When former President Donald Trump took the stage at the RNC, it was obvious that something had changed. "I've never seen him like this," Glenn says. "He was humbled." Surviving an assassination attempt sure seemed to change him, and made him realize that only God's will matters. But it wasn't just Trump. Glenn says he also has never seen a Republican National Convention like this. Glenn and Stu review why they have hope for the future of America after this event. But of course, the Left immediately returned to the narrative that Trump will be a fascist dictator. So, Glenn and Stu review the facts, along with the Left's latest conspiracy theory: that Trump staged his own assassination.
Transcript
Below is a rush transcript that may contain errors
GLENN: I've been watching the convention, this week.
And it is the best convention I have seen, and I think it was better than the Reagan conventions. And those were regulated. This -- this had everything you needed in the Republican convention.
It had all of the right people speaking, I thought. All the way through the week. If people spent the time and watched it, actually listened to it.
They saw a very different party, than what they have ever seen before. At least I did. And last night, a very, very different Donald Trump.
I've never seen him like this. Never heard him speak this way. I've never seen him, take the stage the way he did.
He was humbled. And I think, you know, he pushed back on the crowd.
Or the crowd pushed back on him, halfway through the speech. He said, you know, I was not supposed to be here tonight. I'm not supposed to be here.
And they started chanting, yes, you were. Yes, you were. And he said, no. I wasn't.
An assassin wanted me gone. And I wasn't supposed to address you today. But God saved my life. And it was not a moment of boasting. It was a moment, I thought of clarity.
Now, there's something else that happened, that I haven't heard a lot of people talk about. In fact, I haven't heard anybody talk about this yet. And I think it's very, very telling.
Donald Trump has kind of shifted gears into this -- into this zone of, I know what I know. I know what I feel.
And I know who the other side is, and they're dismissed. He's not fighting them like he was before. Now, that doesn't mean that he's not fighting -- the one thing about Donald Trump, is he's a fighter. But it's almost as if he feels like the outcome is already there.
And he doesn't need to -- he doesn't need to push the envelope anymore. He just needs to say the truth.
So he came out quiet, humbled. He did about 30 minutes of just riveting material, that he wrote himself. He tore up the speech. Wrote the speech himself. Which is also not Donald Trump. He usually will ad-lib. He doesn't usually write his own material. But he wrote the first 20 minutes. And probably the last 20 minutes as well. The rest of it was kind of a stump speech. But he -- he came out, humbled. And told the story of the assassination. He said at one point, Joe Biden's name. And at one point, when he said it, he said, I'm only going to say this once.
And he talked about telling the story of the assassination, and said, it's too painful. So I won't tell this story again.
You'll hear it the first and last time from me.
Tonight. When he brought up Joe Biden, do you remember the context Stu, on when he first brought up Joe Biden, and then apologized, and said, I'm not going to say his name anymore?
STU: Yeah. He was talking about the 10 worst presidents of all time, and how all of them added up together, wouldn't get to Joe Biden, and that's when he said his name.
GLENN: Right. Right.
And he said, you know, I didn't want -- I didn't want it to be unclear, who that president was, that was worse than the ten worst combined.
He said, but I'm not going to mention his name anymore.
And to me, that may be lowering the temperature, a little bit. I think that's one way to read it. But I think more importantly, I think he strategically is now looking at the fact that Joe Biden is not going to be the nominee.
I just don't believe he's going to be the nominee.
And it's only a matter of time. And Donald Trump, why waste his hour of television, or in his case, 90 minutes of television, making a case against a guy who is not going to be running?
And that's why he kept saying, they. They made these things. This administration did this. And did not say, Donald Trump. Or, did not say Joe Biden.
And did not say Kamala Harris. Now, that -- the Kamala Harris thing, I think is because he just doesn't know that Kamala is running. And why look back at the people that are so far behind you, at this particular point?
But the hopeful side of me says that he didn't mention Kamala. Because he knows it will be Michelle Obama. And I only say hopeful, because Stu will owe me -- I think it's four grand, isn't it, Stu?
STU: Three. It's definitely three. It's 100 percent three. And even that, with inflation, I don't even know if we can really count 3,000. I think we can probably lower.
GLENN: It should be five. It should be five.
Yeah, because three just wasn't what it was six months ago, when we made this bet.
STU: I will say, thank God for Bidenflation. Because by the time I paid this bet off, it will be worth nothing. The three thousand dollars will be like what a loaf of bread is.
GLENN: We won't be able to buy a sandwich. No. We won't. We won't.
All right. So there's a couple of -- a couple of stories here that explain the speech. The first one is the New York Times. And the New York Times, Trump in an RNC speech struggles to turn page on the past. Well, it's a little difficult, you know, when the past involved assassination attempts. You know, a little difficult there.
Donald J. Trump has been a man long undone by himself. He imperiled his presidency and political campaigns with personal grudges, impulsiveness, and an appetite for authoritarianism. You know, it's really strange how they keep saying authoritarianism in Donald Trump, when he's not done anything authoritarian.
I mean, he might say, you know, we should go after the press and take away their license. Until he's reminded, they don't have a license. And he wasn't serious in the first place.
Lock her up!
Until he wasn't serious in the first place.
I can't find the authoritarian streak in him, high school. Of anything that he's actually done.
