2024 GOP Convention: A Tiger Can't Change Its Stripes

The Republican National Convention is over. If you tuned out early on Thursday evening, you missed the “exciting” conclusion.

I’m not referring to Tucker Carlson, Hulk Hogan, Kid Rock, all of whom performed to expected specifications. I’m not referring to the appearance of Melania,  who dodged a kiss upon greeting her husband on stage. (She declined the offer of a speaking slot) 

Dana White, leader of a made-for-tv fighting organization, took what in normal times would have been the candidate’s spouse's job of introducing the Republican Presidential nominee.

Niece Mary Trump explained the introduction’s significance:

• Ultimate Fighting Champion founder Dana White will be introducing Donald. This, just a year after White apologized when video leaked of him punching his wife in the head repeatedly. What message is Donald trying to send here? Part of it is borrowed masculinity (toxic or otherwise) because Donald, despite his delusions otherwise, is not a tough guy. But perhaps it’s also the same message he sent when he walked into the arena on Wednesday night to James Brown’s “It’s a Man’s, Man’s, Man’s World.” As far as he and the Republican Party are considered, it is a man’s world. It also might be the same message Donald sent when he picked anti-abortion misogynist JD Vance to be his running mate. In their man’s world, women are to be controlled and subjugated. 

Donald J Trump spent 17 minutes reading a speech off the teleprompter that seemed to be heartfelt, recounting last Saturday’s assassination attempt and claiming he would be president for all Americans. 

Then, he went off-script, giving a greatest hits version of the language used at his political rallies. And, perhaps, a gift for Democrats in the fall campaign.

Much of the mainstream print media took the bait, and portrayed the event’s scripted part of the speech as proof that the GOP nominee was somehow normal. They accepted the transcript of Donald J Trump’s acceptance speech and went to press. West coast newspapers went with a theme of “soft, then hard” in terms of the words coming out of the former president’s mouth.

Here are, thanks to Ben Meiselas, a dozen outrageous things Trump said on Thursday night:

1. He asked if people knew his friend the “late great Hannibal Lecter.”
2. He praised Hungary’s authoritarian leader Viktor Orban.
3. He said North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un missed him.
4. He attacked the UAW Union.
5. He called COVID “the China Virus.”
6. He said he was buying votes in Wisconsin.
7. He thought Scott Walker was still the Governor of Wisconsin and praised his leadership. The Governor is Democrat Tony Evers who did not attend.
8. He said he was going to “take over the Auto Industry.”
9. He called Nancy Pelosi “Crazy Nancy.”
10. He said he wanted to hold the next Republican Convention in Venezuela.
11. He spread lies about the 2020 election.
12. He bragged that the Taliban called him “your excellency” and said they probably don’t call President Biden that.

Saying outrageous things and telling absurd lies has always been part of the Trump brand. It happens with such frequency that much of the press overlooks or downplays it as old news.

CNN took a break from what has generally been its fawning coverage of the candidate to let fact checker Daniel Dale get in a few words:

• “A remarkably dishonest acceptance speech.” 

Trump lied 22 times during the 92 minute rant.

The unscripted part of the speech served as a testament to Trump’s belief that he can do whatever he wants. Up until that point, no speaker at the GOP had mentioned “Stop the Steal” (referring to the 2020 election) directly. Conference speakers were told not to mention claims about the 2020 election.

Observers who saw Trump’s previous acceptance speeches noted something else, the same something else driving uncertainty in the Democratic party: Their man is getting old and showing it.

Here’s Jill Filipovic, who judged the oratory as the least tethered to reality of all time:

• But now we’ve had a four-year-old break from Trumpism, and when the former president reemerged on stage at the RNC, he exhibited all of his previous flaws, plus a marked decline: He was slower, even less coherent, less connected to the crowd, less tethered to reality. It’s hard to overstate just how bad his speech was. If Joe Biden gave a speech that colossally disjointed and tortuously boring, the headlines tomorrow morning would all be about just how severely he has deteriorated — and how Democrats are crazy for running him.

If you looked beyond the endless parade of mostly grifters and wannabe fascists on the stage, it might dawn on you what was missing.

There were no former presidents and nominees (normally given choice speaking slots), the vice president from Trump’s first term, and many others who served under him in the White House. Propagating the Big Lie about the 2020 election was the price of admission, even if it was to remain unspoken during the event.

In fact, much of what happened before 2016 was missing, including ideological stances that once defined the GOP. Heather Cox Richardson noted the road traveled and where the GOP was going.

• Before 2016 the Republican Party stood staunchly against Russia, and getting Republican voters to forget that history required adopting the argument of Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán, who is aligned with Putin and Trump, that democracy has ruined the United States. 

• In this argument, the central principle of democracy—that all people must be equal before the law, and have a right to a say in their government—destroys a country by making women, people of color, immigrants, members of religious minorities, and LGBTQ+ individuals equal to heteronormative white men and permitting them to influence government. In place of democracy, they want to impose their version of Christianity on the nation, banning abortion, rejecting immigrants, and curtailing the rights of gender, religious, and ethnic minorities.

The transformation of the Republican Party into a bastion of MAGA extremism has completed. I would venture a guess that 2024 will be the last year which we’ll see the two parties as presently constituted competing. A two-party system cannot function when one party goes off the deep end; which party won’t make it is anybody’s guess. It depends on who is inaugurated next January, regardless of how the vote in November turns out.

This Republican Convention was a public airing of the cult of Trump. As far as the campaign is concerned, there are no dog whistles anymore—only bullhorns.

