The final night of the Republican convention featured Trump’s first public speech since a gunman tried to assassinate him on Saturday, and saw extensive exaltation of the nominee from speakers who implied, and sometimes outright declared, that he was saved by, and chosen by, God himself.
That deification was punctuated by appearances from various MAGA celebrities who gloried in their own excess — Hulk Hogan, Tucker Carlson, Kid Rock — leading up to a long and sometimes plodding speech by the biggest MAGA celebrity of all.
Here are some moments and themes from night four:
Trump recounts the shooting
Speaking with an image of the White House projected behind him, Trump retold the story of the attempt on his life last weekend in Pennsylvania.
He said that he turned during his speech and “felt something hit me really, really hard.” There was “blood all over the place,” and he immediately knew “we were under attack,” he said.
“There was blood pouring everywhere and yet, in a certain way, I felt very safe because I had God on my side. I felt that,” Trump said.
He praised the crowd on Saturday for its stillness after the shooting.
“This massive crowd — tens of thousands of people — stood by, and didn’t move an inch,” he said, with his customary need to exaggerate crowd size (and, in this case, lack of crowd movement).
He then mused on how, if he had not turned his head at the exact right moment, the bullet would have found its mark. There was an explicitly religious overtone to all this. Trump was saved, Trump was protected.
“Bullets were flying all over us, and yet I felt serene,” he said. He added, later: “I’m not supposed to be here tonight.”
“Yes you are,” the crowd chanted.
“I stand before you here thanks to the grace of an almighty God,” Trump said.
It was a religious revival story that earlier speakers teed up for him, and which he leaned fully into. He dodged death, he suggested, and is marked by God for a providential mission.
Trump takes a victory lap on immunity, Cannon
Trump made his call for “unity” demanding that the Democrats stop labeling their opponent the “enemy of Democracy.”
“In fact, that is not true, I am the one saving democracy for this country,” he said.
He then transitioned to exulting in Judge Aileen Cannon’s dismissal of his Mar-a-Lago records case, and in his victories in fending off a number of other attempts at accountability: the two impeachments, the Supreme Court giving him an assist by finding that it’s nearly impossible to prosecute former presidents for anything they did while in office.
“Very big news, as you probably just read. On Monday a major ruling was handed down from a highly respected federal judge in Florida, Aileen Cannon,” he began, name-checking his appointee.
Trump did not mention his conviction on 34 felony counts in New York state court in May.
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The hits
For all of the articles touting New Trump and the talk during the convention of “unity,” a lot of Trump’s speech Thursday night consisted of playing the hits. There was election denial, and the promise that, referring to the 2020 election that he lost, “we’re never going to let that happen again.”
We heard “close our borders.” We heard “drill, baby, drill.” We heard “the China virus,” snarled with relish. We heard about immigrants coming to the U.S. from “jails” and “insane asylums,” and terrorists “coming in in numbers that we’ve never seen before.”
Much of it could have been taken from the 2016 or 2020 campaigns.
The cult of personality
Earlier on in the night, you started to get the distinct impression that the evening was constructed to make the big man feel as good as possible before he took the stage for his speech. It was striking how many hours focused on one thing: praising Donald Trump.
Speakers praised him for his golf game, for his management abilities, for his divine protection, for his bravery, for his selflessness, for his modesty. If you can think of it, they were praising it. Policies were only mentioned incidentally, as features garlanding the core: praising Trump.
“Donald Trump: 21 club championships,” a golf professional from one of Trump’s clubs bragged from the stage. “Joe Biden? Zero.”
One consistent theme across the speakers was that his entrance into politics was an act of supreme sacrifice. How could someone so rich and so successful, so universally beloved, with so much time and opportunity to relax in the most lavish ways imaginable, commit himself to dreary, dirty, and divisive politics?
The renouncement is what makes Trump heroic in the story the speakers attempted to tell. He’s not seeking power: rather, he’s turning away from his own riches to help the country. Many of Thursday’s speakers repeated a version of this, but not verbatim. And they seemed to genuinely believe it, each retelling the story in their own way as they lavished the former president with praise.
“I’m in the tough guy business, and this man is the toughest, most resilient human being I have ever met in my life,” UFC CEO Dana White said.
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It’s all entertainment
A reactionary media personality. A pro wrestler. A televangelist’s kid. Kid Rock. And then Trump. The night was programmed, either intentionally or not, in a way that acknowledged the way Trump has changed 21st century politics, making it purely about entertainment and dominance: putting on a show as you claim to do battle against the forces of evil. Thursday’s lineup was almost too on the nose: his often-on-TV attorney, Alina Habba; Tucker Carlson; wrestler Hulk Hogan; Billy Graham’s son Franklin; Kid Rock; and White, the UFC CEO.
Their contributions to the 2024 Republican Party’s attempt to define itself were all over the map. Carlson was the TV host we know, sneering and apocalyptic, claiming antifa tried to kill his wife. Habba got religious and solemn, saying that Trump didn’t just take a single bullet in Pennsylvania, but that he “has and will continue to take them for each and every one of us.” Hulk Hogan, in character, gestured to Trump and shouted that he sees “the greatest tag team of all time.” He then ripped off his tank top to reveal another tank top, this one with “Trump Vance” written across it. “What up America,” grunted Kid Rock before exhorting the crowd to “fight, fight”
They say a lot of politics is acting. With Trump, it’s often very hard to tell what’s schtick and what’s real. This introductory lineup took that sense of unreality to the extreme.
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If we’re lucky, everyone calling on Biden to drop out will back down after seeing snippets of Trump’s convention speech. This is Trump both scripted and unscripted and this speech is being panned all across the country with most calling it a rambling mess.
“Look! Up in the ceiling! It’s an eclipse!”
For me, the most significant was Trump’s lying about trade. He started a trade war with China. US foreign trade is worth about $75 billion a month. Isolationism will not boost that number.
I’ve always found Melania’s hands by her side pose having a disturbing quality about it. And boy, her nail tech sure gave her some long claws.
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