Chris Wallace judges Trump’s speech horribly

CNN’s Chris Wallace on Thursday sharply criticized Donald Trump’s “rambling” speech at the Republican National Convention, expressing disappointment that the former president failed to strike the more unifying tone he promised during his campaign.

“There was so much talk during the Trump campaign that we would see a softer, more thoughtful Donald Trump,” the former Fox News host said during a panel discussion on CNN.

He said that early in his speech he thought for a moment that it would be “a different Donald Trump” when he said: “I am running to be president for all of America, not for half of America.”

Wallace added: “But despite all that, it seemed he couldn’t keep up acting.”

Trump’s muted tone lasted 17 minutes, then began attacking the criminal charges against him as a “partisan witch hunt,” calling Representative Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) “crazy,” and complaining that the 2020 election was rigged. Over the course of his 92-minute speech, he spread more lies, among other lies.

“Frankly, it was a long speech. It was a rambling speech. It was an older man’s speech, and I couldn’t help but think that the people who are going to be happiest tonight are not the people at Trump headquarters, but the people, the Democrats, maybe at Biden headquarters,” Wallace said.

Wallace, like many other media figures, had previously speculated that viewers would see a softer, more moderate Trump following Saturday’s assassination attempt. The Daily Show newspaper noted this in a summary headlined “There’s no way the media has fallen for ‘Trump’s new tone’ again, has there??”

Trump and his team had indicated that the speech would be very different than originally planned after the former president survived an assassination attempt. They decided that it was time to “bring the country together.”

Trump’s advisers had said he did not even plan to mention President Joe Biden by name, but he did so when he argued that Biden was worse than the last 10 worst presidents combined.

Related…