The Republican Convention’s finale on Thursday night began, fittingly, with a clown show: Hulk Hogan, shouting in a voice that sounded like a Disney Animatronic version of a pro wrestler giving a political speech. He talked about the “real Americans” in the room, “the Trumpites who are going to be running wild the next four years,” and the “gladiators” who will lead them back to power—Donald Trump and his new running mate, the Ohio senator J. D. Vance. Then he stripped off his jacket, and ripped off his shirt, to reveal a bright-red Trump-Vance 2024 T-shirt, in honor, he said, of the near-death experience that Trump had suffered less than a week earlier. “I want the world to know that Donald Trump is a real American hero,” Hogan said. In the imperial red MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN box, just above the convention floor, Trump stood at attention, wearing his signature navy suit and red tie. At the end of Hogan’s performance, Trump—convicted felon, front-running Presidential candidate—pumped his fist in the air, the small white bandage on his right ear a reminder of what were, perhaps, the most unbelievable few days I can ever recall in American politics.
周四晚上，共和党全国代表大会的压轴戏以一场小丑表演开始：绿巨人霍根（Hulk Hogan）用听起来像是迪斯尼动画版的职业摔跤手发表政治演讲的声音大喊大叫。他谈到了房间里的“真正的美国人”，“未来四年将疯狂奔跑的特朗普分子”，以及将带领他们重新掌权的“角斗士”——唐纳德·特朗普和他的新竞选伙伴、俄亥俄州参议员J·D·万斯。然后，他脱掉外套，扯掉衬衫，露出一件鲜红色的特朗普-万斯2024年T恤，他说，这是为了纪念特朗普不到一周前遭受的濒死体验。“我想让世界知道唐纳德·特朗普是一位真正的美国英雄，”霍根说。在“帝国红色让美国再次伟大”的盒子里，就在会场上方，特朗普穿着他标志性的海军西装和红色领带，站在众人面前。在霍根的表演结束时，特朗普——被定罪的重罪犯、领先的总统候选人——在空中挥舞着拳头，他右耳上的白色小绷带提醒着我，这也许是我能回忆起的美国政治中最令人难以置信的几天。
Two hours later, the wounded showman took the stage. Behind him was a full replica of the White House, lit up in red and blue. The former President had not said a word in public since being shot at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, on Saturday evening. He gave his account of the would-be assassin’s bullet coming within a quarter inch of killing him, of the blood he found on his hand, and how he knew he had survived “because I had God on my side.” In the hours leading up to Trump’s acceptance speech, his daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, one of a passel of ascendant Trump family members in the now fully Trumpified G.O.P., insisted that the “near-death experience” had changed the ex-President and that a “softer version” of Trump would be presented in his Thursday-evening acceptance speech. Various advisers claimed to Politico that the famously non-religious Trump had absorbed a dose of “humility, in the Biblical sense,” as one put it.
两个小时后，受伤的表演者走上了舞台。在他身后是白宫的完整复制品，用红色和蓝色点亮。自从周六晚上在宾夕法尼亚州巴特勒的一次竞选集会上被枪杀以来，这位前总统没有在公开场合说过一句话。他讲述了这名准刺客的子弹在杀死他不到四分之一英寸的地方，他在手上发现了血迹，以及他如何知道自己活了下来，“因为我有上帝站在我这边”。在特朗普发表获奖感言前的几个小时里，他的儿媳劳拉·特朗普（Lara Trump）是现在完全特朗普化的共和党中特朗普家族的家族成员之一，她坚持认为，“濒死体验”改变了这位前总统，特朗普的“软版本”将在周四晚上的接受演讲中呈现。多位顾问向Politico声称，众所周知，不信教的特朗普吸收了一剂“圣经意义上的谦卑”，正如一个人所说的那样。
And sure enough, Trump uncharacteristically opened with lines about “the grace of almighty God” and a “message of confidence, strength, and hope.” Instead of the “American carnage” that he emphasized in his dark Inaugural Address from 2017, which prefigured a chaotic and divisive four years in the White House, he spoke of healing the discord in society. “I am running to be President for all America,” he said, a phrase that he generally avoided when he was actually the President. Did he mean it? Was he having a post-traumatic episode?
