Republicans did their best Monday night to present themselves as a party that celebrates diversity and sanity.
It didn’t go well.
In a night replete with mendacity and disinformation, GOP speakers lied throughout the evening about Joe Biden wanting to defund law enforcement agencies. They falsely compared Democrats and their platform to the communist government in Cuba and the authoritarian regime in Venezuela, and they warned us that Biden would turn the country into, “a socialist utopia.”
A doctor, a nurse and a slickly produced video told us that Donald Trump’s decisive action during the COVID-19 crisis has saved countless lives, as the death toll stemming from his incompetence approaches 180,000.
RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel said that Democrats support abortion up to the point of birth, another blatant prevarication.
There was a fast-talking rant from the president’s son, Donald Trump, Jr., that would have made any used-car salesman proud. Kimberly Guilfoyle, the $180,000-a-year earning girlfriend of Trump Jr., shrieked and screamed at the top of her lungs to an empty room.
Several speakers appeared unprepared, as if they were reading from a script that had been handed to them seconds earlier. One diatribe attacked unions. Another claimed Democrats were bad for health care, as Trump fights tooth-and-nail to destroy the Affordable Care Act.
South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, Georgia State Rep. Vernon Jones, former NFL and USFL running back Herschel Walker and Maryland congressional candidate Kim Klacik were among the seven men and women of color to address the nation in support of Donald Trump. Guilfoyle and Florida businessman Maximo Alvarez, a Cuban immigrant, rounded out the 33 percent of the evening’s non-White speakers.
Scott and Haley gave, by far, the most cogent speeches of the evening. Scott, an African-American, and Haley, the daughter of Indian immigrants, each rejected the notion that America is a racist country.
Delivering the 21st and final address of the first night of the Republican National Convention, Scott said our nation always bends back toward fairness, and that we are always striving to be better. He said race relations in this country are in a far better place than in the 1860s and 1960s, comparing modern-day America to a time when Blacks in this country were enslaved and/or segregated.
“We have work to do, but I believe in the goodness of America, that all men and women are created equal,” Scott said.
Haley, who was the 19th speaker of the night, insisted: “America is not a racist country.”
Walker, who was the starting running back for the New Jersey Generals when Donald Trump bought the United States Football League franchise, insisted that Trump is not a racist because they are friends.
Walker, who also starred at the University of Georgia, said that Trump was nothing like the virulent racists he witnessed in his youth. That very well may be the truth, but the president’s record is clear.
And no amount of sugarcoating from speakers of color can change it.
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