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David: I don’t much like the Democrats or Joe Biden and I certainly don’t like leftists, anarchists and cancel culture, so there was a lot in Trump’s speech that I wanted to like. When Trump said, “Americans build our future, we don’t tear down our past,” I cheered. When Trump said, “For Americans there is a dream and it is not beyond your reach,” his words rang true to me. To me, “America is the torch that enlightens the world.”
But Donald Trump is a fraud and a liar. He said tonight that “From the moment I left my former life behind, I have done nothing but fight for you.” Maybe, if your definition of fighting is to spend your days watching Fox News and tweeting half-truths before heading to one of your golf properties. And, he didn’t leave his former life behind. It has been so long that we’ve forgotten he said he would separate himself from his businesses when he ran for office. What he has done is fill their coffers with government and political money.
You can’t believe anything he says. Even the most simple statements are false. Of COVID-19, Trump said, “we are meeting this challenge.” I can give you 180,000 reasons that’s not true.
He said, “We obliterated 100% of the ISIS caliphate,” except the 10,000 fighters a new UN report says are still on the ground in Iraq and Syria.
“Joe Biden supports cutting police funding,” he said, when the reality is that Biden supports increased spending on law enforcement.
“We also passed … VA choice,” he said. No, actually, that was the Obama administration.
Trump's casual and continuous lying is a cancer on the presidency and this speech only made that more clear.
Jill: There is no end to the gall of this man and his family, and the exhaustion and the terror that they might possibly pull off a win. Four more years of lies and grift, the endless hogging of credit, the fatal incompetence and indifference, the nepotism and law-breaking that we’re supposed to just swallow, and so many people do.
Trump must be viewed as an aspiring law and order nominee. He tried to scare the pants off the country about a Joe Biden too weak to stand up to the anarchists and looters and rioters and flag-burners — and yet his entire presidency has been a corruption spree, with close associates charged, convicted and jailed, as he himself likely has broken campaign finance laws, obstructed justice and tried to help his friends, like Michael Flynn, evade justice. The New York attorney general and the Manhattan district attorney are investigating Trump and his business dealings. And let's not forget he's been impeached.
White collar crime doesn’t provide frightening visuals. But that doesn’t mean it’s invisible.
Story time: Republican National Convention re-imagines Donald Trump as kind and fair
Trump is exempt from the Hatch Act so he didn't violate a law in turning the White House into a taxpayer-funded stage set for the most partisan political event possible. But it was unseemly and unprecedented and of course he spiked the football: “The fact is I’m here, what’s the name of that building? … The fact is we’re here and they’re not.”
Gloating is not against the law. It's just insufferable.
David: I am afraid there is just enough truth in Trump’s attacks on Biden that he’ll be able to slide back into office with another Electoral College squeaker.
In a sense, Joe Biden is “a Trojan horse for socialism.” He has worked out an agreed agenda with self-described socialist Bernie Sanders. Sure, there’s a logic to it. Biden needs enthusiastic support from Bernie’s legions of voters, but that comes with a cost.
On foreign policy, Biden does have a decades long record of “blunders.” Against the first Iraq war, for the second and then against the surge and cautious on the effort to get Osama bin Laden. Biden has some explaining to do if he wants to be trusted as commander in chief.
My hope is that Trump’s penchant for stretching a good case into an absurdity will backfire. No, China would not “own our country if Joe Biden got elected.” Nor is it true that “No one would be safe in Biden’s America.” And Biden doesn’t want to “surrender” to the coronavirus.
Jill: This week for the first time I seriously contemplated the possibility that Trump might win another term, and the idea of moving if that happened. Toronto? Santa Barbara? I wrote publicly that I was not going to let him break me, but I should have added a qualifier: In his first term. I don’t think I could withstand another four years.
A normal political party never would have let this happen. But today’s Republicans are like a fusion of the Tin Man, the Scarecrow and the Cowardly Lion: No heart, no brain and no courage.
Trump's RNC naturalization ceremony at White House: Tasteless, hollow and probably illegal
One of the deep sadnesses of this convention for me, in addition to that one, is the rut Republicans are in. From Ben Carson talking about how “a rising tide lifts all boats” to Mitch McConnell with the tax-cut mantra to Trump walking onstage to “God Bless the USA,” a Lee Greenwood song released in 1984, the gaze was backward to the Reagan era and completely unsuited to this moment.
I have news for conservatives. We need more and better government right now, to ensure voting rights, gun safety, police reforms, financial support in a recession, a start on fixing racial inequities and, above all, a national public health response commensurate to a deadly pandemic. And we need the money to do it without racking up trillions more in debt, so yes, that means a more progressive tax code that asks more of the wealthiest Americans. My hope is that most voters recognize this and are done with Trump, his party and their absurd fearmongering.
David Mastio, a libertarian conservative, is the deputy editor of USA TODAY's Editorial Page. Jill Lawrence, a center-left liberal, is the commentary editor of USA TODAY. Follow them on Twitter @DavidMastio and @JillDLawrence
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Donald Trump's big convention speech was filled with lies and gall: Mastio and Lawrence - USA TODAY
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