Donald Trump’s Excruciating RNC Speech Proves He Can Still Lose
A sleepy repeat election between two polarizing candidates has turned into quite a rollercoaster. So far, in the last week, there was what authorities deemed an assassination attempt on Donald Trump, and an apparently mounting pressure campaign to get President Joe Biden to leave the race following his disastrous debate performance on June 27 (which may or may not be working, depending on your sources). All this was backdropped by the Republican National Convention, held this year in Milwaukee, a buoyant affair for a GOP bolstered by increasingly strong presidential polling numbers, chaos in the opposing party, and the seemingly heroic survival of their candidate. The speeches, pundits, and enthusiasm in the convention hall made it clear that everyone felt confident they had this election on lock. With reports growing that some elected Democrats have privately resigned themselves to a second Trump term — and others publicly expressing their concerns — the sense of inevitability has increased.
But a rambling, often off-script 92-minute speech by Trump as he clinched his third GOP nomination on Thursday night served as an important reminder of who Trump is — and more importantly, that he can still be beat.
Ahead of the 78-year-old Trump’s big speech, his allies and pundits were proclaiming that he was a changed man after the attempt on his life on July 13. POLITICO reported that GOP allies were calling Trump “emotional,” “serene,” and “spiritual” in the wake of the shooting, and some pundits predicted that the bombastic candidate who tried to overturn an election a little less than four years ago might bring a new, softened tone to his speech. Adding to the speculation that the assassination attempt made him a new man, Trump himself told the Washington Examiner that he wanted to pivot to unity at the convention in an attempt to “bring the country together,” and according to NBC News, his campaign reportedly suggested other convention speakers follow suit. Ahead of the former president’s speech, CNN contributor Scott Jennings posted on X: “I’ve seen a big chunk of Trump’s speech . folks, buckle up because he’s about to blow the doors off and rise to the occasion.”
It’s true that early on in the speech, while still reading off the teleprompter, Trump seemed somber and subdued, recounting the recent attempt on his life, thanking “the almighty God” for his survival, and claiming he was running to be president “for all of America, not half of America.” But after 20 minutes or so, he went right back to being the old Trump. Ad-libbing extensively, he turned his focus back to his personal grievances like his legal issues and his false claim that the Democrats “used Covid to cheat” in the 2020 election.
He made many, many outlandish claims. He said that “Americans are being squeezed out of the labor force” and that “107 percent of those jobs are taken by illegal aliens.” (There have been more than 7.2 million jobs for native-born citizens added during the Biden administration, according to the Washington Post, and people can’t take “107 percent” of jobs because that suggests they are taking more than the number of jobs available.) He said that under the current administration we’ve experienced “the worst inflation we’ve ever had,” even though inflation topped out at around 9 percent under Biden and was up in the teens in 1946, 1974, and 1979 (it’s now back down to around a somewhat standard 3 percent.) He leaned into transphobic rhetoric, claiming that “we will not have men playing in women’s sports.”
He suggested bringing back Tom Homan, the former acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and one of the contributors to Project 2025, a sweeping set of proposals from conservative think tank the Heritage Foundation that would allow Trump to consolidate power and engineer a mass deportation effort, in addition to stripping reproductive and LGBTQ+ rights. Though Trump had said he would not mention Biden by name once, he slammed him twice and threw in a jab at “crazy Nancy Pelosi” for good measure. He praised authoritarian leaders like Hungarian leader Viktor Orbán and said he thinks North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un “misses” him. He called for the head of the United Auto Workers union to be “fired.” By the end of the long, unfocused, rambling, low-energy speech, which included greatest hits from his rallies like an extended bit about “the late, great Hannibal Lecter” from The Silence of the Lambs that somehow connects to immigrants, Trump had dropped the reformed act. The only thing about Trump that’s changed since 2016 is that he’s eight years older, and it shows.
We are now three weeks into ongoing chaos over whether or not the 81-year-old Biden can continue on with his campaign post-debate. Polls show that the majority of voters — Democrats included — think he should withdraw from the race. News reports suggest behind-the-scenes maneuvering from the likes of Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, and even Barack Obama to encourage Biden to rethink his re-election campaign. George Clooney, a fundraiser for Democrats, published an op-ed urging Biden to step aside in favor of a younger candidate who’s more equipped for the task at hand. But after last night’s speech, it’s clear that Biden isn’t the only old man in this election, and the one who spoke last night has no vision for the nation beyond his own ambition and power.
Trump’s speech had the air of your racist uncle who’s had one too many drinks at Thanksgiving, as boring and meandering as it was divisive and frightening. He and the other speakers at the convention, including VP pick JD Vance, spent a lot of time painting an image of a dark, war-torn nation in need of saving, with little plan for improvement beyond mass deportation and bold claims about bringing down inflation with few concrete details. Trump’s America is still all about Trump, but with less zing and far fewer rights for immigrants, women and LGBTQ+ people. Things have felt a bit hopeless for Democrats since the debate, but with more focus on the Biden administration’s accomplishments and the Democrats’ future plans — particularly if Biden steps down and endorses, say, Vice President Kamala Harris in his stead — the Democrats may still have a real chance at beating Trump, who is an even more diminished version of the man who lost the popular vote in 2016 and the Electoral College just four years ago. The inevitable is anything but.
