Newsletter: Opinion: A scarier, more insidious version of Donald Trump

Good morning. I’m Paul Thornton, The Times’ letters editor, and it is Saturday, July 23, 2016. Yes, it’s really hot today, but Southern California isn’t the only part of the country suffering extreme heat. Here’s why.

Let’s take a look back at the week in Opinion.

Donald Trump wants to make American great again — but first, he’s trying to make us afraid.

During his acceptance speech Thursday night, the Republican nominee for president (not “presumptive” anymore — as in, we’re actually doing this) cast himself as the savior of a nation beset by crime, undeterred foreign threats and spineless leadership. And he did it not with the trademark unsubtlety and braggadocio that carried him to the convention, but rather using language blunted just enough to make his frightening vision acceptable to voters.

And that, says The Times’ editorial board, is the scariest thing about a nomination speech full of unsettling moments:

Trump’s overarching intention was to sow fear in America’s voters: Fear of uncontrolled crime and terrorism that “threaten our very way of life.” Fear of immigrants, including refugees from the civil war in Syria. Fear of Muslims, although instead of the “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States” he proposed last year, Trump said he would suspend immigration from countries that have been “compromised by terrorism.” Fear of foreign trading partners that, thanks to “disastrous trade deals supported by Bill and Hillary Clinton,” have destroyed American manufacturing.

Finally, Trump warned that Americans should fear Hillary Clinton, whom he described as a corrupt politician whose legacy as secretary of State amounted to “death, destruction and weakness.”

But Trump’s speech was frightening in a second sense: By softening his strident rhetoric, by (selectively) citing statistics, by couching cruel policies in the language of compassion, Trump managed to make an extreme agenda sound not only plausible but necessary.

This seemingly more restrained Trump said that he wakes up every day “determined to deliver for the people I have met all across this nation that have been neglected, ignored and abandoned.” He spoke with feeling about victims of crime, impoverished Latinos and African-Americans, and the LGBTQ community, which was victimized by the recent attack on a nightclub in Orlando, Fla. All Americans, he suggested, would benefit from a Trump administration that would restore law and order and “add millions of new jobs and trillions in new wealth that can be used to rebuild America.”

Even in his attacks on Clinton, he moderated his tone and elevated his vocabulary. He dropped the reference to “Crooked Hillary,” and when some in the crowd shouted “Lock her up,” he countered: “Let’s defeat her in November.” The underlying slander, however, was the same. Notwithstanding the FBI’s conclusion that Clinton’s use of a private email server to transmit classified material was extremely careless and negligent but not worthy of criminal prosecution, Trump claimed to know better: “These terms are minor compared to what she actually did. They were just used to save her from facing justice for her terrible crimes.”...

If Trump’s dire diagnosis of the country’s problems was deceptive, so were his proposed solutions. For example, he promised that “the crime and violence that today afflicts our nation will soon come to an end,” adding, “Beginning on January 20, 2017, safety will be restored.” But how? Trump said he would “work with, and appoint, the best and brightest prosecutors and law enforcement officials in the country to get the job done.” But most prosecutors and law enforcement officers are local, and the federal government plays little or no role in their daily work.

When Trump fleetingly addressed foreign policy in his speech, he said he would replace “globalism” with “Americanism” — whatever that means. One interpretation, suggested by Trump’s recent interview with the New York Times, is that a Trump administration would be willing to abandon NATO allies if they didn’t spend enough on their own defense. In his speech, Trump warned that “the countries that we protect, at a massive loss, will pay their fair share.”

Other assertions in Trump’s speech will be subjected to similar scrutiny, but many of those who watched it on television will never catch up with the corrections. They will remember that they saw a nominee who spoke in somber tones and seemed resolute about rescuing America from a nightmare of crime, terrorism and economic stagnation. Never mind that Trump still lacks an elementary grasp of domestic and foreign affairs, that he still wants to build a wall on the Mexican border and withdraw the U.S. from engagement with the world, and that he still has no words of comfort for victims of police brutality.

The challenge for Hillary Clinton is to rescue reality from the illusion Trump created in this perversely powerful speech.

» Click here to read more.

The new Trump, same as the old. Columnist Doyle McManus says the Republican nominee’s acceptance speech was a collection of his greatest hits, plus some new material about running as the “law-and-order candidate.” McManus writes, “The general election Trump is no clearer, and no more disciplined in his thinking, than the Trump of the primaries was.” L.A. Times

A coup against President Trump? Don’t dismiss the possibility. James Kirchick warns that if Trump makes good on his pledge to kill the families of terrorists or orders American soldiers to commit war crimes, military personnel could be left with the option of disobeying their commander in chief or overthrowing him. In response, some readers call Kirchick’s piece “grotesque” and “reprehensible.”

More from Cleveland: Don’t let Melania Trump’s plagiarism distract you from the truly terrifying stuff in the GOP platform, writes Melissa Batchelor Warnke. Scott Martelle says that platform would worsen climate change. Vice presidential nominee Mike Pence delivers something in short supply at the Republican convention, says Doyle McManus: coherence. House Speaker Paul Ryan gave one of the best speeches at the convention, writes former speechwriter Barton Swaim (who also weighs in on Melania Trump’s plagiarism). McManus spots the beginning of Ted Cruz’s 2020 presidential campaign in his non-endorsement of Trump. Find more at latimes.com/opinion.

There was an actual attempted coup last week. What set the attempted military overthrow of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s regime apart from previous attempts in Turkey is that this one failed, writes Nick Danforth: “Before the most recent coup attempt, the government was already quick to suggest that all of its domestic enemies, including secular journalists, Kurdish politicians and followers of the preacher Fethullah Gulen, were acting together in a vast conspiracy against it. The uprising proved that a conspiracy did exist, but that it was less extensive than Erdoğan feared.” L.A. Times

American mothers hear this all the time: “Breast is best.” But our country’s policies don’t reflect the fact that breastfeeding babies for the first several months of their lives produces the best health outcomes, writes Jennifer Grayson. Wealthy families in which the mother can stay home tend to do better with breastfeeding than those on public assistance programs or in which the mothers cannot afford to take extended time off from work. Countries such as Vietnam and Taiwan have largely closed the breastfeeding equality gap; why won’t the United States? L.A. Times

The New York Times published the worst piece on L.A. transit in a while. The Expo Line to Santa Monica is not the “subway to the sea,” but the piece calls it that anyway. Many of the most tired clichés about Los Angeles (the proliferation of yoga studios and pricey cold-press juice shops, to name two) are featured prominently. And despite the fact that no one held up the Expo Line to Santa Monica as the panacea for the region’s notorious congestion, the article reads as if Los Angeles commuters naively expected a single light-rail line to rescue them from traffic hell. New Yorkers must think it’s awfully cute to watch L.A. play trains. New York Times

Reach me: paul.thornton@latimes.com