Republican strategists jittery about President Trump’s prospects expressed relief Thursday he largely stuck to a somewhat positive teleprompter script as he accepted renomination from the GOP for a second term in the White House.
In evening remarks from the South Portico of the White House, Trump defended his record on domestic and foreign policy, vowing to crush the coronavirus and reduce the footprint of the United States military overseas. The president’s address was not as forward-looking as some Republicans would prefer, and he took dead aim through much of the speech at Democratic nominee Joe Biden.
While marked with a handful of provocative statements and occasional ad-libbing, Republican operatives said Trump concluded his remarks with a minimum of the dark imagery and extemporaneous comments characteristic of his signature stadium rallies. Such asides have sometimes backfired politically with voters beyond the loyal base that he needs to win reelection.
“Given the range of what he would want to talk about, this is a fair bit better than almost all of what I imagined we might see,” a Republican consultant said. “A stroke of humility would have been optimal, but that is not his preferred gear. If we can’t get humility, then optimism is good enough.”
“Trump delivered a speech that is a mix of campaign rhetoric and the State of the Union,” Republican operative Ron Bonjean added.
After the coronavirus forced Trump to cancel plans for a renomination celebration in Jacksonville, Florida, he settled on the White House as the site for his acceptance speech.
The address was attended by a tightly packed audience of around 1,500 spectators who watched from the South Lawn. Trump embraced the imagery, at one point gesturing to the White House behind him. “The fact is, I’m here. What’s the name of that building,” pointing to the executive mansion. “But I’ll say it differently: The fact is, we’re here, and they’re not.”
The president’s address clocked in at more than an hour and included a checklist of promises kept from his first campaign, mixed with attacks on Biden and the Democratic Party and bullet points for a second-term agenda. These included leftover first-term items such as infrastructure spending and new proposals, like becoming the first nation to plant a flag on Mars.
Some Republicans complained that the speech was too long and too unfocused. They lamented that Trump delivered too much of a backward-looking State of the Union address, with insufficient attention paid to developing a coherent theme of second-term agenda items. Republicans also continue to worry, after the president’s speech, that his attacks on Biden are too unwieldy to have the desired impact. “Joe Biden is weak,” Trump charged.
But overall, Republicans rooting for the president to be successful were pleased that he didn’t turn the event into the sort of charged Trump rally performance that can rub swing voters and disaffected Republicans in the suburbs the wrong way.
“He’s hitting the right issues and seems to be sticking to the script,” Republican operative Jim Dornan said. “But he needs to offer a vision for a second four years.”
As Trump enters the final stretch of his reelection campaign, he needs to erase Biden’s lead in national polls and swing-state surveys. To improve the president’s performance with swing voters and suburban women, the GOP convention featured several speakers who vouched for his character and put his occasionally provocative behavior in the context of passion to get things done.
The goal was to transform this race from a referendum on Trump’s leadership into a choice between the incumbent and Biden. Some Republicans said Trump’s speech was a fitting capstone to a very successful effort in that regard.
“In spite of the media’s insistence that he is only speaking to his base, I thought his speech and the Republican convention made an overt attempt to reach beyond the base,” said Brett O’Donnell, a Republican communications consultant.
