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You are here: Home / Elections / Election 2020 / Late Night Schadenfreude Open Thread: The RNC Convention of the Doomed

Late Night Schadenfreude Open Thread: The RNC Convention of the Doomed

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It’s not sparsely attended, we just have a very select audience…

… Admittance to convention sites will be limited to delegates over the first three days, while on the final day, when President Donald Trump delivers his acceptance speech, delegates will be able to bring one guest and alternate delegates will be able to attend, the chairwoman wrote.

McDaniel said Republicans plan to use multiple venues, both indoor and outdoor, throughout the course of the convention while implementing a series of health protocols, such as on-site temperature checks and available coronavirus testing, to deal with the pandemic, which is surging through Florida…

McDaniel’s letter comes as Jacksonville and the wider state of Florida has experienced record-setting COVID-19 case counts and as some Republicans say they won’t be attending.

Speaking with Greta Van Susteren last week, Trump seemed more open to the idea of having a scaled-down event.

“It really depends on the timing,” the president said. “Look, we’re very flexible, we can do a lot of things, but we’re very flexible.”

Former Vice President Joe Biden will accept the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination at a nearly all-virtual convention in Milwaukee one week before Republicans gather in Jacksonville. Delegates were told to stay home because of health concerns.

Biden 2020 — he *wants* to keep his voters alive!

Ronna Romney McDaniel is gonna be the fall guy for this, just as Parscale was for the Tulsa fiasco. Six weeks from now, Lord Velveetamort will absolutely be in the mood to insist that his Faithful follow him into the hellpit, plague or no plague…

… After a venue change, spiking coronavirus cases and a sharp recession, Trump aides and allies are increasingly questioning whether it’s worth the trouble, and some are advocating that the convention be scrapped altogether. Conventions are meant to lay out a candidate’s vision for the coming four years, not spark months of intrigue over the health and safety of attendees, they have argued.

Ultimately, the decision on whether to move forward will be Trump’s alone…

… Trump and his aides had pinned their hopes on creating the pageantry of a formal acceptance speech in Jacksonville, envisioning an arena of packed with supporters, without face masks. Outwardly, the White House and the RNC have said they’re full-steam ahead with the revised plan.

But privately, concerns are mounting, and plans are being drawn up to further scale back the event or even shift it to entirely virtual. Officials who weeks ago had looked for the convention to be a celebration of the nation’s vanquishing of the virus now see it as a potent symbol of the pandemic’s persistence.

“There’s a lot of people that want to do it. They want to be enthusiastic. But we can do that and we can do it safely,” Donald Trump Jr. said. He told Fox News Channel’s “Sunday Morning Futures” that “it’s going to be an awesome event.”…

Guess Uday figures, if he didn’t catch it from his girlfriend after Tulsa, he’s either immune or already compromised. Worse comes to worst, there’s always the ‘Wow, wouldja look at that terrible weather forecast’ excuse, after all. Not as though the Trump Crime Cartel was gonna be stuck with the bill afterwards — and it’s not as though Gov. deSantis’ reputation could be any worse than it already.

Reader Interactions

89Comments

  1. 1.

    gwangung

    Open thread? Gonna go off topic already….

    Am having a Zoom reading of my play, She Devil of the China Seas this Saturday at 7 pm PDT. Folks can rustle up a ticket here.

    A little Mulan, a little Red Sonja (or, as best as you can get on Zoom…)

  2. 2.

    dmsilev

    Conventions are meant to lay out a candidate’s vision for the coming four years

    Yeah, good luck with that. Reliable bootlicker Hannity asked Trump what his agenda and vision for a second term would be, and got, well,

    One of the things that will be really great — the word experience is still good, I always say talent is more important than experience, I’ve always said that — but the word experience is a very important word, a very important meaning.

    “I never did this before, never slept over in Washington. I was in Washington maybe 17 times and all of a sudden I’m the president of the United States, you know the story, riding down Pennsylvania Avenue with our first lady and I say this is great but I didn’t know very many people in Washington, it wasn’t my thing. I was from Manhattan, from New York, and now I know everybody. And I have great people in the administration. You make some mistakes, like an idiot like Bolton, you don’t have to drop bombs on everybody.

