That’s true, though one would hope that the hero history has chosen for this moment might be, say, an epidemiologist, or someone who doesn’t respond to Americans’ cries for racial justice with tweets about shooting protesters. But according to the Republicans who spoke at the RNC, this fraught moment demands the expertise and compassion only the host of NBC’s the Apprentice can provide. Trump is “the only candidate who is capable of protecting the American dream,” Representative Elise Stefanik said in her speech. That may sound extreme, but it was nothing compared with the repeated comparisons, for the third straight night, between Trump and Lincoln—or the continued slurring of opponents Biden and Kamala Harris with the same qualities that so obviously define himself. Is it the Biden-Harris ticket that’s putting “tribalism above truth,” normalizing “emotion-based voting,” and promoting “radicalized identity politics?” as 25-year-old rising Republican star, Madison Crawthorn, put it?
For three straight days, Republicans have tried to rewrite the president’s last four years. This is a president who, Karen Pence implied, is a paragon of “humility.” This is a president who, press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said in an otherwise sympathetic speech detailing her mastectomy, “stands by Americans with preexisting conditions.” This is a president who has, according to Richard Grenell, put “you” in charge—even though his policies tend to be disfavored by wide swaths of the American public, which were overruled by the Electoral College in 2016. Meanwhile, in their telling, Biden and Harris support “infanticide,” want to “cancel” law enforcement, in the words of Senator Marsha Blackburn, and has a bleak vision of America: “Where Joe Biden sees American darkness,” Pence said, “we see American greatness.”
The president’s allies seemed particularly keen Wednesday to cast him as an ally of women. If Tuesday appeared aimed at convincing Black Americans that Trump isn’t actually racist, Wednesday seemed to be about convincing women he isn’t sexist via appeals from the likes of Kellyanne Conway. It’s impossible to know at this juncture whether the appeals managed to bring new voters on board, or whether they simply reassured the Black Americans who already agree Trump is the “least racist person in the world,” or the American women who see overturning Roe v. Wade as a defining issue. Like the first two nights, much of what was said Wednesday felt fleeting. But there were more compelling moments: a mother describing her son’s education; McEnany recounting her health crisis. Such stories had the power to move, even outside of the MAGA bubble from whence they came. Those human moments had one thing in common, though: They had almost nothing to do with Trump.
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