It might seem like six months ago, but it was just six days ago when a gunman in Pennsylvania nearly killed Donald Trump. In some political circles, people assumed that the outrageous assassination attempt wouldn’t just change the 2024 election cycle, it was also change the candidate who was targeted.
“In this moment, it is more important than ever that we stand United,” the former president wrote on his social media platform the morning after the attempt on his life. Hours later, the Republican was even more succinct, adding, “UNITE AMERICA!”
As the week got underway, Axios reported that Americans should expect to see a different kind of Trump going forward. “Almost dying rocks perspectives — and people,” the report read.
Axios added, “Yes, Trump has shown little appetite for changing his ways, tone and words. But his advisers tell us Trump plans to seize his moment by toning down his Trumpiness, and dialing up efforts to unite a tinder-box America.”
During the Republican nominee’s convention address, some observers would be forgiven for thinking the assurances were true — at least initially. In the first part of his remarks, Trump spoke in a somber tone while describing the awful events of Saturday and at least paid lip service to the “unity” theme he’d promoted days earlier.
“Together, we will launch a new era of safety, prosperity and freedom for citizens of every race, religion, color and creed,” the former president said. “The discord and division in our society must be healed. We must heal it quickly. As Americans, we are bound together by a single fate and a shared destiny. We rise together. Or we fall apart.”
And then Trump ripped off the mask, abandoned the pretense and reverted to form. As a Washington Post analysis summarized:
The rest of the more than 90-minute-long speech was thoroughly confusing. It meandered between points, often going off-script with ad-libs that left a standard-issue Trump campaign speech without the kind of coherent, lofty theme that defines traditional presidential convention fare. And Trump’s initially subdued manner and calls for unity didn’t match the content of an often-divisive speech.
I’ve seen a great many convention speeches from presidential nominees, and I think it’s fair to say Trump’s was the worst. At times, it seemed as if he were trying to make himself even less popular with an American electorate that already holds him in low regard, reminding voters of all the things they don’t like about him.
The speech was breathtakingly dishonest. It was painfully long — to the point that even some of his loyalists left the convention floor before it was over. It rewrote recent history. It made fools of those who genuinely believed his “unity” rhetoric and took seriously the idea that Saturday’s shooting had changed him.
But most of all, it was familiar.
CNN’s Daniel Dale noted overnight that fact-checking the former president’s convention speech was surprisingly easy “because he’s told almost all of those lies before.” He added, “Trump is hardest to fact check because of the extreme volume of false claims but easiest to fact check because he does the same false claims dozens of times over years.”
This was partly a convention speech and partly a greatest hits package, filled with petty lies, conspiracy theories, cheap shots, juvenile taunts (“Crazy Nancy”? Seriously?), borderline incoherent asides about Trump’s overwhelming sense of grievance, praise for the authoritarian leaders he admires, and the latest in a series of weird references to “the late, great Hannibal Lecter.”
Meet the new Trump; he’s the same as the old Trump.
By some measures, this was the best news Democrats have received in weeks. If the former president had demonstrated real leadership on the Republicans’ convention stage, his opponents would have new reason to worry. Instead, in a rather literal sense, Trump simply couldn’t help himself.
