MSNBC’s Jason Johnson Hammers RNC for Praising Trump Instead of Addressing Country’s Crises: ‘Like a Bunch of Clones of Mike Pence’

MSNBC contributor Jason Johnson called out the first night of the Republican National Convention for its relentless, reflexive praise of President Donald Trump while failing to address the reality of the multiple crises facing the country and the much more diverse suburban voters the party is trying to woo.

During an Tuesday even gin appearance on Deadline: White House, Johnson spoke with Nicolle Wallace about the narrative of the evening and how the repeated attempts at stoking racial division trafficked in decades-old tropes.

“Suburbs are more liberal than four years ago and the suburbs are more diverse than they’ve ever been,” Wallace pointed out. “[The GOP is] running on calling people in the suburbs, they keep talking about ‘suburban housewives’ and making them less diverse, frankly, there’s more diversity and more people from the cities living in the suburbs now than ever.”

“Yeah, it’s like, this would be an awesome, awesome convenon in like ’92. But it really doesn work for 2020,” Johnson joked. “The suburbs are full of black, brown, tan people and middle-class folks who can’t afford to live in million-dollar condos in the city. I live in the suburbs. The suburbs are born, Suburbs are where you have bilingual Burger Kings and McDonald’s. So when Donald Trump is talking this mythical suburbs, he’s talking about parents who go to school and have three or four different kinds of races and they come home and they’re used to it.”

“He doesn’t even know the country he’s talking to at this point,” Johnson added, driving home the point.

Polling in this election cycle has found numerous warning signs for Trump amid suburban voters. A recent Hill/Harris X poll showed 59 percent of suburban voters disapproved of the job he was doing and a Third Way poll from last week found Biden soundly beating Trump by 16 percentage points among suburban voters in five key battleground states.

“I cleared my ears after Kimberly [Guilfoyle] was yelling at me,” Johnson joked again. “By the time they got to Tim Scott last night, that was one of the most compelling speeches I saw. But here’s the problem with it and this is what I think demonstrates the fact that Trump doesn’t even know what his base is anymore. Tim Scott was there to make suburban white people, urban white people and middle class black people take a different look at Donald Trump, but nothing he said resonated with the reality that we’re seeing outside. People are still losing jobs. People are still afraid of Covid, people still can’t go to the movies so when Scott gives this sort of baritone, ‘Donald Trump has cared more for black people,’ it doesn’t look like that’s the case. That’s what I thought was strange. This entire RNC doesn’t fit the reality viewers are seeing. That’s why I don’t think it’s going to resonate. The ratings were terrible.”

Johnson then recalled a seminal moment from the 1996 Republican National Convention, when Elizabeth Dole, the wife of GOP nominee Bob Dole, left the stage and wandered the convention floor on air, talking to the delegates about their lives.

“It was this warm, amazing Oprah moment. This was Donald Trump’s opportunity to do that,” Johnson said. “He talked to regular people, but rather than him saying ‘I care about you, I’m concerned about your kids. How’s your work doing,’ it was a praise fest. Like a bunch of clones of Mike Pence. Everybody just had to sit there and worship the president and that’s not what the American people want to hear.”

“They failed to present a message about how the dangers and the traumas that Americans are dealing with today are going to change anytime soon,” he added about the RNC. “That’s not even your base at this point.  That is literally only cultists. Your base is suffering because they haven’t been able to work and they have got a $600 check from the government for about a month.”

“And they can’t get a same-day Covid test to know if it’s safe to go back to the office,” Wallace pointed out.

Watch the video above, via MSNBC.

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