5 Things to Know About Night 4 of the Democratic National Convention By Tyler O’Neil
Whew! That was torture. The Democratic National Convention (DNC) finally concluded on Thursday. We at PJ Media subjected ourselves to this Gaslighting America Telethon so you wouldn’t have to. Check out our liveblogs from Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, and follow our coverage tomorrow.
Without further ado, here’s a recap of the fourth and final night.
1. Was Joe Biden’s speech racist?
Democratic nominee Joe Biden delivered his acceptance speech at the end of the night, and his speech focused on the theme of choosing “light” over “darkness.” According to the logic of woke cancel culture, that theme seems rather suspect. Here’s a selection of quotes:
The current president has cloaked America in darkness for much too long. Too much anger. Too much fear. Too much division.
Here and now, I give you my word: If you entrust me with the presidency, I will draw on the best of us not the worst. I will be an ally of the light not of the darkness. …
For make no mistake. United we can, and will, overcome this season of darkness in America. We will choose hope over fear, facts over fiction, fairness over privilege. …
May history be able to say that the end of this chapter of American darkness began here tonight as love and hope and light joined in the battle for the soul of the nation.
Biden even said, “Light is more powerful than dark.”
Clearly, Biden meant to contrast his supposedly hopeful vision with Trump’s supposedly divisive and negative vision. But at a time when Chief Executive Officers are rejecting the term “chief” as racist, perhaps Biden’s theme is “problematic.”
Linux recently abolished the terms “blacklist” and “whitelist,” even though King Charles II of England used the term “black list” to refer to a list of people who voted to execute Charles I in the English Civil War. This original meaning is not racist at all, and the idea of such a list goes back at least to the Roman Republic.
But if the term “blacklist” is racist, is the “darkness” and “light” framing of Biden’s speech any more innocent?
On a more serious note, Biden does not represent a hopeful America in contrast to Trump’s supposedly more divisive America. The Democratic nominee shied away from embracing Sen. Bernie Sanders’s (I-Vt.) radical policies during the 2020 primary, but after he won the nomination, he lurched to the left in order to pick up Bernie’s supporters. Biden is just as divisive as Trump — imagine if Trump told black voters “you ain’t black” if they would even consider voting for someone else — and his history of lying about the car accident that tragically killed his wife raises serious questions about his much-touted “decency.” His notorious gaffes just make the whole package even less appealing.
2. Hunter Biden
Hunter is the black sheep of the Biden family. Sure, there’s the Burisma scandal in which Hunter Biden raked in the cash with a corrupt Ukrainian gas firm while his father pressured Ukraine’s president to fire a prosecutor looking into Burisma. But Hunter also broke his promise to get off of the board of a Chinese company that benefitted from his father’s soft hand on China during the South China Sea aggression. Then there’s the paternity scandal in which Hunter cheated on his dead brother Beau’s widow and produced a love child, before going on to marry a woman sixteen years his junior a month after breaking up with his dead brother’s widow.
Perhaps it was no surprise when Joe Biden’s Christmas photo omitted Hunter last year. Biden and his wife Jill have also omitted Hunter’s love child from their list of grandchildren.
So it seemed a bit perplexing when the DNC had Hunter Biden introduce his father’s big acceptance speech.
So naturally, the Trump campaign launched a seven-figure digital ad focused on Hunter Biden and his father’s corruption.
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3. Julia Louis-Dreyfus thinks she’s funny
Actress Julia Louis-Dreyfus emceed the evening, and her “jokes” proved extremely fake and cringeworthy. Andrew Yang apparently thought it was a good idea to insult Vice President Mike Pence’s alleged xenophobia… by mispronouncing his name. I can’t help but think less of Yang after this.
She also tried to crack a few jokes (?) about Trump’s golf score.
Oh, and of course, she had to slam Trump by saying the president needs “tear gas” to get to church.
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4. More vote-by-mail lies
Night 4 included a long segment about voting by mail, with speakers suggesting that there are no legitimate concerns about it and acting as though Americans have no choice in this pandemic.
“Comedian” Sarah Cooper did a lipsynch of Trump warning about mail-in voting. After the performance — was it supposed to be funny? — she claimed, “Donald Trump doesn’t want any of us to vote because he knows he can’t win fair and square.”