And then they say, also, he's caused himself problems for his casual approach to the rule of law.
Now, Stu, out of he who shall not be named. And Donald Trump.
Which one has the casual approach to the rule of law?
STU: I don't know. Should we go over the latest cord to overturn his student loan debacle?
GLENN: I know. I know. I read that this morning, in the New York Times, after reading the casual approach to the rule of law. And then, you know, the next story is, oh. Another court said, you can't do that with student loans.
He just keeps trying to go around the law, over and over again.
STU: Yeah. The courts overturned his attempts at student loans. The same day, he announced another attempt, for I think it was $1.5 billion of student loan relief. I mean, he's addicted to giving away money to these people, it's incredible.
GLENN: His unwillingness to accept electoral defeat, and his actions that have resulted in $83 million in penalties, nearly three dozen felony convictions, and additional legal trouble ahead. I mean, that's how they start. And, I mean, you've got to be -- I mean, you're just under the spell of witchcraft.
If -- if you buy into any of that. But on Thursday night, with his right ear still bandaged five days after he was wounded by a would-be assassins bullet. Okay. Can we talk about that for a second, Stu?
STU: Sure.
GLENN: The bandage. What they're trying to say here is he didn't need the bandage.
Do you think he needed the bandage still?
STU: Yes. My guess is, that his ear looks pretty funky right now. And he doesn't necessarily want to walk out on stage looking that way.
GLENN: Yeah. I was actually hoping that he would take off the bandage. Because I think his ear probably looks worse. He lost the top of his ear. And, you know, that's kind of a -- you know, you have to be -- I mean, there's conspiracies thrown around. Now, a third of Democrats believe that he set this up with the Secret Service. What?
To have his ear blown off? I mean, how delusional do you have to be? First of all, he's not the guy who has the in with the Secret Service, and, you know, the spy agencies and everything else.
The conspiracy doesn't -- it falls apart pretty quickly, you know.
STU: Yeah. It's not rational by any means, and this is something, Glenn, you see in polling every single time.
If there is a conspiracy theory about your political opponent, about a third of people will believe it, no matter what it is. Now, you can get higher than that. The Democrats, about 50 percent of them believed that 9/11 was an inside job, when George W. Bush was president. You can find numbers that get higher. But like the baseline number for a conspiracy theory for your political opponent is about a third. It just is.
A lot of people just taking the position they think hurts their opponent more than them actually believing it, I hope.
But there are a lot of people. I mean, Joy Reid is on television every single day, talking about this stuff. I mean, they threw poor Joe Scarborough off the air. What did they think this guy was going to say? I mean, what do they think of Joe Scarborough, if they leave Joy Reid on the air?
GLENN: I never thought of it that way. You're exactly right.
(laughter)
STU: That's amazing.
GLENN: So let me just switch gears here. Joy Reid posted a video of herself, working through a bizarre conspiracy theory, suggesting that the Secret Service helped Donald Trump to create the defiant photo image from the shooting.
She noted the Biden campaign released a lot of detailed medical information about his condition within minutes of the announcement. That he had contracted COVID-19 again.
But when it comes to what happened on Saturday, with former President Donald Trump, this assassination attempt we know almost nothing about his medical condition. Bum-bum-bum.
How come no one has any information about this wound?
We still don't know for sure, whether Donald Trump was hit by a bullet, or whether he was hit by glass fragments. Whether he was hit by shrapnel. We don't have any of those details.
Glass fragments?
Where were the glass fragments from?
Was that the teleprompter, that they say was hit?
STU: There was an initial report. And I don't remember who reported it. But there was a report that it was glass fragments. And it wasn't even a liberal reporter. I remember reading it like, what? What are you talking about?
Then about five minutes later, you can see pictures of it, where both the teleprompters were fully intact. It was a crazy theory. That was debunked immediately. But people who are like Joy Reid who are impossibly stupid continue to believe it.
GLENN: And we have a picture unlike anything we've ever seen. A picture of the bullet, in flight. As it's about to hit his head.
STU: Right!
GLENN: I mean, it's incredible.
STU: Yeah. I think it's actually just --
GLENN: It could have been a fly. A really big mosquito. We don't know. We don't know.
STU: It's just after it passes his head. But, yes, it's about as -- I mean, it's one of the most incredible photos ever taken, and the photographer who took it has basically the most impossible photo you can take.
And it's still not the iconic photo of the incident. Which is kind of -- you go through -- you caught a bullet in your picture. And still like, somebody else got the picture of him standing up with his fist up. With the blood streaming down his face. Which is still the iconic photo of that day.
It's so tuned.
They believe everything.
They believe that, you know, the bandage is fake, that he didn't actually get injured.
Like, I don't know. I thought it was glass that hit him. Now he didn't get injured at all. He doesn't need the bandage. It's just, everything they come up with is dumber and dumber.
GLENN: They're just crazy. Really, truly crazy about him. They lose all reason. And for Joy Reid to be on the air, on MSNBC is remarkable. And not because they should fire her because of her points of view. I don't believe that.
Just because she's dumb as a box of rocks, man. She's crazy. She is crazy.
STU: Yeah. To be fair, I don't believe that Joy Reid has lost all reason. She just didn't have it any point, so it's impossible for her to lose in particular.