even though other members of the Trump family have switched to raising money via Zoom — including Ivanka Trump, the president’s elder daughter, who raked in $4 million earlier this month. Asked whether Melania Trump would appear for virtual campaign fundraisers, a White House official said, “Not sure yet, details still being worked out.” She has been more careful about the coronavirus than her husband and has largely eschewed campaign travel with him in recent months.

This convention speech, then, may be her biggest contribution to the reelection campaign. And while the president plans to speak every day of the convention, and his adult children will also have turns at the microphone, Conway said the first lady’s speech might be “the highlight of the week.”

Reluctant campaigner

It is sometimes hard to discern how much the first lady is really invested in her husband’s political career. On one hand, in a 2011 interview, she echoed his false claims questioning the legitimacy of Barack Obama’s birth certificate. On the other, she’s been both a reluctant campaigner and public speaker.

After her 2016 convention speech, she mostly disappeared from the campaign trail, saying that she had chosen instead to focus on raising Barron, the first couple’s son. “They would have me on the trail all the time,” she told CNN’s Anderson Cooper then, referring to her husband and his campaign. “They wish to have me there. But I made the decision. I will be a parent to our boy.” She didn’t move to the White House for six months after the election, instead choosing to stay at Trump Tower in New York City, at a cost of millions of dollars a month for Secret Service and New York City Police Department protection. She said it was so that Barron could finish his school year, but several people close to the Trumps said she was also using her absence as leverage to renegotiate her prenuptial agreement with the president.

Once she arrived in Washington and started taking on official duties, reviews were mixed. First-lady historians point to her first state dinner, welcoming French President Emmanuel Macron and his wife, Brigitte, as a highlight. “I think she’s a graceful and gracious first lady whose background of being foreign-born makes her very comfortable on the world’s stage,” said Anita B. McBride, who served as chief of staff to Laura Bush and runs the First Ladies Initiative at American University. (Trump has hosted only two state dinners, not counting one that was canceled because of the pandemic; Michelle Obama hosted six in her first term, and Hillary Clinton hosted 12.)

The lowlights almost all seem to be clothing-related: The “I really don’t care, do u?” jacket. The stiletto heels she wore while planting a tree and visiting hurricane victims in Texas in 2017. The white pith helmet that unintentionally evoked colonialism that she wore on an otherwise successful tour of Africa. She has few close friends but one who used to be close to her, Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, is expected to be critical of the private first lady in a book coming out next week.

Trump’s public activities, first-lady experts agree, have been less numerous than those of her predecessors. “Her volume of speaking is certainly nothing compared to Michelle Obama’s,” said Myra Gutin, author of “The President’s Partner: The First Lady in the Twentieth Century.”

The Be Best campaign represents the most visible example of her venturing out into America to address the nation’s social ills — opioid addiction, child welfare and cyberbullying. It’s difficult to measure the impact of any first lady’s initiative, said McBride, particularly one like Be Best. It’s not as concrete as Laura Bush starting the National Book Festival, which is still going, for instance. Trump’s initiative remains ill-defined and little understood. On its second anniversary this year, CNN found that, of the goals announced at the program’s first anniversary — such as expansion of the part of the campaign focused on opioids or the appointment of Be Best “ambassadors” (representatives from various government agencies who would be responsible for finding ways to “make a difference in the lives of children,” a White House official told CNN) — none seemed to have been fulfilled.

Her work has also been undermined indirectly by the president’s public fits of pique. The irony of a first lady touting the importance of online civility while the president rages against his political opponents on Twitter did not go unnoticed. Last year she was booed, amid some cheers, when she spoke at a youth opioid summit in Baltimore, a city her husband had called “a rodent and rat-infested mess.” A person close to the first lady said she knew she would get attacked for an online bullying campaign but decided to do it anyway. The women who say they had sexual relations with her husband during their marriage continue to be an uncomfortable issue for the first lady. Michael Cohen, President Trump’s former lawyer who has said he paid hush money to two women, is expected to go into new detail about the affairs in his book due out soon.

The president, for his part, has told others that the first lady is popular and that he knows she is an asset to him politically.

“How popular can you be when your last name is Trump?” said Cox Han, the Chapman professor. “It’s challenging because of how divisive her husband is. We’ve never had a president like Trump before, and that reflects on how the public views his spouse, as well.”

