Okay, let’s get this started.

The final night of the RNC opens in 15 mins.

In nights past, I affixed protective headgear to no avail.

I now understand I must use my enemy’s force against him.

As such, I am dressed like the Karate Kid.

Someone is getting Crane Kicked tonight.

In the fridge, a tasty six-pack of a fine Belgian beer. Leffe Blond.

Centuries of monks eschewed all worldly pleasure that I might drink their beer.

Seems like a bit much, but, hey, cheers fellas.

Thank you to the kind benefactors who put beer money in my jar these last few nights. I truly appreciate it. It has been a slog.

But I have not lost my puckish sense of whimsy... which is why I also bought a very large Taj Mahal.

Unlike Trump’s casino of the same name, the fine Taj Mahal brewery of India is still in business.

Eff you, Bankruptcy Boy.

Let’s crack open that one, shall we?

And here we go.

The final night of the Fiesta Del Jackassery known as the RNC is underway.

Events open with a cloying, faux-patriotic video layered in more artificial cheese than 7/11 nachos.

As setup, the lumbering, pumpkin-faced toolbox currently infecting the White House will be speaking tonight.

In preparation, his spineless toadies have dutifully assembled a Hatch Act-violating amphitheater of corruption on the South Lawn.

Ironically, this will prove to be less effective than Joe Biden’s speech directly to camera.

The White House can’t fill security-cleared seats with the kind of rabid, sparsely toothed Pennsyltuckians who used to show up at MAGA Moron Jamborees.

Low energy is assured.

After an opening prayer, we were treated to a pandering turdwich of insipid puffery from the House of Representatives’ least articulate member:

Mr. Kevin McCarthy.

He should neither be public nor speaking - let alone public speaking.

We’ve now moved on to a segment about how a number of Black Americans who are totally authentic and definitely not paid by the Campaign have come to realize that the super racist guy and his super racist party were actually pretty neat!

This is so stupid.

Let’s be very clear here:

The endless parachuting in of Black voices throughout these four days is in no way meant to sway Black Americans.

It is aimed at giving Trump-voting white racists a face-saving excuse for being all kinds of pro-bigotry.

Now we’ve moved on to the dumbest shitbird from my home states House delegation.

Jeff Van Drew.

He’s the titanic asshat who was a Democrat until he was going to lose a primary and then went full Trump.

The guy is a complete jackanapes.

The irony of all of this pandering is that it only works on an audience willing to hear it...

The Trump Campaign loaded up the lineup with pandering speeches from white women and Black men & women while somehow forgetting their target audience is racist and misogynist.

Trump’s core hillbilly voting bloc is already ass-deep in a rerun of Pawn Stars by now.

This lineup is a ratings killer.

Trump is an awful human with an awful base. They should have gone wall to wall Lee Greenwood “God Bless the USA”.

That’s their vibe.

The audience for Day 1 of the RNC came in 3 million lower than the DNC.

And then it fell another 3 million.

Trump’s lot is Shakespearean at this point. He rode into office on a strategy of full racism and misogyny.

Now, misogyny if off the table...

...and there aren’t enough racists to win again...

...and trying to pander to even white people who were squishy on racism actually tunes out the ultra-racists.

Trump danced with the devil. Now he gets to burn.

Tonight’s ratings are going to be a huge embarrassment to Trump.

This is unwatchable.

And it follows three prior days that were equally unwatchable.

This shitshow is ending not with a bang but a whimper.

And, in a comically fitting proof of point, we just heard from Dana White, head of Ultimate Fighting Championship.

Trump could have opened the night with the cage-fighting guy. Instead, he had dipshit Kevin McCarthy kick it to a bunch of randos.

Many a TV has already turned off

And now another rando. The Utah Attorney General.

Do not - I repeat, do not - underestimate the impact of Trump’s inability to attract even the major names from his own party.

The DNC this year was an all-star lovefest. Every major name appeared both alone and together.

The lineup this week has been:

- People named Trump
- A clown car of absurd sycophants
- Randos stiffly reading scripted lines

I’ve seen more impressive lineups at trade shows.

This has all the star power of a fair-to-middling Chamber of Commerce meeting.

Now we’re on to a speaker named Ann Dorn whose husband, a 77-year old, long-retired police officer, was killed by an intruder at a friend’s pawn shop during looting in St. Louis.

His killing was tragic and senseless.

Like the murder of Breonna. And Trayvon. And Tamir. And. And.

Now we have Ben Carson - a man who alleged that in his wayward youth, he attempted to stab someone but was thwarted by a belt buckle.

What kind of belt was that dude?

Did you try to stab Hulk Hogan?

