UPDATE, AUGUST 26:

I joined BBC Talkback’s William Crawley on Tuesday to discussing the opening of the Republican National Convention and, amid Coronavirus and economic downturn, the “scorched-earth” politics hoping to keep the White House and Senate in November.

The other participant is Trump supporter Jan Halper-Hayes.

Listen to Discussion from 45:59/a>

What you have is an absence of any policies because this isn’t as much a Republican Convention as it is a Trump Convention….

There is very little that will be said about Coronavirus, with almost180,000 Americans dead. There will be very little said about dealing with the economic downturn. Because what can you say, given your mismanagement?

So instead, you whip up this idea of “culture wars”, that racially-coded declaration that “they’re coming to take your suburbs”.

EA on BBC: Jacob Blake Protests, The Conventions, and Hope v. Fear


ORIGINAL ENTRY, AUGUST 25: Liam Kennedy, of EA’s partner The Clinton Institute America Unfiltered, joined RTE’s Good Morning Ireland on Monday to preview the Republican National Convention.

This is going to be a reality-show extravaganza. Donald Trump is not going to play this quietly.

Liam explains why so many Trump family members are key speakers — even as other Trump relatives, including his sister and niece, portray him as a devious, untrustworthy, unsavory man: “I imagine he’s lining up the [others] members to provide slightly sunnier character references.”

And then’s there the matter of scorched-earth politics:

The idea is to attack Joe Biden as some sort of stooge of the socialist left which, for anyone who know Biden’s career, is laughable.

The idea is to make people afraid. That’s the core theme of the next four nights: to instill fear in Americans. This is not someone who wants to unite Americans, as Joe Biden did last week.