Restoration legacy

The first lady’s legacy may end up being what she did inside the White House grounds, rather than any interaction with the public.

Trump, who studied architecture and loves design, just finished managing a project to restore the Rose Garden to the original design overseen by Jackie Kennedy. The project seems to have personal meaning, as her affection for Jackie Kennedy runs deep. Amalija Knavs, Melania’s mother — a dark-haired, elegant woman who grew up in the former Yugoslavia and wore heels to work every day to her factory job as a seamstress — was called “Jackie” by those in her small town. Amalija has often stayed in the White House, as Michelle Obama’s mother did, and helped her daughter raise Barron.

The Rose Garden “renewal” is “really long, long, long, long, long, long, long overdue,” said McBride, who remembers dealing with maintenance issues back when she worked for Laura Bush.

The fixes involve irrigation and wear and tear from the garden being used for many of President Trump’s news conferences. There is new lighting and electrical wiring for broadcast television crews, and new limestone walkways that make the garden accessible for those with disabilities. While the new garden has many more roses, and the distinctive crabapple trees are gone (the White House said they were casting too much shadow on other plantings), Melania Trump made sure that a rose named after Pope John Paul II remained in the garden. The first lady, who was baptized Catholic, has said her meeting with Pope Francis in Rome in 2017 was particularly meaningful.

She has taken a keen interest in the rest of the White House grounds, too. “Before the inauguration, she requested copies of all of our books and publications and wanted to know about our history and our work,” said Stewart McLaurin, president of the White House Historical Association, the private nonprofit that funds renovations.

While her seasonal decorations have made the most headlines (remember those “creepy” blood-red Christmas trees she had lining the colonnade in 2018?), much of what she’s done is unglamorous restoration work: organizing a massive storage room of relics in the basement; redoing the Nixon bowling alley; refinishing worn historic wooden doors; replacing the parquet floor of the East Room, which had loose tiles; and refreshing the worn fabric in the Red, Blue and Green rooms. A rug in the diplomatic reception room had gone threadbare because it’s what the president crosses every time he walks outside to catch a helicopter; she had it remade in the style of the old one, replacing the original border of all 50 state seals with a border of all the state’s flowers.

The time she got dinged for wearing stilettos to a tree-planting? She had invited the largest gathering of presidential descendants in history to plant the tree with her on the South Lawn.

“These aren’t the flashy, showy things, but are necessary to keep the house going,” McLaurin said. “I think she understands that families who live in the house, it’s like a relay race. You receive the baton and you carry the baton for your four or eight years, and then you hand the baton to another family.”

Michelle Obama, for instance, chose new wooden chairs with brown upholstery for the State Dining Room. McLaurin said that every time he has seen President Trump give an interview, he has been sitting in one.

Unique value

Just as the president seems obsessed with criticizing his predecessor, the White House seems determined to measure the first lady’s performance in Tuesday’s prime-time speech against Michelle Obama’s remarks at last week’s Democratic convention, where she received widespread praise and news coverage for delivering a stinging rebuke of the Trump presidency.

The president responded by criticizing Obama for pre-taping her speech, saying he could tell because she cited a coronavirus death toll that is at least 17,000 deaths lower than the total count when Obama’s speech aired. “Frankly, she should have made the speech live, which she didn’t do — she taped it,” he said. ­Grisham has said publicly that the Tuesday speech will be given live, not taped.

At crucial times Melania Trump has backed up her husband. After the 2016 “Access Hollywood” tape came out and voters heard him boast about grabbing women, she made a rare solo campaign appearance in Pennsylvania (which he narrowly won) five days before the election.

But she has made it plain she does not agree with everything her husband says. Early in the pandemic, she was the first Trump administration figure and first Trump family member to post a picture of herself wearing a mask, at a time when her husband said he refused to wear one, in defiance of a national recommendation from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. When the president had his infamous photo op outside St. John’s Church in Washington, after law enforcement had cleared his path by violently dispersing protesters, the first lady was nowhere to be seen.

She reads all the polls, said someone close to the campaign. She knows her husband is down. His campaign is already using her convention speech to raise money: An email to Trump supporters promised those who contribute “ANY AMOUNT IMMEDIATELY” will get their name “broadcast live during her address.” She knows that for this president, at this moment, she has unique value.