“And now, I don’t go to the polls anymore. The U.S. Postal Service does it for me,” a Democrat identified as Seymour said.
“And now we’re seeing our current president sabotage our right to vote, sabotage our democracy,” a woman named Terry charged.
Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson (D-Mich.) falsely claimed that “there is absolutely zero difference between voting by mail and voting absentee.”
Democrats and left-leaning reporters have claimed that the president has launched an “assault” on the U.S. Postal Service. In reality, Trump is not trying to undermine the system. He has merely refused to fork over $25 billion to the post office, which is rapidly becoming insolvent. The Postal Service did receive a $10 billion loan, however. Postmaster General Louis DeJoy has also sought to reform the Postal Service to cut costs.
The USPS has been removing a few mail collection boxes, since surplus collections are a key drag on the budget. (Lest Americans think this is a Trump idea, the Obama administration removed more than 12,000 mail collection boxes.)
The most powerful response to the Democrats’ claims comes from the sainted Dr. Anthony Fauci himself.
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5. Trump caused COVID-19 and Biden will solve it on day one
Throughout the night, Democrats accused Trump of somehow causing the coronavirus pandemic crisis, and suggested that Joe Biden would immediately solve it upon becoming president.
Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wisc.) urged people to vote for Biden and Harris in order to make America “a nation free from COVID.”
One of the down to earth Democrats — not a politician — described the coronavirus pandemic as “this crisis created by our president, Donald Trump.”
Former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg characterized Trump’s response to the coronavirus as a catastrophic failure: “When confronted with the biggest calamity any president has faced in the modern era, Donald Trump spent the year downplaying the threat, ignoring science and recommending quack cures, which let COVID-19 spread much faster than it should have, leaving hundreds of thousands needlessly sick or dead. He has failed the American people catastrophically.”
During his speech, Biden himself cited the numbers of Americans who have been infected and who died from COVID-19 as evidence of Trump’s failure. He claimed, “It’s not this bad in Canada or Europe or Japan or anywhere else in the world,” even though America’s per capita infection and death rates are not the highest in the world, and the reported numbers from China and Iran are almost certainly undercounted.
Biden claimed that Trump does not have a plan, and said he would push rapid tests — which Trump already did with a public-private partnership.
Biden promised, “I’ll protect America, I’ll defend us from every attack, seen and unseen, always, without exception, every time.”
Trump’s response to the coronavirus pandemic has not been perfect, but Biden’s plans have often plagiarized the steps that the president had already taken. Genetic studies of coronavirus strains have shown that most of America was infected through New York City, which Mayor Bill de Blasio (D-N.Y.C.) hesitated to lock down. The elderly and those in nursing homes have proven extremely vulnerable to the virus, and many Democratic governors — including Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D-N.Y.), whose coronavirus response Democrats cheer — forced nursing homes to admit COVID-positive patients when discharged from the hospital.
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Final tidbits:
Biden praised Kamala Harris, who has demonized President Donald Trump’s conservative Christian and Catholic nominees for their faith, for “calling out the current administration for its extremism.”
When Sister Simone Campbell, a Roman Catholic nun, prayed to open the convention, she addressed God as “Oh, divine spirit…”
The DNC did play a clip of Joe Biden expressing a key Christian truth. Speaking of the black church targeted in the heinous Charleston church shooting, Biden said of the pastor and his congregation, “They forgave him [the shooter], they forgave him, the ultimate act of Christian charity, they forgave him.”
The also-rans, including Andrew Yang, former Mayor Pete Buttigieg, Sens. Cory Booker (D-N.J.), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), and Bernie Sanders, had a cringeworthy reunion, speaking about Joe Biden’s character. Booker, of course, had to say it was his great honor to compete against them. Is this his Spartacus moment?
Some of these candidates questioned Biden’s cognitive abilities.
Buttigieg spoke about restoring the soul of America, hoping the country would be a place “where faith is about healing and not exclusion.” With this sentence, he yet again demonized conservative Christians as somehow focused on “exclusion” rather than following God.
Tyler O’Neil is the author of Making Hate Pay: The Corruption of the Southern Poverty Law Center. Follow him on Twitter at @Tyler2ONeil.
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