First, the case was that Trump has done many things to help individual people in extremis — working to release hostages, deregulating certain types of medical treatments, fighting entrenched interests, and leading a strong economy until COVID came along to kill it.
Twitterati laughed at the supposed awkwardness with which Trump interacted with frontline COVID workers and hostages, but what they missed was Trump’s good cheer as he talked to them. These exchanges were actually less weird than the ones last week in which Biden talked to party activists over Zoom.
And second, the case was that Democrats are supporters of urban chaos and socialist policies that will make American lives less safe and will help immiserate the American middle class.
Nowhere was that clearer than in the joint speech of the St. Louis couple who were seen in a Twitter clip standing in front of their house, the husband brandishing a gun against a Black Lives Matter march. They pointed out that the BLM people were undisturbed by the cops, while they found themselves under arrest.
Their message — this could happen to you, home owners — surely struck a chord with Americans who own guns as protection. Stats tell us that 43 percent of all Americans live in a gun-owning household.
That’s a lot of people. Trump’s hope for reelection is based on getting those people to turn out in greater numbers than they did in 2016, to offset Democratic gains. And the Democratic message — that cops are bad and rioters are good — plays right into Trump’s hands.
– John Podhoretz in First night of RNC 2020 was very effective, to media’s dismay