    Thats the wilted iceberg lettuce of word salad, and it didn’t even try to answer the ‘what next’ question.

  3. 3.

    Punchy

    Perhaps I’m just an asshole for thinking this, but if this sparks enough COVID deaths in North FL (motto: we hate the n’s), the state may go blue in spite of Shitbag Just Us Roberts. I know I shouldn’t be wishing death, but I’m all out of FTG at this point.

  5. 5.

    Fair Economist

    What’s going to make the convention of the damned even MORE exciting is that most florida schools start 2 weeks before, so the schools will be turbocharging FL’s already nightmarish epidemic by the time the delegates get there. We know from the Israeli experience schools cause disaster without careful control measures FL won’t have. The epidemic in FL is already so bad a superspreader event among a few thousand delegates will be barely noticeable but the school fiasco will probably produce an intolerable surge shortly after the convention so it will probably take some morally if not scientifically deserved blame.

  6. 6.

    frosty

    @Punchy: No, you shouldn’t be wishing for deaths. Just hospitalizations or debilitating complications that last until November 4th.

  8. 8.

    Aleta

    Attendance will be mandatory for delegates the first three days, while on the final day, delegates will be pressured to bring one guest and alternate delegates will be enticed with loot and actors paid to attend.

  9. 9.

    gwangung

    @West of the Rockies:

     

    @frosty:

     

    This is “merely” a staged reading; the pandemic wiped out the actual full production. But I have almost all of the intended cast in for the reading…and we’ll see if we can generate enough interest for a full production when things get better..

    (There was going to be a visual joke about her rejecting a replica of the classic Sonja costume, but, alas, it doesn’t quite play in Zoom…)

  11. 11.

    Chetan Murthy

    @frosty: I’m with you in the sense that I know that lots and lot decent people will die and be crippled, suffer greatly.  But I’m also with @Punchy:, with NFLTG for all the rest.  The moral imbeciles who voted for Shitmidas, voted to destroy our Republic, vote again and again to subjugate our fellow Americans who are people of color, women, of differing sexuality?  N.F.L.T.G.

    Notwithstanding, you’re right: a lot of innocent and decent people will be made to suffer and die, and this alone is enough to not wish for it.  But OTOH, I’ll laugh and laugh when DeathSantis gets it.

  13. 13.

    CaseyL

    @Grover Gardner:  H’mmm… do I want to see the GOP Convention swept out to sea, or do I want to see them gasping for air in an ICU?

    Decisions, decisions…

  14. 14.

    NotMax

    @gwangung

    Break a virtual leg.

    The title is evocative enough to have triggered recall of seeing another memorably titled show, the original off-Broadway production of Vampire Lesbians of Sodom lo these many decades ago.

    ;)

  17. 17.

    Amir Khalid

    @FelonyGovt:

    Thank you. It’s Angela Merkel’s and David Hasselhoff’s birthday too. But make sure you don’t book a flight for this date.

  18. 18.

    Jay

    Oregon Public Broadcasting confirms tweets today that federal officers in camouflage but no agency identification or badges, driving unmarked non-government rental cars, are grabbing protestors off streets in Portland and not talking w local authoritiest.co/sfY9TUkbDI— David Burbach (@dburbach) July 17, 2020

  20. 20.

    NotMax

    Suppose the inner comics geek is beholden to point out that in the Marvel universe the so described she-devil is Shanna.

    The original incarnation of Red Sonja at Marvel could have been aptly titled Sonja the Boobarian.

    :)

  21. 21.

    Kent

    Please please please.  We need at least 3 or 4 GOP Senators to catch covid at this thing and spend the fall on respirators so that the Senate can’t function without Dem votes.  No more judges or rubber-stamped nominations to fill out Trump’s term.      Would be a fitting end to this horror to have a GOP Senate Covid Caucus in the hospital on ventilators.

  29. 29.

    jl

    I guess if they want to get a bunch of GOP leadership sick just in time for the campaign, fine by me. It’s a free country. Go right ahead. McConnell’s probably ordered his rich old geezer colleagues not to go since he’s worried about holding the Senate.

