MSNBC’s John Heilemann: Republican Convention Has Been ‘Two Days of Political Self-Pleasuring’
MSNBC’s John Heilemann slammed the Republican National Convention on Wednesday, even going so far as to compare it to masturbation. Heilemann told Morning Joe that the Republicans were succeeding in making the election all about President Donald Trump – to their detriment.
“When Melania Trump made the comment that she made in her speech last night it was the first time in five hours of programming that any speaker at the Republican National Convention expressed any sympathy for those that lost lives or jobs because of Coronavirus,” Heilemann said.
“That gives you a sense of how disconnected this event has been from the overriding realities that govern, that have been defining our existence for the past five months. The virus, the economic fallout, and all of the issues related to police brutality and racial justice. It’s an aternative universe that we’ve been living in for these last couple days.”
“I think you’re right that yesterday you could see very ham-handed attempts to do very basic work,” he said. “Everything is in primary colors with this party, but the big challenges they have, they need to inspire a bunch of — not just their base, but to drive out people who would have been part of the Trump base in 2016 but didn’t vote. White non-college voters in battleground states.”
“So there’s all of that red meat they’re throwing. And the contradictory impulse to solve the problem that Donald Trump has with upscale suburban moderate voters, women particularly. Those two are strategic objectives are at odds and so you have this not only alternative universe but a schizophrenic kind of convention playing out.”
“And then the other big challenge is they must make this election a choice and disqualify Joe Biden. If this race is a referendum on Donald Trump, he’s gonna lose this race. And I think everyone in Donald Trump’s team understands that. I think that’s certainly the view of most political analysts who’ve seen this thing playing out, and yet everything about this is about Donald Trump.”
“It’s not serving the purpose of trying to make this election a choice, and make it about Joe Biden. It’s making it all about Donald Trump. And so the spectacle of two days of political self-pleasuring that we’ve seen on Donald Trump’s part, everything being about him, him being omnipresent and pervasive, seems to fight the kind of fundamental strategic objective of what this convention should be about.”
Watch the video above, via MSNBC.
