Donald Trump‘s lengthy acceptance speech at Thursday’s Republican National Convention closer was, naturally, the hottest topic of the day on Friday’s (July 19) edition of The View, and the cohosts had a particularly relevant guest of the day in former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, a former Trump ally who has been critical of him in recent years. And Christie had an interesting theory about the speech: that Trump was using his acting skills for the first 15 minutes of it.
During his discussion with cohosts Joy Behar, Sara Haines, Ana Navarro, Sunny Hostin, and Alyssa Farah Griffin, Christie said that Trump is “most comfortable” when he’s speaking off the cuff and not relying on the prepared speeches displayed on his teleprompter. He then suggested that only the first portion of the speech was scripted, and that’s why Trump’s tone was so different.
“Understand, the first 15 minutes that, he was as unenthusiastic and as unenergetic, as I’ve ever seen him. Why? Because he hated what he was saying. He hated it. He doesn’t believe it. But he knew he had to say it,” Christie said.
Christie, who was once a top-two finalist to join Trump’s 2016 presidential ticket, criticized prior media coverage of Trump’s appearances at the RNC’s first three nights, saying, “I wondered if every network correspondent had taken drugs. They’re like, ‘Look at him in the audience. He looks more solemn. He looks as if he’s changed.’ He’s an actor. He’s been acting on TV for decades, and he knew the camera was going to be on him. That’s the easy part for Donald Trump. It’s when he opens his mouth that the acting becomes more difficult. And so I think, quite frankly, the media completely failed the American people. They bought hook, line, and sinker all of the garbage that the Trump campaign was leaking out to them.”
He then went on to add a prediction that, despite the tone of the speech, some members of the media will continue to frame the speech as a message of “unity.”
.@GovChristie reacts to former Pres. Trump’s RNC speech, saying his assassination attempt “doesn’t change fundamentally who he is”: “It’s just who he is and he’s not going to change.”
“He’s an actor. He’s been acting on TV for decades.” pic.twitter.com/Yp6SfvynZ7
— The View (@TheView) July 19, 2024
The cohosts themselves, of course, had their own sharp responses to the speech.
“I made a very bad prediction. I was like, ‘Surely he can get through a teleprompter speech without invoking Hannibal Lecter.’ I was wrong,” Griffin joked before adding, “This, to me, underscored the fact that Donald Trump is an infinitely beatable candidate. This is somebody who’s polarizing. He’s divisive. And I also want to mention, with due respect, knowing what he went through, he’s not as sharp as he once was. It was meandering. There was he was losing his train of thought. It didn’t make a ton of sense.” Even so, Griffin stuck to her previously expressed position that Joe Biden should still drop out of the race because, she said, “Democrats are currently running the one person who seems incapable of beating him.”
“I really want to see a copy of the speech that was ripped up because if that was the unifying one, I might have missed something during the 90-minute … that is a Broadway show, and they literally give you an intermission in the middle,” Haines said. “I don’t know what a lot of that was, and read the room. Because if people dress up like they’re going to a parade in red, white, and blue, show up, and they’re bored? It was like the whole room checked out. These are your people. What’s happened here?”
Navarro then offered her fiery take, saying, “I do think this should be a unity speech, and I think there should be a unity speech for Democrats who should realize that they have got to unify, and they’ve got to do everything they can — Democrats and sane independents — to beat this man. If you have Trump amnesia, this should have cured you. If Joe Biden had been up there giving that speech, men in white coats would have interrupted him and carted him off and put him in a padded wagon. I thought today I would wake up and the TV would be full of doctors talking about Donald Trump’s cognitive decline. I thought it would be full of Republicans hanging their heads in shame like Democrats did. Joe Biden had a bad 90-minute debate. … What we saw yesterday was a replay of Trump’s 90-minute constant rallies. It’s too bad the bandage was just over his ear. It should have been over his mouth.”
.@ananavarro reacts to former Pres. Trump’s speech at the Republican National Convention last night. pic.twitter.com/BqG5Dwaxv3
— The View (@TheView) July 19, 2024
Hostin said that she thought his speech would reflect a change in Trump, but it didn’t happen, saying, “I did believe that the assassination attempt would change him. He did invoke God a lot, and I just thought he would be changed. But it felt so performative to me. It really did, and it felt beneath the dignity of a national convention from the nominee of a major party.” Ultimately, to Hostin, the speech was “a xenophobic, ugly vision of America speech.”
Navarro then reiterated her oft-proclaimed theory of the case for the 2024 race, saying, “This is a binary choice, and the choice could not be more simple. It is between a good, frail old man surrounded by a steady, experienced team, or a crazy loco old man surrounded by a bunch of criminals and hooligans.”
TRUMP CLOSES OUT RNC WITH 92-MINUTE SPEECH: After the 2024 GOP presidential nominee took the stage on the last night of the Republican National Convention, #TheView co-hosts react and question if his call for unity was short-lived. pic.twitter.com/GQrn0Cd360
— The View (@TheView) July 19, 2024
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