Emperor Trump Still Has No Clothes

Trump's rambling, incoherent, and racist RNC speech revealed he's the same chaos agent he's always been, except this time he's even more diminished and beatable.

President Biden’s disastrous debate speech was the Gettysburg Address compared to Donald Trump’s rambling, incoherent, verbal diarrhea that was his RNC speech, the longest acceptance speech of all time.

I expect to see numerous columns in the New York Times and the Washington Post tomorrow demanding Trump step down due to his obvious diminished capacity, however I don’t think we will.

The entire week we kept hearing from compromised and shameless corporate hack pundits, reporters and personalities that Trump was allegedly changed after his assassination attempt. He was going to be “serene,” “spiritual,” “emotional,” and deliver a “unified” speech. This was said with a straight face even after he posted a rant about “radical left democrats” and complained about “unlawful witch hunts” on his Truth Social account two days ago.

At first, Trump attempted to gaslight all of us with an exaggerated re-telling of the shooting over the weekend. He was slow, somber, and even invoked God as he read almost exclusively off the teleprompter. (We still haven’t seen the hospital records of his injury or treatment by the way.) He kissed shooting victim Corey Comperatore’s firefighter jacket, which was shamelessly brought on stage as a prop. Things were going well until about the 35 minute mark. The tone and energy started to shift once he started praising the gallery of “N-word” loving reality TV stars who graced the RNC stage earlier in the evening. I’m of course referring to Hulk Hogan, Kid Rock and Dana White of the UFC who was caught on tape slapping his wife. “Idiocracy” is no longer a classic movie but our modern political reality.

As a masochist who has covered Trump for nearly a decade, I have noticed he cannot stay focused or be disciplined for longer than forty minutes. Around this time, he de-evolves into a rotting pumpkin. His smeared, orange makeup begins to glisten with sweat on his blotched face as he goes off script and says unhinged nonsense. Lo and behold, the same thing happened earlier tonight. The Emperor still has no clothes, except this time he wears a giant diaper on his ear. He’s the same old Donald Trump. He is incoherent, racist, vindictive, and aggrieved. He lied and lied and then lied again. He was ugly, mean, and stupid. Here are some quotes from his speech:

• He blamed Biden for "failed, incompetent leadership."

• He said the current Administration are not “fierce people,” but “they’re fierce when it comes to cheating on elections.”

• He referred to Nancy Pelosi as "crazy Nancy Pelosi."

• He whined about a "witch hunt” and his legal cases.

• He said "we are a nation in decline."

• He talked endlessly about undocumented immigrants and demonized them as “invaders” - the same language used by terrorists who killed Jews, Latinos, Muslims and Black people.

• He said “illegal immigration” has “spread misery, crime, poverty, disease...nobody has seen anything like it."

He even brought back some classic bits from 2020 such as “China virus” and MS-13 rants. He gave respect to Hannibal Lecter yet again, and also found time to give a shout out to North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un and Hungary’s authoritarian leader Viktor Orban, whom he praised for his toughness. After about an hour, the faces in the crowd grew more restless and you could feel the energy shift from excitement to “Uh…what the F is happening here?”

What’s happening is Donald Trump, folks. He's the same, except he’s more diminished. I'm not a white pundit or a privileged bro with access. I'm just a simple, unfrozen caveman lawyer. I'm “a DEI Hire.” But I believe Trump has peaked. Whatever bump was achieved with his "image" of strength after the assassination attempt was undone tonight by his own performance. He is beatable. America saw the same chaos agent that we rejected in 2020. 

This speech was an injection boost for the deflated, impotent Democratic Party who has spent the past 3 weeks trying to destroy the Biden-Harris ticket. They can and should attack Trump on his threat to democracy, his violent insurrection, his refusal to accept the election results, his promise to be a dictator, his embrace of Project 2025, his attack on reproductive rights, and the GOP’s commitment to gut Social Security and Medicare. With JD Vance on the ticket, there’s even more misogyny, racism and anti-semitism. The heavens have given Democrats nearly a decade’s worth of examples that clearly reveal that Trump and MAGA are a dire threat to our freedoms.

You just need messengers to tell the story and to stay on message. However, Democrats have always brought an eraser to a knife fight. That being said, let’s see if they can use this gift and unite after this week. Or, they can just continue the circular firing squad. Either way, Donald will still be here, the same man, older and more tired, but now with a giant diaper on his ear.