6 takeaways from Trump's final night at the Republican National Convention

Trump Speech at Republican Convention, in Spanish 14:02

(CNN) - By the time President Donald Trump descended the steps of the South Portico on Thursday, the goals of this week's Republican National Convention were clear: regain the confidence of women, put the coronavirus behind, and convince Americans that the president is not racist.

In one of the longest candidacy acceptance speeches ever delivered, in a stern tone and read almost entirely from a teleprinter, Trump sought to meet those three goals - prepared for him by previous convention speakers - by while appeasing the base of supporters who helped propel him to the White House in the first place.

The result was a world produced for television in which the coronavirus pandemic has largely faded, the president oozes empathy, and accusations that he is racist are met with horrified denial.

Outside the fortified gates of the White House, things look different. The kind of mass meeting the president organized is not possible anywhere else. His insult-filled Twitter account gives voters little evidence of hidden warmth. And his hard-line "law and order" stance has turned into racist rhetoric.

Yet in his speech, Trump essentially asked viewers to believe what he was offering rather than the very reality they live in.

The president proclaimed that his efforts to combat the virus were focused on "the science, the facts and the data," despite numerous examples to the contrary, including the maskless crowd that gathered to hear his speech.

He stated, "very modestly," that he had surpassed the efforts of any previous president to help the black community, save Abraham Lincoln, even when he refused to address the issue of the systematic racism that has sparked protests across the country.

And while he claimed to be "an ally of the light," in a nod to rival Joe Biden's acceptance speech last week, he delved into dark premonitions about "violent anarchists, agitators, and criminals" who he claimed would be given unleash if Biden wins.

"Everything we have achieved now is in jeopardy," he said. "This election will decide whether we will defend the American way of life or allow a radical movement to dismantle and destroy it completely."

The four-day convention, which came as Trump struggles to reverse deficit poll numbers caused by his handling of the pandemic, was the president's most prominent opportunity to frame the race on his own terms.

Last night was the clearest attempt yet to reverse increasingly harsh impressions among Americans that Trump has mishandled the pandemic and behaved like a bully during his tenure.

Here are 6 takeaways from the last night of the Republican National Convention:

Living like there's no pandemic

If speakers at this week's convention provided a portrait of Trump's presidency that didn't always fit reality, images of crowds gathered without face masks or social distancing helped reinforce it.

The images, combined with repeated references to the coronavirus pandemic in the past tense, projected a post-pandemic world, even as deaths soar.

Trump did not address the pandemic to any great extent. When it did, it predicted a rapid resolution of the ongoing crisis using dubious claims about its own performance.

“In recent months, our nation, and the entire planet, has been struck by a powerful new invisible enemy. Like those brave Americans before us, we are facing this challenge, "he said. "We are offering life-saving therapies and will produce a vaccine before the end of the year, or maybe even earlier."

Later, he tried to brag about his handling of the pandemic using misleading figures and exaggerating the extent to which he had addressed the outbreak in its early stages.

It is an image that Trump wants to project as he tries to convince Americans that he is at the forefront of the pandemic. To attest to his handling of the virus, Trump relied not on medical experts but on Dana White, the president of the Ultimate Fighting Championship who is a longtime friend of his.

Of course, the pandemic is not over. More than 3,200 Americans have died since the Republican National Convention began three days ago, more than those who died during the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

Unlike most Americans, Trump has access to a comprehensive testing regimen that his aides say makes him "the man who has had the most tests done in America." Anyone who walks up to him gets one: Thursday that included at least some of the more than 1,000 guests on the South Lawn for his speech.

The effect was to provide Trump with the crowds he long desired for his convention. But it has also allowed him to project a reality that simply does not exist for the rest of the country.

It's unclear how effective this is in convincing Americans that Trump has handled the virus well. People who lived through the outbreak are still feeling its effects. Images of the president living his life normally cannot change that reality.