果不其然，特朗普一反常态地以“全能上帝的恩典”和“信心、力量和希望的信息”开场。他没有像他在2017年黑暗的就职演说中强调的那样强调“美国大屠杀”，这预示着白宫的混乱和分裂的四年，他谈到了治愈社会的不和谐。“我正在竞选全美国的总统，”他说，当他真正担任总统时，他通常会避免使用这句话。他是认真的吗？他有创伤后发作吗？
Once the sombre formalities were concluded, a more realistic theme, or at least a Trumpier one, presented itself: his definition of “unity,” it turned out, was not so much about healing national discord as it was about making sure that the criminal cases pending against him—those terrible “partisan witch hunts”—would be ended. A kinder, gentler Trump? Never mind. The speech showed that there is no such thing, any more than there is a kinder, gentler version of the G.O.P. in 2024. One of my enduring memories of this Convention will be the delegates streaming out of the hall on Wednesday evening, many of them carrying pre-printed “MASS DEPORTATION NOW” signs as souvenirs. The biggest applause I heard for anyone other than Trump was for Peter Navarro, the defiant former White House adviser who was imprisoned for refusing to testify to Congress about Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 election. Revenge was the theme of Navarro’s speech, delivered hours after his release. “If we don’t control our government, their government will control us,” he warned, darkly. The crowd did not want uplift; like Navarro, like Trump, what it wanted was retribution.
一旦这些沉闷的手续结束，一个更现实的主题，或者至少是特朗普的主题，就出现了：事实证明，他对“团结”的定义与其说是为了弥合民族不和，不如说是为了确保针对他的未决刑事案件——那些可怕的“党派猎巫”——将结束。一个更善良、更温和的特朗普？没关系。演讲表明，没有这样的事情，就像 2024 年有一个更友善、更温和的共和党版本一样。我对这次大会的持久记忆之一是周三晚上从大厅里涌出的代表们，他们中的许多人带着预先印好的“立即大规模驱逐出境”的标语作为纪念品。除了特朗普之外，我听到的最大掌声是彼得·纳瓦罗（Peter Navarro），这位挑衅的前白宫顾问因拒绝向国会作证特朗普推翻2020年大选的努力而入狱。复仇是纳瓦罗演讲的主题，在他获释数小时后发表。“如果我们不控制我们的政府，他们的政府就会控制我们，”他暗暗警告说。人群不想要振奋;像纳瓦罗一样，像特朗普一样，它想要的是报复。
Trump’s supposed pivot to the center was silly spin, and yet all week long I marvelled at the collective susceptibility to this narrative, so seductive, so absurd. It’s true that the Republican platform, micromanaged by Trump himself, excised controversial, politically inconvenient positions, whether a national abortion ban that has been atop the Party’s agenda for decades or the insistence that marriage be strictly defined as between a man and a woman. This was not a sign of moderation, however; those positions have been deleted but not repudiated. The new platform consists of vague slogans—rendered in all caps out of deference to the leader’s eccentric typographical preferences. This, too, is telling. The man himself is the policy, which is the perfect reflection of the authoritarian turn in the Republican Party. This part, at least, they are not bothering to hide. Asked by the Times what message the platform’s aggressive rewriting sent, Chris LaCivita, a top Trump campaign adviser, did not pretend it signalled a turn toward the center. “What it says is that the Republican Party is Donald Trump’s party,” he responded. “Trump has put the imprint, quite frankly, that he should have had in 2016 and 2020 on the Party as a whole in 2024.”
