What to know
- Donald Trump formally accepted the GOP presidential nomination tonight on the fourth and final day of the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee. His address was notably long and low energy compared to some of his previous speeches.
- Other speakers included the former president's second-oldest son, Eric; former Fox News host Tucker Carlson; WWE Hall of Famer Hulk Hogan; and others. Former first lady Melania Trump made a rare appearance toward the end of the night.
- The convention kicked off on Monday, two days after a gunman attempted to assassinate Trump at a campaign rally. The attack appears to have further galvanized Republicans for their nominee, who has said his right ear was grazed by a bullet during the shooting. He has worn a bandage on it at the RNC.
- Last night, Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, the author of "Hillbilly Elegy" and a relative newcomer to politics, accepted the GOP's vice presidential nomination.
Why Dems should see Trump as beatable after Thursday
Chris Hayes speaking on MSNBC moments ago:
First part of the speech, I was struck by the fact that this was a 78-year-old man who had just gone through a profoundly traumatic experience and was forced to reckon with his own mortality and how scary this was for him. The time comes for all of us, and that part of it was a part of Trump you don’t see because I don’t think he likes thinking about it at all.
I also felt like the biggest takeaway after what has been three of the most painful weeks I have ever seen in Democratic politics: this is not a Colossus. This is not the Big Bad Wolf. This is not a vigorous and incredibly deft political communicator. This is an old man in decline who’s been doing the shame schtick for a very good long time and it’s really wearing pretty thin. And he is a beatable candidate. And Democrats have been feeling a lot of pain and fear and anxiety and understandably so but I don’t think anyone watched that speech and thought, "Wow that’s going to be hard to top, that’s going to be hard to beat, how are we going to message against this guy."
And that is what he does at every rally. That was just a Trump rally with some speech woven through. I just think you got to look at that and think it’s really important if you’re on the pro-democracy side of this country to stop him from getting back into office but that should be a doable thing.
These comments have been slightly edited for length and clarity.
Trump's speech was not traditonal... to say the least
Jen Psaki speaking on MSNBC moments ago:
From being a part of many convention speeches in the past, I think we can all agree this was not a traditional one. The first 35 to 40 minutes were about himself, about Donald Trump. He only stuck to the teleprompter for a page and a half or so.
Also, for a man who is not a person of faith, but has struck a chord with the faith community in our country. There was one line that stuck out to me: “I stand before you in this arena only by the grace of almighty God … Many people say it was a providential moment.”
He was surrounded by photos of his own bloody face that were projected in the arena. Obviously, that was a very traumatic moment for him and for the country, but he also spoke about this as if it was sort of a calling from God.
We'll see how he speaks about this moving forward. But I also think if you’re tuning in and not really paying attention, or you’re undecided, you may see his speech and think maybe I'll go with the other guy.
These comments have been slightly edited for length and clarity.
MAGA, is this your king?
Joy Reid speaking on MSNBC moments ago:
To paraphrase Erik Killmonger: “MAGA, is this your king?”
If Joe Biden had given a rambling, shambling, all-over-the-place speech like that, elected Democrats would be demanding that the 25th Amendment be invoked immediately. They would scramble even worse than they are now to jettison him as the candidate for president. We would be questioning his mental acuity.
That speech was proof that there’s not just one old man in the race. Donald Trump is an old man clearly in decline and we must start talking about him the same way that we are questioning Joe Biden, because Donald Trump cannot stay on message for even five to 10 minutes — even when telling a story about the most traumatic moments of his life.
Donald Trump is not a candidate that Democrats should be terrified of. Their terror is embarrassing tonight. Again I have to ask: MAGA, is this your king?
These comments have been slightly edited for length and clarity.
Why this historically unimpressive acceptance speech matters
Four years ago, Trump’s acceptance speech ran 75 minutes and landed with a thud. This year, he spoke for nearly an hour and a half, went on a dozen or more tangents, and, after recounting the assassination attempt on him early in the address, made no effort to tamp down the usual rhetoric.
Trump declared that Democrats “used Covid to cheat” in the 2020 election. He lied about crime rates, his inflation plan and his tax plan. He didn’t even bother mentioning abortion, because even he knows no one would believe anything he says about it. His only good fortune was that a good portion of the country likely went to bed before he finished.
In short, this was among the worst — if not the worst — acceptance speeches any presidential nominee has given. And as more members of Biden’s party ask him to step aside, Democrats on all sides of that issue should ask themselves some hard questions, given that this is the candidate they are losing to in many polls.
Trump's meandering speech is a win for Dems
Nicolle Wallace speaking on MSNBC moments ago:
I think if you’re wondering what impact Donald Trump's speech has on the viewing audience, you have to wonder how much of the viewing audience stayed through.
It was longer than modern baseball games with a new pitching clock — I don’t even know that all baseball games last that long. It was very lengthy, very meandering. I hope that the bigger message anyone in the pro-democracy side got tonight is that the pro-democracy candidate, the Democrat, can beat him — by a lot and decisively.
These comments have been slightly edited for length and clarity.
Odd speaker picks to close out this RNC
Despite being billed by Republicans as a convention focused on national unity, I think it wrapped up true to the form of the Republican Party.
Kid Rock, Tucker Carlson, Dana White, Hulk Hogan and Trump — five men who've made headlines for bigoted comments — closed it all out. Pretty telling that the RNC felt the people best suited to drive home their purported message of multiracial unity and political harmony were these guys.
TL;DR: Tepid calls for unity, but otherwise it’s the same ol’ Trump
Trump had said he rewrote his speech to focus on calling for unity after his assassination attempt, but his remarks tonight were classic Trump. The speech was more than 90 minutes long, and he went off script again and again, greatly exaggerating or lying about his administration’s accomplishments in his first term.
Trump made brief, sweeping attempts to appeal to a diverse group of voters, but his overall talking points on immigration, foreign policy, the economy and violent crime remained as grim as ever. The dissonance between his call for the country to heal from “discord and division” while having played a major part in sowing such conflict — including criticizing Biden, Democrats and “crazy Nancy Pelosi” tonight — was unmissable.
Trump steers clear of abortion
The lack of any abortion talk in Trump’s speech is notable, and it mirrors the other convention speakers’ deafening silence on the issue this week. Abortion rights is a losing issue for Republicans at the ballot box and one that the party remains divided on. The GOP platform this year — parts of which The New York Times reported Trump had dictated personally — had no mention of a national abortion ban for the first time in 40 years.
Trump’s cringeworthy Orbán 'endorsement'
Trump touted his endorsement from Hungary’s authoritarian Viktor Orbán, whose illiberal behavior Trump and fellow Republicans have praised repeatedly.
Orbán, Trump claims, thinks Russia and China fear the former president. That certainly contradicts Trump’s former national security adviser, John Bolton, who said world leaders viewed Trump as a “fool.”
This whole aside felt like a truly self-aggrandizing diatribe, though I’m not sure many folks outside the MAGA bubble lionize Orbán enough to care what he thinks.
Trump criticizes Biden’s cancer moonshot
Trump took a veiled shot at Biden’s “cancer moonshot” in a part of the speech that was not in the prepared remarks.
In the middle of boasting about how American technology will “soon be on the verge of finding the cures to cancer, Alzheimer’s disease and many other diseases," Trump took a swipe at his opponent. “You remember this gentleman that I don’t want to mention other than one time I had to,” he said, referring to Biden. “This man said, we’re going to find the cure to cancer. Nothing happened.”
In 2016, then-Vice President Biden launched a project often called the “cancer moonshot” after losing his son Beau to brain cancer, and he relaunched in 2022 after he was elected president.