I subscribed to Jay Kuo’s blog, The Status Kuo, and I hope he will forgive me for quoting today’s post at length. Jay is a multi-talented man. This is his Linked In profile:

I am the CEO and founder of The Social Edge, a social media and digital publishing company based in New York City.

I am also a composer/lyricist/playwright. My show Allegiance–a story of love, loss and heroism during the Japanese American internment, starring George Takei and Lea Salonga–opened in the fall of 2015 and had its LA premiere in 2018. Tokyo Premiere in March 2021. London January 2022. 

I am a two-time Tony winning Broadway co-producer (Hadestown, The Inheritance)

My background is in law. I am an appellate litigator admitted to practice in California, the Ninth Circuit and the U.S. Supreme Court.

Here is Jay’s report on Trump’s Acceptance speech, which I’m glad I missed:

Someone didn’t have the cajones to tell Trump not to write his own speech and to stay on script. The result was an embarrassing end to the entire Republican National Convention.

Trump began as expected, leaning into his new-found martyrdom and sporting a bandaged ear. Many MAGA faithful decided to wear bandages, too, as a symbol of fealty because “they aren’t sheep.”

Then it got weird. Trump veered off into la-la land with references to Hannibal Lecter, 2020 election denialism, praise for authoritarians like Viktor Orbán, and (checks notes) how he could stop wars with a single telephone call.

“This is the first good thing that’s happened to Democrats in the last three weeks,” observed David Axelrod, with a characteristic backhanded slap to his own party. “This really reminded everyone why Donald Trump is fundamentally unpopular outside this room.”

Pundits watching in real time were scathing. Because it’s Schadenfriday, I pulled together some of the commentary for your consumption, organized into basic buckets of why his speech sucked.

Trump has the discipline of a five year old

Earlier in the week, I conveyed my skepticism that Trump could ever recast himself and avoid being the petty, vindictive man he truly is, even after nearly being killed by a lone shooter. His speech last night proved this prediction correct. 

Right after he got through talking about the shooting—a beginning that was carefully scripted and in fairness he pulled off fairly well—there was “a jarring tone shift” per Washington Post editorial board member Shadi Hamid. “It almost seems schizophrenic,” he observed.

That’s because Trump’s brain is actually not okay. The media underreports this, but it was on full display last night.

In reverting to his standard campaign speech—a hodge-podge of political grievance, personal attacks, meandering stories, and truly bizarre references—Trump forgot he had a national television audience before him, speaking instead to the MAGA faithful who already know this weird and disquieting speech well.  

Even the New York Times, which has been stanning for Trump in its headlines by calling him “muscular” and referring to the “coronation” he would receive on Thursday, conceded that Trump has a “challenge with discipline.” That’s a candidate for understatement of the year. After the scripted part was over, the Times reporters agreed that Trump “could not resist falling back into the kind of rambling, unscripted diatribe that has long been his signature style.” 

“Trump has reverted to factory settings,” noted Jim Geragthy, who is the senior political editor of the National Review and not exactly a liberal. “Biden is watching this in Delaware and saying to Jill, ‘See? I’m not that bad!’” he joked.

Unity is for suckers and losers

“Trump the unifier” is a laughable idea. It stands in contrast to everything we know about the man, who has done more to divide this country than any single person since the Civil War. 

And certainly in the speech last night, there was none of the unity Trump had promised. The Times headline read, “Trump Struggles To Turn the Page on ‘American Carnage,’” noting,

He derided former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi as “Crazy Nancy.” Less than four years removed from office, he said America was already a “nation in decline.” He waxed hyperbolic about the immigration crisis, calling it “the greatest invasion in history” and compared undocumented migrants to Hannibal Lecter, the fictional serial killer and cannibal from “The Silence of the Lambs.”

Those in CNN’s focus group in Michigan agreed. “I gave his speech a D,” said one undecided voter. “He started out great, but then he went into mistruths and grievances and attacks. It just totally contradicted itself in terms of what he wanted to achieve with unity.” (CNN’s fact-checker Daniel Dale counted no less than 22 false claims in the speech.)

As Aaron Blake of the Washington Post reported, the “initially subdued manner and calls for unity didn’t match the content of an often divisive speech.” In addition to the moments the Times recounted above, Blake observed that Trump also called for the firing of the head of the United Auto Workers, called a Democratic senator a “total lightweight,” and cited the “China virus.”

When that phrase popped up, it was like we time traveled to 2020…

We know that Trump thrives on division and chaos. And he couldn’t even manage to stick to a prepared speech after promising unity just four days ago.

Long, winding, and boring

Historians take note: This was the longest presidential nomination acceptance speech since they began timing these things. It clocked in at 93 minutes.

”[H]e hasn’t given any speeches for nearly a week, and he has a lot of pent-up words that he is releasing now,” observed Washington Post opinion columnist Charles Lane rather dryly.

Notably absent from his speech, as the Biden Campaign pointed out, were any references to Project 2025, how he has harmed American women by getting Roe v. Wade overturned, or his promise to pardon the January 6 insurrectionists.

There was also no organization to his words, which is indicative of Trump’s management style. He not only rambled but circled fully back to things he already said earlier, like trashing on electric vehicles. His speeches are “like lazy Susans,” remarked Washington Post contributing columnist Ramesh Ponnuru.

Near the 90 minute mark, Alexandra Petri, whose work in McSweeney’s I adore, quipped, ”When I agreed to do this live blog, I did not realize I was signing the best years of my life away.” She compared it to the movie Up. “The first 10 minutes had emotion and were unlike anything I’d seen. The remaining 70 minutes were just an angry man roving wildly at large for unclear reasons.”

The only possible good news for Trump is that people probably stopped watching it after the first 45 minutes. But the folks in the convention hall, who normally get to start leaving a Trump rally early, were stuck listening to him as the speech stretched past midnight Eastern time.

Even pollster and analyst Nate Silver, who has been particularly hard upon President Biden for not dropping out of the race, went through all the stages of Trump fatigue in real time, first calling it a weird but pretty good speech, then calling it boring AF, then fully retracting and rescinding this earlier statement, saying “it seems both parties are trying to throw this election…”

“Is… is it over?” asked Jim Geraghty. “Quick, someone release the balloons, before he starts talking again!”

The speech was so bad that Ana Navarro had a strong message for Democrats who soured on Biden after his poor debate performance:

“If this clinically-insane Trump speech does not get Democrats out of their defeatist doldrums, and focused and energized around electing their nominee—instead of tearing him down—I don’t know what will.”

The paper tiger

On Monday I observed that an orange tiger like Trump can’t change his stripes, the attempt on his life notwithstanding. But I also called him a paper tiger for a reason: He isn’t invincible, scary or dominating at all. He’s an old man operating on autopilot, full of piss and vinegar and entirely unlikeable.

No matter what Democrats are going through presently and who the party’s nominee ultimately is, the Donald Trump that was up there on the most important night of his future political career is someone the majority of voters would resoundingly reject, just as they did in 2020. We need to understand that and then lean into it hard. Make this election about him, and we win it.

Yeah, we can beat this guy.