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

Well, after two weeks of live blogging, this is it. The last night of the RNC has come to a close and the main event of this evening was, of course, President Trump’s speech. Throughout the evening, Republicans built on a series of themes they’ve been coming back to all week: The Republican Party is also a party that celebrates diversity and is not racist, there is no room for socialism in the Republican Party, and a “law and order” agenda will be the main guiding principle moving forward.

But as with all things of this nature, it’s really hard to assess what the impact this will have in the polls and on the race. Remember, we’ve still got weeks to go before November, and even though Biden currently has a healthy lead over Trump nationally, that could change. We’re not entirely sure what to expect concerning the convention bounce this year, given the event’s virtual format.

Anyway, thanks for joining us for the last two weeks. If you scroll below, you can see the team’s final takes in addition to the live blog in all its chronological glory. If that’s too much work, though, here are the team’s headlines for the evening:

• Dan: Trump Gives Conventional Speech At Unconventional Moment
• Julia: Trump Eliminates The Border Between The White House And The Republican National Convention
• Seth: Trump Uses White House Lawn And Dense Maskless Crowd To Deliver Standard Stump Speech
• Kaleigh: Trump Gives Nomination Speech From The White House Lawn
• Amelia: Trump Gives Lengthy Convention Speech In Front of Mostly Maskless Crowd
• Galen: Trump Didn’t Make News With His Speech, So The Takeaway Is That He Held A Nearly 2,000-Person Event On The White House Lawn During A Pandemic. (Is That Too Long? So Was The Speech)
• Geoffrey: The GOP Convention Ends With A Bang Full Of Fireworks After A Fairly Tame Speech By President Trump
• Emily: RNC Closes Out With Fireworks, But Not Much Else
• Micah: You’ll Forget About Both Conventions Within A Week
• Meena: Is It Still 2020? (*Somehow, The Answer Is Yes.)

Alright, this is it. Final report card for the RNC:

Address important party groups – Exemplary. By the end, it felt like the RNC had addressed most of Republicans’ key constituencies — evangelicals, law enforcement, cultural conservatives, so high marks here.

Create party unity – Adequate. Two 2016 primary opponents were featured, and a couple of political figures who aren’t directly from the Trump camp. But it’s hard to ignore the numerous speeches by Trump’s close relatives that seemingly took the place of spots for people from other wings of the party or party elders (former presidents, presidential candidates, or congressional leaders). Conventions often feature uneasy truces between different factions and personalities, but the role of Trumpism in the Republican Party meant this was absent, harkening back to a phrase from the notably absent George W. Bush: “You’re either with us or you’re against us.”

Reach beyond the party base – Adequate. There were some attempts – a few former Democratic politicians and a video with former Democratic voters. And there were speeches by people who have lost loved ones in horrific ways that might seem to be a way to relate to voters beyond politics. But it’s not clear exactly how these speeches are received, or if they break through beyond the hardcore political nerds who watch the early parts of the convention.

Command the news cycle – Inadequate. This has been an intense week for the news cycle, and we’ll see what happens after Trump’s speech. Sen. Tim Scott’s speech has probably done the best so far in this regard. The weird stunts on Tuesday night might once have been novel, but at this point they can’t compete with all that’s going on in the news.

Rally sentiment against Democrats – Exemplary. Like the DNC, the RNC has missed few opportunities to attack the other side.

Explain and publicized the party’s positions – Proficient. The RNC emphasized some things that were sort of strange, like the Right to Try Act, which isn’t a hugely well-known piece of legislation. And the emphasis on criminal justice reform might not fully line up with the robust defense of law enforcement. As the incumbent party in the White House, this week the Republicans also made an effort to take credit for the pre-pandemic economy, and to claim successes in fighting the pandemic. It’s not clear these will resonate, or reflect what actually happened. But if talking about “cancel culture were” a policy position, then we could change this grade to “exemplary.”

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.

Trump’s speech was pretty perfunctory and included a lot of the usual things you’d expect an incumbent to brag about. It wasn’t the style of delivery he is best at, though — although he did some ad libbing, he mostly read off the teleprompter. It won’t really matter because people only watch the final hour of these things (which was all Trump), but I actually thought the rest of the night was the most effective night of the RNC by far. There were several emotional speeches, such as Ann Dorn’s, and several very rousing patriotic videos. It was the most coherent theme (“Land of Greatness”) of the week.

