The biggest loser on Thursday’s fourth and final day of the Republican National Convention was Democrat nominee Joe Biden, who was on the receiving end of an all-out rhetorical assault.
The second biggest may have been North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper and the Charlotte City Council members who sought, under the auspices of the state’s coronavirus restrictions, to derail President Donald Trump from delivering what was always sure to be an epic acceptance speech for his re-election campaign.
Like the Mother of All Bombs, the massive munitions charge that Trump’s administration used to quell ISIS’s hopes of gaining any ground in the new presidency, Trump’s speech—running more than an hour long—capped off the Mother of All Rallies, and it was equally designed to strike shock and awe into the hearts of Democratic opponents.
The president chafed COVID fearmongers who expected him to submit to social-distancing decrees, gathering friends and family, trusted advisers, victims of recent race-riots and even workers from the Tennessee Valley Authority in what would prove to be a more stunning backdrop than any prior rally or convention speech could have permitted under the best of circumstances.
This is a truly stunning picture pic.twitter.com/XSoQY4JIzL
— John Bresnahan (@BresPolitico) August 28, 2020
Of course, the venue in front of the White House also sent his opponents into a tizzy on Thursday.
But as Trump’s daughter Ivanka and many others noted during the convention, it was a brilliant solution befitting of the Trump presidency, unafraid to shake up the normal order of the Swamp while pragmatically staying within the confines of the law and achieving results that well exceeded expectation.
“Washington has not changed Donald Trump,” said Ivanka in her introduction. “Donald Trump has changed Washington.”
Like another of his historic speeches, January’s State of the Union Address, Trump had plenty else on his mind. The former, he delivered flawlessly while staring down the prospect of impeachment.
His speech on Thursday came only two weeks since the death of his brother and best friend, Robert Trump for undisclosed circumstances believed to be related to intracerebral hemorrhaging.
But Trump acknowledged that he, like so many others, had also felt the personal toll of the deadly coronavirus in his life on a day when the pandemic surpassed the 180,000 death mark.
Even so, Trump waged a strong defense of his administration’s actions in fighting the virus and drew a sharp contrast with his adversaries, who had mocked his early efforts to slow its spread from China and Europe.
“The opposition show themselves capable of nothing but a partisan ability to criticize,” Trump said, but a Biden administration would have cost thousands more lives, not only to the virus, but also the aftermath of suicides, overdoses and other forgotten tolls wrought by the shutdowns that followed.
Biden’s plan, he said, is “not a solution to the virus but rather it’s a surrender to the virus.”
Trump’s highly quippable and Twitter-friendly criticisms of his political rival were bound to be one of the take-homes of the speech.
Already, his GOP allies were posting the more memorable lines in viral-ready graphics.
RETWEET if you agree a Joe Biden presidency would be a disaster! #RNC2020 pic.twitter.com/eYx01nqj2T
— Doug Collins (@CollinsforGA) August 28, 2020
He’s got a point..
“How can the Democrat Party lead our Country when they spend so much time tearing down our Country?” @realDonaldTrump pic.twitter.com/07s4dVEJ7C
— Madison Cawthorn (@CawthornforNC) August 28, 2020
“The fact is we’re here and they’re not.”
— Headline USA (@HeadlineUSA) August 28, 2020
Despite the broadsides on Biden—some of which mocked the former vice president’s own vision of a bleak future in his acceptance speech a week ago—Trump’s speech largely exuded hope, optimism and promise.
He pledged to continue breaking new and pioneering barriers, such as putting a woman on the moon and being the first nation to plant its “beautiful flag” on Mars.
The spirit not only cast aside the defeatism that seemed to emanate from the very marrow of the DNC convention, but it openly flouted it.
Indeed, Trump’s speech felt as though it could have been written before the coronavirus and race-riots consumed the news cycle, back when he still presided over the greatest economy in American history.
But far from looking back, Trump continued to look forward toward the challenges that lay ahead.
And he pledged to continue taking on the political establishment whose betrayals had prompted him to enter politics four fateful years ago.
“From the moment I left my former life behind—and it was a good life—I have done nothing but fight for you,” Trump said.
“…We have ended the rule of the failed political class, and they are desperate to get their power back by any means necessary,” he continued. “They are angry at me because instead of putting them first, I put America first.”
