Trump Has No Closing Argument

George Condon: “Four years ago, candidate Donald J. Trump closed out his long-shot challenge with a steady and surprisingly disciplined reliance on nine words he repeated over and over again: ‘Build the wall,’ ‘Drain the swamp,’ and ‘Lock her up.’ Stemming from his remarkably effective campaign slogan, ‘Make America Great Again,’ it was the most readily digestible message since Franklin D. Roosevelt urged voters not to ‘change horses midstream.'”

“Now, President Trump is concluding his run for a second term with a broad, shotgun-style message that is diffuse, disjointed, and undisciplined. In place of the tight message of 2016, Trump has uttered in just the last seven days of his 2020 campaign almost 200,000 words and what often seemed to be just as many messages. A challenger’s stretch-run clarity and simplicity have been replaced by an incumbent’s disdain for anything that appears scripted, edited, or—most of all—short.”