At the women’s suffrage event on Monday, the mother of one of the children chosen to attend praised the first lady. Lisl Lange, one of the few people wearing a mask, had traveled from Missouri with her 12-year-old daughter Abigail.

She called the first lady “exquisite” and said, “The president wouldn’t be where he is without her.”

 

The eye roll vote is sorely missed again.

I don't believe for a minute that her speech will be anything but a dull, heavily accented, recitation of what everybody else at the convention has already said: Donald good, Biden bad.

[GreyhoundFan]

More on Kimberly's speech:

[GreyhoundFan]

I did a spit take when I read Pat's comment:

 

[Audrey2]

2 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

“Since taking office,” she said Monday at an event celebrating women’s suffrage, “my husband and this administration have taken historic measures to empower and support women in the United States — and around the world.”

Wait- have we been living through the same last four years?

[fraurosena]

Just now, Audrey2 said:

Wait- have we been living through the same last four years?

Yes, but in an alternative universe, @Audrey2...

[GreyhoundFan]

This is a great op-ed piece: "The Republican convention is fan fiction"

Spoiler

No one doubted that the Republican convention would be filled with insane fearmongering, bizarrely dishonest attacks on Joe Biden, and tributes to the party leader’s magnificence so over-the-top that they would not be out of place on North Korean state television. But watching the first night’s proceedings, something else came into focus: an entirely different President Trump from the one we all know, one whose actions and character are completely at odds with what we’ve watched over the past four years.

To put it simply: This is Trump fan fiction.

For the unfamiliar, fan fiction allows fans to take well-known entertainment properties and write their own scenarios into them, creating everything from brief stories to entire novels. What if Kirk and Spock were lovers? What if you threw Harry and Hermione into the “Star Wars” universe? What if the a cappella singers from “Pitch Perfect” had to fight zombies?

Or what if Trump were a caring, compassionate, totally non-racist person who saved America from the coronavirus pandemic? Wouldn’t that be an interesting twist?

So Republicans decided that the way to handle the crisis affecting all our lives was to present an alternate timeline, a bizarro-universe story in which rather than spending months denying the coronavirus would affect the United States and claiming it was about to disappear, Trump was in fact the only one who realized how serious it was.

“One leader took decisive action to save lives: President Donald Trump,” said the narrator of a video laying out a fantasy in which Trump personally wrestled the pandemic into submission.

Speakers were brought in to testify to how fantastically Trump performed and how much America benefited. “I can tell you without hesitation Donald Trump’s quick action and leadership saved thousands of lives during covid-19,” said Amy Johnson Ford, a nurse from West Virginia. “President Trump truly moved mountains to save lives,” said G.E. Ghali, a doctor and the chancellor of Louisiana State University Health Shreveport.

You’d never know that over 174,000 Americans have died of covid-19, or that while many of our peer countries, such as Germany, Canada, and South Korea, have the pandemic largely under control to the point where their daily death tolls are in the single digits, America is still ravaged by the virus.

But not in the GOP fanfic. “Just imagine what 2020 would have looked like,” said cancer survivor Natalie Harp, had Trump not done such a magnificent job. “Millions would have died. Millions more would have been infected.”

Just like in all those countries unfortunate enough to lack the benefit of Trump’s leadership, like … um … well, anyway, the pandemic is pretty much over, right?

Then there was the rewriting of Trump’s character. That Trump we all know, the petty, vindictive, crude, selfish narcissist who only seems comfortable around other humans when they’re telling him how great he is? Forget that guy. The convention gave us a fan-fiction version of Trump, one brimming with kindness and compassion.

“I’ve seen up close a man who has a deep love for family,” said RNC chair Ronna McDaniel, who literally was forced to change her name because Trump found the “Romney” in it displeasing. (She’s Mitt’s niece.) “I’ve seen private moments where he comforts Americans in times of pain and sadness.”

Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan told us “how much he truly cares about people,” by relating a story in which Jordan asked Trump to speak on the phone to a family member whose young son had been killed in a car accident. Rather than saying no, Trump spoke to the man for five minutes. Could any mere mortal display such compassion?

Former football star Herschel Walker testified too to Trump’s boundless love for ordinary people. “I watched him treat janitors, security guards, and waiters the same way you would treat a VIP. He made them feel special because he knew they were,” said Walker, saying he’s seen “what a caring, loving father he is.”

