Welcome to Opinion’s commentary for Night 1 of the Republican National Convention. In this special feature, Times Opinion writers rate the evening on a scale of 0 to 10: 0 means the night was a disaster for Donald Trump and his party; 10 means it could lead to a big polling bump. Here’s what our columnists and contributors thought of the event, which included speeches from Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, Senator Tim Scott and Sean O’Brien, the president of the Teamsters, who was given a prime slot.
Best Moment
Kristen Soltis Anderson Donald Trump appearing in public was powerful. Smart to follow it with two good, very unconventional Republican convention speakers — Amber Rose and Sean O’Brien — who demonstrated how Trump is trying to reshape the G.O.P. coalition with voters Democrats have taken for granted.
Binyamin Appelbaum President Biden’s interview on NBC on Monday night, which aired while the convention was in progress, probably helped Trump more than anything that was said on a sleepy first night in Milwaukee.
Charles M. Blow It was the night of Black people (all but one of them men), Hispanics (mostly women) and white women — groups that Republicans are trying to increase their percentages among. Sean O’Brien probably had the most impact, even though his speech tried to walk the middle of the road. At times it felt as though he was speaking at the wrong convention. Trump’s presence electrified the crowd. But there was a bit of strain and fatigue in his face, sometimes looking as if he might be on the verge of tears, which I guess is understandable under the circumstances.
Jamelle Bouie This was a perfectly average night at a political convention. I suppose you could say, however, that it was helpful for the president of the Teamsters to be onstage.
David Brooks O’Brien. The (partial) pro-union shift among senators like Josh Hawley and J.D. Vance is real. Watching somebody attack the “corporatists” from the stage of the Republican convention is like watching the tectonic plates (partially) shift.
Jane Coaston O’Brien’s speech, which sounded as if it could have been given at Walter Mondale’s nominating convention and thus likely annoyed many attendees.
Michelle Cottle Well, duh. There were plenty of serviceable, even impressive speeches and speakers. But having Trump come strolling into the hall late in the evening — ear bandaged, looking subdued and vaguely emotional — was genius. Trump is a helluva showman.
David French There’s no question: the moment Trump walked into the convention. As he waved to the people in the crowd and repeatedly thanked them, he seemed genuinely moved. There was a degree of vulnerability and emotion that I don’t think I’d ever seen from him. It’s way too soon to know if the trauma of Saturday’s attack will have any lasting impact on Trump, but his emotion and the crowd’s emotion were a reminder that the nation is still recovering from the shock of Saturday’s terrifying near miss.
Katherine Mangu-Ward The best part was the crushing boredom. After the events of the past few days, an evening of dull, stolidly delivered, A.I.-written speeches — punctuated by the playlist of an especially patriotic white wedding — felt restful.
Daniel McCarthy Trump’s appearance in the convention center was the best moment of the night and clearly the one the audience valued the most.
Peter Wehner Trump walking into the family box with a bandage over his wounded ear, unusually somber and even slightly vulnerable. It was an electrifying moment, rarely matched in the history of political conventions.
Kevin Williamson It is easy to make fun of the treacly crooner-Bible salesman Lee Greenwood, who is the James Taylor of Elmer Gantrys, but remember that he was born the month before Biden. And it isn’t just the thudding beat of “God Bless the USA” that makes him seem more animated than the president.
Worst Moment
Anderson Marjorie Taylor Greene.
Appelbaum Republicans hyped a new convention theme of national unity. That lasted until the opening speaker on Monday night, Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, who wasted no time describing the Democratic Party as “a clear and present danger to America.”
Blow What stuck was admonitions that America isn’t racist and that “there are only two genders” and that “if you don’t vote for Donald Trump, you ain’t Black.” What stuck were repeated suggestions that Trump survived the assassination attempt by divine intervention and referring to him as an “American lion,” “the Braveheart of our time” and a fighter. The night actually anchored the party in its culture conflicts — anti-trans and anti-immigrant positions, racial denialism and the intertwining of the political and the religious.
Bouie It is quite striking the extent to which the highest-profile House members — like Speaker Mike Johnson — just do not have the talent to carry an audience at a national convention.
Brooks Tim Scott’s assertion that America is not a racist country. It’s a lot more complicated than that, and the G.O.P. has to acknowledge the sometimes glorious and often shameful historical reality.
Coaston David Sacks has the charisma of the sound of the word “taupe.”
Cottle Lordy, what was up with Scott’s goofy, overamped speech? The content was unremarkable — though that devil-with-a-rifle line was a real crowd pleaser — but the delivery was so much too much. It’s as though he was trying to convince everyone that he’s not super bummed about failing to get the V.P. nod after so much sucking up to Trump.
