Last night we were treated to the full spectacle of a Trump-managed Republican convention. We were promised big stars; we got Scott Baio. We were promised a Republican pivot to the national election; we got a party still seething—and reveling—in uncontrollable xenophobia. We were promised a Republican luxury cruise through the world of Donald Trump; what we got instead was a Republican Titanic. The house band, though, played on.
It was an evening of conspiracy theories, white supremacy, plagiarism, long stories about people being murdered, and claims that the sitting president was secretly working with terrorists.
Let's first dispense with Melania Trump swiping phrases from a 2008 Michele Obama speech. It has been covered elsewhere. If anything, Melania saved the Republican day, as today's news cycle has been dominated by the story of a single speaker swiping speech content rather than the clusterf--k that was the entire rest of the day. If it were not for that, the punditry would be agape today at a Republican convention that was barely one step up from an internet-peddled snuff film. This was, truly, the herald of a new sort of conservatism, and the funeral for whatever the older kind was supposed to have been. A review:
• Scott Baio gave an unmemorable speech about very little. He then proceeded to go on television and defend his tweet calling Hillary Clinton a c--t.
• Pat Smith, the mother of an American killed in Benghazi, gave a tear-filled speech directly blaming Hillary Clinton for her son's death. While we generally give wide space for grieving families to have a voice, it should be noted that large portions of what Smith claimed are disputed. Smith was the first of multiple Republican speakers to assert from the convention that Hillary Clinton should not just be defeated, but imprisoned.
• Marine veterans Mark Geist and John Tiegen then described the entire firefight at Benghazi, bullet for bullet, death for death, in a very long and apparently ad-libbed back-and-forth repeating the "stand down" claims made in the Benghazi book and movie 13 Hours. While this theory continues to hold Republican imaginations, it should be noted that it is has been disproven by countless Benghazi investigations, Republican and otherwise. No such thing happened. It remains a fiction peddled by fringe groups and congressmen.
• Ex-General Hospital star and former underwear model Antonio Sabato Jr. gave an unmemorable speech about very little. He then left the stage to give an interview in which he claimed he was "absolutely" certain President Obama is secretly a Muslim, declaring:
"I believe that he's on the other side ... the Middle East," Sabato told ABC News. "He's with the bad guys."
• Not to be topped by mere conspiracy theories and calls for Hillary Clinton to be imprisoned, Rep. Steve King chose this moment to go full white supremacist on national television, defending the convention's strikingly-white demographic makeup by flatly telling a stunned MSNBC panel that it was because white people have "contributed more to civilization" than "any other subgroup of people."
• Sean Duffy and Rachel Campos-Duffy came on to remind us that they were among America's first reality stars, and they were here to endorse their fellow reality star Donald Trump for the presidency. It’s not clear in what universe this counts as a non-embarrassing event for Republicans, nor why the party felt the prime-time importance to remind their audience that their candidate's primary claim to the national spotlight is exactly equal to the claim on the presidency that could be made by Kim Kardashian or Snooki.
• Rudy Giuliani was there to scream at the audience for what seemed like an hour, but was most certainly less. He commanded the stage like a caffeinated hummingbird singing songs of apocalypse. He professed outrage at how fellow New Yorker Donald Trump was being treated. He then stormed off into the night, leaving us with the damnedest segue a stage production ever attempted ...
• As Donald Freaking Trump came out, in shadow, framed by a bright white background and the haze of a fog machine. It was a scene cribbed from the alien landing scene in Close Encounters. It was a scene cribbed from a pro wrestling match. Donald Freaking Trump came out the the blare of a stolen song—Freddie Mercury singing We Are The Champions, a dead gay man's words swiped to prop up America's most well-known rich nobody. He came onstage like the Steve Jobs of fascism, and to the strains of that stolen song introduced his wife, who would go on to give a stolen speech.
Now that's the Donald Trump party. Say what you want about the convention, but every bit of it captured the Trump Republican movement. From the casual knifing of anti-Trump forces in the opening hours to the conspiracy peddling to the speaker after speaker dedicated to warning against the danger of immigrants to the white supremacist asserting white supremacy in the punditry booth, it was every bit a Trump Republican convention.
And that was, for the most part, that. By the time Lt. General Michael Flynn, a once-contender for the Trump vice presidential slot, was halfway through his very long speech, the delegates were already heading to the lifeboats. He, too, called for the opposing presidential candidate to be put in prison. "That's right, lock her up!" he told a chanting audience.
By the time Flynn finished speaking, the primetime hours were over. Perennially rising star Joni Ernst gave a long speech to a home audience that was no longer listening; by the time Ryan Zinke got his turn the convention floor had nearly emptied.
On any other day, we'd be talking about multiple speakers at a national convention calling for the opposing candidate to be put in prison for still-unspecified reasons. We'd be talking about the Republican who stated, outright, the fundamental definition of white supremacy as the rationale for his party's stances. We'd be talking about a tawdry snuff-film of a convention that Republican commentator Steve Schmidt dubbed "the weaponization of grief."
So Republicans should be thanking God for Melania Trump today. They should be thanking God that Melania Trump gave the watching public and pundits and hangers-on something else to talk about.