Would you allow Ben Carson to operate on your brain?

The guy seems like a profound, profound jackass.

I mean, he thought the ancient pyramids - which were essentially, big rock piles - were actually grain silos.

He is not bright.

Now up: one of the biggest shitbirds in New York City law enforcement.

Patrick Lynch.

Head of the NYPD PBA.

Imagine a Law & Order where Lenny Brisco has to bust a crooked old school cop buddy for burying evidence and framing innocent defendants.

That’s the Pat Lynch type.

Now up, ranty nutbag Rudy Giuliani.

He’s an unhinged, spittle-sprinkler of angry lunacy.

This is like a Timothy Burton remake of Up!

It’s just creepy and dark and weird.

The guy is weapons-grade nuts. Someone tranq his fruitcup.

And Rudy is done.

He was terrible. A lawn sprinkler of crazy shit.

A dizzying spray rather than a cohesive message.

Total eyewash. Forgotten as soon as it was heard.

And they didn’t even merchandise his appearance. It was just a random segment 70 minutes into Night 4.

This entire RNC has been a slapdash affair so clumsy in staging and promotion, it has been absolutely clear the Trump Campaign was desperately trying to even fill the minutes.

The DNC was a cohesive program reflective of long planning, careful coordination and tight production.

The contrast between the two is like going from seeing Lin-Manuel Miranda in Hamilton to sitting through a middle school production of Cats.

Everything about this RNC has been poor.

And they’re doing all live-reads despite seeing how masterfully the DNC used pre-records.

Who do we have left?

The only major headliners left are Porn-Whisper Barbie and President Fuckopotamus, right?

I mean, this is a mercy killing at this point.

Just let it end.

Guys, if the PBS telethon was this boring, public television would have died decades ago.

I have seen late night infomercials which were riveting theater compared to this.

Shamwow. George Foreman Grill. That was Emmy shit compared to this.

And the time has come to open a Leffe.

Those Belgians. They know their way around a beer.

While I was getting a beer, a speaker was lavishing praise on Trump for granting her clemency and thus enabling her release from prison.

This whole thing is so contradictory and nonsensical.

Rudy Colludy ranting about being hard on crime. Up next, a felon Trump freed!

Wut.

And here comes Porn Whisper Barbie.

Princess of the Vapid.

A prattling skinsuit of insipid puffery.

Ivanka Trump

She, like Eric and Traitor Tot, is a remarkably shitty public speaker.

They’re all terrible at trying to sound animated and passionate because they’re nothing more than soulless Roombas who just push about from room to room in their daddy’s house.

Ivanka is trying to use her big-girl voice tonight.

It is somewhat of a relief that she isn’t using that weird, affected little whisper that sounds like she’s trying to give a mall Santa an erection.

The same person wrote Junior’s, Eric’s and Ivanka’s speeches.

They are all trite in all the same ways with common applause lines.

Basically, one speech delivered three times by three shitty speakers.

The applause is tepid.

This is boring. I’m bored.

“My father. My father. My father. My father. My father.”

Even Meghan McCain is like “Enough about your damn dad, Vankie.”

This is terrible.

The entire thing seems so contrived and trite and lifeless.

She is desperately overacting to try to convey some personality.

This whole family is broken. Broken human beings. Incapable of even pretending for 5 minutes that they aren’t.

Ivanka introduces her father.

And now I am straight up laughing at the cloying cheese of Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the USA” playing as Mango Magoo walks down the stairs with a Melania who is dressed like The Jolly Green Giant’s simple country wife.

I rest my case.

Trump reading from a script.

As always, stiff, uncomfortable, weird diction. A man both terrible at reading and too lazy to rehearse.

Some weird pronunciations in there. Lumbering through the inflection.

Trump has entirely destroyed his own ability to move the needle with a speech.

He has saturated the market with his four-year Cult of Me.

Everyone knows the scripted Trump isn’t Trump. People glaze over because it is both so fake and so poorly delivered.

This is a zero so far.

This is no different than his usual dumbass “Coronavirus Briefing”.

It’s just a boring live-read with an applause track.

It’s just... low energy.

I saw Meatloaf at the PNC Art Center for $5 a few years ago.

He had to sit down and rest for awhile after opening with Paradise by the Dashboard Light.

President Meatloaf has the same energy.

Trump is going to prattle on for a while but let’s just enjoy the fact that this whole RNC has been a massive, underwhelming disappointment by a party that used to be good at these things.

No poll bump coming. Terrible ratings.

I’ve watched a whole bunch of Trump’s rallies.

He just has no energy when he can’t go off script and find the vein.

He needs to vampire off the crowd. With seats full of plants just clapping on cue, he can’t find the heat.

