This is the campaign that never ends. Yes, it goes on and on, my friends. Some people started making it knowing exactly what it was, and they’ll go on campaigning it forever just because …
Donald Trump began campaigning for 2020 even before he took up residence in the White House to start his term as president. In a genuinely unheard-of move, Trump filed the paperwork for his campaign and began raising funds and shifting over personnel as soon as the noise died down from the 2016 election. Every one of the screaming three-hour-hates he has hosted over the last two-plus years has been, both officially and unofficially, a campaign rally—complete with taxpayer-funded transport and security. But last night in Orlando, Trump “officially” opened a campaign that had never stopped … by debuting a mocking imitation of Hillary Clinton, repeatedly calling for the destruction of media, and pulling more lies from his seemingly infinite supply. For Donald Trump, 2016 never ended.
As The Washington Post reported, what was declared to be the opening act for Trump 2020 was built on a foundation of items less real than Trump’s tan. He lied about Robert Mueller, the Russia investigation, and the contents of the special counsel report. He lied about progress on trade talks, and about money from tariffs, and about trade figures, and about economic figures in general. He lied about immigration. And about immigrants.
In fact, the only thing that got in the way of his lies was the moments set aside for hate, and often Trump was able to combine them, as when he lied about the “potential crimes” of Clinton. Because if there’s anything that really affects voters going into 2020, it’s Hillary Clinton’s emails. Trump returned to the critical subject of Clinton at least seven times during the speech, including breaking out a Hillary imitation as wincingly awful as every other Trump imitation.
Trump’s lies about immigrants showed that, if anything, he has only gotten worse since he descended the golden escalator to talk about rapists and drug runners. And it showed that Trump’s audience was, as always, ready to join in with the racial hatred and xenophobic claims that made every family trying to find a better life into a collection of coyotes, gang members, and human traffickers.
But perhaps the most ludicrous section of Trump’s speech was the part summed up by the change in Trump’s official slogan. Trump supporters need to get ready to shell out for a whole new selection of red hats, because it’s no longer “Make America Great Again.” The motto is now “Keep America Great.” Because, according to Trump, he has achieved record greatness.
What has Trump made great? Energy! In his speech, Trump claimed that he “ended the cruel war” on energy. Which is why America is the biggest natural gas producer in the world. Of course, that requires Trump to have won this war in 2009, during Obama’s first term, because that’s when the U.S. took the lead. Trump certainly doesn’t mean that he’s “made coal great again,” because both coal jobs and coal’s contribution to the energy picture continued to decline, as not one coal-based power plant has been either built or planned under Trump.
America’s new greatness also comes from building “The Wall.” Only, Trump claimed that the reason that what’s really been rolled out on the border has only been sections of fence that slightly extended existing fences is that he went down to see the prototypes of his “big, beautiful wall” and … didn’t like them. That’s right, people. Only a fence is going up because the wall prototypes just didn’t please Trump’s delicate design sensibilities.
Trump also made a series of ludicrous claims about tariffs being paid by China. They’re not. About manufacturing returning to America. It’s not. About the benefits of his budget-busting tax bill that was a gift to corporations and CEOs, but hasn’t generated any increase in job creation or manufacturing investment. Trump bragged about nonexistent new auto plants. He bragged about a nonexistent boom in the steel industry. And he made claims about a healthcare plan that has never been more than a talking point.
Hate on Hillary. Check. Call immigrants criminals and a drain on the economy. Check. Insult the media. Check. Pretend that the economic gains that happened during the Obama administration did not exist. Check. Trump’s start to his 2020 campaign seemed mostly the same as any given rally from his 2016 campaign. And that wasn’t by accident. Trump sees absolutely no reason to meddle with the white nationalist formula that got him the electoral win in the last cycle.
There is, of course, a reason that Trump declared this particular rally the official start of a campaign that has gone on nonstop. It’s the same reason that Trump continually told the crowd that this was his “second home,” and how happy he was to “be home again.” It’s because Florida is critical to any chance that Trump has to keep his fish-saucy fingers on the Resolute Desk.
If there was any change from 2016, it was that this rally was attended by Marco Rubio, who in 2016 refused to be seen on a stage with him even after Trump was the GOP nominee. Because in the last four years Donald Trump may not have made America great, but he has certainly made the Republican Party his stooge.