特朗普所谓的转向中间派是愚蠢的旋转，但整整一周，我都惊叹于这种叙事的集体敏感性，如此诱人，如此荒谬。诚然，由特朗普本人微观管理的共和党纲领剔除了有争议的、政治上不方便的立场，无论是几十年来一直列在党内议程上的全国堕胎禁令，还是坚持将婚姻严格定义为一男一女之间的婚姻。然而，这并不是温和的表现;这些立场已被删除，但未被否定。新平台由模糊的口号组成——出于对领导人古怪的排版偏好的尊重，全部大写。这也说明问题。这个人本身就是政策，这是共和党威权主义转向的完美反映。至少，这部分，他们懒得隐藏。当被《纽约时报》问及该平台激进的改写发出了什么信息时，特朗普高级竞选顾问克里斯·拉奇维塔（Chris LaCivita）并没有假装这标志着转向中间派。“它说的是共和党是唐纳德·特朗普的政党，”他回应道。“坦率地说，特朗普在2016年和2020年应该给整个党留下2024年的印记。”
Soon enough on Thursday night, the audience was back to its comfort zone, booing as Trump criticized “crazy Nancy Pelosi” and warned that the hated Democrats were “destroying our country,” cheering him on as he demanded the firing of union leaders and rambled about the “China virus” and the “plunder” of our nation by rapacious foreigners. The second coming of George Herbert Walker Bush this was not. All the Trump standbys were there: the supposed “invasion” at the southern border, the “caravans” and the illegal alien crime wave, the 2020 election that was stolen from him by Democrats “who used COVID to cheat,” the weakness and incompetence of everyone else. The theme of the speech, of the night, of the campaign, was the same theme of Trump’s entire life, summed up in the one word that he had shouted in Pennsylvania on Saturday, before he was carried off the stage, bloodied but intact: “Fight!”
周四晚上，观众很快就回到了舒适区，当特朗普批评“疯狂的南希·佩洛西”并警告说可恨的民主党人正在“摧毁我们的国家”时，观众们发出了嘘声，因为他要求解雇工会领导人，并喋喋不休地谈论“中国病毒”和贪婪的外国人对我们国家的“掠夺”。乔治·赫伯特·沃克·布什（George Herbert Walker Bush）的第二次到来并非如此。特朗普的所有待命都在那里：南部边境的所谓“入侵”、“大篷车”和非法的外星人犯罪浪潮、2020 年大选被民主党人“利用新冠病毒作弊”从他那里偷走，其他人的软弱和无能。演讲的主题，当晚的主题，竞选的主题，是特朗普一生的主题，总结为他周六在宾夕法尼亚州喊出的一个词，然后他被抬下舞台，血迹斑斑但完好无损：“战斗！
What can you say about a week when the attempted assassination of the once and quite possibly future President was not necessarily the biggest news? On Monday, less than forty-eight hours after the shooting in Pennsylvania, Trump chose as his Veep-in-waiting a thirty-nine-year-old first-term senator from Ohio who once called Trump “America’s Hitler.” In writing, no less. In any other political moment, a headline for the ages. By Thursday, however, it became clear that the most extraordinary development of the 2024 election thus far was unfolding not inside the Republican convention hall in Milwaukee but among Democratic Party leaders so panicked about Trump’s resurgent political fortunes that they were attempting to push aside their own incumbent President. The coup against Joe Biden, should it succeed, would represent something as unprecedented in its own way as the fact that the Republican Party has now formally ratified the decision to stake its future on a deeply unpopular, rapidly aging demagogue who was repudiated by voters only four years ago.
对于曾经的、很可能是未来的总统被暗杀未遂不一定是最大的新闻的一周，您能说些什么？周一，在宾夕法尼亚州枪击事件发生不到四十八小时后，特朗普选择了一位来自俄亥俄州的39岁的第一任参议员作为他的Veep，他曾称特朗普为“美国的希特勒”。在书面上，不少于。在任何其他政治时刻，都是时代的头条新闻。然而，到了周四，很明显，2024年大选迄今为止最不寻常的事态发展不是在密尔沃基的共和党会议厅内展开，而是在民主党领导人中展开，他们对特朗普重新崛起的政治命运感到恐慌，以至于他们试图推翻自己的现任总统。针对乔·拜登的政变如果成功，将以前所未有的方式代表着这样一个事实，即共和党现在已经正式批准了将其未来押在一个非常不受欢迎、迅速衰老的煽动者身上的决定，而这个煽动者仅在四年前被选民拒绝。
Video From The New Yorker
来自《纽约客》的视频
You’ll Be Happier: The Story of a Butt Lift
你会更快乐：提臀的故事
Against such a backdrop, with Biden’s fate uncertain after his disastrous debate performance three weeks ago and rumors of his imminent exit as abundant as the red Make America Great Again hats on the convention floor, Republicans, for once, seemed almost sublimely confident in their own chances of victory. “Right now the Democrats are the perfect circular firing squad and we have the run of the field,” Trump’s longtime pollster Tony Fabrizio told a panel convened by the University of Chicago’s Institute of Politics, which included the Democratic strategist David Axelrod, one of the loudest voices publicly pushing for Biden to exit, even warning that Democrats risked a “landslide” if he does not.
