CNN’s Chris Wallace gave a blistering review of Donald Trump’s “rambling” Republican National Convention speech on Thursday, expressing disappointment at the former president’s failure to deliver the more unifying tone his campaign had been promising.
“The Trump campaign had talked so much about how we were going to see a softer, more reflective Donald Trump,” the former Fox News host said during a CNN panel discussion.
He said he momentarily believed it would be “a different Donald Trump” early on in the address when Trump said, “I am running to be president for all of America, not half of America.”
Wallace added, “But then, for all of that, it seemed as if he couldn’t keep up the act.”
Trump’s more subdued tone lasted 17 minutes . Then, he began attacking the criminal cases against him as “partisan witch hunts,” called Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) “crazy,” and complained that the 2020 election was rigged, among other lies over the course of the 92-minute-long spiel.
“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,” Wallace said.
Earlier, Wallace was among numerous media figures who speculated that viewers might see a gentler and more moderate Trump following Saturday’s attempt on his life, as “The Daily Show” pointed out in a roundup captioned, “No way the media fell for ‘Trump’s New Tone’ again, right??”
Trump and his team had teased that the speech would be very different from what was originally planned after the former president survived an assassination attempt. They decided it was time to “bring the country together.”
Trump’s advisors had said he didn’t even plan to mention President Joe Biden by name. But he did when he argued that Biden has been worse than the last 10 worst presidents combined.
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