Call me a wonk, but I enjoy reading and listening to politicians’ speeches in full. That said, Donald Trump’s acceptance speech last night, which went on for more than an hour and a half, was a little long even for my taste.
There was a lot of guessing before the speech about whether or not we would see a changed Donald Trump after the assassination attempt from last week. Well, we did during the first part of the speech (when Trump was still reading off the teleprompter). We saw a more human, emotional and subdued Donald Trump.
I think that the words a politician uses really matter and I found it noteworthy that he would use words such as love, friendship, humble and support repeatedly.
For the second part of the speech, it was more classic Donald Trump. He spent a lot of time on two domestic issues, inflation and immigration.
Inflation is really a global issue at the moment. During the past months, I have conducted focus groups in various countries and inflation is a major concern almost everywhere. The truth is also that, other than some sort of dole outs or subsidies, there is little that can be done to fix it in the short term.
Trump had more of a credible promise to make on immigration. Many voters feel that Joe Biden and Democrats have ignored the issue at the Southern boarder for three years.
I found it noteworthy that an issue like abortion was barely mentioned. It’s an issue that works in favor of Democrats right now and in particular the position of the vice presidential candidate JD Vance is clearly out of the mainstream.
I was surprised Donald Trump would bring up the alleged cheating from the last election again. I doubt it played well with swing voters. The same goes with what he calls the “green scam.”
Overall, I think the speech was probably not the high point it could have been of an otherwise pretty well-orchestrated convention. However, most voters don’t watch the speech in full anyways, but hear about it in the news. And I think there are some extracts that will work in Donald Trump’s favor.
One thing that was clearly illustrated and emphasized during this week of the convention is how the Republican Party is now a unified MAGA party behind Donald Trump. Not so long ago, this was not a sure thing.