Alex Brandon/AP Photo
Donald Trump is perfectly comfortable occupying both the dark and the light simultaneously.
In the days between the Democratic and Republican conventions, Donald Trump’s reelection campaign settled on a message about what the Democrats had to say: It was just too sad. “The Democrats held the darkest and angriest and gloomiest convention in American history,” said Trump in a speech. It was a “doom-and-gloom, Donald Trump-obsessed convention,” echoed RNC chair Ronna McDaniel
To counter that imaginary vision of what Democrats actually said, Republicans seem to be planning a convention that toggles back and forth between ludicrous happy talk about what’s happening now and terrifying visions of the nightmarish future to come should Joe Biden be elected. You want to see dark and angry? Just you wait.
To call this a balancing act would be to impute a level of subtlety to the Trump operation it has never displayed. On one hand, they claim that America’s cities have become hellscapes of violence, and that violence could soon spread to every corner of the country. “If you want a vision of your life under a Biden presidency,” said Trump last week, “think of the smoldering ruins of Minneapolis, the violent anarchy of Portland, the blood-stained sidewalks of Chicago, and imagine the mayhem coming to your town and every single town in America.”
Or as he said in another speech, “I’m the only thing standing between the American Dream and total anarchy, madness and chaos.” You can expect to hear plenty more of that, a vivid picture of the post-apocalyptic future to come if socialistic Democrats get their way and destroy America.
Yet on the other hand, the actual threat every American faces—the pandemic that has killed over 175,000 of us—will be presented through the construction of a bizarre fantasy history in which the president didn’t ignore it, didn’t deny it was happening, didn’t hawk snake-oil remedies, didn’t discourage simple public health measures, didn’t turn over management of the crisis to his halfwit son-in-law, and isn’t right now pretending it’s all but over.
Trump will speak not just when he gives his climactic address but on every night, lest anyone forget for a moment that it’s all about him.
Instead, whenever they talk about the pandemic—which they probably will as little as possible—it will be to praise Trump’s masterful leadership, then change the subject.
Likewise, in the midst of an economic crisis in which 30 million Americans are out of work, the convention will concentrate heavily on arguing that you’ve never had it so good. “While Joe Biden last night said the economy won’t come back until the coronavirus pandemic is over, newsflash to Joe Biden: The economy is coming back!” said Vice President Pence on Fox & Friends on Friday. The convention will feature portraits of ordinary Americans to whom Trump brought prosperity and success, so we can share in their gratitude.
Put it all together and what we are likely to see is a strange mix of denial and terror, in which the miseries of the present are shoved aside while the future is portrayed as a horror almost too imaginable to contemplate.
Donald Trump is perfectly comfortable occupying both the dark and the light simultaneously. If you’ve watched any of the hundreds of stream-of-consciousness speeches he has delivered in the last few years, you know how easily he switches back and forth between describing the grandeur of accomplishments he has never achieved (“Nobody’s ever seen anything like it”) and offering lurid descriptions of crime and suffering he can attribute to his enemies, whether they’re Democrats or immigrants or foreigners.
There may not be too much extemporaneous riffing from the president during the convention, but we do know that in contrast to the tradition at previous conventions, Trump will speak not just when he gives his climactic address but on every night, lest anyone forget for a moment that it’s all about him.
Which of course it is. The lineup of speakers at the convention is filled with Trump family members, Trump staffers, and Trump toadies, all of whom will pay him the kind of sycophantic tribute they know he thirsts for. What we’re likely to see much less of is an attempt to define Republicans as a party. That’s usually a key function of these events: To explain who the party is, what they believe, and where they want to take the country.
Right now there’s but a single answer to all those questions: Trump. Republicans are united by their worship of Trump, they believe in Trump, and they want to take the country to more Trump. No convention of his—especially one free of the unplanned moments that can happen in a traditional convention—could have any other message. If he is deprived of the roar of the adoring crowd, he’ll substitute it with an endless stream of compliments, from others and from himself.
But amidst the praise there will be grievance—so, so much grievance. It’s the fuel that makes the Trump party run, the endless complaints of unfair treatment from liberals and the media and universities and everyone else keeping good people down. He may be president, but he’s always mad about something someone just said or did to him.
It’s a powerful force bonding him with his base, their shared belief that the world is doing them wrong. And it’s why Trump loses none of their loyalty despite not delivering them much in the way of tangible benefits. The economy may be in desperate shape and the country may be gripped by a pandemic, but Trump still hates the people they hate, every day. So as one Trump campaign official told the Associated Press, the convention will feature people who “have been ‘silenced’ by a ‘cancel culture’ pushed by Democrats.”
So in the end, each installment of Trump’s convention will resemble nothing so much as an evening of Fox News: bizarre, dishonest, meant to inflame and frighten, and so excessive in its boosterism it would embarrass North Korean state television.
And just like Fox, it will preach to Trump’s choir but likely persuade no one outside it. After all, does anyone really think that after four years, one more Donald Trump show is going to change anyone’s mind?