Walker also insisted that Trump — he of the racist birther lie, “s---hole countries,” and too many bigoted remarks to mention — is actually a great friend to Black people. “It hurt my soul to hear the terrible names that people call Donald,” Walker said. “The worst one is racist. I take it out as a personal insult that people would think I’ve had a 37-year friendship with a racist.”

Four years ago, the Republican Party said to America: Why not the worst? What if we searched far and wide to find the most corrupt, immoral, ignorant, narcissistic, impulsive, childish, bigoted demagogue in all the land, a guy who cheats on his taxes and sexually assaults women and is a literal con artist, and made him president? Which we did, and we all know how it worked out.

So now they ask: What if we imagined that none of that actually happened? If we imagined a Trump who is kind, gentle, and compassionate, and the worst disaster of his presidency, the one that has destroyed so many families and left the economy devastated, never occurred? What if that spectacular failure was actually a tremendous success? Wouldn’t that be great?

Well yes, it would be. But the thing about fan fiction is that it’s fiction. And we’re all stuck with the reality.

 

[WiseGirl]

I didn't watch. Did he really come across as high? I've seen a number if Tweets alleging this.

 

[WiseGirl]

 

[thoughtful]

I'm waiting for Randy Rainbow to alter the Cy Coleman and Carolyn Leigh classic:

 

[Cartmann99]

4 hours ago, WiseGirl said:

I didn't watch. Did he really come across as high? I've seen a number if Tweets alleging this.

 

Note the red and glassy eyes:

 

[GreyhoundFan]

The NYT columnists and guests ran down the best and worst of the first night of the RNC. I've posted some under the spoiler:

Spoiler

Best:

Wajahat Ali At least I laughed out loud.

Linda Chavez Watching Kimberly Guilfoyle do her best Evita imitation. Was it hydroxychloroquine or too much Red Bull? What was the deal with her paying homage to her mother from “Aguadilla, Puerto Rico,” and her father, “also an immigrant.” Someone should tell her that Puerto Ricans are natural-born American citizens — and even Donald Trump hasn’t figured out how to take that away. The man she wants re-elected would make sure there are fewer people like her in the next generation.

Matt Labash As a reasonably devoted person of faith, I enjoyed all the God references. To their credit, at least nobody at the Republican convention was shy about invoking the G-word. Though I also like to think God has better things to do than to thumb the scale on the side of a presidential candidate who some of my fellow evangelicals have compared to “the second coming of God.” If God doesn’t see it otherwise, I’d have to reconsider atheism.

Melanye Price If the goal was to scare (mostly white) people into believing that everything you hold dear is under attack, it was quite successful. If you’re Chinese-American, believe protesting is a constitutional right, support gun control or understand that all Democrats are not socialists, you are afraid that Trump could win another term and embolden more hostile actors.

Mimi Swartz The Trumpers laid down their campaign theme with a steamroller. Empathy is for weaklings who want sand kicked in their face. Socialists want to take your guns, your freedom of speech and your school choice. Liberty is on the line. Joe Biden has been a Washington hack for 47 years. No quarter will be given — even if you need it because Covid-19 took your job away.

Worst:

Wajahat Ali My cup runneth over. The terrifying and surreal segment featuring the McCloskey couple from St. Louis was a textbook example of white supremacy. The warning? People of color are going to invade the suburbs. They pointed their guns at peaceful Black Lives Matter demonstrators and somehow think they are the victims?

Elizabeth Bruenig Even if Donald Trump Jr.’s speech had been overflowing with good content, the form would’ve obscured it, with obnoxious rhetorical turns like “Beijing Biden” (what?), “the Loch Ness Monster of the swamp” (mind-bending) and “the silenced majority” (for God’s sake).

Linda Chavez The McCloskeys — the gun-toting couple who threatened peaceful protesters in their gated community — were introduced by a disingenuous film showing looting, arson and a broken gate. They referred to the protesters as a mob “that descended on our neighborhood.” In their speech, the couple doubled down on the message, saying that Biden will “abolish the suburbs.” It’s a canard borne of desperation as suburban voters flee the G.O.P.

