Within the first 20 minutes or so of his acceptance speech on the Republican Nationwide Conference in Milwaukee Thursday evening, former President Donald Trump projected the congenial tone of a man receiving a civic award at a Kiwanis Membership assembly. He riffed amiably about his spouse and youngsters and pitched kudos to mates within the viewers, together with Child Rock and Hulk Hogan.
Trump additionally recounted, in considerably exaggerated element, the harrowing moments he skilled when a shooter got here inside an inch of ending his life. He spoke in regards to the grace of God and, for as soon as, confirmed a little bit of grace himself.
All of the previous tropes got here out: the fantasized concern mongering about unlawful immigrants, the virtually completely inaccurate claims about his financial successes and President Joe Biden’s failures, and a disjointed recitation of wildly exaggerated assertions about one factor or one other being the very best in historical past or the worst the world has ever seen. And this stream-of-consciousness bloviating set a brand new document for the size of a nominee’s speech at a nationwide political conference.
It isn’t an overstatement to say that Trump is the weirdest speechifier within the historical past of American politics. He simply will get up there and blathers. Usually ignoring any ready textual content, he boasts, fabricates, insults, repeats himself and pulls oddball allusions out of curious corners of his mind (on Thursday, he repeated a previous reference to Hannibal Lecter, the fictional, cannibalistic, serial killer, then left it hanging, unexplained).
I first noticed Trump communicate in 2016 when the Los Angeles Occasions despatched me to Phoenix to report on Trump and his followers earlier than the Arizona presidential main. Then, I assumed his talking model was surprisingly improvisational. Now, it has solely gotten more odd and simpler for comedians to imitate. However the weirdest factor is that it appears to work for lots of voters.
Following the ex-president’s speech, because the balloons have been falling on the ultimate evening of the conference, CNN requested a bunch of undecided voters to grade the ex-president’s deal with and say if it modified their minds about how they’d vote in November. To my shock, most gave him a B and some awarded an A. Extra surprisingly, a number of of those swing voters introduced that they now meant to solid their ballots for Trump.
Apparently, coherence doesn’t matter to some folks, nor do info. Trump talks nonsense more often than not, however, for thousands and thousands of our fellow residents, that’s simply superb.
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