One of the truths I’ve come to believe over the years in covering conventions is that they play differently in the hall than they do on TV. I’m not in Cleveland, so I can’t tell you how it played to the room, but on the screen, Chris Christie’s show-trial indictment of Hillary Clinton came across as weird. Creepy, even.

It wasn’t just the strange political and logical contradictions—he criticized Clinton for not being hawkish enough on Syria when Trump wants to stay away from that mess; he hung the Iran deal on her even though she had little to do with it; he criticized her for being too soft on Russia when his boss is incredibly, uncomfortably, close to Putin. Like I said, leave that aside, because convention speeches don’t get judged by debating society standards.