French Sacks’s speech was one of the worst prime-time convention speeches I’ve ever seen, both in content and crowd response. As a listless crowd sporadically applauded, he delivered a string of accusations against Biden — including the remarkable assertion that Biden “provoked” Vladimir Putin to attack Ukraine — that resembled a social media rant more than a political speech.
Mangu-Ward The 47th time someone mentioned gas prices. While some presidential acts can tweak prices on the margins, they are largely set by global markets. Trump doesn’t deserve this much credit for low prices any more than Biden deserves this much blame for high prices.
McCarthy Johnson was entitled to his opening-night slot, as a home-state senator, but he sounded like exactly what he was: a politician from a bygone age, with little to say in the new party of Trump and Vance.
Wehner Sacks, a former chief executive of Yammer, saying that Biden provoked Russia to invade Ukraine. As a person who’s worked in three Republican administrations, I found it disorienting to see a Republican convention speaker openly rooting for a Russian dictator against an American ally. And he’s hardly the only one.
Williamson Watching Senator Marsha Blackburn pretend that the G.O.P. has a platform other than whatever Trump has said in the past 20 minutes was both grimly amusing and dispiriting but not as satisfying as watching abortion opponents who got into bed with Trump swallow the betrayal they set themselves up for.
How much does J.D. Vance help or hurt Trump?
Anderson His selection does not necessarily change the 2024 race dramatically, but it does change the likelihood that Trump’s national conservatism movement will remain a strong force in the next generation of the party’s leaders.
Appelbaum Trump appeals to moderate voters by cultivating confusion about his intentions. The choice of Vance makes that a little harder. Trump is doubling down on his own political and economic instincts, and that could scare off some voters.
Blow I got the sense, from speaking to some Republican officials on the floor, that there may be some ambiguity and hesitation about Vance as the vice-presidential pick, although they all had favorable things to say on the record.
Bouie Vance represents the doubling down by Trump on his hardest, most ideological edges. Vance also has a long paper trail that demonstrates both his indifference to the people who might suffer under his preferred policies and his own opportunism and lack of scruples. A bad pick, although I am sure that some observers will find his callowness attractive.
Brooks Vance helps. In 2016, MAGA was a slogan. Over the past eight years, a phalanx of politicians, wonks and activists, like Vance and the folks at American Compass, have filled in the policy and ideological substance. Democrats are going to have to mount a more substantive response.
Coaston Vance is the most Trump pick, so it helps and hurts. Doesn’t widen the tent but deepens it.
Cottle I don’t see Vance moving the needle much. He’s young, smart, media savvy and unlikely to embarrass himself. He’s also a superconservative white guy who has gone all in on the lib-trolling, election-denying MAGA thing, which seems unlikely to expand the ticket’s appeal much beyond the already Trump-smitten base.
French Vance hurts Trump, but only slightly. He’s not the man you choose to reach wavering independents. A former scathing Trump critic, he might be the most aggressive populist Trumpist in the Senate, and he ran 19 points behind the Republican governor, Mike DeWine, in Ohio when Vance won his Senate seat in 2022. He has a compelling personal story and is likely to be a capable debater, but on balance, his extremism does more to hurt Trump than help.
Mangu-Ward Vance is still in his formative years as a politician. The baby-faced Vance of “Hillbilly Elegy” was an outspoken Never Trumper, which will furnish juicy attack-ad fodder. In recent years, however, as his views have evolved (or sycophantically flipped, if you’re being less generous), Vance has consistently moved in the direction of using more state power to advance an illiberal agenda. Who knows what he will do next?
McCarthy Vance is half the ex-president’s age but as deeply committed to his right-leaning populism, and then some. The choice shows Trumpism has a future in the Republican Party and isn’t about one man. Rust Belt states like Pennsylvania and Michigan gave Trump the Electoral College votes that made him president in 2016, then awarded their votes to Biden in 2020. Vance is the best choice Trump could have made to win back the places he lost between 2016 and 2020.
Wehner It won’t influence the outcome in a single state. The pick’s importance is what it signifies: an effort by Trump to institutionalize the MAGA revolution. Insurrectionism is in; so is invective. This is a massive blow to the G.O.P.’s internationalist wing. It’s also an encouragement to cynics and bootlickers everywhere.
Williamson Vance’s impact will be modest. He is young, which is interesting, but has no real record, and only eight years ago, he was a venture-capital dork nobody had ever heard of. He is not an electrifying speaker, and his habit of repeating Moscow’s foreign policy talking points may cause trouble.
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