Republican Convention: Live Coverage Of The Final Night

The longer this speech goes on, the more I wonder about those speechwriters that were supposedly brought in — I’m unsure of the structure of this speech. I thought he had already covered trade, but just now, Trump looped back in on it again. Kind of odd — usually politicians like to have a stump you can follow logically.

Earlier tonight I noted that economic research has found that trade with China has cost the U.S. as many as a million manufacturing jobs. But economists generally view NAFTA far more positively. A key difference: NAFTA is an actual trade agreement, with protections for all parties.

I basically had two questions about Trump’s speech when I first read it this afternoon. First, the delivery. Could he make it sound natural while reading a speech like this from the teleprompter? I think the answer to that is basically “yes.” My second question was whether he could go so far down the law-and-order path, and deliver a speech with so much invective, but also have it function as a normal presidential acceptance speech? I think the answer to that is basically “no.”