I have to admit that Donald Trump’s July 18th nomination acceptance speech at the Republication National Convention started off so well. I thought, as I listened to his words – from recounting his feelings to the assassination attempt, how he would be a president for all Americans, that the country needed to set aside their polarized bickering and become “Americans” again – that maybe his brush with death might have changed him. No matter what he said, he was the GOP nominee… but maybe his words could take the vituperatives, the angry nicknames he accorded his opponents, the divisive policy and litany of half-truths and out-and-out lies out of his message and truly unite the nation going forward. Maybe, I was wrong about him. He honored those who had been shot, one retired chief killed and two who survived. He was uncharacteristically humble.
And then, he went off the teleprompter, into well-hashed tangents and falsehoods, making claims and stating as facts words that were unequivocal falsehoods… as the cheering crowds repeated his over-used lies, continuing his message that the 2020 election had been stolen, suggesting that the GOP was very well prepared should that happen again. My heart sank. Trump was still the same demagog he always was, painting undocumented immigrants as the cause of rising crime in the streets. This particular group actually has lower crime statistics than the rest of the nation, and actually national statistics show that overall crime in the United States was down.
Mentioning the notorious MS-13 ultra-violent gang by name, he suggested that when those countries from south of the border from whence these gangsters purportedly came had initially refused to take these deported criminals, but his threat to withhold aid “convinced” them to take their criminals back. Strange. MS-13 was actually born in Los Angeles, California among Salvadoran-born residents. These criminals actually exported this LA-based gang to El Salvador, and the gang has only grown stronger everywhere, reinforced with the guns (including AR-15s) they purchased easily in the United States. Starting out with this gang (he could have selected any criminal enterprise he wants), suggests that the entire premise was fabricated.
I was lulled until I was startled. The call for unity, the demand for lowering the temperature, was dramatically contradicted after those warm opening minutes… followed by an interminable refutation of everything he said at the beginning. It was the longest acceptance speech of any major candidate in American history. Even Trump’s efforts at seeming inclusive – telling Hispanic and Black Americans that immigrants were taking away their jobs disproportionally – were bottom-line racist at their core. Andrew Restuccia, writing for the July 19th Wall Street Journal, noted a nothing-to-lose second-term candidate with retribution on his mind: “Behind all the pageantry, the Republican convention made clear what Donald Trump’s governing style would look like in a second term: assertive, adversarial and unconstrained.
“If he wins the November election, Trump would return to the White House unburdened by ever having to appear on a ballot again, with more conviction about his vision for the country and more knowledge about how to execute it. The cabinet secretaries and White House aides who once beat back—and sometimes quietly worked to undermine—his most radical ideas would be replaced by loyalists eager to push his agenda even further. And he could reap the benefits of a Supreme Court whose conservative majority he enshrined… On Thursday night [7/18], he painted President Biden as a failure and pledged to lower prices, close the U.S.-Mexico border and bring an end to international conflicts… ‘Nothing will sway us, nothing will slow us, and no one will ever stop us,’ Trump said as he accepted the Republican nomination.”
Blame was prominent, even where the underlying issues were actually created by Trump during his campaign. Like his negotiation with the Taliban leadership that mandated what became an ugly withdrawal to meet his promises to that malignant leader of the forces that had battled American soldiers for years. He promised to reduce the cost of living by reducing interest rates (not a presidential prerogative) while cutting the deficit (his gift tax cut to corporate America added trillions to the deficit) and extracting tariffs from just about every nation, friendly or otherwise (pretending that foreign exporters wouldn’t raise the price of the underlying goods).
Even though the United States currently is extracting the largest amount of oil and gas in its history, Trump promised still to “drill, drill, drill” starting on day one, cutting all the relevant climate change federal programs, major job creators, which he labeled “green scams.” All this as Beryl’s hurricane damage in Texas, the rains and storm surges in Florida and the wildfires in California cost the victims billions. And with JD Vance, born-again pro-Trump rightwing “whatever you say sir” pledging a mass immigrant round-up, Trump is feeling the potential of a “forever MAGA” legacy rising with, at this writing, a weak and embattled Biden barely standing in the way.
But where we are and likely to continue the hyper-accelerated, gun-crazy bevy of “we’ll find women who got abortions in other states and prosecute them” evangelical purists and revenge-driven red states led by Donald John Trump, today’s America should be terrifying… as Op Ed writer, Max Burns, suggests in the July 17th The Hill: “Americans hardly needed an assassination attempt against former President Donald Trump to realize that our civil society is fraying… [The July 13th] horrific shooting feels in many ways like the logical progression of a political culture that has been growing increasingly extreme for years.
“The former president himself has been a prominent purveyor of rhetoric that often encourages or fantasizes about violence against his political foes. This is, after all, the same Trump whose words have been cited over 50 times by men and women facing criminal charges for violence and assault. It’s the same Trump who, according to former Defense Secretary Mark Esper, once asked why police couldn’t simply gun down demonstrators protesting the murder of George Floyd. In fact, back in 2022 Axios detailed 10 distinct incidents where Trump praised or excused political violence.
“The sad reality of our politics in 2024 is that a growing number of Americans now agree with Trump’s view — and not all of those radicalized partisans support the president or his party. It isn’t clear that our political leaders truly appreciate the scope of this threat to the democratic order… Of course, Trump isn’t solely to blame for Americans’ increasing comfort invoking the language of violence in place of peaceful political disagreement. A growing number of state and national Republican lawmakers have invoked the threat of civil war if Trump loses the White House this year.
“As recently as July 4, pro-Trump Project 2025 leader Kevin Roberts called for a ‘second American Revolution’ that would be bloodless so long as ‘the left’ allowed it to be. Former GOP vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin promised violence if prosecutors in multiple states proceeded with criminal cases against Trump. And in the days following the attack on Trump, Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene ramped up her own rhetoric, accusing Democrats of trying to ‘destroy God’s creation’ and laying blame for America’s political unrest at the feet of transgender rights activists and pro-choice voters… The language of political violence has become so commonplace in our media that it barely merits concern — that is, until the bullets start flying.”
So, the candidate who spoke with humility and called for unity was the product of speech writer’s dream; the real candidate quickly shook off the fake narrative and returned to the threat he represents to freedom and individual liberty in a “safe” nation. Not one where the GOP answer to criminal activity is an admonition to Americans to “arm yourself” or where personal attacks, verbal and physical have been legitimized. The way we were when we were truly great and without such polarization and internal violence. Did our soldiers in WWII and Korea die in vain to defend against the same autocratic regimes we are now becoming?
I’m Peter Dekom, and with normalized violence, legitimized racism and a vector toward retribution, can a Trump led America ever lead to a better, safer land of opportunity… or will it simply be over?
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