When the President accepted his party’s nomination from the White House, there were TV cameras – but no live TV broadcast. Not that many people would be watching live, anyway. Not only was it after midnight, but few Americans had television sets. Those who did had to wait 15 hours later, after the film was developed.
That was in the summer of 1940, when Franklin Delano Roosevelt accepted the Democratic nomination for a record third term, speaking on the radio from the White House as fellow Democrats were convening in Chicago.
This week, President Trump follows in accepting the Republican nomination from home, but other than the same address as Roosevelt, there are few similarities.
His will be in primetime. It will surely be live. And unlike FDR, who wasn’t keen on appearing on TV and appeared that night only in shirtsleeves, Trump, a optically-attuned former reality TV star, will be making sure he’s beamed to millions as much as possible – and definitely will be wearing a blazer.
And, this President is also going to be making an appearance each of the convention’s four days.
“You will see all the trappings of the office that make Donald Trump look presidential and come off as powerful and in control to the audience - I think that's part of the mission,” said Mark Lukasiewicz, a former NBC News executive who has led coverage of numerous live political events, including conventions, and is now Dean of The Lawrence Herbert School of Communication at Hofstra University.
“I don't think that's completely distinct from prior incumbent presidents who campaign," he continued. “The difference, though, is to do a political speech, an overtly political speech for a convention from the White House, is breaking a norm. It's shattering a norm.”
The Trump campaign hopes to shatter ratings, too – and inject itself with sorely needed voter support. Already down in polling, with the pandemic continuing to claim lives and jobs, Republicans now face a seemingly unified Democratic Party that is earning praise (and a bump in some polls), after its virtual convention last week that has Former Vice President Joe Biden and California Senator Kamala Harris as the ticket.
The pandemic scuttled Trump’s original convention plans: it was supposed to be in Charlotte, N.C., then a public health disagreement with North Carolina’s Democratic governor prompted a move to Jacksonville, Florida, which a surge in COVID-19 cases also nixed.
Even if the White House is Choice #3 – and using federal property is being criticized as unseemly, if not illegal – the Trump Campaign is embracing it with gusto.
Much of the White House has been retrofitted as a stage, with the President speaking Thursday from the South Lawn and First Lady Melania Trump Tuesday from a newly reshaped Rose Garden. A fireworks display over the National Mall is awaiting permits.
An RNC spokeswoman, Cassie Smedile, called it “lemons out of lemonade.”
"During these unprecedented times, you're looking at unprecedented places to try and bring the convention to people. Joe Biden chose to just stick in Delaware. And the president is choosing to stick where he is, where he currently lives and the people's White House."
The President will still travel to North Carolina, where convention business is still being held.
Of the concern using at political events at the White House, Smedile said: "It will all be funded through the Republican Party. The president's campaign." (Vice President Mike Pence is also set to speak at a national monument, Fort McHenry in Baltimore, on Wednesday.)
In another norm-bending appearance, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo will be speaking to the RNC from "an undisclosed location" in Jerusalem, Axios reported, citing a source familiar with his plans.
The theme of the Convention is said to be “Honoring the Great American Story.”
Speakers will include a number of elected officials as well as others whose causes Trump and his allies have championed: a St. Louis couple photographed brandishing guns at Black Lives Matter protesters in June; a criminal justice advocate whose sentence on drug crimes was commuted by Trump at the urging of celebrity Kim Kardashian; parents of human rights activist Kayla Mueller, who died while being held by the Islamic State group in Syria; a Kentucky student who gained national attention after an interaction with a Native American man during demonstrations in Washington; Andrew Pollack, whose daughter Meadow was among those killed in the 2018 school shooting in Parkland, Florida.
Republicans say they want their convention to be an “optimistic” juxtaposition against the “gloomy” Democrats.
“Yes, we're in a pandemic right now and things are really difficult for a lot of people,” Smedile said. “But because the foundation was laid in the first part of this first term … we are bouncing back and the great American comeback is underway.”
The President is also expected to repeat the kind of dire warnings he has been sounding about a Biden administration.
“I'm the only thing standing between the American dream and total anarchy, madness and chaos,” he said last week.
Unlike in FDR’s day, modern conventions are manufactured for cameras, leaving questions of journalistic ethics never far away – namely how much to air of what is an entirely partisan event.
Lukasiewicz, the Hofstra dean and former television executive, said this year’s Republican convention is uniquely fraught, considering Trump’s record with telling falsehoods, as he noted.
“Network news organizations now face a new dilemma – how to allow their audiences to see a bonafide news ‘event’ without being a vehicle for disinformation,” Lukasiewicz wrote in an email.
The RNC didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
It’s the part of journalists’ jobs to fact check political figures, and there have been several post-event fact checks of the Democratic National Convention.
Unlike the White House speech a bit more than 80 years ago, Trump’s on Thursday is expected to air on TV live in its entirety; according to the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum, in July 1940, only a “short snippet” of FDR’s radio address ended up broadcast on TV, with newsreel footage also shown in theaters.