This is an opinion column.
Over at CNN, they didn’t even make Trump’s RNC speech the top story. It’s as if the media had buried the story of Ronald Reagan, on the hospital stretcher, telling Nancy, “Honey I forgot to duck.”
Donald Trump found his inner Ronald Reagan last night. He finally did what many of us – even those of us who’ve voted for him four times since 2016 – were hoping he would do. Pivot. Be presidential. Yes, be the attack dog we need – and inspire.
Nicked by an assassin’s bullet, a somehow different (more likable or humbled?) but equally resolute and sometimes very (typically) funny Trump gave a presidential (candidate’s) speech that was incredible by historic proportions. I met Trump in person for a couple of minutes before his Racine, Wisconsin, rally and found him to be gracious and very likable, to be clear. But he showed more of that side on Thursday night.
The first 30 minutes of his speech, in which he, with emotion-tinged voice, softly recounted the assassination attempt in riveting detail, was one of the most extraordinary speeches ever given by a president, former president or presidential candidate. When he mentioned that it would be too emotionally difficult to repeat the horrific details a second time, you got a true sense of the man – and the wound.
“I’m not supposed to be here tonight. I stand here before you in this arena by the grace of almighty God,” Trump said. For a second when Trump said that, a very different alternate scene flashed horrifically in my mind – Melania behind a casket, tears in his children’s eyes, an RNC cancelled, a nation in despair. Narrowly surviving death by 1/2 inch brings perspective and, in the words of one commentator, a sense of “what matters and what doesn’t. Fights worth fighting for and those not worth” it.
Trump was still a fighter – that indelible image of his fist in the air burned in our collective consciousness like Iwo Jima or the firefighters raising the flag in New York – but he seemed like a man who emerged from a near-death experience with an even steelier sense of purpose. Stress reveals the character of man. The speech was less about Trump overall and more about what he wants to do to help the country. He didn’t call Biden a single name. In fact, he hardly used his name. And therein lies the difference.
Not using Biden’s name much depersonalized the rhetoric and focused the speech on policy. Trump knows President Joe Biden might not be his opponent so he made a case for America that doesn’t require it.
Donald Trump was saved by Ron Johnson’s chart on illegal immigration. Think about that for a minute. If Mandela Barnes had won…
In a big F you to the assassin, Trump literally surrounded himself Thursday with about six versions of the chart and essentially picked up where he left off in the speech, as the middle transitioned into a fairly typical – and effective – Trump rally presentation.
A much earlier version of the @TeamTrump immigration chart put together by @RonJohnsonWI and the keeper of the numbers @PaddyMacMke pic.twitter.com/HzjHlPgwkA
— Ben Voelkel (@benvoelkel) July 19, 2024
But you wouldn’t know any of this from the legacy media.
The image of Trump kissing and tenderly touching the uniform of slain fire chief Corey Comperatore – who took the assassin’s bullet for him – should have been the top photo on every news site in the land. But it wasn’t. Instead, several major news sites made their top story a photo of… Biden.
A moment that will echo through history pic.twitter.com/WRqElVitJu
— Dan O'Donnell (@DanODonnellShow) July 19, 2024
A northern Wisconsin man wrote on my Facebook page, “Media portrayed the speech as rambling, incoherent, nonsensical. I guess they didn’t actually watch the same speech I did of a determined, focused man that just escaped death a couple days ago that just had a lot to say to people that absolutely wanted to hear every word.”
Over at CNN, they didn’t even make Trump’s speech the top story. It’s as if the media had buried the story of Ronald Reagan, on the hospital stretcher, telling Nancy, “Honey I forgot to duck.”
CNN’s top story (and two and three…) rounded up the frenzied Democratic freak-out over the fact they just can’t get Joe Biden to leave. The more Obama schemes and Democrats turn press leak in an obvious pressure campaign, the more you sense Biden (and Jill and Hunter) are digging in their heels due to the sheer disrespect (and their longstanding feud with the Obamas.)
The liberal Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s top photo on Friday morning was a big picture of Biden and a story about how Democrats are waffling about whether he should go. (Then again, it’s the Journal Sentinel. One of the other top stories was a glowing profile on a man who tried to stab another man with two knives.)
In other words, the legacy media are framing Trump’s speech as collective panic that he actually might win, and so they are ratcheting up the pressure on Biden to quit.
Trump is right – if Democrats actually care about unity, the liberal prosecutors will dismiss the ridiculous charges against him and stop trying to throw their party’s top political opponent in jail. But they won’t, of course.
Over at ABC, they made the top story right after Trump’s extraordinary speech a Trump “fact check.” The New York Times’ top article on Trump reported (falsely) that Trump had struggled to “turn the page on American carnage” in his speech, calling it “bleak” and divisionary. The Washington Post’s top story was the global IT outage. CNN also ran a story about liberal operative David Axelrod whining that he didn’t like Trump’s speech.
