Exaggeration Wrapped in Grandiosity

Acceptance Speech by President Donald Trump, August 27, 2020. 

Republican National Convention, Fourth Night.

Last night in a speech that ran well over an hour President Trump made his argument for re-election: America faces destruction, but I have done a great job. 

[D]espite all of our greatness as a nation, everything we have achieved is now in danger. This is the most important election in the history of our country.

The setting for this see-saw speech was intended to overpower the senses. More than a thousand guests sat on the White House lawn to look up to the president on the portico in front of a profuse display of American flags. Some of those guests were federal employees from the Border Patrol and Tennessee Valley Authority, who were asked to stand and take a bow. This seems to flout the Hatch Act, but as White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows observed, “No one outside the Beltway really cares.” He’s probably right about that.

When President Trump wasn’t bragging on his accomplishments, he was excoriating his opponent:

We have spent the last four years reversing the damage Joe Biden inflicted over the last 47 years. Biden’s record is a shameful roll call of the most catastrophic betrayals and blunders in our lifetime. He has spent his entire career on the wrong side of history. 

If the left gains power, they will demolish the suburbs, confiscate your guns, and appoint justices who will wipe away your second amendment and other constitutional freedoms.

Biden is a Trojan horse for socialism. 

The president’s speech is the blueprint for what we will hear from him and his surrogates this fall. Democrat-run cities are hotbeds of extremist politics and violence; the Trump Administration built up the economy to unprecedented heights and will do so again while protecting the suburbs and rural areas from the forces of evil. 

Exaggeration wrapped in grandiosity can be potent.