Trump’s acceptance speech was just like the RNC itself, with lies about his record, efforts to make out Joe Biden as a radical, attacks on Democrats as un-American, and indifference to the COVID-19 threat, manifest in a perilous White House ceremony.
Team Trump dealt with their first problem, the necessity of a virtual convention, by plunging right ahead with a big cheering crowd on the White House lawn, crammed together and maskless. That’s quite a gamble. Just as predictably, this entire convention, reflected perfectly in Trump’s own acceptance speech, accepted the challenge of building up the incumbent and tearing down his opponent with big, audacious lies, repeated so monotonously as to seem less remarkable. And the Big Liar himself, described incredibly as an inveterate truth-teller by his wife on the second night of the convention, put an exclamation report on every lie. How many times did we hear that prior to the China Virus Trump had compiled the most stunning record of accomplishment of any president, who kept absolutely every promise he made in 2016? This is the president who, with partisan control of both Houses of Congress, could boast just one significant legislative victory in his first two years, a reactionary tax cut package that helped buy Republican loyalty. After his party lost the House, the Trump legislative agenda basically died with the exception of occasional deals to end or avoid government shutdowns he had triggered or brought near. We are still waiting on his health-care plan and his infrastructure plan. How many times were we regaled with tales of his stunning achievement of criminal justice reform via the First Step Act, as contrasted with Joe Biden’s (and even Kamala Harris’s) shameful lock-em-up policies (which they pursued when they weren’t urging rioters to sack the suburbs)? In truth, Trump’s 2016 campaign stopped an earlier and much more significant bipartisan criminal justice effort dead in its tracks, a fate reinforced by his first Attorney General Jeff Sessions and his staunch ally Tom Cotton, until finally, begged by his son-in-law Jared Kushner, he grudgingly signed a half-measure. How often were we assured of Trump’s deep and abiding compassion for the downtrodden, those suffering from injustice and poverty and poor health? This is the president with a lifelong habit of sneering at hurting and vulnerable people as “losers,” who struggled almost visibly during his daily coronavirus briefings to treat the pandemic as anything other than an annoyance that threatened his reelection.