Gail Collins Lots of competition, but I hit bottom watching the couple brag about having waved guns at protesters marching past their yard. (“They want to abolish the suburbs altogether!”) The virtual parade of the delegates from their home states was really flat compared with the Democrats’ version. This is the party of a reality TV star and they can’t even figure how to make the easy stuff appealing.

Michelle Cottle Kimberly Guilfoyle was so apocalyptic and shouty that she seemed on the verge of spontaneous combustion. Her delivery might have worked in a packed arena, but it was terrifying in a quiet auditorium empty enough that her voice echoed. Close second: Her boyfriend, Don Jr., was slightly less loud but similarly amped-up and scary. And what was going on with his eyes?

Nicole Hemmer They didn’t shout like Kimberly Guilfoyle, but Mark and Patricia McCloskey got their message through loud and clear. Video of them waving guns at anti-racist protesters made them an emblem of white fear and resentment, and they lived up to that reputation tonight.

Matt Labash Someone forgot to tell Kimberly Guilfoyle that this was the Republican National Convention, not Evita tryouts. (Has she stopped yelling yet?) A lot of speakers made mention of prayer tonight, and she had me saying one myself: I asked God to short out my cable connection until it was over.

Liz Mair Kim Guilfoyle forgot a bunch of things tonight. She forgot she had no audience, so the applause lines were just surrounded by dead air. She forgot she had a microphone, so she didn’t need to turn the volume up to 11 (or 500). She forgot you can’t paper over the lack of a crowd with more yelling, so she yelled a lot. And then some more.

Melanye Price “The China Virus,” “Beijing Biden” and other China baiting were the lowest moments. They have to know that they are fomenting potentially hostile actions toward Asian-Americans. The fact that they did it is just another example of the belligerent nature of Trump-era intolerance and willingness to run with racist tropes despite the consequences.

Bret Stephens Representative Matt Gaetz, warning of MS-13 next door, and Kimberly Guilfoyle, doing an unwitting imitation of Edvard Munch’s “The Scream,” were the lowlights for me.

Mimi Swartz Donald Trump Jr. Please. Maybe his anger and hatred served as raw sirloin for the base, but his smugness and hyperbole were just beyond the pale. Biden a leader of the radical left? Come on. Runner-up: Kimberly Guilfoyle. Gurl, take a breath.

Héctor Tobar Kimberly Guilfoyle’s awful, shouted harangue. As the volume reached a peak halfway through — “Don’t let them destroy your families, your lives and your future!” — you could hear the pops of a few million televisions turning off.

Peter Wehner So many to choose from. But let’s settle on the Trump lap dog Charlie Kirk’s opening speech, in which he said the choice is between Trump and those “eliminating everything that we love” and informed us that Trump is “the bodyguard of Western civilization.” Uh-huh.

Will Wilkinson Kimberly Guilfoyle’s crazed, screaming rant took the cake. She seemed to take her inspiration from Benito Mussolini, Judge Jeanine Pirro and that Will Ferrell “Saturday Night Live” character who can’t modulate his voice. A G.O.P. star is born.

 

What Else Mattered:

Wajahat Ali We saw a snapshot of what will happen if Trump wins in 2020, a family run and ruled kakistocracy. They had Donald Trump’s son give a talk. His title? “The president’s son.” A democracy as vibrant as ours shouldn’t die for dynastic rule by idiots.

Jamelle Bouie The big problem with the night is that it was thematically muddled. What was the message, exactly? That the country is in chaos? That it is on the verge of prosperity? That Biden is a dangerous radical? That he is ineffectual and incompetent? Each speaker brought something different, and the result was a series of mutually exclusive messages that may appeal to the president’s fans but may not persuade voters who are on the fence.

Linda Chavez There was no unifying theme for the evening: a little pandemic, a little “promises kept” and a dash of crazy. Speakers in a nearly empty auditorium seemed more artificial and stilted than Democrats’ Zoom chats. The effort to portray Joe Biden and the Democrats as Marxists, radicals and socialists will fail. There are still real Stalinists in the world, and Trump has been willing to cozy up when it suits him.

Gail Collins Donald Trump Jr. was a star of the night, but if he was supposed to make the viewers see Dad’s behind-the-scenes warmth, he really gave a good impersonation of an Ohio assistant state party chairman. Still, let’s keep in mind that the poor guy had a really awful childhood.

