The Key Moment From Night Two of the Republican Convention
So there was quite a bit to digest on Tuesday night.
We saw repeated abuses of the White House for political purposes. Two Trump kids went to the podium and didn’t even bother to bring any humanity to their father. An anti-Semite was pulled from the speaker’s list at the last minute. Pam Bondi pulled the Florida/ Ukraine-falsehood/ Trump-corruption trifecta, with an unhealthy dollop of Russian dezinformatsiya to boot.
Newly-nominated-but-still-not-legally-appointed Homeland Security boss Chad Wolf led a naturalization ceremony, leading pundits to wonder if Wolf’s illegal appointment accidentally shielded him from prosecution under the Hatch Act. The First Lady gave a fairly decent if laughably un-credible speech.
Meanwhile, Joe Biden’s campaign put out a statement exploding Monday night’s “they hate the police and love riots” scare with six lines of text.
None of these moments, however, became the key moment of the night. That came from Larry Kudlow, of all people. The White House top economist had this to say about the current situation (via Andrew Solender of Forbes).
“Then came a once-in-one-hundred years pandemic. It was awful. Health and economic impacts were tragic. Heartbreak and hardship were everywhere,” Kudlow said of the coronavirus crisis.
Kudlow declared that “presidential leadership came swiftly and effectively” and mounted an “extraordinary rescue to health and safety to successfully fight the covid virus,” adding that a “bipartisan rescue saved the economy.”
It was awful?!?!?
As Kudlow was attempting to gaslight us into thinking COVID-19 was in the past tense, the number of deaths from the diseased passed 1,000 for the day … again. New unemployment filings were above 1.1 million … again.
Larry Kudlow might like us to think COVID and the COVID recession are behind us. The rest of the night’s speakers echoed that with near-total silence about the disease. The American people know better. They still see their loved ones fall ill and die – or see themselves fall ill. They see their local businesses shutter. They see jobs disappear.
The disconnect between what the Republicans presented and what American are witnessing has become a chasm. The party has less than ten weeks to bridge that gap. It’s more likely they’ll simply mark time and prepare the ground for bigger grifts on the people on its own side of the canyon.
Previous from D.J. McGuire:
