"New Trump," Same Old Package

Before President Biden kablooeyed everything on Sunday, most eyes were still on the Republican National Convention, and notably Trump's acceptance speech Thursday night.

The next morning, an analyst on MSNBC said that Trump’s RNC speech was calm and unifying enough to likely placate Republicans who were on the edge of voting for him.

I have no idea whether any on-the-edge Republicans were placated or not.  Nor, I'd guess, does the analyst.  But I’m certain that any Republican who could watch a Trump speech written by someone else and think that it showed a change in Trump, a “new Trump,” is someone who was planning to vote for him anyway and was looking for a reason they could use to defend their decision at dinner parties.

If anyone thinks there is a “new Trump,” a change in Trump because of the early part of a speech that someone else wrote -- which once you got past the opening was still (of course) was full of unrelenting lies (CNN counted at least 20, PBS detailed their own count here) and had more than its share of divisiveness, still slamming witch hunts, “crazy Nancy Pelosi” warning of “bad things ahead” if he loses, attacking LGBT issues, promising mass deportations and more, although, yes, he did read some nice-sounding things at the start which are uncommon in a Trump speech and were likely shocking to an unsuspecting audience -- then all they need do is wait 24-48 hours until he speaks at his next rally, and you will be back on solid, familiar, out-of-control, dystopian ground.

Actually, you really don’t have to wait that long, since he got to the darkness and divisiveness before even finishing the speech.  Many turned off the 92-minute speech before getting through it all (it peaked at the 15-minute mark, and with a half-hour still to go, 20% of viewers had turned it off), so they missed the discord and Return to American Carnage.  For that matter, one-third fewer viewers watched the MAGOP convention than the last pre-COVID event in 2016.

Mind you, this is the same party that desperately wanted to fool itself into thinking there was a “New Nixon” and so nominated him to be president, coming back from obscurity with his flim-flam.  Only to create an Old Nixon “Enemies List” and become for first U.S. President to resign from office in disgrace. 

It’s the same party that believed George W. Bush was a “compassionate conservative,” which many would argue is an oxymoron.  The man who ignored the Presidential briefing “Bin Laden determined to strike in U.S.,” sat reading a children’s book to schoolkids when the attack came, lied about Iraq having weapons of mass destruction, got the U.S. involved in wars that lasted eight years in Iraq and 20 years in Afghanistan, and got dressed up in a flight suit to declare “Mission Accomplished” in Iraq after just six weeks.  For starters.

But then, you know the Republican phrase:  Fool me once, shame on you.  Fool me again and again and again, that’s the Republican Party.  Or as it was expressed so eloquently by the compassionate conservative Mr. W. Bush himself:  'Fool me once, shame on......shame on you. Fool me -- -- -- you can't get fooled again.”

The only reason anyone can think there is a “new Trump” is that they haven’t been watching Trump for the past eight years.  If they had been, they would have seen Trump.

This is the person who fomented an Insurrection to overthrow the government, who was impeached twice, was convicted by a jury of 34 felonies, found liable by two juries of rape, found guilty of business fraud, is currently under three indictments, had his charity foundation (!) shut down for a “shocking pattern of illegality, had 30,000+ documented lies, enabled white supremacists and neo-Nazis, who says he wants to be a dictator, says he wants to throw out parts of the U.S. Constitution, said that if elected “I will be your retribution,” said that if he wasn’t elected there would be a “bloodbath”,  received $7.8 million from China which he said publicly was “for services,” has expressed him admiration of despotic dictators Vladimir Putin and Kin Jong-Un, as well as fascist leader Viktor Orban, told the neo-fascist militant Proud Boys (whose four leaders were later found guilty of “seditious conspiracy”) to “Stand back and stand by” before the January 6 Insurrection,  For starters.

And that’s just the past eight years.  It’s been the pattern of his entire adult life the past 60 years.  He and his farther settled a lawsuit by the Department of Justice for racial discrimination over not renting apartments to Black families, took out a full-page ad in the New York Times calling for the death penalty during the trial of the Central Park Five young Black men – who were all later exonerated, had his fake “university” shut down, used the fake name ‘John Barron’ to pretend to be his own PR representative to call journalists and pass along stories about himself, has said he lives by the principle that “If you hurt me, I will come back and hurt you 10 times, has been sued over 4,000 times in the past 40 years – which averages out to being sued twice a week, every week, for 40 years!!!  For starters.

And so, after all that, just watching a speech written by someone else that was filled with lies and divisiveness, with just a handful of more calm statements than you’d normally hear in any other Trump speech, that supposedly is enough to convince people on the edge about Trump that this is a “new Trump.”

By the way, anyone on the edge about who Trump is and whether they should vote for him knows who Trump is, knows they’re going to vote for him and have their heads buried in the ground so that they don’t have to see and hear any more and desperately want to point for just one nice sentence that someone else wrote so that they can say, “See, it’s a ‘new Trum’ trying to unify the country!!!”

The only way Trump wants to unify the country is if it he can get everyone in it to do whatever he tells them, signs a loyalty oath and then signs a non-disclosure agreement.  Trump wants to “unify” the country the same way Kevin Roberts, head of the Heritage Foundation (core authors of the fascist Project 2025), said, "We are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be."

There is no “new Trump.”  There is Trump.  There has always only been Trump.  He is the same vindictive, dystopian, racist, malignant narcissist, fascist, anti-Semitic, pathological liar he has always been.  And at 78, he is not suddenly becoming even a wisp more kindly and gentle just because he read some nice sentences that someone else wrote.  He is Trump.  Period  And the only reason there will be a change is because psychologists and psychiatrists have said that show signs of early dementia, which is degenerative and will only get worse.

And anyone who says – or even just thinks otherwise -- not only is trying to fool you, but themselves.

Willful ignorance is not a virtue.