Take away Day 4: #RNC2020
1. Again, laws were broken
2. Mix of state of the union and rally
3. All about Biden
4. What Covid?
5. Limited effectiveness?
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1. Again, nobody will change their mind either way. But the Hatch Act specifically makes using the executive 1/9
branch for political gains illegal (not the president himself, but everyone around him). This is not normal and should not be normalized.
2. State of the union/Rally
This was a weird mix SOTU elements and rally elements. Trump had several ‘special guests’, like the family 2/9
of a Latina cop that got killed that would normally be part of a SOTU. In a pretty long speech (70 mins) Trump moved between reading off the teleprompter and using some impromptu rally lines. Whenever he spoke from the teleprompter, he seemed somewhat bored, with small 3/9
flashes of enthusiasm whenever he wandered off script.
3. All about Biden
Normally convention speeches are about setting a positive message for the candidate. This speech was all about Biden (mentioned 41 times). It concretizes the notion that the GOP is no longer a 4/9
party that proactively stands for something, but rather stands in opposition to the democrats.
The split screen of Trump running as a challenger while standing in front of the White House is very strange. The problem with complaining about the state of law and order 5/9
as the president is that you own it. Trump also raised Ilhan Omar, ‘crazy’ Bernie Sanders and still seems to be campaigning as if Bernie is the nominee.
4. What covid?
Although Trump acknowledged Covid, he again made misleading statements about his response. Social 6/9
distancing was fully ignored at the speech and the few facemasks that were worn were taken off the moment a camera zoomed in on one. Trump again promises to have a vaccine by the end of the year, maybe even sooner.
5. Limited effectiveness
Overall, the speech was not very 7/9
effective, mostly because it was too long and didn’t really drive home a single point beyond Biden = Bad. In fact, various right-wing news outlets (the National Review) had bad op-eds about the speech as been too long and boring. Its curious that Trump, who normally has 8/9
very good media instincts ended up having an acceptance speech that seemed much less in tune with the moment than Bidens. The speech Trump gave last night would likely have been very similar if Covid had never happened.
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