Joe Scarborough and John Heilemann Trash Trump’s RNC Speech: ‘They Didn’t Land Any Punches’

MSNCB’s Joe Scarborough and John Heilemann were not impressed by President Donald Trump’s acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention on Thursday night. The Morning Joe host and the political analyst saw a desperate Trump missing his target.

In an extensive conversation, Heilemann explained that Democrats had been worried about the potential impact Trump’s speech might have but after he made it last night, that worry evaporated.

“Then last night came along and I heard a large, collective exhalation of relief because I think the view of Trump’s speech last night was, in addition to the optics we talked about earlier, that the speech itself was bad, was long, was boring.”

“Trump did not seem — he’s always bad on teleprompter, he likes to riff, he likes to extemporize, they did not want him to do that last night clearly. A 70-minute speech where he did not have that much energy through most of it. He also has trouble reading. So the speech was delivered in a kind of halting way. And two other things about it. One of them was the critique of Joe Biden.”

“He mentioned Joe Biden 41 times last night. In 2016, he mentioned Hillary Clinton 15 or 16 times and that seemed like a lot. He mentioned Joe Biden 41 times last night and the critique of Biden was so over the top, was so hyperbolic that it lost a lot of its force. It seemed like it was so exaggerated and you wondered whether it was really gonna move anybody who wasn’t already in the MAGA camp.”

Heilemann went on to point out that Trump had totally failed to mention Jacob Blake.

“The Democrats coming in to this week were very concerned that they would throw everything at Joe Biden and somehow something would land. It didn’t land,” Scarborough said.

“I don’t think they landed any punches. First of all, as you said, because unlike, let’s say, Ronald Reagan, Donald Trump is very bad on the teleprompter. I certainly understand why his staff would have him reading from a teleprompter from the White House instead of just going on riffs but looking back he would have been better going on riffs and having one of his — I mean, if he had themes to follow, if he had promises that he was going to make for the second term, that would be one thing but there are no new themes or new promises.”

“So that didn’t make any sense. I want to touch on something else here that you said. And I can’t repeat this enough. The Trump campaign is making a terrible mistake with their hyperbolic attacks on Joe Biden,” Scarborough went on.

“They’re overselling the case. People know Biden. If you want to say he’s a bumbler, sometimes he says stupid things, sometimes he stumbles around and he’s been doing it for 40 years, that’s fine. But these hyperbolic attacks that he’s Stalin or that he’s Che Guevara or something … this is a guy who’s been attacked for being too cozy with banks and credit card companies and Delaware corporations his entire career. So people know Joe Biden.”

Watch the video above, via MSNBC.