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To attorney Ty Cobb, who served as Donald Trump’s White House counsel during the ex-president’s first year in office, this week’s four-day GOP nominating pageant was, for the party’s purposes, “executed well.” Republicans have never appeared more unified, and their messaging is clear, Cobb said Friday morning.
“Sadly though, and obviously, it is mostly theater,” Cobb told The Independent. “Trump is an empty soul. He doesn’t stand for anything but pure ambition. There is no principle at all.”
When Trump closed out the final evening of the 2024 Republican National Convention on Thursday night, he briefly tried on for size a marginally less aggrieved persona. Five days after he was grazed in the ear by a gunman’s bullet, the twice-impeached former commander-in-chief promised an arena’s worth of GOP delegates and millions of people watching at home that if he were to return to power, he would serve as “president for all of America, not half of America.”
But after a frenzied appearance by pro wrestler and noted union-buster Hulk Hogan, who ripped off his shirt mid-speech to emphasize his MAGA bona fides, and an apparently lip-synched performance by Kid Rock, the crowd clearly wanted to hear the hits.
So, after less than a half-hour of the “new” Trump, he reverted to form for the rest of his rambling 93-minute address, veering wildly off-script for, in the words of one commentator, “one of the truly awful and self-indulgent political performances of our time.” The newly minted felon spent the next 90-plus minutes tossing MAGA fans the hunks of the red meat they craved: “Crazy Nancy Pelosi” is a scourge on the nation, Joe Biden is the “worst” president in U.S. history, Democrats rigged the 2020 election, the “Russia, Russia, Russia” investigation into Trump’s alleged Kremlin ties was a “hoax,” and undocumented immigrants are “stealing” jobs from Black Americans, among incendiary but wholly untrue proclamations.
It was the archetypal example of how Trump, according to Cobb, a former prosecutor, can shapeshift “almost flawlessly,” adopting whatever persona he chooses to project in the moment.
“That chameleon-like phenomenon allows him to appeal to many who merely want to hear their favorite narrative, whether or not it is from a false prophet,” Cobb continued. “Regrettably, the current state of the party requires the few remaining serious leaders like Ambassador [Nikki] Haley and Secretary [Mike] Pompeo to kiss the orange ring just to retain some ability to play a part later.”
At the same time, Cobb said it will be up to Haley, Pompeo, and other “adults” within the conference to spearhead “the MAGA retreat that must take place if our culture and form of government are to survive long-term.”
Cobb, who represented Trump during Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into alleged Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, was on the former president’s good side—until he wasn’t. Trump was once “VERY happy” with Cobb, who he said was doing “a great job.” Cobb later left amid tension over what he saw as Trump’s needlessly belligerent posture toward Mueller and the Department of Justice, and when he spoke critically last year about Trump’s alleged mishandling of classified information, Trump immediately turned on him.
“Ty Cobb is a disgruntled former Lawyer, who represented me long ago, and knows absolutely nothing about the Boxes Hoax being perpetrated upon me,” Trump posted on Truth Social. “…His words are angry, nasty, and libelous, only because I did not continue using him (and paying him), and for good reason.”
America’s problems are growing “exponentially more complicated every day,” and “expensive, fact free, non-substantive convention spectacles” do little more than “dazzle” the base, Cobb said on Friday.
“Until we return to a truth-based, more tolerant foundation, there will be no progress,” he told The Independent. “A reckoning is needed for the entire political class. Yet, there does not appear to be a savior in sight… Illusions and hatred are not the tools for progress.”
