For four days, the Republicans convened in Cleveland, officially nominated Donald Trump for president, and wingnuttery abounded.
A Paler Shade of White
Remember when the Republican National Committee issued its post-mortem of the 2012 election? In a rare moment of clarity, Republicans told themselves some hard truths.
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Young voters are increasingly rolling their eyes at what the Party represents, and many minorities wrongly think that Republicans do not like them or want them in the country. When someone rolls their eyes at us, they are not likely to open their ears to us.
Fast forward to 2016, and it’s clear that no lessons were learned. Even before the convention started, reporter Byron Tau tweeted a picture of some of the signage going up in preparation for the RNC.
Spotted at the #RNCinCLE. I'm told it's being replaced for obvious reasons. pic.twitter.com/SVayl1zGCd
— Byron Tau (@ByronTau) July 16, 2016
Not every reference to "White Elevators" has been scrubbed from convention signs by day one cc @ByronTau pic.twitter.com/tWVLDp4Mlt
— Leigh Munsil (@leighmunsil) July 18, 2016
Now, there were also “Red Elevators” and “Blue Elevators,” and certain routes in the convention center were color-coded with the colors of the American Flag to help delegates find their way around. Doors, stairways, and even parking lots were similarly color-coded.
Sooo... walking around to chronicle the #RNCinCLE and I happen upon this sign that's VERY... um... #awkward pic.twitter.com/34OADk3Aal
— Ian Saint (@SaintsRearview) July 18, 2016
What’s amazing is that it didn’t occur to anyone how this would look, especially when the GOP was set to nominate a man who has slurred, suited, and otherwise offended just about every group the GOP momentarily realized in 2012 that it needed to win over in order to survive.
How is it possible that no one in the chain of people who approved the signage said, “Guys, hold up. We cannot have signs that say ‘White Elevators’. Yeah, yeah. I know the scheme is red, white, and blue. But have you heard of Twitter?” It’s possible, because there was probably not one single person of color in the room when the decision was made.
Take a look at the selfie House Speaker Paul Ryan posted with the 2016 House Republican intern class.
A photo posted by Speaker Paul Ryan (@speakerryan) on
Notice anything? It’s almost unbroken sea of white faces. (Look closely, and you’ll spot the lone Asian intern.)
House Democrats’ interns responded with a selfie of their own.
My intern Audra Jackson led Democratic Interns in their own selfie 2day showing #DemInternDiversity #DemInternSelfie pic.twitter.com/83UcIOKS5s
— US Rep E.B.Johnson (@RepEBJ) July 19, 2016
Like Ryan’s intern selfie, the Republican convention was wall-to-wall with white faces. Out of 2,472 delegates, the number of black delegates was 18 — just 0.7 percent.
Got a problem with that? During a panel including Esquire writer Charles Pierce, Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) defended his party’s homogeneity with Pierce asked about the “old white people” at the convention, asking Pierce "Where did any other subgroup of people contribute more to civilization.
[fve]https://youtu.be/tu-LBS_kpDQ[/fve]
“This whole business does get a little tired, Charlie,” King pushed back in clear frustration. “I would ask you to go back through history and figure out where are these contributions that have been made by these other categories of people that you are talking about, where did any other subgroup of people contribute more to civilization?”
Of course, King got quite a lot wrong. Much of what he claims in the name of western civilization the way explorers once “discovered” land that already had people on it, was developed by other civilizations long before Europeans caught on. African villagers were doing sophisticated iron-working around the time of Jesus. Iraq, Iran, India, China, and Egypt had civilizations for thousands of years, when the Celts were still hunting and gathering. Our numbers came from Sanskrit, and Arabs and Iranians added the zero, and invented algebra in the bargain. Ancient Mesopotamia gave us written law with Hammurabi’s code nearly 1,800 years before Christ.
None of this stopped King from doubling down on his statement in an interview on ABC.
Deja Vu
It was the copy and paste heard around the world. Melanie Trump’s speech on the first night of the RNC got off to a weird start when she was introduced by her husband, whose ego demanded that he make an entrance worthy of a pro wrestler, despite the tradition of the nominee staying out of sight until the last night of the convention. (Without a hint of irony, despite entering to Queen’s Freddie Mercury singing “We Are The Champions,” when the GOP just unveiled an incredibly anti-LGBT platform.)
[fve]http://youtu.be/GAHc8cOJf-w[/fve]
By all accounts, Mrs. Trump turned in a pretty good speech. But it turned out that was because we’d heard it somewhere before. Like, when Michelle Obama addressed the Democratic National Convention in 2008.
[fve]http://youtu.be/sgyXFxDw5P8[/fve]
Journalist Jarrett Hill picked up on the “similarities.”
CORRECTION: Melania stole a whole graph from Michelle's speech. #GOPConvention
WATCH: https://t.co/8BCOwXAHSy pic.twitter.com/zudpDznGng— Jarrett Hill (@JarrettHill) July 19, 2016
Things were pretty much off and running from there with #FamousMelaniaTrumpQuotes.
"Of course, you don't have to take MY word for it..." #FamousMelaniaTrumpQuotes pic.twitter.com/JDlIWK3BPp
— Joseph Gordon-Levitt (@hitRECordJoe) July 19, 2016
“Ask not vaht country do for YOU, but vaht YOU do for rich husband -- but get the jewelry UPFRONT, girls!” #FamousMelaniaTrumpQuotes
— Mrs. Betty Bowers (@BettyBowers) July 19, 2016
Girl, you know it's true! #FamousMelaniaTrumpQuotes pic.twitter.com/WUxBXhTQO9
— ☔️ April ☔️ (@ReignOfApril) July 19, 2016
"I do not like green eggs and ham. I do not like them, Sam-I-Am." #FamousMelaniaTrumpQuotes
— Alyssa Milano (@Alyssa_Milano) July 19, 2016
"‘Til you do right by me, everything you think about is gonna crumble..." #FamousMelaniaTrumpQuotes pic.twitter.com/9ju4HIePym
— Joshua Henry (@joshjenks) July 19, 2016
"In west Philadelphia born and raised, on the playground is where I spent most of my days" #FamousMelaniaTrumpQuotes
— Lamorne Morris (@LamorneMorris) July 19, 2016
Wtf!! Michele Obama wins the ghost writer of the year award?? #FamousMelaniaTrumpQuotes pic.twitter.com/daGLnNn7nh
— Big7 NiMarketing CEO (@iAmBig7) July 19, 2016
The success of this campaign was based on two types of control:
1) Ctrl C
2) Ctrl V— T (@HolevasT) July 19, 2016
"Four score and 7 years ago, our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation..." #FamousMelaniaTrumpQuotes pic.twitter.com/VKcAlYtzU8
— Ethan Fixell (@EthanFixell) July 19, 2016
"I was born a poor black child." #FamousMelaniaTrumpQuotes
— Eric Benet (@ebenet) July 19, 2016
"Be yourself. Everyone else is already taken." #FamousMelaniaTrumpQuotes pic.twitter.com/erdRVzplR3
— Jeff Barrett (@BarrettAll) July 19, 2016
The Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort defended Mrs. Trump’s speech, saying that it consisted of “common words and values,” and then blamed Hillary Clinton for the whole mess. Sure, these are words everybody uses, but what are the odds that we just happen to put them together in the same order that Michelle Obama did eight years ago? Her strongest defense came from New Jersey governor Chris Christie, who claimed that “93 percent of the speech is different from Michelle Obama’s.”
Maybe, but any high school English teacher would probably hand this speech back and recommend a rewrite. The this speech made it all the way to the teleprompter in the shape it was in speaks to the ineptitude of Trump’s campaign.
