Analysis: 6 takeaways from Trump’s big night at the RNC

He proclaimed his efforts to combat the virus were centered on “the science, the facts and the data,” despite numerous examples to the contrary — including the very mask-free crowd he had assembled for his speech.

He declared, “very modestly,” that he had exceeded any previous president’s efforts for the Black community, even as he’s declined to address issues of systemic racism that have sparked nationwide protests.

“Everything we’ve achieved is now in danger,” he said. “This election will decide whether we will defend the American way of life or allow a radical movement to completely dismantle and destroy it.”

The four-day convention, which came as Trump struggles to reverse a polling deficit caused by his handling of the pandemic, was the President’s highest-profile opportunity to frame the race on his terms.

The final evening amounted to the clearest attempt yet to reverse the hardening impressions among Americans that Trump mishandled the pandemic and has behaved like a bully during his term.

Here are 6 takeaways from the final evening of the Republican National Convention:

Living like there’s no pandemic

If the speakers at this week’s convention provided a portrait of Trump’s presidency that didn’t always comport with reality, the images of mask-less crowds gathered without social distancing helped reinforce it.

Combined with the repeated references to the coronavirus pandemic in the past tense, the images projected a post-pandemic world, even as deaths mount.

Trump did not address the pandemic at great length. When he did, he predicted a quick resolution to the ongoing crisis using dubious claims about his own performance.

“In recent months, our nation, and the entire planet, has been struck by a new and powerful invisible enemy. Like those brave Americans before us, we are meeting this challenge,” he said. “We are delivering lifesaving therapies and will produce a vaccine before the end of the year, or maybe even sooner.”

Later, he sought to brag about his handling of the pandemic using misleading figures and exaggerating the extent to which he had tackled the outbreak in its early stages.

It’s an image Trump wants as he tries to convince Americans he is on top of the pandemic. To vouch for his handling of the virus, Trump did not rely on medical experts but on Dana White, the president of Ultimate Fighting Championship who is his longtime friend.

Of course, the pandemic is not over. More than 3,200 Americans have died since the Republican National Convention started three days ago — more than died during the terror attacks on 9/11.

Unlike most Americans, Trump has access to an extensive testing regime that his aides say renders him the “most tested man in America.” Anyone who comes into close proximity with him receives one; on Thursday, that included at least some of the more than 1,000 invited guests on the South Lawn for his speech.

The effect has been to provide Trump with the crowds he long desired for his convention. But it has also allowed him to project a reality that simply doesn’t exist for the rest of the country.

How effective that is in convincing Americans that Trump has handled the virus well isn’t clear. People living through the outbreak are still feeling its effects. Images of the President going about his life as normal can’t change that reality.

“Here’s what you have to understand about the nature of a pandemic: It’s relentless. You can’t stop it with a tweet. You can’t create a distraction and hope it’ll go away. It doesn’t go away,” Democratic vice presidential candidate Sen. Kamala Harris said in a prebuttal to Trump’s speech earlier Thursday.

Ignoring Jacob Blake but condemning violent protests

The “law and order” message Trump hoped to advance Thursday came at tense moment. Kenosha, Wisconsin, remains on edge after the police shooting of a Black man. Many professional athletes were continuing a boycott, though NBA playoff games were scheduled to resume. In Washington, a large racial justice demonstration was being planned for Friday.

In his speech, Trump sought to cast Biden as dangerous at a precarious time.

“Your vote will decide whether we protect law abiding Americans, or whether we give free reign to violent anarchists, agitators and criminals who threaten our citizens,” he said.

At the same time, he lamented what he characterized as unpatriotic efforts to reckon with the country’s hateful past.

“In the left’s backward view, they do not see America as the most free, just, and exceptional nation on earth,” he said. “Instead, they see a wicked nation that must be punished for its sins.”

The tinder-box atmosphere surrounding the President’s address is not an entirely unfamiliar or uncomfortable place for Trump, and in some ways fits squarely into the theme of his convention and campaign: that Democratic-run areas will devolve into chaos should Joe Biden win.

He used almost identical themes in his 2016 convention acceptance speech, when he said: “The crime and violence that today afflicts our nation will soon come to an end. Beginning on January 20th 2017, safety will be restored.”

But in refusing the address or even acknowledge the circumstances that have led to protests in Wisconsin, Trump also seems to undercut the assertions made over and over during the convention that he is attuned to the issues of the Black community and eager to help.

Those themes arose again Thursday, with speeches from Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson, Trump’s sole Black Cabinet member, and Ja’Ron Smith, the highest-ranking Black official at the White House.

“Many on the other side love to incite division by claiming that President Trump is a racist. They could not be more wrong,” Carson said, citing (among other things) Trump’s willingness to accept Black and Jewish members at his club in Florida.

Alice Johnson, whose life sentence for a drug violation was commuted by Trump, said she was “free in body thanks to President Trump, but free in mind thanks to the almighty God.”

Yet in the same evening, Trump claimed Biden wanted to release hundreds of thousands of criminals, and touted his own demand that people convicted of defacing federal memorials spend 10 years in jail.

Ultimately, the messages appeared designed to inure Trump from accusations that he is racist. Yet in practice, his unwillingness to confront the reasons behind current racial tensions — and to instead stoke them with divisive rhetoric — offers a different reality.

Finding an attack on Biden

Throughout this year’s campaign, Trump’s aides have struggled to identify a line of attack on Biden that both moves the needle with voters and earns Trump’s seal of approval.