This is what you need to understand about the nature of a pandemic: it is relentless. You can't stop her with a tweet. You cannot create a distraction and hope it will go away. It doesn't go away, ”Democratic vice presidential candidate Sen. Kamala Harris said in a pre-Trump speech early Thursday.

Ignoring Jacob Blake, but condemning the violent protests

The "law and order" message that Trump hoped to convey Thursday came at a tense moment. Kenosha, Wisconsin, remains tense after the police shooting of a black man. Many professional athletes were continuing the boycott, although the NBA playoffs were scheduled to resume. In Washington, a large rally for racial justice was planned for Friday.

In his speech, Trump tried to label Biden as dangerous at a precarious time.

"Your vote will decide whether we protect law-abiding Americans or unleash violent anarchists, agitators and criminals who threaten our citizens," he said.

At the same time, he regretted what he characterized as unpatriotic efforts to settle accounts with the country's hateful past.

"In the hindsight of the left, they do not see the United States as the most free, just and exceptional nation in the world," he said. "Instead, they see an evil nation that must be punished for its sins."

The atmosphere of danger and out of control that surrounded the president's speech is not a totally unfamiliar or uncomfortable place for Trump, and somehow fits perfectly into the theme of his convention and campaign: that the areas controlled by the Democrats will become a chaos if Joe Biden wins.

Trump appealed to nearly identical themes in his 2016 convention acceptance speech, when he said: “The crime and violence that afflict our nation today will soon come to an end. As of January 20, 2017, security will be restored.

But by refusing to address or even acknowledge the circumstances that have led to the protests in Wisconsin, Trump also appears to undermine claims made time and again during the convention that he is in tune with the issues of the black community and eager to help.

Those themes resurfaced Thursday with speeches by Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson, the only black member of Trump's cabinet, and Ja'Ron Smith, the highest-ranking black official in the White House.

“Many on the other side love to incite division by claiming that President Trump is a racist. They couldn't be more wrong, ”Carson said, citing (among other things) Trump's willingness to accept black and Jewish members into his club in Florida. .

Alice Johnson, whose life sentence for a drug offense was commuted by Trump, said she was "free of body thanks to President Trump, but free of mind thanks to almighty God."

However, that same night, Trump claimed that Biden wanted to free hundreds of thousands of criminals and promoted his own proposal that people convicted of vandalizing federal monuments spend 10 years in jail.

Ultimately, the messages appeared designed to deflect Trump from accusations of racism. However, in practice, his unwillingness to confront the reasons behind current racial tensions and instead stoke them with divisive rhetoric offers a different reality.

Finding an attack on Biden

Throughout this year's campaign, Trump advisers have struggled to identify a line of attack against Biden that will move the needle of the voters and earn Trump's seal of approval.

The dispersal approach was evident in the president's speech.

By Trump's account, Biden is both a status quo Democratic politician for whom it is getting late, and he is a "Trojan horse" for socialists like Bernie Sanders.

He's hiding his agenda - "Biden wants to keep you completely in the dark," he said - and working in collusion with Sanders to move the agenda to the extreme left with "a 110-page political platform."

And he's both weak on crime, willing to let criminals out on the streets, and too tough in passing a 1990s sentencing law that imposed harsh penalties on many black Americans.

The grief narratives about Biden summarize the challenge Trump will have in defining his rival in the weeks leading up to Election Day.

The only area Trump avoided on Thursday was Biden's mental condition, an attack he has enjoyed, but which his advisers fear could alienate older people.

Instead, he took aim at the practical approach to Biden's policy: "He took donations from workers, gave them hugs and even kisses," said Trump, another attack that some attendees fear could open the president to questions about his own. accusations against you of sexual misconduct.

By contrast, Trump didn't begin detailing his schedule for the second term until the end of his speech, spending only a few minutes outlining what he hopes to do if re-elected.

He's a nice guy, believe me

A persistent message at this week's convention has been that Trump is a nicer guy than he sounds.

The accounts, mostly by people who work for him in the White House, suggest that Trump is privately a warm man who oozes empathy for those around him.

