Reflections on the Trumpist "Convention"

 The Trumpist Convention was an alternate-reality show of questionable legality.

There were moments of grace: Senator Tim Scott spoke well, but he IS the entire Congressional Republican Black Caucus. Karen Pence spoke movingly of art therapy helping a PTSD-plagued veteran, but didn’t explain the connection to Trump.

Mostly people said, straight-faced, how much Trump cares about the average person, and how hard he works. Trump even mentioned the “unnecessary deaths” from COVID-19, as if our absurd global lead in per capita deaths had nothing to do with him. (In Trumpworld, when China “let” this virus spread, Trump started the biggest national mobilization since WWII. And he “follows the science.”)

The Hatch Act forbids federal employees to engage in partisan activities while on public business or federal property. Doesn’t apply to Trump. Applies to the official who naturalized five new citizens in the White House for the Republican convention video – suggesting Trump (who’s sharply cut legal immigration) welcomes immigrants. Applies to the minions shooting and editing the videotape.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo made a convention speech while on federal business in Israel. Other Trump Administration figures spoke at the White House – violating the Hatch Act.

Florida Attorney-General Pam Bondi spoke about fighting corruption. In 2013 she was preparing to have Florida join in a fraud lawsuit against Trump’s charity. Trump’s charity donated $25K to her re-election campaign, and Florida didn’t join the suit. Charities can’t legally contribute to candidates; Trump was fined, but bribing Bondi worked.

Eric Trump, VP of The Trump Organization, spoke the same day New York issued another subpoena to him to testify about allegations The Trump Organization inflated assets to facilitate loans.

While pro athletes were canceling games over police shootings of unarmed black men, the Trumpists used Kenosha, Wisconsin and exaggerated tales of violence to illustrate the refrain, “You won’t be safe in Biden’s America.” ( “What part of 180,000 deaths don’t they understand,” a commentator asked.)

On the Centennial of U.S. women’s suffrage, Trump had a speaker who believes in “household voting” (each household gets one vote), and says, “In a Godly household, the husband would get the final say.”

Melania Trump came out against slavery. Talking about a former slave fort in Ghana was her most emotional moment. Otherwise, she was wooden – and victimized by whoever placed the teleprompters so far apart she had to look too far right then left, exaggerating her discomfort.

Trump spoke for a record hour and ten weird minutes. He seemed at his best attacking Biden. Mostly he looked bored, particularly when reading about U.S. history.

It was wholly inappropriate to hold this event at the White House, which has always been a kind of national shrine, above politics, belonging to all of us. While presidential speeches and family photo-ops have had political implications, no one previously made the place a prop for a political extravaganza designed to project power and patriotism. Trumpists installed scores of flags, illustrating Samuel Johnson’s 18^th Century remark that “pretended patriotism is the last refuge of scoundrels.” (Trump has repeatedly ignored national interests to serve his own.) The grand finale was a fireworks display at the Washington Monument.

Trump used the White House as a dictator would. Like a dog urinating, he showed us this was HIS territory, even boasting, “What’s the name of this house? We’re here. They’re not!”

I hope that changes soon. But appeals to fear can be effective.

                                  –30–

 

[The above column appeared this morning, Sunday, 30 August, in the Las Cruces Sun-News, as well as on the newspaper's website and on KRWG's website.  A spoken version will also be available on KRWG's site, and will air during the week on KRWG and on KTAL, 101.5 FM ().]

[Among the lawbreakers backing Trump were Mark and Patricia McCloskey.  Although the convention avoided mentioning the white youth who killed two people and wounded a third with a semi-automatic rifle in Kenosha, the RNC had the McCloskeys speak in prime-time.  They're the St. Louis couple whose only claim to fame is having illegally (and pointlessly) brandished firearms at passing Black Lives Matter protesters last month.  They were charged in July with unlawful use of a weapon, a felony.

[One of the creepiest and clearest Hatch Act violations surfaced afterward: a federal official, a Trump supporter who oversees public housing, invited four women to talk with her about conditions.  She did so as a federal official, and concealed from three of the women that she her real purpose was to edit a two-minute video clip of them to be played at the Trumpist convention.  Suddenly famous (or infamous), the women hastened to explain that they do not support Trump.  One added that as  a first-generation U.S. citizen from Honduras, she was "not a supporter of his racist policies.  More than the Hatch Act violation is wrong with that conduct!]

[Watching the “convention” was painful.  I may watch Triumph of the Will again this week.  I found brief respite in watching, again, the end of It Happened One Night on another channel.  If you don't know it, I strongly recommend it.  It's a 1934 Frank Capra comedy.   That and My Man Godfrey (1936), which is not by Capra, are a fine treatment for cabin fever or depression about the pandemic or politics.  The latter begins with two flighty sisters from a wealthy New York family competing in a scavenger hunt in which "a forgotten man" is one of the items each must find, with
William Powell at his best as the forgotten man they find in a homeless encampment under a bridge.  It Happened One Night features Clark Gable as the recently-fired newspaperman who happens to run into a famous millionaire's runaway daughter (Claudette Colbert) whose activities are dominating front pages as she tries to make it to New York with neither money nor much of a clue about life. [Gable and Colbert, neither of whom really wanted to do the film, each won an Oscar – and the film actually won five major awards, including Best Director and Best Picture.

Sclupture by Sami Muhammed

World War II started a few years later. In the interim, Lombard married Gable, and was the love of his life. Then she died at 33 in a plane crash in Nevada, returning from a trip selling war bonds, whereupon Gable enlisted.  Capra had enlisted right after Pearl Harbor, and when General George Marshall assigned him to make a series of documentary films called Why We Fight, he saw Leni Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will, and initially concluded "We can't win this war!" then saw how to use the Germans' own propaganda against them.]