'Squandering sympathy and goodwill': Columnist buries Trump's RNC rant

Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank was left deeply unimpressed by former President Donald Trump's acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention.

In his latest piece, Milbank argued that Trump and the GOP were "squandering all the sympathy and goodwill" that came from the failed assassination attempt on the former president over the weekend.

After highlighting a number of angry and divisive messages from speakers at this year's RNC, Milbank then zeroed in on Trump's acceptance speech, which he had promised would be more unifying than his normal rally rants.

"Trump himself, after a feint toward unity — 'the discord and division in our society must be healed' — soon reverted to type," Milbank wrote. "He complained about the 'fake documents case against me' and the 'partisan witch hunts.' He denounced 'Crazy Nancy Pelosi' and invoked the 'China virus.' He said Democrats 'used covid to cheat' and called the United States a 'nation in decline' with 'totally incompetent leadership,' where there is 'cheating on elections.'"

ALSO READ: Milwaukee girded for massive convention protests. But they got something else.

All of this led Milbank to chide mainstream media journalists who bought into yet another narrative about Trump "pivoting" to a warmer "tone."

"Despite his campaign’s claims (credulously swallowed by some in the press) that he wouldn’t mention Biden in his unifying speech, Trump told the convention that he would 'take back the White House from Crooked Joe Biden, the worst president in the history of our country," he wrote. "He then delivered his standard stump speech, packed with vitriol and fabrications."