Trump’s long, boring speech— packed with lies— sounded like the ravings of an angry old man stoking all the fears and grievances he could think of. But it was too long and too dull, with even his fans wishing it was over… if not dozing off. David Axelrod noted it was “the first good thing that’s happened to Democrats in the last 3 weeks. This really reminded everyone why Donald Trump is fundamentally unpopular outside this room. It was so awful that people were leaving early.
CNN Fact Check: “A remarkably dishonest acceptation speech. I counted at least 22 false claims from DonaldTrump… Let’s start with one of ten wildest claims he made: ’The world was at peace. Our opponents inherited a world at peace and turned into a planet of war. We’re in a planet of war. The whole world was at peace and now the world’s blowing up around us.’ This is false. Trump did not achieve world peace when he was president; certainly wasn’t at peace when he left office. There were active armed conflicts in dozens of nations in 2020— 51 by one research institutions count…”
Lois Beckett reported that Trump’s speech “was deeply familiar: same divisive rhetoric, same divisive policies. Historians rate Trump as the worst president in history. He, of course, tried to project that onto Biden, a garden variety mediocre president— like nearly all of them in the last 6 decades. “Though sources said Trump would simply not use Biden’s name in his speech, he did, saying: ‘If you took the 10 worst presidents in the history of the United States— think of it, the 10 worst— added them up, they will not have done the damage that Biden has done.’”
Throughout their convention, Republicans have taken key Democratic lines of attack and claimed them for themselves. In the world of the Republican national convention, the Democrats are the ones who are undermining US democracy, not the party whose supporters stormed the US Capitol to overturn the results of the 2020 election. “Biden is acting like a dictator,” the North Dakota governor, Doug Burgum, said in a speech on Wednesday.
Republican politicians kept reciting the names of women who have been raped or sexually assaulted by immigrants, while blaming the Democratic party’s immigration policies for putting them at risk. They didn’t talk about Trump being found liable of sexual abuse in a civil trial brought by the magazine writer E Jean Carroll, or the allegations of sexual misconduct he has faced from more than two dozen women. Biden and Harris were called criminals, rather than the candidate who has been convicted on 34 felony charges, and whose convention featured a Trump ally who had just been released from federal prison.
“The Democrat party should immediately stop weaponizing the justice system and labelling their political opponents as an enemy of democracy, especially since that is not true,” Trump said on Thursday. “In fact, I am the one saving democracy for the people of our country.”
Before Trump spoke, other Republican politicians devoted large swathes of time during their convention to demonizing undocumented migrants, blaming them for a host of social ills, and advocating not just for a border wall but also “Mass deportations now.”
Trump’s speech mirrored the convention as a whole, with a major focus on attacking migrants as criminals and rapists, and claiming, without evidence, that countries like El Salvador had seen decreases in crime because they were shipping all of their murders to the US. (Human rights organizations continue to speak out about the effects of mass arrests in El Salvador.)
Trump again promised “the largest deportation operation in the history of our country” and pledged that his deportations would be “even larger than that of president Dwight Eisenhower from many years ago. You know, he was a moderate but he believed very strongly in borders. He had the largest deportation operation we’ve ever had.”
Trump also joined other Republicans throughout the week in touting the GOP as the party of fossil fuel, as Republicans repeatedly chanted: “Drill, baby, drill!”
Climate change experts and activists have said that both Trump and his vice presidential pick, JD Vance, are likely to pursue a “methodical” climate crisis denial presidency that would include increasing production of fossil fuel, ignoring mainstream climate science and undermining or overturning rules to reduce emissions.
One of the everyday Americans invited to speak at the convention earlier in the week was the petroleum engineer Sarah Phillips, who criticized Biden and the Green New Deal. “The hydrocarbons that are being extracted are a true gift,” Phillips said. “Our society and our standard of living could not exist without fossil fuels.”
“These liberal senators shut down the Keystone Pipeline,” the Montana senator Steve Daines said earlier on Thursday. “An America First majority— we’re going to drill, baby, drill!”
It’s worth noting that Vance has taken $371,924 in legalistic bribes from anti-Climate sources… and he’s only been in Congress for a year.
If recent elections and both parties prove one thing, it is that there is no such thing as "unfit" in american politics. There are no yardsticks to measure "too stupid", "too evil", "too sociopathic", "too misanthropic", "too diminished" and, of course, "too corrupt" and "too criminal".