"Unity" broke down at the Republican National Convention long before Donald Trump took the stage

MILWAUKEE — Donald Trump is the world's most famous liar. So when he called for "unity" after his close encounter with an assassin's bullet, the safest assumption should have been that he was lying, exploiting his own attempted murder to bamboozle the press into downplaying his swing voter-alienating violent radicalism. And yet, too many journalists fell for it.

"After assassination attempt, Trump and Biden seek calm, unity," a Reuters headline read ahead of the start of the Republican National Convention (RNC).

It was all spin. The reality, as folks on the ground at Milwaukee's Fiserv Forum can attest, is that the real theme of this week's GOP convention was captured in a popular chant, often directly led by members of the Trump family: "Fight, fight, fight!"

Trump started cashing in on the threatening slogan immediately.

(Although the site claims that these sneakers "are not designed, manufactured, distributed or sold by Donald J. Trump," ABC News quickly discovered he owns the company selling the sneakers.)

Trump's strategy to create the illusion of being "sober" and "moderate" when he took the stage Thursday was simple: Be painfully boring. After a lengthy bout of self-pity over getting nicked by a bullet, he attempted to deflect accusations of ignoring the guy who actually died by literally kissing the man's uniform. It was a disgusting move, but smart play. It is likely to be the headline story from the truly terrible speech that followed.

The speech was written and loaded into the teleprompters but it was hard to tell. Trump hit all the hateful talking points about immigrants, "woke" people, and Hannibal Lecter. But it was so boring, it's unlikely to make much of a ripple. Even the crowd that was ready to worship him could barely work up the energy to care after nearly 90 minutes.

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Trump may have buried his hate under the tedium of his speech. But the rest of the convention, like the "fight fight fight" sneakers, told the uglier truth. The transparent dishonesty of the "unity" talk was reflected in the interviews Salon had with delegates and other Republicans attending the convention. Most of them seemed to understand they were expected to talk positively about "unity," but when pressed on what the word means to them, things swiftly got weird.

Former North Carolina congressman Madison Cawthorn told Salon unity is about "bringing all Americans together." He then denounced "the academic elite" and people "infected with Trump Derangement Syndrome in the coastal elite cities" as obstacles to unity. To achieve unity, he suggested ideological sorting. "Pick a state that represents your values," the Republican advised liberals, and conservatives could live separately in "deep south Alabama."

"We as Americans have a lot more in common than we have differences, and I'd like us to focus on that rather than things that separate us," an attendee from New Jersey told us, suggesting "taking down the heat a little bit" in the political discourse.

I then asked him about the "Women for Trump" T-shirt he was wearing.

"I'm a cis-attracted trans lesbian," he answered with a laugh. "That's how I identify."

"Americans are exhausted right now," another Trump supporter told Salon. She identified Trump as the leader who will return Americans "to getting along, shaking hands, hanging out at barbecues, not having divisive arguments with our friends and family." When asked why she thought Trump was the leader to make Americans get along and not fight anymore, she said, "He's been through so much, the lawfare and the attacks and the venom."

A delegate from Montana identified unity as getting on the Trump bandwagon "instead of on the Democrat bandwagon." If they don't vote Trump, he warned, "we might not have any more chances if Biden gets in and does his purges like Stalin did."

The insincerity of the "unity" talk was regularly demonstrated by the speakers. On Tuesday, Donald Trump Jr. was giving interviews claiming his father was "changed" by the shooting and will do "his best to moderate." This gentler tone did not last long. By Wednesday night, Jr. was leading the packed auditorium in a chant of "Fight, fight, fight!"

I witnessed his brother, Eric Trump, doing the same outside the stadium doors.

Trump's running mate, Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, seemed like he wanted to use his speech to prop up the gentle-face mask of the GOP, mostly by telling stories of his tough-but-loving grandmother, and highlighting that he "married to the daughter of South Asian immigrants to this country." Said wife, lawyer Usha Chilukuri Vance, even introduced her husband by claiming, "he adapted to my vegetarian diet." The effort to portray the GOP as a tolerant and inclusive party was undercut, however, by the confusion and irritation that rippled through the crowd. Republicans are not used to hearing vegetarianism spoken of positively, rather than condemned as a conspiracy of testicle theft by the commie Marxist antifas.

But the crowd at the RNC still loved Vance, despite hearing he may eat tofu because they know all this peace-and-love talk is just a put-on for the cameras. The real Vance built his reputation with the MAGA by being a trollish jerk who shames women who leave abusive husbands and, despite being only 39 years old, clings to the ancient misogynist stereotype of "miserable cat ladies."

As John Ganz explained in his newsletter, Vance's speech was boring and family-oriented, surely, but mainly to distract from the terrifying underlying message of blood-and-soil nationalism. He flagged this passage:

As Ganz notes, this passage opposes the idea that "America is an idea, a creed, a set of self-evident propositions," which are the basis of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. Despite Vance's wife's background, he's asserting an ethno-nationalist ideology, one that cannot be separated from the ugly notion that only white Christians are "real" Americans. The cruelty and racism of this surfaced in his tone a few times, such as when he argued that citizens shouldn't have to "compete" with "people who shouldn’t even be here."

On Thursday, Tucker Carlson offered a snappier version of Vance's wordplay fascism. Without coming out and denying President Joe Biden won the 2020 election, Carlson repeatedly found ways to deny Biden's legitimacy. He asserted that the presidency is merely a "title" that is "bestowed by a process of some sort that can be subverted." (The crowd oohed and aahed at his daring.) "I can call my dog the CEO of Hewlett Packard. It doesn't mean she is."

So what makes a president legitimate, Tucker, if not winning an election? He asserted Trump is already "the leader of a nation," proved by the "divine intervention" of the assassin's bullet missing him. A leader is not "a title" and it's certainly not the result of being named by the people. The leader is "organic" and "the bravest man." Trump, therefore, "became the leader of this nation" last weekend, "months before the presidential election."

Hulk Hogan offered a dumber and far more entertaining take on the same theme. He repeatedly insisted that the only "real Americans" are "Trumpicans." To his credit, however, the pro wrestler probably had the clearest vision of "unity" of anyone at the convention. "Unity" is about creating an in-group of right-wing white Christians that have the rights and freedoms of citizens. The rest of us — the majority of Americans — are excluded from "unity."