Day 1,313: The RNC is officially a North Korean-style event

Governing and politics used to be separate buckets in the U.S. “Used to” being the operative term.

Under Donald Trump, the line has been blurred, maybe forever.

The Republican National Convention kicked off Monday, as Trump and the party shatter all sorts of norms and break laws designed to prevent unethical behavior.

To name a few:

• The convention’s speakers are a laundry list of people with the last name Trump.
• Secretary of State Mike Pompeo will be delivering a speech, the first such person holding the office to do so in modern times. (The State Department is insisting the Pompeo is speaking only in his personal capacity, not official one, as if his invisible hat can be removed.)
• The GOP has decided to not even have a 2020 platform.
• Trump will deliver his speech accepting the nomination on Thursday from the White House.

The entire event — far more than typical conventions — is geared toward heaping faux praise on Trump like he’s the dictator of a nation that must applaud their leader or risk imprisonment or death. Speakers are praising Trump’s COVID-19 response (despite more than 175,000 Americans dead from the disease), the economy (as the unemployment rate is twice as high as when he took office), about American exceptionalism (while throwing longtime allies under the bus), the idea of law and order (as the racial gap in the criminal justice system remains as wide as ever), and a multitude of other topics like “draining the swamp” (that Trump has done nothing about from the hundreds of days he has spent at his private golf course).

The entire event is an ode to the person Trump thinks he is and the party wants to pretend he is and will be.

1,313 days in, 149 to go

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