Night's speech, when Donald Trump accepted his nomination as presidential candidate, was weak – both in terms of content and delivery, according to US expert Frida Stranne.
One of the weaker acceptance speeches I have heard and I don't think he got as much enthusiasm from the audience as he usually does.
The speech is intended to fire up the campaign and the convention is a starting gun before the final sprint to the election. The idea is to energize the party as a whole and highlight important issues.
He didn't reach out and the content was more vague than clear, says Frida Stranne to TT.
Meanwhile, other speeches at the convention have been outstanding, says Stranne. For example, one of Donald Trump's grandchildren and vice presidential candidate J D Vance held a better speech in terms of what they want to achieve.
Overall, other strong speeches made the convention successful for the party's purposes, emphasizes Stranne.
Unity?
After the assassination attempt, Donald Trump told Washington Examiner that the acceptance speech would be rewritten and that "it will be a completely different kind of speech now". The speech now included bits about a united USA and Trump said that the division and discord in the country must be healed.
This is a different tone than before and he didn't attack President Joe Biden as harshly as he usually does, says Stranne.
A assassination attempt is of course a shocking thing that can lead to change for anyone. But it's too early to say if the changed rhetoric means any kind of political change.
The speech was not without sharp criticism of both Democrats and Biden, as well as the witch hunt that Trump believes he is being subjected to.
It was a lot about how good the US was when he was president and how bad it is now. And there were a lot of factual errors in those claims.
For example, he said that millions of people have died due to illegal immigration and that the economy flourished when he left the presidency.
Harder border control
The presidential candidate highlighted his main issues, which shed light on what one can expect from politics: border control and economy. He opened up, for example, to start drilling for oil.
Trump talked about deporting illegal immigrants but did not focus on specific groups, instead saying that all are welcome – in a legal way. The rhetoric also dealt with illegal immigrants taking jobs from black and Latin American citizens.
A way to attract swing voters, Stranne believes, those who do not easily vote for Democrats but who thought Trump was too controversial, but above all to win black and Latino votes.
