Trump convention speech did little to expand his political base, experts say

MILWAUKEE — Heading into the Republican National Convention, former President Donald Trump said he planned to tear up his previously written convention speech to compose an address focused on national unity after he survived an assassination attempt.

"The speech I was going to give on Thursday was going to be a humdinger," Trump told the conservative Washington Examiner a day after the July 13 shooting at his Bethel, Pennsylvania, rally. "Had this not happened, this would’ve been one of the most incredible speeches. Honestly, it’s going to be a whole different speech now."

But while Trump used his convention night address to issue calls for unity, the 93-minute speech, which started as a somber recounting of his near death experience, eventually segued into the kind of remarks he has long delivered at campaign rallies since 2015. He labeled former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi "crazy," described COVID-19 as the "China virus" and accused Democrats of using the pandemic to "cheat" during the 2020 election.

As Trump and Republicans look to build off the momentum from their four-day convention, political analysts interviewed by Newsday said the speech he made in accepting the Republican presidential nomination for a third time was a missed opportunity to expand his support, particularly among undecided swing voters.

"The speech was a little bit of unity and new Trump, versus the old Trump and messages of divisiveness," said Christopher Malone, a political science professor at Farmingdale State College.

Malone, in a phone interview, said that overall he did not believe the "speech is going to be the deciding factor in this election," but he noted the past week was "encouraging from the perspective of Republicans" because they presented a unified front at the four-day affair.

"I think the question is, will the overall hopeful messaging coming out of the Republican convention — of unity — will that be enough to carry into the general election," Malone said.

Lawrence Levy, executive dean of Hofstra University’s National Center for Suburban Studies, said Trump’s speech likely did little to move the needle among suburban swing voters who were part of his winning equation in 2016 but who abandoned him for Biden in 2020. Suburban swing voters tend to be moderates, turned off by fringe messaging from either party.

"I’m not sure how [Trump] broadens his appeal beyond the base by calling former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi 'crazy Nancy' right after calling for no longer demonizing political opponents, and relitigating mostly false accusations that Democrats stole the election," Levy said. "What’s clear is that he hasn’t accepted that his dark apocalyptic vision did not play well with suburban moderates. Or maybe he has decided that it’s not worth trying to build bridges to them, that he can win without the swing voters who normally decide national elections."

Biden won the overall suburban vote with 51.2% of the nearly 157 million votes cast, compared with the 47.2% Democrat Hillary Clinton garnered in 2016, according to a November 2020 analysis of U.S. election data by Bloomberg News’ City Lab.

Trump’s campaign maintains that battleground suburbs continue to be in play, and Trump himself has pointed to New York congressional wins on Long Island and in the Hudson Valley as evidence of growing support, according to a number of New York GOP leaders interviewed by Newsday at the convention.

"He’s a big believer that Republicans are making inroads in New York," Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-Schuylerville) said at a delegation breakfast on Thursday.

Robert Rowland, who wrote the book "The Rhetoric of Donald Trump: Nationalist Populism and American Democracy," told Newsday that Trump would have been better served by delivering a more concise speech to keep the attention of viewers not inside of the convention hall.

"The 2016 convention speech, it hit the same themes as this year’s speech, but it was a much more tightly organized, coherent message," said Rowland, a communications studies professor at the University of Kansas. "By going off the teleprompter and doing the stream of consciousness, he lost that type of message."

By Laura Figueroa Hernandez

laura.figueroa@newsday.com@Laura_Figueroa

Laura Figueroa Hernandez is the White House correspondent and previously covered New York City politics and government. She joined Newsday in 2012 after covering state and local politics for The Miami Herald.