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AUGUST

**28, 2020**

Harold Meyerson' s
National Convention Report

**Unconventional:** The Republicans, Day Four

Your Questions Answered!

****

Question: Why did President Trump's handlers give him a 70-minute
speech?

By giving the president so long a text, his handlers obviously hoped its
sheer length would inhibit his tendency to go off message into
inflammatory or unintelligible ad-libs. In that, they largely succeeded.
Obscure digressions were held to a minimum. In the last 20 minutes, the
president was so clearly running out of steam that he appeared too tired
to ad-lib even if he wanted to. The corresponding downside of having
Trump read text, of course, was that, as in most things, he appeared
completely bored, delivering even the attack lines in a singsong voice.
By the time he got to what should have been his uplifting
finale-hailing the American pioneer spirit, celebrating Wyatt Earp and
Annie Oakley, the heroism of the plainsmen who crossed prairies in their
covered wagons-he sounded like he'd been pushing one of those wagons
himself and wanted nothing so much as to be done with the damned thing.
For a "bodyguard of Western civilization," his recitation of the march
of civilization was so flat that the audience, prepared to be wowed by
the big finish, sat in stony silence, probably also wishing that he'd
wrap it up.

Question: Many of the speakers said that, all appearances to the
contrary, Trump was a deeply empathetic and caring man. Is this true?

In introducing her father last night, Ivanka Trump said she wished we
all could see the president as she could, the caring and solicitous
private Donald Trump. Clearly, what would dispel the nation's
misimpressions would be for Trump to allow himself to be filmed or
otherwise recorded in his private moments, and, conversely, to refrain
from any public discourse whatever, as Melania Trump has successfully
accomplished. Since Trump's public persona is so ineradicably
thuggish, only his private moments-reading Emily Dickinson,
crocheting, volunteering to be a pallbearer at strangers' funerals,
parking cars at bar mitzvahs-should be made available to the public,
particularly to suburban Republican women who've been appalled by his
conduct and need reassurance.

Question: Many of the speakers, including Rudy Giuliani last night, have
also attested to the fact that Trump is the hardest-working president
we've ever had. How do we know that's true?

The president's day is a whirlwind of activity. He awakens early so he
can get off 30 or 40 tweets while most of America still lazes abed. Then
he spends mornings diligently watching

**Fox & Friends** to bone up on the latest in theology, matters of
national security, and modern monetary theory. Then come his
intelligence briefings, except when they don't. Afternoons are spent
on further documenting the falsity of Barack Obama's birth
certificate, proving the guilt of the Central Park Five, repealing
Obamacare, and attending awards ceremonies for policemen who do the best
job of banging the heads of arrestees when putting them into patrol
cars. Then meatloaf for dinner and a nightcap of tweets.

Question: Ivanka Trump noted in her introduction that while her father
was one of New York's most prominent developers, he "befriended
construction workers." Did he really?

Yes. That was in lieu of paying them.

Question: The convention certainly featured a whole lot of African
Americans attesting to Trump's concern for them and their people.
That's quite unusual for a Republican convention, isn't it?

No. Republican convention delegates, alternates, and spectators have
been at least 95 percent white for decades now, so the convention
planners always take pains to trot out Blacks and Latinos to convince
the viewing public that Republicans are more inclusive than they
actually are.

In December 2000, during the long count that followed the Bush-Gore
election, Harold Meyerson wrote a piece
for the

**Prospect** in which he looked back at that summer's Republican
convention, which had nominated Texas Gov. George W. Bush. Here's what
he wrote: "If you watched the Republican convention [on television], you
almost came away thinking that all the governor's acquaintances were
black or Latino. (Indeed, there seemed to be just two kinds of blacks
and Latinos in Texas: Either the governor was your friend, or he
executed you."

(During Bush's term as governor, Texas led the nation in executions.)

Support Independent, Fact-Checked Journalism

Question: So what's the Republican game plan for the rest of the
campaign?

Scare the bejeezus out of white suburban women who aren't hardcore
Democrats. These women have been repulsed by the gratuitous cruelty and
harsh vindictiveness of Trump's presidency, and by policies like
separating toddlers from their families at the border and putting them
in cages. To win them over (or back) to Trump's column, Trump's
strategists spent half the convention creating what was almost an
anti-Trump, who cares about minorities and women and has unseen reserves
of empathy and good fellowship. They spent the other half of the
convention raising the specter of Black rioters and frothing young
Marxists storming a suburb near you, imperiling life, limb, and property
values, and alleging that cautious centrist Joe Biden was in a reality a
Trojan horse concealing these predators. Republicans will be focusing on
that second message for the duration of the campaign, while trying to
make the nation forget that, under Trump's leadership, nearly a
quarter of the planet's deaths from COVID-19 have come right here in
the USA.

For their part, the Democrats

**will** focus on Trump's ineptitude in dealing with the pandemic; on
how his conduct in office has both embodied and greatly increased the
violent hostility abroad in the land, thereby putting democratic norms
in danger; and on his ongoing efforts to strike down the Affordable Care
Act, imperiling Americans with pre-existing conditions in the midst of a
viral plague.

The Republicans also have a postindustrial Midwest swing-state argument
that Trump focused on in his remarks last night: that Biden's support
for NAFTA and the 2000 trade deal with China gutted American
manufacturing. Advantage Trump here: Biden sided with big business on
these votes, over the opposition of the labor movement and some more
enlightened progressives like Sherrod Brown and Bernie Sanders.

Question: There were a number of distortions in this week's
convention. Does any one line stand out to you?

Last night, Trump said:

I say, very modestly, that I have done more for the African American
community than any president since Abraham Lincoln.

This kind of thing gives chutzpah a bad name. Megalomania, too.

Question: You watched the Republican convention gavel to gavel. How did
you get through it?

Drinks.

~ HAROLD MEYERSON

Follow Harold Meyerson on Twitter

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Unconventional: The Republicans, Day Three

Chicago, 1968; pandemic, Kenosha, and the hurricane, 2020 BY HAROLD
MEYERSON

Super PACs Coordinating to Support Richie Neal

Two separate entities are engaged in what appears to be a joint effort
to protect the congressman from a primary challenge. BY DAVID DAYEN &
ALEXANDER SAMMON

Professors Speak Out About College Reopenings Amid Coronavirus

As campuses reopen and then close, faculty express concern about lack of
safety protections and blame-shifting to students. BY MICHAEL SAINATO

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