Put your feelings about Trump – pro or con – aside for a minute and consider this: did you get the same feeling I did watching Trump’s acceptance speech at the RNC Convention tonight that his heart wasn’t in the fight?
The first 30 minutes started off great with the “kinder, gentler, Trump.” Had he ended his speech there, Trump would have gone down in history as the Political Rebranding Kid.
But Trump didn’t stop.
He kept talking.
No doubt his campaign professionals – which have carried him this far – were backstage tearing their hair out. The most perfect convention in the history of conventions – to channel Trumpian hyperbole – went off the rails after minute 31 of his speech.
I believe Trump knew better than to riff but continued on anyway. In fact, I think he wanted to continue on in his way for one reason.
He was telling us goodbye.
No doubt he has been feeling his age of late: the hell he’s been put through ever since coming down the Trump Tower escalator, what the Democrats and the media have done to him, and what the Old Republicans did to him too. The assassin’s bullet was the last straw. Does he want another four years of that?
You cannot disagree that Trump’s legacy is one of significant changes: he started the War on Woke, he changed the Republican party forever, and, most important, woke people up to the idea that government is not always your friend. An idea we knew but had forgotten.
He shattered many, many norms and with them many myths.
Now that Biden is on the brink of leaving the democratic ticket, Trump had one more masterstroke to play (besides having immediately accepted the CNN debate with no conditions to lure Biden out of his basement in order to show the world how decrepit Biden had become) in selecting JD Vance to be his V.P.
Now that the future of Maga is secure, once the replacement for Biden is selected, no doubt Trump will depart his ticket as well, and become the grandfather he longs to be and the stay-at-home husband Melania wants.
Of course he will be a phone call away for JD and provide him with a bevy of stolid MAGA people to staff his administration, but the Big Guy will head out to pasture, albeit one with 18 holes, where he will play golf with his grandchildren and regal them with stories about how he was president once.
As Frodo Baggins said, “We set out to save the Shire Sam, and we did – except not for me.”
Take your rest Mr. Trump and thank you for showing us the way.