    The advice Stephen Moore is giving Trump, to block an extension of the unemployment rate is so insane and self-destructive, I have to wonder who Moore is really working for. If Moore is working for the money bags who figure the GOP road show might soon be over, why not just go for it, force as many people two go out and work and die, export as much meat to China as possible and then count the loot.

    McConnell is talking like he’s using unemployment extension as a bargaining chip. But Moore’s advice is insane for Trump’s re-election. But Trump is so dumb, he’ll buy anything.

  30. 30.

    NotMax

    @eddie blake

    In the 1980s text adventure computer game Leather Goddesses of Phobos if you tried in any way to command the computer to remove it, the response was always a curt “But the brass bikini is so becoming.”

    :)

  31. 31.

    Odie Hugh Manatee

    @frosty:

    CV-19 deaths are going to happen and I’m hoping that as many of those deaths as possible are conservative. I can’t help it, I have a soft spot for people who want to live and it’s clear that too many conservatives are willing to die for this.

    I hope they get their way as I’m all out of fucks to give for them.

  33. 33.

    jl

    @jl: I meant to type ‘unemployment covid benefits’ not ‘unemployment rate’.

    But, I am a well known slob, so…

  35. 35.

    opiejeanne

    @Amir Khalid: Happy birthday!

    Here it’s still July 16th, so for a few more minutes it’s my youngest  child’s wedding anniversary. Four years ago we had a wedding here in our front yard. Her big sister and fiancé catered it, her friends bought flowers at the flower market and made the table arrangements, we rented a big tent because one never knows if it will rain in July in the Seattle area.

    It was a swell party.

  36. 36.

    opiejeanne

    @Jay: The governor has told them to leave. It’s HHS, the director has ignored the governor, and there is a report that they’ve shot one person.

  37. 37.

    mrmoshpotato

    @Punchy:

    Perhaps I’m just an asshole for thinking this, but if this sparks enough COVID deaths in North FL (motto: we hate the n’s), the state may go blue in spite of Shitbag Just Us Roberts. I know I shouldn’t be wishing death, but I’m all out of FTG at this point. 

    At this point with the plague trash, it’s not wishing death.  It’s just being a realist.

    Do you think Dump will dress as the Lone Ranger?  (Orange dumbfuck, the Lone Ranger didn’t have a mask over his mouth.)

  38. 38.

    opiejeanne

    @Jay: I feel like no one here has noticed your post or what’s going on in Portland OR., and it makes me feel a little panicky.

    Federal agents have essentially invaded Portland Oregon and are arresting people out on the street.

  40. 40.

    NotMax

    Several minutes of agita on Thursday.

    Power blinked out for like a half a second – enough to have to reset the clocks. Everything came back on except the router (which is only about a year old). Checked connections and the reset control and still nothing. Several choice words of invective were expressed.

    Finally got down on hands and knees and traced the power cord to the plug, which had somehow, some way, worked itself just loose enough that it was no longer making the necessary contact with the outlet.

  42. 42.

    opiejeanne

    Governor Kate Brown

    @OregonGovBrown

    · 7h

    This political theater from President Trump has nothing to do with public safety. The President is failing to lead this nation. Now he is deploying federal officers to patrol the streets of Portland in a blatant abuse of power by the federal government. twitter.com/KATUNews/statu…

  46. 46.

    Just Chuck

    At this point, who wants to be in a crowd surrounded by ill people?

    The Beastie Boys were Ill People.  The Republican delegates are merely sick.

  47. 47.

    Jay

    A flag crafted to show solidarity with Riot Ribs, the free kitchen that was taken down via extreme police violence this morning. pic.twitter.com/m2JPCQ2P6p— Robert Evans (The Only Robert Evans) (@IwriteOK) July 17, 2020

    They were feeding people, providing medical care, to everyone, Protestors, unhoused, even just passerbys, Masks, gloves, PPE,

    Just destroyed.

  48. 48.