[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLYgIF86rlNXFxeW4zfiD5VMCCsrOoE7aF&w=640]
Cruz (Out Of) Control
If conventions are all about party unity, how does the least liked member the senate, who doesn’t even have any friends in the Republican caucus get to give a speech at an already fractious gathering? If conventions are all about rallying around the triumphant nominee, how does the candidate who came in a very distant second not only get to give a speech, but get a prime time slot — especially if the nominee has insulted his wife and repeated conspiracy theories about his family?
Well, one reason might be that Republican lawmakers were staying away from Donald Trump’s convention in droves. That’s the only logical explanation for giving Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) a prime time slot, even though Trump had almost nothing to gain by having Cruz appears.
That doesn’t explain what happened though, when Ted Cruz did what Ted Cruz can almost always be expected to do. After congratulating Trump, albeit begrudgingly, Cruz launched into the expected talking points, but towards the end he urged his audience not to stay at home in November. He exhorted them to vote, and to “vote your conscience,” but never urged them to vote for Trump. That’s when the audience realized Cruz was not going to endorse Trump.
Tipped off about Cruz’s intentions, Trump stepped on the end of Cruz’s speech, by stepping into this VIP box to greet his friends and family, pulling attention away from Cruz, That’s when the booing started. A fight broke out among the Texas delegation, and Cruz’s wife Heidi was escorted out for her own safety.
With one speech, Ted Cruz had obliterated any appearance of Republican unit, or what was left of it after the voting chicanery that effectively shut out the anti-Trump delegates. He may have also positioned himself for 2020 as the anti-Trump candidate. Cruz is probably betting that Trump will lose badly, and leave the GOP leaderless.
Cruz did something else, too, which may have been one of his goals. He got under Trump’s notoriously thin skin. Many people thought Trump wouldn’t be able to resist coming unglued and attacking Cruz in his acceptance speech, but he didn’t. No, Trump waited until a press conference the following day to really lay into Cruz, slamming him as “ruined,” swore he’d never accept Cruz’s endorsement anyway, and returned to linking Cruz’s father to the JFK assassination.
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Here’s the best of the rest of the worst in wingnuttery this week:
- MSNBC’s Tamron Hall tore into actor Scott Baio for his sexist tweet about Hillary Clinton.
- RNC speaker, and soap opera actor Antonio Sabato told the audience, "We had a Muslim president for over seven and a half years.
- Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) told the RNC audience that members of ISIS are in all 50 states.
- RNC speaker Dr. Ben Carson connected the dots from Saul Alinsky to Hillary Clinton to Lucifer.
- Al Baldasaro, Trump’ advisor on veterans issues, called for Hillary Clinton to be executed. “Anyone that commits treason should be shot,” Baldasaro said on the Jeff Kuhner Show
- In an ABC interview, Republican nominee Donald Trump said that President Obama sided with those attacking police, based on his body language. I mean, you know, I watched the president and sometimes the words are okay,” Trump said. “But you just look at the body language. There’s something going on"
- Former House GOP majority leader Tom DeLay told Newsmax host Steve Malzberg that President Obama has “blood on his hands” after the recent police shootings, because of his support for Black Lives Matter.
- On Newsmax Prime with J.D. Hayworth, Wayne Allyn Root said its time for white men to have their voices heard in the political arena.
- Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones ambushed Karl Rove at the airport, and tried to hijack the Young Turks broadcast, and later held a rally.
- Jones also joined right-wing author Dinesh D’Souza in diagnosing Hillary Clinton with psychopathy.
- For what it’s worth, Trump also failed a sanity test given by Keith Olberman.
- White nationalist Matthew Heimbach, who was filmed shouting at and shoving an African-American protester at a Trump rally has been charged with harassment with physical contact.
- Lori Gayne, a Trump delegate from Illinois’ fifth congressional district was sent home after using a racial slur in a Facebook post suggesting that police should shoot black protesters. “Our brave snipers just waiting for some N—- to try something. Love them,” Ganye posted.
[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLYgIF86rlNXH-h_m_jue0x4mhLYEtJ3Fi&w=640]
