7 Surreal RNC Moments That Had Nothing To Do With Melania Trump Or Ted Cruz

Ok. It was difficult but we made it. It was an embarrassing and for many of us I believe, a physically painful week. But RNC 2016 is over and we shall live to fight another day.

Monday offered a momentary glint of hope that the #NeverTrump Republicans might finally get their shit together. Psyche. We saw it play out on TV, but the total madness also included a Where’s Waldo?-like hunt for the convention Secretary. A text message with her headshot was sent to aid revolters on the chase. Just another confused team of Pokemon Go players. Tragic.

The scars of Melania’s plagiarized speech linger. Not so much the irony of Trump’s wife and her team lifting passages from the First Lady, the spouse of a democratic President Trump has built his entire political career on delegitimizing. But the days of denial, finger pointing and posturing before Meredith McIver took the fall.

On Wednesday night, second place Republican primary finisher and reviled bastard Ted Cruz achieved the impossible. He threw actual ice on the Trump nomination by telling the nation to vote its “conscience” in November, but still came off as a smug faced, self-serving hater. I’m not sure anyone but the Texas Senator could manage to heap deserved humiliation on a farcical candidate and not gain a single Q Score point. Cruz’s popularity even amongst GOP voters is upside down. Being denied access to mega donor Sheldon Adelson’s hotel suite after his act of nationally televised party betrayal is telling. #NeverTrump never meant #GoCruz for any of us.

And of course there was the orange one’s own predictably arrogant and rambling Thursday night acceptance speech. The official 2016 Republican nominee for President did in fact, as our own Justin Baragona wrote, Literally Call for a Race War. God bless conservative America!

However while these four major crap fests were occurring and gobbling national attention, there were plenty of other insane side shows. These less covered events still offered schadenfreude for the less charitable liberal, ignominy for those acutely aware a sociopolitical low point was playing out on stage for all the world to see. Here are seven other absurdities you may have missed during RNC 2016:

1. Staffers working for the California delegation infected with norovirus. They were also staying at a water park. You can’t make this stuff up. How many Ohio children and their families fell ill because of this?
2. Representative Steve King asserts white supremacy on CNBC. A national lawmaker in 2016 publicly uttered THIS FUCKING SET OF WORDS: “This whole ‘white people’ business, though, does get a little tired, Charlie. I mean, I’d ask you to go back through history and figure out, where are these contributions that have been made by these other categories of people that you’re talking about? Where did any other sub-group of people contribute to civilization?”
3. D-List celebrity given a speaking slot to reassert tired “Obama is a secret Muslim” theory. The week’s misery is compounded by having to cross two high school crushes off the list – Antonio Sabato Jr. and Scott Baio.
4. Speaking of Chachi, he got bitch slapped on-air by MSNBC’s Tamron Hall. Apparently she’d had more than enough of the misogynist’s religious hypocrisy. Thank you.
5. Rudy Giuliani continues to make us forget we regarded him well after 9/11. “There was a certain energy flowing through the arena, a fervor, and as Giuliani built through the various levels of outrage, he began to feed on it. His face puffed up, his eyes bugged out, his arms began to wave wildly, and he thrusted his head upward and outward like Toby Turtle pressing out of a suited shell.”
6. Grieving Americans leveraged with shameless cynicism throughout the convention. Patricia Smith, the mother of Sean Smith who was killed in Benghazi in 2012, has been victimized twice. I can’t say anything negative about a woman who lost her son in a most tragic way and has been unable to cope with the reality surrounding his death. She’s been through hell. But the RNC should be absolutely ashamed of the way they paraded her in front of a crowd thirsty for Clinton blood. Leadership know the things Smith said stand in direct conflict to party’s own findings.
7. Trump enters convention hall with the subtlety of a WWE wrestler. The candidate never let his audience forget that he is a megalomaniac first, an entertainer second. A serious man fit for the job of President of the United States? A thousand times no.

So there you have it. My humble attempt to supplement the obvious list of RNC 2016’s ridiculous occurrences. I’m sure many of us would rather forget. But we can’t and shouldn’t forgive one of our country’s two major political parties for four nights of absolute ignorance, folly and dangerously hateful rhetoric.