"President Trump is a kind and decent man. I wish you could stand by his side with me to see his infinite kindness to everyone he meets, "said Dan Scavino, the social media guru who is often behind Trump's most aggressive and insulting tweets.

I've seen your true conscience. I wish everyone could see the deep empathy he shows for families who have lost loved ones to violence, "said White House Senior Advisor Ja'Ron Smith, naming Ahmaud Arbery and George Floyd.

Most effusive in insisting on Trump's empathy was his daughter Ivanka.

"I have been with my father and I have seen the pain in his eyes when he receives updates on the lives that have been stolen by this plague," he said.

It's a depiction of Trump who, as a parade of attendees recognized, is generally not seen in public.

"I recognize that my dad's communication style is not to everyone's taste," Ivanka Trump said. "And I know her tweets may seem a bit unfiltered."

However, neither his daughter nor any of his assistants really explained why, given the wide access the public has to Trump through his availability to the press, his active Twitter account and his telephone interviews on Fox News.

Everything seemed designed to refute Biden's "nice guy" bet, although Trump himself seemed less convinced of the idea of ​​empathy.

"Laid off workers in Michigan, Ohio, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and many other states didn't want Joe Biden's hollow words of empathy, they wanted their jobs back," he said in his speech.

Do you remember the impeachment?

It's perhaps not surprising that Trump's impeachment has been largely forgotten. He's still the president, a world-altering pandemic came weeks after he was acquitted and the political calculus around the matter changed.

The surprising thing is who, seven months later, raises it as a topic. Democrats completely ignored the impeachment era at their convention last week, despite many asserting back then that the stain of impeachment would follow Trump forever.

Instead, it's Republicans who have made it an issue during their convention, including through the last night's speaking space allotted to Rudy Giuliani, the president's volatile personal attorney whose actions helped spark the entire impeachment scandal in first place.

Giuliani did not directly address the impeachment process, instead choosing to focus on the violence in American cities and an attack on Biden.

"He is a Trojan Horse with Bernie, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Pelosi, Black Lives Matter and the entire left wing of his party hidden inside his body waiting to execute his procriminal and anti-police policies," he said.

But his mere presence was enough to go back to late last year, when his appearances helped fuel the efforts of Democrats.

Trump's allies seem to have calculated that time has softened Americans' views on impeachment, clouded their memories of the details, or made it a minor distraction compared to today's huge problems.

A White House turned into a fortress

Until this year, convention speeches were delivered within sealed arenas. If protests did occur, they were out of sight and well out of the minds of the onlookers.

Trump's open-air speech Thursday from the South Lawn of the White House did not provide those advantages, although a fortified security perimeter around the executive mansion provided a wide barrier between him and the protesters, who could be heard during the speech. of Trump.

The ethically questionable measure has been the subject of scrutiny all week, and the final rally - massive "Trump-Pence" posters under the Truman Balcony, a fireworks display over the Washington Monument, and an opera singer on the Portico. South - only cemented the character contrary to the rules of the night.

Trump himself made little attempt to downplay the place.

"The fact is, I'm here," Trump said, pointing to his residence. What is the name of that building?

"We are here," he said, "and they are not."

At least two groups said they would meet near the White House during Trump's speech. One said they hoped to "drown" the president using loudspeakers and trucks.

The protests, which included roars, air horns and muffled chants, could be heard from the South Lawn, where Trump delivered his acceptance speech.

The sound of the protests has previously moved over the White House billboards to where the president speaks, including when a group of truckers honked their horns during an event in the Rose Garden.

Most notably, the sounds could be heard from the Rose Garden as Trump spoke before his fateful walk through Lafayette Square to St. John's Church in June.

Before Trump's speech on Thursday, a temporary fence was erected around the perimeter of the White House grounds, almost completely covering the property. The fence mimicked the barricades that were put up around the White House during that week in June, when Trump was at one point taken to an underground bunker.

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