I am going to attempt to watch tonight’s RNC so you don’t have to.

I make no promise that I will last all the way through it.

I have many beers in the fridge though, so that bodes well.

And here we go.

1/

Tonight’s session opens with well documented asshat and talking potato, Charlie Kirk.

Kirk looks like a fleshy honeydew with a Howard Cosell toupe.

Like Ben Shapiro, Kirk vomits up conservative talking points meant to appeal to young, white kids still young enough to confuse privilege with merit.

It is very, very boring.

I won’t even paraphrase.

Now we’ve moved on to some woman named Rebecca Friedrichs who alleges she is an educator.

She seems nuttier than a Payday bar.

Her speech is about how teachers hate unions because unions are bad.

Uh, wut?

Oh, she’s a charter school zealot. Hard pass. Next.

Next up, a woman who alleges she owns a coffee shop in Montana that received a PPP loan.

She’s basically rattling off a conservative mad-lib of empty red meat jargon. Prayer, the marines, police officers, freedom.

She is very vapid. Patriarchy has its female fans. She is one.

For real, she had that whispery, meek, compliant tone of the brainwashed little corners of our country where husbands are daddy-heroes and wives are just so lucky to be protected.

1950s ethos with an updated haircut.

Eww.

Now up, the shameful disgrace running for Elijah Cummings’ House seat. Kim Klacin or something like that.

She’s on Twitter, I think. Diamond and Silkish rhetoric.

Painful.

And along comes Ronna Romney McDaniel, the head of the RNC, to deliver a cookie cutter speech of talking points.

We’re like 20 mins in and on our fourth speaker and I already regret all of my life choices and curse my decision to watch this.

This is all just so weird.

It’s a parade of women puking up brainwash fodder.

Trump is a political Charles Manson and his weird little cult is so damn creepy.

They all have this vacuous, empty stare as they deliver laughably absurd lines.

And now they’re ripping off the way the Democrats did their roll call by hustling through a quick cut of the RNC rolll call this morn.

It ends with sparse, sad crowds chanting “four more years” in a variety of places.

This feels like a funeral that guests think is a wedding.

This is the White Olympics.

Every video, every crowd shot, is all white.

They didn’t even try to pretend Babyfingers has diverse support.

It’s a white out. A snowfall of redneckery and ignorance.

Now up, an alleged nurse from West Virginia.

She is rambling through a speech about telehealth in an accent so thick, it took about five times before I knew she was saying “telehealth”.

I don’t even know what that was.

I’m sorry. I... oh well. Next.

So far, one of the recurrent themes of the night has been “Hi, I have a relatively low-level job in healthcare entirely peripheral to coronavirus care... but let me tell you... Trump has handled COVID-19 great!”

A nurse from a town of 2,000. A dude who is a surgeon.

It’s like all those bullshit Facebook posts your aunt posts all came to life and met for a convention.

I need another beer. This is terrible.

It’s unwatchable.

If this was the pilot for a show, there wouldn’t be a second episode.

And now they’ve kicked it to what appears to be a live moment with Trump in the White House with a bunch of “ordinary Americans” talking about coronavirus.

Nurses, healthcare cleaning staff, a police officer.

If there was a point to that, I don’t know what it was.

Listen, I am obviously biased but I can still be relatively objective on the overall effectiveness of a communications effort even if I am not the target.

I could admit when Trump’s rallies - as awful as they were - were working.

This... isn’t working. It’s boring.

Thus far, it has come across as Common Man Spaghetti.

Just throw a bunch of average Americans at the podium and hope their comments somehow generally accrue to Trump keeping his base.

It’s small-ball.

It’s no bigger than overhearing mall conversations outside a Cinnabon.

And now former football player, Herschel Walker, is up talking about how Trump is definitely not a racist.

I want to puke.

Walker is a fuckwit.

Annnnd I’m going to get a beer.

I’m back. And now, yet another in the endless parade of blonde women is up. For real, she’s the third or fourth in a row. Is being a brunette illegal in Trump counties?

The speaker, Natalie Harp, is up ranting about how we won’t have doctors anymore if Biden wins or something.

The rhetorical style here is The Firehose of Bullshit.

Just hose down the audience with so much bullshit, so fast, they can’t identify a lie let alone all of them.

And then, Harp inexplicably wraps by likening Trump to George Bailey from It’s a Wonderful Life.

Wuuuut?

As an aside, I’m drinking a very large can of Dale’s Pale Ale.

It is delightful but insufficient to the task.

I’m an hour in and feel like I’m being waterboarded.

I am already dreading what is to come.

Donald Trump, Jr., Nikki Haley, Trump himself.

Jesus, what have I committed to here.

Anyway, if you have any interest in filling my mug with comvention juice, I’ll be in your debt. https://ko-fi.com/hoarsewhisperer 

I missed a speaker there. That’s okay. You didn’t miss anything other than a bizarre rant by a Democratic Georgia State Senator about how Trump is really the candidate for Black Americans.

I... don’t think so.

Now someone named Andrew Pollack up telling the graphic story of his daughter being killed in a school shooting.

Pollack inscrutably blaming liberals for what was clearly a failure of gun control.

This guy doesn’t seem bright. At all.

And now we have the gun-waving Bonnie and Clyde from St. Louis appearing via a recorded message.

“What you saw happening to us... could happen to anyone in a quiet neighborhood.”

Uh, you live in a literal palace, asshats.

“Marxist revolutionaries!”

Drink!

RNC Bingo is a path to alcohol poisoning. Play at your own risk.

Now, Bonnie claims Joe Biden wants to outlaw suburbs.

“Your family won’t be safe in the radical Democrats’ America.”

