Donald Trump accepts the Republican presidential nomination on the South Lawn of the White House on Aug. 27.
Photo: carlos barria/ReutersTrying to encapsulate President Trump’s 70-minute speech to the Republican National Convention on Thursday calls to mind Monty Python’s old gag about an “All-England Summarize Proust Competition.” Mr. Trump touted accomplishments such as negotiating a new North American trade deal, appointing 300 federal judges, and killing “the world’s No. 1 terrorist, by far, Qasem Soleimani.”
He defended his administration’s response to Covid-19, promised a vaccine before the end of the year, and pledged that “together we will crush the virus.” He invoked America’s frontier spirit, mentioned Wyatt Earp and Davy Crockett, and promised to put the first woman on the moon. “How can the Democrat Party ask to lead our country,” he said, “when it spends so much time tearing down our country?”
Mr. Trump condemned “the rioting, looting, arson and violence we have seen in Democrat-run cities, all, like Kenosha, Minneapolis, Portland, Chicago, and New York.” Bad cops must be held accountable, he said, but “the overwhelming majority” of police officers “are noble, courageous and honorable.”
He predicted that Joe Biden would be “the destroyer of American greatness.” He said Mr. Biden had voted for “the Nafta disaster,” supported the Iraq invasion, and hurt American workers by “offshoring their jobs, opening their borders, and sending their sons and daughters to fight in endless foreign wars.”
It almost could have been a typical Trump rally, except with more reading from a script and a smaller, staid crowd. Oh, not to mention scenery provided by the south facade of the White House, plus fireworks spelling out “Trump 2020” behind the Washington Monument, norms and niceties notwithstanding. Ad libbing at one point, Mr. Trump turned around to take in the view of his recent public residence. “What’s the name of that building?” he asked. “The fact is, we’re here, and they’re not.”
To voters who have been watching the Trump show for four years, many of the themes no doubt sounded familiar. Is the president still making anti-Nafta converts at this point? More consequential, possibly, was the continuation, for a fourth day, of the Republican National Convention’s concerted effort to reach out to nonwhite voters.
“Every issue important to black communities,” said Ja’Ron Smith, an adviser to the president, “has been a priority for him: prison reform, rebuilding broken families, bringing jobs back to America—jobs in Cleveland, jobs in Detroit, jobs in Milwaukee.”
Stacia Brightmon, a single mother and Marine veteran, talked about entering an apprenticeship program, “making $16 an hour while I trained to become a pipe fitter helper.” President Trump’s policies, she said, “made it easy for states and companies to give opportunities to hardworking Americans like me.”
“I was once told that the only way I would ever be reunited with my family would be as a corpse,” said Alice Johnson, who received presidential clemency for drug charges. “Six months after President Trump granted me a second chance, he signed the First Step Act into law. It was real justice reform.”
Mr. Trump’s own speech highlighted “long-term funding of historically black colleges and universities,” along with the pre-virus economic data showing “the best unemployment numbers for African-Americans, Hispanic-Americans, and Asian-Americans ever recorded.”
Who knows how successful this approach will be, but the overtures are a healthy development for both the country and the GOP. The white share of the electorate has been slipping for years. Sixty-nine percent of registered voters were white in 2019, down from 73% in 2012, according to the Pew Research Center.
Four years ago, exit polls said Mr. Trump won 8% of the black vote nationally. That statistic is sometimes followed by a factoid about how it outpaced the performances of Mitt Romney in 2012 and John McCain in 2008. But as Jason Riley points out, if you throw out the years when Barack Obama was on the ballot, then 2016 was the GOP’s worst presidential showing among black voters in four decades.
Mr. Trump clearly intends to do better this year, and Mr. Biden apparently knows it. “Both campaigns, guys, tell me that there is a chance that Donald Trump could overperform with African-American men,” NBC’s Chuck Todd said on the air this week. “It’s a concern of the Biden campaign.” If Michigan is decided by 11,000 votes again, that could make all the difference.
Mr. Peterson is a member of the Journal’s editorial board.
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