New York Times: “He opened his address by casting himself as a unifying figure, promising to bridge political divides he had long delighted in deepening. He mentioned President Biden by name only once. At brief moments, he struck tones more similar to President Barack Obama’s message of hope and healing than to the dark version of America that Mr. Trump described in accepting his first two Republican presidential nominations…”
“Yet even this speech, designed to debut the new message, underscored Mr. Trump’s challenge with discipline. He stuck to the script at the start. But as the clock ticked well beyond the one-hour mark, he couldn’t resist falling back into the kind of rambling, unscripted diatribe that has long been his signature style. At more than 90 minutes, it was the longest Republican nomination address since at least 1956, when the American Presidency Project at the University of California-Santa Barbara started tracking the statistic on the G.O.P. side.”
Aaron Blake: “The first 15 minutes of Trump’s speech were powerful, as he recounted Saturday’s assassination attempt.”
“The rest of the more than 90-minute-long speech was thoroughly confusing. It meandered between points, often going off-script with ad-libs that left a standard-issue Trump campaign speech without the kind of coherent, lofty theme that defines traditional presidential convention fare. And Trump’s initially subdued manner and calls for unity didn’t match the content of an often-divisive speech.”
