1. Marble! Mirrors! ‘The Music of the Night’! Trump’s plan to Trumpify the GOP convention
In only his second full day as the presumptive Republican nominee, Donald J. Trump managed to spice up the sleepiest stretch of any presidential election year — the long slog between the end of the primary battle and the beginning of the general election — by tweeting out a photo of himself eating a celebratory Cinco de Mayo meal:
Que authentico!
Interpreting Trump’s lunchtime selfie as a tone-deaf attempt to connect with “Hispanics,” who have long shunned his candidacy, the Twittersphere instantaneously erupted — in laughter, in scorn, in existential disbelief.
“This cannot be real,” wrote James Poniewozik, a television critic for the New York Times. “This cannot be real. This election isn’t happening.”
“A taco bowl is just a taco with a big, beautiful wall around it,” the Washington Post’s Karen Tumulty explained.
“Can’t wait to see how he handles Yom Kippur,” added David Freedlander of the Daily Beast.
If Trump can melt America’s political media with a single tweet about a glorified Taco Bell Fiesta Taco Salad, just imagine what he’ll do when he gets his short-fingered mitts on an entire Republican National Convention.
Fortunately, we won’t have to rely on our imaginations much longer.
In a phone interview Wednesday with the New York Times, Trump revealed that he is already scheming about how to make this summer’s GOP convention classier and more tremendous than the “extraordinarily boring” conventions that preceded it.
“The site has been chosen and the arena is fine, but I’d want to have — you know, the last Republican convention was extraordinarily boring,” Trump said. “And we’re going to come up with some things that will make it interesting and informative, but also smart and different.”
(Previously, the tinsel-haired mogul told CNN, “It’s very important to put some showbiz into a convention, otherwise people are going to fall asleep.”)
Trump added that he would look to organizations like IMG, a global talent management company, to help with the production.
On Wednesday, Trump told reporters that he would select his running mate before the convention. The following day — perhaps sensing that nothing could imbue Cleveland with as much suspense as a VP unveiling — Trump pushed back his deadline.
“I will announce it at the convention,” he told the Associated Press in an interview. “A lot of people are interested.“
The shift is a clear sign that Trump is thinking about how to maximize the drama in Cleveland — and attract as many viewers as possible.
According to Republican National Convention Communications Director Kirsten Kukowski, the process of transferring control to the Trump campaign is already underway.
“We’ve been in Cleveland for almost a year and a half now and have divisions taking care of delegations, guests, housing, events, communications and digital planning, media operations, all operations, production, etc.,” Kukowski tells Unconventional. “Now we will start working with the Trump campaign to lay out all of the planning we’ve been doing and move forward together over the next 75 days.”
Trump has tasked one of his top aides, Michael Glassner, with overseeing convention planning. Glassner and other members of Trump’s team plan to visit Cleveland next week to start hammering out the details.
What exactly those details will be is anyone’s guess at this point. Trump’s past, predilections, and present-day connections offer some clues.
The Donald has a long history in “showbiz,” as he calls it, and in recent decades, he has proven to be a more successful promoter and entertainer than real estate developer.
By Andrew Romano.
Culled from Yahoo News.
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