message surrounding unity could only be interpreted as applying to party members in particular, who had to come to the convention to bend knee before the king and not the country at large.
A tiger does not change his stripes, and neither will Trump nor Vance. The Republicans will remain on message: the world is against them;
Trump is for and will protect them. It is their time, their turn to dismantle the “deep state” and replace it with something more to their liking. The only problem is the country to be built will be of Trump’s design and liking. And he is no poor, disenfranchised American. He remains a narcissist with authoritarian tendencies, who wishes to be dictator from day one. And, despite the rhetoric of having a near death experience that opened his mind to pushing an agenda of unity over division, Trump is more likely to act as other authoritarian leaders who double-down on his or her power and position when threatened (think Putin’s response to Navalny or Wagner chief Prigozhin’s challenge to his authority).
A person need simply look at the lineup introducing Trump on the final night of the convention to realize nothing had changed. There was Kid Rock, singing his song ‘American Bad Ass’ before a backdrop that had fire surrounding the American flag with the crowd chanting a response of ‘fight, fight, fight.’ There was also Hulk Hogan, a “professional” wrestler, who, in attempting to make Donald Trump out to be a ‘tough guy,’ asked attendees: “So all you criminals, all you low-lives, all you sc*mbags, all you drug dealers, and all you crooked politicians need to answer one question, brother. What you gonna do when Donald Trump and all the Trumpamaniacs run wild on you, brother?”7
There was Dana White, CEO of the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) and Power Slap (an American slap fighting promotion company owned by UFC), who was caught on video made public by TMZ slapping his wife while they
vacationed in Mexico, who formally introduced Trump to convention attendees, saying Trump was “the toughest, most resilient human being that I’ve ever met in my life.”8 Only in America
would such individuals serve as character references for a former president and a person seeking, once again, the most powerful office in the world. Only in America would the most important thing be not facts or figures, but the entertainment brought about through the
fakery of snake-oil salesmen peddling their wares.
It was against this backdrop that Trump entered the convention to make his one hour and 32-minute speech, the longest in republican national convention in history. Trump had released excerpts from his “supposedly” gentler speech, the one ripped up and rewritten after the assassination attempt, and pundits were citing those excepts to proclaim Trump would go down in history as being a unifier. They also proclaimed the election was now Trump’s to lose, and if he were to stick to the script Trump would be elected president. But it was not to be the case: Trump soon went off script to cite old grievances. It was to become a speech that reminded people of past authoritarian leaders like Stalin or Khruschev or Castro addressing their countrymen.
Trump started his speech with a softened voice, detailing the assassination attempt and describing how it affected him, how it softened him, how he understood his survival was due to divine intervention, and how he believed the divisiveness in America needed to stop. But soon the old complaints, the old grievances,
and the falsehoods started. Over the course of the speech, Trump made more than 20 false claims.
And yet, despite all the theatrics and falsehoods, Trump’s seemed stronger than ever. Soon the Democrats were looking for a way to replace Biden at the top of the ticket. Age became the answer, particularly after Biden disastrous debate performance.
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