Last night, Republicans gathered in Cleveland for the first night of the Republican National Convention. The evening's theme was supposed to be “Make America Safe Again," so speaker after speaker charged that the Obama administration is doing little, if anything, to fight radical Islamists.
Many presenters repeated the claims, frequently put forward by Donald Trump, that the U.S. would be able to finish off the terrorists if only the president stopped being “politically correct, ” uttered the words “radical Islam,” which Trump and others believe will have a miraculous effect in destroying terrorist groups, and channeled a “winning” spirit.
Not mentioned were Trump’s actual policies or, at least, the ones he isn’t keeping a secret.
We didn’t hear a single speaker echo Trump’s views that the U.S. should:
- Increase nuclear proliferation and allow countries from South Korea to Saudi Arabia acquire nuclear weapons.
- Jeopardize the global economy by taking haircuts on the national debt.
- Ban all Muslims from entering the country “until our country's representatives can figure out what is going on.”
- Let Syria become “a free zone for ISIS” to “let them fight and then you pick up the remnants.”
- Order the military to commit war crimes, such as murdering suspected terrorists’ family members.
- Expand and broaden rules on torture and implement torture ID who wrote this quote “techniques ‘a hell of a lot worse’ than waterboarding and use them regardless of effectiveness on terrorist organizations like ISIS because they ‘deserve it.’”
- Shut down parts of the internet so terrorists can’t use it.
- Make allies pay us more money and “rethink” our involvement in NATO.
- Turn the U.S. into both a “consistent” and “unpredictable” world power.
- Ignore global climate change because it is a hoax manufactured by China.
Maybe there’s a reason Trump’s own supporters aren’t championing these ideas….
