For release: 07/18/24
What Trump should say Thursday night
By Cal Thomas
Tribune Content Agency
When Donald Trump takes the stage Thursday night and accepts for the third time the Republican Party’s nomination for president, he faces an opportunity and a temptation.
The temptation is to launch a full-bore attack on Democrats, President Biden, the left and the media. The opportunity is to use the sympathy he has garnered since last Saturday’s assassination attempt to pursue a loftier goal. He should choose the opportunity.
After Ronald Reagan was shot by John Hinkley in 1981, the president told his wife, Nancy, at the hospital, “Honey, I forgot to duck.” That leaked comment immediately endeared him to many Americans, including, I suspect, some who had not voted for him.
Reagan’s display of humility and his refusal to condemn Hinkley astounded many, though it was consistent with his character. Two weeks after being shot, he returned to the White House and wrote in his diary: “Whatever happens now I owe my life to God and will try to serve him in every way I can.”
In Washington if you can fake humility you can fake anything, but this is where Trump has a chance to demonstrate a thought Calvin Coolidge once expressed: “It is a great advantage to a President, and a major source of safety to the country, for him to know that he is not a great man.”
Americans have always appreciated stories about changed lives. “I once was blind, but now I see” is a lyric from “Amazing Grace,” a hymn popular even among the secular. A preview of what might be coming Thursday was the expression on Trump’s face and his demeanor as he made an appearance Monday night inside the convention hall in Milwaukee. As the crowd roared, he seemed to be applauding them and repeatedly murmured “thank you.” The gauze bandage on his right ear covering where he had been shot added further weight to the moment.
Trump should begin his speech by thanking those who contributed to saving his life. What message does he take from being spared? He should tell us. What has the experience taught him about the brevity of life and his own mortality? He should minimize, or eliminate, any attacks on President Biden and talk optimistically about the future and what he plans to do if given another opportunity. He shouldn’t appear to be faking it, so lowering the tone of his voice and speaking as if directly to one person (with his TV experience he knows how to do that) would go a long way toward changing the political temperature, at least temporarily.
Someone might share with him this profound thought: “A soft answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger. The tongue of the wise uses knowledge rightly, but the mouth of fools pours forth foolishness.” (Proverbs 15:1-2)
Trump has had his say about what he thinks of the president, Nancy Pelosi and even some fellow Republicans. He should pledge in his speech that he intends to focus less on personalities and more on what he regards as the failed policies of the present administration, how he plans to reverse them, and how that reversal will benefit the most people.
Optimism about the future is what people want to hear. They know and can feel the problems, especially economic ones. To that end I offer this useful quote: “All of us share this world for but a brief moment in time. The question is whether we spend that time focused on what pushes us apart, or whether we commit ourselves to an effort — a sustained effort — to find common ground, to focus on the future we seek for our children, and to respect the dignity of all human beings.”
I’d love to see the reaction from the delegates and the media if Trump dared to use that quote from President Barack Obama in his acceptance speech.
Readers may email Cal Thomas at [email protected]. Look for Cal Thomas’ latest book “A Watchman in the Night: What I’ve Seen Over 50 Years Reporting on America” (HumanixBooks).
(C) 2024 TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.
Dear Cal,
I have been a fan of yours for decades and I thank you for this opinion piece. I especially liked the suggestion that President Trump show humility, a lost virtue in today’s me, me, me, culture. Also, your quote from Proverb 15: 1-2 is beautiful and is a good reminder not only for President Trump but also each and every one of us. Lastly, though, I hope that President Trump does not take your advice about using Obama’s quote about seeking common ground. I know you were not writing satire, but Obama was the most divisive president of my life as he separated us by race, sex, gender, religion and any other thing he could think of to cobble together his coalition that could give him power. As much of a student of history as I believe that you are, I do not need to support my statement with the innumerable positions that Obama took during his 8 years in office to divide us as Americans. And due to Obama and the Biden administration that he helped to populate, I ask how do we find common ground between between the current open border with millions of unvetted people pouring in to drain our country and President Trump’s vision of a closed border with a big door permitting those in line to be legally admitted by their merit, or continuing $2 trillion annual deficits and spending at the same level as the peak of the Covid pandemic 4 years after Covid, or the Obama/Biden administration hamstringing of our natural resource production which for 3 years has produced high inflation and whose resulting high oil price funded wars against Ukraine and Israel and have killed tens of thousands of people?
And one last question. will you vote for President Trump?
May God bless you and your family
Thanks for kind words Raymond. I was indulging in irony with the Obama quote, in effect throwing it back in his and the Dem’s faces. They never practice Common Ground, although my late friend Bob Beckel and I did for ten years in our USA Today column. As for who I am voting for, it’s called a secret ballot but you can probably guess who I am NoT voting for! Hope you will get my latest book “A Watchman in the Night.” I think you will enjoy it. Thanks again for writing me.
I consider it an honor to receive a reply from you. Thank you. But, you did not answer the central thesis of my post which can be succinctly stated as “how can we find common ground with the half of the population of the United States which by their votes supports policies which are destroying our country and the values on which was created?”
My answer is that there is no common ground, there is no compromise. Our only choice is to reverse these policies to save America or else we will watch the destruction of the last best hope of mankind. This election might be our last chance. The Democrats are destroying our Bill of Rights so quickly and with the support of Big Tech and a compliant media they will have the power launch a thousand year Dark Age that will replicate Orwell’s 1984.