RNC 2020: What to expect from Trump’s coronavirus-marred coronation

Joe Sommerlad looks at the upcoming ceremony that will see the president formally nominated to take on Joe Biden, an event downsized and pushed online by the pandemic to the candidate's evident frustration

Trump will have a difficult job convincing most that they are better off now than they were in 2016 (EPA)

Donald Trump appears to see no distinction between the powers of his office and that of a despotic medieval monarch, often operating with blithe disregard for the niceties of the constitution or the moderating role of Congress.

“When you strike at a king, you must kill him,” he tweeted on 15 February, misquoting Ralph Waldo Emerson as his Senate impeachment trial approached its climax.

This president likes to berate his corporate enemies with the threat that he can vanquish their fortunes with the flourish of his signature across an executive order, or tank their stock price with a single frothing tweet, a stunt he tried on Goodyear Tyres last week.

Equally, he pardons friends like Roger Stone without apparently letting his conscience trouble him.

While most kings adore political pageantry, this year’s Republican National Convention (RNC) – at which Trump and Mike Pence will again be crowned their party’s candidates, this time to take on aspiring usurpers Joe Biden and Kamala Harris – looks set to be a decidedly less glitzy affair than this former luxury real estate impresario has been accustomed to.

The Democrats have already held their convention, handing the Republicans an advantage. The GOP has been free to sit back and observe their opposition’s first all-virtual gathering, weighing up which aspects worked and which didn’t before making last-minute tweaks to their own Zoom summit accordingly.

But the Democrats were able to call on the experience and star power of both Obamas and the Clintons – plus Eva Longoria and Julia Louis-Dreyfus – whereas there is no question of 43rd president George W Bush or beaten 2012 candidate Mitt Romney ascending the stump for Trump.

Both men are bitterly estranged from his administration, Romney courageously breaking ranks in the Senate to vote for Trump’s impeachment this spring. He has remained a thorn in his side ever since.

Instead, the Republicans are offering viewers a “four-day celebration of President Donald Trump, culminating in his acceptance speech on 27 August from the White House grounds”, as CNBC phrases it.

This year’s event is being masterminded from Charlotte, North Carolina. A feud with the state’s governor over social distancing briefly saw it relocated to Jacksonville, Florida, only for a fresh coronavirus spike there to prompt a hasty retreat.

Melania Trump and “several of Trump’s adult children” (including Tiffany!) will be opening for him on Tuesday, followed by Pence speaking from the national monument at Fort McHenry in Maryland a day later.

The venue for the vice president’s speech is a curious choice. Trump himself gave his Memorial Day address there in May but previously remembered it as the site where American infantrymen “took over the airports” during the War of Independence in 1775.

The president will give his own acceptance speech on the South Lawn of the White House on Thursday, which has likewise raised eyebrows as it is illegal to hold party political gatherings on federal property. Also, while Trump and Pence may be exempt from the Hatch Act prohibiting government employees from engaging in partisan activities, West Wing staff are not and could risk violating it should they assist campaign aides in readying the broadcast.

The rest of this year’s RNC speakers from the party ranks amount to a roster of Trump apologists and include secretary of state Mike Pompeo, housing secretary Ben Carson, former ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley, Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell, House minority leader Kevin McCarthy, South Dakota governor Kristi Noem, obliging senators Tim Scott, Tom Cotton and Joni Ernst and friendly congressmen Dan Crenshaw and Steve Scalise.

But it’s the selection of CPAC-style guests that is most revealing in an event whose theme is “Honouring the Great American Story”.

Mark and Patricia McCloskey – better known as “the St Louis gun couple”, who went viral in late June after marching out of their Missouri mansion barefoot to hold firearms on a group of Black Lives Matter demonstrators – will be addressing the invisible crowd.

Joining them is Nick Sandmann, the MAGA hat-wearing Catholic school student who was filmed apparently staring down a Native American demonstrator at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington last year, as well as Planned Parenthood clinic director turned anti-abortion activist Abby Johnson and policeman’s widow Ann Dorn.

Mark and Patricia McCloskey pointing guns at Black Lives Matters protesters in St Louis in June (AP)

These individuals are being wheeled out to put a human face either to the Trump administration’s white cultural grievance themes or more traditional conservative concerns.

While the McCloskeys and Sandmann will be presented as ordinary Americans vilified by the “mainstream media” for taking a stand against anti-police rhetoric and political correctness respectively, Johnson and Dorn’s presence speak to fears of family values under threat.

As for Trump himself, the president will have to follow Biden’s own scathing “season of darkness” acceptance speech with a more convincing case for a second round of his leadership than he has managed thus far.

Speaking at Mount Rushmore on the Fourth of July, the president scaremongered about left-wing anarchists tearing down American history in the wake of George Floyd’s murder. But that was just a smoke bomb tossed to distract from his own bungled handling of a pandemic that has left 175,000 Americans dead (and counting), the economy mired in recession and unemployment the likes of which has not been seen since the Great Depression.

Trump will have a difficult job convincing most that they are better off now than they were in 2016 and that a Biden presidency will make matters worse. How could it?

For the GOP itself, which has bought into Trumpism wholesale and has lately invited the likes of “proud Islamophobe” Laura Loomer and QAnon conspiracy theorist Marjorie Taylor Greene into its order (both heartily welcomed by Trump), this RNC amounts to nothing less than a final, desperate throw of the dice.