Commentary
Ironically, I recently shared with a friend the memory of New York Yankee Lou Gehrig’s July 4, 1939 speech. Standing before a microphone in Yankee Stadium, having been diagnosed with an ALS disease, Gehrig refuted what he had been reading about “the bad break I got … yet today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth,” as he spoke of the kindness of fans over his 17 years in baseball.
Now, over the past several days, I’ve been reading about the luck of former President Trump, considering the failed assassination attempt on his life. Some people have elevated it from luck to divine intervention.
As I sit at my computer, preparing to write about Trump’s speech to supporters at the RNC National Convention, and to those at home who will be watching it on television, I should be filled with optimism, thankful the assassin’s bullet was off target, and what that meant for the Republican Party and Americans going forward.
I was happy to see Trump enter the convention hall on Monday evening, but he didn’t look the same. It wasn’t until the next day that Fox’s Laura Ingram mentioned that too. What did I expect after that harrowing experience? We know that much of his body is black and blue caused by the protective bodies of the Secret Service detail.
I’m usually a glass half full kind of guy but having heard that he tore up a tough speech he had planned to deliver in favor of one with a unity message, I became concerned.
It’s not that Americans prefer unity over chaos, I am concerned with what Trump will be saying Thursday evening. He cannot give Biden a pass for his four years of poor decisions that have led to the decline of our nation, in the interest of toning down his usual bold rhetoric.
I’m afraid Trump has forgotten 2016, when he was elected because the people were frustrated with the previous administration. The voters liked what they heard then, and the goal of making America even greater resonates with them.
If he tones down his speech to the point where we don’t recognize the bombastic Trump we admire and trust, with the belief that he can reverse the hostile attacks on the left from the Biden campaign and his media darlings, he will be making a big mistake.
On the flight from Pennsylvania, he told the New York Post’s Michael Goodwin and Byrun York of the Washington Examiner that he had written a speech that was “an unbelievable rip-roarer … it was brutal … really good, really tough,” but decided he couldn’t give that speech in consideration of the gratefulness he felt in surviving.
As a businessman, not a typical politician, I believe Trump has an intuitive sense of communication. When the left warned that he would unleash massive retribution against those who wronged him, he calmly said that the success of his policies will be his response.
He told Goodwin and York it was hard to predict what effect his speech will have, noting that he suspects the chances of fundamental political change coming from the Pennsylvania attack are probably not great. I agree.
With full knowledge of the Trump campaign goal of a pledge of unity coming out of the convention, the media is already tearing into his vice presidential pick, slated to speak as I write this, without really knowing him.
If Trump, reframing his speech falls on deaf ears, he will be the first to acknowledge the mistake. With the division in the Biden administration, it isn’t as if he will have lost ground.
MSNBC’s Michael Steele’s criticism of Trump’s ear bandage as a means of gaining sympathy certainly isn’t helpful.
May God continue to bless the United States of America.