On the final night of the convention, Trump delivered a lengthy but cookie-cutter speech about his successes, future plans and why the Democrats stink. A few clip-worthy moments will probably make the rounds on social media among supporters, but it’s hard to imagine any voters are going to be swayed by this tonight’s festivities.

George M. Cohan’s “You’re A Grand Old Flag” is playing, and interestingly, that early-20th-century tune was originally supposed to say “grand old rag” in reference to a quote he heard from a Civil War veteran about the U.S. flag, but the use of “rag” seemed pejorative to some people, so he just used “flag” instead.

One thing is pretty clear after tonight: Trump is going to be campaigning against Democratic-run cities. This might not have been the most exciting night of the past two weeks of political conventions, but we got a big clue about what one of Trump’s priorities will be. Buckle up — we are going to be hearing a lot more about law and order over the next few months.

I thought that this was shaping up to be higher-energy night than Nights 2 and 3, but Trump’s acceptance speech was just inexplicably long and not especially well-written or well-delivered. As I always say when we cover these things, that isn’t meant as a prediction of how the public will react. But the Trump campaign is behind, and it could really have pared the speech down to, say, two major themes instead of running through the whole laundry list.

Social media response during the final night of the RNC, and particularly during Trump’s speech, is essentially flat. This suggests there were no breakthrough, buzz-worthy moments tonight. That’s a change from last week, when Biden gained buzz throughout his speech.

I don’t know what to think. Someone said earlier on this live blog that Republicans have thrown a lot of stuff at the wall during this convention — the same was true for Trump’s acceptance speech. It’s hard, therefore, to draw many conclusions about how the Trump campaign will pursue the rest of the campaign.

What I can say: I think both the DNC and the RNC will fade from the news and most voters’ minds within the next several days.

🎆 🎆 🎆 🎆

In his 1980 gubernatorial reelection bid, Clinton was said to have lost because of the three Cs — Cubans, car tags, and Carter. If Trump loses, it might be a fourth C: coronavirus. But Biden will lose because of cancel culture?

Trump says Americans build the future, “we don’t tear down the past,” a clear reference to the growing push to remove statues of confederate monuments. However, Mother Nature does tear down the past: Hurricane Laura toppled a confederate statue in Lake Charles, Louisiana, last night.

At the risk of getting into Forecast Wars, I think people generally overstate the impact of the economy on a president’s reelection chances, and I also think that the dynamics of a COVID-19-induced recession might be different than a normal recession. Trump’s approval rating on the economy is still fairly decent.

I’d be interested to go through and see how closely this speech hewed to our “perfectly-poll-driven Republican stump speech.”

Trump suggested that the original moon shot was so that Americans could stand and salute the flag from another world.

One of the things that has truly jumped out at me, watching the DNC and RNC over the last two weeks with y’all, is just how vastly different “reality” is to the two parties. If you only get your information from one side or the other, it is no surprise that opinions aren’t responsive to “the real world.”

Dan, I don’t think so, just because we haven’t seen a double-digit win since then. I just figured there’d be somewhat more of an impact from an almost overnight shift from less than 4 percent unemployment to more than 10 percent unemployment.

This is pretty weird:

Seth, were you expecting 1984 (when Mondale won only his home state and D.C.)?

“Our country wasn’t built by cancel culture.” Well, we previously had trouble polling cancel culture because a lot of people didn’t know about it. After this week and this speech, I imagine that problem will be reduced.

Following up on what Nate said, is it not stunning that a pandemic and a deep recession seem to have cost Trump something like 3 points?

While Trump talks up protections for preexisting conditions, it’s worth remembering that the Supreme Court will hear yet another challenge to the Affordable Care Act this fall — where the Trump administration is arguing that the law is illegal in its entirety.

Micah, Trump’s approval rating was low before the pandemic, but he got through impeachment, his approval briefly got to 43 percent before the coronavirus threw everything out the window. Incumbents frequently gain a few points during the campaign, so would he not be a favorite with a 45 favorite approval rating?

Remember when the fight over a “gasoline tax” was going to decide the 2008 election? Simpler times … simpler times.

No mention of climate change, except through the attacks on the Paris Accord and the boasts about low gas prices. That represents a real difference between Trump and the U.K.’s Boris Johnson, who has argued for the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

“Joe Biden is weak,” says Trump. “These same liberals want to eliminate school choice while they enroll their children in the finest private schools in the land. They want to open our borders while living in walled-off compounds and communities. They want to defund the police while they have armed guards for themselves.”

