Chris Wallace Hits Back on Claim Trump Has Changed: ‘He Couldn’t Keep Up the Act’ in ‘Rambling’ RNC Speech

CNN’s post-Republican National Committee panel argued that former President Donald Trump’s historically long nomination speech Thursday could affect the outcome of the 2024 election, as it was “rambling” and negative.

Chris Wallace was particularly critical of the speech, which was teased as one that would display a calmer and more unifying tone from Trump just days after a gunman in Pennsylvania tried to kill him.

Trump began a one hour and 32-minute speech by humbly recounting, he said for the last time, the failed assassination attempt from his perspective.

As time wore on, Trump moved away from his prepared remarks and went after two of his political rivals President Joe Biden and Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA). The speech was the longest in the history for a candidate accepting a nomination from either major party, CNN reported afterward.

The network’s panel argued the speech was so long and off-script that it slowed Trump’s momentum following the shooting and amid rumblings about Biden being pressured to drop his reelection bid.

“But there was a lot of that in there there’s something a phenomenon in this campaign called Trump amnesia, and that’s the idea that a lot of people have forgotten what they either liked or loathed about Trump during his four years as president,” Wallace said. “Over the course of this hour-and-a-half, you were reminded of what you liked or loathed about Donald Trump.” He added:

The Trump campaign had talked so much about how we were going to see a softer, more reflective Donald Trump and he had a line early on, he said, ‘I want to be president for all Americans because there’s no victory in winning for half of Americans. I thought, ‘Well, we’re off to the races here, and this is really going to be a different Donald Trump.

But then for all of that, it seemed as if he couldn’t keep up the act. So, we started hearing about “crazy Nancy Pelosi” and cheating on elections and talking about Biden. Frankly, it was a long speech. It was a rambling speech. It was a speech by an older man and I couldn’t help but think that the people that are going to be happiest tonight are not the people at Trump headquarters, but the people, the Democrats, maybe at Biden headquarters, maybe at the headquarters of other people who think they’re going to replace Joe Biden.

Speaking to his network colleague Jake Tapper, Wallace concluded, “Jake, we have ourselves a presidential campaign again.”

Tapper then turned to Anderson Cooper and said, “Just a note, the average film is one hour and 31 minutes long. This speech was longer than the average movie.”

Watch above via CNN.

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