It was Vice President Mike Pence’s night and he tried to make the most of it, with a lot of truth-bending and a few outright lies.
It was a night short on reality and long on revisionist history. It was as if the virus that is killing 1,000 Americans a day is over, and the economy that counts millions of unemployed is roaring along without a hitch.
The theme for Day 3 of the Republican National Convention was “Land of Heroes” and Pence was assigned to make the case for Donald Trump, especially his support of the U.S. military and local police forces across America. But he also sought to soften Trump’s rough-edged image.
“Picking up on a thread from First lady Melania Trump’s speech on Tuesday night,” said the Washington Post, Pence assured Americans “that, whatever the public appearance, President Trump is a caring, empathetic and driven leader behind closed doors.”
Pence had plenty of competition for the nation’s attention Wednesday night — and not just from his ever-present, camera-loving boss, who appeared at the close of the event at historic Fort McHenry off Baltimore, where Francis Scott Key wrote “The Star Spangled Banner” during the war of 1812.
An unmasked, un-socially distanced crowd of a couple hundred was there to applaud as Pence accepted the party’s nomination for re-election.
Unlike some keynote speakers during the convention so far, Pence gave at least a nod — plus a pro-Trump twist — to our multiple current crises.
He acknowledged the threat of Hurricane Laura — a potentially catastrophic storm that slammed into southwestern Louisiana early Thursday with 150-mph winds — without offering much for coastal residents to cling to.
His words of encouragement to those facing what experts called an “unsurvivable” storm surge: “Stay safe and know that we’ll be with you every step of the way.”
Pence implied that somehow the Covid-19 pandemic is over, which it certainly is not.
“Mr. Pence, the head of the government’s coronavirus task force, depicted Mr. Trump as a heroic leader in the crisis and cast the federal response as a success, even as the U.S. death toll approached 180,000 this week,” reported the New York Times.
Most medical experts say Trump actually wasted precious time in February and continually played down the seriousness of the coronavirus.
Pence took that as an opportunity to attack Democratic nominee Joe Biden — and to make a startling prophesy.
“Last week, Joe Biden said ‘no miracle is coming,'” he said. “What Joe doesn’t seem to understand is that America is a nation of miracles and we’re on track to have the world’s first safe, effective coronavirus vaccine by the end of this year.”
Few experts believe that is likely in so short a time.
In his prerecorded speech, Pence never mentioned Jacob Blake, the 29-year-old Black man shot seven times in the back by Kenosha WI police on Sunday, or the subsequent boycotts by pro basketball and baseball players that began on Wednesday.
He presented it all as a straightforward matter of “law and order,” adding that “the violence must stop, whether in Minneapolis, Portland or Kenosha.”
He called Biden a “Trojan Horse for the radical left,” and warned darkly that “you won’t be safe in Biden’s America.”
Earlier, a series of unheralded Americans — particularly white women — along with local officials, retired military officers and Republican politicians and operatives, took sharp 2-minute turns bashing Biden.
They accused him of “supporting the horrors of late term abortion and infanticide,” being “hostile to farmers” and part of “the most radical anti-police ticket in history.”
There is no evidence of any of that in Biden’s words or deeds across nearly 50 years of public service.
President Trump will conclude the convention with a speech from the White House on Thursday.