Meredith and Perry looked at this question earlier this summer and did find that despite wide majorities of white Democrats saying that they thought discrimination in the U.S. was an issue, that didn’t mean there was support for structural methods of correcting this. That said, I’m not sure if Trump calling it out as hypocrisy will be the most effective way to win over these white voters who maybe aren’t as progressive as they think.

Maybe the idea was to string together a few meme-able clips that can make the rounds on social media tomorrow, rather than deliver a coherent 90-minute opus?

There’s not a lot of structure to this speech. I don’t know how people will react to the substance, but it feels like it jumps around randomly.

Trump says he will protect Medicare and Social Security, clearly important to the many older voters he hopes to win in November. But his recent executive order to give workers a temporary break from paying payroll taxes has raised the specter that a tax holiday could become permanent and harm the long-term solvency of Social Security.

It’s worth remembering that Trump consistently trailed Biden by 6 points in national polling both before and during the first few months of the pandemic. It wasn’t until June that Biden opened up his current 8- or 9-point lead.

I think if you removed coronavirus from the equation but kept the unrest in cities and Trump could run on the economy and “law and order,” he’d be a favorite.

But Chris, his approval rating was still pretty bad pre-pandemic. Wouldn’t the race have been more of a 50-50 toss-up?

Micah, if not for the pandemic, Trump would have been the favorite based on the economy, he could have run on almost anything and won.

Here’s a 🔥 take that maybe isn’t that hot but I think maybe is: If not for the coronavirus pandemic, Trump could have run an anti-“cancel culture”/economy-focused campaign and won. Thoughts?

“The fact is: We’re here and they’re not,” says Trump. He is hitting on a big theme in American politics at the moment, which is that, in a world of negative partisanship, beating your opponent can trump many other concerns.

Trump turns to face the White House and says “I’m here, what’s the name of that building?” flaunting his choice to use the people’s house as a political backdrop.

Good point, Nathaniel. That’s clearly because almost all large metropolitan areas vote at least somewhat Democratic, if not overwhelmingly so. In the 2016 election, Trump only carried four of the 50 largest counties by population in the country.

Trump just told his supporters to send liberals a “thundering message” “on Nov. 3.” That’s in contrast to Democrats, who urged their supporters to vote early or request their mail ballots early.

Early this week, I called this the “Cancel Culture Convention.” It’s been a really common talking point, and sure, Americans don’t like cancel culture or political correctness. But in the middle of a pandemic and economic collapse, it seems like an awfully abstract argument to spend so much time talking about. But hey, I’ll leave that up to the voters to discern.

I wrote earlier today that to win, Trump needs to build support more among white Americans who are lower in prejudice. I don’t think a heavy emphasis on law and order fits the bill.

Trump says the top 10 most dangerous cities in the country are run by Democrats. I haven’t fact-checked that, but I wouldn’t be surprised — because almost all cities are run by Democrats. In the top 21 most populous cities in the U.S., there are only three Republican mayors.

Trump says Biden’s polling numbers “are going down like a rock in water” amid the racial-justice protests. As Perry Bacon Jr. wrote today, that’s just not true. (Biden’s lead has actually held incredibly steady at around 8 percentage points.)

Worth remembering Perry’s piece about how Black Lives Matter’s declining popularity suggested that there’s significant daylight between what voters think of BLM and Biden.

When Trump says his administration is trying to punish criminals to the fullest extent possible, he’s not joking. Under Trump, the federal government has resumed the federal death penalty after a long hiatus. Four people on federal death row have been executed so far this year, including a man who was executed last night. Definitely a contrast with all of the talk earlier about Trump’s commitment to criminal justice reform — and an example of the way he’s trying to thread the needle between being seen as a compassionate leader who gives second chances, and the president of law and order.

Galen, I was really convinced by this piece from The Atlantic’s Adam Serwer. Trump’s culture-war playbook is disarmed by a Biden nomination, and I’m not sure yet whether Harris is someone who his campaign can use as a stand-in for the things they’ve been attacking the past four days. They are trying to tie him to Sanders and “the Squad,” but I’m not sure it’ll work.

Trump says that civil strife and protests in “Democrat-run” cities could have their problems solved if they would just accept federal help that Trump is offering.

Well, Galen, I think a lot of those young progressives are really anxious about whether they’ll be able to push Biden to the left if he’s elected. So I don’t think they see him as a Trojan horse at all!