The Republican National Convention wrapped up Thursday night with a speech by President Donald Trump to accept the Republican nominee for the 2024 election.
The acceptance speech by Trump Thursday night was both rather long and was a mixed bag, with Trump showing some humility and humanity during the first part of his speech Thursday night, then swerved to a typical Trump rally speech filled with ad-libs, shout-outs and more.
Hosts of Hancock and Kelley John Hancock, a Republican strategist, and Michael Kelley, a Democratic Strategist joined Total Information A.M. right before their show to discuss the speech and their takeaways from it.
Hancock says liked the first part of the speech when the former president read from a teleprompter but didn't like Trump's "stream of consciousness" during the last part.
"I think it was an opportunity squandered," said Hancock. "The first or so of that speech, and I thought on the whole was pretty good. Certainly resonated with the people in the room and I think would have elicited a lot of sympathy of general public. I think if he would've stopped there, (Republicans) probably would've held that nine point lead."
Hancock feels the speech didn't influence undecided voters and that was disappointing to him considering how well run the Republican National Convention was all week.
"They put on tight a very good convention together," said Hancock. "Who would've thought six months ago the Republican Party would go into it's convention unified and the Democratic Party was in disarray?"
Kelley says that while he was shocked at Trump showing humanity during the first part of his speech, then the remaining parts of the speech was "a horror movie that reminded him what those four years were like with Donald Trump as president."
"It also gave me hope from a Democratic perspective of that is who we are running against," said Kelley. "John's right: he could've given the first 15 minutes of that speech, got on an airplane, fly back to Mar-a-Lago and played golf for the next two weeks and I don't think it would've hurt him. I think he opened the door again for people to remember 'Sigh, that's who we are dealing with.'"