More than anything, the first night of the 2020 Republican National Convention erased whatever nanoscopic doubt may have remained that the GOP is now fully the party of Donald Trump. It has no ideas. Its platform has been replaced by the president’s petty grievances. As they sought to rebut the indictments Democrats offered at their convention last week, and a compelling appeal to the nation’s better angels, Republicans opened their Trump re-coronation bash by condemning the opposing party as demons out to destroy America, casting the president as a selfless defender of the values handed down by the founding fathers, and griping about “cancel culture” in the midst of a pandemic. “Do we want a society that breeds success, or a culture that cancels everything it only slightly disagrees with?” asked Senator Tim Scott, Monday’s closing speaker. “I know where I stand.”
Scott’s remarks were characteristic of the first night of the convention, a hastily-produced affair in which a who’s who of right-wing politicians and fawning apologists cast Trump as the only barrier preventing Democrats from ruining the country forever. One by one, speakers misrepresented the president’s record, particularly his handling of the coronavirus pandemic, as well as his character, describing him as a “visionary,” unifying leader who, as Charlie Kirk put it in the evening’s opening address, “put his own life of luxury on the line” for the good of the American people. “When we re-elect President Trump this November, the best is yet to come,” said Ronna McDaniel, chair of the Republican National Committee. “This election is the most important in our lifetime.”
The partially in-person, partially-remote event—a frequently surreal affair, with a strong up-is-down, down-is-up vibe to it—not only cast the narcissistic, grifting, impulsive president as a selfless, Lincoln-esque figure who has methodically drained the swamp and enacted a clear policy agenda. In the funhouse that was night one of the RNC, the Trump GOP also lied about their Democratic opponents. They saddled them with policy positions they’ve never taken, like claiming Joe Biden wants to defund the police. And, perhaps most egregiously, they accused Democrats of not having any new ideas—even though the Republicans literally elected not to even put forth a platform this year beyond supporting Trump, citing the coronavirus pandemic they exacerbated as explanation.
While many of their arguments in favor of the president were familiar—there were nods to the “Democrat-run” cities Trump loves to knock, and to the economy that had until recently been his strongest re-election selling point, and of course to the wall, which remains incomplete and not funded by Mexico—Republicans on Monday also attempted to cast his coronavirus response as a reason he should be given another term in office. This is an odd case to make, given the extensive toll the pandemic has taken on the United States and the president’s obvious failures not just to adequately address the coronavirus crisis, but to even bring himself to care beyond its impact on his own political prospects. “The president quickly took action,” Donald Trump Jr. said of his father, something that wasn’t true at the beginning of the crisis when Trump downplayed the threat of the virus, or as it spread.
Defending Trump’s response to the COVID-19 crisis other countries have managed to bring under control was only part of the program Monday evening. Another significant chunk of the night was spent defending the president against charges of bigotry via monologues from the likes of Scott and former football star Herschel Walker. Those efforts were undercut by the event’s blunt appeals to racism; in perhaps the grossest iteration, Mark and Patricia McCloskey, the St. Louis couple charged with felonies after pointing guns at Black Lives Matter protesters, all but warned white suburbanites that people of color would “take over” their neighborhoods under the administration of Biden and Kamala Harris, which would seek to “abolish the suburbs altogether”—a narrative Trump has promulgated in recent weeks. “What you saw happen to us could just as easily happen to you who are watching from quiet neighborhoods across our country,” said Patricia McCloskey, speaking from her opulent sitting room.