This is Donald Trump’s third convention as presumptive Republican nominee, so by now he and his staff are thoroughly familiar with how to run an operation that is tightly disciplined in terms of both operations and message. They have been unusually secretive about the convention schedule, even for tonight; we have a good idea who will speak at some point during the convention but the precise running-order remains under wraps at this point. But more important is message control, particularly since Trump has sent some mixed signals about the tone he wants to set. To put it simply, his idea of “national unity” is probably not yours or mine, particularly since his first and most important decision was to choose a controversial and divisive running-mate.
Whatever Team Trump has decided on, however, will almost certainly be imposed on convention speakers via a vetting operation that controls the teleprompter where final speech texts will appear. If, for example, the Trump campaign decides it’s a bad time to talk about Biden’s age and fitness to serve as president, speeches will be scrubbed to get rid of the inevitable Biden-is-a-feeble-puppet jokes that speakers and their staff are likely to bring with them to Milwaukee.
In my experience as a speech-and-script staffer at six Democratic conventions, sometimes the word can come down abruptly from convention managers changing or managing the message. In 1992 during the convention in New York when the Clinton campaign learned that Ross Perot was about to drop out of the presidential race, all references (mostly negative) to Perot were ruthlessly eliminated or preempted. In 2004 John Kerry’s focus groups showed that swing voters were unhappy with excessive partisanship, so at the Democratic convention in Boston wordsmiths were told not to mention the word “Republican.” It will be interesting and revealing to see how powerfully Trump’s people secure message discipline.
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