Dallas: There were bribes and lies in Donald Trump’s speech to the Republican National Convention, though it was a consummate piece of showmanship.
The lies concerned the crowd at the American Airlines Centre in Dallas, which was decidedly half-full, despite the US president’s protests to the contrary.
“This place is packed,” he said at one point, even though the upper stands were mostly empty. He pointed to a pretend person in the stands, asserting they were leaving to go to the bathroom.
“They’ll take a picture of his seat while he’s gone, and they’ll say, ‘Trump did not fill up the arena, the arena was not filled, look at the seat’. So, please, if you don’t mind, don’t anybody go to the bathroom.”
Anyway, Trump did not nearly fill up the arena. It was a long way short of that – and that’s fine because it was a large stadium – but the president’s unbelievable narcissism on this front must not go unnoted.
The bribe was a $US1 trillion-plus pledge that every American adult would get paid $US5000 ($7000) if the Republican Party holds on to the House of Representatives and the Senate in November.
It was a promise so brazen, so bafflingly corrupt in its premise, and so unlikely to come to fruition – but for the fact that it came from the president of the United States, on one of his largest possible platforms.
Strategically, Trump was absolutely transparent. His aim – and the aim of Republicans more broadly – was to put the Trump name front and centre of conservative voters’ minds in the lead-up to the November 3 poll.
That is because for the past decade or so, Republicans have done better when the Trump name is on the ballot. It’s a reality that perfectly matches Trump’s ego.
“When I’m running, we get tremendous numbers of votes,” he said in Dallas. “But when I’m not running, it’s a little different. So please, pretend that I’m running, and get out and vote.
“In actuality, I really am running. We don’t really know it, but we are. We’re running together. We have to have Congress, we have to have the majorities.”
The stakes are high. If Republicans lose their majority, Trump at the very least loses his ability to legislate from the Oval Office. And he likely faces another impeachment trial.
If we were still in Trump’s ascendant era, the speech would be a masterstroke. He was funny, spontaneous, cutting, and entertaining – all the things Trump voters loved about him when he first came on the scene.
But we are not in that era any more. Other than the big fat bribe, little was new in his speech. He boasted of his achievements, while inflating the threat of a Democrat-communist takeover.
For all the sycophantic supporters gathered inside the arena, the whole performance still fell a little flat. It felt a little like a last gasp from someone who, while gifted, was running low on his bag of tricks.
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Michael Koziol is the North America correspondent for The Age and Sydney Morning Herald. He is a former Sydney editor, Sun-Herald deputy editor and a federal political reporter in Canberra.Connect via X or email.From our partners
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