Trump Lit Up The Skies (And The Right) While The Streets Raged — And Remade Conventions Forever

The most impressive political fireworks display most will recall ever seeing on their TV sets finished President Donald Trump’s address at the close of the four-day Republican National Convention Thursday evening, wrapping up the party’s rallies, energizing the president’s supporters, and changing the convention genre forever.

Just one week after a physically isolated, professionally awkward, and visually timid Democratic National Convention finale featured Joe and Jill Biden walking down an empty hallway to a cute fireworks display while socially distanced cars honked their horns in a Delaware parking lot, the Washington sky was alight and a live concert played while hundreds of attendees applauded on the White House’s South Lawn.

The president’s speech began and finished with American history, distilling the platform he ran on and the accomplishments of his administration into an hour-long address focused on “Promises Made, Promises Kept.” Its themes included industry and fairer trade deals versus outsourcing and China; law and order and police versus lawlessness, murder, and defund movements; and late-term abortion versus the innocent unborn and a moral America.

Characterizing former Vice President Biden as a weak betrayer of the American worker, the president said, “For 47 years, Joe Biden took the donations of blue-collar workers, gave them hugs and,” drawing laughter, “even kisses… And told them he felt their pain – and then he flew back to Washington and voted to ship their jobs to China and many other distant lands.”