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Meanwhile, in the nation’s capital, Donald Trump’s presumed opponent is being pressured to not run in 2024. 

President Biden’s defenders are out and about, loudly proclaiming their guy’s intention to stay the course, even as persons previously considered allies are hoping he’ll “bleed out.” It’s gross and unbecoming, even if their justifications are correct.

The latest version of the “soft” coup making the rounds has the President announcing his withdrawal from the ticket on Sunday. He will, we’re told, be allowed to remain in office for the rest of his term.

Further, the terms of the deal supposedly negotiated with party brokers, Kamala Harris will not be automatically nominated to replace Biden at the top of the ticket. Four or five candidates (including the Vice President) will compete to win over delegates at the Democratic Party convention.

This is so frikken wrong.  Here’s an excerpt from Politico’s morning newsletter:

• Amid all of it, President Biden is reportedly “feeling angry and betrayed by top Democratic leaders” for working to push him out, NBC’s Mike Memoli, Ali Vitali, Julie Tsirkin and Sahil Kapur report.

• “Can we all just remember for a minute that these same people who are trying to push Joe Biden out are the same people who literally gave us all Donald Trump? In 2015, [BARACK[ OBAMA, Pelosi, Schumer pushed Biden aside in favor of HILLARY [CLINTON]; they were wrong then, and they are wrong now,” a “source close to Biden” told NBC News.

• “‘How did all this work out for everyone in 2016? Perhaps we should learn a few lessons from 2016; one of them is polls are BS — just ask Secretary Clinton. And two, maybe, just maybe, Joe Biden is more in touch with actual Americans than Obama-Pelosi-Schumer?’ the source added in unusually blunt language that represents the views of those closest to Biden.” 

• “[W]ith Biden’s campaign on the brink of collapse, many Democrats say there’s little political value to take that position publicly unless they have to,” Sarah Ferris and Anthony Adragna report for Inside Congress. “Why pull out your knife if he’s already bleeding out, unless you want to make a point of it at home,” one Hill aide tells them. Another person “added there was no point in a member of Congress calling on Biden to step down when ‘at this point, everyone knows Pelosi, Schumer and Obama are handling it.’”

The Democratic Convention is in four weeks. Early voting starts four weeks after that.

I don’t want to believe three democratic stalwarts are this kind of involved, but there’s an awful lot of smoke coming from that figurative building where they’re supposedly plotting.

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Friday Finds in the News World

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Rudy Giuliani can't even fall out of bankruptcy right by Liz Dye at Public Notice

• And while Judge Lane has made it clear that he will not be revisiting his decision to dismiss the case, he could put Giuliani through some exquisitely unpleasant moments on his way out the door.

• Toward that end, Giuliani has a new gig working for pillow CEO Mike Lindell, who’ll distribute Rudy’s podcast through the Frank Speech platform. Giuliani was recently fired from a gig at WABC, reportedly because the station owner feared getting sued for defamation. Lindell is apparently unworried, although he is himself a defendant in multiple defamation suits arising out of his lies about election fraud.

• Lindell is also running out of cash. He recently bragged about his patriotic decision to quit paying his lawyers to save his company, and, for the second time this year, his company faces eviction for failing to pay rent on warehouse space. It seems fairly likely that he’ll join his fellow travelers in the land MyBankruptcy one of these days.

• But, as Alex Jones discovered, malicious torts are not dischargeable — that is, you can’t shrug them off like other debts. And ruining someone’s life or business with lies is pretty definitionally malicious. Also, bankruptcy involves a lot of very unpleasant paperwork that can’t be BS-ed like a podcast appearance. Giuliani and Jones both found the entire experience rather less pleasant than they’d hoped. But at this point, Rudy seems to be living his life stumbling from one bad decision to the next.

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The Persian Gulf is enduring life-threatening heat indexes above 140 degrees via The Washington Post

• Largely because of the high humidity, nighttime minimum temperatures have also remained exceptionally warm, in many cases staying above 85 (29 C). Temperatures in Iranshar, Iran, only dropped to 97 (36 C) on Wednesday night, its hottest July night on record.

• A Washington Post analysis found that the wet-bulb globe temperature, which measures the amount of heat stress on the human body, reached 96 (36 C) at the Persian Gulf International Airport and 95 (35 C) in Dubai, exceeding the threshold of 89.6 (32 C) that researchers have said poses a risk to human survival if such heat is prolonged. The wet-bulb globe temperature, which was calculated using data from nearby weather stations, takes into account a combination of temperature, humidity, wind and clouds.

• Researchers have identified the Persian Gulf among the regions most likely to regularly exceed life-threatening heat thresholds during the next 30 to 50 years. Dubai was recently ranked as the city having the most dangerous summer heat in the world, with dangerous heat on 89 percent of summer days. Doha, Qatar, came in second.

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Put Up Or Shut Up by Edward Zitron at Where’s You Ed At?

• I hate to be that guy, but it’s all beginning to remind me of the nebulous roadmaps that cryptocurrency con artists used to offer. What’s the difference between OpenAI vaguely suggesting that “Strawberry” will “give LLMs reasoning” and NFT project Bored Ape Yacht Club’s roadmap that promises a real-life clubhouse in Miami and a “top secret blockchain game”? I’d argue that the Bored Ape Yacht Club has a better chance of delivering, if only because “a blockchain game” would ostensibly use technology that exists.

• No, really, what’s the difference here, exactly? Both are promising things they might never deliver.

• Look, I understand that there’s a need to studiously cover these companies and how they’re (allegedly) thinking about the future, but both of these stories demand a level of context that’s sorely lacking.