Last night we were treated to the full spectacle of a Trump-managed Republican convention. We were promised big stars; we got Scott Baio. We were promised a Republican pivot to the national election; we got a party still seething—and reveling—in uncontrollable xenophobia. We were promised a Republican luxury cruise through the world of Donald Trump; what we got instead was a Republican Titanic. The house band, though, played on.
It was an evening of conspiracy theories, white supremacy, plagiarism, long stories about people being murdered, and claims that the sitting president was secretly working with terrorists.
Let's first dispense with Melania Trump swiping phrases from a 2008 Michele Obama speech. It has been covered elsewhere. If anything, Melania saved the Republican day, as today's news cycle has been dominated by the story of a single speaker swiping speech content rather than the clusterf--k that was the entire rest of the day. If it were not for that, the punditry would be agape today at a Republican convention that was barely one step up from an internet-peddled snuff film. This was, truly, the herald of a new sort of conservatism, and the funeral for whatever the older kind was supposed to have been. A review:
• Scott Baio gave an unmemorable speech about very little. He then proceeded to go on television and defend his tweet calling Hillary Clinton a c--t.
• Pat Smith, the mother of an American killed in Benghazi, gave a tear-filled speech directly blaming Hillary Clinton for her son's death. While we generally give wide space for grieving families to have a voice, it should be noted that large portions of what Smith claimed are disputed. Smith was the first of multiple Republican speakers to assert from the convention that Hillary Clinton should not just be defeated, but imprisoned.
• Marine veterans Mark Geist and John Tiegen then described the entire firefight at Benghazi, bullet for bullet, death for death, in a very long and apparently ad-libbed back-and-forth repeating the "stand down" claims made in the Benghazi book and movie 13 Hours. While this theory continues to hold Republican imaginations, it should be noted that it is has been disproven by countless Benghazi investigations, Republican and otherwise. No such thing happened. It remains a fiction peddled by fringe groups and congressmen.
• Ex-General Hospital star and former underwear model Antonio Sabato Jr. gave an unmemorable speech about very little. He then left the stage to give an interview in which he claimed he was "absolutely" certain President Obama is secretly a Muslim, declaring:
"I believe that he's on the other side ... the Middle East," Sabato told ABC News. "He's with the bad guys."
• Not to be topped by mere conspiracy theories and calls for Hillary Clinton to be imprisoned, Rep. Steve King chose this moment to go full white supremacist on national television, defending the convention's strikingly-white demographic makeup by flatly telling a stunned MSNBC panel that it was because white people have "contributed more to civilization" than "any other subgroup of people."