Republican Convention Day Two Wrap-Up!

[Content Note: Bigotry; sexual harassment; theft.]

HOO BOY that was quite a day of EVEN MORE turgid garbage!

I again did some live-tweeting of the primetime trash parade, and I've Storified those tweets for anyone who wants to read them.

It was supposed to be jobs night, as the theme was "Make America Work Again," but there was no discernible jobs plan anywhere to be found, unless you count the cottage industry of Hillary Hatred. And I'm not sure there are any openings, since the Republican Party seems ALL STOCKED UP.

What was most remarkable to me was who wasn't there to talk about jobs. Usually, on jobs night at the Republican convention, there are corporate bigwigs as far as the eye can see. The biggest name Trump managed to finagle into speaking was the general manager of his own winery.

It's really an extraordinary feature of this convention—the absence of who you'd expect to see in a typical election year. But this time, there are so few women. No corporate honchos. A dearth of major name Republicans.

Speaker Paul Ryan stood out like a sore thumb, in that he was recognizable and vaguely credible. (By shitbox standards.)

It's just absolutely gobsmacking what a complete mess this convention is, in every way, not least of which is that it was so obviously always going to be a complete mess that hardly anyone who isn't Scott Baio bothered to attend.

Yikes.

Anyway. The roll call was yesterday, too, so Trump's now the nominee. Officially. And although there were persistently rumors of an insurgency to deny Trump the GOP's nomination, the "Never Trump" movement was a phenomenal flop. So much for all that talk about how Trump's extremism isn't representative of the party. When it came down to it, they nominated him without any drama at all.

Which proves what I've been saying all along: It isn't that Trump isn't representative of the party. It's just that he uses a bullhorn instead of a dogwhistle. He's not outside the party; to the contrary, he is its gold-plated unfiltered id.

It's fitting that his nomination capped off a day in which the media was preoccupied with discussing the plagiarized address delivered by his wife Melania last night; in which his campaign put forth a litany of accuses for how that happened, including his son's eventual admission that she used speechwriters, thus also implicating her in a lie for having said she wrote it; and Trump again speaking at the convention—albeit remotely—because his ego won't let him not be the center of attention for a single day.

Theft, lies, and conceit. The Trump Trifecta.

Two more days of this crap.