Man, this is just a torrent of batshit crazy mindfuckery meant to terrify low-information shut-ins.

And how we have Kimberly Guilfoyle.

She is delivering remarks in a weird, affected growl-yell.

Basically, she sounds like a phone sex operator if there was a version of phone sex where a deranged woman just yelled at you like you had asked her to wear a mask at Costco.

For real, she is just yelling.

It’s so weird.

She’s at an empty podium screeching at a camera.

I feel like I’m watching a Jeanine Pirro biopic and they’re doing a flashback scene to when she was just as drunk but younger.

Omg. This is insane.

She is YELLING.

Un-fucking-hinged.

Someone prep a tranquilizer dart. Aim for soft tissue. A thigh maybe.

THAT WAS THE CRAZIEST CONVENTION SPEECH I HAVE EVER SEEN.

Find a clip.

My lord. I need to sit alone in a quiet place after that.

What.. and I ask this in all seriousness... the fuck?

CNN just cut away.

I’m going to leave it here because I could use a little detoxing after Guilfoyle’s utterly bonkers raging.

Okay, and we’re back with military veteran, Sean Parnell, who is now running for Congress.

He’s delivering your basic “I did much war. I love the flag. So you should love Trump.”

Boring faux-patriotism.

There is just nothing new in any of this.

It’s basically like a Zoom call with the kind of people who dial into Rush Limbaugh’s radio show.

It’s all just so rehashed. So trite.

And now we’re back to Trump live from the White House.

Showing a propaganda film of Americans held hostage overseas until Trump intervened.

This is ultra-jingoistic pap but the sizzle film has good production values.

It’s crap but relatively effective crap.

Film wraps and scene cuts to Trump sitting with six former hostages.

The live production values aren’t great. The shots feel like a local cable car dealership ad.

Or a community cable talk show called Talkin’ Topeka with Tina and Tom.

Low budget. Not working.

You can tell that the goal was to make these feel a little like The Apprentice.

Show Trump interacting. Make him seem like a human being of sorts.

It just doesn’t work because Trump is just so awkward and stilted.

He’s the anti-Biden. Zero empathy.

Now up, Cuban immigrant and businessman, Maximo Alvarez, warning about the siren song of Fidel Castro and socialism.

Apparently a president who deports immigrants is okay as long as they don’t give people healthcare.

Alvarez is a captivating speaker.

He’s entirely irrationally prattling about how a Biden America would somehow be like a Cuba that he neither grew up in nor even exists anymore today but captivating nonetheless.

And here is Nikki Haley.

Man, I haven’t drank enough for this.

Haley is going full red meat.

Opening with some horseshit about thieves and robbers who want us to pay their bills.

Praises Trump for ripping up the Iran nuclear deal.

Man, this is a low water mark for Haley.

The moment of full abandonment of any pretense of character.

Haley is doing what even many of the most craven, covetous, power hungry of Republicans opted to not do:

Go all in for Trumpism in 2020.

Haley has no character. No honor.

May this moment be the inflection point dooming her to never win office again.

Haley: “America is not a racist country.”

Also Haley: (backhandedly acknowledges racist violence under Trump and the legacy of systemic racism in her home state)

Haley is done and here comes the Crisco Kid.

Traitor Tot.

Donald Trump, Jr.

The greasy little turd who looks like he’s sweating Mazola

In a way, I feel bad for Traitor Tot.

He is so thoroughly mediocre, so bland and below average, and yet he desperately wishes to be something other than a failed barnacle on the shitty ship of his father’s career.

It’s sad. A whole life trying to be good enough for a sociopath.

Junior is just a script reader. A prompter jockey. A marginal thinker who memorizes some talking points and goes on friendly shows like Hannity.

He isn’t bright though. He isn’t good at it.

And yet he truly thinks he may have a bright soaring future.

He’s Prince Doofus.

As an aside, one of the reasons why this whole night is falling so short is because it’s basically just any night on Fox News.

The DNC was programming people never see.

The RNC is programming people see daily. Grievance politics served up by Trump sycophants.

BORING.

Man, Junior is almost as bad as his girlfriend.

Not as yelly. But close.

This is all just so much Anger Management Class “before” footage.

And he’s done.

Wait, are we finished for the night?

I think we are.

Wow. That was an anticlimactic wrap up.

Two hours of grievance politics and then an abrupt wrap.

I can’t see the ratings for this coming close to the DNC’s. This was pretty uncompelling. Pretty unwatchable.

Even for Fox Newsies.

This was weak sauce.

No, wait... there’s more.

Tim Scott will be the final speaker.

Senator Scott is a talented orator. Charismatic and easily listenable.

Of course, it isn’t a coincidence that Republicans slotted one of their only Black Members of Congress into the cleanup role during the convention.

How Tim Scott can be a Repubin the Trump era is beyond me.

I want to like Tim Scott. I enjoy listening to him speak.

I just can’t get past the bizarreness of him extolling the virtues of a racist Trump.

I do not understand. I just don’t understand.

Can’t imagine the same audience that claps and cheers for Trump’s race-baiting about “Democrat-run cities” is still tuned into the RNC for the long Tim Scott finale.

And we’re done.

If there was a strategy tonight, it wasn’t a coherent one.

That was a concussive 2 1/2 hours. It was basically just a drumroll of brain punches.

It was an assault on reasoning more than the offering of an argument.

If the next three nights are like this, the RNC will win Trump a grand total of zero new voters.

It will cement some of his base but that has never been his challenge.

Anywaaaaaay, that was awful.

And thankfully we’re done... for tonight.

Thx for being here. Time for a beer.