What was that?  Night 1 was Make America Afraid and a little sad for how nutsy cuckoo one of the major parties has become.

The mother of a Benghazi casualty said Hillary was responsible for her son’s death and journalists had to gently point out that there’s no evidence for that without calling her crazy.

9/11 Rudy yelled and took credit for the 20 year drop in crime in NY that started before he took office and continued after, and happened everywhere he wasn’t mayor too.

A bunch of people said we’re already at war and/or a cross roads and only they have the courage to call the enemy by its given name of “Muslim extremism.” They seemed proud of that.

Chachi spoke after tweeting that Hillary is a c*nt (Baio literally ran into Trump last week and Trump asked him to speak – like this was just some backyard barbecue, “you know , come if you can and have a rib, give a speech, whatever, it’s casual”).

Antonio Sabato, Jr., who is… um… I don’t know who he is, said Obama is definitely a Muslim, definitely.

Joni Ernst and Jeff Sessions droned showing why they’re big stars. Actually, nobody ever thought Sessions was a star (he’s in the Senate because his nomination for the federal bench was rejected by the Senate because of his extreme views on race). They did actually think Ernst was, until last night.

Melania Trump gave a serviceable although apparently plagiarized speech that didn’t add any personal element to her indentured servitude marriage to Trump. Which, going by the people who have seen the curtain pulled back, is about par for the indifferent course on his relations with his wives and children. Maybe she had no color to offer because the only color in their lives is that orangeish tint he trails like a human bag of Cheetos. Maybe she doesn’t really know him.

But more importantly she rickrolled us all.

It was also an occasion for every nude picture of Melania to be tweeted against the backdrop of how much grief the same people applauding Melania gave to Michelle Obama over sleeveless dresses.

Ultimately it’s a toss up whether the actual convention was worse or this piece in the  New Yorker about the writer who actually wrote “The Art of the Deal” and how much he regrets putting lipstick on a pig for Trump.

The hall seemed half empty most of the time (and completely empty part of the time), the functions seemed perfunctory – march speaker on, march speaker off, no videos, no productions values. It looked like a convention that was done on the cheap at the last second, and it was.

Poor Bob Dole sitting there and being propped up whenever they needed a visual of an elder statesmen to give the whole thing cover. There is no cover here and that was obvious from the fact that even his wife, Elizabeth “Liddy” Dole, former Republican Senator from NC, did not accompany him.