Michelle Cottle The question of where the president’s convention would fall on the spectrum of “rallying his base” vs. “expanding his appeal” was definitively answered: It’s all about that MAGA base. Lots of grievance politics. Lots of scaremongering. Much talk of socialism and cancel culture.

Nicole Hemmer Based on the first night’s speeches, you would think cancel culture is a bigger threat than Covid-19. But Trump’s campaign strategy is not to ask “Are you better off than you were four years ago?” but “Can you imagine how mad would it make the libs if I won a second term?!”

Melanye Price This first night seemed more joyless than the first night of the Democratic Convention. It’s a strange way to demonstrate how much you love America by castigating significant swaths of the population and frightening others. Unless their plan is to attract the angriest people to their party, I’m not sure why this is the approach.

Peter Wehner There are three notable themes that emerged. One is that on the first day of the R.N.C. we witnessed a cult of personality that at times rivaled Jonestown, minus (thankfully) the mass suicide. The second was how fully the R.N.C. has embraced Trump’s inversion of reality. The bolder the deception, the better. Third, a relentless effort to portray Democrats not just as radical but malevolent, committed to destroying America and to relish doing so. The G.O.P. came across as one pissed-off party.

Will Wilkinson The cultlike air of the proceedings, the constant lies about the catastrophic Covid-19 pandemic, the night’s motif of incendiary anti-urban fear-mongering showed us that the president and his party are in such profound disarray that they fear they’re losing their own voters, feel they need to double down on their most distasteful themes to nail them down, and can’t afford to waste a moment reaching out and appealing to wavering independents and Democrats.

 

 

[Marmion]

On 8/22/2020 at 4:40 PM, nausicaa said:

So with Cindy McCain vocally endorsing Biden, some pundits were saying they might be able to flip Arizona. Does anyone from the Southwest have more understanding of the electorate there and how much pull the McCain family has? It would be awesome if they could but I wonder if this is just more pundit exaggeration

And finally so has Meghan McCain .  https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/494508-meghan-mccain-indicates-shell-vote-for-biden-politics-is-personal  Initially she had been noncommittal , in large part I think due to Biden rescinding his support for the Hyde Amendment .  

Spoiler

 

I fear that the divisive hot button  issue of abortion is being brought to the forefront of this election , by Democrats , as well as Republicans .  I resolve to vote for the Democratic ticket come what may , but I imagine I might receive pressure , and grief , from my Christian right Republican family .  I just wish to the Democratic party officials would realize that while they have to deal with the likes of such die hard Republican true believers , those such as myself have to live with them . 

[GreyhoundFan]

"4 takeaways from the second night of the Republican National Convention"

Spoiler

The Republican National Convention continued Tuesday night with high-profile speeches from Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and first lady Melania Trump, plus President Trump’s son Eric and daughter Tiffany.

Below, some takeaways.

1. Melania Trump’s case for her husband

In Tuesday’s keynote speech, the first lady made the case for her husband, rough edges and all.

“As you have learned over the past five years, he is not a traditional politician,” Melania Trump said. “He doesn’t just speak words. He demands action and he gets results. The future of our country has always been very important to him, and it is something that I have always admired.”

The first lady, who has run a “Be Best” campaign focused in part on online bullying, cast the president’s very public comments about his grievances in a positive light.

“We all know Donald Trump makes no secrets about how he feels about things,” she said. “Total honesty is what we as citizens deserve from our president. Whether you like it or not, you always know what he’s thinking. And that is because he’s an authentic person who loves this country and its people and wants to continue to make it better.” (GreyhoundFan added a huge eyeroll here)

One of the biggest applause lines of her speech came when she sent a message to Trump’s critics, saying, “If you tell him it cannot be done, he just works harder.” (GreyhoundFan's eyes got stuck doing another huge eyeroll)

“He’s what is best for our country,” she said.

2. An appeal to socially conservative women who have deserted Trump

Chief on the list of aims Tuesday night was appealing to women, who polls show have deserted Trump in numbers that make his reelection path very difficult. And there was clearly a focus specifically on culturally conservative women.

One speaker, Cissie Graham Lynch, the granddaughter of the late evangelical icon Billy Graham, referred to what are known as bathroom bills on transgender students, saying, “Democrats pressured schools to allow boys to compete in girls’ sports and use girls’ locker rooms.”

