What Went Down During President Trump’s Closing Speech At The RNC

Tonight was obviously all about the president, but unlike some of Trump’s other campaign speeches, this one was basically like the State of the Union. He went over his accomplishments, which made perfect sense, but the speech was frankly pretty repetitive and got stale quickly. He certainly got his shots in at Biden and attempted to cast his opponent as Trojan horse for the radical left, carrying the “Biden-Bernie” agenda into the White House. I’m confident the speech was rousing to Trump’s Republican base, but it’s hard to say how components of it might shift attitudes among uncertain or independent voters. Also, never again should we have party conventions in back-to-back weeks. Just no. Please.

Although there’s polling evidence that the protests are becoming less popular, that doesn’t mean it’s necessarily smart for Trump to spend a lot of time talking about them. In fact — given how poor people think his handling of the protests has been — it’s possible that they’re becoming less popular because Trump has been talking about them less. I had a longer version of this take in a Twitter thread this morning:

I saw little in here to shake up the race. Trump hit on very familiar themes and used his speech to excoriate Biden and Biden’s policies as though Biden were the incumbent and Trump were the scrappy challenger.