Dallas: There were bribes and lies in Donald Trump’s speech to the Republican National Convention, though it was a consummate piece of showmanship.
The lies concerned the crowd at the American Airlines Centre in Dallas, which was decidedly half-full, despite the US president’s protests to the contrary.
“This place is packed,” he said at one point, even though the upper stands were mostly empty. He pointed to a pretend person in the stands, asserting they were leaving to go to the bathroom.
“They’ll take a picture of his seat while he’s gone, and they’ll say, ‘Trump did not fill up the arena, the arena was not filled, look at the seat’. So, please, if you don’t mind, don’t anybody go to the bathroom.”
Anyway, Trump did not nearly fill up the arena. It was a long way short of that – and that’s fine because it was a large stadium – but the president’s unbelievable narcissism on this front must not go unnoted.
The bribe was a $US1 trillion-plus pledge that every American adult would get paid $US5000 ($7000) if the Republican Party holds on to the House of Representatives and the Senate in November.
It was a promise so brazen, so bafflingly corrupt in its premise, and so unlikely to come to fruition – but for the fact that it came from the president of the United States, on one of his largest possible platforms.
Strategically, Trump was absolutely transparent. His aim – and the aim of Republicans more broadly – was to put the Trump name front and centre of conservative voters’ minds in the lead-up to the November 3 poll.
That is because for the past decade or so, Republicans have done better when the Trump name is on the ballot. It’s a reality that perfectly matches Trump’s ego.
“When I’m running, we get tremendous numbers of votes,” he said in Dallas. “But when I’m not running, it’s a little different. So please, pretend that I’m running, and get out and vote.
“In actuality, I really am running. We don’t really know it, but we are. We’re running together. We have to have Congress, we have to have the majorities.”
The stakes are high. If Republicans lose their majority, Trump at the very least loses his ability to legislate from the Oval Office. And he likely faces another impeachment trial.
If we were still in Trump’s ascendant era, the speech would be a masterstroke. He was funny, spontaneous, cutting, and entertaining – all the things Trump voters loved about him when he first came on the scene.
But we are not in that era any more. Other than the big fat bribe, little was new in his speech. He boasted of his achievements, while inflating the threat of a Democrat-communist takeover.
Across five hours of speeches before the president took to the stage in Dallas, including Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Attorney-General Todd Blanche, lavishing praise on Trump was mandatory.
The only partial surprise was a cameo by Democratic senator John Fetterman, who appeared by video to introduced his “great friend”, Republican senator Dave McCormick, also of Pennsylvania.
Fetterman, who regularly breaks with his party to vote for Republican policy, called himself a “common sense” Democrat who would work with Trump to protect the “steel way of life” in the Keystone State.
The MAGA crowd also booed Trump’s mention of Republican Senate leader John Thune, who is accused by some of failing to rally enough support for election reform to require photo identification and restrict mail-in ballots.
But for all the sycophantic supporters gathered inside the arena, the whole evening still fell a little flat. It felt a little like a last gasp from someone who, while gifted, was running low on his bag of tricks.
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Michael Koziol is the North America correspondent for The Age and Sydney Morning Herald. He is a former Sydney editor, Sun-Herald deputy editor and a federal political reporter in Canberra.Connect via X or email.