What Trump didn't say
Donald Trump spent considerable time talking about what he viewed as the highlights of his presidency and the lowlights of the first two years of the Joe Biden administration. As the speech progressed, he went off-script with more frequency, telling stories about foreign leaders and making new promises about what he hoped to accomplish in a second term.
But the speech was noteworthy as much for what he didn’t say as what he did.
Apart from a brief early aside on supposed Chinese meddling, he didn’t talk about the 2020 election or how it was “stolen” from him. He also didn’t attack members of his own party, including recent favourite targets like Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell and potential presidential rival Ron DeSantis. In fact, the only Republican officeholder he mentioned by name was Texas Governor Greg Abbott, who he said had praised him for winning over Hispanic voters in his state.
Perhaps the former president was heeding the advice from some in his party that Republican leaders should offer a positive message and focus on the future, not the past.
As Trump veered further off script in the later stages of his hour-plus speech, he did talk about the FBI’s investigation into Russia’s 2016 election-meddling and its recent raid on Mar-a-Lago, but only as part of his pledge to “dismantle the deep state”.
That came after all the cable networks had cut away from the speech, however. By that point, even conservative-leaning Fox News was running highlights of Trump’s speech rather than carrying his ongoing remarks live.