Another, former Planned Parenthood employee Abby Johnson, denounced abortion services in graphic terms and said she was told to push for them in her former job.

“I was expected to sell double the abortions performed the previous year,” she said. “When I pushed back, underscoring Planned Parenthood’s public-facing goal of decreasing abortions, I was reprimanded and told abortion is how we make our money.”

Johnson added: “I know what abortion smells like. Did you know abortion even had a smell? I’ve been the perpetrator to these babies, to these women. And I now support President Trump because he has done more for the unborn than any other president during his first month in office.”

Melania Trump made a general appeal to women and said she had “a special message for the mothers of this country,” describing struggling with how to talk to children about their changing world. “To mothers and parents everywhere, you are warriors. In my husband, you have a president who will not stop fighting for you and your families.”

Another video featured mothers who serve in the White House. (GreyhoundFan added" must have been a short video)

The angle seemed to be that conservative women who have deserted Trump in large numbers could be brought back into the fold, and the appeal was very much focused on social issues.

3. Trump’s highly unusual use of his political stage — on many counts

Trump has used his presidential power in unprecedented and transparently political ways, and Tuesday night brought more of the same.

At the start of the night, a lengthy video featured Trump’s pardon of Jon Ponder, a convicted bank robber and three-time felon who has run a program that helps people transition to life outside prison. The pardon was announced shortly before the evening’s programming in a White House video.

The touching story noted that Ponder and the FBI agent who arrested him, Richard Beasley, have become unlikely close friends.

The pardon called to mind another instance in which Trump wielded a uniquely presidential power in an unconventional, official venue: this year’s State of the Union address, where he awarded conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Trump has also awarded and commutations to other political allies, including longtime political adviser Roger Stone; former Maricopa County, Ariz., sheriff Joe Arpaio; conservative media figure Conrad Black (who wrote a Trump hagiography); conservative provocateur Dinesh D’Souza, and former New York police chief Bernard Kerik.

Trump’s record of pardons suggest he sees some political benefit in them; featuring the Ponder pardon so prominently in such a political venue certainly spoke to that apparent aim.

Similarly, the convention aired video of a diverse group of candidates for naturalization becoming citizens, a ceremony conducted by acting Department of Homeland Security head Chad Wolf. It was another unusual use of a political convention that suggested an intent to use the process for political gain.

The scenes raised questions about potential violations of the Hatch Act, which prohibits administration officials from participation in politics in their official roles.

And those weren’t the only elements Tuesday night that raised eyebrows for joining normally apolitical government functions with politics. Melania Trump used the White House Rose Garden for her speech, and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo spoke while ostensibly on a diplomatic mission in Israel — a break with diplomatic protocol and the State Department’s recent directive about appointees engaging in political campaigns.

4. Real-person testimonials — from key states

One thing previewed by convention organizers — whose promises of an optimistic convention weren’t exactly realized Monday — was that regular people would be featured.

That also wasn’t so much the case Monday, but it was Tuesday, and it worked.

A Wisconsin dairy farmer, Cris Peterson, recounted the recent struggles in that industry and how her family suffered a blow when their cow-milking barn burned down. But she credited Trump’s economic policies and attentiveness to farmers’ struggles.

“President Trump understands that farming is a complicated, capital-intensive and risky business,” Peterson said. “More than any president in my lifetime, he has acknowledged the importance of farmers and agriculture. That support and focus on negotiating new trade deals gave us the confidence to rebuild our barn and dairy operation.”

Peterson said Trump, amid the coronavirus pandemic, “again took steps to provide the supports we needed. … One person deserves the credit and our vote: President Donald J. Trump.” (GF: another massive eyeroll)

Similarly, the owner of a metal fabrication business — another Wisconsinite — credited Trump’s deregulation and renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement with helping his business. A small-town mayor and longtime Democrat from Minnesota credited Trump’s trade war, saying that “for far too long, members both parties allowed our country to be ripped off by our trading partners, especially China, who dumped steel into our markets and slapped tariffs on our products.” And a Maine lobsterman recounted not voting for Trump in 2016 because he was skeptical of Trump’s conservative bona fides but ultimately becoming convinced.

