The convention highlighted just how much the Republican Party had become an adjunct of the Trump family. The roster of speakers included seven people named Trump and an eighth who aspired to the name. In addition to the president and the first lady, those addressing the conclave included Donald Trump Jr., Ivanka Trump, Eric Trump, Lara Trump, and Tiffany Trump. Even Kimberly Guilfoyle, the girlfriend of the president’s oldest son, had a turn at the podium, where she concluded her speech with a widely mocked cheer, shouting as if addressing a crowd of thousands rather than a camera in a mostly empty room: “The Best! Is Yet! To Come!”
The Trumpification of the party was so complete that the convention produced no platform, the document traditionally adopted by a party every four years to outline its agenda and positions on major issues of the day, an abdication unheard of in modern times. Instead, the Republican National Committee simply released a resolution declaring that it “enthusiastically supports President Trump,” rendering it a party that stood for nothing other than its leader.
Small wonder, perhaps, since that leader could articulate no strong idea of what he wanted to do with a second term anyway. Asked just before the convention about his agenda for the next four years, he rattled off a few accomplishments from his first term, then added, meanderingly, “But so, I think, I think it would be, I think it would be very, very, I think we’d have a very, very solid, we would continue what we’re doing, we’d solidify what we’ve done and we have other things on our plate that we want to get done.”
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