The 2020 Republican National Convention was never going to be a slow build-up to its centerpiece: Thursday night’s climactic speech by incumbent nominee Donald J. Trump. There are a lot of people in the party who have their own eccentric beliefs, enough to fill four whole nights. (One longtime Trump ally not invited: Michael Cohen. But he’d be present in some fashion.) Indeed, Monday night’s session wasted no time, filling over two hours with one over-the-top speech after another. There were so many deranged addresses that they couldn’t help but put two of them back-to-back for maximum impact.
Those people were Mark and Patricia McCloskey, aka the wealthy couple who pointed guns at Black Lives Matter protesters in St. Louis, Missouri, and attorney and former Fox News personality Kimberly Guilfoyle. Both were, shall we say, intense in their very own ways.
The McCloskeys first (and you can watch them above). Sitting in a very tony room in their massive McMansion, the two recounted the events that led to them becoming media fixtures, damned, mocked, and even charged with felonies for unlawful use of a weapon. Naturally, they became darlings of the right-wing, which is why they were invited to speak at the RNC, where they issued dire warnings about a proposed socialist hellscape, littered with a liberal dose of dog whistles.
“What you saw happen to us could just as easily happen to any of you who are watching from quiet neighborhoods around our country,” Patricia said, making explicit that her testimony was directed at the wealthy.
“It seems the Democrats no longer view the government’s job as protecting honest citizens from criminals but rather protecting criminals from honest citizens,” Mark added. “Not a single person in the out-of-control mob you saw outside our house was charged with a crime. But you know who was? We were. They actually charged us with felonies for daring to defend our home.”
Mark McCloskey smeared Cori Bush, the leader of the protest that found its way into their upscale St. Louis neighborhood, thrice calling her a variation on “Marxist activist,” then warning people that she’d won the Democrat nomination in the House of Representatives.
“These radicals are not content to march in the streets. They want to walk the halls of congress. They want to take over. They want power,” Mark said. “This is Joe Biden’s party. These are the people who are going to be in charge of your culture and the future of your children.”
Patricia McCloskey then made sure to scare white suburbanites. “They’re not satisfying with spreading the chaos and violence into our communities. They want to abolish the suburbs altogether,” said Patricia, who lives in a gigantic mansion.
Patricia then singled out Trump’s controversial eradication of “single family home zoning,” which was widely seen as a racist dog whistle, scaring white suburbanites terrified of lower-income black families moving into their neighborhood. Patricia doubled down. “This forced rezoning would bring crime, lawlessness, and low-quality apartments into now-thriving suburban neighborhoods,” she said “These are the policies that are coming to a neighborhood near you. make no mistake, no matter where you live your family will not be safe in the radical Democrats’ America.”
After the McCloskeys’ joint speech, it was almost hard to focus on Guilefoyle’s, which immediately followed. But had a way of making you pay attention: by screaming.
Guilfoyle started at 11 and then kept finding new heights of shoutiness, hollering about how she was a “PROUD American!” and a “PROUD supporter of Donald J. Trump,” a man who “always puts America first,” and who is “the law and order president!” She screamed about “socialists!” and “closed schools!” and “China!” and “Cuba!” and “Venezuela!” She bellowed about how rioters “must not be allowed to destroy our cities.” She took on “cancel culture!” and “cosmopolitan elites!”, often while doing jazz hands.
It wasn’t really building to a fever pitch — it was all a fever pitch, for six-and-a-half straight minutes — but she still found a new way to top herself by the end, even as she merely parroted an oft-told Trump promise, that “the best is yet to come!”
You can watch both videos above, if you must.