Rarely has the appearance of a party’s nominee on a convention stage been as intensely anticipated as that of Donald Trump in Milwaukee.
Nearly assassinated last Saturday and still bandaged from his wound to his ear, Trump was rapturously greeted each time he entered the convention hall this week, and his speech was tantalizingly teased as completely reworked after the shooting last weekend.
The emotional centerpiece of the address, of course, was Trump’s riveting account of his near-assassination. He delivered it in a soft, earnest tone that we’ve never heard before. He seemed genuinely moved and humbled, and attributed his survival to the grace of God. He paid tribute at length to the firefighter who was killed at his rally, the former fire chief Corey Comperatore, and two others who were seriously injured. This was, indeed, a different Trump.
From there, he delivered a lengthy, rambling, repetitive speech, clocking in at a record one hour and 32 minutes. As he combined lengthy riffs with his teleprompter text, often leaving and returning to topics multiple times, the performance became more like a restrained, low-affect rally than a focused convention speech.
Trump stayed mostly positive (although he couldn’t resist references to Democrats “cheating” in 2020) and mostly spoke in a quieter tone than usual. Along with his impromptu tributes to the speakers and performers from earlier in the evening and his prediction of a good upcoming season for the Green Bay Packers, he hit all the issues where Biden is vulnerable, and promised to kill inflation, keep taxes low, pursue deregulation, secure the border, and restore America’s strength and deterrence abroad. He also emphasized his signature hostility to trade — calling on the head of the UAW to be fired for allowing cars to get manufactured in Mexico — and pledged to protect Social Security and Medicare.
As a speech, it was a fizzle. Trump and the Republicans are sitting pretty, though. The party was unified and energized in Milwaukee, while the Democrats have been in the throes of a crisis that seems likely now to result in the defenestration of President Joe Biden. Who knows, if it happens, how that will play out — whether Democrats emerge still divided with another weak candidate or newly united behind someone formidable. Regardless, Republicans have to hope that Trump, who has been willing to listen to his advisers more than usual during this campaign, will be more disciplined going forward than he was at the podium last night.