He's still talking. We're 70 minutes in, and at least 15 of them were spent talking about Abdul the Taliban leader. Weird as that sounds, he's gotten lost there in speeches before.
Not to say this speech is bad, exactly. Everyone knows he does this, you put up with it for the fun, weird moments. Like when he talked about building a bunker under a skyscraper. Couldn't tell you why. I was drifting in and out by that point.
Trump started strong and he started assertive. We are not going back to the old Republican party, he says. This is still my party, he does not say, but everyone hears it.
The Republican party is not the party of neocons any longer: no wars, no foreign aid. He doesn't say flat out that he'd cut off aid to Ukraine, but he did everything but say it. NATO should pay, he said.
Nor is the GOP the party that cuts social security. Ever. He was extremely clear about this. Didn't deny that some people in the party want to do that. Explicitly said that some people DO want to do that. But it's not their party anymore. It's his.
He also promises to get homeless vets off the street, with lurid description of war heroes lying on asphalt in the cold. I think that's a great idea. I would like to extend it to everyone lying on asphalt in the cold.
After this populist declaration he shouts out Mark Levin: an infamous libertarian. It's weird. It's all weird.
I have a dinner to eat and a party to crash, so I'm not going to go through the rest of the speech point by point--can't imagine you'd enjoy reading that either . Let's hit the highlights:
You've probably heard about the “I will be your retribution” line already; if you haven't, he really did say that to a rapturous audience. He said he was going to be several other things as well, none of which I can remember over an hour of speech later (were at 1.5 hours now). Here's the clip, it's worth a watch. Biblical vibes. Borderline sacrilegious.
Off-script Trump said some incredible things today. Apparently the radical left was calling him up in 2019 saying they'd come around, they loved him. We were unifying. And then COVID ruined it.
Trump asked the crowd if they remember Biden giving a speech where he said he wasn't going to give back a billion dollars in taxpayer money. Perhaps some of them remember. I certainly do not.
Biggest applause lines of the night: the promise to end “chemical castration” and the promise to return to paper ballots.
Other than that, standing ovations tended to be more for Trump the person than policy promises. To be fair, aside from the three points at the beginning there's not much policy here. Trump promised to tell us his plans to fix things, talked about not starting any foreign wars and not risking foreign wars by funding foreign wars. And then he got lost, for about 40 minutes, in musings ok Russia and Afghanistan and China and etc etc etc. He got lost in Abdul the Taliban leader: a subject I've seen him get lost in before. It's very strange.
That's around the time I started writing this substack and I confess I've only been half-listening. I swear I heard him say that fentanyl is killing America and he destroyed ISIS in the same sentence. Is that possible? What is happening.
The audience has Trump signs, which is new. Those have always been banned before. It's official: CPAC is MAGA country.
Oh, wow, Trump just promised baby bonuses for a new baby boom. Not sure how we're going to cut the budget when we do the same thing the Nazis did to encourage breeding but it doesn't really matter, does it?
Trump has promised to pay reparations. That's right, you read that correctly. He will pay reparations to anyone adversely affected by Biden's woke policies and affirmative action.
Theres other stuff, but the speech is ending. Compared to other Trump speeches I give it a rhetorical 4 out of 5. The genuinely weird moments made up for the lagon the middle. Hit all the culture war stuff his audience loves. I don't love it, I hate it, I really do not like it at all, but this isn't about me. This is about the speech.
The most powerful and important part of this speech was Trump's declaration of populism: war against the balance-the-budget fiscal conservatives. I don't believe he brought up the debt ceiling a single time.
This was a strong showing: the kind of thing that makes me rethink my political eulogy a couple months ago. If he can keep this up, he'll be a contender. I'll be damned.
Sending without proofreading even one time. That party isn't gonna crash itself. Can't wait until I can crash. I miss sleep. My liver hates me. Soon.
Everyone have…an evening. Have an evening.
I hope it was a great party and that you got to sleep in late this morning.
Look if your liver hates you you're doing it right? I mean I guess? Have fun at the party.