For all the mocking of Donald Trump's Fidel Castro–like exhortations at the Republican National Convention (RNC) last night (and he did go on way too long), his endless monologue threw down a gauntlet to Joe Biden and the Democrats in a deep and profound way that will difficult to top, whether or not Scranton Joe gets the boot before or after Chicago. Suddenly, vanquishing the memories of the 1968 Democratic National Convention (DNC) being disrupted by violent far-left protesters is a secondary concern for the Dems assembling in the Windy City in August.
It's impossible not to compare last night's RNC finale ultimo to the presidential pageantry in Mike Judge's Idiocracy, and laugh all you want. Trump 2.0 doesn't give a fuck and neither do the people around him. Mock the endless acceptance speech all you want—at times he seemed like late-life Bette Davis accepting a Golden Globe and settling scores with Joan Crawford from 50 years back—but he and the Republicans had a great night. And even when he was just making shit up (illegal immigrants have somehow stolen 107 percent of all jobs!) and every time he invoked pre-COVID, pre-Biden America, you could sense people all over the country nodding along, at least a little bit.
Biden and Trump are not so different when it comes to policy and outcomes (how great was it in the recent presidential debate when Trump jeered Biden for not repealing Trump's own tariffs?), but over the past year at least, the world seems to have gone completely off its rocker, and having a president who seems more infirm than The Simpsons' Mr. Burns is too much to bear. Never popular to begin with, Biden had started to hit the skids even before the debate revealed what all but Hunter and Jill Biden had conceded: The president's brain is, if not missing, working about as well as the internet on his beloved Amtrak Acela.
Political speeches and spectacles are more about style than substance. Barack Obama was known as a good orator, but who remembers any truly great turns of phrases he uttered? He hit the right poses and had the right tonalities—that's what we remember, not the specifics. And the big finish of last night—90 minutes of Trumpian stream of consciousness—drove home the message that here is a guy and a team ready to win. Especially compared to the sad-sack convention in 2016, when Scott Baio was about the biggest celebrity in attendance and nobody exited figuring Trump could beat Hillary Clinton.
Trump's overly long, overbearing presence at the end of an incredibly well-produced, high-energy, big-volume spectacle last night demonstrates that he is still indisputably king of the castle. It was nothing less than an incredible flex that shows he can riff, rhetorically dominate, and keep the audience captive in a way that is frustrating, sure, but never in question. Like Lyndon B. Johnson holding cabinet meetings in the john, the longer it goes on, the more uncomfortable it becomes, but nobody dares to head for the exits before the big guy flushes and leaves first.
The Donald was never really more like Succession's Logan Roy than he was last night, lurching from megalomaniacal thanks-be-to-God for saving him from an assassin's bullet to uncharacteristically commemorating other people's sacrifices to thanking all of his paid employees and family members for doing such a good job for him. Part billionaire, part Mob boss, the effect of his going on for so long was to remind everyone in the arena, at home, and in the country that he is in charge. Walk out before he's done speaking and you can kiss your job, your family, and your friends goodbye.
He strategically snuck in more than a few rude barbs at his enemies, both personal (Democratic Rep. Nancy Pelosi) and generic (illegal immigrants) to signal that post-assassination-attempt Trump is not fully reborn. He's not Pope John Paul II forgiving Mehmet Ali Ağca, or even pre-surgery Ronald Reagan joking that his doctors better not be Democrats. Trump is still like that other very stable genius from Queens, Seinfeld's Frank Costanza, whose every seemingly pacific incantation of "Serenity now!" brings him one step closer to an eventual Vesuvius-level emotional eruption.
Trump is almost as old as Biden and is nowhere close to the slick-speaking bon vivant who used to show up on Howard Stern or pro-wrestling events. Yet his endless speech means nobody questions whether Trump has his marbles or the stamina to go four more years. Indeed, the worry among his opponents is that he is vibrant enough to actually get things done that escaped him the first go-around. And to his credit, he surrounded himself unapologetically with younger, energetic allies (the loathsome J.D. Vance) and resuscitated middle-aged trash talkers (Kid Rock) who don't hesitate to project confidence, righteousness, and inevitability. Unlike in 2016, they're not hesitating. They're also not proactively whining about stolen elections. Indeed, they're already planning on who they will deport, literally and figuratively.
I'm not a Trumpist, and there are many things about his victory, especially if it comes with a GOP congressional majority, that deeply worry me. Make all the President Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho jokes you want, but give this utterly impossible figure—that hair; the raccoon makeup; the failed, sad-sack businesses selling steaks and bottled water and real estate; the inability to say two true statements consecutively—his due.
He put on a hell of a show not in spite of an overly long final soliloquy but because of it. Simply standing on his own two feet for a couple of hours while ranting, raving, joking, and raising his comically small fists was enough to raise the bar for Joe Biden and the Democrats in a way that virtually nobody saw coming even a few months ago.
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