The scattershot approach was evident in the President’s speech.

In Trump’s telling, Biden is both a status-quo Democratic politician who is out of time to prove himself — and a “Trojan horse” for socialists like Bernie Sanders.

He is both concealing his agenda — “Biden wants to keep you completely in the dark,” he claimed — and working in cahoots with Sanders to move the agenda far-left in “a 110-page policy platform.”

And he’s both weak on crime, willing to allow criminals onto the streets, and overly tough in passing a 1990s sentencing law that saw harsh sentences applied on many Black Americans.

The dueling narratives about Biden encapsulate the challenge Trump will have in defining his rival in the weeks before Election Day.

The one area Trump avoided Thursday was Biden’s mental condition, an attack he’s relished but that his advisers fear could alienate senior citizens.

Instead he took a swipe at Biden’s hands-on approach to politics — “he took the donations of blue-collar workers, gave them hugs and even kisses,” Trump said — another attack that some aides fear might open the President to questions about his own accusations against him of sexual impropriety.

Conversely, Trump didn’t begin spelling out a second-term agenda until toward the end of his speech — and spent only a few minutes describing what he hopes to do if reelected.

He’s a nice guy — believe me

A persistent message delivered at this week’s convention has been that Trump is a nicer guy than he seems.

Delivered primarily by people who work for him in the White House, the accounts all suggest that in private, Trump is a warm man oozing empathy for those around him.

“President Trump is a kind and decent man. I wish you could be at his side with me to see his endless kindness to everyone he meets,” said Dan Scavino, the social media guru who is often behind Trump’s more lashing and insulting tweets.

“I have seen his true conscience. I just wish everyone could see the deep empathy he shows to families whose loved ones have been lost to violence,” senior White House adviser Ja’Ron Smith said, naming Ahmaud Arbery and George Floyd, two Black men killed this summer.

The most effusive in insisting on Trump’s empathy was his daughter Ivanka.

“I’ve been with my father and I’ve seen the pain in his eyes when he receives updates on the lives that have been stolen by this plague,” she said.

It’s a description of Trump that, as the parade of his aides acknowledged, is not usually seen in public.

“I recognize that my dad’s communication style is not to everyone’s taste,” Ivanka Trump said. “And I know his tweets can feel a bit unfiltered.”

Still, neither his daughter nor any of his aides really explained why — given the ample access the public has to Trump through his frequent press availabilities, his active Twitter feed and his phone interviews on Fox News.

It all appeared designed to rebut Biden’s stake on the “nice guy” mantle — though Trump himself seemed less sold on the idea of empathy.

“The laid-off workers in Michigan, Ohio, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and many other states didn’t want Joe Biden’s hollow words of empathy, they wanted their jobs back,” he said in his speech.

Remember impeachment?

It’s perhaps unsurprising that Trump’s impeachment has been largely forgotten. He is still the president, a world-altering pandemic struck weeks after he was acquitted and the political calculus surrounding the matter shifted.

What is surprising is who, seven months later, is raising it as an issue. Democrats entirely ignored the impeachment era in their convention last week, even though many claimed back then that the stain of impeachment would follow Trump forever.

Instead it is Republicans who have made it an issue during their convention — including through the final-night speaking slot assigned to Rudy Giuliani, the President’s volatile personal attorney whose actions helped prompt the entire impeachment scandal in the first place.

Giuliani did not address the impeachment proceedings directly, choosing to focus instead on violence in American cities and an attack on Biden.

“He’s a Trojan Horse with Bernie, AOC, Pelosi, Black Lives Matter and his party’s entire Left Wing hidden inside his body just waiting to execute their pro-criminal, anti-police policies,” he said.

But his presence alone was enough to harken back to late last year, when his appearances helped drive Democrats’ efforts.

Trump’s allies appear to have calculated that time has either softened Americans’ views of the impeachment, clouded their memories of its specifics or rendered it a petty distraction compared to the massive problems of today.

Fortress White House

Until this year, convention speeches were delivered inside sealed arenas. If protests occurred, they were out of sight and well out of mind.

Trump’s outdoor speech Thursday from the White House South Lawn didn’t provide those advantages, though a fortified security perimeter around the executive mansion provided a wide buffer between him and protesters, who could be heard during Trump’s speech.

The ethically questionable move has drawn scrutiny all week, and the final manifestation — massive “Trump-Pence” signs underneath the Truman Balcony, a fireworks display above the Washington Monument and an opera singer on the South Portico — only cemented the norm-busting nature of the night.

Trump himself made little attempt to downplay his venue.

“The fact is, I’m here,” Trump said, gesturing toward his residence. “What’s the name of that building?”

“We’re here,” he said, “and they’re not.”

At least two groups said they would convene near the White House during Trump’s speech. One said they hoped to “drown out” the President using loudspeakers and trucks.

Protests, including banging, air horns, and muffled chanting, were audible from the South Lawn, where Trump delivered his acceptance speech.

Sound from protests has previously carried over the White House fence to where the President is speaking, including when a group of truckers blared their horns during a Rose Garden event.

More notably, the sound of flash bangs could be heard from the Rose Garden as Trump spoke ahead of his fateful walk across Lafayette Square to St. John’s Church in June.

Ahead of Trump’s speech on Thursday, temporary fencing was erected around the perimeter of the White House grounds, almost entirely encasing the property. It mimicked the barricades that were positioned around the White House during that week in June, when Trump at one point was rushed to an underground bunker.