Republican Convention Review: Trump Children and Uncle Christie’s Scary Bedtime Story
The second night of the Republican National Convention gave us a television spectacle that was a schizophrenic affair, veering wildly back and forth between sweet sentimentality and vicious fear-mongering — and I’m not just talking about The O’Reilly Factor.
The convention stage was occupied chiefly by two of Donald Trump’s children, Tiffany Trump and Donald Jr., who praised their father in the generous terms you’d expect from any child in this situation. While Tiffany hewed closely to autobiographical remembrances, Donald Jr. followed his own daddy praise with a crisply delivered venture into Hillary Clinton criticism, using a big chunk of his time to excoriate the Democratic candidate as someone who “would be the first president who couldn’t pass a basic background check — it’s incredible!” Both sides of the cable news aisle — MSNBC and Fox News — as well as CNN praised Donald Jr.’s performance extravagantly, with various channels’ commentators saying he “crushed it,” gave “an amazing, impressive performance,” and that “on a scale of 1 to 10, this was an 11.”
Related: The Unconventional Diaries: Trump seals the deal at the RNC
Preceding the Trump children was Chris Christie, whose manner could not have been more different from either of the Trumps — more scary uncle than warm comforter. He delivered one, maybe two, introductory sentences about “my friend, Donald Trump,” but then he went into a speech that doubled as an act: a mock trial of Clinton, “her performance, and her character.” He asked the audience in the hall and at home to be “a jury of her peers”: “I’m gonna present the facts in the case against Hillary Clinton … so that you can render your verdict on the basis of the facts.” Before he even presented his case, conventioneers began chanting, “Lock her up! Lock her up!” as Christie looked on approvingly, smiling and nodding, at one point literally licking his chops. He said with a grin, “Gimme a few more minutes and we’ll get there” — “there” being, presumably, locking up Clinton and throwing away the key.
The New Jersey governor named seven countries in which he asserted Clinton, as secretary of state, had acted against the best interests of America, and concluded his indictment with that ever-popular villain, Hillary’s email server, which “violated our national security.” With each country named, Christie asked, “Is she guilty or not guilty?” and the crowd bellowed, “Guilty!” again and again. The lynch-mob energy Christie stoked was striking.
Before Christie, there was Paul Ryan, who put on his future goggles and told us that the upcoming Democratic convention would be “a four-day celebration of politically correct moralizing.” After Christie, Ben Carson appeared to close out the night with a brief homily about the evil of “one of Hillary Clinton’s mentors,” community organizer Saul Alinsky. I must say, I was impressed at the volume of booing the mention of Alinsky’s name provoked, since the 1960s radical is an obscure figure to most of America these days. But I guess if Carson puts “mentor” after “Hillary” at a convention, he could have followed it with “Mother Teresa” and the doughty old gal would have been jeered lustily.
As usual, the broadcast networks came on for only an hour, at 10 p.m., and were left to poorly describing or badly editing the remarks Christie had made. In primetime cable, Bill O’Reilly commenced his Factor with a Talking Points Memo about how Trump could win the election but was soon straying into oddly old territory, condemning N.W.A. (!) for releasing the song “F*** tha Police” in 1988 (!). You never know when Bill is going to get some bit of pop culture stuck in his craw, and he takes it out on us until he shakes it out. At least he gave his usual pop music punching bag, Beyoncé, a rest this night.
