Ohio governor John Kasich’s decision to skip the convention prompted Manafort to open the festivities on Monday by accusing the home-state governor of “embarrassing” his constituents.7 But Kasich wasn’t alone in steering clear of Cleveland. Of the five living Republican presidential nominees, just one, Bob Dole, attended the convention. The notable absences of Mitt Romney, John McCain, and both Bush presidents set the tone for a week of intraparty bickering that came to a head with Cruz’s refusal to endorse Trump.
For an hour and fifteen minutes on Thursday night, July 21, it was Trump who brought a modicum of normalcy to the proceedings. He delivered acceptance remarks that were smart and tightly scripted. Taking the stage wearing a luminous red tie, the nominee waved triumphantly as the delegates on the floor broke out into a chant: “Trump! Trump! Trump!”
Stepping into character as America’s strongman, he cast President Obama as feckless and weak, blaming his administration for everything from the murders at the hands of illegal immigrants to the protests against law enforcement on city streets. “The crime and violence that today afflicts our nation will soon come to an end,” he said. “Beginning on January 20, 2017, safety will be restored.”8
Trump also assailed Obama—and the Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton—for sowing turmoil around the world. From the Iran nuclear deal to the nonenforcement of the Syrian “red line” to the killings of four Americans in Libya, the United States had been neutered on the international stage, he said. When Trump made mention of Benghazi, the crowd began to chant, “Lock her up!” A few nights earlier, from the same stage, retired general Michael Flynn joined in the chant, declaring of Clinton, “If I did a tenth of what she did, I would be in jail today!” But Trump, showing restraint, raised an index finger to silence the crowd. “Let’s defeat her in November,” he said. The audience roared.
The Republican faithful got what they came for. Tony Ledbetter, a first-time delegate from Florida who had volunteered for Trump during the primary, said the GOP was united “except for a small minority of people” and that the party was better off without them. “Rubio, Bush, all these establishment insiders, I don’t care if they’re here,” Ledbetter said on the convention floor after Trump’s speech. “They can stay home—Romney and Kasich, too. This is not their Republican Party anymore.”
Trump couldn’t resist taking a parting dig at his detractors. As his family joined him onstage, with red, white, and blue balloons falling from the rafters and confetti dancing through the air, a Rolling Stones tune began blasting over the loudspeakers.
“You can’t always get what you want . . .”
AS REPUBLICANS DEPARTED CLEVELAND, WATCHING FROM AFAR AS their Democratic counterparts gathered in Philadelphia, Trump could have found any number of weaknesses in the opposition to pick apart. He might have focused the country’s attention on Bernie Sanders getting stonewalled by the Democratic establishment; or on Hillary Clinton being outshone by the speeches given by Barack and Michelle Obama; or on the liberal base’s lukewarm reaction to her pick of Tim Kaine, the Virginia senator and committed Catholic with a pro-life past, as her running mate.
Instead, Trump found himself feuding with a pair of Gold Star parents, Khizr and Ghazala Khan, whose Army captain son, Humayu Khan, had lost his life to a suicide bomber in Iraq. They were so offended by Trump’s rhetoric toward Muslims that they agreed to appear at the Democratic National Convention in late July. Paying tribute to his son, Khizr Khan waved his pocket-size copy of the Constitution and questioned whether the Republican nominee had ever read it. “Go look at the graves of brave patriots who died defending the United States of America,” Khan said. “You will see all faiths, genders, and ethnicities. You have sacrificed nothing and no one.”9
His speech quickly became a viral news sensation. Trump could not resist punching back. Appearing on ABC’s This Week, he observed that Khan was “very emotional” in his speech. Instead of leaving it there, the Republican nominee began to speculate as to why Khan’s wife, Ghazala, who stood silently next to her husband during his speech, had not said anything. Trump wondered aloud whether she was not allowed to speak, presumably because of subservient gender roles in the Muslim tradition.
Just as with his earlier attacks on Judge Curiel, Trump found himself engulfed by criticisms from within his own party—from the likes of McCain, Romney, Lindsey Graham, and of course, Speaker Ryan.
“As I have said on numerous occasions, a religious test for entering our country is not reflective of [our] fundamental values,” Ryan said. “Many Muslim Americans have served valiantly in our military, and made the ultimate sacrifice. Captain Khan was one such brave example. His sacrifice—and that of Khizr and Ghazala Khan—should always be honored. Period.”
Trump seemed to take particular umbrage with Ryan’s rebuke. He threatened to withhold his support for the Speaker in his Wisconsin primary that August, and began saying positive things about Ryan’s challenger, an anti-Semitic buffoon named Paul Nehlen. (Trump, on the advice that he would look foolish when the Speaker prevailed in the primary, later issued a halfhearted endorsement. Ryan won 84 percent of the vote against Nehlen.)
Fortunately for Republicans, they had not cornered the market on intraparty warfare. Days ahead of the Democratic convention, the website WikiLeaks—which was later shown to be working in concert with a Russian campaign to interfere in the U.S. elections—had dumped tens of thousands of hacked emails from the Democratic National Committee. The emails showed, among other things, a clear preference for Clinton over Sanders among DNC staffers who were obligated to remain neutral. DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz resigned ahead of the convention and was replaced by vice chair Donna Brazile, who later confessed that the party committee had unethically conspired to aid Clinton in the primary.10
In a continuation of the Campaign That Nobody Wanted to Win, the Republican nominee kept finding ways to make his opponent a sympathetic figure, even as her own party’s progressive wing was burning with resentment toward her.
On August 9, Trump seemed to suggest that Clinton could be assassinated if she won the White House. “Hillary wants to abolish—essentially abolish the Second Amendment,” he said in North Carolina. “By the way . . . if she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks. Although the Second Amendment people, maybe there is. I don’t know.”11
Having sparked a national frenzy—another one—Trump ran straight into the comforting arms of Sean Hannity. “Obviously you’re saying that there’s a strong political movement within the Second Amendment, and if people mobilize and vote, they can stop Hillary from having this impact on the court,” the Fox News host said.
“Well, I just heard about that,” Trump replied, playing dumb, “and it was amazing because nobody in that room thought anything other than what you just said.”
Except that some people did. Darrell Vickers, a local Republican and Trump supporter who sat directly behind the candidate onstage, had his shocked reaction captured on live television. “I was just absolutely taken aghast,” Vickers later told CNN.12 “Down here in the South, we don’t curse in front of women, we don’t drink liquor in front of the preacher, and we don’t make jokes like that in public.” (Vickers said he would still be voting for Trump.)