The emphasis on regular people — many of them notably from key electoral areas like these — seemed likely more effective than the focus on members of Trump’s family, who have been extremely prominent at the convention thus far and dominated Tuesday night especially.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

Twitler is so disgusting.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

[GreyhoundFan]

He looks like he needs to use the restroom.

[GreyhoundFan]

No surprise here:

[GreyhoundFan]

"The Trump children are here to feed your grievance and resentment"

Spoiler

Before the Republican National Convention began, party chair Ronna McDaniel promised “an aspirational and uplifting tone.” And some speakers certainly have described the paradise America will turn into should President Trump be given a second term.

But much more, the convention has been a showcase of grievance, anger and resentment. And the most enthusiastic purveyors of this, oddly enough, have been those who have the least cause to be aggrieved about anything: Trump’s own children.

This has long been a core part of Republican politics, especially around race. Minorities are taking your jobs, killing your children and living off welfare, generations of voters have been told; the only answer was to elect the party whose highest priority is cutting taxes for the wealthy and corporations. In 2016, Trump told that same story, but this time the villains were immigrants.

But in this election the GOP has found a different avenue to promote that resentment and anger. Liberals, they say, are silencing you, making you a victim of “cancel culture.”

And the Trump children are here to tell you that the thought police are coming for you.

“The Democrats want an America where your thoughts and opinions are censored when they do not align with their own,” said Eric Trump on Tuesday night. “To the voiceless, shamed, censored and canceled, my father will fight for you.”

Joining the de-silencing and un-canceling was Eric’s half-sister, Tiffany, who exposed the dark forces tampering with Americans’ minds. “This manipulation of what information we receive impedes our freedoms. Rather than allowing Americans the right to form our own beliefs, this misinformation system keeps people mentally enslaved to the ideas they deem correct,” she said.

“Ask yourselves, why are we prevented from seeing certain information?" Tiffany Trump continued. "Why is one viewpoint promoted while others are hidden? The answer is control, because division and controversy breed profit.”

So we’re all forced to adhere to one set of beliefs, because the media want division and controversy. See if you can spot the logical problem there.

“If you care about living your life without restraints, about rebelling against those who would suppress your voice,” Tiffany Trump concluded, you must vote for her father.

Tuesday’s presentation also featured Nick Sandmann, the young man who became famous after a confrontation on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. Sandmann described how his voice had been snuffed out: “I learned what was happening to me had a name. It was called being canceled, as in annulled, as in revoked, as in made void. Canceled is what’s happening to people around this country who refuse to be silenced by the far left.”

So Sandmann explained how he had been silenced while addressing a national televised audience, as every silenced person does.

The night before Donald Trump Jr. sounded the same notes: “Joe Biden and the radical left are now coming for our freedom of speech. They 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.”

There’s a reality underneath these complaints, even if it’s not quite the one Republicans portray. Liberals do indeed have the lion’s share of cultural power in America, particularly in the entertainment industry and academia. They use that power to express their values, in ways many conservatives find unpleasant. For instance, you can see gay couples on TV now.

As American society has become more inclusive, certain groups have felt their loss of cultural hegemony as a kind of oppression, as though, to take just one example, if everyone isn’t forced to honor Christian holidays in all public spaces to the exclusion of every other religion, that means Christians are being persecuted.

When society changes in ways that undermine your position — if you hear people speaking a language other than yours, or people challenge ideas you took for granted, or someone tells you that the way you talk about other people is harmful — it can be alienating and distressing.

At the same time, conservatives have most of the political power in America today, power they possess despite the fact that they are in the minority. In two of the past five presidential elections, their nominee has won despite getting fewer votes than the Democrat, and they control the Senate despite Democratic senators winning many more votes and representing many more people. The system is built to give outsize weight to them and the places they live.

That fact does not assuage Republicans’ feelings of resentment over their lack of cultural dominance. And just as they equate any exercise of authority by a duly elected Democrat with “tyranny,” they’ve convinced themselves that being criticized for something they do or say is the same thing as being censored and canceled.

This is all right out of the rhetoric of Fox News and conservative talk radio, where tales of oppressed conservatives are a part of everyday’s menu, meant to keep the audience enraged and fearful.

To be clear, I’m not saying that there aren’t, shall we say, excesses of censoriousness in our contemporary debates. But for a group of people constantly wailing that they’ve been silenced, Republicans are awfully loud.