What are they talking about? He didn’t struggle. Were they even watching the same speech? Trump spoke many times of unity in his speech and made it clear that he wants to help Americans of all backgrounds. Watch for yourself:
The reporters just don’t like his policy preferences. Which part do they oppose? Stopping foreign wars because dictators fear you? Securing the U.S. border so that immigrants come here the legal way? Stopping inflation so people can afford their grocery bills and rent again? Lowering interest rates so young people can afford to buy a house?
It’s as if Lincoln gave the Gettysburg address or JFK said, “Ask not what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your country,” or FDR said, “So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself” and the top story was to fact-check it. Or focus on something else.
But this is a new, activist media, and they STILL don’t get the appeal of Trump outside their coastal bubbles. Come to the heartland. We live on a block with neighbors who have Trump signs, and we actually know people who send their kids to the military, work in trades, or have a dairy farmer’s work ethic. When I went to the Piggly Wiggly grocery store recently, the woman collecting carts, a total stranger, launched into an anguished rant about how she works two jobs and can’t afford her rent anymore because the landlord jacked it up, and grocery prices are swamping her.
We know a lot of people who believe in Trump and his promise for America and who don’t believe the media’s caricature of him. Heck, we know a lot of people who NEED his promise for America.
The last RNC I attended was in 1992, in Houston, as a page for CBS, barely out of high school. I remember standing on the floor and hearing Reagan speak.
Deeply moved by his optimism for the country, I remember thinking, “Now I get it. Now I get his appeal.” I don’t remember a single word he said. I remember how he made me FEEL and how different he was from how the media portrayed him (similar to Trump).
I grew up in a little northern Wisconsin town in a pre-Internet and pre-cable news era, and I got my news from Tom Brokaw’s NBC News and the weekly newspaper. X wasn’t even a figment of our imagination. Neither was talk radio.
The news media painted Reagan as a forgetful, warmongering elderly dunce. Now standing on that floor, listening to him outside of the warped media filter, I finally got it.
Listening to Trump speak on Thursday live, I realized I was feeling a similar emotion. His speech evoked hope for the country. It was optimistic. It promised a better future for our kids. It was Reaganesque. It made you FEEL something. And this time it wasn’t anger.
Here’s the problem for the current media.
Millions of people likely tuned in to hear Trump speak because of the assassination attempt who never would normally listen to a Trump speech (or are seeing clips of it on X). My apolitical 19-year-old daughter was one of them. And she thought his speech was great.
Millions of Americans got to see the real Trump, not the media stereotype, live, like I got to hear Reagan unfiltered so long ago.
Yes it probably went a bit too long. Those of us who have heard him speak before know the middle part of his speech was a typical Trump rally speech – substantive, off the cuff, and incredibly detailed. I’ve never thought the media grasp how funny he is. What they perceive as outrage is often theatrical humor. But the first 30 minutes, when most people likely tuned in, were something else – something very special – altogether.
Shades of Iwo Jima and the firefighters in NY https://t.co/jgXvIy77yr
— Wisconsin Right Now (@wisconsin_now) July 19, 2024
And the middle served its purpose.
It showed that Trump, despite his age, is cognitively stronger than most people 30 years his junior and certainly more so than a president who can’t consistently string a coherent sentence together.
Aristotle’s Art of Rhetoric holds that an effective speech must have three elements. First – pathos (an appeal to the emotions). Trump did this well in the opening and at the end, recounting the assassination attempt and referencing divine intervention. He did this by mentioning his dad taking him to Billy Graham’s rallies growing up (and the left told you he got the rally idea from Hitler…) He did this by creating an emotional desire in the audience for the future he was promising. He did this when his grandkids crawled on his lap.
The media will NEVER show you this. It’s up to you to make this viral!!!#maga #Trump2024
pic.twitter.com/gXVTz3vipd— Steve 🇺🇸 (@SteveLovesAmmo) July 19, 2024
The second prong of successful speaking is ethos (an ethical appeal; the character of the speaker). Trump’s ethos is the part that seems different since the assassination attempt – he had more decorum. That’s the inner Reagan part.
But Aristotle said the foundation of any successful speech should be logos – the appeal to reason. This is where the middle part of the speech mattered. It was specific. It proved his plans aren’t just empty rhetoric.
The media paint Trump as a bombastic, rambling, nasty fool, but the problem for them is that millions of new people now know that’s not true. Something big changed on July 13 in Butler, Pennsylvania, and it’s hard to see how the media stop it. As the old adage goes, if you shoot at the king, you better not miss.