And that makes him Mickey Monotone.

Trump now rambling through scripted lines about his myriad fictitious achievements.

Lies about the wall.

Lies about jobs.

Lies about lowering drug costs.

Lies about passing VA Choice which was actually passed under Obama.

As an aside, I’ve gotten 12 hours of sleep over the RNC.

5 hrs. 4 hrs. 3 hrs.

This has been a toxic endeavor.

As a communications person, I watch with an eye towards comms effectiveness.

Tuesday was... concerning. Two more days of that type of content would have hurt.

Instead, they lost the head of steam last night and have done nothing to reverse it tonight.

No matter what the polls show coming out of this week, we dodged a bullet here.

I’m a former ad guy. Pandering schlock isn’t hard.

They just fucked it up six ways to Sunday.

For the first time in my adult lifetime, Democrats vastly outplayed Republicans at the communications competition of a convention.

Sometimes it is a tie. We never win going away.

This year, it hasn’t been close.

The ratings reflect that. Can’t influence people not watching.

This year, the campaigns were facing the new challenge of a virtual convention.

Democrats had the added challenge of having to go first.

But they radically reinvented the concept of a convention - and pulled it off.

It was compelling. It was moving. Word spread. Audience grew.

The Trump Campaign produced a product reflective of exactly what was going on behind the scenes:

Weak talent running around trying to please a dimwitted narcissist with what he’d like rather than what would be good.

The DNC was an A.
The RNC has been a D+.

I’m not even bothering to transcribe Dumbalina’s speech because it is just the same stupid lies.

It’s no different than any 5 pm Rose Garden corona briefing.

It will get torn apart in the fact-checking.

It will have done nothing.

A total zero in a speech that can soar.

Trump now lying about his coronavirus response; lying about vaccine progress; insisting school’s need to reopen.

It’s just a Sea of Sameness.

Same shit floating on the same tide.

Trump is 40 minutes into this.

It’s just so boring.

In digital media, when you post online videos, you measure starts and finishes.

How many people started watching a video vs how many watched til the end.

The drop off here must be huge.

Babyfingers now trying to read through attack lines.

But he reads like a 3rd grader sounding out Curious George lines.

It’s somnolent. Speech Ambien.

Gets some applause for an anti-abortion lie.

The studio audience is bored too.

As we wind down toward our merciful end, a commercial interruption.

If you’re of the inclination to fund my recovery from the battering of these four days, I’ll love you for all eternity. https://ko-fi.com/hoarsewhisperer 

I won’t even spend the money on beer.

I’ve got a week in a bare mountain cabin with my son coming up.

Perfect timing to forget all about the torment of the last four days.

Consider your beer funds a s’mores sponsorship.

Recovery on a graham cracker.

Anyway, Trump now delivering the same old shtick in a boring, moron staccato.

It’s reminiscent of Pence’s speech last night.

The teleprompter operator is rolling the lines slowly and Trump is sleepwalking through them like Siri’s dumb, drunk uncle.

Trump starting to slur words together.

“A 38-year vetter...”

Veteran. The word you were looking for was veteran.

That bump of stimulants two hours ago is starting to taper.

Give him the hook, Ivanka. Daddy is nearing sundown.

Trump has been speaking for almost an hour.

And it is definitely a more is less situation.

A pithy 20-minute red meat speech highly leveraging the pomp of the South Lawn would’ve worked like a charm.

Instead, this is a moron Aida. A 4-hour opera of failure.

Wrap it up, Fuckopotamus.

This sucks. You suck.

Trump is just going on and on and on.

It is so fucking boring.

Nothing new.

Same crap.

While he prattles on, thank you for coming along with me on this Odyssey of the Damned this week.

It has been abjectly horrible but it is soon to be over.

We had to do it. Had to pay some attention to what we were up against.

And now we know.

Hope I saved ya a bit of grief by not having to watch - or provided a bit of comic relief or sympathetic rage if you were watching.

Now, let’s bury the fetid corpse of this 4-day trainwreck and move on to pushing this asshat out of the White House.

Now, if this pumpkin-faced talking diaper could just wrap it up so I can go fold laundry, that would be great.

Trump... at long last... reaches his ultra-trite closing lines.

“We will make America... stronger.
We will make America... safer.
Blah, blah, and blah.”

So cheesy. So trite. Moron mad libs.

And with that, my friends, we are done.

At long last, we are done with the RNC.

I’ll leave you with just this:

Worry little about the coverage tomorrow. Nothing in 2020 lasts longer than two newscycles.

Over is minutes from forgotten.

And now we press on.

Thanks for riding shotgun.

<fini!>