在这样的背景下，拜登在三周前的灾难性辩论表演后命运不明朗，关于他即将退出的谣言就像大会上戴着红色的“让美国再次伟大”的帽子一样多，共和党人似乎对自己的获胜机会几乎充满信心。“现在民主党人是完美的圆形行刑队，我们掌握了这个领域的控制权，”特朗普的长期民意调查专家托尼·法布里齐奥（Tony Fabrizio）告诉芝加哥大学政治研究所召集的一个小组，其中包括民主党战略家大卫·阿克塞尔罗德（David Axelrod），他是公开推动拜登退出的最响亮的声音之一，甚至警告说，如果他不这样做，民主党人将面临“压倒性滑坡”的风险。
Earlier in the week, many of the Convention speakers eagerly attacked the flailing Biden. Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida who flopped as an alternative to Trump in the primaries, bashed the incumbent’s “Weekend at Bernie’s Presidency.” Senator Tom Cotton, of Arkansas, talked about “Joe Biden’s chaos.” Much of Vance’s speech was framed as an attack on Biden, including the cutting line “Joe Biden has been a politician in Washington for longer than I’ve been alive.” Listening to a litany of Biden’s shortcomings, the crowd interrupted with a cheer that had erupted several times during the week: “Joe Must Go! Joe Must Go! Joe Must Go!”
本周早些时候，许多大会发言人急切地抨击摇摆不定的拜登。佛罗里达州州长罗恩·德桑蒂斯（Ron DeSantis）在初选中作为特朗普的替代品失败了，他抨击了现任总统的“伯尼总统周末”。阿肯色州参议员汤姆·科顿（Tom Cotton）谈到了“乔·拜登的混乱”。万斯的大部分演讲都被定性为对拜登的攻击，包括“乔·拜登在华盛顿担任政治家的时间比我活着的时间还要长”。听着拜登的一连串缺点，人群打断了一周内多次爆发的欢呼声：“乔必须走！乔必须走！乔必须走！
It was a mark of the moment that many Democrats, had they been having their own Convention this week, might have wanted to chant the very same thing.
这是一个时刻的标志，许多民主党人，如果他们本周有自己的大会，可能会想高呼同样的话。
In his own speech, Trump seemed to be anticipating that Democrats might just go through with it. He vowed to only use the word “Biden” once in his speech, while calling him one of the worst Presidents in history, if not the worst. The rest of his criticism was reserved for the more generic evils of the Biden Administration. Trump’s entire campaign theme has been built around defeating Sleepy Joe Biden. He may soon have to pivot. But to whom? Against what?
在他自己的演讲中，特朗普似乎预料到民主党人可能会接受它。他发誓在演讲中只使用一次“拜登”这个词，同时称他为历史上最糟糕的总统之一，如果不是最糟糕的话。他的其余批评是针对拜登政府更普遍的邪恶。特朗普的整个竞选主题都是围绕着击败昏昏欲睡的乔·拜登而建立的。他可能很快不得不转向。但对谁呢？反对什么？
I have no idea what further disruptions await in this most extraordinary campaign. But listening to Trump talk on and on and on this Thursday evening, more than an hour and a half of strange and untruthful and incoherent freestyle rambling, it was hard to think that America was truly on the brink of reëlecting this man. He may have had a brush with death but he has not been reborn. He is the same Trump, only four years older, angrier, and far, far more incoherent than anyone who has any business being President of the United States. If Biden can’t beat him, then surely someone else can—and must. ♦
我不知道在这场最不寻常的运动中等待着什么进一步的破坏。但是，在这个周四晚上，听着特朗普断断续续的讲话，一个半小时的奇怪、不真实和不连贯的自由式漫谈，很难想象美国真的处于重新审视这个人的边缘。他可能与死亡擦肩而过，但他没有重生。他还是那个特朗普，只比他大四岁，比任何与美国总统有业务往来的人都更愤怒，也更语无伦次。如果拜登不能打败他，那么其他人肯定可以——而且必须打败他。♦
