Last week was the Republican National Convention where the GOP officially crowned Donald Trump as their nomination for President of the United States. Although bizarre things always seem to go down at the RNC (never forget #eastwooding) this year was particularly strange. Here at Skepchick, we put a list together of some of the most bananas things that happened during the 2016 Republican National Convention.
- Rep. Steve King, an actual sitting US Congressman, during an MSNBC interview said that “western civilization” (i.e. white people) have contributed more to civilization than any other group. Apparently in the Age of Trump congressmen feel no qualms about spouting off white supremacist talking points during cable news interviews.
- Megyn Kelly wore a strappy dress while covering the RNC and Fox News viewers freaked the fuck out. Apparently the people who watch Fox News just could not handle seeing Megyn Kelly’s shoulders and tweeted their ire at her for daring to dress the way she wanted to dress. Roger Ailes may have gotten fired but Fox News viewers seem happy to step in and sexually harass their female anchors in his stead.
- A female journalist covering the convention was berated by an RNC official for daring to wear a sleeveless blouse on the convention floor. “Women’s shoulders must be covered at all times” must be part of the new GOP platform considering how terrified republicans seem to be of lady shoulders.
- There was a “gays for Trump” party on the second night of the RNC, proving that even people who are a part of a marginalized group can be racist, misogynistic assholes. Speakers included
journalistprofessional harasser Milo Yiannopoulos wearing a rainbow gun tank top with the words “We Shoot Back,” and anti-islam activist Pam Geller, who took time out of her speech to make racist jokes and criticize transgender people for wanting basic human rights.
from Courtney
- This hat:
A unique hat on the floor pic.twitter.com/tc58F2Ci0H
— Ben Jacobs (@Bencjacobs) July 20, 2016
- Ted Cruz refused to endorse Trump during his RNC speech and the crowd booed him so loud that people in the convention hall couldn’t hear the end of the speech over the audience. The crowd got so rowdy that Cruz’s wife Heidi had to be escorted out by security for her own safety. The weirdest part is that Ted Cruz never went off script. He read exactly what was on the teleprompter, which means that Trump’s campaign approved the speech ahead of time.
- Melania Trump plagiarized a portion of Michelle Obama’s 2008 DNC speech and then there was a roller coaster of strange denials from the Trump campaign including claiming it wasn’t a big deal because 93% of her speech wasn’t plagiarized, claiming that Michelle Obama didn’t invent the English language, quoting My Little Pony’s Glimmer for some reason, then eventually admitting to the plagiarism and blaming it on a speechwriter who doesn’t even work for the campaign and therefore might have been breaking FEC rules for working on the speech while being employed by one of Trump’s private organizations . The worst part is that all the brouhaha over Melania’s plagiarism overshadowed the fact that she totally rickrolled the RNC during her speech. #BeckyWithTheBorrowedSpeech indeed.
- One of Trump’s advisors said that Hillary Clinton should be “shot for treason” and somehow still has his job despite the fact that he’s now being investigated by the Secret Service.
- During the RNC, the New York Times broke the story that the Trump campaign asked John Kasich to run as Trump’s VP, promising him that he would be the most powerful VP ever since Trump would be president in name only and would let his VP run the country in his stead. When asked what Trump’s job as President would be if the VP was the one running everything, Trump’s son replied “making america great again.”
- During his RNC speech, Ben Carson implied that Hillary Clinton was a satan worshiper. He might have something here. As he pointed out, Saul Alinsky wrote a book in which he mentioned Lucifer on his dedications page. Clinton once said Alinsky was a mentor to her. Therefore, Clinton is a satan worshipper. It just doesn’t get clearer than that.
- Rudy Giuliani gave a speech in which he said “[Trump] will lead by leading.”
- During Trump’s speech, he claimed that crime is going up. When his campaign manager was later confronted with the fact that the crime rate has been going down since the 90s, he responded by implying that the FBI is lying about the crime rate since they are in Clinton’s pocket. Apparently back in the early 90’s, Clinton used her satan powers to learn that she would be running for president in 2016 and that her opponent Trump would claim crime was going up in his RNC speech. So, she paid off the FBI to spend 25 years falsifying crime data to make it look like crime was actually going down. Then, when Trump in 2016 claimed the crime rate was up, she would be able to say he was lying! CONSPIRACY!
- Chelsea Clinton’s DNC speech was leaked. In it, she talked about the problems of the gender wage gap and promoted equal pay for equal work, parental leave policies, and free child care. Haha, no! Just Kidding! That was actually Ivanka Trump’s speech. Ivanka used her RNC speech to push a lot of women’s rights issues that come right out of the DNC platform and the Clinton campaign and in a surreal twist, she got huge cheers from her republican audience.
from Courtney
- In other news of republicans cheering for policies they are officially against, Peter Thiel told conservatives to stop fighting over who uses what bathroom and for some reason republicans, the same legislators that have been fighting to pass stringent laws about who gets to pee where, gave this statement huge cheers.
from Rey
- This gif:
- Trump’s bizarre entrance, which seemed more like something you would see at the WWE rather than the RNC.
from Will
- Laura Ingraham somehow managed to give what looks a lot like a nazi salute. Sure, it was probably just a wave-gone-wrong and not an actual nazi salute, but you can’t argue with the optics.
from Donna
- And finally, the most bananas moment of the RNC was when Trump seemingly patted his daughter Ivanka’s butt in the most awkward father/daughter embrace ever seen at a political convention.
from Donna
https://twitter.com/ParkerMolloy/status/756319111412670464
Now that you’ve see what a shit show the RNC was last week, this might be a good time to remind you that this is not a joke. This is an actual political party putting up a candidate for president of the United States in a race that is likely to be a close one. Trump has a non-zero chance of winning the election in November. Right now might be a good time to register to vote.
I was waiting for Jesus to show up and start flipping tables.
Maybe that’s all a myth or maybe he is still caged in a “free speech zone”, who am I to say?
Jesús? I’m guessing that with a name like that, he’s staying as far away from Trump as humanly possible. Probably up in Canada trying to get a wall built, and then make the US pay for it.
It’s…actually kind of weird, since Nixon was a racist, but did a lot for Indians. Reagan has a similarly mixed record. (I get to have the odd opinion that the Democrats should’ve impeached him for the best thing he ever did for Indians.)
White centrist Democrats meanwhile get mad at me for saying “Indian”.
Chachi. As far as I can tell, he was just there for retweeting a meme calling Clinton a…word I’m not going to say here, but it rhymes with “blunt”.
Hey, Michelle Obama gets to be the first person to give a speech at both parties’ conventions.