Yes, for a second straight night, it was 2+2=5 at the Trump convention. Pam Bondi, reminding those watching from home that the theme of the night was supposed to be “the land of opportunity,” bashed Biden as a proponent of cronyism who saw the nation as the “land of opportunism,” leaving out the fact that Trump’s daughter, son-in-law, and unqualified friends all have a home in his administration—and that he has been on an absolute sprint of grift over the last three-and-a-half years, all in the company of campaign and administration officials who have been investigated, convicted, and/or jailed for their brazen wrongdoings. In one of the campaign videos inserted amid the mostly wooden in-person speeches, Trump—you know, the “grab ‘em by the pussy guy”—was touted as a “champion of women.” And, in one of the several speeches delivered in the first two nights by members of his own family, oft-forgotten daughter Tiffany Trump lamented the “misinformation system [that] keeps people mentally enslaved to the ideas they deem correct” — referring, of course, to the “fake news” media, and not the never-ending lies that Trump and his administration and his allies have continuously spouted for close to four years to encourage their supporters to doubt the truth that’s before their own eyes.
Americans can’t travel to much of the world, thanks to the untamed coronavirus crisis? Nay: “America,” Eric Trump said in his father’s support, “became the envy of the world.” Trump spends an inordinate amount of time defending Confederate statues, flags, and supporters? Sure—but he’s also basically Abraham Lincoln, according to Vice President Mike Pence. Trump has pursued a reckless and impulsive foreign policy, based not on briefings but his whims and the praise he’s received from a given country’s leader? Nope, said Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, appearing by video from Jerusalem: “This president has led bold initiatives in nearly every corner of the world.”
The latter’s appearance, like that of Chad Wolf, the acting Homeland Security secretary Trump recently nominated to serve in the role in a full capacity, was a brazen abuse of office: an unprecedented deployment of government officials at a partisan political event. (The White House was also used as a prop and backdrop throughout). Pompeo and Wolf likely violated the Hatch Act in participating, as well as their trust, to the extent they ever had it, in the American people. But no matter. To point out that Trump is breaking government rules is like pointing out that Yogi Bear is breaking the rules of Yellowstone in stealing picnic baskets. Defying the law? That’s his whole thing! It’s as essential to who he is as prosecuting the sideshow culture wars that were once again on full display Tuesday night, most prominently in Covington MAGA teen Nick Sandmann’s railing against “cancel culture” and the “unfair media coverage” Trump has endured more than anyone else in the world.
Trump’s spent more time manufacturing and inflaming those culture wars than just about anything, other than perhaps golfing, as he did for the 288th time as president over the weekend. That this disdain for expertise, propensity for wishful thinking, and resistance to facing up to the reality of the pandemic has worsened the crisis is beyond dispute. That talk of the virus was so conspicuously missing from the second night of the GOP’s 2020 convention was telling. Melania Trump, the president’s wife and the second evening’s keynote, perhaps made the most direct acknowledgement of the Americans who have or are currently suffering from the virus—opening her speech by offering her sympathy to them. But even she quickly torpedoed her own expression of condolence, by painting her husband—who has constantly downplayed the threat and said, of the rising death toll, that “it is what it is”—as terrifically concerned with a virus he has dismissed as “sniffles” and suggested would “miraculously” go away. “Donald will not rest,” she said from the Rose Garden she just redesigned, “until he has done everything he can to help everyone impacted by this terrible pandemic.”
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