    Jay

    Twenty minutes pass and little has changed, save for the fact that police are now shining spotlights into the crowd in response to the crowd shining flashlights at them.This is the only proportionate use of Police force I have witnessed in 51 days of Portland protests. pic.twitter.com/oqJze2RpIA— Robert Evans (The Only Robert Evans) (@IwriteOK) July 17, 2020

    51 days,

  62. 62.

    Jay

    @frosty:

    people are dying, being crippled, the first amendment has become  a joke, but Grammar Nazi’s gotta Nazi.

    got it, have some fucking pie.

  64. 64.

    prostratedragon

    @opiejeanne:

    The Official Story wins Best Foreign Language Film at the 1986 Oscars

    The story concerns an upper middle class Buenos Aires teacher and housewife, a rather sophisticated woman, who has arrived at the year 1983 with little understanding of the events of the Dirty War that had swept up her country for the previous 7 years. Her education comes as she realizes that her adopted daughter could have been taken from her (the daughter’s) mother in one of many such atrocities of that war. It is an overview of complicity. The movie can probably be found with English subtitles on youtube, at least for now.

  67. 67.

    Shalimar

    @Aleta: If it’s like every other Republican convention, the only locals who delegates might know will be prostitutes.  The +1s on that last day are going to be interesting.

  69. 69.

    Aziz, light!

    It’s my workplace being vandalized in downtown Portland by our local anarchist contingent, the Portland federal building, along with every other building in the vicinity. We had a 120-year-old statue of an elk on one of the streets there, but that’s gone now. A few weeks ago the yahoos piled plywood around it and set it on fire. These are not Black Lives Matter protesters. They are, for the most part, the same hoodlums who have been destroying property downtown for years now. Our downtown is a ghost town, many of its restaurants and stores boarded up for protection from these mostly young white men roaming the streets in the middle of the night. What really rankles me are the food carts, the many trucks and trailers around downtown that are owned mostly by minority families trying to eke out a living, the Asian and Mexican and Arab food carts that feed us downtown workers. Many of these have been obliterated with spray paint covering every side and some have been physically damaged. What cause are these guys protesting exactly when they attack these working people? I want these spray paint clowns arrested and I’m not sure I care who does the arresting. You guys be sure to let me know what your righteous attitudes will be when it is your place of employment being assaulted every night. There’s difference between actual protesters and anarchist assholes.

  70. 70.

    NotMax

    @Shalimar

    “$10 for a picture with Scott Baio? That’s outrageous!”

    “You don’t understand. We pay you the sawbuck. Don’t tell him, though, he doesn’t know about the arrangement. And you’re in luck. Yesterday it was five bucks and practically nobody bit.”

    //

  73. 73.

    Amir Khalid

    @Jay:

    Heve you considered learning English? I mean, really learning it, so that you don’t embarrass yourself like you used to do with your spelling?

  75. 75.

    OzarkHillbilly

    Sometimes I just crack me up. Was reading the AP article and I saw this,

    “For technical reasons, the convention will be unable to formally adopt a new party platform.”
    as
    “For criminal reasons, the convention will be unable to formally adopt a new party platform.”

    Pretty sure it’s more accurate.

  82. 82.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @Amir Khalid: Many years ago Carl Sagan (RIP) noted that the primary constituent of Jupiter’s atmosphere was bovine flatulence. Many years later we find he was, if not technically wrong, at least qualitatively misguided – it is in fact bovine eructation. Yay for the march of science!!

  83. 83.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @Amir Khalid: Also my college girlfriend’s birthday. (Strange, what trivia comes to light when you push the mindbroom into the eaves of the skull.) Who, alas, has been no longer with us for over 2 decades now.

  86. 86.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @Jay: Oh look, it’s our resident Knucklehead Of The Frozen North, who can’t spell, thinks “grammar” was the mom of one of his parents, loves to tell us Yanks what we’re doing wrong from his hovel up in Hoserland even though he understands fuck-all about our country, & in lieu of having any coherent thought posts c&p’d stuff that’s wrong or misleading at least half of the time.

    You need to shut the fuck up & get the fuck out of here, Knuck.

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