Pages

Sunday, August 23, 2020

Multiple outlets indicate Trump plans to speak each night, prime time, at his convention. Ms. Conroy is quoted by N.Y. T.

 Link. In part:

Ja’Ron Smith, the highest-ranking Black official in the Trump White House, is set to speak on the final night. A handful of supportive House members, including Representatives Matt Gaetz and Jim Jordan, also have speaking slots.

“The Democratic convention was a Hollywood-produced, Old Guard-laden convention, if you ask me,” Kellyanne Conway, Mr. Trump’s counselor, told reporters at the White House on Friday, adding that viewers “are going to see and hear from many Americans whose lives have been monumentally impacted by this administration’s policies.”

No Roger Stone. No Bannon. No Flynn. 160,000 pandemic deaths because of GOP ineptitude. None speaking. Dead men tell no tales. But each, "monumentally impacted by this administration's policies." 

The dog speaks every night. No pony. 

Will there be a bible walk reenactment?

Donald Trump walking past graffitied concrete walls.
Donald Trump walks back to the White House after his photo-op in Lafayette Park in Washington, DC, on June 1, 2020. Brendan SmialowskiAFP via Getty Images

image and caption from Vox 

UPDATE: Wikipedia. Another Smith bio.

FURTHER UPDATE:  

The NYTimes item reports further:

The president’s sensitivity to TV production values has also raised pressure on Republican aides to pull off a glitch-free affair.

The Democrats’ relatively smooth experience belied the complexity of mounting a virtual event, from juggling dozens of remote video feeds to avoiding embarrassments like losing picture or sound. To ensure professionalism, the Democrats relied on Ricky Kirshner, the producer of the Super Bowl halftime show and the Tony Awards.

The Republicans’ celebration is being coordinated by longtime Trump loyalists including Ms. Conway; Justin Clark, the deputy campaign manager; Hope Hicks, a senior White House adviser; and Lara Trump, the president’s daughter-in-law. Tony Sayegh, a former Treasury Department official who was brought on as a consultant to help handle the convention, is overseeing plans with Max Miller, a former White House official who took charge of campaign events after Mr. Trump’s sparsely-attended rally in Tulsa, Okla., and who has little experience in television production.

The team is consulting with Mr. Kim, who served as Mr. Burnett’s head of business development for about a decade, earning production credits on “The Celebrity Apprentice” and “The Voice.”

Mr. Kim, whose production firm has received $54,274 in payments from the Republican Party’s convention committee, has a relatively low profile in the TV industry. Several producers who worked on “The Apprentice” said last week they had never heard of him. In 2010, he served as a judge for the Miss Universe pageant, with an official bio saying he “negotiates, packages and manages deals with brands and agencies” for Mr. Burnett’s programs.

Chuck LaBella, the other consultant, has a long relationship with Mr. Trump dating to his time as a talent wrangler on “The Apprentice”; he also worked on pageants for Miss Universe and Miss USA. He was linked to Mr. Trump’s inner circle after Michael D. Cohen, the president’s former lawyer, steered Mr. LaBella to Keith Davidson for legal work. Mr. Davidson was the Hollywood lawyer who negotiated payments on behalf of two women who said they had affairs with Mr. Trump.

A company owned by Mr. LaBella has received $81,603 in payments from the Republican convention committee, according to financial disclosure reports. (Republican aides declined to make Mr. Kim or Mr. LaBella available for interviews.)

Slush, with both parties guilty. SuperBowl halftime shows suck. They are plain awful. It's when fans at home get up to pee. That's the Dems. Trump remembers friends from Apprentice days, and they get paid. People don't need mediocre entertainment types getting richer. They need sound government.

(They get mediocre entertainment types getting richer.) Kayne West.