Did we see a "new" Donald Trump last night, focused on unity after the assassination attempt on his life? Yes we did, especially for the first half-hour of his acceptance speech at the Republican national convention.
Did we see the "old" Trump? To a certain extent, yes too over the following hour. But even then, Trump dispensed with his usual bombast and put aside the name-calling to deliver a compelling -- if long -- speech that focused understandably on divine providence and his blessings in the moment, as well as the issues in the campaign.
"I'm not supposed to be here," he said early in the speech to emotional delegates. When they chanted back "Yes you are!", he smiled and waited them out and answered, "Thank you. No, I'm not."
Trump spent an extraordinary half-hour recounting the events of last Saturday in Butler County, PA in what he promised would be the first and last time. "It's too painful," he said at the start. He praised everyone around him at the rally, especially his Secret Service protection detail, whom he credited with saving his life. Trump explained the moment that got captured by Evan Vucci's iconic photograph as his way of letting the crowd know he was all right. "They thought I was dead," Trump said, and he needed to let them know he was alive and still able to fight.
Trump also gave credit to the crowd itself for not panicking. "A lot of lives were saved" by their courage in the moment, Trump said. In moments like this, Trump noted, crowds start fleeing to get away from shootings, and in that panic people get trampled and killed. The rally crowd hunkered down instead, even though Trump could see that they thought he'd been mortally wounded, and he credited them with remarkable courage and faith.
Trump spent a good part of that first half hour paying tribute to Corey Comparatore, the only fatality in what could have been a bloodbath. Comparatore's family sent his fire chief gear to Trump, and he had it on stage with him. At one point, Trump walked over to it and kissed the helmet, lauding Comparatore a hero for having shielded his family from the bullet that killed him. That moment was as moving as anything I've heard in a political speech, and there weren't any dry eyes in the audience -- not at the arena, and I suspect not in American homes tuned to the convention either. Trump also talked about the two people critically wounded in the attack, providing their names and telling the crowd that both will make a full recovery.
After the first half hour of this somber recollection of tragedy, Trump finally turned to the campaign and the issues at hand. He seemed to struggle at first in breaking out of the tone he set in the first half hour, but began to find his usual rhythm after ten or so minutes. He even joked at one point about having to give people what they want from a Trump speech before really finding himself in rally mode, extemporaneously jumping from topic to topic, using bucketloads of superlatives, and clearly getting back to the point where he enjoyed himself enough to keep going ... and going.
At 92 minutes, the speech was probably too long for purpose. Trump and his team likely planned it to be significantly shorter -- maybe an hour, perhaps -- but Trump's constant riffing kept extending the length. However, that serves a purpose as well, especially if Joe Biden remains his opponent. Just as in Butler County, Trump demonstrated an almost unbelievable vitality and strength in a 92-minute, late-night speech. Biden can't match it; he can't even come close. One has to wonder how Biden will be able to even deliver an acceptance speech at the end of the last day of the Democrat convention of any length, let alone 90 minutes, coherently and cohesively.
Finally, there will be plenty of people who will point to the last hour of the speech as tonally off and too much like the pre-assassination Trump to credit him with a new approach. That's not accurate, however; even in rally mode -- which again the delegates not only expected but wanted -- Trump took a different approach. He only mentioned Biden by name once, to my recollection, and made an explicit point that he wouldn't say his name again after that. No "Slow Joe," no "Sleepy Joe," or anything like it. He dispensed with the personal insults aimed at Biden and other opponents and critics.
Trump certainly had a lot to say on the issues and the performance of the Biden administration, especially on immigration, crime, the economy, and foreign policy, but he approached it on those bases rather than as demeaning ad hominem attacks. Most strikingly, Trump even refrained from attacking the media as "enemies of the people" -- a favorite line in rallies -- opting for more subtle teasing of the news outlets in the gallery.
Trump had fun, clearly. He talked about the issues too, and did so with his usual reliance on superlatives and exaggeration at times. But the entire speech showed the country a more sober and reflective Trump, who returned at the end where he began: crediting divine providence for his presence on stage, and asking for it to guide the nation.
