The Republican National Convention had an assessment of America Tuesday night, and the assessment was that America is a dark place.
It’s a stormy, crime-ridden metropolis plagued with exploding cars, angry mobs of protesters and migrants flooding the border. Luckily, there’s a hero who can save the country, summoned like Batman with a rooftop searchlight that illuminates the clouds with one word: “Trump.”
At least, that’s how the CGI sizzle reel presented the situation in Milwaukee Tuesday night.
The theme of the evening was “Make America Safe Again,” and the sub-theme was law and order. What wasn’t mentioned, however, was Trump’s own conviction, save some passing references that sought to dismiss the charges as political attacks.
One of those references came from Brenna Bird, Iowa’s attorney general. She managed to summarize the contradiction of Trump and his law and order agenda in 24 words: “Republicans get justice for victims, and we put criminals where they belong: in jail. That’s why we need to elect President Donald J. Trump.”
No one mentioned the mountain of evidence in Trump’s other three criminal cases, nor a civil case which deemed him responsible for a sexual assault, nor a half-billion-dollar judgment against Trump for committing bank fraud.
But nearly all of the speakers on Tuesday touched on some aspect of what Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York called President Joe Biden’s “violent crime crisis.” And there was a simultaneous attack on the justice system itself, as Trump’s MAGA allies sought to assail the prosecutors and judges holding Trump accountable for his white-collar felonies.
During her speech, Stefanik called for people to show up at the polls because “the soul of our very nation is on the ballot.” She blamed Biden for a “violent crime crisis, fueled by Democrats’ pro-criminal sanctuary cities and defund-the-police policies.”
She then brought up how “corrupt Democrat prosecutors and judges wage illegal and unconstitutional lawfare against President Trump in an effort to do Joe Biden’s political bidding.”
Republican National Committee co-Chair Lara Trump, who is married to Trump’s son Eric, was able to bury a reference to her father-in-law’s conviction by spinning it, slipping it in between a warm family portrait and a Martin Luther King Jr. quote, then smothering it beneath his recent brush with death.
“I’ll never forget watching my two children run up to him with their drawings and hugs for grandpa just moments before he took the elevator down in Trump Tower to address the media the day after his wrongful conviction,” she said. “Despite everything else he had going on, he had no other focus in the entire world, just a man relishing time with his grandchildren.”
Lara Trump claimed that it was a side of Donald Trump that not enough people get to see. “Maybe you got to see a Donald Trump on Saturday that you were not sure existed until you saw it with your own eyes,” she said. “Martin Luther King Jr. once famously said, ‘The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of convenience and comfort, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.’ There’s no doubt that Saturday was one of the most frightening moments of my father-in-law’s life.”
In another rhetorical flourish, Florida Sen. Rick Scott brought up the judges overseeing Trump’s cases alongside Saturday’s would-be assassin in western Pennsylvania.
“The Democrats couldn’t stop him. The media couldn’t stop him. The liberal judges couldn’t stop him. A bullet from a madman couldn’t stop him. Can anything stop Donald Trump from becoming the next president and making America great again?” Scott asked.
The criminal cases against Trump are indeed on hold. In Georgia, missteps by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis have derailed her indictment against Trump for election interference. The case is now tied up on appeal.
In Washington, the federal special counsel’s case against Trump for his role in fomenting the Capitol riot was just whittled down by the Supreme Court and delayed into oblivion. And in Florida, Trump’s favorite federal judge just dismissed the classified documents case, which legal scholars said was a slam dunk.
Improbably, the speaker brought on to most directly counter the inevitable criticism that the “law and order” party just nominated a convicted criminal was Savannah Chrisley, a reality TV personality whose parents are currently serving sentences in federal prisons in Florida and Kentucky.
“My family was persecuted by rogue prosecutors in Fulton County … due to our public profile and conservative beliefs,” Chrisley claimed. “They accused my parents of fraud, when, really, we were defrauded by a dishonest business partner who, let’s not forget, the government gave full immunity to. We suffered warrantless raids and harassment.”
Chrisley decried the “Obama-appointed judge” and insinuated that politics was at play by pointing out that the prosecutor was operating “in the most heavily Democrat county in the state.”
“Justice, it’s supposed to be blind, but today we have a two-faced justice system. Just look at what they’re doing to President Trump!” Chrisley said. “Donald J. Trump has only one conviction that matters, and that is his conviction to Make America Great Again.”
But her narrative doesn’t hold up. Despite her qualms about the validity of the criminal case against her parents, the political bent of her projected anger is misdirected. Her parents were indicted in 2019, halfway through the Trump administration, when the Justice Department was led by the conservative Attorney General Bill Barr.
In the Northern District of Georgia, where the investigation was conducted, the top federal prosecutor was BJay Pak, a Republican who had previously spent six years in the state Legislature.
But the other speakers at the convention on Tuesday were focused on the grander narrative, the one that always defines Democrats as “soft on crime.” House Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana boasted, “We in the Republican Party are the law and order team. We always have been, and we always will be, the advocates for the rule of law. And we all know that principle — as well as many others — is in serious jeopardy today.”
Former GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy took a jab at migrants while citing the same respect for justice.
“Our message to illegal immigrants is also this: We will return you to your country of origin, not because you all are bad people, but because you broke the law. And the United States of America was founded on the rule of law,” he said.
Ramaswamy wasn’t talking about exposing a former president to criminal charges, though. He was among the dozens of associates who showed up at Trump’s criminal trial in Manhattan in the spring to show support for the man and malign the prosecution.
It’s been eight years to the week since Trump delivered a campaign speech in Virginia where he famously uttered the words, “I am the law and order candidate,” pausing just long enough between the last two words to leave listeners wondering what he truly meant.
Tuesday night showed that Republicans are still intent to own the brand, despite the glaring contradictions.
“I’ve dedicated my life to law enforcement,” former cop Randy Sutton told the crowd. “And I’m here to tell you one thing, America. Donald Trump is the best friend we will ever have.”
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Jose Pagliery is a reporter at NOTUS.
Correction: An earlier version of this story misstated the day of the assassination attempt. The incident occurred on Saturday.