Welcome to ConBag, a daily roundup of gossip from the Republican National Convention, which we are attending for four very long days.
CLEVELAND—My colleague Stassa Edwards and I continue to be at the RNC, and it’s fine. Everything’s fine. Last night we entered the Quicken Loans Arena, where the main convention action is. We immediately beheld a small, hobbit-like man in a Brooks Brothers suit, being greeted enthusiastically by many taut-faced, tanned rich people. It was Karl Rove.
“I can’t stop to talk,” Rove told Stassa and me as we enthusiastically ran up on him. He intimated that he was very busy, but— between us—he didn’t really look busy.
“How woke are you?” we asked him.
“I don’t know what that is,” he said, a little irritably as he speed-walked away from us.
Well, OK! That’s just fine.
Second-youngest Trump scion Tiffany Trump is also fine. She took her first, faltering, baby deer-like steps into the outside world, delivering a speech in which she opined that her dad is great.
Controversial, and frankly a tough position to really defend at length, but fine.
Melania Trump is, perhaps, not so fine today. The Trump campaign responded to her plagiarism scandal by fully throwing her to the wolves, implying that she edited her speech without their knowledge to include all that plagiarism.
- The Westboro Baptist Church is also here. So are some delightful counter-protesters, and they will tell you what is truly not fine.
- Ben Carson took the stage last night to accuse Hillary Clinton of being a disciple of Saul Alinsky, who is, in turn, a disciple of Satan. [Baltimore Sun]
- The Washington Post, like several other media outlets, has rented out an entire restaurant to serve as their office for the duration of the RNC. Which is mostly just disappointing a lot of hungry people who walk by: “Washington Post? Is that the name of the restaurant? Why is it so empty?”
- I saw Fox News ambush aficionado Jesse Watters and asked how woke he is. He had no idea what I was talking about. [Twitter]
- Radio host and head conspiracy theorist Alex Jones had dinner at a Mexican restaurant last night, surrounded by several InfoWars staffers who are all extremely jacked-looking dudes with beards. They look like they run around in homegrown militias on the weekend, or perhaps do eight straight hours of Crossfit while slamming Monster energy drinks until their eyeballs bleed. Jones is, he tell us, “100% woke.” [Twitter]
- Stassa saw Jorge Ramos interviewing a white supremacist. Everyone’s fine!
Photos by Stassa Edwards