A Man In Decline

Created
Sun, 21/07/2024 - 08:00
Updated
Sun, 21/07/2024 - 08:00
Very much worth seeing if you missed it. You really cannot overstate just how bizarre he was, and I’ve seen a lot of Trump speeches. I liked David Frump’s description in The Atlantic: At the climax of the Republican National Convention last night, former President Donald Trump’s nomination-acceptance speech was a disheveled mess, endless and boring. He spoke for 93 minutes, the longest such speech on record. The runner-up was another Trump speech, in 2016, but that earlier effort had a certain sinister energy to it. This one limped from dull to duller. Somebody seems to have instructed Trump that he was supposed to have been spiritually transformed by the attempt on his life, so he delivered the opening segment of his address in a dreary monotone, the Trump version of pious solemnity. After that prologue, the speech meandered along bizarre byways to pointless destinations. A few minutes before midnight eastern time, Trump pronounced a heavy “to conclude”—and then kept going for another nine minutes. Perhaps it was the disorienting aftereffect of shock, perhaps the numbing side effect of painkillers. Whatever the explanation, Trump demonstrated in Milwaukee that President Joe Biden is not the only national politician diminished by the years. Trump too is dwindling into himself, even more isolated from such facts about the external world as elapsed time and audience impatience. Bizarre byways to pointless destinations is right. Also he kissed a helmet in one of the smarmiest displays I’ve ever seen and wore a huge bandage on his…