Former President Donald Trump formally accepted the Republican Party’s nomination for the 2024 election on Thursday evening, delivering a speech that was riddled with disinformation and anti-immigrant rhetoric — despite his supposed calls for “unity” in the wake of the recent attempt on his life.
Trump’s speech was the longest in modern history, lasting over an hour and a half. The GOP presidential candidate frequently went off-script and bragged about his celebrity endorsements, most notably people who appeared ahead of him onstage — including professional wrestler Hulk Hogan (who ripped his shirt off during his speech), musician Kid Rock and UFC president Dana White.
Perhaps in recognition that his presumed Democratic opponent may be dropping out of the race, Trump only referenced President Joe Biden by name twice, calling him by his actual name 45 minutes into the speech and then referring to him as “Crooked Joe.” Saying his opponent’s name appears to have been a mistake, as Trump’s prepared remarks only referenced the current “administration,” without mentioning Biden’s name at all.
Trump entered the stage with great pomp, appearing in front of a giant display of lights that spelled out his last name in capital letters. The background later changed to look as though he was speaking in front of the White House. Trump also appeared onstage with the firefighter’s uniform of Corey Comperatore, who was killed by the shooter who attempted to assassinate Trump during his campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.
During his speech, Trump described the recent attempt on his life, claiming that he would only recount the story once as it was too “painful” for him to relive, and saying that he had only survived because he had “God on my side.”
“I am not supposed to be here tonight. I stand before you in this arena only by the grace of almighty God,” Trump added, appealing to the Christian nationalist movement that has come to dominate the Republican Party.
His remarks also began with a supposed call for unity, with Trump stating that the “discord and division in our society must be healed.”
“As Americans, we are bound together by a single fate and a shared destiny. We rise together, or we fall apart,” he said.
He then pivoted to demanding (as he did earlier this week) that, in the name of such unity, all criminal charges against him be dropped. He also claimed that the Biden administration had “weaponized” the legal system against him, an assertion he’s made for several years without evidence.
In total, Trump adhered to his unity pledge for just 17 minutes before launching into unfounded attacks against his political opponents over his legal troubles.
“If Democrats want to unify our country, they should drop these partisan witch hunts without delay, and allow an election to proceed that is worthy of our people,” Trump said.
(In reality, a unifying action may be the opposite of what Trump is demanding: Polling from earlier this year shows that most Americans want Trump’s trials to begin and conclude before the 2024 election.)
Trump’s speech featured right-wing disinformation on the economy, tax policy, Social Security, Medicare, crime rates and foreign policy. The former president also used the speech as an opportunity to push the “big lie,” falsely insisting that his loss to Biden in the 2020 election had been rigged.
He then launched into a racist tirade against immigrants entering the U.S.
Trump described immigration as a “massive invasion” that has “spread misery, crime, poverty, disease, and destruction to communities all across our land,” spewing right-wing talking points against migrants that have been leveraged by U.S. lawmakers for decades. He wrongly claimed that 107 percent of new jobs in the U.S. are being taken by immigrants — a nonsensical statistic and a flagrant lie.
Trump peddled several other lies about migrants, claiming that immigrants are “coming from prisons and jails, from mental institutions and insane asylums, and terrorists at levels never seen before” — a statement that his own campaign has refused to provide evidence of to fact checkers.
Trump also parroted the lie that undocumented people are responsible for a rise in crime across the country, another common refrain of racist fearmongers.
In fact, crime levels across the country have largely decreased since Trump left office — and studies have consistently shown that crime rates among undocumented people are actually much lower than crime rates among people who were born in the U.S. or immigrants with legal residency status.
Trump then vowed to “launch the largest deportation operation in the history of our country.”
“I will not let these killers and criminals into our country,” Trump said.
Despite these and other political attacks — including once again describing former Democratic Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi as “crazy” — Trump ended his remarks with another call for unity.
“We must now come together, rise above past differences and disagreements, and go forward united, as one people, and one nation, pledging allegiance to one great and beautiful American flag,” Trump said.
The Trump supporters who had gathered in the Fiserv Forum in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, were largely supportive of his speech, cheering wildly at times and chanting several of the phrases he said back to him — although the crowd did get noticeably less enthusiastic at around the hour-mark.
Commentators on social media noted that Trump’s call for unity was ultimately a charade.
“Trump essentially delivered a regular campaign speech at the RNC tonight,” said Hugo Lowell, senior political correspondent for The Guardian. “He made a few glancing mentions of unity and added a blow-by-blow account of the assassination attempt, but the Trump campaign saying this was a unity speech has not really materialized.”
“[Trump] hasn’t changed. He’s the same bitter, whining, vindictive, rambling Trump who is lying but this time with a big diaper on his ear,” said Daily Beast columnist Wajahat Ali.
“It takes some real initiative to botch a convention acceptance speech, and Trump has now done it three times, with the third time being the worst,” political commentator Jonathan Bernstein said.
Ruth Ben-Ghiat, history professor at NYU and expert on authoritarian leaders and governments, noted that Trump accompanying his calls for unity with political attacks and racist fear mongering was unsurprising given his stated intention to expand the powers of the presidency should he win office.
“Anyone who studies autocrats knows this is a scam. This is all about covering up his corruption and violence as his plans for dictatorship and mass ruin of the US have been exposed,” Ben-Ghiat said.
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